a deep breath and sighed. 'Look. It won't be dawn for hours yet, and I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep, but why don't you at least try to? No sense in everybody sitting up just because I'm seeing ghosts.'
'Fair words, Wildmage,' Jermayan said gravely.
Kellen had thought Jermayan might argue with him, but apparently Jermayan did him the courtesy of assuming he knew what he was talking about. Without further discussion, the Elven Knight took the empty cup back from Kellen and banked the fire again before returning to his bedroll.
Kellen pulled his blankets up around his shoulders more firmly. It was cold out here.
'You can use me for a backrest,' Shalkan invited, kneeling down behind him. 'Warmer that way.'
'Thanks,' Kellen said, leaning back cautiously into the unicorn's muscular softness. Soon the small camp was utterly still once more, save for the blowing of the wind and the faint rustling of the grass. The stars were very bright overhead.
He'd wondered if Jermayan might have put sleeping herbs into his tea, but apparently the Elven Knight trusted him to make his own decisions and take their consequences, for Kellen remained wide awake. The memory of the dream-landscape overlaid the real one he now saw—a thousand years ago the land here had been more even. Forested, as Jermayan had said. Now the terrain was all blasted away to almost bare rock, the gentle slopes he remembered from the dream entirely gone.
And it really didn't matter whose magic had done it, Allied or Endarkened, because the end result was the same. What used to be the Forest of Tilinaparanwira was a wasteland, and even another thousand years wouldn't be enough time to make it the way it had been before the Great War. All the survivors of that war could try to do was hold on to what they had left, because even as hard as they'd fought, they hadn't foug hard enough to defeat their enemy once and for all. Shadow Mountai had survived, and the Endarkened were ready to go to war again—
And if there was another war, no matter who won it, would there be anything left at all this time?
If? In the cold hour before dawn, Kellen had the depressing certainty that it wasn't an if. It was a when. And that when wasn't far off.
HE DOZED OFF finally just as the sky was beginning to lighten, to be awakened as Shalkan moved out from under him.
'Rise and shine,' the unicorn said, looking down at him. 'It's the start of a beautiful new day.'
'I'll rise,' muttered Kellen, rolling over on his stomach and hugging the blankets to him, 'but I refuse to shine.'
And in fact the day was hardly beautiful. Though the night had been clear and icy cold, clouds had rolled in toward morning, and the day had dawned—if you could call it that—cold, grey, damp, and overcast. Kellen gave thanks for the thousandth time that Elven armor didn't rust, but there was no power on earth that could make it warm and inviting on a day like this. Even a mug of hot tea and a bowl of soup did little to cut the biting chill.
He'd been going to do a Finding Spell to seek their path this morning, but after his experiences of the night before, Kellen hesitated to work any magic, still feeling off-balance and out of sorts. If they didn't find any clear sign that they were on the right road by the time they stopped for their midday rest, he'd do one then, but he hoped he wouldn't have to. The thought of the mounting cycle of debt and obligation that was a necessary part of a Wildmage's life still bothered him. In the normal course of things, he wouldn't mind—or not much—but right now, when any Mageprice might take him away from the vitally necessary task of placing the keystone at the Barrier, Kellen grudged any spell he needed to work, for fear its obligation would lead him astray.
You'll know what to do when the time comes… All very well when you were not surrounded by enemies, with Demons sniffing for you, when you were in, say, Merryvale or the Wildwood and the most dangerous creature in the forest was Cormo. And it was easy enough to try and tell himself that since the Wild Magic 'wanted' the Barrier broken, it wouldn't put an obligation on him that interfered with that.
Easy to tell himself that, but hard to convince himself. It was a matter of faith, he supposed, and he just didn't have a lot of faith in anything or anyone, when it came right down to it.
Not even in himself.
And the consequences of refusing to pay for his magic were not to be considered…
IT was a relief, coming down off the hillside, to strike a real road at last. It wasn't what Kellen would have considered a road at the start of their journey, but after so long traveling through the Lost Lands, even this narrow beaten track—obviously going from Somewhere to Somewhere, and frequently used by someone—was a welcome change, providing sure footing for horse and mule. The only thing that marred Kellen's relief was that he still hadn't seen any more clear signs of Endarkened Taint in their surroundings—although that wasn't altogether surprising, since there wasn't much around them to see besides rocks and a little sparse grass. It was hard for either grass or rocks to go awry in any noticeable way. How warped would grass have to get before he'd notice the Taint?
