She almost asked Draken, “What do you think happened?” But the words died on her tongue. Her head was hurting from wondering so much, and she knew that he couldn’t possibly have an answer. Indeed, at any moment, she expected him to ask the question.
But he never did. He merely stood, gazing into her eyes.
Suddenly she understood. “You know what happened! You know why there are fish on dry ground!”
He squeezed her hands, looked toward her family. “I have a guess. . . .”
“What is it?” she demanded.
“I can’t say. I am honor-bound not to speak of it. Someday, when we’re married, perhaps. . . .”
Rain understood secrets. Draken had his secrets, she had hers.
“When we’re man and wife,” she said, “I want no secrets between us.”
She clung to his hand as if she were drowning. She knew that she’d have to reveal her own secrets to him someday. How could she tell him what Warlord Grunswallen had forced her to do?
Draken nodded. Rain glanced back toward her father’s camp; her father, Owen, rose from a crouch, along with his brother Colm.
She excused herself from Draken’s presence and warned her father of the Borensons’ intentions.
Moments later, Sir Borenson and most of the other men set out from camp, splitting off in two directions. For long minutes Rain stood watching Draken as he trundled away.
I’ll wait for him, she thought. I’ll make my bed near the Borensons, so that I’ll awaken when he returns.
Late that night Sir Borenson came stumbling in to camp, closer to dawn than to midnight. Myrrima had been awake all night, thinking about the implications of the great change that had occurred.
Her husband had told her little before he hurried off on his rescue mission. He’d told her how he had merged with another man in the binding of the worlds, but he had cut the conversation short when Rain entered their camp.
So when he returned that night she asked, “Why don’t you tell me what you are afraid to say in front of the others?” Myrrima studied his face by starlight, waiting for an answer, but the giant only hesitated, searching for the right words.
The night was comfortless. Stars glimmered cold and dim through a strange misty haze. All afternoon, Myrrima had preened Erin’s body for burial—washing her face, primping her clothes, braiding her hair in corn rows. It was the custom back in her homeland in Heredon to stay up at night with the newly dead, for their spirits often hovered nearby on that first few nights, and one could hope for one last glimpse during the long vigils, one last chance to say good-bye.
Borenson had been gone for hours, scrabbling along the shore, calling for survivors. When he’d walked into camp, he reported, “Mill Creek is gone, washed away.” His voice was hoarse from overuse, from calling out.
He sat beside her little fire, his head hanging, gazing into the ash-covered embers, their dull red light too dim to reach his face.
Myrrima had anticipated that the town would be gone, but she suspected that her husband was weighed down by some greater worry. He had secrets, and she knew from the way that he got up and began to pace that he was fighting to find the right words to tell her.
Myrrima had knelt all evening with Sage, and together they wept. They’d mourned Erin and all of the friends and neighbors that they had known. They’d considered their lot and mourned for themselves.
She worried for her oldest daughter, Talon, who was off in Mystarria, and for Fallion, Jaz, and Rhianna—whom she loved as much as if they were her own offspring. The suspicion that she had lost Talon and the others was growing minute by minute.
I lost more than a child today, Myrrima knew. She dared not say it yet, but she feared that she had lost a husband.
Oh, when she looked at the giant, she imagined that she could see the old Borenson. His features were there, somehow hidden in all of that mass of flesh, the way that one can sometimes look at a knot of wood on a tree and imagine seeing a half-hidden face in it.
But she estimated him to be over seven and a half feet tall now, and he could not weigh less than four hundred and fifty pounds.
She could never be intimate with such a monster, not like a husband and wife should be. They could never be tender or close.
She suspected that Borenson had something to tell her, something that would cause her more grief, so Myrrima asked the question that was most upon her mind. “Why don’t you tell me what you were afraid to say in front of the others?”
“Where do you want me to start?” Borenson begged, shrugging. It was a peculiar gesture, one that he used to signify that he would hold nothing back.
“Start with your life on that shadow world,” Myrrima said. “You had a family, a wife, I suppose?”
“Her name is Gatunyea,” Borenson said in that deep voice. It was as if a bull were trying to approximate human speech. “We lived in what you would call Rofehavan, in the north of Mystarria, in a city called Luciare. She bore me two fine sons, Arad and Destonarry, and I have a daughter close to Talon’s age named Tholna.”
Myrrima sighed. There was so much that she didn’t understand. If two men had merged into one, why did he appear here and not in Mystarria, or somewhere between the two lands? “I see. . . . Do you think that they are still alive?”
“I’m alive,” he said. It was all the argument he could give. “You’re alive. Our children survived. Things have changed in the binding, but I suspect that my . . . other family is still out there.”
Now Myrrima spoke the hardest words that had ever come from her mouth. “You need to go to them. You’ll need to find out if this wife of yours survived. If she is alive, she and the children will be beside themselves. You must reassure them.”
They both knew what Myrrima was really saying. He was a giant now, and he was no longer suited to be her husband. There was a chance that he still had a wife out there. It only made sense that he go to her.
“Myrrima,” Borenson said with infinite sadness.
“We both know the truth,” Myrrima said, struggling to be strong, to hide even a hint of the loss she felt. “You have changed in the binding. Though I’ll love you forever, some things are impossible.”
She could not make love to such a man.
“You know me,” Borenson said. “I may look like a monster on the outside, but I am the same man who has slept at your side these past twenty years. My love for you—”
“You have another woman, one who must be sick with grief. Your children must be wondering where you are. . . .”
Borenson hung his head, reached out and stroked her cheek with one finger.
He would have to sail back to Rofehavan, she knew. But that was easier said than done. They had no boat. Perhaps they could buy passage on a ship, but they had nothing to buy passage with. Their only shelter for the night was a bed of ferns at the base of a cliff.
A great feast they’d made in the mid afternoon, but by morning all of the sea life would be going to rot.
Myrrima had to wonder how they’d survive the coming week, much less make it back to Rofehavan.
She didn’t even want to think about going back.
Myrrima had always felt so strong, but something was wrong. Her muscles ached as if from fatigue, a weariness that made her fear sleeping, lest she never wake again. To stand or move took immense effort. The numbing weariness wasn’t just upon her, but upon her children and the Walkins, too—seemingly everyone but Borenson.
“It could be months or years before I make it back to Rofehavan,” Borenson confirmed. “All of Garion’s Port is drowned. A ship might come in time, but even if it does, I may not be able to buy passage. . . .” He took a deep breath, as if to broach a topic that he dared not discuss, and then released it again, his head shaking from side to side.