Someone was calling his name, but Kendath heard it as though from across a yawning chasm. He couldn't listen, couldn't locate it. All he could see was the man who stood before him.

"Hello, Kendath," said Kendath.

Kendath tried to swallow his fear, but it caught in his throat and refused to go down. "What... what are you?"

In response, Kendath only tossed his crimson cloak over his shoulder and tapped his finger on the Flame and Thorn insignia emblazoned upon his cuirass. The gems studding the pommel of his falchion flashed in the tepid light. He smiled, and it was the smile of a wolf who'd just located his prey. "The Bloodstone Court made me commander. Convenient, isn't it? Demon's ecstatic. He's finally found his place in life. So have I."

Commander Kendath. He choked on his bitter laugh. Of all the times he'd failed his missions, sneered at his superiors, openly mocked the Bloodstone Court... Commander Kendath. The assassin who killed too little and thought too much? He returned the grin, crookedly, mirthlessly. "Sorry. Try again."

The image wavered like a mirage, then shifted. And suddenly he was no longer staring at himself but at the face of a young woman - a girl, really - with the world in her blue eyes. She tucked a strand of copper hair behind her ear and peered up at him, and her face that bore the suffering of thousands was still pure, innocent, beautiful. Then, with a laugh, she twirled around, her hair flying out behind her, and ran into someone's waiting arms. As their bodies melded, the man lifted his head to meet Kendath's gaze.

Kendath took one look, and all traces of his grin slid away. He stopped breathing.

You see. Gyre's talon brushed gently, almost caressingly, against his cheek. She has found happiness with another. A man of honor. A man of worth. Long has she forgotten you. Who wouldn't? You have no worth. You are nothing.

Merrin reached up to cup her hands along the stranger's neck. Her lips found the other’s with barely restrained passion. Watching them, Kendath felt his throat constrict. One gasping breath after another seized his chest until his heart failed altogether. He was suffocating, yet he couldn't tear his eyes away.

It could have been you, you know, crooned Gyre. You could have had this and more, if only you'd been stronger. You try so hard, but you are so weak. Oh, Kendath, how I pity you.

Again the stranger lifted his head, and Kendath began to turn away. Too slow. Much too slow. Merrin winked out of existence, and the face that stared back at him now was no stranger's.

"My son," Amrinev said softly.

Father. He mouthed the word, for his voice had abandoned him.

Amrinev shook his head. "My son, why have you disappointed me?" When Kendath didn't speak, he continued, "Everything that I've ever taught you - everything about truth, about strength, about the gods - you have tossed to the four winds. Carelessly, without thought for the ramifications of your actions. In the pursuit of what? Vengeance! The deadliest of pursuits! Do you so readily scorn my memory? Do you love me, Kendath, or not?"

"Father..." Kendath's fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. His world spun around him. He fumbled for words but could find none.

Amrinev shook his head once more. The lines on his brow deepened - those familiar lines of worry! Those familiar brown robes, so soft to the touch. Those familiar arms, long for embracing, with those familiar hands, callused from bearing the labor of peasants. So patient, so gentle. His disappointment was too much to bear. He spoke in the same soft whisper, "Is that all? After all these years, is that all you can say to your dead father?"

Yes, yes! he wanted to scream. Because there was nothing to say - nothing that would excuse himself and the miserable choices he'd made. Dare he call himself his father's son? How could he, when he'd destroyed everything his father had ever worked for? He spread his hands out before him and saw, to his horror, not calluses but blood. The scarlet stains had always been there - how could he not have noticed them before? Nothing could wash them off. It was too late. Stop the Shadowers? Hah! Much more - he'd have to do much more than that to redeem his mistakes, his very existence. But what did it matter? He was weak, worthless, worse than nothing.

Yes, Kendath. At last, you see yourself clearly.

The edge was so close, the jagged rocks below so inviting. A single step could end it. Just one step.

That's right, Kendath. Don't look back.

It was so easy. So easy to forget it all, to let it all go. He could leave now - leave everything behind. He could be rid of himself forever. The world would thank him. So very easy. His breath came faster. His chest expanded to take it in once, then twice. The canyon of blue below was almost the same hue as Merrin's eyes. Almost, but not quite.

"No." He stepped back.

No?

"No." His voice grew stronger. "I made a promise to see this journey to the end. Some other time, maybe. But not now. I'll not forsake her now."

What could you possibly do to help? You are nothing. How many times must I tell you?

"Then I'll just have to prove you wrong, won't I?"

And nobody answered him back.

_________________

The voice of the breeze that teased at Merrin's hair, that invited her over the precipice, sighed when her frantic entreaty went unheard. See? it said mournfully, now the voice of all the loneliness that awaited her. And why do you want him close to you? Don't you want to keep him safe?

Merrin was not fool enough to fall for that ploy. "Safe?" she whispered, still rigid with the effort of resisting the powerful suggestion of the inviting edge. "If it weren't for me, he would be Meiltha still! That's not safe! I told him -" and she broke off, remembering. I would hurt...I would hurt a thousand times over...if it meant that in doing so I could make you see... the ghost of her own voice faded. For a moment, in the silence that followed, she thought it was over, that this test had fizzled out like all the others.

But this time, childish arms that wrapped around her waist had substance and emotion. Adasin gazed up her, older than she'd seen him last but still with an endearing look of implicit trust. "Merrin, come with me," he said, pulling at her, beckoning. Suddenly, the precipice grew indistinct.

In midair, strands of sky and sea broke from their moorings and twisted into colors, into an image like a door in the air. Blue became a rainbow of colors, and settled into an image...an image Merrin knew very well.

Past the portal lay Riversmeet, its peaked roofs blanketed with snow. Adasin paused at the threshold, casting an inquiring look over his shoulder. Liand joined him, a very slightly smaller version of his twin. "Merrin!" he said in surprise. "It's almost dinner, Merrin. Aren't you coming?"

