“That’d be much simpler. Here, there’s…” He made several vague gestures, describing shapes in the air that never quite resolved. “There’s too much, too entangled with itself. If I pulled a stick out, the tower might remain or crash, but it could also go sideways or levitate or burst into flames. One of the gods themselves might be able to sift through the whole mess, if They had a year or so of leisure to do it.”
“I can’t say I’m all that surprised.” Vivian should have been far past the point of regarding the Battlefield with fresh revulsion, too, but Olvir’s description worked an unfortunate miracle in that respect. Now she pictured strands of force writhing beneath her feet, rotted and snarled with centuries. “Are you all right, having to feel all that?”
“It’s kind of you to ask, but yes. It’s not pleasant, but I don’t have to stare at it, so to speak, unless I try. It’s not intruding on my mind, thank the Four.”
“Very much,” said Vivian. She imagined having the Battlefield anywhere near the inside of her head, shuddered, and made the sign of the gods.
Olvir touched her shoulder lightly. “Remember, I’m used to some amount of divine strangeness from what I chose to be, as well as my birth. You don’t need to worry. Not about my comfort.”
She couldn’t help it, but he didn’t need to hear that, so Vivian only smiled back at him. “Just tell me if it does get worse,” she said, though gods alone knew what she’d find to do in that case, “or if you do start getting memories. Or emotions.”
“I promise,” he said, and she chose to believe him for that moment.
* * *
Silver shimmered ahead of them. Unlike the rest of the Battlefield, it stayed silver for more than the span of two breaths. It was too broad to be a river, nor did it move as water usually did. Olvir had to admit that water in the Battlefield probably wouldn’t have moved as he expected it to, either, if there had been any.
They had crossed a stream recently, or what had been a stream. It still was, somewhere. He could discern the shape and the nature of it, buried inside twisting layers of power, but he couldn’t have said what it looked like. On spring evenings, the sound of its water had mingled with a chorus of little frogs. It had been icy even at noon in summer.
Knowledge rose up without reference. Olvir tried to get out of its way and at the same time to hold on to himself: he was Olvir Yoralth, Tinival’s knight, Edda’s fosterling, Vivian’s companion and lover. Silently, as he walked, he repeated the vows he’d made to Vivian after his meditation, striving to summon the feeling of Letar’s statue under his hands.
As they came closer to the silver patch, the Battlefield’s changes began to slow down. Sections became rigid and sharp-edged: a square of blue, a triangle of purple. The ground stabbed up into the sky in hedgehog spines for a while. Their footsteps rang out, and the surface they were walking on felt harder than stone.
“I’d hate how conspicuous it makes us,” Vivian said, “but I don’t think an ambush is what we need to worry about.”
“One fewer thing for the list,” Olvir replied and was glad to get a chuckle, even a brief one.
When he looked up again, the trio of silver-white shapes had vanished from the sky. A face had replaced them, etched in the same color, with almost as little detail. The hair was long, the chin was tilted back, and the eyes were almost shut.
Weeping? Laughing? Screaming? Olvir couldn’t tell, any more than he could recognize a trace of the person’s identity—and legends alone made all three activities possible.
All three had happened on that spot. He was suddenly certain of it.
His throat was dry with dread.
“Problem with my promise,” he got out and watched active alarm replace mere wariness on Vivian’s face. “I’m not sure I’ll be sure. With emotions.”
“Ah. Hmm. I would have thought it’d only be… No, you’re right.” She gestured to Ulamir, indicating that the sword-spirit had spoken. Olvir had felt the communication too. “He says I should remember we’re not dealing with Gizath as he is now. Fear?”
Olvir fumbled for his waterskin and took a drink. It helped his throat, if not the root cause. “Obvious, is it?”
“The most likely candidate. If we weren’t both terrified, we’d be stupid. But it’s worse all of a sudden?”
“Or I’ve merely been holding it off better until now. Or it’s that.” He pointed at the face in the sky. “Or the fragment’s remembering when the Sundering happened and where. I wish I could tell you more definitely.”
He wished, watching Vivian, that he hadn’t promised to tell her any part of what he felt. It did no good, it wasn’t right that she should be worried needlessly, and he’d probably only made it worse. But he had given his word.
“I’m not sure the specifics matter in this case.” Every syllable Vivian spoke was clearly measured, considered: stones in the bridge over what she didn’t say. She paused, listened as Ulamir spoke, then let herself settle back toward being merely watchful. “But I’m glad you told me. It’s good to keep track. Thank you.”
“Of course. I did promise.”
“You did,” she said, and the warmth Olvir glimpsed in her face was enough reward to overcome his earlier regrets. “A knight’s vow. But appreciation’s nice, even if it’s for duty.”
“Do people thank you for yours?”
“Sometimes.”
He would have pressed Vivian further on that, but she spoke first as they entered a moss-green patch where the ground rose up on both sides. It towered over their heads, but sunlight—or light that appeared to be sunlight—reached them exactly as it had before. Olvir saw no shadows but their own.
