Did he love her in turn? He hadn’t stopped to ask himself that. He hadn’t even considered it before now because the idea of her reciprocating had seemed impossible. It was enough that they were friends. But he did love her. He had always loved her in some sense, from the first moment he had seen her. Now, kissed and held and told of her feelings, he loved her so desperately he could hardly stand it.
He forced himself to shift his thinking away from her.
“How is he doing?” he asked, nodding toward Quentin.
Panax shrugged. “The same. He just sleeps. I don’t like the way he looks, though.”
Neither did Bek. Quentin’s skin was an unhealthy pasty color. His pulse was faint and his breathing labored and shallow. He was dying by inches, and there was nothing any of them could do about it but wait for the inevitable. Already emotionally overwrought, Bek found himself beginning to cry anew and he turned away self-consciously.
Panax rose and came over to him. He put one rough hand on Bek’s shoulder and gently squeezed. “First Truls Rohk and now the Highlander. This hasn’t been easy,” he said.
“No.”
His hand dropped away, and he walked over to where Grianne knelt on a pallet in the corner, eyes open as she stared straight ahead. The Dwarf shook his head in puzzlement. “What do you suppose she’s thinking?”
Bek wiped away the last of his tears. “Nothing we want to know about, I’d guess.”
“Probably not. What a mess. This whole journey, from start to finish. A mess.” He didn’t seem to know where else to go with his thoughts, so he went silent for a moment. “I wish I’d never come. I wouldn’t have, if I’d known what it was going to be like.”
“I don’t suppose any of us would.” Bek walked over to his sister and knelt in front of her. He touched her cheek with his fingers as he always did to let her know he was there. “Can you hear me, Grianne?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here anymore,” Panax continued. “I don’t know that there’s a reason for any of us being here. We haven’t done anything but get ourselves killed and injured. Even the Druid. I didn’t think anything would ever happen to him. But then I didn’t think anything could happen to Truls, either. Now they’re both gone.” He shook his head.
“When I get home,” Bek said, still looking at Grianne’s pale, empty face, “I’ll stay there. I won’t leave again. Not like this.”
He thought again about Rue Meridian. What would happen to her when they got back in the Four Lands? She was a Rover, born to the Rover life, a traveler and an adventurer. She was nothing like him. She wouldn’t want to come back to the Highlands and stay home for the rest of her life. She wouldn’t want anything to do with him then.
“I’ve been thinking about home,” Panax said quietly. He knelt down beside Bek, his bearded face troubled. “I never cared all that much for my own. Depo Bent was just the village where I ended up. I have no family, just a few friends, none of them close. I’ve traveled all my life, but I don’t know if there’s anything left in the Four Lands that I want to see. Without Truls and Walker to keep me busy, I don’t know that there’s anything back there for me.” He paused. “I think maybe I’ll stay here.”
Bek looked at him. “Stay here in Parkasia?”
The Dwarf shrugged. “I like the Rindge. They’re a good people and they’re not so different from me. Their language is similar to mine. I kind of like this country, too, except for things like the Graak and Antrax. But the rest of it looks interesting. I want to explore it. There’s a lot of it none of us have seen, all of the interior beyond the mountains, where Obat and his people are going.”
“You would be trapped here, if you changed your mind. You wouldn’t have a way to get back.” Bek tried the words out on the Dwarf, then grimaced at the way they sounded.
Panax chuckled softly. “I don’t see it that way, Bek. When you make a choice, you accept the consequences going in. Like coming on this journey. Only maybe this time things will turn out a little better for me. I’m not that young. I don’t have all that much life left in me. I don’t think I would mind finishing it out in Parkasia, rather than in the Four Lands.”
How different the Dwarf was from himself, Bek thought in astonishment. Not to want to go home again, but to stay in a strange land on the chance that it might prove interesting. He couldn’t do that. But he understood the Dwarf’s reasoning. If you had spent most of your life as an explorer and a guide, living outside cities and towns, living on your own, staying here wouldn’t seem so strange. How much different were the mountains of the Aleuthra Ark, after all, from those of the Wolfsktaag?
“Do you think you can manage without me?” Panax asked, his face strangely serious.
Bek knew what Panax wanted to hear. “I think you’d just get in the way,” he answered. “Anyway, I think you’ve earned the right to do what you want. If you want to stay, you should.”
They were nothing without their freedom, nothing without their right to choose. They had given themselves to a common cause in coming with Walker in search of the Old World books of magic, but that was finished. What they needed to do now was to help each other find a way home again, whether home was to be found in the Four Lands or elsewhere.
“Why don’t you get some sleep,” he said to the Dwarf. “I’ll sit with Quentin now. I want to, really. I need to be with him.”
Panax rose and put his hand on Bek’s shoulder a second time, an act that was meant to convey both his support and his gratitude. Then he walked through the shadows and from the room. Bek stared after him a moment, wondering how Panax would find his new life, if it would bring him the peace and contentment that the old apparently had not. He wondered what it would feel like to be so disassociated from everyone and everything that the thought of leaving it all behind wasn’t disturbing. He couldn’t know that, and in truth he hoped he would never find out.
He turned back to Quentin, looking at him as he lay white-faced and dying. Shades, shades, he felt so helpless. He took a deep, steadying breath and exhaled slowly. He couldn’t stand this anymore. He couldn’t stand watching him slip away. He had to do something, even if it was the wrong thing, so that he could know that at least he had tried. All of the usual possibilities for healing were out of the question. He had to try something else.
He remembered from the stories of the Druids that the wishsong had the ability to heal. It hadn’t been used that way often because it required great skill. He didn’t have that skill or the experience that might lend it to him, but he couldn’t worry about that here. Brin Ohmsford had used the magic once upon a time to heal Rone Leah. If an Ohmsford had used the magic to save the life of a Leah once, there was no reason an Ohmsford couldn’t do so again.
It was a risky undertaking. Foolish, maybe. But Quentin was not going to live if something wasn’t done to help him, and there wasn’t anything else left to try.
Bek walked over to the bed and sat next to his cousin. He watched him for a moment, then took his hand in his own and held it. He wished he had something more to work with than experimentation. He wished he had directions of some kind, a place to begin, an idea of how the magic worked, anything. But there was nothing of the sort at hand, and no help for it.
“I’ll do my best, Quentin,” he said softly. “I’ll do everything I can. Please come back to me.”
Then he called up the magic in a slow unfurling of words and music and began to sing.
24
Because he had never done this before and had no real idea of how to do it now, Bek Ohmsford did not rush himself. He proceeded carefully, taking one small step at a time, watching Quentin closely to make certain that the magic of the wishsong was not having an adverse affect. He called up the magic in a slow humming that rose in his chest where it warmed and throbbed softly. He kept hold of Quentin’s hands, wanting to maintain physical contact in order to give himself a chance to further judge if things were going as intended.