She could feel the snowflakes, the winter air against her skin. "I can't," she whispered, wanting more than anything. Identical faces fell.

"When will you come back?" asked Liand, stepping forward into what should have been thin air. His lips trembled. Merrin longed to hug him to her, however much of an illusion he was. In the next moment she very nearly stepped forward to do so, only alerting herself as the edge of her boot brushed the brink of the stone. She gulped back the sudden homesickness and stared at the pair of them across the chasm, trying to memorize their features.

"I don't know," she said helplessly.

"Why don't you come now?" said Adasin, stepping forward to reach for her hand. Go back, go back and be Merrin Tanner again, whispered the breeze.

"I'm the Chosen of the Gods," said Merrin, voice barely above a whisper. "I'm Merrin Dragonrider. I'll never be Merrin Tanner again." Even as the spoke the words struck home. What have you sacrificed? came the whisper. Why have you given it all up?

"I love you," she told them both, and closed her eyes, aching with loss.

When she opened them, the meld of sky and sea was as before. Merrin gulped a breath that she didn't realize she'd been holding, and backed away from the precipice. No breeze whispered lies in her ears. Daring to hope, she turned around.

This time, the portal was merely a dark, shimmering sheet of nothingness; just as when they entered, Merrin remembered with a painful surge of fragile hope. Reality - or what they'd come to know as reality - bent itself around the edges of the hole in the air, creating an impression that what was there had simply winked into nonexistence. She looked across at Kendath, then opposite at Garthag, then at Adeila, mutely asking if they saw what she did and wanting assurance that it was no illusion like the rest.

"Is it over?" she asked of no one in particular, voice hushed, daring to touch the surface of the blackness with her fingertips. It rippled in concentric circles, akin the glassy water below. The question hung in the languid air. Would it ever be over?

_________________

Kendath wearily turned to face the shimmering portal. Was this a test too? If he stepped through, would it betray his trust and send him plummeting to his death? He wanted to leave this spit of rock. He wanted to leave it so very much, and the portal beckoned so warmly. An irresistable temptation, just like everything else had been.

So what if I die? I'm sick of this. I'm too sick to care. He glanced from Merrin to Garthag to Adeila, but how could he be sure that they weren't illusions as well? Could their images have been conjured simply to mock him? What if he truly was alone on this insignificant island of rock, just as Gyre had said? "Damn you," he told the Renegade mages in their thousand-year graves and, brushing past his companions, strode into the portal.

Whatever he'd expected to find on the other side, it wasn't this.

His boots crunched on fresh snow. The blast of cold that struck him tore through his thin tunic and bit his skin. He stood upon the ledge of a mountain spur overlooking a pass between two peaks. The gray teeth stabbed into a velvety panorama pinpricked by a million stars that glimmered and spun like fireflies. The air stung his nostrils as he inhaled, but it was a pleasurable sting, akin to cool water stinging a blistered throat. The air on the portal's other side had been stagnant. This air was clean.

Did he spot something in the moonlit darkness below? He peered more closely. Dotting the bottom of the pass... were those...? People, he realized. Those were people. A cluster of them, pitifully small against the backdrop of frozen stone. They had shelter, at least. Nursing their flickers of campfires, they huddled under the roofs of overturned wagons - evidence of another traveling band's misfortune. He recognized the pass. A road often used by merchants on more hospitable days passed through here. It wound all the way through the mountains, to the city guarding the gate between the civilized south and the wildlands of the north.

With a pang of clarity, Kendath remembered what he'd told Mayor Lyssa about Dey'tarn. He squinted through the flurries of white, to the northwest. The city was too far, especially in these conditions. Had he told them to come all this way seeking refuge, bringing their women and children, only to die forgotten in the barren snow?

A crunch of footsteps behind him told him that Merrin and Garthag had emerged from the portal. They looked no more enlightened than he was. "Why did it bring us here?" he wondered aloud. "This is half a day away from Thyrault."

"Astute observation, little assassin."

The perspiration on Kendath's back froze and trickled in tiny beads of ice down his spine. Slowly, forgetting even to reach for his falchion, he swiveled around.

The portal was gone. In its place stood a figure in armor that may have once been silver, but was now so charred by fire that it gleamed a shade of tarnished black that not even the moonlight dared touch. The tattered remains of a cloak whipped in the wind as the figure raised his arms, rusted shoulder plates screaming with the movement, in a parody of greeting. "You've made it past the tests. I bow to your courage." He inclined his helmed head with a laugh that grated against the mountainsides.

"That's right, we've endured your miserable tests," Kendath said, taking a step forward. "Let us pass."

This time, the laugh was louder, shriller, like splitting glass. It dragged on and on and wouldn't stop, and as the creature laughed, Kendath felt his skin tearing apart, felt a chill more frigid than ice seep into his bones. He stood on the ledge, his arms wrapped around his chest, and trembled and couldn't cease trembling. The laugh approached a scraping halt. The armored apparition regarded silently the four shivering humans before him. A coating of snow had dusted off his breastplate, revealing the faint outline of a nimbus of rays. The insignia looked eerily familiar... The Renegade sunburst? How could that be?

"Merrin Dragonrider," the apparition said quietly, extending a gauntleted fist as though to touch Merrin's face. Abruptly he let his arm fall back to his side. "I have heard much about you, Merrin Dragonrider. My friend the Lich provided a most intriguing description."

The shudder that rippled through Kendath's shoulders had nothing to do with cold, natural or eldritch. His glance darted to Merrin, but try as he might, he couldn't spur his paralyzed muscles to action. He could only watch, helpless to intervene, as the apparition continued, "My name was Commander Rolan, but my name is not what matters here. What matters is you, little Merrin."

