He looks over his shoulder. “Yes, sir?”
“Are you running off to that necromancer?”
“His name is Shae,” Arthur says. “And yes.”
“I just want you to know, I’ll be honor-bound to testify about this at your trial,” she says. “If you leave for him now, the Archpriest will never let you back in.”
Arthur pulls his pendant from under his shirt. He looks at the golden sun he’s carried for five years. But his purpose is more than a symbol. If he can’t bring Vara’s magic, then so be it. He’ll give Shae his heart and his sword if those are all he has.
He pulls the chain over his head and drops it to the ground. The small noise seems to thunder through the dusty, smelly barn. Arthur’s never seen Captain Tanner surprised before.
“Then I quit,” he says. “Light guide you.”
He walks out before anyone can reply.
Karis is waiting just outside the door, eyes wide. Arthur walks past him, then remembers something and whirls around to grab his shoulder. “Track Shae again,” he says roughly. “Tell me where he is.”
The boy’s jaw drops, then clicks shut. Divine power flickers through him, tingling Arthur’s hand where they touch. Karis’s brow furrows, and then he opens his eyes again. “About seven miles northeast of Lanwatch,” he says. “A ruin in the Lyralan Crater.”
Moments later, Arthur’s up in the saddle, kicking Duchess toward the road. Bernard shouts something after him, but he neither understands nor cares what he’s saying. All he knows is the pounding of galloping hooves, Duchess moving beneath him, the wind whipping past him—and a strange, exhilarating feeling rising within him.
He thinks it’s the adrenaline at first. The shock of turning his back on everything he thought he wanted burning deep in his chest, driving him forward. The sensation surges, cresting into white-hot illumination. Sunlight floods him, and for a moment, everything he sees—road, trees, skyline—is limned in golden light. The brilliance stings his eyes to the edge of tears.
On his next blink, the world returns to normal, and the light settles into his heart, a steady, reassuring power. He thought that throwing away his pendant would break his connection to Vara’s power. Instead, his magic feels stronger than ever before, and he has the guidance he’s prayed for: Vara’s Radiance, spurring him forward.
He’s doing the right thing. He just hopes it’s not too late.
?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Shae
The earth is dark and wet beneath Shae when he gasps awake. Death fills his lungs, so thick he chokes on it. He scrambles to his knees so fast that the blood rushes from his head, and he slumps sideways again. His hands are numb. His wrists barely support his weight as he sits again more slowly.
Gray light filters through the clouds above. It’s impossible to tell what time it is. Corpses surround him. Riverswords and bandits, and gods only know what else. The older corpses that Izen dragged to fight. Ashes of dead vaidkos mingle with the bloodstained dirt. Shae’s stomach seizes, and he breathes through the nausea until it subsides.
Standing up takes longer than it should. He falls again to one knee. Counts his breaths. Touches a stud in his right ear for a quick burst of strength that finally gets him upright. He barely feels the magic as he uses it. That’s how he knows he’s really, truly cold.
He drags himself around the wreckage and checks each fallen body for life. It’s useless, he knows it’s useless, but he has to. None of them have any breath left in them. A couple of the Riverswords feel warm to the touch, but Shae doesn’t know what that really means. He’s so cold himself that the newly dead bodies would naturally be warmer than him.
He counts six Riverswords. Two men and four women—almost all the ones who rode into Lyrisenia with him. Only Georgia is missing. She must have gotten away, leaving Shae alone on the bloody ground. He’s too numb to be mad about that. Running away was the smart thing to do. None of them were any match for Izen with the array this weak.
Shae’s still no match for him. Not in this condition. Maybe not ever. He laughs sharply in the middle of the spread of bodies. He thought he learned the lesson of hubris when he was twelve years old—that wanting something with every bone in his body doesn’t mean he can have it. But no. Once again his recklessness has consequences.
Just as well he left Arthur behind. Maybe the paladin’s magic could have made a difference, or maybe Arthur could be lying lifeless in the dirt too.
Shae can’t help missing him, with a fully-body ache that rivals the cold.
He lifts his hands. His fingertips look blue already, and he needs to find people fast. But the nearest settlement is too far away, and he doesn’t remember exactly how to get there. He definitely won’t make it back to Lanwatch on foot. He’ll die before then.
Shae kneels beside a dead bandit. The man is older, with a patch over his eye and blood in his scraggly gray beard. Shae doesn’t know if he was a good man or a bad man. The sort of man that rode through the Nightven homestead and killed Shae’s parents, or just a hungry man trying to get by. Maybe both, or neither. He’s not good or bad now, just dead.
And the violence and fear of his death wait in the shadows of his soul, ripe for the plucking. All the bodies around him are a source of power too. If Shae wants to banish Izen, if he wants to end all this and get rid of his necromancy for good?
He can’t fix anything if he’s dead. Whatever the risk, he has to take it.
Hands shaking, Shae unfastens the silver feather from his right lobe. Drops it on the ground next to the one-eyed bandit’s corpse. It’s easier than Shae thought it would be. The last protective wall crumbles from his soul with barely a whisper of sensation.
