I think I’m rather past the need for fame,said Gerant.But thank you.
“Did you end up at court, in the end?” It was as innocuous a question as Amris could think of.
For a while—such as therewasa court. After a while I threw myself into the magical aspects of the Order. There was enough there to occupy a man for a lifetime. Or three, considering.A moment of silence followed, where the scrape of whetstone on steel was the beat for another wordless melody.I thought you’d perished, Amris, and within my life there was no chance of reaching Klaishil. And they needed me.
“I understand,” he said softly. Sincerely too. It had long been his job to decide where to spend men’s lives, to abandon some as beyond rescue, and to go on with the larger mission. There were times when people had to put their hearts away from them, like the warlords of legend, and hope that they would still be intact when that chest opened again.
I’m still sorry.
“I know.” A week before, or a hundred years, he’d have put his arms around Gerant. There was nothing to touch now, save for cold steel and hard stone, and that led to his next question. “How much do you perceive of…anything? I take it you can hear well enough.”
True, and I have some sight independent of my bearer. Smell, taste—the hesitation was minute, but there—and touch are far more muted. Other than secondhand, they might as well not exist unless the sensations are very extreme. I might feel fire or acid, but nothing less.
“Ah.”
There’s this compensation: magic is far easier to sense in this state, and to grasp, or persuade, if one is going to be absurd about it.Amris smiled. That was an old debate, and one he’d sat through Gerant’s side of on a few evenings.You’ll notice perhaps that neither the ward last night nor the expansion just now required any chanting or incense from Darya?
“I did,” Amris lied, and caught Gerant’s skepticism in his head. He admitted, “Or would have, if I hadn’t left half my mind a century back. Truly, it is impressive.”
I had always wished for you as an audience.
“I didn’t get any more knowledgeable while I was out of time, you know.”
And you know that never mattered. I would rather show off for you than for the most learned mage in the world.
“And I’d rather see you conjure fireworks than have anyone else summon me a castle,” Amris replied, his voice rough.
It could be worse, Gerant said. Across the room, Darya finished sharpening her last knife and started tugging on her armor.When I agreed to this, I did think I was abandoning all hope of seeing you again, since you’d likely have moved on from Letar’s realm by the time I got there. In many ways, this is an unexpected gift for me.
For Amris, it was the opposite, but he didn’t say that. Love, like so many other human ties, was built as much on the words you didn’t speak. He stared hard at Sitha’s carved face on the wall, slowly mastering himself enough to ask, “Did you survive long past”—past mecame to his lips, but hehadsurvived, in whatever new form this was—“that last battle?”
Longer than I should have, and longer than better people. I was eighty-eight when I died, mostly from sheer old age.The priests of Letar could heal many things, but the body wore thin over the years, until the rust outweighed the rivets.
“Good,” said Amris, and meant it. But the next thing he said was, “And if we’re to save the world from another such catastrophe, we’d best be going.”
He couldn’t ask if Gerant had been happy without him. He hoped so, truly, but he couldn’t make himself say the words.
Chapter 11
The morning itself provided excuses enough for silence at first: wrestling himself into armor again, then breakfasting on more hardtack. They washed it down with water from Poram’s fountain, and Amris felt better for those few swallows than he’d done after many a feast in a lord’s hall. He said his blessing again before he drank, and bowed before they left.
“If we had a week or two,” Darya said, glancing over her shoulder, “I’d clear out all the temples here. Get rid of the dust and undead and rats.”
Unless people resettled the city, it would only be temporary.
“The corpses wouldn’t come back. Besides, everything’s temporary. They deserve better.”
“One day,” Amris said. “And one day people might return too. If all goes well.”
You’ve doomed us all, said Gerant, as Darya hastily knocked four times on her bow, that being the only wood in reach.
He laughed apologetically and yet was glad he’d said it—glad even for the mild heckling. After the morning, it cleared the air and lifted his own mood. With the curious vitality of the water had come a freshness to his mind, one that did not erase his sorrow but made it easier to see beyond and to take an interest in other matters.
“You’re a well-matched pair,” he said. “Which of you chose the other?”
“I picked Gerant for his looks,” said Darya, with a sly grin. “Silver-etched steel, Nerapis-style grooves and ornamental runes, square-cut flawless emerald, excellent balance—how could any girl resist?”
And she was the most likely trainee her age—when I was ready for another bearer, that is to say—to understand the appeal of discovery. Ihadhoped she might develop an inclination toward more subtle methods than breaking things, killing other things, and stealing yet more things, yet here we are.
