Blood surged through my veins with an abundance of a spring flood, but my senses remained dulled, divided between my two realities.

My fingers fumbled to seize Ondrey's chin and set his lips onto mine so much that it was a triumph when our mouths linked.

His hands acted more deftly to claw my clothes away. All I had on was a tunic over the trousers. So little clothes for once, less and less with every passing moment. I would have to ask him what happened to my chain shirt, the quilted padding and the rest of my kit. They cost good money.

"The world is a blur," I complained when I wore nothing but my skin. "I'm making love to you, and I can't even properly see your body."

His chest rumbled, frustratingly faint. I wanted to feel the full magnitude of his laughter. "I'm luckier. And you are as beautiful as I pictured a hundred times, no matter how afraid I was to break my vow. I... I'm sorry if the thought is too frivolous considering--"

"Sweetheart, don't apologize. When you laugh, I know you haven't buried me yet."

"Never!"

I arched to kiss him for his efforts. It was as much as I could do to help him to the climax. We had to hurry, but the less I could do with my body to caress him, the more my heart labored. The waves of gentleness washed over me, in both worlds, warmer than skin and lips.

"I won't leave you." I cradled him in the postcoital comfort. "We share too much. We're alike in all things. My soul cleaves to yours."

We did everything to start the gift of new life in my womb.

Now all three of us—me, Ondrey and the soul who would be reborn in our child—had to wait. It shouldn't take long, should it? I was wandering the River Vash already where the souls waited. I was right there, ready for it to kindle. Though I wasn't sure if it was a soul looking for a soul, or soul looking for a body, or something else. I should ask Kozima once we had returned to him--or not. Kozima... he might be a little upset about my firstborn being conceived from a consort.

"I'll save my strength for the quickening, Ondrey. Don't be afraid. Sleep. I'll be back."

"I'm not afraid," Ondrey said faintly. His beautiful body disappeared from my arms.

The moment my limbs stopped flailing in the River Vash to cling to him in the Knowable World, I went down like a stone. The maidens' hair ensnared me, dragged me through the miles of water and light, tossed me still spinning to the bottom.

Dizzy, I pushed to all fours and puked my guts out onto the fine, combed sand. Someone took a sharp intake of breath above my bent head. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. I had my shirt and pants on in the River Vash... confusing.

"If that's how you bring the guests in, you shouldn't be surprised," I said.

"Dear Ismar, you are no guest. You're a fugitive. The maidens only hunt the souls refusing to inhale the oblivion."

The River Vash would freeze over before I'd inhale oblivion voluntarily! Ondrey and Kozima waited for me in the Knowable World. I was about to become a mother.

I lifted my eyes at the speaker, ready to give them a piece of my mind. It was a water spirit of some sort. Willowy and tall, golden-green scales down the sides of a pointy face with luminous green eyes. The hair, also green, cascaded down their back. There was no obvious bosom, but the body was sinuous. Slim arms ended with webbed hands, long-nailed.

They needed those well-trimmed nails too, since their occupation appeared to consist of sitting on the bottom of the River Vash, playing a harp. The instrument was a complicated affair of crystal and gold, about a woman's height, wedged into the fine golden sand of the bottom.

The long fingers ran down the harpy's strings, bringing forth a haunting melody. "I'm Sadko the Harpist, the singer at the feasts of the defeated. I'll decide your fate."

Sadko? He was a male then. How dared he to judge me? "I'm not a criminal!"

He chewed his thin lip. "Mmgh. Not a criminal? I would call you a trickster, given what you'd done just now. It entertained me."

The audience for my first night with Ondrey was expanding. I would have thought that an old witch would be enough, but the denizens of the River Vash just had to take a peek as well.

"Your smile doesn't look merry, Sadko the Harpist."

The shrug finished in a flourish of the musicians' slender wrist. "Nonetheless, you brought back a memory of a past life when I was young and ready to do anything to live another day. It won't be sporting to put an end to your charade immediately."

I rubbed my stomach. "I'll be back, don't take me wrong, but today I want to leave. The child in my womb will call me back to the Knowable World."

An eyelid slipped upward to give me a weird wink, lizard-like. "Ah... but can you resist me while your womb quickens?"

If only conception was immediate! Since it wasn't, every moment I spent yapping was one less moment fighting. And I had to save my strength for the child. "Resist you how?"

"Do you see the coral palace on the hill?"

"It's hard to miss."

An intricate fantasy of turrets, arches, buttresses and sky bridges on top of the underwater hill arrested the eye. Its slopes sported welcoming groves of coral trees in every shade of red and the beds of sea anemones. I was no stranger to the beauty of the ocean floor, but this vista boasted a precise hand of a gardener.

The palace's windows spilled golden light, with the shadows of incredible beings, gigantic and defying the logic of the Knowable World, dancing within. I was drawn to the silhouettes, the harmony of their many limbs and bodies, and I was terrified. My curled toes dug into the sand. Oh, how I wished for granite underfoot instead of soft sand, and that I had claws of black iron.

After clearing my throat a couple of times, my voice still shook. "It looks Divine. Or should I say 'Bhuta-like'?"

"All and the same, Ismar. All and the same."

"My High Scribe would vehemently disagree."

Sadko shrugged off Phedoxia's opinions with otherworldly elegance. "Do you want to meet your namesake?"

My ears pricked. "Ismy true name Ishmara? Who named me? Do you know?"

He laughed. "You'll find it out in due course, if it matters to the Wheel of Fate. Now we shall duel. Your choice of a weapon?"

