He knelt silently meanwhile, hands clenched against his thighs, as he tried to see a road forward, tried to see anything past sick, cold anger and the thoughtthen it was all for nothing.
Find out more, Gerant would have advised him. To the wizard’s mind, more information was never an ill, and either the facts themselves or the quest to discover them might show a way to proceed.
A swarm of questions came to mind. Amris picked one: straightforward, polite, unlikely to further shatter his composure. “Forgive me. What is your name?”
“Darya.”
“I cannot say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but you have my thanks.”
She nodded, a quick jerk of her head. “Couldn’t leave anyone stuck like you were, even if… Oh, hell. That was the second thing.” Darya was rearming herself as she spoke, with knives, a short bow, and a long sword that had a large square-cut emerald in the hilt. She looked down at the stone, gave a brittle laugh, and said, “I wouldn’tnormallyforget. It’s not a minor matter. I’m sorry.”
“Your…soulsword, they were calling them in my time. It holds a spirit, yes?”
“Yes.” Darya laughed again, with no more amusement in it than the time before. Her face itself was no paler than it had been when Amris had first seen her, but color had drained from her lips.
Amris could do nothing about Thyran’s return, not just then, but he offered what reassurance he could think of. “Have no fear—I know that they go willingly. I don’t think you a necromancer.”
“That’s good,” she said. “That’s very good. Because the soul in mine is Gerant.”
“I—”
He didn’t know what else to say. He didn’t even say that much, in truth: the sound emerging from his open mouth meant nothing to him. Meaning itself was a slippery concept right then.
“Gerant.” Amris clung to the name and all the images it brought up, memories that were more solid in that instant than the hall of dust and roses surrounding him or the strange woman standing there. “Gerant?” It was a question that time, as he looked at the emerald in Darya’s sword and tried to reach out with his mind.
Sympathy softened Darya’s expression. “He says… Well, he says hello,” she told Amris softly, “and he loves you, and he’s very glad you’re alive. Only the Sentinel bonded to a sword can hear them, mostly. I’m sorry.”
“No,” said Amris, with no thought behind the words. He wasn’t entirely certain he could think; his mind felt numb, frozen. “No, of course. I presumed…foolish of me. I’m glad he…”
What was he glad about? Was he glad at all? Should he be? Part of him rejoiced at Gerant’s presence, while the rest said that such joy was selfish, when his lover could have been in Letar’s Halls long ago rather than trapped in a gem. “I hope he’s well,” Amris finished, flat, uncertain, and embarrassed.
The slight pause before Darya responded was nothing Amris would even have noticed normally. Now it stretched out into the edge of a razor. When she said, “Generally, yes,” he heard it in Gerant’s voice, at those moments when he’d combined thought with dry humor, and fought not to flinch.
“Though he admits the situation isn’t ideal,” she added, with a gesture around them. “And I agree. To say the least.”
That brought back some perspective. For the first time since Darya had mentioned Gerant, Amris really looked at her, seeing the lingering animal panic she’d first quashed and then pushed aside for his sake. “Forgive me,” he said. “There are larger stakes, I know, and I’d give much if I had any knowledge that would help.”
“We know he’s back now. That’s a hell of a lot more than we did ten minutes ago, and might help the whole world.” Darya glanced past him, down a long hall lit only by spots where the crumbled walls let the sunlight in. “If we can find a way out.”
* * *
It was never supposed to last this long,Gerant mourned as they started walking.We thought if we separated Thyran from his forces, it would be enough of a blow that our armies could drive them off. Then we could go in, bring Amris back, take down Thyran’s defenses at our leisure, and kill him.
“Decent plan,” said Darya, before she’d thought. Other Sentinels were used to conversations that sounded one-sided, outsiders found them odd regardless, and until Amris gave her a questioning look, it didn’t occur to her to explain. “The plan you two had originally. And Mater Whoever-She-Was, Gerant said.”
“Kasyila,” Amris replied absently. “Among others. I admit I can’t regret it, nor find fault, given what we knew then.”
“It kept Thyran off our backs for a hundred years. That’s not nothing.” She thought she was being sincere. It was hard to know. Darya had used up all her day’s ability to feel, she was sure, between sympathy for Amris and Gerant and…terrordidn’t entirely cover her reaction to Amris’s news.The creature under the bed is back, and he’s got friends.
They passed an open door, and Darya poked her head in hopefully, but inside was only a small bedroom, likely for a servant: no stairs, just one tiny window. Not even a child would fit through it.
Action was settling her mind, letting her think past the fear. “Going by the finger, assuming it rotted like most things,” she said, “then he’s only been back for a few months. Three, I’d say, at most.”
“Do you know where he might have gone from here?”
“Probably north. He’d find plenty to work with there.”
“The Twisted?”
