“So do I.” Vivian made a quick bow of her own. “Thank you,” she added to Olvir as they began walking again. “I wouldn’t have thought to do that.”
The song ended, or they passed out of its range. Olvir sighed as the last of the notes died away behind them. “He was very happy, whoever he was,” he said.
“I suppose Veryon would’ve been, for a while,” Vivian said, the idea strange to her. “I don’t remember many of the temple stories when I was a child, and the Sentinels don’t dwell on much except for Thyran and the first storms. We got a sentence or two about Gizath and Letar, that was all.”
“We learned more, though not very much. It’s still odd to remember that Veryon was a person. He’s always been—” Olvir shrugged. “A reason for the shape of the world. A face in tapestries or on temple windows. We hear the echo, maybe, and we don’t listen for the voice.”
“It would be hard to, after so many years.”
Now Vivian was considering the man and the story behind the clipped facts as the Order had presented them. She’d heard tales and poems herself over the years and a bit of theology. She’d rarely given them much consideration.
“It’s a pity that joy didn’t last, that’s all,” Olvir said.
Vivian reached out and took his free hand. “Yes.”
Chapter 35
After the music, they came to a rosebush whose blossoms were women’s faces.
The…roses…didn’t look distressed, for a mercy. Olvir thought the best word for their expression would be peaceful, or perhaps drunk. They were roughly the size of his palm, and all appeared young, though not close to childhood. All the colors he’d ever seen on roses appeared in them, and each was different. The first Olvir noticed had pink skin and hair the variegated colors of a sunset, shades that extended to the long lashes around her violet eyes.
“I don’t think this ever existed,” he said, gesturing to the rosebush. A dozen pairs of eyes half focused on him, following the motion hazily, and Olvir shuddered. “Or I truly hope not.”
“I’ll stand that round,” said Vivian, shaking her head and giving the bush a wide berth as they passed it. “There’d have been notes about…this…in some history or bestiary, surely. If it’s an echo, gods grant it’s a distorted one.”
The roses watched them leave. None of them spoke. Olvir didn’t know if air passed those slightly parted lips, and he had no wish to draw close enough to find out. The elder peoples had passed down tales of the world before Gizath’s betrayal. Most of them were recorded in fairly obscure scholarly manuscripts. Olvir chose to believe that mentions of plants with human faces would have made it into popular legends, had there been any truth to them.
He was almost entirely certain that the river of fire hadn’t existed before the betrayal.
The land, such as it was, gave him and Vivian no advance view of the river. It simply appeared a few feet in front of them, a broad slash through the shining colors with the sort of clear-cut sides no real river actually had. Flames danced in its midst, flaring up every moment or so.
Both he and Vivian stopped in their tracks, staring at it, until Vivian swung her pack off her shoulder and pulled out her spare tunic. “I wish I’d thought to bring a stick along,” she said as she sliced a strip off the hem. “We’re going to be naked by the time we’re done, and while that’s an appealing prospect in some senses, it’ll be uncomfortable traveling.”
She put the tunic away, shouldered the pack again, and reached forward, dangling the strip from her fingers.
Flame surrounded her hand. Sick anger rose up in Olvir at the sight, half at her for not consulting him first and half at himself for letting the woman he loved go into such danger. He reached for her arm.
Vivian stayed in place, completely rigid. Despite the sparks in her eyes, her gaze was pure ice. “Really,” she said, each syllable distinct, each reproachful. Very deliberately, she looked back at the fire, where neither her hand nor the fabric was showing the least sign of harm.
“How was I to know—” Olvir started to protest.
Then he forcibly closed his mouth on the words. He still knew what was just, and they wouldn’t have been. He dropped his arm to his side.
Neither of them had known that the fire was illusion. Olvir could, in theory, have argued that they couldn’t be sure Vivian would withstand fire in the odd landscape of the Battlefield the way that she could with normal flame, or that he hadn’t seen her stick her hand directly into a fire before.
He’d still known that she was a Sentinel and a woman grown, with a mind free of outside influence. They’d been traveling together for weeks, working together for longer. She knew as much about the fire river as he did. Vivian’s decisions hadn’t always been right, but they’d always been sound. That should have been all he needed.
“No,” he said, facing her squarely. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Vivian pulled her hand back, deliberately slow. “Thank you. Let’s get across and hope it doesn’t turn real midway through. I’ll go first.”
“All right,” said Olvir. Whether his impulses came from the Sundered Soul or not didn’t matter, he told himself. He wouldn’t give in again—not least because he’d seen Vivian’s expression as she tucked the fabric into her belt.
Behind the cold anger, there’d been grief.
* * *
Illusion or not, blessing or not, walking into fire had never appealed to Vivian before.
