“What decisions? When?”
“I do not know.”
“You don’t know? Oh, that’s just great!” Mari burst out angrily, then pointed an accusing finger at him. “I’m ready to break my heart and say goodbye forever to the only man I have ever loved, and then one of your blasted Mage spells shows up and tells me maybe something could happen if we both do the right things, but there’s no telling what those things are. Do I get that right?”
“Yes, but— ”
“Thanks for nothing!”
“Mari, it shows that we can survive that long. The chance exists, despite all perils. We were together, and you were still alive, still fighting. There is hope.”
“I don’t want to fight!” Mari said.
“But this vision tells us that our decision today is the right one,” Alain insisted. “It sets us on the path to that day.”
“To that battle?” Mari drew in a shuddering breath. “Who were we fighting?”
“The storm,” he replied, as if that answered everything.
“Fine. We were together. So I want that future, Mage Alain. A future with you.” She took a step closer to him, then managed to halt herself. “You were right, I guess. I will see you again. Someday. Somehow. You had better make the right decisions, do you hear me?”
He looked at her. “We will face many choices, any one of which made wrongly could bring an end to that possible future I saw. I will do my best. I also want that future with you, and you will have need of me in the new day you must bring to pass.”
“I already need you,” Mari said, “but I keep getting the feeling that you and I are talking about two different things sometimes. What new day? What storm?”
Was that a flash of puzzlement that appeared in Alain’s eyes? “But you said—” His voice broke off as Alain suddenly looked down and to one side, then over in another direction. “Mages approach. They seek me. They must not find you. I must go now to lead them away.”
“Alain, what—”
But he was moving, gliding silently through the shadows and out the gate, leaving Mari glaring at the empty shadows inside the turret.
You blasted Mage! Why do I keep thinking there is something you’re not telling me? No. It’s more like something you think I know, but I have no idea what it is. Fine. Right now I have to leave to keep you safe, so I’ll do that. But I will see you again, and we will be together, and I will find out what this “new” day stuff means, and I will fix the problems that I am finding, no matter what any of those things take, and no matter what I have to change.
I’ll change the whole world, if that’s what it takes.
Mari gazed once more at the chipped stone of the firing slit and felt a shiver run through her as she remembered Alain speaking of them being in a battle. She tore her eyes from the token of old wars and looked out over the harbor again, past the works of humans and on to the restless waters of the Sea of Bakre.
To the north, she could see storm clouds forming.