The cavalry saber I carried had shattered when I hit the Eternal Sovereign. Black steel, that I still had on my hip in this reality, was useless against an ethereal spirit. Whatever he would conjure was what I should use. Though if I were him, I'd arm my opponent with a toothpick against pikes.

"An ax," I said, remembering Ondrey breaking the ice to pieces and my childhood attacks on the olive groves. The way the ax felt in my hand when Sadko put it there... Mythra's fangs! The ebony shaft and the jade blade! Only jade crescent was also metal somehow. I laughed in exhilaration and took a practice swing.

In the meantime, Sadko caressed the harp's strings, whispering something in rhythm with their throbbing.

I slipped into the neutral stance, keeping a wary eye on him. Who knew what weapon he saved for himself, if he let me borrow this marvelous ax.

The harp finished conferring with Sadko and broke into a stirring tune on its own. He walked toward me, one hand behind his back, with a fencer's elegance, the other flung out to the side, webbed fingers opened in anticipation.

When a weapon of the same jade-metal materialized in his hand, I cocked a brow. A sword with its tip flaring out wide like an ax--a falchion.

"I appreciate the similar yet different vibe of the blades," I said. "A beautiful weapon. Impeccable style." Probably deadly.

He grinned and swirled the blade in a slow arc, showing off the scrollwork of the Mother of All Tongues etched into the metal. "Confluence, dear Ishmara, confluence."

"Is that what it says on the falchion?"

"Initidama ada Peritima," he intoned in the Mother of All Tongues, then grinned at my blank expression. "It means unleash to perish. The smith didn't say who would perish, the foe or the wielder. We, the skalds, must listen to those who forge our swords more often."

I fell into a deeper crouch. "Let's hope it's the wielder."

A scaly brow quirked upward, but he brandished his falchion instead of words.

The harp belted out a triumphant note, filling my heart with a savage joy. Even his harp was on my side... I mentally slapped myself. This was his realm, and he was the singer at the feasts of the defeated. Surely, he had tricks up his gold-embroidered sleeves. For example, filling his enemy's big heads with false confidence.

He attacked in a smooth, falling motion. I parried. The clung of jade on jade when it connected... no offense to the harp, but it was heavenly. He pivoted around me, light as a feather, changing the direction of a swing.

I parried again. He danced away, an opening looming. A test or a trap. I stepped into it, he caught my blow, turned it aside, but I held on, expecting the disarming move. We unlocked the weapons and bowed to one another with respect.

The harp played joyfully behind my back.

I held his gaze, trying to decipher which way he'd move... a fish would have given out more.

I pressed on, he fell back.

In the River Vash, I had nothing left to lose, I thought. And unleashed a flurry of furious strikes, pushing Sadko back and back.

I chased him around a coral tree. I was winning. But...wait! How did we end up in the palace's garden?

Mythra's fangs! The rogue had just where he wanted me. He was leading me to the palace.

Perhaps, I presented the book to Ondrey too early, before learning my lessons. Fall back as many steps as you need to win the battle, it said. This one uncomplicated stratagem defeated a commander after commander, a false retreat, then an ambush. In my case, with the harp blaring out heroic tunes, jade striking jade, and the fervor of the combat seizing me, I would miss my child's voice, I would enter the palace chasing Sadko...and all would be lost.

'The best strategy is unexpected,' taught the book.

I closed my eyes and listened.

Sadko chuckled at my madness. The harp played on. His footsteps crunched on the sand, closer and closer. The falchion whistled through the air.

I parried blindly. The temptation to peek was nearly overwhelming, but I resisted.

Lo! A faint cry and an even fainter call touched my straining ears.

"Ismar," Ondrey's voice said from the palace, the very place of my doom. "Ismar, come back to me."

There were many ways to die in a battle, but none was as sure as hesitation. Hesitation spells death, the book said.

Move! I tossed my jade ax aside and took the steps leading to the coral gates two at a time... three at a time. "Ondrey!"

The gates opened up.

I flew inside, and tittered on the brink of a precipice-like drop. The foyer was enormous, with its ceiling far above. They didn't bother with the floor. Instead, at a dizzying distance below was a bed of metal stakes. On the opposite end of the room was a shelf similar to the one upon which I stood.

Ondrey waited there—not in a flesh, but his faint shadow. I was getting tired of him being a shadow, I wanted him to solidify in all his beauty. But for the time being, it was enough. A newborn baby in his arms cried, and he lowered his head to start a lullaby.

I backpedaled a few steps.

"You can't jump this far. You'll die," Sadko's voice warned me to the wailing of the harp.

I dashed and leaped.

The spikes shot toward me in a wall of malicious steel, but instead of being impaled through the foot, I believed that this was a ruse. Only fear could catch me now, only looking back would kill me, only questioning my choices would render me mad.

And I bounced back into the air from the first killing tip like a flea on springs. I didn't freeze there, pondering my success, I jumped again, as far as I could, landing for a hot minute on another tip. On and on, over the field of screeching metal, I ran for the other side, for Ondrey.

Last bounce, and I was across, safely.

Staring at the blank wall. What little of him was there, if anything at all, it was no longer there. I pounded on the damp stone in frustration, losing time. The child's cry vied for precedence with the harp's song. Mythra!

Under frantic groping of my hands, brickwork rotated inward, opening a rectangle of impenetrable darkness.

I stepped in without hesitation. My child called... Ondrey called.

"Till we meet again, Ishmara!" Sadko's voice fainted away in my ears—and my tear-stained cheek rested on the fair hair of Ondrey's heaving chest.