It was almost unbearable now - the stiffness of his limbs, the way the ice clawed from his feet to his chest. The first fingernails of frost began scratching at his neck. If they reached far enough to clasp his jugular, Kendath knew he was doomed. He flexed his fingers, aching to peel them away, but his muscles defied his will. The icicles in his lungs rewarded every breath with a stab of pain. No. This isn't happening. Not now - not to Merrin. Leave her be! But he couldn't move his lips.

"I offer you a choice." The creature that had once been Commander Rolan swept his arm expansively at the pass below, where the refugees huddled around their puny campfires. "These women and children... I fear they will not survive. They move slowly. The Meiltha will soon overtake them on their way to Dey'tarn."

The Meiltha are going to Dey'tarn? Kendath's heart thudded against his ribs. Impossible. The temple would never allow it.

Commander Rolan moved forward, his sibilant hiss cutting the wind. "The Meiltha will trample them beneath their feet. They will all die, Merrin Dragonrider, and they will die because of you - because they made the mistake of harboring the Chosen of the Gods." He did not laugh, but derision dripped like venom from his voice. Derision and pity. "I offer you a choice. You can let them die. Every one of them. Even your brother, who would foolishly fall to protect them. After all, you are the Chosen. What is to you the suffering of a hundred or even a thousand meaningless innocents, lost in the grand tapestry that the gods have woven for you?"

Allari had said it too. Pale, innocent Allari had asked the same question after death had claimed everyone she'd ever cared for. Where are the gods? the villagers had pleaded. Kendath watched Merrin and wondered if she still knew.

"But I am merciful," the apparition whispered, "so I offer you a second choice. I can save them. The Meiltha legions are mighty, but my power surpasses theirs by far. I can halt their advance. I can banish their very souls to the abyss, if you command it. They will be helpless to resist. Ah, but you wonder at the price of my services. It is not unreasonable. Merely one life for a thousand. A fair bargain, wouldn't you say?" Under the shadow of his helm, a glimpse of a grin twisted his skeletal visage. "You, Merrin Dragonrider. You are the price. You, in exchange for the lives of these innocents who your gods promise to defend. Is it a worthy sacrifice to ask of the Chosen?"

_________________

What have you given up for the gods? the voice of the stagnant wind had asked, back in the deceptive unreality of the last test. What have you lost? Merrin had known the answers then, and she knew them still. Wyvern, buried in rock in a mountain tunnel. Vryngard, with Meiltha pennants flying from its towers. The family she hadn't seen for years. They had been safe; safe until now.

The wind here asked her nothing, only chilled her to the bone. It swept brittle snow, closer to chips of stinging ice, into her face; it clawed through her limbs until Merrin was almost too cold to shiver. The tiny fires in the valley did not glitter as icily as the stars, but they seemed to offer the same cold comfort. She faced the skeletal remembrance of what had once been a man, the twisted remains of Commander Rolan, without even the flimsy protection of her cloak around her shoulders.

Little Merrin, he called her. He spoke about the Lich. Merrin could only stare transfixed, the saber she didn't remember drawing trembling in her hand as she shivered. Her mind was whirling wildly, and the words wouldn't sink in. She could hear the rasp of a thousand years of death in his voice, but the words felt as though they were whipped away on the same wind that froze her pounding heart in her chest.

That voice offered her the deadliest ultimatum Merrin had ever heard.

Is it a worthy sacrifice to ask of the Chosen? Those words, uttered as the memories of everything Merrin had ever lost burned before her eyes, were crystal clear. She remembered a village two thousand years ago, obliterated because of her.

Innocents, all of them. He was watching her now, watching as the choice she couldn't make twisted inside her agonizingly. It was her. Her, or the desperate huddle of villagers in the valley. Somewhere down there, T'mor was crouched in front of a fire with Kiril. Somewhere down there was a man who loved his wife, a girl with a brother, a child who didn't understand. Merrin choked a breath, knowing she had to choose, and knowing too what choice she could never make.

The innocents who your gods promise to defend. And they would. They would, through Merrin, because nobody in that valley deserved to die. Briefly, Merrin was aware of Adeila beside her. These were the people Adeila knew. She'd mended bones and given remedies for fevers, so that these people would live. And they would live still.

I don't have to listen to you! she wanted to scream into the wind, throwing defiance back in his face. Fight me, then! Fight me, and if I die you can have victory - but my gods are stronger than you! She realized, with the strange and sudden clarity of a decision done, that it was true. Her gods were stronger. But looking up at the sinister apparition, Merrin knew that there was no way, on her own power, to win that battle.

She drew herself up, terror knotting in her stomach no matter what she did to suppress it. The choice was made.

"My gods will always protect the innocent," Merrin said. The armored figure was silent, waiting. She drew a breath, her saber trembling one more time in her hand. She wanted to look back, at Kendath and Adeila. Maybe even Garthag. "They always will. And they will always protect me. When I became the Chosen of the gods" - her voice trembled faintly now, with the terror she wouldn't admit - "I said I, too, would protect the innocent."

If I am meant to die here, she told them silently, pleaded with them, let me die. But you are stronger than him. You are stronger than he will ever be. You saved me back in time, you saved me from the Meiltha, from the Shadowers, you've brought me this far - you chose me. I trust you.

"My gods will keep me safe," she said. Then: "You told me to choose." Uncurling her clenched fingers and dropping her saber in the snow, she took a step forward and tipped her head up, searching for the eyes under that shadowed helm. No white fire leaped to her fingertips. "I choose me."

I trust you!

_________________

Someone was yelling, screaming, lunging forth, but none of it penetrated the dense fog of Kendath's mind. The sabre dropped to the snow with a dull thump. Merrin stood tall, silver moonlight rimming the regal tilt of her chin. She took a step forward, against the wind that snapped her hair behind her raised head and tugged her back. Standing on that unforgiving ledge, her gaze locked with the guise of death, she looked no more mortal than a goddess, pure and transcendent.

Ice shattered, and the crystalline shards sprayed in a thousand pinpricks of light. Kendath never heard the cry torn from his own throat. He never felt his legs moving, launching himself at Merrin before she could act, before it was too late.

