"No," he repeated, this time in a whisper. "I won't pretend it was love. But it was mutual. She agreed, I agreed..."
Tal found a smile tugging at his lips, though there was not a shred of mirth left in him. "Nevertheless. You don't seem surprised. When did you figure it out?"
The old warlock met his gaze again. "I'd suspected there was something to you ever since we met. A touch of the eldritch in your eyes, but also something else I couldn't quite grasp. Then, after you fled your performance with the Dancing Feathers at that Sendeshi nobleman's manor, I became curious and learned what I could of you. Once I discovered you were from Hunt's Hollow, it was simple to piece the rest together."
Tal searched the warlock's deep brown eyes. Did he see remorse there, in those eyes so like his? Could this man feel enough remorse for it to matter?
He thought back to his childhood. To his mother, a disgraced woman, scrounging to provide a living for him while others spat at her feet as they passed in the street. Working day and night, fletching arrows when they had the materials, scrubbing laundry when they didn't, despair creasing her brow to the last day she lived. He remembered and found himself hardening.
Are you without fault? part of him mocked. Have you never made mistakes?
A smile twisted his lips. He had only to remember his many names to recount all the errors he'd made. But he found his heart no softer for the memories.
Tal held out his hand. "I'll take the ring. But giving it to me does nothing to ease your guilt, considering you stole it from me in the first place."
Kaleras' gaze turned to flint again. "You won't forget my mistake?"
"No one seems able to forget mine."
For a moment, he thought the warlock would rescind his offer. Then, with a bitter twist of his lips, he opened his hand and offered the dull gray band again.
Tal took it and held it up, staring at the glyphs. He could read the larger letters, the founding script of the enchantment, but his grasp of the Worldtongue fell away for every fine line that trailed away from the primary runes.
"Thalkuun Haeldar," he whispered. "The One Impervious to the Heart."
A thought flickered through his head as he whispered the words, the vague notion of an idea. But he tucked it away even as he put the Ring of Thalkuun on his middle finger. The shiver of the enchantment pressed over him, and he felt as if he'd stepped into a shadow after standing under the sun's heat.
"Return that to me." Any gentleness in Kaleras' countenance had dissipated entirely. "And be sure you kill the Night-lusting bastard."
Tal stood. "I will."
He turned and began to descend the stairs, but paused and half-turned back, just seeing the warlock from the corner of his vision. "Oh, and Kaleras?"
"Yes?"
Did he hear a note of expectation in his voice? He needn't have bothered getting his hopes up. "I have something I'll leave with you in return. Something that might keep you entertained while you're an invalid."
He didn't have to look around to know Kaleras glared at him. "I'm hardly an invalid. But leave what you must."
Nodding, Tal turned back down the stairs, feeling the warlock's gaze on him until he disappeared out of sight.
Like Old Friends
Just a moment longer. One more gallop — One more — And another—
Garin struggled to keep his eyes open, but they fought back in equal measure. Had someone told him that he could fall asleep riding a horse at full tilt, he would have laughed them out of the room.
He wasn't laughing now.
Four days, they'd kept up the grueling pace, only resting for the horses while they choked down hard bread and cold, salted meat — then it was back into their saddles again. Despite his complaints about the waste of his talents, Aelyn bolstered the horses' endurance through a steady supply of enchantments. When Garin snidely suggested he ought to spare some on the riders, the mage looked on the verge of showing him a piece of the Night's Pyres then and there.
All of them were nearing their thread's ends — all save Tal. With each mile they neared the ruins, he seemed to grow more vital, more full of life, as if there was no amount of rest or food in the World that could match whatever sustenance awaited him there.
Garin knew the feeling well.
He felt the cursed place drawing nearer, its Night-touched stones calling to him in a faint, ghostly chorus. And no matter how he tried to shut it out, he inevitably found himself straining to hear it again. As much as he feared listening, he feared more its fading.
It's the Night, he told himself, over and over. It's Yuldor and his kin, trying to lure you to their side. But though his fascination repulsed him, he couldn't deny it.
So he busied himself worrying over other things. His horse, a dun mare, was loaded with unfamiliar implements of war. A round shield, plain but sturdy. A sword of steel rather than the wooden ones he'd practiced with. Armor of chainmail and padded leather. A crossbow that he'd received with little more than cursory instructions and was still unsure how to load.
Only three months ago, he'd started to learn to fight. And now he intended to take on one of the Extinguished and all the Nightkin at his disposal. But what choice did he have? He'd made a mistake — if stabbing a man between the ribs could be called a mistake — and had to set things right. A man always set things right. Didn't he?
He thought of how his brothers would laugh at him, how his mother would scold, and Lenora would gently ask, Are you sure about this? All he had to do was keep riding, all the way to the East Marsh, and he'd be home in another week or two.
His eyes burned, and not just from the constant air rushing past his face.
But every time his courage began to falter, he had only to glance next to him to find it surging again. Wren looked nearly as eager as Tal, though her strength seemed brittle compared to his, like ice cracking under the weight of a boulder. Garin could hardly blame her. The Soulstealer had impersonated her father, had taken his face, his voice, even his memories to mold himself into the perfect doppelgänger. She'd spoken with him, hugged him, confided in him for months, and never known.
But why she would have guilt burning in her eyes, he couldn't understand. It wasn't her fault this happened to her father. She was as much a victim, and as innocent, as he. But every time he thought to say it during their brief respites, he found his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth.
Tal held up a hand, and Garin sighed in relief as he slowed his mount to a walk. The evening had bled to dusk, and now even the blue light was fading. Beneath him, his horse panted, its coat sheen with sweat.
Wheeling his blonde gelding around, Tal faced them. "We'll draw up camp here for the night. The path to the Ruins of Erlodan lies just ahead. Tomorrow morning, we'll find it and make for our puppeteer."
"And my father," Wren said fiercely.
Tal nodded with a small smile. "And Falcon."
Dismounting, Garin blinked away the dragging exhaustion and set to finding an adequate spot for camp off the road. Well-practiced as they'd become, within a quarter-hour they were hidden behind a small grassy knoll, wrapped up in their bedrolls, with full, if unsatisfied, bellies.