“We’ll find her,” Sallah said. “She’ll be all right.” Her tone was as soothing as her words, although they did little to ease his worries.
“You can’t know that,” Kandler said. “For all we know, she’s already dead.” He tried to keep the bitterness from his voice, but it echoed there anyhow.
“If you believed that, you wouldn’t still be on this path, chasing after her so hard. Revenge can always wait.”
Kandler bowed his head. It was a moment before he spoke, and Sallah let the silence lie between them easily. He liked that, and he liked her.
“I used to live in Metrol,” he said. “That’s where I met Esprë’s mother. She was one of the king’s elite battle sorcerers, working in Cyre at the behest of her family in Aerenal.”
“I didn’t know she hailed from the elf homeland,” Sallah said.
“Esprina had more class than anyone I’d ever met before. I’d known elves, but they mostly left me cold. People who live ten times as long as you don’t ever seem to have the same set of problems.
“She was different, though. Her father said her time in Khorvaire had tainted her, made her too ‘human.’ Maybe that’s so. She was two hundred years older than me, but that never seemed to make a difference.”
Sallah dropped her hand from Kandler’s shoulder and moved up next to him. He put his arm around her. The warmth of their bodies together pressed back a chill in the air that, up until that point, he hadn’t known was there.
“How did you meet her? Metrol is a long way from Sharn.”
“In more ways than one,” Kandler said. “I came to Metrol in the secret employ of King Boranel.”
Sallah cocked her head up at the slightly taller man. “You were a spy?”
“I preferred the term ‘elite agent of the Citadel.’ ”
Sallah looked out at the city in the distance. “Did she know?”
Kandler squinted at the Metrol skyline a moment before answering. “Eventually.”
He looked down at Sallah and saw her gazing up at him. Her green eyes seemed to shine even under this dead-dull sky.
“She was one of my assignments. I was supposed to get close to her and learn everything she knew, then report back to Sharn.”
Sallah glanced away. “Did you?”
“I got close to her, all right. Closer than I’ve ever been to anyone.”
Sallah nodded. “But did you report back to Sharn?”
Kandler held the woman closer. “Burch and I were on our way back to Sharn with Esprë when we ran into Argonth and hailed it for a ride.
“Argonth? The floating fortress?”
Kandler nodded. “We figured it would get us to Sharn eventually, and despite our orders we weren’t in much of a hurry. Better to get there safe than fast, we told the captain.”
“The captain?”
“Captain Alain ir’Ranek, the commander of Argonth. While our excuses still echoed in the general’s quarters, he informed us that Breland was mounting a massive offensive against Cyre. Argonth had already unleashed an army of thousands to stab deep into Cyran territory. We were to sit tight until the operation was complete, then follow the troops in to report on our efforts.”
“You had a child with you,” Sallah frowned, confused.
“We were all going to move to Sharn. Esprina had a few details to work out, she told me, but she promised to follow as soon as she could. Just one more mission for Cyre, she said, then she’d be free to leave her adopted country for another.”
Sallah shuddered against Kandler’s side. As she did, the justicar remembered how they’d passed by a monument to the dead when they’d first entered the Mournland. Esprina was buried there, he’d told Sallah then, killed on the Day of Mourning.
“Did you know she’d be part of that battle?” Sallah asked, her voice soft and low.
“I left Esprë with Burch and commandeered the fastest horse I could find. I rode hard in the wake of the army, following its trail of trampled land, until I reached the borders of Cyre.
“As I got closer, I saw a long bank of clouds settled along the ground before me: the dead-gray mists that surround the entire nation, although I didn’t know that at the time. All I knew was that Esprina was in there somewhere, possibly in the middle of a vicious battle, maybe dead.”
Sallah closed her eyes and held Kandler tight around his broad chest. “What did you do?” she asked.
“What I had to,” he answered. “I gave my horse its head and galloped straight in.
“I rode hard into the cloud bank for a while, hoping I’d just dash right through and into the sunlight beyond. After a minute, I realized that something was wrong. The mists swirled about me like a tornado, but I felt no wind. They blotted out the sky. It was impossible for me to tell which way was east. I almost couldn’t tell up from down.
“I stopped for a moment, lost. I thought I suspected the worst. I was wrong, but only because I couldn’t have imagined how bad things would be.
“I spurred my horse on and rode through the mists for what seemed like days, although it could only have been hours. I got turned around though, and I found myself back outside the mists as the sun set over Breland, painting the sky crimson red.
“I knew that I would soon not be able to see, so I uncapped an everburning torch and held it high. The heatless flames didn’t do anything to burn away the mists that curled out at me from the edge of the cloudbank, almost as if trying to draw me back into their embrace.
“The only thing I knew for sure was that I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t face Esprë without some sort of news about her mother, and I couldn’t face myself without knowing what had happened to Esprina. I turned that horse right back around and dove into the mists again.
“I wandered about in there for I don’t know how long. Eventually, I emerged from the mists again. For a moment, I thought I’d just come back out into Breland again. It was darkest night, and it’s impossible to tell one side of the border from the other around there—or at least it was. Then I looked up and saw that there were no stars. What I’d thought was a cloudbank reached up into the sky and covered the entire land beyond.
“I wandered through darkness so thick it almost seemed solid, my magical torch the only thing shedding light as far as the eye could see. As I rode, the sky began to grow lighter, but never bright, like an overcast winter’s day. It was then that I finally saw it.
“Saw ‘them,’ I should say, what was left of the battle from the day before.
“I later heard reports that it was a three-way affair, with Cyre and Breland skirmishing for a bit before the goblins of Darguun swept in, unable to control their bloodlust at the sight of such a hard-fought conflict. There were no goblins in the part of the battle I stumbled upon, just a sea of dead people, mostly human.
“I knew there was at least one elf floating in there though.
“The carnage seemed to stretch on forever. I’ve been in battle before, seen more fights than I care to remember, killed more people than I can count. I’d never seen anything like that. It was as if everyone on the battlefield had been dropped in their tracks, all at once.
“I looked for the standards from Cyre. It was easy to pick out the golden crown on the bright green field. Those flags seemed to shine as if they could still see the sun hidden overhead.
“I spent the better part of the day picking my way through the bodies and the wreckage. As I did, one thing struck me: there was no smell.
“Bodies that lay out in the weather begin to turn fairly soon, but these looked freshly dead, as if they’d all been breathing just a moment ago.