But it was already too late. The choice had been made. Merrin took another step. Commander Rolan threw his arms wide to envelop her in his frozen embrace. Kendath skidded and fell, but still he struggled to rise, knowing that he had to stop it, had to save her even as the apparition enclosed her more tightly until she disappeared altogether in a flash of darkness blacker than a moonless night, more complete than the cold silence between the stars.

Merrin was gone.

"No," Kendath murmured, then roared as he lunged, bare hands outstretched to rip the helm from the creature's head and seize the decaying neck and squeeze - squeeze until neither he nor the monster had any breath left and then squeeze some more because he would make it hurt, would make it hurt so badly that those arms would unclasp Merrin and release her. But he wasn't fast enough. He was too slow, and before he came close enough the apparition had already vanished in a billow of cloak and a stench of charred bone.

He collapsed, face-first, on bare rock. Flurries of snow brushed his skin and trickled down the back of his neck. Wind whispered down the mountain spurs and hissed between the craggy horns. Too slow. He'd been too slow, too weak. He'd always been. Even now, he hadn't been fast or strong enough to save Merrin. Merrin, the one person in the world he had left.

Rolling onto his back, not caring if Adeila or Garthag or the thousand refugees below might hear him, he screamed. The sound echoed upon the bleak stone surrounding him and continued rebounding, returning each time a little feebler, a little more of a mockery than the one before. It teetered away to nothingness, and Kendath took a ragged breath in preparation to scream again, and again, so many times that the gods would have no choice but to look down from their lofty seats and hear him, and answer him.

She trusted you. She put her soul into your hands to uphold your promises of life. Give me a sign. Show me - give me a reason to go on.

You who reproached her about faith, have you so little of your own? The voice grazed the back of his mind like the softest tickle of a feather.

I try. I want to, Kendath replied without thinking. Show me how!

A pause, as though the owner of the voice were considering his response. Then, Do you love her?

Yes. Not a second's hesitation.

How much? She needs you, you know.

More than you know. Much more. Please... Kendath felt blackness pressing close, threatening to lull him in. He fought it, but his strength was spent. Rigid mountains melded with velvety skies, and the resulting gray spun endless circles around his head. He grew dizzy watching them. With a shuddering sigh, he slumped back. The last sensation he recalled was one of falling, and of a shimmering maw gaping open to swallow him. He didn't resist.

-----

The stone beneath his cheek was hard, but unlike that of the mountain, this stone was smooth as well. The pain knifing through his skull told Kendath that he'd been lying here for a long while. He let his eyelids flicker open and discovered instantly that it did no good. The darkness was complete.

As his pupils adjusted, he discerned a glow emanating from an unknown source. Ignoring his headache, he sat up and squinted into the dim nothingness. Yes, there they were, sluggishly flickering to life on the barren walls. Runes etched into stone, pulsing a soft blue light that flared brighter with each passing moment. He'd seen those runes before, in a tomb somewhere...

Tomb of the Four Winds. At that instant, he spotted the sarcophagi lining the round chamber. His gaze gravitated toward a raised platform dominating the center of the stark floor. A single sarcophagus, larger than all the others, rested on top of it. And sprawled at the base of the platform, her sabre just beyond her fingertips, lay Merrin.

Kendath jumped to his feet so quickly that all the blood drained to his toes, forcing him to stand and blink for another ten seconds. When his vision cleared, he started toward her again.

Someone had already beat him to it.

His falchion snapped into his hand. The blade arced to land right beside the robed figure's throat. The stranger, kneeling beside Merrin with his back turned, didn't flinch. "We meet again, Kendath."

Kendath almost dropped his weapon. "You."

Forest-green robes whispered against stone as the figure rotated to face him. A gnarled staff gently pushed the falchion aside. Sage rose to his feet with a weary smile. "You've changed much, I see. A pleasant surprise. But then again, perhaps not. For a long time have I had faith in you, child."

"Merrin - "

" - will be fine. She's recovering as we speak. Her only ailment is exhaustion. Both of you should get a good night's rest before this is over."

Before this is over. Yes, perhaps Sage was right. When this ended... Kendath jerked himself out of it. The Druid's very presence was enough to soothe him into complacence. He coughed. "You have our thanks for rescuing her... and me... from..." He flashed back to the armored apparition and repressed a shudder.

Sage's gray brows knitted. "Rescued you? No, dear gods, rescue either one of you I did not. Young Merrin here rescued herself. As did you, might I add." He looked puzzled. "Do you not know?"

Equally if not more bemused, Kendath shook his head.

"Poor man. Poor Merrin, too. The Renegade mages did a better job than I thought." Sage smiled at Kendath, then knelt back down to lay a hand on Merrin's shoulder. She was just beginning to wake. "You did it, child. You passed the fifth and final test. The gods chose you well."

_________________

Adeila sat on the stone floor some distance from the others, uncharacteristically silent. The last test, more than any of the others, had unsettled her. All of the previous tests, she had been able to endure because they had not been real. No matter how convincing the illusion, how potent the memory, some part of her mind had always known that the mountain could be climbed, that her husband was not truly standing before her, that the portal would not take her home, and that the illusions would continue to pass as long as she kept reminding herself that they were just that.

But the last test....It had been real. Perhaps not real in a literal sense, but there had been far more truth to it than Adeila would have liked. Somewhere, the people with whom she had spent her entire life were leaving behind all that they knew, fully aware that not only would they most likely never again see their fathers, husbands, sons in this life, but that they themselves would soon join the deceased if the Meiltha chose to pursue. Somewhere, the children whom she had treated for everything from a bruised knee to a life-threatening fever huddled against their mothers whom she had likely treated for the very same things, wondering why they could not go home. Somewhere, her loved ones were in pain.

And for the first time in decades, she could do absolutely nothing about it.

