She is kept quite occupied with small magics to keep the ship operating smoothly, and also with notebooking - writing quite small, as she brought more than enough notebooks for three weeks but then unexpectedly used many of them to draw and write with the demon and has only half of one left for several days at sea.
They land on the shore of the Elven Lands on schedule, and disembark.
"Hi!" he says. "You're Isibel, r—I mean, you must be Isibel, I can tell." He straightens up and nods importantly, flicking his tail. "The Wild Magic sent me! I have to tell you that you need to bond with a dragon to save the world."
"There are - several Elfmages, more experienced than I, who would of course not want the Elemental Darkness raised..." Isibel says. There's really no point in arguing with the unicorn, he's just a messenger, but she can't exactly address the Wild Magic personally. "I don't understand what would make it essential for me in particular to participate - surely there are others - who have the bond already, who want it -"
"You - you don't understand. I would like nothing better than to be an Elfmage; if the world needs saving I would be willing to devote my life to saving it - I don't think I can - I think if anyone, even a dragon who I'd come to love as life itself, could - spy on my thoughts like that - I don't think I'd survive it, I'd go madder than Bisochim the Deceived, I'd be in no condition to save the world," pleads Isibel. "I can't. I'll as good as die before I can accomplish anything."
"I know you have to bond with a dragon to save the world," he says, "and I guess it has to be the one you found, and it had better be sometime this year, and I'm supposed to stay with you until you decide you're definitely going to do it but I don't have to follow you all the way across the ocean or anything, which is good because I get really seasick, it's awful."
"I am supposed to Bond with a dragon," Isibel says softly, in no condition to weave layers of indirection, "and save the world. It's possible I'll survive this physically, but I hold little hope for the state of my soul. I do not even know if I will hold together well enough under such scrutiny to save the world in the first place."
While the debate about what to do with the dragon's Bondmate is ongoing, a consensus quickly emerges that the dragons should send an expedition. Magania defers to Isibel for any knowledge she may have of the island dragon's willingness to engage in producing eggs.
"A unicorn, Liselen, told me when our expedition returned from the island that the Wild Magic says that the world is again in danger of Dark incursion and that I must avert it, and that this will involve my Bonding with a dragon." She swallows. "The island dragon and I can Bond. I - avoided his company as soon as I realized, having decided years ago that I could not, not for love or power, tolerate having my mind read. If there is any way, any at all, to mitigate this problem - I would hear it."
"That may work," says Isibel, head bowed. "Thank you."
She finds her.
She explains the situation.
The other elf wastes no time in setting Isibel up in a guest house and setting a rigorous schedule suitable for the world-saving deadline in which Isibel will learn meditation.
Isibel proves rather adept at it, all told. Inside a moonturn, she can narrow her attention to the finest of points, like a needle so fine as to be half-invisible, or sunlight focused through glass. She thinks of nothing else beyond her chosen object of meditation. The practice isn't without its dangers. She could easily neglect a terrible injury, for example, were her mind elsewhere than her body when she was hurt.
But that's much of the point, that she can feel no suffering when hyperfocused. That she will do work, and nothing else. That she will be able to look for whoever seeks the Dark, and nothing else. That she will be able to study magic to be able to bring it to bear, and nothing else. That she will be able to be the savior of the world.
And nothing else.
She can't stay in hyperfocus forever. She's up to an hour when her teacher pronounces her ready, and she can only do an hour when the focus object is something interesting - a book, usually. She can last only minutes at a time trying to meditate on her breathing or on a star. But of course the object here is not to make her Bond free of distress for her. It's to make her productive in spite of distress.
She'll get better with practice, and if she has to spend much of every day in miserable desperate awareness of scrutiny, well, the world is at stake, she is only one elf and there are millions if not billions of people on the line, where would she be now if Harrier had refused his commands from the Wild Magic?
The teacher advises her to add a trigger to each session of hyperfocus that will end it early (because, of course, one of the things she neglects when her mind is sharpened to a blind single point is anything that could lead her to want to cease to be so). For practice purposes, she uses a word from her teacher. For later, she will need something else.
