“It's tea, Kovren. Not a declaration.”
“It's the first thing someone's given me that wasn't medical supplies or directions to the next creature sighting.”
I don't have an answer for that. I take his hand and we keep walking.
The portal back to Vorneth costs less than the one coming. Returning traffic, the portal keeper says. Demand goes one direction. We step through in the late afternoon, and the mountain air fills my lungs. I realize I've been breathing shallow for two days. Korsmot's air is thick and warm and smells of too many people. Vorneth smells of pine and cold stone and the particular sharpness of altitude.
Mother Sanque is waiting at the top of her stairs. She takes one look at us and nods.
“It worked.”
“You sound surprised,” I say.
“I sound satisfied. There's a difference.” She ushers us inside, puts a kettle on, and makes me sit while she examines Kovren. Her hands press flat against his chest in the same places as before. She closes her eyes. Stays still for a long time.
When she opens them, the lines around her eyes have loosened. Not softness. Mother Sanque doesn't do soft. But relief, maybe. As close to it as she gets.
“What the stone gave you has taken the deeper seat. The oath to his brother is still there, but it's stepped back. Made room.” She looks at me. “You feel the difference?”
“Yes.” Our bond sits differently since the ceremony. Thicker. More present. “It's stable.”
“More than stable. It's dominant.” She pours tea and doesn't offer sugar. “The beast?”
“Contained,” Kovren says. “Not gone. But the door between me and it is heavier than it was.”
“Good.” She settles into her chair and fixes us both with that sharp gaze. “Now. We need to talk about Rodvek.”
Mother Sanque has been working hard while we were in Korsmot. Her table is buried. Books open on top of books, pages marked with torn strips of cloth.
“Tell me what happened at the stronghold,” she says to Kovren. “When Rodvek turned. What you saw.”
He tells her. Haltingly, in pieces. The line breaking. Rodvek holding it so the children could get out. The moment Rodvek went under and didn't come back.
“He was still fighting when you left?”
“He was still standing. Still between them and the children. But his eyes had gone gold. All the way.”
She writes something. Checks it against a passage in one of the open books. Writes again.
“And the children,” she says. “They escaped.”
“All of them. The rear passage. I found the trail markers later.”
“But Rodvek didn't know that.”
Kovren is quiet.
“He was too far gone,” I say. “By the time the children were out, the berserker had him.”
“Yes.” Mother Sanque pulls a diagram off the wall and lays it flat between us. Two interlocking circles, dense with her handwriting, arrows looping back and forth. “A Bogatyr oath binds to purpose. Rodvek's purpose was the stronghold. The children. When the line broke and he believed they died, the oath had nowhere to go. Still pushing, nothing to push toward.”
She taps the second circle. “The berserker feeds on whatever it can find. In Rodvek's case, it found the oath.”
“They fused,” I say.
She looks at me. “You're quick.”
Kovren stares at the diagram. His hands are flat on the table, pressing until the grain bites into his palms.
