But then he looked at Vestakia. She'd struggled to her feet, clutching at Shalkan's shoulder for support. Vestakia had lived every day of her life on the run from the Prince of Shadow Mountain—not hypothetically but really—she'd been fathered by a Demon but had never given up the fight to be human. He looked at Jermayan, who hated Demons with every fiber of his Elven soul, but stood beside a woman who looked like one, who had been fathered by one, and did so now because he trusted Kellen.
Both of them—and Shalkan—were counting on him to keep his part of the bargain he'd begun when he first began to read The Book of Moon. He couldn't back out now. This was his price. He wouldn't refuse to pay it.
Maybe I'll die here, Kellen thought in a kind of grim hope. Compared to being the target of the entire race of Demons, death didn't seem terribly bad. Death—or failure—if he died trying, surely Jermayan would take up the stone (if it was still intact) and see the task to its end. Surely, now that he knew what to do with it, it didn't require a Wildmage to actually put it in place!
He clutched the keystone tighter, imagining it cracking in his hands— accidentally!—knowing that even amid the guilt and horror he would feel nothing so much as relief at the choice and responsibility that would be taken from him in that moment. I'm only a boy! I'm only seventeen! a voice deep within his mind shouted despairingly. I've never done anything special in my life! I'm not ready for this!
Part of him yearned desperately to believe that, but even if it were true, it couldn't be allowed to make a difference now. Ready or not, able or not, he had to do what he had come here for, because so very much depended on him.
He turned away from the others and began to walk slowly across the broken wasteland toward the cairn. Taking the first step was the hardest thing he'd ever done, and it was only after he'd begun to walk that Kellen realized he hadn't even said good-bye. But he knew that if he stopped, or turned back, or spoke, he would never have the strength to start walking again, and so he gritted his teeth and kept walking. If he got back, he'd be able to explain. If they all died here, it wouldn't matter.
He had not gotten more than twenty paces away before the first attack struck him.
Only it wasn't the first attack, was it? They'd been under attack from the moment they set foot on the mountaintop, Kellen realized. Why else would he even have considered betraying his friends and going back to Armethalieh?
It was terrifying to realize he couldn't even trust his own thoughts!
I won't give in, he told himself stubbornly. I WILL take the keystone to the top of the cairn. I WILL do what Idalia trusted me to do. I WILL…
The next attack was subtle as well, though now Kellen was suspicious of everything. It began with pain, but not intense pain, only the dull aching of every muscle in his body. As if he were in the throes of a fever, except that he was so cold… as if he had been beaten from head to toe. But the pain increased the nearer he drew to the cairn. His real injuries hurt far more than they should have. Each step was an agony, as if his muscles were filled with lead. Each impact of his foot against the ground jarred his bruises into sullen life, until his whole body ached like a rotten tooth, and he trembled with pain as much as cold.
Though he knew his friends were only a few yards away, that if he turned and looked back he could still see them, Kellen felt utterly alone, as if when he had taken that first step he had somehow passed into a place where they could not follow.
And despite the fact that he was the one who had moved, he felt as if it was they who had abandoned him. He was out here alone, likely to die, and they didn't care.
Jermayan doesn't care about me. He never did. He only cares about the Elves, about ending the drought. He only pretended to like me to get me here.
If Idalia was such a great Wildmage, why hadn't she come back to the City for him? Why had she left him to suffer, lonely and despised in his father's house? She knew better than anyone else what it was like, but she had left him there. And then, Idalia had left him again, to do this thing that he wasn't ready for, and she didn't care.
Why had Alance left both of them with Lycaelon, knowing what kind of man he was? What kind of mother would abandon her children to a man like that? His mother had thought only of herself and the trap that she was escaping. She didn't care either, about either of her children.
Why had no one in all the City cared what Lycaelon did to either of his children? The Law was supposed to be Armethalieh's greatest treasure, but the Mages set themselves above the Law. No one would interfere in a Mage's personal life, and so—corrupt, petty, vindictive as they were— the Mages of Armethalieh were a Law above the Law, and their families suffered for it. And the Mages gave everyone the safe little world that they wanted, no one cared what that cost.
No one cared.
He knew his thoughts were petty, unworthy, coming from a part of him that wanted to live at any price, that would do anything, say anything, to get him to give up and turn back. He knew the thoughts came from the cairn, from Shadow Mountain, from the Demons. Kellen ignored the voice, letting it say what it would, letting the words pass over him unheeded. He didn't even care if that inward voice reflected who he truly was. It wasn't who he wanted to be. It wasn't who he would be.
