Ore-Locks had also seen to safeguards for the way in and out of the peak, and there were now multiple, connected chambers nearby, cut into the mountain’s stone to serve as a home. The youngest stonewalker had been a good friend, the likes of which Chane never thought he would have.
Tonight he stood alone with Magiere’s falchion in hand, staring across the bridge. Since that long-past night when she had tossed this weapon at him, he had never drawn the blade that had once taken his head.
But he did so now and stepped out along the bridge, sword and sheath in his hands.
The rope cabling was inspected and repaired as needed each year. It swayed a little, and yet he did not need to grip the braided rope railings. The earliest nights beneath the mountain were still fresh in his memory, when he had escorted Wynn to check the sun-crystal staff.
On their first visit, she had felt her way onward without him. Without sight, she did not trust just touching the staff to know if the crystal was still lit. She draped her cloak over it and called out to him, and only then did he dare enter.
The sun crystal was still glowing—it was always still glowing.
Over time, they guessed this must have been the influence of Chârmun’s child, tree and sun crystal sustaining each other.
After that first visit, Chane remade some physical protections that he had once used—along with a potion to fight off dormancy—in protecting Wynn during daylight hours. With his body fully covered, he could accompany her to check on the crystal. Once they entered the cavern, she still threw a cloak over the top of the staff, as even his covering would not protect him for long. Although Chane knew they did not need to fully enter the cavern to see that the crystal glowed, Wynn insisted on making a full check of the staff and tree. Perhaps it helped her feel she was fulfilling her duty.
It was several years before Wynn willingly missed even one night’s visit to the tree.
Over time, the new grandchild of Chârmun grew more and more immense.
Chane could imagine it even now, as he walked the chasm’s bridge, though he would not go to see it this night or ever again.
Its branches nearly reached that cavern’s walls, though under the canopy it was difficult to tell if it had reached the ceiling higher above. Even while wearing the “ring of nothing,” Chane had always felt it prodding him, trying to uncover what he was. Through that tree, all but Ore-Locks and his kind visited this place, and others were brought by white sages of Chuillyon’s previous order.
Chane stepped off the bridge into the far half-cavern landing, but he went no farther. Instead, he leaned the falchion and its sheath against one of the bridge’s upright anchor posts. About to turn back, he hesitated, peering toward the landing’s rear. He barely made out the passage leading to the cavern of immense bones caught in the great tree’s spreading roots.
Two cold-lamp crystals were mounted in plain holders on the bridge posts. He took out the nearest above the falchion, rubbed it furiously for light, and replaced it before heading back.
He crossed the bridge again and paused upon reaching the other side, remembering.
In their early time here, going to the tree had always left Wynn somber. On several occasions she had resisted his help in the return and blindly felt for a grip on the braided railing.
Her frustration had grown worse—and dangerous—in that first year after so many visits to the staff. The sun crystal she never saw for herself was what had taken her sight. Perhaps in her blindness, she never knew how much of that he saw in her face.
Chane had not foreseen the lengths to which this would drive her.
Or at least he did not until one night when the white sages had come through the tree to deliver seasonal supplies. As always, they helped him move crates and baskets across the bridge, taking the previous empty containers with them. After a brief parting, he took a moment to assess the stores and discovered a pouch of roasted chestnuts crusted with cinnamon and nutmeg.
At the prospect of anything that might cheer Wynn, he left everything else and hurried off with the pouch.
A short ways up the passage, he had turned into an opening excavated by Ore-Locks and others. Therein were the chambers he shared with Wynn. They were filled with cushioned chairs, a few orange dwarven crystals for heat, a small scribe’s desk for himself and his journals, and shelves with odd things and many books that he read to himself or her. By the end of that first year, they had the comforts of a true home beneath the mountain.
But Wynn was nowhere to be seen that night. Though not exactly worrisome, it was odd. She always settled for the evenings in this outer chamber. He stepped onward toward the back of the room, and as he was about to open the heavy curtain within another opening, he heard the whispers.
Quietly, he pulled the curtain aside.
Wynn knelt on the stone floor at the bed’s foot, having pushed aside a thick rug. By her whispers, he knew what she was doing, but he hesitated at breaking her focus. He feared some worse mishap if he interrupted.
What had she been thinking?
Without true sight, how could her mantic sight ever show her even the Elements within all things? The taint in her from a thaumaturgical ritual gone wrong so long ago could do nothing for a blind woman. He had never felt so restrained in helplessness, waiting for her to fail.
Wynn stopped whispering.
She pitched forward, caught herself, hands braced on the floor, and gagged. Then Chane dropped the pouch as he charged for her.
He dropped to his knees, and she collapsed against him, breathing too fast and hard.
“What are you doing? Why?” he asked softly.
Her head toppled back, struck his shoulder, and her eyes opened wide. He watched those brown irises shift more than once, pause, and shift again about the chamber.
She slapped a hand over her mouth as her eyes clamped shut. Her other hand slammed down on his folded leg, and her small fingers ground into his thigh. He felt nothing in his worry—except shock.
In the brief moment Wynn’s eyes had opened, they had moved more than once about the chamber.
She had seen something.
Her eyes opened again, and he thought she might sicken again. Then she looked up at his face so near to hers.
“Chane?” Wynn whispered.
He should have made her stop then and there, but he could not.
Obviously she had been toying with this in secret whenever he went hunting lizards and desert rodents to supplement their supplies. Or when he was working to improve his meager conjuring, which eventually moved from fire to water for their additional use. Given her loss of sight, he had never thought she would try this, for how could mantic sight work if she could not see?
But it had, and more than this, she blinked twice. For an instant, her expression cleared of sickness, and she smiled at him. It was not the last time he would have that aching joy. So long as he wore the ring, there was one thing—one person—that did make her head ache in vertigo when she looked upon Spirit or any other elemental component of the world.
She would see him, only him, as he truly was.
Even so, he could not stop her from suffering in her tampering. Seeing elemental Spirit in her surroundings was all that she had. How could he deny her those brief moments of independence?
Now, standing at the near side of the chasm—and in that memory—Chane went numb again, and yet he could not stop remembering.
Wynn had found a way to see, now and then, and even for the price, she was much happier. She and Chane had a life together.
At night, they walked out under the moon and stars. In the seasons and years that followed, they studied languages, history, culture, and more from texts she or he requested from visiting sages. They drank tea brought from any corner of the world that sages could reach. They played board games and cards, ones they had always known and even a few new ones.