“You’ve done your share, return home,” he repeated.
“What about mother?”
“You’ve been on the Crescent Continent longer than I. Do they have a cure?” Vi shook her head. “Then them summoning me to discuss a cure was a lie.” Vi glanced at her father, filing that information away. Who had summoned him? Ulvarth, or the queen? Had Taavin known? Her heart protested against that last question. “Let’s go home.”
“But mother…”
“Your mother is strong. The strongest woman I have ever met.” Nothing short of wonder, admiration, and love filled his voice. Vi watched as her father gazed out to sea, his brow softening. Only to nearly choke on his next words. “But I have been away from her long enough, and if ill is to befall her, I should be by her side, as she would seek to be by mine.”
“ButI can save her,” Vi reiterated, stressing each word.
“How? Daughter, I believe you can move mountains. But I need your help filling in the blanks of how you believe so adamantly that you can accomplish something the most skilled clerics and sorcerers on the Main or Crescent Continents have not.”
“Have you ever heard of the Champion of Yargen?”
“I can’t say I have.”
Vi chewed on her lower lip a moment, trying to figure out her next words. She knew of the rise of the Mad King and the fall of the Crystal Caverns. It would be an understandably trying topic for her father. How could she broach it all without sounding as though she blamed him? She didn’t, of course. No one knew what the Crystal Caverns really were and it was not his fault they had been opened.
“Long ago, Yargen—we know her as the Mother, and Raspian—we know him as the Father, were at war.”
“At war?”
“Yes, well, the Crones of the Sun got their stories a little twisted at some point in history. They’re not lovers; they’re sworn enemies. Anyway, when the war was over, Yargen won and sealed Raspian away. That seal was broken, and he’s back now. He’s behind the White Death.”
“If you stop him, or seal him away again, the White Death goes away too?” Vi gave a nod. That was the same logic she had used—the same thought she’d hung all her hopes on these past months. “But how can you accomplish such a task?”
“Well…” Vi picked at the hem of her tattered, sun-bleached shirt. “Because I am Yargen’s new Champion.”
“You?”
“Yes, and because—hold on.”
Vi scrambled to her feet. She had to prove to him she wasn’t talking madness. Heart pounding against her chest, Vi sprinted over to the cabin, quietly leaned in so as not to disturb Taavin’s slumber, and grabbed the scythe. She returned, sitting back down and setting it between them. Her father regarded the bundle warily and Vi took a deep breath.
“I think—know—I can defeat him because I am Yargen’s Champion. Taavin is her Voice; he can hear her words and knows how to get to the flame of Yargen in Risen. That’s the other piece of Yargen’s power.” Vi knew she was talking too fast, but couldn’t slow down. She was working up to this moment and her words were in a race with her heart. “And because I have this.”
Vi undid the straps wrapped around the scythe, pulling back the fabric covering it. Even in the bright, early morning light, it sparkled and shone with a magic that filled her with delight and hope.
At least it did until her father scrambled backward, looking on in horror.
“Throw it overboard,” he demanded.
“Father—”
“That, Vi, is not the solution.Thatis the problem.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“I know what this is,”Vi insisted.
“You clearly do not.” Aldrik reached forward, hesitated with his hand hovering above the pole of the scythe, then made up his mind. He grasped it, but not before Vi gripped it with both her hands on either side of his. She held on firmly as he tried to wrench it away and make good on his demand to throw it overboard. “If you knew what this was, you would not be holding it in the first place. Now let it go, Vi.”
She knew that tone. It was the same tone that would have had her shaking as a child. But she wasn’t a child any longer.
“No. You need to listen to me, Father.”
“Vi—”
