“Kellen—”
“I
How could a healing have gone so wrong? Was it because he’d come here straight from the caverns? What had he done to her? It was all his fault—
“I saw her before the Healers got to her.” Shalkan’s voice came to him, harsh and rasping, as if the unicorn had been weeping until his throat was raw. “You didn’t. She was already blind. Shall I tell you what a bucket of acid in the face does to a person—or a unicorn? I could describe it in great detail, if you’d like.” Shalkan’s words were cruel, but they penetrated Kellen’s own grief and horror.
“Stop it,” Kellen said wearily. “I already know. I’ve seen it too.” He sat back, scrubbing his face with snow. “But… I healed her. Or I could have. If I’d been good enough.” And that was what was so horrible. He hadn’t been good enough, not nearly good enough, and he had been her only hope.
“No.” An Elven Healer Kellen didn’t know came and knelt in the snow beside him. “I am no Wildmage, but I have aided them in their healings, and I have heard them speak among themselves. The power of the Wild Magic to heal is indeed great, but it cannot create that which is not there. That which will—or might—grow with time will grow at a Wildmage’s touch. But that which is lost is lost forever.” The Healer took his shoulder in one hand and shook it. “Look at me, Kellen Knight-Mage. See the truth in me!”
Kellen studied the Healer’s face. She regarded him with grave compassion and faint puzzlement, as if she had never seen anything like him before. Kellen knew without having to ask that she was from Ysterialpoerin.
“Now, if you’ll accept the Lady Arquelle’s word that you did all you could do, perhaps you’ll be sensible, come inside, and rest,” Shalkan said crossly, his voice still sounding hoarse. “Or perhaps you’d like to give the Healers even more to do?”
“No,” Kellen said, getting stiffly to his feet. His bare hands were numb and aching with cold. “I’m coming.”
He felt battered, both physically and emotionally, and he wasn’t quite sure whether Shalkan was really angry with him, or simply knew that the last thing Kellen could take right now was his sympathy.
“No one rejoices to see the Star-begotten in pain,” Arquelle said softly as Kellen walked back through the snow. “It has overset stronger hearts than yours, Kellen Knight-Mage.”
And that, perhaps, was the truest thing he had heard in a day of terrible truths.
—«♦»—
CILARNEN, Wirance, and the small party of Centaurs traveled west and north. As Luermai had promised, each time their supplies began to dwindle, Nemermet led them to a fresh cache—tea, salt, charcoal, grain, honey, spices, and the blocks of compressed rations that Nemermet simply called journey-food.
It never seemed to stop snowing.
He ought to be used to it by now, Cilarnen told himself. He’d never seen snow actually
Snow, in addition to being cold, painful, inconvenient, and sometimes actively dangerous, Cilarnen decided, was boring. But there was nothing else to look at. There was Snow With Trees, and Snow Without Trees. There were cloudy days when it snowed, and (fewer) cloudy days when it didn’t snow, and (very infrequently) clear days when you had a dazzling vista of… snow.
Kardus, who was the only one of them who had traveled in Elven Lands before, said that the snow was unusually heavy this year. Nemermet had no comment to make on this—but then, as Cilarnen had quickly discovered, their guide apparently had no desire to engage in conversation with them at all. His only interest seemed to be to hurry them along as quickly as possible, pushing them to the limits of their endurance every day.
After the first sennight, it became obvious that Tinsin was slowing the party’s pace. The draft mare obeyed Cilarnen’s orders willingly, but no amount of willingness could make her as fast as a mule or a Centaur—let alone as fast as Nemermet’s ice-grey stallion. She was meant for plowing fields and pulling wagons, not gallivanting cross- country.
