“I can ask him,” he said.
“It’s important enough to go, and quickly.”
There was no point in further talk. No sense in worrying them with questions that could not yet be answered. We arranged ourselves for the night. To rest, if that were possible. Roges lay looking at the dark. Beedie close beside him. The creature was back in its basket. Peter had stretched himself out on a blanket by the fire, with the baby beside him, and Sylbie lay against Peter, half-curled around the baby.
Peter slept, one arm across the child, the hand touching Sylbie’s breast, and she not moving away from this touch. I, wandering late, saw this. Well, where else would Sylbie sleep except beside the one among them she knew as a friend?
I lay down away from the fire, able to see the flames as they undulated against the black of the forest yet unlit by them, lost in a pocket of darkness as in some secret closet, spying upon the outer world as through the keyhole of that closet, closed about with baffled jealousy coupled with the anxiety that my suspicions had aroused. If they were true, did it matter what Peter did?
None of them saw. All the myriad clues were there in front of them, and none of them saw. Not even Queynt. Queynt, who should have seen long ago on the Shadowmarches, when he was given a blue crystal by a Shadowman and interviewed by the Eesties.
Oh, yes, Queynt should have seen then. But he did not. Only I believed I saw, from this cavern of quiet darkness.
And I could be wrong.
But if I were right, could I do anything useful if I stayed here? Where Sylbie was and Peter’s child? I thought of the baby, opening each day with his bubble sounds, crowing like some cock-bird from his basket, pure joy unalloyed. Could I accept that, not grieve over it, and get on with what must be done? Even if I could accept it, what good could I do here? Could I think of staying only to stand between Peter and Sylbie and the child? Would Jinian take a parent’s love away from a child? Jinian, who knew well enough what it meant to be the victim of an abductor of love, a robber of faith? Should I do to another what Eller of Stoneflight had done to me?
There was an easy way to do it. Jinian could go into these dark woods and gather the needful things: sixteen herbs and earths, and those easy to find, not scarce in any land, not difficult to locate even in the dark. A torch would be enough light. Her own senses would serve without any light at all. To make a love potion. To guarantee Peter loved Jinian, not Sylbie but Jinian, not the crowing child but Jinian. A simple thing, taking only from now until dawn. And then she could bring him his tea and sit by him looking into his face while he drank it...
There was a pig that had loved me in the Forest of Chimmerdong, loved me well, unable not to love me. So would Peter be unable not to love me. And if I were a monster, he would love me still. And if I were Valearn, Ogress of Tarnost, still he would love me.
And I, knowing that, would feel—what would I feel?
If crystals could compel without blame, could not one small Wizard? And if what I feared was true, who would be alive to judge me for it? And if what I feared was true, what time would there be for any alternatives? And if what I feared was true, what point in refusing to taste the blue crystal and verify what I believed?
Except that if I knew, I might be too terrified to act.
But as long as there was doubt, however small, then action could take place.
Exactly.
Even if I did it totally alone, I had to do something.
This was the lesson of Chimmerdong.
So, not the sixteen herbs and earths. Not the liquor of love, the efficacious potion. Not love at all.
And not a patient traveling with them, either, coming between them, becoming less myself with every passing hour as I sought to become whatever it was he loved, forgetting my oath, changing myself to the needs of love rather than being true to myself and doing what must be done. Not jealousy.
And not the mere running off in a huff, to sulk in some distant place until the world was changed. Not anger. No. Not love, not jealousy, not anger. Duty instead. The lesson of Chimmerdong instead. I would need to depart, but depart to some purpose.
I sneaked from my pocket of darkness to gather the things any traveler would need. Quiet as shadow I drifted into the forest, up along the hill, back toward Fangel. Morning would take me far enough from this place that they could not find me, even if they looked, which they would not. The need for them to move southward was too imminent, too persuasive.
Pray Queynt understood this. A man as perceptive as he must understand it. Pray they did not delay.
And I would do what I had to do. This was to find the Dream Miner and this companion, this Storm Grower, and see if they knew why the foul yellow crystals were being spread across the world. And, I reminded myself, learn why they wanted me dead.
Behind me, a log broke among the flames, showering sparks, shattering into coals. An omen. Even the hottest fire would break and cool in time. It was a better hope than nothing. I