There was the sound of small feet skittering across stone, and then Svit was in her lap once more, returned from his exploring of the strange room. He cocked his head at her and flicked out his tongue inquiringly, prompting a small smile in return. "We'll be alright, sweet, won't we?" she murmured, stroking his head gently. "We'll be alright."

Taking a deep breath, Adeila turned to have a better look around. They were in a tomb, quite obviously. She had known that before even opening her eyes. Death hung heavily in the air, stagnant and suffocating. Beyond that, however, Adeila found that she was not sure. When she had decided to join these people, she had known only that their quest was of the utmost importance, and that she was supposed to go. There had been very little discussion of specifics, she now realized.

"They require far more than a night's sleep," Adeila said quietly, slowly getting to her feet. She was not familiar with the man who now crouched beside Merrin, but the others seemed to trust him, and that was sufficient for her. "Food and water being most crucial. Though," she added as an afterthought, looking around, "I suppose there is little of that to be had here."

Just as Merrin cleared the grey haze that obscured her vision - the insubstantial nothingness that had followed the most intense cold she'd ever known, locked in that eerie embrace, and then a numbing explosion of white - she realized that she was shaking, trembling uncontrollably. All she could do was shake her head at Sage's words, gulping the stale air. Stale, but blessedly real. Hardly daring to believe it was over, she raised herself to lean against the stone sarcophagus behind her.

Her mind was churning, trying unsuccessfully to reconcile events. How could they have been nearly touching the infinite sky on a mountaintop one moment, and back in the tomb they'd started in the next? It didn't make sense, not in any way she could fathom.

Merrin realized she was trying very hard not to think of what had happened. Concentrate on the facts, on the facts that didn't make sense, not how she'd been locked in the arms of what seemed death incarnate, not how the white fire hadn't come for ages on end and she'd thought - she'd thought -

Looking up, she saw Sage with hardly a rush of surprise. Too much had happened for his presence to make her look twice. Past him was Adeila with Svit, Adeila whose words made her realize the hollowness of her stomach and the dryness parching her throat. Such strangely foreign sensations, it seemed. Merrin wanted to sleep for an age. Past Adeila was Garthag, and past Garthag was Kendath.

Merrin heaved an unsteady breath, clenching and unclenching her fists to stop the uncontrollable shaking, and looked up at Sage. The fifth and final test. T'mor, Kiril. the villagers. Test? Test? One more breath, and this time she clenched her teeth, grasping at her last vestiges of control. "That's not fair," she managed, the words so utterly inadequate it was somehow grotesquely amusing. Her jaw hurt.

Somehow the first sob did make it past her brittle barrier. Merrin hugged her knees to her chest and buried her face in her arms, abandoning even an attempt to stop herself trembling and hardly caring that they were all watching her. It was hard to breathe. That terrible choice. Adasin, Adasin and Liand, and before that the tortured villagers, and Kendath, and her cloak. Her cloak. That made Merrin cry harder, if that were even possible. Idiot, the rational part of her brain told her faintly. It's over, it's all right.

Rationality had a very tenuous hold, and the tears seemed to wash it away entirely. Merrin heaved a breath into her constricted chest, then another, but it didn't help. Nothing helped - everything was over, but that almost made it worse. It was fortunate, perhaps, that with everything else she couldn't contemplate what must still come.

"They didn't," she managed. "They didn't - choose - well. I was so - scared -"

Talking and breathing and crying all at once was very hard.

_________________

What is this lingering feeling, that I can`t shake off?.... fear? Of what? Failure? No... it`s not that, but... I have been proven wrong...

Garthag pondered as he opened his eyes after the scene had changed from the snow white pass to the dark, cold burial chambers, that was known as the tomb of the four winds. Whilst standing above the pass Garthag had felt like he had been relieved, just for a second, but then appeared an apparition claiming to serve the lich. For a moment he had fully intended to attack the creature, no matter what the cost, but he knew he would have to pay for his arrogance yet normally he wouldn`t have feared to pay the price. The creature would have allowed the Meiltha to slaughter the villagers down below, but why had he even considered that? Why did he care for the well being of complete strangers, people to whom he had no connection to? Garthag blinked his eyes and sighed heavily before continuing to gaze at the roof with dull gray eyes.

He had pitied them, one second they could have been traveling towards a safe haven with their families intact and the other they could have been slaughtered, even worse enslaved by the Meiltha legions. Garthag grinned his teeth in quiet protest at his own thoughts as he knew, that he couldn`t keep saying, that nothing wasn`t connected to him. Earlier on it had been easy, to cast away everything as he had nothing, but now after recalling the past and the pain it had brought, he hated himself for even joining them on this whole journey. He was still willing to stand by some of the things he had said and done, but being completely detached from emotions seemed impossible. The secret had been revealed, there was no lie to protect him anymore from the truth, that he had cast away all those years ago. Now it slithered it`s way back into his life and sank it`s fangs into his arm, injecting a poison he could not rid himself of.

Garthag gazed to his left and right, recognizing the others and then turning to gaze at the roof once again. If he started acting differently now, it would raise questions and he did not wish to burden himself with such a task, his past was best left undisturbed. As he had thought before, there was no need to burden the others with his pathetic stories or worse of all have them pity him. He would have to act heartlessly again all tough avoid looking like before, Merrin and Adeila wouldn`t notice a difference, but Garthag knew that the sharp eyed Kendath could spot a change.

In fact thinking about the past, reminded Garthag of the conversation he had with Kendath at the inn, that one night. It was easy to annoy the assassins and engulf him with doubts about the success of their mission, if they allowed personal feelings to get in the way. Yet back at that time Garthag had wore a mask, a shield of lies, that not even the most perceptive of examiners could penetrate. Yet what he had said back then, had been proven wrong during the course of his test and had they gone along with Garthag`s methods they would have surely failed. The thought of the duo proving him wrong made him amused all tough he guessed the two might never know. Garthag smile quietly before starting to chuckle quietly, it was time to put on the mask once again, not for his own sake, but for the sake of the success of this journey.

