Head aching and mouth painfully dry, she sat up.
Heboric knelt a few paces away, vague behind a refulgent haze. Invisible hands were pressed against his face, pulling the skin into bizarre folds, as if he was wearing a grotesque mask. His whole body heaved with grief and he rocked back and forth with dull, senseless repetition.
Memory flooded Felisin. Kulp. She felt her own face twisting. 'He should have sensed something,' she croaked.
Heboric's head shot up, his sightless eyes red and hooded as they fixed on her. 'What?'
'The mage,' she snapped, wrapping herself in a frail hug. 'The bastard was a D'ivers. He should have known!'
'Gods, girl, would that I had your armour!'
And should I bleed within it, you see nothing, old man. No-one shall see. No-one shall know.
'If I had,' Heboric continued after a moment, 'I would be able to stay at your side, to offer what protection I could – though wondering why I bothered, granted. Yet I would.'
'What are you babbling about?'
'I am fevered. The D'ivers has poisoned me, lass. And it wars with the other strangers in my soul – I do not know if I shall survive this, Felisin.'
She barely heard him. Her attention had been pulled away by a scuffing sound. Someone was approaching, haltingly, a stagger and a scrape of pebbles. Felisin pushed herself to her feet to face the sound.
Heboric fell silent, his head cocked.
The figure that emerged from the ochre mist sank talons into her sanity. She heard a whimper from her own throat.
Baudin was burned, gnawed, parts completely eaten away. He had been charred down to the bone in places, and the heat had swelled the gases in his belly, bloating him until he looked with child, the skin and flesh cracked open. There was nothing left of his features except ragged holes where his eyes, nose and mouth should have been. Yet Felisin knew it was him.
He staggered another step closer, then slowly sank down to the ground.
'What is it?' Heboric demanded in a hiss. 'This time I am truly blind – who has come?'
'No-one,' Felisin said after a long moment. She walked slowly to the thing that had once been Baudin. She sank down into the warm sand, reached out and lifted his head, cradled it on her thighs.
He was aware of her, reaching up an encrusted, fused hand to hover a moment near her elbow before falling back. He spoke, each word like rope on rock. 'I thought... the fire ... immune.'
'You were wrong,' she whispered, an image of armour within her suddenly cracking, fissures spreading. And beneath it, behind it, something was building.
'My vow.'
'Your vow.'
'Your sister ...'
'Tavore.'
'She—'
'Don't. No, Baudin. Say nothing of her.'
He drew a ragged breath. 'You ...'
Felisin waited, hoping the life would flee this husk, flee it now, before—
'You ... were ... not what I expected ...'
Armour can hide anything until the moment it falls away. Even a child. Especially a child.
There was nothing to distinguish sky from earth. Gold stillness had embraced the world. Stones pattered down the trail as Fiddler pulled himself onto the crest, the clatter appallingly loud to his ears. She's drawn breath. And waits.
He wiped sweaty dust from his brow. Hood's breath, this bodes ill.
Mappo emerged from the haze ahead. The huge Trell's exhaustion made his walk more of a shamble than usual. His eyes were red-rimmed, the lines that bracketed his prominent canines were deeply etched into his weathered skin. 'The trail winds ever onward,' he said, crouching beside the sapper. 'I believe she's with her father now – they walk together. Fiddler . ..' He hesitated.
'Aye. The Whirlwind goddess ...'
'There is ... expectancy ... in the air.'
Fiddler grunted at the understatement.
'Well,' Mappo sighed after a moment, 'let us join the others.'
Icarium had found a flat stretch of rock surrounded by large boulders. Crokus sat with his back against stone, watching the Jhag laying out foodstuffs in the centre. The expression the young Daru swung to the sapper when he arrived belonged to a much older man. 'She's not turning back,' Crokus said.
Fiddler said nothing, unslinging his crossbow and setting it down.
Icarium cleared his throat. 'Come and eat, lad,' he said. 'The realms are overlapping, and all is possible ... including the unexpected. Distress over what has not yet happened avails you nothing. In the meantime, the body demands sustenance, and it will do none of us good if you've no reserves of energy when comes the time to act.'