Isibel supposes that as long as she has to give over her entire self into the hands of the dragon - and his obviously much more content existing Bondmate - she may as well let them trigger her. The demon could snap his fingers in front of her face, or something. Let them decide when she works and when she weeps.
At least she'll still sleep at night.
Elves sleep at night.
She's ready in time to return to the island with the rest of the expedition, and if anyone notices that she is withdrawn and upset, they are all too polite to ask.
She drifts into the forest towards the cluster of unicorn statues, already half-dead, and makes a reluctant but definite beeline for the dragon's cave.
Inhale. Choose object. Blur everything else into black disappeared irrelevance. Exhale. Focus.
"The Wild Magic told a unicorn to tell me that I must Bond with a dragon in order to save the world," Isibel says levelly. Her voice sounds too careful, too even, every syllable an exact length and every space between words the same size, but she's not paying attention to that. Breathe. Is that the complete explanation? It is a sufficient explanation.
The focus falls away and she cries again.
"I care about the world. So many people could die. They may have already started dying because I waited to learn to concentrate on things, but I couldn't help that, I don't think I'll be able to work otherwise, whatever work I must do. I might die anyway, if I do nothing. There's no helping it." She doesn't hyperfocus for these sentences; she pushes them out between sobs and miserable sniffling inhalations.
She looks up and meets his eyes. "I will also be unhappy if darkness takes the world," she murmurs, not addressing the first statement. She doesn't know what to do with that. She can't process. She can never process again; she's going to have to make do with some combination of instinct and status quo and Bondmate opinion, and what she has written down. There is not going to be another chance to write herself into books and read her thoughts in plain words. Not with someone watching.
It's not hard, on a surface level, to just look. She knows what it means, but she's already made her decision about that, and now she can just - stare. They're compelling eyes, they draw her gaze, she feels a bit like someone has dropped her off a cliff and she might wish she could fly or that the cliff hadn't been there but it's not hard to fall.
The second is that there are not really three people here. There are two, in three bodies. The demon and the dragon are not at all shy about Isibel seeing into their thoughts, and in the newness of the bond that is still possible. They are one, in a way that dragon and Bonded usually aren't. Two separate experiences of the world, two separate voices, but one unified mind.
And they love her, and they are sorry.
She can see why the dragons might have predicted that she'd learn to tolerate the mind-reading. Their presence with her is so benign and tender and if anyone has to read her mind at least it's them, at least it's only this twinned-self who love her so much.
And it's worse. Because she hadn't expected to be able to feel it. She had expected to know she was being watched, to put aside the notebooks, to toss and turn before she could manage to sleep every night, to flinch at odd moments with the memory. She hadn't known that her own self-knowledge would be her window into the process as it happened. But she can feel her thoughts echo as they form, constant sensory confirmation that she's being watched.
She's sorry. She's sorry they have to have her in their heads, when she's going to be a creature of despair and a mechanical unthinking knife of focus by turns. She's sorry she didn't run for the hills and let Liselen chase her till the darkness swallowed up everything. (Or maybe she isn't. She'd have to write, to know for sure, and she can't, she can't, she's being torn open now but that doesn't mean she could hold the blade even if it'd lead to neater cuts.)
He doesn't want to hurt her. When he was only his one-self and the other demons hated him violently, this was part of why: because sometimes he sees someone hurting and he doesn't want them to be. And now he can feel it, and it's so much worse, he would die if that would help, but if his both-self died it would kill her too and if only the demon died the dragon would be half a soul forever without him and she would still hurt.
"I'l sleep," the dragon says desperately, "I'll sleep your whole life, if I wake up I'll go to sleep again—my love, my love..."
Isibel hugs the demon, tightly, tightly, eyes closed. Usually a dragon teaches their Bondmate elfmagery from where it's hidden under the exchange the elves' ancestors made, but there are other Elfmages, she can go back to the Elven Lands, she can learn from them, she can do whatever it is she has to do, but even if the dragon sleeps a thousand years there will still be the demon and that is not how he works, is it? It scarcely matters if it's one of them or both, the problem isn't how many eyes but that things never meant to be exposed are visible at all.
