“I am not criticising you,” Grimult promised her. He felt the hint of a rueful smile tugging at his lips, despite his lack of true humour. “Although I am afraid I will be driven mad before the end with all that I do not understand.”
Penryn did not smile back. “I do not want that for you,” she admitted, her expression torn as she nibbled at her lip. “I had rather hoped you would forget me.”
Grimult blinked. “Forget?”
Penryn gave a half-hearted shrug. “That is not possible either, I know, but I want to think of you back at home, living a good life with your family. Not worrying about what has become of me.” She gestured around them, pausing briefly as her hand neared the direction of the lantern. “What all of this has been for.”
She did not get to decide how much he was told, that he knew well. The instructors had been most stern in that regard, that their time together was not an opportunity to pry into secrets that were hidden away for express purposes.
But it was a hint nonetheless, that there were reasons beyond what had been previously established. It was a Journey based on faith, many said in hushed tones, looking in the direction of the sages’ keep as they did so. To go forth into the wilds, where all else were forbidden, to dedicate oneself to training and self-betterment to take up the task.
While clans might have once fought, squabbled over nothingness, they were unified in that, at least.
“But it is?” Grimult petitioned, feeling something sure and certain crumble all the more. “It is, for something?”
A small, sad smile. “Yes,” Penryn confirmed with a heavy nod of her head. “I promise you that. All of this has been for something.”
Fourteen
Grimult cooked as much meat as he dared, unwilling to risk an animal tracking them by the scent of a fresh kill awaiting claim. The rest was buried, not enough that it could not be found, but he would rather they take the time to dig up the carcass than to grow distracted with either of the weary travellers.
He could admit that the walk was growing tedious; dark smudges beneath Penryn’s eyes suggesting she had not slept well for the past few nights. He had not either, as the nights were growing colder, the ground an unforgiving place, even now. He wondered how long it would be before such conditions became his normalcy, the comforts of home a strangeness that he had to adjust to once more.
He did not allow the thought to conclude, to wonder after Penryn. It only set his teeth on edge, this not knowing, and he wondered at how much dedication he had lost that he could admit that so freely. When he had begun he was so certain, of the sages and of himself, in his purpose here.
Now...
Many at home would be ashamed of him if he ever admitted that the Journey had not been all that he had expected. A great adventure, filled with terrors and monsters to be thwarted.
A child’s tale.
It was the everyday tedium that would kill them first, if he did not find a way to keep their spirit’s from lowering with every step.
Silences were common as the days dragged onward, and although he did not mind them, whenever he glanced at Penryn there was a miserable set to her mouth, her eyes misting with something close to despair.
It was only walking.
What harm could that do?
But when it was endless, when the desire to simply get there warred with the fear of what came with the Wall at all, it was oppressive enough.
“Name one sage that you liked, even a little,” Grimult entreated, groping to find something to distract her. It was a poor choice, especially given all that he knew of her upbringing, as it was entirely possible that all them were equally terrible.
Penryn blinked, as if coming back from somewhere very far away. Once he might have wondered if she had the power to see great distances, if she had been viewing the rest of the path from above, scoping out how long they had left.
But now it seemed all the more likely that she had simply been lost to her own thoughts and had been interrupted.
“They do not have names,” Penryn reminded him. “So I could hardly give you the name of one.”
“True,” Grimult acknowledged with a grimace. “But surely there was one you liked better than the rest.” Even if the scale was woefully out of balance.
She thought for a moment, and he was gratified that her expression was one of concentration rather than the lost, hopeless thing it had been before. “There was one,” she admitted almost begrudgingly. “I think I only liked him better because the other sages seemed so frustrated with him. He was newer, which is only to say that he was not already old, and he was the clumsiest man I had ever seen. All of you are so...” she hesitated, glancing at him quickly before heat rushed into her cheeks and she looked away again. “So graceful,” she finished, and he wondered if that was the word she meant to use before. “In your movements.”
He gave his wings a single shake. “Gives balance,” he answered modestly, keeping his tone purposefully light. She did not need to be reminded that too had been stolen from her, that it was something she would not have to envy as it should have been hers as well.
Penryn cleared her throat, shrugging her shoulders as she did so. “Yes, well, this man had both his wings intact and yet he could trip over anything. Knock over anything too. A candle on a book once when he was tutoring me, then he did not know what to do and kept wringing his hands in his panic.”
Grimult’s eyes widened in alarm. He had seen... far more of her
