She kissed me again, her gaze finding mine. “You know that happened to me, Willet, but you changed the game. You saved me.” Her fists knotted in my tunic. “What is it? Let me save you this time.”
I pulled her close and held her. “For ten years I’ve managed to stay out of sight of the Darkwater,” I said. “I haven’t even seen it in the distance except in my worst nightmares, but all the other options are fading away, and the forest is pulling me back.”
She took my hand and led me upstairs to the oversized room we shared with the rest of our company. Bolt nodded to us as we came in the door and took his position by it in case murder woke me in the middle of the night.
Later, in the dark, I didn’t hear Gael come and lie beside me, but I could smell her scent, soft and floral, as she put one arm protectively around me. I cast back for the memories of the last war and lived them again—the desperate run into the forest, the decision to enter the Darkwater, the dying light of sunset. But the memories stopped, and my mind skipped forward to the morning I walked out of the forest alone. I knew the men who ran into the forest had survived, but my mind refused to remember anything at all about my time there.
The next morning we purchased the best mounts we could buy and set a pace toward Vadras that would spend the horses within hours. “Tell me,” I called to Bolt, “why we didn’t bother to bring supplies with us.”
“Because we won’t need them,” my guard said. “The southern end of the continent is far more heavily populated than Collum or even Owmead. There will always be a village or town within reach, and worrying over supplies will just slow us down.”
Behind me, the newest member of Aille’s nobility rode sandwiched between Gael and Mirren, her gaze serious but unafraid.
“Does she understand what we’re riding into?” I asked.
Bolt snorted. “Do you?”
I nodded. “I’ve spent ten years dreading the Darkwater Forest, and my time with the Vigil and Ealdor has served to put that decade of fear into a context I’d rather not have.”
“True enough, but we have a saying.”
I sighed. “Of course you do.”
Ignoring me, he continued. “‘If you think you’ve reached the point where you can’t learn anymore . . .’”
“‘Then you won’t,’” I finished for him, shaking my head. “I know how it goes.”
“That’s not all of it. The rest goes ‘because you’ll be dead.’ Most people conveniently forget that last part.”
“You’re always so cheerful in the morning. What kind of man is the king of Caisel?” I asked.
“He’s old, Willet. Even before the death of Laidir, he was the oldest of the monarchs in the north. The rest are at least twenty years younger.” He stilled. “I’m not sure he’s in good health.”
I swore inside. With Bolt’s gift for understatement, that probably meant Boclar was at death’s door. “Alright,” I said, “he’s old, but what is he like?”
“Secretive . . . reclusive,” Bolt said. “I’m not sure which. I’ve only met him once in all the years I’ve been with the Vigil. Of all the kings and queens of the north, his talent lies most heavily with all.”
Surprised, I pondered how to make use of this information. In my studies with the Merum I’d learned that the talent of all, the ability to see connections between seemingly unrelated facts or events and create understanding, was the rarest of the nine and perhaps the most subtle. “Is he a philosopher, then?”
“Not in the usual sense,” Bolt said. “I think the gift of kings forces him to be a bit more practical than that.”
“Will we be able to convince him to come with us?”
One corner of Bolt’s mouth drew to the side. “I’m still not sure how you convinced me.”
Chapter 48
Pellin had studied Elieve as they made the ride across the outer border of the Maveth and then recuperated at Dukasti’s brother’s inn. With her vault gone, her maturation had accelerated. In most moments the girl—he would have put her age somewhere between fifteen and twenty—was hardly distinguishable from any other her age. Quieter, perhaps, and more given to observation or thought, but an ordinary girl nonetheless.
Grief and joy mingled within Pellin’s heart as he considered their journey and all it had brought. “But that is the way of things,” he whispered. “Every joyful circumstance carries a shadow of mourning, however distant it may be, while our griefs hold the hope of something more joyful in the future.”
Mark set his glass of date wine back on the table. Since Elieve’s healing, the boy had taken a liking to the thick drink. “What did you say, Eldest?”
He gave himself a small shake. “Just the musings of a very tired old man.” That last part was an understatement of colossal proportions. The fight within Elieve’s mind had taken everything from Igesia and almost all of it from him. His bones and mind ached with a weariness that he doubted rest could cure, a wound that would scar and ache for the rest of his life. “You have a choice before you, Mark, if Aer will allow you to make it.”
“The Vigil or Elieve?”
“Yes.”
“Are you offering me the right to choose, Eldest?”
Pellin nodded. “Insofar as I can, Mark, but remember, Bronwyn offered Fess the same choice before she died.”
“And the gift came to him anyway.” Mark took a deep breath of the smoky air inside the inn. “He scares me, Eldest.”
Pellin’s brows rose at this. “Fess? He is much changed, I’ll warrant, but—”
“Not Fess,” Mark said. “Aer.”
His first impulse was to brush away Mark’s statement with some wry observation, an almost-jest to lighten the mood, but his apprentice’s objection ran too deep. Regardless of Mark’s decision, he should receive the most honest, most truthful answer Pellin could offer. “He scares me as
