“Perhaps not, Eyron,” Sorak said, “but in becoming a part of her life, I bear at least some responsibility for the effect that I have had on her.”
“Nonsense. She has free will,” said Eyron. “You did not force her to fall in love with you. That was her choice.”
“Had she known you, Eyron, perhaps she might not have made that choice,” replied Sorak harshly.
“Had she known me, she would not have suffered under any misapprehensions,” Eyron said, “for I would have told her the truth from the beginning.”
“Indeed?” said Sorak. “And what is the truth, as you perceive it?”
“That you are infatuated with her, that Kivara is curious to explore new sensations, that the Guardian feels threatened by her, and the Watcher feels threatened by everything. The Ranger could not have been less concerned, one way or another, for love has no pragmatic aspects, and the Shade would have frightened the wits out of her.”
“What of the others?” Sorak asked.
“Screech is little better than the great, dumb beast that trails at our heels, and Lyric would never have been capable of taking her seriously, for Lyric takes nothing seriously. And I will not presume to speak for Kether, since Kether does not condescend to speak with me.”
“Little wonder,” said Kivara.
“No one asked you,” Eyron said.
“Enough!” Sorak said out loud, exasperated. “Give me some peace!”
A moment later, he began to sing. The words rang out bright and clear as he walked along the trail, singing an old halfling song about a young maiden and a hunter experiencing love for the first time. It was Sorak’s voice that sang, but it was Lyric and not Sorak who sang the words. Sorak did not know them. Rather, he did not consciously remember them. It was a song his mother often sang to him when she had held him cradled in her arms. As Lyric sang, the Ranger guided their feet along the path leading through the valley toward the mountains. The Guardian gently drew Sorak down into a slumber and cradled him in solitude, isolating him not only from the others, but from the outside world, as well.
Tigra sensed the difference in him, but the beast was not surprised by this. It had never known Sorak to be any other way. The Ranger walked with a long and easy stride, Sorak’s light leather pack and water skin slung over his shoulders, the sword hanging at his waist. He wore the only clothing that he had, a pair of woven, brown cloth breeches tucked into high, lace-up leather moccasins, a loose-fitting brown tunic with a leather belt around his waist, and a long, brown, hooded cloak that came down almost to his ankles, for warmth against the chill of the mountain air. The only other things he carried were a wooden staff, a bone stiletto knife rucked into his moccasin, his steel sword, and a hunting blade in a soft, leather sheath at his belt.
At the convent, the diet had been strictly vegetarian. On occasion, there was need for skins and leather, and at such times, animals were taken, but always sparingly, with great solemnity and ceremony. The hides would be dressed out and used, and the meat would be salted and cut up into jerky for distribution to the needy by whichever priestess next left on a pilgrimage. Sorak had been taught a reverence for life, and he followed and respected the villichi customs, but elves were hunters who ate meat, and halflings were carnivorous to the extent of feasting on their enemies, so the tribe of one had found its own compromise. On those occasions when Sorak had gone out into the forest on his own, the Ranger hunted game while Sorak slept. Only then did the tribe eat their fill of a raw and still warm kill. The tribe did so now.
When Sorak next became aware of himself, some time had passed and night had fallen. He was sitting by a campfire he did not remember building, and his belly felt full. He knew that he had killed and eaten, or rather, that the Ranger had, but he did not feel ill at ease over the idea. The thought of eating raw, freshly killed meat did not appeal to him in the slightest, but he understood that it was in his blood and that there was no getting away from his own nature. He would remain a vegetarian, but if his other aspects chose to be carnivorous, that was their choice. Either way, the needs of the body they all shared were seen to, one way or another.
He looked up at the stars and at the silhouetted mountains, trying to orient himself so that he could determine how far the Ranger had traveled while he had been asleep. He got up and stepped away from the firelight, scanning his surroundings. Elves had better night vision than humans, and Sorak’s night vision, as a result, was quite acute. In the darkness, his eyes seemed lambent like a cat’s, and he had no difficulty in making out the terrain around him.
The ground sloped away, down to a valley far below. He had climbed almost to the summit of the crest, and in the distance, he could just make out the tower of the temple, poking up over the scrub. He wondered if Ryana was still in there, and then quickly pushed the thought from his mind. Eyron had been right, he thought. There was little point in dwelling on it now. He had left the convent, probably never to return, and what had happened there belonged to part of his life now in the past. He had to look to the future.
In the distance, beyond the crest of the mountains encircling the secluded valley, he could see the higher peaks of the Ringing Mountains like shadows cast against the sky. The Dragon’s Tooth loomed prominently over them all, ominous and foreboding.
Its name came from its appearance. Rising from the higher mountain ranges, it was wide at its base, but narrowed sharply as it rose until its faces were almost completely vertical. Near its summit, it angled up even more sharply, so that its faces were not only vertical, but curved along one side, like a gigantic tooth or fang scratching at the sky. Far removed from the civilized cities of the tablelands, a trek across the desert and up into the mountains to even reach the lower slopes of the forbidding peak would have been arduous in itself. The deadly hazards one would encounter on the ascent discouraged most adventurers from climbing the Dragon’s Tooth. Of those few who had attempted it, all had failed, and most had not survived.
Sorak did not know if he would have to climb the mountain. At least once before, his call had reached the pyreen where she stood atop the summit of the peak, and he had been all the way out in the desert, some miles from even the foothills of the Ringing Mountains. Yet, since then, he had never been able to summon up his psionic powers to any such extent. He had no idea how he might have done it. The Guardian, who was the telepath among them, had not made the call. Neither had any of the others. Or at least, they could not recall having made it. With the body they all shared pushed to its last extremity, they had all been either senseless or delirious at the time. Perhaps, in their delirium and desperation, they had all somehow united in the effort, or one of them had tapped hidden reserves. Or, perhaps, someone else had made the call, one of the deeply buried core identities that none of them knew about
There was, Sorak had learned, a very deeply buried “infant core,” one he could not access on any conscious level. Huddled and cocooned somewhere deep within his psyche, this infant core had once been his infant self, but whatever pain and trauma had caused his fragmentation had also caused this infant core’s retreat deep into his subconscious, where it remained in some state of frozen stasis, its development arrested and its senses numbed. Not even the Guardian could reach it, although she was aware of it. There was something—or perhaps someone—shielding it somehow. And that shielding, whatever it was, suggested that there could well be other core identities within him that were not so deeply buried, but were buried just the same, constituting levels between his infant core and his more-developed aspects.