Gawain studied the wizard closely. “Are you still weak from the fight at Ferdan?”
Allazar shrugged. “It is passing, Longsword, thank you for asking. Probably nothing that good hot food, cool ale, and a soft bed in the comfort of some rustic inn wouldn’t cure. We could have availed ourselves of any number on our journey here.”
“Ah. And here was me thinking old age was creeping up on you.”
That remark earned him a reproachful nudge from Elayeen as she settled against him, cautiously cutting a strip of frak from a small lump of the pressed meat with her dagger.
“I think I have a few more years left in me yet,” Allazar replied, but his heart clearly wasn’t in it. “Unless of course you should decide to kill me in the morning.”
“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today,” Gawain countered, noting not for the first time the dark circles around the wizard’s eyes, and realising that he really didn’t know how old Allazar was. He looked no more than thirty, perhaps forty, which was certainly old enough from the perspective of his own twenty years. But there really was no telling with wizards.
“Mmm? I’m sorry Longsword?”
Gawain frowned. “Come, Allazar, you’ve barely said a word since we left Ferdan. My lady’s best efforts have earned little more than a heartless chuckle from you and my best efforts are poor even at the best of times. And these are not the best of times. I need you hale and hearty when we reach Raheen.”
Allazar sighed, and nodded sadly. He sat on his blanket with his legs crossed under his robes, his face turned slightly toward the faint breezes swirling up from the south. But it was Elayeen who broke the silence.
“Gawain, why must we go to Raheen? You have told me of the horror that greeted you when you returned there from your banishment a year ago, of the ruin of your land. I have felt the pain within you when you look to the south.”
“A year?” Gawain asked softly, looking over the top of Elayeen’s silver-blonde head towards the unseen shores of the Sea of Hope far to the south. “It seems so much longer.”
He took the strip of frak she offered him with a weak smile and began to chew. The leathery spiced meat brought back memories of his time beneath the Dragon’s Teeth with Martan of Tellek, who perhaps even now was hammering his tortuous way through hard rock and pain.
Then he took a deep breath and turned his gaze sternly back to the wizard, who seemed to Gawain to be as crumpled as the robes of his calling.
“So. Allazar.”
“Eh? Oh. It will pass,” Allazar repeated, “It will pass.”
“It took only a week for the burns on my hands to heal, thanks to the see-eelan healers in Thal-Hak’s entourage.” And it was true, the unguent given him to soothe the burns he’d received when the strange aquamire had burst forth from the Sword of Justice, and himself, were all but a memory, just a slight discolouration on his palms now remained.
“My wounds cannot be seen.” Allazar said quietly, smiling again as if to reassure his companions.
“Dwarfspit. They’re as plain as the nose on your face.” Gawain pressed.
“I do not know what to say, Longsword. Words seem… evasive of late.”
“Your world has come crashing down around your ears, all you once held sacred lies like ash around your feet, those you trusted and respected have betrayed you, together with all of us, to the darkest of enemies. Again.”
Gawain felt Elayeen stiffen beside him and even to his own ears, the words sounded harsh.
Allazar simply turned his gaze away to the north, towards Ferdan, and nodded.
“Then you must do as I did, wizard. Set yourself a new course. Make for yourself a new target for the rage and confusion and loss you feel, and make that target Morloch. Gather your wits, Allazar, and your strength. I need them.” And then Gawain surprised himself as well Allazar with a word: “Please.”
The long silence that followed was broken only by the quiet chewing of frak and the occasional buzzing of insects.
“We have no way of knowing how far and how deep the rot goes.” Allazar announced quietly, as if talking to himself. “Nor any idea how much damage is even now being done throughout the kingdoms. Word of Morloch’s appearance at the Council will have spread, word of the treachery. On receipt of that word,” Allazar sighed and fiddled with a crease in his robes, “On receipt of that word it is entirely possible that open warfare commenced within the ranks of the brethren. There is no telling what carnage may have been wrought upon the unsuspecting, by wizards of power allied to Morloch’s vile cause.”
Sudden alarm gripped Elayeen’s slender frame and she sat bolt upright. “There are many wizards in Elvendere,” she gasped.
“Yes, my lady,” Allazar said softly. “There are many of the brethren in all lands.”
“Yet as we saw at Ferdan,” Gawain announced, mostly for Elayeen’s sake, “Not all are traitors. Yet.”
Allazar nodded, but took no reassurance from Gawain’s assertion. “But they will be the weaker, for they will be unsuspecting, and thus easy prey. It is the attacker who has the advantage of surprise in an ambush, not the innocent defender.”
Elayeen cast an imploring look at Gawain, but all he could do was nod in agreement with the wizard, who continued:
“In the aftermath of Ferdan, they will all have looked for a leader. You should have remained, Longsword, it was to you they would have turned.”
“Which is precisely why we had to leave. Once the heat of battle and recriminations had died down, they would’ve looked to Rak for guidance. He will keep alive the dream of union, and his diplomacy will win the battle for hearts and for minds. In such a battle my sword could only fail.”
“You underestimate yourself.”
“So do you, whitebeard.”
“Thank you.”
“No, I meant you underestimate me too.”
“Ah.”
But again Allazar’s eyes remained empty of any spark of humour. Gawain wondered if he himself had looked so distant and hollow a year ago, roaming the lowlands, wreaking terror and vengeance upon the Ramoth. He conceded he probably had.
Then the old Allazar seemed to press up from the depths of the wizard’s despair. “Do you really believe what you said, at the Council, words so strong they provoked the traitors to reveal themselves?”
Gawain frowned. “What did I say?”
“You don’t remember?”
“A lot happened, wizard, in a short space of time.” Gawain lied.
“You said: Brothers of Morloch, were you not sent out centuries ago, when first your kind realised the devastation wrought by you on your own lands was irreversible? Are you not here to prepare the way for his coming?”
Gawain sighed. “That insight was born of the strange aquamire within me, and within my blade.”
“If it is true, then the same blood courses through my veins as theirs.”
“It’s not blood but brains determines actions, Allazar. A one-eyed old soldier told me that when I was a boy.”
“And yet the weakness for aquamire may have been bred into all of us, all of the brethren.”
“True enough. But you’ve had plenty of opportunities to avail yourself of Morloch’s good will, and taken none of them. So have others.”
“Yes,” Elayeen announced firmly, perhaps more for her own peace of mind than for anyone else’s, “The wizard Pahak stood firm by my father at Ferdan. There were others too who fought against Morloch’s evil.”
But Allazar was far from convinced. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps there are fewer in Morloch’s service than we know. Perhaps the brethren who truly serve the races of Man have already prevailed, and I am fretting needlessly.”
Gawain doubted it too. He remembered all too clearly the many visions he had seen swimming in the darkness of the great aquamire lens beneath the Teeth, images which could only have come from the eye-amulets worn by Morloch’s minions.
With a great drawing in of breath Allazar straightened his back, seeming to uncrumple before their very eyes. “Well, Longsword. We have pressed hard across the plains almost to the border with Callodon and you still haven’t told us why we are making such unseemly haste for Raheen.”