Wise Bear nodded. “More than . . . memory. Feeling.” He raised his staff and swept it slowly around, tracking over the remnants of a city that must once have been wondrous. “This place, filled with power.”
He moved on, eyes bright with scrutiny, scanning the ruins with a near-predatory intensity. Vaelin followed him through the maze of rubble, past the rare intact building Brother Harlick had fancied a library and onto what appeared to have been some kind of raised platform. Vaelin judged it might have stood ten feet high when intact, but the supporting pillars were shattered and the stone surface had tumbled to be cracked from end to end. Wise Bear paused, his limbs betraying a spasm of discomfort before he stepped onto the platform, moving to the centre where he touched his staff to the bare stone.
“Something here,” he said. “Something . . . black.”
Vaelin found he didn’t like the confusion he saw on the shaman’s face, his features sagging a little, making him seem even more aged. “Something black?” he prompted as the old man crouched to touch a tentative hand to the stone. “You mean Dark? Something that had the power?”
“Black,” Wise Bear stated in an emphatic tone before straightening. “Gone now, far away. Taken.”
“By who?”
Wise Bear turned, meeting Vaelin’s gaze. “You know,” he said. “We go across ice to find him.”
• • •
“I left Ultin in charge,” Dahrena said, settling next to him and pulling the furs across them both. “I doubt he relished the honour but there wasn’t anyone else halfway capable.”
“The gold?” Vaelin enquired.
“The first shipload should dock in Frostport within the month, much to Lord Darvus’s delight I’m sure.”
“He won’t be the first or the last to profit from war.” He paused, enjoying the feel of her pressed against him, regretting the necessity for his next words. However, she evidently read his intent and spoke first.
“I’m not leaving.” She raised her head to press a kiss to his lips then settled back. “How is Alornis?”
He recalled Alornis’s rigid face the morning he left, her valiant attempt at holding back the tears, falling to ruin as she collapsed against him, only drawing back at Lyrna’s gentle but insistent tug. His final glimpse of her lingered like a guilty stain, her head on Lyrna’s shoulder as she turned her face, refusing to watch him ride away. “She does good service in the queen’s cause,” he told Dahrena. “Her talents are even greater than we knew.”
She shifted a little, turning her gaze to the sky, clear of cloud and offering a fine view of the stars. “It’s faded,” she murmured. He knew the star she spoke of; Avenshura, from which Sanesh Poltar had taken his Eorhil name.
“We’ll see it shine again,” he told her. “We just have to live a very long time.”
She turned back to him, her voice sombre. “I do not like this place.”
“Terrible things were done here once. Wise Bear says the stone carries the memory.”
“Not the city. The mountains, the home of the people who birthed me . . .” She trailed off but he knew the words she left unsaid.
“And killed your husband.”
Her head moved in a faint nod.
“What was his name?”
“His people named him Leordah Nil Usril, Lives in Dreams. I just called him Usril. The Seordah thought him a quiet soul, seldom given to speech and often lost in thought. He rarely joined war parties against the Lonak though in the battle with the Horde he had proved himself brave and skillful. One summer the Lonak came in larger numbers than usual, raiding deeper than they had before. I was visiting with my father when word came of the raid. I flew to the forest, finding his body amongst many others, a dead Lonak lay atop him. I remember how peaceful they looked, as if they had fallen asleep together. I searched far and wide for his soul, but he was at least a day gone.”
She fell silent, her breath soft on his chest as he held her even tighter. When she spoke again her voice was barely above a whisper and coloured with suppressed fear, “I did my best to die that day, Vaelin. I hung above the forest and watched over his body, knowing my own would soon lose its warmth, hoping I could join his endless hunt in the shadows . . . Father brought me back, somehow I heard his voice pleading with me to return. I barely felt the chill when I slipped back into my body, in truth for weeks I barely felt anything. Then I went to the stone and sought counsel with Nersus Sil Nin. She told me something, something I didn’t want to believe.”