She doesn't understand how the reading can be so pervasive. She doesn't feel like she has more attention to spare than she ever did, or as though - outside of hyperfocus - other things are being neglected. But there they are, background hum of love-attention-invasion, like they can't even look away, try though they might. She needs just a moment - she takes a breath and concentrates, lets it out, concentrates, inhale, exhale, and that's all, she just needed a little break, a moment away, where she might not be doing anything productive but she wasn't conscious of being watched at it.
She can't do it for more than an hour and that only when she's focused on something interesting or at least complicated. Magic will probably qualify. She's loved magic all her life. She'll do her best to recover her equanimity, here with them, while the Bond settles - she'll go back to Elven Lands; the boat will be making several trips and she can simply take the next one - she'll find the same teacher who taught her to focus - she'll work on magic. She'll try to figure out what in the world she's supposed to do with it.
He has no idea.
Stay here, perhaps; he is still afforded some privacy, although the way that flight of dragons earlier was talking, it is only a matter of time before the whole world knows that there is a demon on the loose. He can stay here, and... would she like it if he made more good food for elves? He'll do that.
Isibel hugs him as hard as she can, which isn't very hard really. He should be invisible when he sleeps, perhaps, or he could disguise himself as something other than a demon - aren't they supposed to be able to do that? - and accompany them. She'll be awake, soon enough she'll be a competent Elfmage, a Sarion, and then she'll need to go - wherever she needs to go to stop the darkness, and not even elfmagery will let her fly without someone to carry her. (This may be a flaw in the sleeping plan, at least if there is any intention of implementing it before the danger is past.)
He can try again, he supposes.
Invisibility is a good thought. If she can find somewhere to put him where no one will stumble across the sleeping demon. In a box, perhaps. (He has done that before.)
The dragons know what he is; perhaps they'll help. Or Magania. Or a box, if he wouldn't mind a box, or - she can't think, she's already generated more thoughts than she expected to, and hyperfocus is only good for tasks, not for problem-solving, she can't think anymore, she presses her face to his shoulder and sobs.
Or maybe she'll recognize her own thoughts marching across their minds forever even if theirs ultimately settle into, not invisibility, but the difficult cipher it takes centuries to learn to read.
(She has no protection like that; the mindreading is a property of dragons and the dragon will be able to read her whatever they do. Maybe if he sleeps the demon will be awake but unable to get any detail from her? Maybe? She can hope.)
Well, they can live without her, right? She'll learn magic and save the world and if they haven't figured something out by then there's dream-honey, they can live without her.
But they already knew they were going to, if by some incredible chance the demon is not killed. Elves don't live forever.
Perhaps, though - if the demon is killed - the dragon can sleep for a thousand years, and never take another Bondmate, and he and Isibel can die together as dragon and Bonded used to. Perhaps that would be best.
She thought one day she might love someone - not like this, never like this, but that she'd meet some elf and they'd be drawn to each other in the way that elves are, and then they'd probably have a terrific fight over betrothal pendants and proper wedding ceremonies because the way elves are married also involves thought-sharing, but she would never have agreed to that. Now that's hardly likely at all; even if her personality survives what's to come she's going to be damaged. Maybe she was never meant for that special connection, or maybe she would have found someone who'd be content to remain unmarried yet -
She bites her lip sharply, meditates on inhale-exhale-inhale-exhale-inhale-
She does now - and the history of Bisochim is even more incomprehensible; how could he love her enough to care so intensely about the prospect of her dying and never listen to her -
She couldn't refuse his will when he willed things.
Could she just will the reading away -
Because when the minds of her Bonded are full of blood and fire, when their demon-self's memories of being a plaything for every Endarkened in Shadow Mountain are the only thing they can think of, they can't really pay attention to her thoughts anymore.
The dragon cannot stop reading her; he has tried. But she can exert her will on him, and when she tries to make him do the impossible, all that's left is the sense of being forced, to which the demon has his own associations and plenty of them.
