From the centre of the monument, the view over the whole valley was every bit as majestic as I remembered. A slate-grey river serpentined north and west back to its source in the rugged white peaks of the Clanholds, still deep within the clutches of winter. Across the river and twenty leagues directly north along the rocky coast squatted the mining town of Ironport, from where the Skallgrim practiced blackest sorcery and prepared to invade all the lands of Kaladon.
I wondered if they’d left anybody in that town alive after I escaped onboard the last ship out. Did Old Sleazy and his serving girl still serve up fine drink and their lumpy grey special stew? Probably not. The tavern had been aflame and that sour-faced one-eyed git had meant to fight to the death, and as for her, I’d left her face down in the mud with her dress burning into her back.
I sighed and let it go. I had ‘not caring’ down to a fine art, mostly. That was another life, one before I crippled myself to kill a god. I opened up my Gift and let my consciousness spread out, fingers of thought drifting across the whole valley, further than I’d ever imagined possible. In the town below the anxious minds of the wardens churned, and when I focused on the eyes and ears of my two thralls I discovered my coterie plotting and planning how to survive the coming war, and me. An old couple hosting several wardens radiated annoyance at the disruption to their lives. A warden and a local girl behind the stables were having frantic, and probably final, sex.
I was too busy looking into the distance to notice the small, quiet presence until it was right next to me. I snapped back into myself and spun. The black-clad knight present at the conclave cocked her head, single green eye studying me from behind that impassive steel mask. There was something eerily familiar about the way she felt, that mind curled up tight and strong as anybody I’d ever encountered.
A grainy, broken, female voice from behind the mask: “Here to clear your mind?”
“I’m here to examine the stones,” I replied. “You?”
She shook her head. “Didn’t take you for a scholar.” “We haven’t been properly introduced,” I said. “You know who I am, but who are you?”
A dry, rasping, humourless laugh. “I should have expected you hadn’t read your papers. I would hope you might remember me.”
I pulled Cormac’s crumpled notes from my pocket and hastily leafed through them until I found the list of magi assigned to the expedition. Breath caught in my throat. My left hand spasmed and the papers fluttered to the snow, forgotten.
“Eva?”
Impossible. She died! She must have. And yet the name Evangeline Avernus was there, inked by Cillian’s own hand.
I staggered back, tripped and landed arse-down in the snow, staring up at her. Those broad shoulders and green eye, the other gone where Heinreich had burned it away… Sweet Lady Night, Eva was alive! And I had left her there to die.
“How?” I choked out. “I watched you…” The word burn caught in my throat. “It’s not possible.”
“I lay abed for weeks after they dragged me from the street, voiceless, healing and hurting, unable to even say my name.” She placed a gloved hand on one of the great stones. Her voice took on a bitter tone, “A gods-given miracle the Halcyons called it. I suspect that I wanted revenge and my Gift made it so, whatever the cost in pain. I always did have a bad temper.”
Her agony must have been unimaginable. “You saved my life,” I said, skin crawling with self-hate. “You saved all of us. And I left you behind.”
“Whatever is left of me now, Walker, I am still a soldier. I would have told you to go, and I would have left you there had our positions been reversed. If you had stayed we would all be dead. Martain told me everything.”
“Even so, I should have been there when you woke. I didn’t know…”
“We are not here to reminisce and recriminate. Guilt is a useless commodity. We are at war and it is likely we will all die in these mountains. Don’t waste our time.”
I got to my feet and reached for her hand. “I’m still sorry.”
She flinched back. “Don’t touch me.”
I swallowed and nodded. She might be alive but her body would be a blackened mass of scar tissue and exposed bone – her armour had glowed red and run, melting onto the flesh beneath. Even a knight’s magically reinforced body could not have withstood that. I couldn’t imagine what it would do to a person’s mind, and beyond confirming that she was stable and sane enough not to be a liability, I dared not delve too deeply.
“The stones,” she rasped. “Why are you interested in crude rock?” It was a welcome change of subject. I beckoned her over to the largest lichen-covered stone that faced north. “I came through here a few years ago and didn’t think much of it then.” I glanced at her and quickly looked away again, “However, recent events have reminded me of something from my childhood.”
I dug snow from the base of the stone and scrubbed it from the shallow troughs of time-worn markings. A winter morning offered the perfect low angle of sunlight to view the carvings.
She crouched next to me to examine the symbols. Her presence – so close – burned into me. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and shout with joy, and I also wanted to crawl into a hole and hide from the writhing guilt. Instead, I did nothing.
“What are they?” she rasped. “All I see are vague shapes.” “That’s what I thought the first time I visited. But I had forgotten the things I saw in the catacombs of the Boneyards.” That earned me a sharp look. “Just before the Magash Mora emerged you carried me from the river up to the bridge to meet Shadea. Do you remember what she told me I found down there as a pup?”
“Something about ogres,” she said, impassive steel mask revealing no trace of expression.
I took three fingers and made a triangle, pressing them into three tiny pits in the rock. “These are eyes. Three of them.” I traced the surrounding shape. “This represents a sloping head, and here a bulky body like a bear or a great ape from the Thousand Kingdoms. The shape is all wrong for a human. Clansfolk stories call them the ogarim, and I found the desiccated corpse of one entombed beneath Setharis. It’s where I got my spirit-bound blade. And my fear of enclosed spaces.” My right hand itched like it was crawling with ants, making me want to rip the glove off and scrape it on stone until my blood ran free and hot. Anything to relieve the damn itch.
“How old is this circle?” she asked.
I grimaced. “Older than history. Our race’s that is.” “Makes you wonder what happened to them,” she replied. “If they can erect stones they can build houses. If they can build houses they can build a civilisation.”
The corpse I’d seen had been bigger than us and wearing finely crafted bronze armour, warded too if I remembered correctly. “More than likely humans wiped them out,” I said. “We excel at that sort of thing.”
She grunted in acknowledgement. “As commander, do you have any orders for me?”
I shook my head. “We both know I don’t have any fucking idea what I’m doing. I’m commander in name only. I trust you to do whatever is necessary.”
We didn’t say much after that, and nothing to do with the past, just went over a few deathly dull details of tomorrow’s march, logistics and whatnot. The old Eva was gone, and she would never return. It was immensely awkward and deeply saddening to go from brazen flirting and camaraderie with a young, vibrant women to facing this desert of guilt with a tortured human shell. If I’d been faster, more powerful or more intelligent, then I might have been able to do something.