Pan’assár watched the young warrior, his heavy, gleaming eyes so eloquent. “Your love for him is as strong as mine for my brothers of The Three. You hate me for what I became, but you forget the wherefore of it. The death of Or’Talán, the nature of his end. Will you wander the same path, Warrior? Will you, too, become a bigoted fool? Will you live your life a failure, driven by anger? They may still be alive, and I will hold to that. Have faith,” he said, and then stood. “These shores are treacherous in the dark. You should see to that.” He pointed at Idernon’s cheek. With that, he was away, and the Wise Warrior lay silent, a wretched fool in the mud.
‘Have faith,’ the commander had said. But Idernon had none. He had read of Horizon Falls, knew the river’s capacity, its speed and the height of its drop. He knew what would happen to a body falling from that height, in that volume of water. It would crush them both. The impact alone would surely be enough, but if by some miracle it wasn’t, the injuries they would sustain would not allow them to swim to safety. It was not about faith. It was about physics.
Fel’annár and Handir were dead.
Light, just light, until a dark cloud blocked it out.
He was sinking. He couldn’t breathe. All he wanted was a last glance at the sun, but his body was a reed, limp and malleable, his only movement was thanks to the current that held him back from the light. A sadness so deep it hurt.
He was dying. He couldn’t see the sun.
Tendrils of bright hair snaked around his drifting body. It fascinated him. This would be his last glance at life, he thought. He had to breathe, he did. Searing pain sliced through his chest. His body jerked, arms floating at his sides. Pain, frigid weight, his last, watery breath.
Darkness.
Warmth.
I am dead, aren’t I?
Light, opaque. Empty save for a dark shadow.
Pain, weight. His body was moving, twitching; or was he gasping?
There was a surge of hot liquid through his body, splattering over his face. His chest expanded, and dizziness sent his eyes spinning out of control.
He couldn’t breathe, and yet air filled his wet lungs. He struggled and then sucked in a rattling breath. He coughed, more liquid in his mouth. He scrunched his eyes closed in pain, against searing agony in his chest.
He was alive.
His body lurched from side to side, floating. From the heavens, a hazy face looked down upon him.
“Handir? Brother?” A breathless, desperate question, one he could not answer. He was starving for air, panting and shivering. He wanted to ask his own questions. Where was he? What had happened? Is this Valley, brother?
No. My brother’s eyes are blue …
“Handir? Prince?”
Fel’annár’s voice wavered, barely controlled, panic receding. And he had panicked.
Stones dug into his knees. Hands clawed at the stony sand around him. He could hardly breathe, rasping exhales and trembling limbs.
Gods, but he hurt, his body and his mind. Salty tears mixed with sweet water, water that had filled Handir’s lungs, almost killed him—still might. But sweet Aria, he could not move. What he had done, what he thought would happen.
He rocked on his heels and regretted it; filled his lungs with air and regretted that, too. He leaned forwards, all but collapsing onto his hands. A body lay before him, half in the water, once dead. They should both be dead. He turned his head sideways, to the magnificence of an ancient tree, and heard its last thoughts. He felt them echo across the land, far away.
Long years, time to leave. To die and live again.
He closed his eyes, grief and gratitude emanating from his soul, whispering away on the breeze. He turned back to the body.
He and Handir had gone from cold indifference, spite even, to a stilted impasse in which warmer feelings were slowly growing, as surely as the need to hide them. He felt himself shaking, not just from the screams of his body but those in his mind.
What had almost come to pass.
He had never had a family, save for Amareth, had never needed one, so why were his eyes so hot and full? Why was his heart swollen to the brink of shattering?
A rasping breath, not his own. He looked up at the softening sun, felt the creeping darkness of night and what it may bring. He needed to move, find shelter. All he had to do was understand, at last. Had he been that bereft? Had he hidden it so well, even from himself? He had convinced himself so utterly that he didn’t need a family. He had all he had ever wanted in Llyniel, Gor’sadén and The Company.
He dragged a tattered sleeve over his eyes, repressed a sob of utter exhaustion, pain, relief so great.
He thought Handir had died.
He thought his brother had died.
That afternoon, the commanders had put the warriors to work. They checked the integrity of Handir’s chest, checked their own bags and harnesses, and recoiled the rope they would use later for the descent down the cliff face.
They would walk along the river edge until the Horizon Falls and then descend. There they would search and then continue to the Glistening Falls. Beyond that point, nothing had been discussed, for to do so would be to contemplate the possibility that they could find no trace of Thargodén’s sons.
The chances of Handir and Fel’annár surviving, of Talen making it out, were slim to none, but perhaps by some miracle, they had freed themselves of the current before they went over the edge. In this case, they may have taken refuge away from the flooding. If they had gone over, they were surely dead, but at least Pan’assár would retrieve the bodies if they had not been carried away to the sea.
Pan’assár had offered Deron a fistful of coins as the last payment for both his and Talen’s service. Deron took it with a tight smile, telling the commander that he would give it to Talen’s wife. He would tell her only that he had gone missing, to leave her with a spark of hope he himself did not feel.
With Handir’s chest tightly secured once more, the party continued along the riverbank. Gor’sadén joined Pan’assár at the fore, while Galadan brought up the rear, and between them, Llyniel walked amidst The Company. Anger still glittered in Idernon’s eyes, and the stark bruise on his cheek drew the eyes of the others. But it wasn’t enough to break their collective silence. It wasn’t enough to make them feel anything at all.
It was not easy to walk in mud, and by midday, they were tired. Gor’sadén had been struggling for hours and predictably remained silent. He would not hold them back when Fel’annár was missing, when his fate was uncertain. And so, Pan’assár called for a brief stop, a strategy forming in his mind. With a fire now cracking and smoking heavily, he told it to the rest.
“We must find our prince and warrior with all haste. If—” he held up a hand, anticipating their reactions. “If by some miracle they are alive, they may be injured and unable to find shelter, in which case the elements may be the death of them. They may have washed up on the shore, and so we scour it, every inch until the point of no return. Past that, we can be sure they journeyed to the sea and Valley. Once we are satisfied they are not there, we venture inland. They may have been well enough to find shelter, so we continue our search along the rocky base some two leagues east of the shore. There are caves, crevices, places a warrior would go to protect himself from bears, Hounds, brigands.