Garthag got up sluggishly with a smirk on his face before gazing at all of them, his eyes had become cold, like steel and they were ready to cut anyone, who got close enough.

"That was a real bundle of fun, ghosts from the past, dragons, villagers and undead. I admit those wards were rather... boring? Not very imaginative... or well to the simple minded it seems to have been so. Hope you didn`t see anything to horrifying, that you would stop in your tracks now."

He said with a mocking smirk on his face, but on the inside might have as well been crying out loud, he didn`t hate lying. He had grown to hate himself and his own charade.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

"Boring, you say? Perhaps I can make this more exciting."

Like glass shattering. Kendath remembered that voice all too clearly. He clenched his jaw. His grip tightened on the hilt of his falchion, but little did that thwart the shiver that rippled down his back, along his arms. His white-knuckled fist was shaking. A test. It'd been a test. Is this a test too? To his shock, he found himself praying that it was.

Commander Rolan stood before them, his tattered cloak swelling as though catching an unseen wind. He raised a gauntleted hand. The runes lining the chamber flared blue, then red. The walls seemed to shift, the stone bulging and taking form. Then they were free, breaking clear of the walls - skeletal specters, their eye sockets gaping, their ripped flesh still hanging from their bones. They lurched forward, and the swords clenched loosely in their white claws scraped across the floor at their heels. They formed tight ranks around the five mortals. The red runes blazing at their backs stained their bones in what looked like blood.

"You have passed the tests, so the codes of my bondage stated that I must let you pass. But my bondage is broken. The gods hold no sway over this place." Commander Rolan never moved his helmed head. His stare burned a path through midair between the standing figures of Garthag and Adeila, as if he couldn't care less to whom he spoke to or if he spoke to anyone at all. "You are the first to venture here in many centuries. You are the first to pass these tests in nearly a thousand years. State your business here."

"We came for a key." Kendath climbed to his feet from where he'd been kneeling beside Merrin. His viselike grip on his falchion hadn't slackened, for all the good it might do him here.

The apparition swiveled his head. "A key?"

"'Encased in amber, an obsidian key.' Where is it?"

Once again the helmed head swiveled, this time toward the raised sarcophagus dominating the center of the chamber. The receptacle's polished surface gleamed a burnished red, and only then did Kendath realize that its hue could not be credited entirely to the fiery runes.

"Thanks." It took effort to pry his own numb fingers from his weapon. When he did, he stepped onto the platform and braced his hands on the lid of the sarcophagus. Reddish, yes, or coppery brown. An image of the individual it contained pressed out in convex relief on top of it. From the robes, it looked like a magic-user of some sort. Kendath threw his weight into his arms to push off the lid. It didn't budge.

"The gods have no sway here. I choose the ones who leave with the key. Nobody else."

Kendath glanced up and stumbled back, barely managing to catch himself before he tripped right off the platform.

Just opposite the sarcophagus was Commander Rolan, not five feet away. The slits in the apparition's helm flashed scarlet like the runes. "Many have sought this key. The pitiful fact that you have passed these equally pitiful tests proves nothing of your claim to it."

"Times are changing, Commander Rolan." It resounded throughout the chamber and echoed impressively against the stone. Sage had risen to his feet. His green hood slipped from his head, and his wisps of hair and beard shimmered silver and untainted in the infernal glow. "You would do well to heed the wishes of the gods, whether or not you place your faith in their sway here."

Commander Rolan did not speak. For a long while, he merely stared motionless at the Druid, as though noticing him for the first time. The Renegade sunburst on his breastplate darkened until it vanished into the ages of dust and grime. His sword screeched against its scabbard as he bared it. Its blade was snapped midway down, and the points of its jagged tip now glinted like teeth. He took one step toward Sage, then another. "Never fall," he whispered, the words rattling from his throat like the sigh of a dying man - the sigh of a man reliving his death. "Not taken, not yet. We won't surrender. We'll never fall."

Sage returned the gaze with tired, blue-gray eyes. A tear slid down his cheek and clung to his chin, where it quivered and refused to let go.

The other man continued advancing, his broken blade raised. "Two thousand years. Death has not defeated me, General V'kensul."

"You once spoke of the honor of the gods."

"Honor of the gods!" Commander Rolan threw back his arm in preparation to smite the Druid to the floor. "Who are you to remind me of the honor of the gods? The fall of this city! The death of thousands! By your sword and command, General, my men fell that day, along with the innocent lives I was charged to defend. Speak not to me about honor!"

Kendath felt as though the bottom had just dropped out of his stomach. The face, the face! his mind had screamed on the palace footbridge, that eternity before they'd entered the tomb. Blue-gray eyes... Where was the anchor in this insanity? The walls of the chamber spinning around him in streaks of hellish light, he turned to the Druid, who he knew would condemn these impossible accusations and cast down the apparition for his folly.

Sage stood unmoving and unspeaking, steadily meeting Commander Rolan's scorching gaze. The tear on his chin trembled, then vanished into his silver beard, rimmed in crimson from the light of the runes.

_________________

Merrin raised her head, the tears frozen on her cheeks as if she'd returned to the frigid mountaintop. Not breathing, eyes fixed on the sinister figure, she found her grip locked around her knees. Unlike before, Commander Rolan was not looking at little Merrin, the Chosen of the Gods. She watched him, every rasping word from the depths of that shadowed helm falling on her ears in perfect clarity.

The runes, glowing crimson and blurring in an eerie line that circumnavigated the chamber, combined with the specters that emerged, drove her to her feet. The scrape of brittle human bone on the rock and the screech of rusty weapons on stone sent a tingle of horror down her spine.

