Or seated perhaps with Quickening, saying nothing because speaking wasn’t necessary and just being together was enough, just touching...
The ache of what he was feeling filled him with both longing and fear. He wanted it to continue, wanted it to be there always, and at the same time he did not understand it and was certain that it would betray him.
“Are you awake?” he asked her, anxious suddenly for the sound of her voice.
“Yes,” she replied.
He took a deep breath and breathed out slowly. “I have been thinking about why I’m here,” he said. “Wondering about it since Culhaven. I haven’t any magic anymore—not really. All I ever had was contained in the Sword of Leah, and now it’s broken and what magic remains is small and probably won’t be of much help to you. So there’s just me, and I...” He stopped. “I just don’t know what it is that you expect of me, I guess.”
“Nothing,” she answered softly.
“Nothing?” He could not keep the incredulity from his voice.
“Only what you are able and wish to give,” she answered vaguely.
“But I thought that the King of the Silver River said...” He stopped. “I thought that your father said I was needed. Isn’t that what you said? That he told you we were needed, all of us?”
“He did not say what it was that you were to do, Morgan. He told me to bring you with me in my search for the talisman and that you would know what to do, that we all would.” She lifted away slightly and turned to look at him. “If I could tell you more, I would.”
He scowled at her, frustrated with the evasiveness of her answer, with the uncertainty he was feeling. “Would you?”
She almost smiled. Even rain-streaked and soiled by the river’s waters, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He tried to speak and failed. He simply sat there, mute and staring.
“Morgan,” she said softly. “My father sees things that are hidden from all others. He tells me what I must know of these things, and I trust him enough to believe that what he tells me is enough. You are here because I need you. It has something to do with the magic of your Sword. I was told by my father and told you in turn that you will have a chance to make the Sword whole again. Perhaps then it will serve us both in a way we cannot foresee.”
“And Pe Ell?” he pressed, determined now to know everything.
“Pe Ell?”
“Walker says he is an assassin—that he, too, carries a weapon of magic, a weapon that kills.”
She studied him for a long moment before she said, “That is true.”
“And he is needed, too?”
“Morgan.” His name was spoken as a caution.
“Tell me. Please.”
Her perfect features lowered into shadow and lifted again, filled with sadness. “Pe Ell is needed. His purpose, as yours, must reveal itself.”
Morgan hesitated, trying to decide what to ask next, desperate to learn the truth but unwilling to risk losing her by crossing into territory in which he was not welcome.
His face tightened. “I would not like to think that I had been brought along for the same reason as Pe Ell,” he said finally. “I am not like him.”
“I know that,” she said. She hesitated, wrestling with some inner demon. “I believe that each of you—Walker Boh included—is here for a different reason, to serve a different purpose. That is my sense of things.”
He nodded, anxious to believe her, finding it impossible not to do so. He said, “I just wish I understood more.”
She reached up and touched his cheek with her fingers, letting them slide down his jaw to his neck and lift away again. “It will be all right,” she said.
She lay back again, folding into him, and he felt his frustration and doubt begin to fade. He let them go without a fight, content just to hold the girl. It was dark now, daylight gone into the west, night settled comfortably over the land. The storm had moved east, and the rains had been reduced to mist. The clouds were still thick overhead but empty now of thunder, and a blanket of stillness lay across the land as if to cover a child preparing for sleep. In the invisible distance the Rabb continued to churn, a sullen, now sluggish flow that lulled and soothed with its wash. Morgan peered into the night without seeing, finding its opaque curtain lowered to enclose him, to wrap about him as if an invisible shroud. He breathed the clean air and let his thoughts drift free.
“I could eat something,” he mused after a time. “If there were anything to eat.”
Quickening rose without speaking, took his hands in hers, and pulled him up after her. Together, they walked into the darkness, picking their way through the damp grasses. She was able to see as he could not and led the way with a sureness that defied him. After a time she found roots and berries that they could eat and a plant that when properly cut yielded fresh water. They ate and drank what they found, crouched silently next to each other, saying nothing. When they were finished, she took him out to the riverbank where they sat in silence watching the Rabb flow past in the dim, mysterious half-light, a murky sheen of movement against the darker mainland.
A light breeze blew into Morgan’s face, filled with the rich scent of flowers and grasses. His clothes were still damp, but he was no longer chilled. The air was warm, and he felt strangely light-headed.
“It is like this sometimes in the Highlands,” he told her. “Warm and filled with earth smells after a summer storm, the nights so long you think they might never end and wish they wouldn’t.” He laughed. “I used to sit up with Par and Coll Ohmsford on nights like this. I’d tell them that if a man wished hard enough for it, he could just... melt into the darkness like a snowflake into skin, just disappear into it, and then stay as long as he liked.”
He glanced over to judge her reaction. She was still beside him, lost in thought. He brought his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. A part of him wanted to melt into this night so that it would go on forever, wanted to take her with him, away from the world about them. It was a foolish wish.
“Morgan,” she said finally, turning. “I envy you your past. I have none.”
He smiled. “Of course you...”
“No,” she interrupted him. “I am an elemental. Do you know what that means? I am not human. I was created by magic. I was made from the earth of the Gardens. My father’s hand shaped me. I was born full-grown, a woman without ever having been a child. My purpose in being has been determined by my father, and I have no say in what that purpose is to be. I am not saddened by this because it is all I know. But my instincts, my human feelings, tell me there is more, and I wish that it were mine as it has been yours. I sense the pleasure you take in remembering. I sense the joy.”
Morgan was speechless. He had known she was magic, that she possessed magic, but it had never occurred to him that she might not be... He caught himself. Might not be what? As real as he was? As human? But she was, wasn’t she? Despite what she thought, she was. She felt and looked and talked and acted human. What else was there? Her father had fashioned her in the image of humans. Wasn’t that enough? His eyes swept over her. It was enough for him, he decided. It was more than enough.
He reached out to stroke her hand. “I admit I don’t know anything about how you were made, Quickening. Or even anything about elementals. But you are human. I believe that. I would know if you weren’t. As for not having any past, a past is nothing more than the memories you acquire, and that’s something you’re doing right now, acquiring memories—even if they’re not the most pleasant in the world.”
She smiled at the idea. “The ones of you will always be pleasant, Morgan Leah,” she said.
He held her gaze. Then he leaned forward and kissed her, just a brief touching of their lips, and lifted away. She looked at him through those black, penetrating eyes. There was fear mirrored there, and he saw it.
“What frightens you?” he asked.