At length, it was a mumbling and truculent Gawain who broke the silence:
“I suppose in the morning you will demand I take us back northwest to Jarn and Elayeen.”
Allazar simply regarded the young man in the gloom.
“I suppose you think that because she and I are throth-bound we can’t bear to be apart for more than a few days or nights. Well you’re wrong. And before you even consider pointing out that my life inevitably ends with hers you’d do well to remember she is a thalangard-trained warrior and more than able to fend for herself. And she has my arrowsilk cloak, if she has the sense to wear it.”
Again, Allazar said nothing.
“Besides which, I’d know if she was in any danger.”
Allazar made a show of rearranging his saddle for a pillow, laid down, and pulled his grubby cloak about him.
Gawain drew the longsword from its scabbard and laid it on the ground beside him, before leaning back against his own saddle. “She’s probably stuck in some rat-infested drafty ruin of a barn on the outskirts of town hoping against hope that the straw she’s laying on isn’t home to a host of fleas and wishing she’d had the basic common sense to see that I’m right.”
Far off, an owl hooted, and seemed to be answered by the high-pitched squeaks of a flock of nightcrakes flapping overhead in search of the nocturnal flying insects that were their food.
“Are you asleep?” Gawain asked, amazed and disgusted at the same time.
“No, Longsword,” Allazar sighed. “After so long on the open plains, I find I am now being kept awake by unfamiliar whining noises.”
“It’s just the night birds.” Gawain mumbled, before staring at the wizard suspiciously. But it was dark, and clouds obscured the stars, and like the wizard’s pretexts for stopping or delaying their journey since lunchtime, Gawain couldn’t really prove anything. “I’ll take first watch,” he mumbled, and soon he heard the wizard’s deep and rhythmic breathing.
About an hour later, a sudden feeling of calm washed over him, followed immediately by a brief sense of contentment. And then Gawain’s head cleared like waking from a confused dream, and with a mixture of relief and renewed truculence, he simply knew that wherever Elayeen was, she was not sleeping on a bed of fleas in a rat-infested and drafty ruin of a barn.
When dawn broke next morning the sun found the King of Raheen observing his morning remembrance of The Fallen, while Allazar quietly saddled his horse. After a few moments of respectful silence, Gawain slung his sword over his shoulder, checked the cinch of Gwyn’s saddle, and mounted.
“No, wizard.” He announced firmly.
Allazar feigned confusion. “Longsword?”
“In answer to the question you were trying not to ask, no, we do not ride for Jarn. We continue on to Raheen.”
“Ah.”
“Though we shall lessen our pace. I daresay Elayeen will wish to catch us up before we get there.”
“Ah.”
“And no, again, any resentment I may feel is my own. Since she and I both slept last night, the anger has abated.”
“Ah.”
“Is that all you intend to say between here and Raheen? Ah?”
“I was merely attempting to gauge your humour this morning, Longsword. Since the strange aquamire left you so astonishingly at Ferdan, there is no darkening of your eyes as a harbinger of doom to warn of your ire.”
“My humour is fine.”
“And your lady?”
Gawain looked sheepish. “Judging by the way I felt briefly when you woke me this morning I’d say my lady found her hot food, hot bath, and warm bed for the night.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t press your luck, wizard.”
“I would have imagined, Longsword,” Allazar grunted, dragging himself up into the saddle and eyeing the gathering clouds, “That the thought of your lady washed clean of the grime of almost two months summer travelling and smelling sweet as a new-mown spring meadow would have you flying to Jarn with not even Morloch himself strong enough to hold you back. Especially since it was doubtless your enforced… separation… for so long on this journey that certainly sparked the throth-bound rage which almost entirely consumed you both.”
“It’s because of Morloch’s strength we’re headed south in the first place.” Gawain mumbled, and allowed Gwyn to move off slowly, away from Jarn and towards Raheen. Eventually, after a few hundreds yard, he turned and caught Allazar wearing a sad expression.
“Do you really think that’s what caused it? Our not being with each other, in that way?”
“I think,” Allazar said quietly, drawing his horse alongside Gwyn, “I think that much has happened in your young lives, much of which no-one could have prepared either of you for. I think it is astonishing that you have coped with the horror and tragedy as well as you both have. Clearly, you draw strength from each other, and that is good. You have both suffered beyond imagining, and though you have more friends than either of you realise, you truly only have each other.
“After all, Longsword, you have both lost your homes and all you held dear, all the dreams and expectations of your respective childhoods shall never now come to pass. For you, Raheen is gone utterly. For Elayeen, it is perhaps worse, or perhaps not, only she, and you, could know; Elvendere and all she holds dear remains intact, but is denied to her just as surely as Raheen is denied to you.
“Small wonder then, that you should both draw strength from each other. And all of that is without the throth which has bound your very lives together. You both have had no pause, no time to come to terms with events, no respite save a few nights between battles at Ferdan. It is hardly a surprise, therefore, that since propriety has demanded a… seemly distance… between you and your perfectly natural desires, your frustrations should grow.
“And as I said, the throth not only magnifies the good between you. It magnifies all passions, including the dangerous ones. It is my fault, I think, I should have recognised the danger weeks ago, and given you both a night’s respite from my company. But I was self-absorbed, trying to understand all the ramifications of the battle at Ferdan. And you and she seemed comfortable enough with your quiet conversations all this time.”
“Oh so it’s your fault? Why am I not surprised?” Gawain grumbled.
“Perhaps it is.” Allazar sighed. “But we can still turn aside from this course, Longsword. Join Elayeen in Jarn, take time to be with one another, heal any rift between you and allow all of us to recover our strength before going on to Raheen. As you said, you would know if she were in any danger, and it would seem she isn’t?”
“No,” Gawain conceded, “No I can’t feel any sense of alarm. But nor can I ignore the sense of urgency that demands I take you to Raheen. I know I cannot explain it, Allazar, I know it makes no sense, and I know I have no right to expect you or Elayeen to place such blind faith in me when I can’t explain it even to myself, much less to you. All I know is that Morloch fears me, and that Raheen holds the key which will unlock the reason for his fear.”
“Yet you wounded him sorely, and in so doing bought the time needed for Rak to work his diplomacy.”
“I know, Allazar. And I know you yearn for news from Ferdan as much Elayeen did, and as much as I myself yearn to be with her. But still, my instincts have served me well since the first day of my banishment from Raheen two years ago. And I must trust them. They tell me Elayeen is safe, and that it would be better for the two of us to be apart, for now at least. And that we must press on. ”
And press on they did, though at a pace much kinder to themselves and their horses, moving further from the edge of the woodlands and out into the scrubbier land where better grass for the animals was to be had. From time to time they paused for rest or to drink from shallow streams that criss-crossed these hinterlands, seeing only the occasional wild goat, hare and rabbit, all of which evinced a look of enquiry from Allazar and a shake of the head and an offer of more frak from Gawain.