She watched him. She watched as the twisted memory of what had once been a great commander of armies spat his defiance at the gods. But then he turned to Sage. And Merrin's wild thoughts froze in their tracks. Death has not defeated me, General V'kensul. That was Sage. The Druid. The presence of wisdom incarnate. In her head, Rolan's words echoed. The Druid's image became distorted in her mind, and everything changed except the blue-grey eyes. Recognition didn't dawn, because Sage in front of her was a green-robed, bearded figure, but the vision of the warlord in her head, from the images of tortured Thyrault they'd seen on the palace bridge...

Slowly, the vision completed. And she saw the Meiltha insignia on his cuirass. They were the same. Warlord, Druid. Merrin was transfixed by the revelation of it, the key forgotten, the tracks that tears had made down her cheeks dry. She was impossibly young next to the millenniums of the two men that stood, gazes locked - no, one man. The other had not been a man for ages on end. The one whose honor had led him to his death was a tortured shadow of humanity. The irony, terrible irony, choked in her throat.

And the other? The one whose armies had destroyed their Renegade rivals until blood ran like water through Thyrault's streets?

Honor, they said. The horror of Thyrault's defeat had been nearly palpable before; now it was stifling in the very air. The Renegade commander was a grotesque shell, and the Meiltha warlord...was the one who spoke of honor.

Both fell silent. And still they were not looking at the Chosen of the Gods.

Merrin stepped forward, tingling, fighting past a tangle of facts that pointed to a conclusion she could barely accept. The streaks of crimson in her peripheral vision made it look as though the chamber were stained with blood. "Are you surprised, Commander Rolan?" she said. The helm swiveled.

She'd begun now. No turning back. Merrin swallowed. "Are you surprised," she said again, "that the gods have deserted you?" Perhaps it was terror that knotted her stomach, and perhaps it was shock, but she couldn't stop to think about it. Must keep going. She raised her chin. "Someone told me, once, that the gods did not choose me. I chose myself. By faith. You are far away from them - so they are far away from you."

It had been Kendath, so long ago. How strange - that Kendath would have told her what proved true now, Kendath who she thought had never believed in the gods. She forced herself to look at the vague dark slits of crimson in that helm that might have been eyes. "So you say you are no longer bound by the codes the gods imposed on you," she continued. Her saber hung untouched at her belt, but it was not her saber that would save them here. "The gods abandoned you, Commander Rolan, because you abandoned them. The sword cuts both ways. Aye, you are no longer held by the codes of that bondage. But will you say, still, that the gods do not hold sway?"

Merrin thrust out a hand, palm up, fingertips glittering with ivory fire. It kindled, caught, burst into flame. The column of blinding white that blazed from her hand held none of the runes' blood-red taint. "What is that, then?" she said, voice rising. "What is that, if the gods do not hold sway?"

On the mountaintop, he'd told her to choose. Choose, Merrin Dragonrider, between yourself and the lives of innocents. "Choose, then, Commander Rolan," she said, echoing the words of the apparition on the mountaintop. "You know the gods reign still. Even over you." She indicated Sage, forcing the impossible conclusion into reality. "The gods reign over him." Blue-grey eyes. And she finally believed it. "He should be better proof than anything! The gods changed him! They can change you!"

The column of fire blazed. Merrin took a breath. "You know which reigns supreme, Commander. Even after two thousand years, there is time yet to change your mind. Which is it - the gods you abandoned, or the dark that you've seen they will defeat?"

_________________

The chill intensified until even the runes, blazing scarlet on the walls, flickered and died, plunging the chamber into darkness. Kendath felt the hard floor impact his knees. He looked up and could see nothing but the burning eyes of Commander Rolan and all the specters at his command.

"Little witch," he hissed, and the crimson slits glided forward. "You charlatan, what can you possibly know of the gods in the mere slip of time that you have lived? I have seen! I have seen for two thousand years, have seen much more than you can ever imagine, and I can tell you now, to save you from slavery, that there - are - no - gods!" His red blade thundered down. The specters streaked forth as one.

They came too fast. Shooting toward the ceiling like a swarm of wasps, they coalesced, their rattling gasps filling the chamber and their screeching keens rebounding off the walls ten times, a hundred times, until Kendath couldn't think for the agony stabbing through his mind. Then, banding together, they funneled straight in.

Boom.

Silence. Kendath slowly uncurled from the position he'd tucked himself into in that last millisecond - arms folded against his sides, head bent low to ward off the piercing wails. Pale light flickered above him. He looked up, half expecting to see Merrin. Instead, there stood Sage. The Druid's feet were braced against the floor and his left arm was thrown up, palm flat against the interior of an iridescent globe spanning a five-foot radius around him. Crackles of magic forked across the shield's translucent surface. On the other side, their leering skulls framed by darkness, hovered the specters. They shadowed every spare inch of the shield and clawed at it with fingers like talons.

Closing his eyes, Sage muttered something under his breath. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. The knuckles on his other hand blanched bone-white where they gripped his staff. The harsh syllables tangled on his tongue. Kendath watched, transfixed, as the Druid's lips moved. "Uthul... uthul maexhasti... uthul maexhasti iquis salohn!"

The shield shuddered, then exploded in a spray of ivory shards that sliced the air like knives. Kendath heard, dimly, through the roar of his eardrums threatening to split apart, the screams of the specters as the shards found them and tore through the life-force clinging to their rotting bones. One by one, they evaporated, their last keens wavering on the air before fading to weak echoes that teetered against the stone. Before long, even those had dissipated.

All was still. The chamber was empty. Leaning heavily on his staff, Sage planted one booted foot in front of the other. He stopped, staring at the walls, at the embers of runes that winked a muted blue. Without warning he collapsed.

Kendath was at his side in an instant, helping him up. The Druid shook his head. "I'm fine, just fine. I need some help getting back up is all." He wiped perspiration from his face with a handkerchief and managed a faint smile. "See? I'm up. Now run and get the key, and I'll find us a way out of here, hmm?"