In practice, they reach the dragons' roost by Karahelanderialigor without trouble. The demon sets his love down gently on the ground, and asks Saravasse where he and the dragon might find somewhere to take an undisturbed nap, and she shows them to a cave and they go to sleep curled up together. (Saravasse is, to everyone's surprise but theirs, quite fond of the demon. They understand one another. They didn't speak long when she was visiting his Bonded, but he left an impression.)
Her teacher takes her back in. Her same guest house is available.
While the demon sleeps, she can write. She can write all the shuddering confused violated adoration into a book and shut it away and sometimes she can listen to her teacher describing the synaesthetic spell-impressions even without hyperfocus. She learns to do everything, because she has no idea what she will have to do.
She's out in the forest on the second day, trying to make a berry bush yield fruits more to her taste and a different color and in a different season. It's difficult. Her demon-beloved is better at this; she's not sure if it's practice or a better match to his magic type or both. At any rate, her teacher will move on to the next spell when Isibel returns with an altered berry branch.
"Oh," says Liselen. "That's good, I guess. Um so anyway, the Wild Magic has a message for you, again! It says your magic and your Bonded's magic have to work together to stop whoever it is from calling up the Dark again. Which doesn't make much sense," he adds, "because isn't that the whole point of dragons already? I mean, here you are, doing magic, because of your Bonded."
"I'm not sure," he says. "I don't think I understand the message as well this time. I got the part about working together, but then there's a—like a blue flower made of light, but it smells like blood?" He shivers. "And some more stuff I don't understand at all."
"Elfspells are not always easy to describe without words designed for them. I may be able to receive instructions from my teacher about one that could be described as a blue light-flower that smells like blood," Isibel says. "I would hear of the other part of the message. If it was sent, it may be important to me, even if you don't understand."
"Yes, well, the message is getting sent by unicorn," says Liselen. "There's probably something I'm missing. I was probably supposed to interpret that part to mean something, like I did with the rest. Maybe it means everything will be fine after you and your co-Bonded do what you're supposed to," he says doubtfully. "But that sounds really redundant too, and I don't think the Wild Magic usually sends redundant messages. Especially not by unicorn."
"Well, obviously it's supposed to tell me that he's really for sure not Tainted," he says, flicking his tail, "so I can vouch for him like Gramps did for Vestakia. Except less comfortably, because unless Tialle was way wrong about some stuff, he's still... um, you know... that other thing that makes unicorns twitchy."
"He was very clear about it," Isibel says. "He said there was part of the message from the Wild Magic that he didn't understand, and -" And having a conversation out loud isn't helping very much, but she can focus on giving explanations, she's done that once before. Breathe, and - "- that it felt like dipping his horn into a clear well. He said it made sense after I told him that my co-bondmate was a demon. He asked if you were Tialle's demon, and I said you were, and he said that part of the message meant that you weren't Tainted, and he can vouch for you as Shalkan did for Vestakia, except less comfortably because you are not, for demonically unrelated reasons, fit unicorn company."
It's not as though he wouldn't have - if he had ever met someone he wanted to be unfit for unicorns with, who also wanted to. But there has never been such a person. There has only been his life in Shadow Mountain, and the long years alone after that. And then the visit from all those dragons, but the demon was not physically a part of that encounter.
She couldn't hyperfocus for long when she first started either. Maybe they can practice.
Of course - she's pretty sure she won't be able to get anything done while they're doing that - but through some combination of him concentrating and her concentrating they may be able to do what they have to do.
Which is, by the way -
"And Liselen says we both need to do something about the - whoever is bringing Darkness into the world. Together."
"I don't know a spell to find whoever it is. My teacher thinks that if I could have delayed a season or two to Bond at all I can wait the extra moonturns to become proficient at Elfmagery and that this will give me a better chance of doing what I must when I do find the enemy."
She leans on him and closes her eyes and tries to focus on the comforting love and not on the spying. She's not even thinking anything in particular that she cares about having read, right now, but she doesn't know how to make it less - not concentrating on that not concentrating on that, just on the warmth the love the sleepiness -
She sleeps, eventually.