The wizard pushed himself to his feet with his staff, and with one hand clutching the stick and the other as tenaciously gripping yet another sandwich, this time stuffed with salt pork, moved a discreet distance from Gawain and Elayeen, and assisted the captain with the reports for Callodon.
“How is your hand now?” Gawain asked, nestled close to her.
“The fingers are sore, and he bound them tighter. Though I did ask Healer Turlock to allow me some movement at the knuckles, it might make handling my bow easier.”
“I hope you don’t have to.”
She turned to look towards him, her hair whipping across her face. “I think I may have no choice. Morloch did not sound best pleased at having the plans of ages ruined in the blink of an eye.”
“True. But while his fury was real so too was his obvious weakness. The vision I saw was a pale shadow of the strength I first witnessed on the plains of Juria. I don’t doubt he intends to wreak his vengeance upon our lands, Elayeen, but a Morloch sealed behind the Teeth in a dying land bereft of most of his power is much to be preferred to one standing with an army of mindless minions on the shores of the farak gorin.”
“Agreed. I think. Though if he has an army of mindless minions assembling on the west bank of the Eramak river, I do not think it will make much difference to the outcome.”
“Simayen Jaxon would have known if there were such an army, surely? And I got the impression that Salaman Goth did not welcome being ordered to Raheen by Morloch. I have a feeling that Morloch’s plans did not progress as smoothly as he would have hoped in the Empire, either. And I think that as before, Morloch’s speech is mostly bluster, born of rage and despair.”
“Mostly?”
“I hope so. I would dearly like to know how our friend Rak is faring at the Council of Kings. A pity your father was unable to persuade them all to a more southerly location, we could get there quicker, or least have word from them sooner.”
“Yes.”
“Have you finished your sandwich already?”
“Yes.”
“Want me to get you another?”
“No, I am full, thank you.”
“Then here,” Gawain opened his cloak and folded her into it. “It’s chilly tonight, and it’ll rain.”
“Autumn is coming. The tops of the trees are not as bright as I think they should be. Winter is coming too, though slowly.”
“Yes. Though it will be warmer than the last one, I think.” And Gawain kissed the top of her head, remembering how he’d carried her from Elvendere to Threlland wrapped in his cloak. “Not so much snow anyway.”
He felt her nodding against his chest, and shifted his weight a little, holding her closer. “Did you see the blast Allazar let loose upon that Graken?”
“No, miheth, you stood before me, shielding me from it. You shine brightly, I couldn’t see past you.”
“I thought I burned? Now I only shine?”
“I still haven’t absolved you from earlier.”
“Oh.”
“Why? What was wrong with the blast Allazar loosed? It destroyed the darkness did it not? Like the lightning he made at the foot of the Pass, against the Grimmand?”
“No,” Gawain said softly above the rising wind. “No miheth, it was far more powerful than that. His white fire ripped a great gash in the road, as though hard-baked clay and stone were parchment, and destroyed the Graken and the dark wizard utterly. And he, grinning like a maniac gone berserk in battle while he did it. It was frightening, Elayeen, really quite frightening.”
“Oh,” she said simply, turning her face up to him, “Not chilling, then?”
“Stop it,” he said, and kissed her nose, and then her lips. “I mean it when I say it was frightening. In fact, if the Grimmand were merely scary, and the Graken rider with his black fireballs merely frightening, then the power Allazar unleashed today was blood-numbingly terrifying.”
“Good,” she said, and she was serious. “Then your decision to make him Keeper of the Staff of Raheen was a good one. It is long past time we had a wizard of power on our side.”
“As long as he stays on our side.” Gawain mumbled.
“You know,” Elayeen sighed, shifting a little more sideways under the fold of his cloak, “I had just considered absolving you, and then you go and say something like that. There are times, miheth, when you can be unimaginably insensitive, to me and to Allazar.”
“He’s over there,” Gawain protested, “He can’t hear me for the wind.”
“But I can hear you, G’wain. First you do him great honour, and call him one of the three of Raheen, and after a battle thanked him as a king should thank his wizard under the circumstances. And then you insult him.”
“Old habits die hard.”
“Your remark just now was not made in jest. Even without our throth I know enough to understand when you and he are prodding at each other in good humour. Was it not the circles in the hall of your fathers which chose him, and gifted him with the new power you fear?”
Gawain sighed. “It was.”
“Well then.”
“Well then nothing. Morloch was once as white as snow in the halls of the great wizards of old, and it was his treachery that meant the circles needed to be made in the first place. You didn’t see the look on Allazar’s face, Elayeen, I did.”
“And the look on his face, G’wain, was it chilling? Did it raise the hairs on the back of your neck and send a shiver down your spine?”
“Stop, Elayeen, please. Don’t make more of this than there is. I have always had a deep distrust of wizards and you know it, and with good reason, which you also well know. It’s not my intention to insult Allazar, I know he is a friend, and I know you hold him thus as well. I’m merely saying that he’s become far more than he was, and it’s that which worries me.”
“And I, do I worry you? Now that I am changed?”
Gawain drew in a deep breath, and then paused, thinking desperately.
“I see that I do.”
“No. No, Elayeen. My worry is for you, not of you. You have no idea of the terror I felt when I saw you laying deathly still on the floor of the great hall. You have no idea of the unutterable joy I felt when you stirred in my arms and woke up. Nor of the agony I felt when you said you couldn’t see.”
“Yet the sight of me today made you shudder. I am, perhaps, like Allazar, become far more than I was.”
“I admit it, your eldengaze is very unsettling. You don’t know what it’s like, to see and hear you like that, and I can’t explain it. Allazar felt it on the track today, I am sure, and I think it’s still growing within you. You don’t seem to be you, miheth, when it’s upon you like that. Just like Allazar did not seem to be Allazar when he summoned a great… I don’t know, a great lightning tree which destroyed our enemies in an instant.”
“I am me,” she insisted, as the rain began to fall. “I am who I always was. Only the way I see the world has changed. And how I feel it, without our throth to guide me. It’s as though the circles took away the eyes of my heart, too.”
“I know,” Gawain said fervently. “I know. And it’s my fault. I did this. It was my hand which placed the sword in the circle and did all this. Perhaps that is what I am truly afraid of. Perhaps I am afraid that Morloch was right, and all that’s to come is my fault too.”
Elayeen made no reply, and Gawain suddenly seemed tired. He drew the cloak tighter around them, leaned back against the heap of gravel at his back, and closed his eyes, the rain stinging his cheeks and reminding him of the dark blasts launched against them on the road that morning. He remembered twisting around, grabbing Elayeen and hunching before her when the spheres of black fire had burst upon the track. Remembered the spiteful debris spattering hot and stinging on his legs and peppering his back.
And remembered Allazar, holding the Dymendin staff vertically before him, a shimmering in the air like a clear glass shield before him, protecting his face against the debris while his vengeful smile widened into a grin and he advanced upon the dark enemy. The shield he had raised with the knowledge given him by the wizards of elder times had protected only himself.