Not the garden. The space where it was, between the training yard and the mess hall. The walls on either side are standing, though the roofs behind them are gone. And in the narrow strip of earth between them, pushing up through the frost and the rubble, green.
Mountain sage. Growing between the stones. Still here.
I stop. My hands are shaking.
“Kovren.”
“This is where we sat.” My voice comes out wrong. Thick. “After training. He'd complain about the food. I'd listen.”
She takes my hand. Doesn't say anything. Just holds on.
The great hall is open to the sky. The roof collapsed years ago, the beams fallen in a tangle over the flagstones, and the walls stand jagged against the gray clouds. The hearth at the far end is intact, blackened but whole. Above it, the Oath Brothers statue.
Two figures, carved in stone. Standing side by side, hands clasped. The features are worn smooth by weather and time, but the posture is clear. Brothers in arms. Bound by oath.
I look at the statue for a long time.
“We took our oaths here,” I say. “Rodvek and I. On the same day. We stood in front of that hearth and swore to protect the weak. To stand against the darkness.” The words settled into my bones that day and never left. “He went first. His voice didn't waver.”
“And yours?”
“Mine shook. He laughed at me for it afterward.”
Maren squeezes my hand. Her fingers are cold. The altitude has stolen the warmth from the air, and the sun hasn't broken through the clouds all day.
“We should make a fire,” she says. “Before dark.”
We build it in the hearth, using broken timbers and dead wood from the collapsed sections. The fire catches and throwslight across the ruined hall, painting the stone walls orange, making the shadows jump. The Oath Brothers statue watches from above, their joined hands catching the firelight.
Maren lays out supplies from the pack Mother Sanque prepared. Bandages. Herbs. The oil. She arranges them in a neat line on a flat stone, close to the fire, within reach.
Preparing for what's coming.
“Mother Sanque said the anchor extends through contact,” she says. “That when I touch Rodvek, the bond can reach him through me.”
“In theory.”
“In theory.” She sits cross-legged by the fire, her face calm. “So, the plan is: you call to him. Hold the berserker edge. I get close enough to put my hands on him and let the anchor do its work.”
“That's the plan.”
“And if the anchor isn't enough, I talk. Find the wound underneath. The part of him that's still fighting.”
I look at her. Small, certain, sitting in the ruins of a fallen stronghold, planning to put her hands on a creature that has killed everything it's touched.
“Maren. If I lose control. If the berserker takes me and I can't come back.”
“You'll come back.”
“If I can't.”
“Then I'll bring you back. The same way I did in Gorvani.”
“And if you can't bring us both back? If it's me and Rodvek and the berserker, and you're between us?”
She looks at me. Steady gray eyes, firelight catching in them. “Then I'll be between you. And I'll find a way.”
The same certainty she had in Vorneth. I've been running on fear for years, and she's been walking these roads just as long, and she's still here. Still sure.
