“Did you want to be a physician too?” I can’t help asking questions. This is the first time he’s been open with me.
Ravod shrugs. “I probably would have taken over the clinic eventually. But I definitely don’t have her bedside manner.”
“As your patient, I think you did all right.” I smile at him. “Your mother … She sounds like a really remarkable person.”
The tiniest smile turns the corner of his mouth. “She was,” he whispers. “She’s … gone now.”
His hand trembles against mine, like a small, wounded forest creature. I worry he’ll pull away, but he doesn’t. His gaze is fixed on the point where our hands meet as though such a thing is completely strange and foreign.
“I lost my mother too,” I say softly. “I know how much it hurts.”
His eyes lock onto mine, widening fractionally with emotion. I’m not sure if it is because of what I told him the other night, or some other old hurt, but he forces himself to look away, clearing his throat.
“There are fates besides death,” he whispers. His voice barely carries over the wind in the mountains. “There are many ways someone precious to you can’t be here anymore.”
“So keeping medicine with you makes it feel like she’s still with you?”
Ravod abruptly drops my hand and replaces the vial in its pouch. I pushed too far. “That should stave off infection and help prevent scarring,” he says. “You should try to be more careful in the future.”
His eyes flick to the side; Kennan is approaching. He nods tightly to her before walking away, and as I watch his tall, broad form retreat, it takes all my willpower to keep from following.
Even if I didn’t find him intriguing, just about anyone in the world would be more pleasant to spend time with than Kennan.
“I’ve decided to try a different approach today,” Kennan says without preamble, as I’ve come to expect from her. “Come with me.”
She scarcely breaks stride, immediately leading me off the training grounds, back toward the main entrance to the Bards’ Wing. This time, she leads me past the usual spaces to a large gate at the back that enters into a dark tunnel.
A gust of frigid wind is channeled through the stone, and I shiver. Only dim torch fire lights the path, making it difficult to keep my footing on the uneven ground. After a few dizzying twists and turns, Kennan stops by a second gate and swings it open.
I step down a small flight of narrow stairs. We’ve been deposited into a corridor cut from the stone behind the southern waterfall that ends in a terrifying precipice. The waterfall is a giant curtain wreathed in white mist, blocking the tunnel off. Torches don’t work here because of the vapor in the air. Instead, the space is lit with small, luminescent stones set in a snake scale–like pattern on the walls. Each one is the same pale amber of Kennan’s eyes, making me feel like there are dozens of her judging me instead of only one.
“This place is beautiful,” I breathe.
“I’m glad you think so,” Kennan says. “If today is anything like the rest of this interminable week, we’re going to be here a good long while.”
I don’t want to admit it, but she’s probably right.
“You’re not going to ask me to jump off the cliff, right?” I ask hesitantly.
“Your task is simple.” She nods to the waterfall. “Part the water.”
“What?” I ask, turning to the enormous wall of crashing water. “I thought all the tasks were extensions of my natural abilities. You said Telling is magnifying what we already know we can do. But making water separate? That’s…” Impossible, I want to say. But Kennan caused the ground to tremble and part. That, too, was impossible. Still, what she’s asking—that should be expert Bard-level Telling, not something for a trainee like me.
Kennan sighs, as if reading my mind. “Water already has the desire to flow, but it also has the ability to take whatever shape you give it, unlike air, which drifts away, or earth, which is naturally shy and resists change. Telling is the act of altering what the world around you is capable of. Water is the easiest element to command.” She says these things like they are common facts, as simple as the sky being blue. “Even the lowliest of Bards are able to master this.” She leans against the side of the cavern wall. “Luckily, you have severely lowered my expectations.” She pauses. “Put yourself inside the water.”
I walk nervously to the edge. Does she want me to dive into the waterfall? The current looks deadly, and I don’t even know how to swim …
I turn back toward her, abject terror probably obvious on my face, because she laughs. “No, not your body. Put your mind inside the water. Feel what it feels. Urge it to part. Urge it to do what it already wants to do—to make space. To conform to your touch.”
As Kennan is explaining, her face transforms. Gone is her usual sternness, and in its place is something else, something that almost resembles softness, as if she were talking about an old friend, instead of a waterfall. But it soon passes and she’s back to scowling.
I scowl back, first at Kennan and then the waterfall, but both ignore me. Finally, I take a deep breath.
If the lowliest Bard can do this, how hard can it be?
* * *
Time elapses strangely when exhaustion takes hold.
Kennan settles into a nook in the cave when I continually fail to part the water. The simple act of trying to finish a thought feels like I have to drag it up to the surface of a murky bog. Most of the time, it slips and falls back to the bottom, lost in a haze of dark water.
“Again.”
Her voice is like nails being driven into the base of my skull; I’m too exhausted to think.
“I’m talking to you, peasant.” Kennan draws herself to her full, considerable height. Her lip curls in a snarl that tugs upward. “Again.”
“You say water is so impressionable.” My voice is a whisper as I clutch my pounding head. It echoes with the pulse of the water, a solid beat that I have no power to control. “But just because something is fluid, does not make it obedient.”
“Is that so?” Curiosity blooms in Kennan’s expression. She maintains her scowl and folded arms, but I see her knuckles relax. “Challenging my expertise are you, peasant? Do your ten minutes of experience give you a wealth of knowledge I’m somehow not privy to?”
“Of course not.” I grit my teeth to keep the pounding from overcoming me. “I just…” What if I’ve been looking at it all wrong? I stare at the rush of falling water, feel its power as it races away from me. Images of Aster flash through my mind: the swell of people clamoring and climbing over one another at the Bards’ arrival. Drawn to the graceful force with which their bodies move, closer and closer to the dream of escape.
“If I cannot force the water to change course…” I murmur. My fingers grip the needles hidden in my pocket. On the edges of the corridor is a loose segment of large rock, barely hanging against the thud of water running over it. I tap, tap, tap the needle, the pounding in my head matching the pounding of the water as I twist the idea into words. “What if there was incentive for it to move?” I walk closer until I am directly under the rock and let my fingers skim the sting of water. I imagine the great crack of thunder, the life-bringing rain the Bards brought to Aster, changing the entire focus and flow of the crowds as they stopped to look up and witness it.