“Well enough.” I nodded. “We’ve known that ever since Vaerwold. What’s the second?”
A tremor worked its way across his right hand, marring the perfect peace Ealdor had worn ever since I’d known him. “How will you know what’s important to him, how to stop him?” He put his hand into a beam of sunlight and flexed it. Only after he turned it palm up and examined each finger did he sigh in relief.
I opened my mouth to reply and stopped. Ealdor’s obvious question had carried some threat to his corporeality, some danger to his presence. Cesla. Two intelligences within one body. If there existed a way to stop him, and Ealdor’s appearance testified that there was, then Cesla would know of it as well. “And he’ll take steps to prevent us.” I finished the train of thought out loud.
I looked at my friend, grieving over those parts of him that had become translucent. “He’ll strike at whatever threatens him.” I sighed. “You know that means we’ll have to react. We’ll be chasing him from behind, just as we did before.”
“I know, Willet, but if I continue to break the rules of summoning, I’ll fade completely. I won’t even be able to tell you what you already know. I’ll just be gone.” His head dipped, and he wet his lips. On anyone else that gesture would have signaled nervousness, but one of the Fayit . . . ? I’d never seen Ealdor show that emotion.
“Now I need to ask you a question, Willet.” He leaned toward me. “How do you know my name?”
“I don’t—” I stopped at the look of panic that washed over him. Had he become less real than he’d been just a moment before or had I imagined it? Of all the things he might have asked or spoken of, he’d chosen this. If I said I didn’t know, then Ealdor had guided me toward some hint of knowledge I hadn’t possessed before. “How does anyone learn someone else’s name?” I said. “You told me.”
He nodded and my heart fluttered with relief in my chest. Ealdor possessed the gift of domere as surely as if he were one of the Vigil. He’d looked into my thoughts far too often for there to be any other explanation. He knew Pellin and Toria and even Fess had all delved me, had searched me for the origin of his name. And none of them had found it.
He winced, exhaling as if he’d been struck and the buttress behind him became easier to see.
“Oh, Aer, help us. Even that cost you?” I asked. He held up a hand.
“It’s not as bad as it could have been,” he said, “but the rules divine some measure of intent.”
In that moment, his gaze held me as if he’d already died and had left his body of mist behind. The familiar abstraction, the glamour that came over me in the presence of the dead, exerted its hold and I slipped into the stare of his blue eyes. “What’s out there, Ealdor?” I whispered. “What will you see on the other side of eternity?”
His laughter broke the spell, and I shook my head to scatter its traces. “Don’t worry, Willet, you’ll see it when it’s time.” He looked up toward the empty spot where the altar had been. “Time. It’s amazing how you can think you have so much of it and then realize it’s been slipping away faster than you could imagine. Would you like to celebrate haeling with me?”
“This is why you came to me here,” I said, gasping with the intuition. “There’s something about celebrating haeling that sustains you.”
He smiled and for a moment I could have pretended we were back in Bunard before Elwin’s death. “That was very well done, Willet. Doesn’t the church say that the celebration brings healing? It’s more real than you know. Even among the Fayit the mysteries of Aer held us. Shall we?”
I nodded, trying to ignore the stinging in my eyes. Without a gesture or a word, an altar of uncut stones, similar to the one in the Everwood, appeared on the dais, and Ealdor’s worn purple stole graced his shoulders once more. I joined him behind the illusion and raised my hands to bless the empty church.
“‘The six charisms of Aer are these,’” I pronounced, wondering as peace, unexpected as a ray of sun during a storm, found a home, however temporary, in my heart. “‘For the body, beauty and craft. For the mind, sum and parts. And for the soul, helps and devotion.’” After I finished haeling, Ealdor vanished, taking his altar with him, but the peace remained and I finished the coda, my arms raised to receive whatever blessing Aer might give.
I left the church and descended the two sets of steps back to the plaza, their grouping of six and nine reminding me of the burden I had to satisfy before I could summon Ealdor for knowledge I didn’t already have. I needed a circle of six gifts or nine talents, and they all had to be pure. I tried not to let the fact that there no longer existed pure gifts or talents in the world deter me.
I tried, but I failed.
Gael, Bolt, and Rory looked at me with varying degrees of expectation in their gazes.
“He came to you,” Bolt said. Not a question.
I nodded. “It’s like most things. There are glad tidings and ill.”
“Better to hear the ill first,” Bolt said. “It gives you something to look forward to.”
Rory shook his head. “In the urchins, we always give the glad tidings first. That way if you die, you’ve missed out on the bad news.”
I saw Gael start to say something, her eyes stricken, but Bolt cut her off, nodding in simple agreement. “Sense. I think I’ll start eating dessert first.”
“We always do,” Rory said.
“I like peaches,” Bolt said. “Especially in pies.”
“I’m fond of currants,” Rory said. “There’s nothing like currant brandy
