Morgan blinked. He saw Quickening in his mind, a flawless, silver-haired vision as ephemeral as smoke. The pain he felt in remembering was palpable. He tried to shut it away, but it was pointless. He did not want to remember, but the memory was always there, just at the edges of his thinking.
Matty Roh put her hand over his, impulsive, hesitant. “I could listen now, if you would let me,” she said. “I would like it if I could.”
He thought, No, I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t even want to think about it, not with you, not with anybody! But then he saw her again in his mind bathing her ruined feet in the stream and telling him how she had come to be disfigured, how the poisoning of the land had changed her life forever. Was the pain of her memories any less than his own? He thought, too, of Quickening as she lay dying, healing the shattered Sword of Leah, giving him a part of herself to take with him, something that would transcend her death. What she had left behind was not meant to be kept secret or hidden. It was meant to be shared.
And memories, he knew, were not glass treasures to be kept locked within a box. They were bright ribbons to be hung in the wind.
He turned his hand over and clasped hers. Then he leaned close so that he could see her face clearly and began to speak. He talked for a long time, finding it hard at first and then easier, working his way through the maze of emotions that rose within him, searching for the words that sometimes would not come, forcing himself to go on even when he thought that maybe he could not.
When he was done, she held him close and some of the pain slipped away.
They set out again at dawn, the daylight gray and misty with a promise of rain. Clouds rolled out of the west, a heavy, dark avalanche that sealed away everything in its path. It was hot and still on the river, and the slap of the water against the canyon walls echoed sharply as they wound their way downriver. Morgan put up the mast and sail, but there was little wind to help, and after a while he took it down again and let the current carry them. It was nearing midday when they passed beneath South-watch, the black obelisk towering over them, vast and silent and impenetrable, its shadow cast like a Forbidding across the Mermidon. They stared at it with loathing as they passed, imagining the dark things that waited within, uneasy with the possibility that they might be watched. But no one appeared, and they sailed by unchallenged. Southwatch receded into the distance, melted into the haze, and was gone.
They reached the mouth of the river shortly after, the waters widening and stretching away to become the Rainbow Lake, smoothing into a glassy surface and brightening into a richer blue. The rainbow from which the lake took its name was in pale evidence, shimmering in the heat and mist, suspended above the water like a weathered, faded banner whose stays had come loose so that it floated free. They guided the skiff to the west bank, beached it, and walked out onto a barren flat that dropped away east and south into the water and spread northwest across a plain empty of everything but scrub grass and stunted, leafless ironwood to where a line of hills shadowed the horizon. They breathed the air and looked about, finding no sign of anything for as far as they could see.
Damson brushed back her fiery hair, tied it in place with a bandanna across her forehead, and drew out the Skree. Holding it forth in her open palm, she faced south. Morgan watched as the half disk glimmered bright copper.
She began to put it away, apparently had second thoughts, and tested each of the other compass points. When she faced north, the direction from which they had come, the Skree glimmered a second time, a small, weak pulsing. Damson stared at it in disbelief, closed her hand over it, turned away and then back once more, and reopened her hand. Again the Skree glimmered fitfully.
“Why is it doing that?” Matty asked immediately.
Damson shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it behaving like this.”
She faced south again and carefully let her palm travel the horizon from east to west and back again. Then she did the same thing facing north, reading the Skree’s hammered surface as she turned. There was no mistake in what they were seeing. The Skree brightened both ways.
“Could it have been broken again and the pieces carried in two directions?” Morgan asked.
“No. It can only be divided once. Another breaking would render it useless. That hasn’t happened.” Damson looked worried. “But something has. The reading south points towards the Silver River country west of Culhaven above the Battlemound. It is the stronger of the two.” She looked over her shoulder. “The reading north is centered on Southwatch.”
There was a long silence as they considered what that meant. A heron cried out from over the lake, swept out of the haze in a flash of silver brightness, and disappeared again.
“Two readings,” Morgan said, and put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “And one of them is a fake.”
“So which one do we believe?” Matty asked. She started away a few steps as if she had something in mind, then turned abruptly and came back again. “Which is the real one?”
Again Damson shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Matty’s cobalt eyes glanced toward the horizon where the clouds were building. “Then we will have to check them both.”
Damson nodded. “I think so. I don’t know any other way.”
Morgan exhaled in frustration. “All right. We’ll go south first. That reading is the stronger of the two.”
“And abandon Southwatch?” Matty shook her head. “We can’t do that. Someone has to stay here in case Par Ohmsford is inside. Think about it, Highlander. What if he’s in there and they try to move him? What if a chance to rescue him comes along and no one is here to do anything about it? We might lose him and have to start all over again. I don’t think we can take that chance.”
“She’s right,” Damson agreed.
“Fine, you stay, Damson and I will go south,” Morgan declared, irritated that he hadn’t thought of it first.
But Matty shook her head again. “You have to be the one who stays. Your sword is the only effective weapon we have against the Shadowen. If a rescue is needed, if any sort of confrontation comes about, your Sword is a talisman against their magic. My skills are good, Morgan Leah, but I also know when I’m overmatched. I don’t like this any better than you do, but it can’t be helped. Damson and I will go south.”
There was a long silence as they faced each other, Morgan fighting to control an almost irresistible urge to reject flatly what he perceived to be the madness of her suggestion, Matty with her cobalt eyes steady and determined, the weight of her arguments mirrored in their blue light.
Finally Morgan looked away, reason winning out over passion, a reluctant submission to necessity and hope. “All right,” he said softly. The words were bitter and harsh sounding. “All right. I don’t like it, but all right.” He looked back again. “But if you find Par and there’s to be a fight, you come back for me.”
Matty nodded. “If we can.”
Morgan winced at the qualification, shook his head angrily, and glanced at Damson in challenge. But Damson simply nodded in agreement. Morgan exhaled slowly. “If you can,” he repeated dully.
They conferred a moment more, agreeing on what they would do if time and circumstance allowed. Morgan scanned the countryside and then pointed west to where a bluff fronting the lake looked out across the surrounding land. From there he would be able to see anything coming to or going from Southwatch. If nothing happened in the time between, that was where they would find him when they returned.