Everyone turned and stared back down the tracts of barren space.
‘Do you have any idea where you lost it?’ Hero said.
Vallon shook his head. ‘I last saw it when we set off this morning. It could be anywhere.’ He shook himself and drew a deep breath. ‘It’s gone. No point looking for it.’
‘Are you sure? The ring’s valuable. It has magical properties.’
‘And that’s why I lost it. I bet the damn thing’s gone back to Cosmas.’
A last nod at Wayland, a last penetrating look and a touch of the hand and then Vallon led his party away. Hero and Caitlin kept turning to wave, but Vallon didn’t look back, nor did Wayland expect him to.
He watched them for miles, their shadows lengthening behind them, merging into one and dissolving in the creeping dusk.
A movement in the air made him look up. Caught on the cusp of remaining light, a falcon on passage skated in smooth ellipses, intent on the ground far beneath. Its wings flickered and it slid forward, bunching up into a missile that fell in a steepening curve until it was plunging earthwards as true as a plumbline. The tide of shadows engulfed it, and though Wayland waited, it didn’t appear again. When he looked west again, Vallon, Hero and Caitlin were gone.
He waited a little while longer. A single cloud with its edges burnished by the last rays of the invisible sun glowed like a scrap of charring parchment. When the flame died he turned his horse back. The twin peaks lay sunk beneath the earth and the ridges rolled away soft as lampblack.
On his solitary journey homewards he passed within yards of Cosmas’s ring, lying buried in the winter grasses at the edge of the track. The gemstone recorded his fleeting passage, his image elongating as he approached and then contracting to a dot. Gone in a trice, leaving a dark blank eye highlit by the gleam of stars.
Wayland rode on, wishing he was at home with Syth, regretting that the quest was over. He looked back only once, to record the moment, to draw the line, to seal the memories. He raised one arm in salute before turning away.
