It might have been the least painful option at that moment even if the flames had been real. She was glad to leave Olvir behind for the first time in their journey, and not because she was still angry.
Vivian would have welcomed that clean, righteous wrath. People had let her down in the past, turned out to be less than she’d hoped. She’d forgiven them or not, as the situation merited. It was simple, relatively speaking.
She’d have forgiven Olvir normally: he’d seemed genuinely contrite. In a way, it was easier to do so knowing that the fragment of Gizath could have pushed him to actions he’d never take otherwise.
But that was worse in the end.
They were in the Battlefield, approaching its center. If Olvir wasn’t quite himself now, there was a good chance he’d be less so before they reached their goal. The world would suffer for that and would suffer worse if Vivian didn’t recognize the change and carry out her duty. She had to mark every detail even while she ached at what it could mean.
The fire crackled on every side of her, sounding realistic while giving off no heat at all. Under cover of the noise, she asked Ulamir, “Can you use my body the same way you used my voice when you summoned the rocks?”
With your consent, I likely could, yes. Do you expect that I’ll need to?
Behind Vivian, half-hidden by flames, Olvir stood waiting alone. His back was straight, he didn’t hang his head, but there was an air of dejection about him as well as patience. Vivian spoke around a thickness in her throat. “No,” she said. She had her duty. Neither she nor Olvir, as he really was, would have wanted her to put that aside for a man. “But I won’t doom us by confidence any more than by sentiment.”
Ulamir spoke less crisply than before.I could plan to be the mind behind your arm, should you so wish. It need not be your will that kills him, if that comes to pass, even if that will would be sufficient.
Vivian turned her gaze forward once again. The phantom flames parted in front of her, revealing more of the Battlefield’s uncanny ground, which she’d never thought she’d be glad to see. “It may not happen. Even if he is a little influenced, there’s a fair distance between being obnoxious and being murderous.”
She knew the truth of her words but also the motives behind them and loved Ulamir for not addressing that directly.It may not,he agreed.But my offer remains.
Olvir waited behind the fire. Vivian understood that he was watching her. She could see his expression of relief in her mind, despite the flames obscuring his face. “No,” she said again, with as much difficulty as before. “If he doesn’t get out of this, then I should be there.”
Chapter 36
Next came shades.
They printed themselves across the intact portions of the sky. Silver-white lines formed enormous shapes, blurred and featureless but recognizably people: two arms, two legs and a single head each. Three of them stood together, facing each other. Vivian couldn’t tell whether they seemed friendly or angry.
She drew closer to Olvir as the two of them walked, feeling a little embarrassed about it until they nearly collided and she realized that he’d done the same. Then she glanced at him and had to smile, despite everything.
“I’m sure they’re probably harmless,” she said. “And it’s odd to be scared of pictures in the air, considering the fights I’ve been in. The size of them, though…”
A fitting representation,Ulamir put in.Two, if not all, are almost certainly the images of gods.
“That’s not entirely reassuring,” Vivian told him. “We all know the gods are greater than we are, but it’s not comfortable to think for long about howmuchgreater. Not for me, at least. Maybe priests are different.”
“Not in this sense, or I’m a poor example,” said Olvir.
“You’re human too.” She chose to ignore, for the moment, what else he was. She tried not to let that evidence of humanity give her hope. “We never knew the gods like the older peoples did. Maybe that’s why Ulamir seems less nervous.”
My state is a great source of tranquility as well.
“I’m glad there’s some advantage in being a sword,” she said, responding, explaining, and avoiding the worddeadall at once. It was a sadly clever bit of verbal footwork. “But I doubt either of us can draw much inspiration from that, even if we are each weapons of a sort.”
“We’re supposed to be shields first. Losing mine so early in this may have been a bad omen. Or maybe a sign that I didn’t need to worry about protecting the helpless, since there weren’t any nearby.” Regret was plain in every syllable Olvir spoke and in each line of his body.
Vivian couldn’t sustain even a fraction of her anger in the face of it. She had to keep being suspicious, but she could let that become part of the background, akin to the ache in her feet.
You have me for a skeptic,Ulamir put in.
She sent heartfelt thanks his way and replied softly to Olvir. “This whole damned business is protecting the helpless, isn’t it? As for me…we guard each other, don’t we? When we need to?”
“We do our best,” Olvir said. “Not that I expect being close to each other would do much good if any of thosedidturn mean on us.”
“Probably the reverse, although I could argue that getting squashed quickly might be a mercy in that case. I admit I hadn’t followed through that far. It’s only…instinct, I suppose.”
That much I would call human: to be afraid, in the recesses of your mind and the base of your gut, of that which is large. The sea is far greater than any of those images, and so, too, are mountains.