By the time Kendath had pushed the lid off the amber sarcophagus, the Druid had already found a hidden door and was shepherding Merrin, Garthag, and Adeila through. "We'll wait for you," Sage called over his shoulder, and melted into the darkness of the tunnel. Kendath nodded absently and peered into the receptacle. The body within was still flawlessly preserved, its face smooth in eternal slumber. He brushed a hand across the hem of the azure robes and paused at the neck, where hung a silver medallion. His fingers brushed over the medallion's smooth edges and traced the two symbols engraved on its shining surface - a crenated ellipse in juxtaposition with a circle of outward-extending rays. A cloud and a star.

A cloud and a star... He whirled around. By the diminishing light of the runes, he could still make out the solid forms of the other sarcophagi. Eleven. Eleven of them bordered the chamber, in addition to the one that dominated the center. A total of twelve.

Attempting futilely to steady his hand, Kendath reached into the amber prison and extracted the key from its spot next to the corpse's head. He dropped it into the pocket of his breeches, then braced himself against the lid to grind it back into place.

When he straightened, he found himself staring right into a pair of crimson slits. He recognized them too well.

"My friend the Lich paid me a visit before your arrival," Commander Rolan said. Ironic, how much that statement resembled the one uttered during the test. The apparition shrugged his shoulders with a creak of rusted armor. "My friend sends his cordial regards." At that instant his fist shot out to connect squarely between Kendath's temples.

Smudges of blackness swam in Kendath's vision. Pain shot through his eyes. The merciless floor rushed up to meet him.

-----

Five minutes later, Kendath joined Sage and the others at the tunnel's dead end. A rope ladder, not yet eaten away completely, hung from a trapdoor in the ceiling. "I have the key," he said, pulling it out from his pocket to hold it up. "Shall we go?"

_________________

Merrin nodded mutely, strangely numb. All the emotion of the last hours - had it really only been hours? It felt like days - had left her feeling drained and empty. She almost expected to emerge into some foreign landscape, where nothing was real and everything was designed only to break her, only to find the most vulnerable particle of her being and attack without mercy.

But past the trapdoor was only broken Thyrault. The sole indication that some time had passed was the bank of luminous clouds resting on the horizon, veiling a sun that was nearly gone. With difficulty, Merrin tried to recall anything that had happened before the haunted tomb had commanded her every thought. The only recollection that managed to effect a stab of any emotion at all was the remembrance of the Meiltha and Ironlegs, and even that only made Merrin's wish to crawl into a hole and sleep all the more intense. Were they waiting for her, somewhere, she wondered uneasily, wrapping her arms tightly around herself as if to ward off the cold that her cloak no longer protected her from. Too much to think about.

If any spirits whispered past in their eternal unrest as the five of them slowly retraced the steps that had brought four of them in, Merrin was too tired to hear. The sunset threw blazing pink and gold across the still-pristine spires of Thyrault, and flushed white with vermilion and orange. Merrin didn't notice the colors until, realizing very suddenly that they were past the fateful footbridge, she turned to gaze up at the silent palace, pitted with scars from battle and with the wounds of age. The footbridge.

Hesitantly, she turned to look at the green-robed figure that had exited with them, slowly reviewing this strange new knowledge of him. The shock she'd felt back in the chamber had dulled, like everything else, but Merrin had questions nonetheless. "Sage," she began tentatively, reaching to touch his shoulder, "how did you know -?"

Now that they were outside, she no longer felt the Chosen of the Gods. She was only Merrin, stumbling through a haze that begged for the merciful relief of sleep, and she felt oddly small in the presence of one who had known so many years. More than Merrin could fathom. Nineteen is so few, she thought in dismay, and shook off the weariness, if only momentarily. "Thank you," she said helplessly. "I don't know what we would have done if - if -" and she gestured, wordless. "I'm so glad it's done," she admitted with an attempt at a wobbly smile. "Just - thank you."

_________________

They reached a square lined with empty-eyed shops and stalls whose curtains fluttered in the murmuring wind. Weeds tumbled out from cracks in the flagstone. The mermaid they'd seen when entering the city still curled her tail around the fountain. She raised her sunken face to the dying sunset. The rays combed her hair with threads of gold and flushed her chipped cheeks with a blush of pink. She was beautiful, Kendath realized, just like everything else in this city. The kiss of twilight upon the soaring spires, the embrace of softly haloed shadows on the walls. Everything was beautiful. He wouldn't turn back to the tomb for anything in the world.

"Do not thank me." Sage lowered himself onto the marble rim of the fountain and squinted up at Merrin, his own face shadowed by the sun at his back. "Why do you stand there? Come, child. Sit." He shuffled aside to make room for her. He beckoned Kendath, Garthag, and Adeila to sit as well, but Kendath declined the offer with a wave. The Druid shrugged. "Dark hours await us all. We must learn to relax. Listen. Do you hear that?"

Kendath cocked his head but heard nothing. The empty buildings were silent. Anticipating the worst, he began reaching for a weapon, but Sage caught his wrist and returned his arm to his side. "You see? Relax. I simply bid you to heed the birds. Hear how they sing! Hard times are upon us, yet they still sing. Theirs is the song of the gods."

Heed the birds? He scrutinized the Druid, whose serene countenance begged only to be a harmless old man, sitting down to rest his sore feet and indulge himself in a bit of peace. The crevices on his weathered brow smoothed, and his blue-gray eyes turned toward the heavens. Blue-gray eyes. Kendath envisioned the black armor, the sword dripping with Renegade blood. He couldn't bring himself to believe it. The images wavered, feeble, before scattering to the winds like leaves on an autumn evening.

"You wish to ask me something."

"It's nothing." Kendath averted his stare and attempted, lamely, to listen for the birds.

"Ask. I insist."

"I..." He cleared his throat. His gaze fixated first on a tangle of weeds beneath his feet, then on a bird that had just landed on the mermaid's cracked tail. The sparrow hopped from one foot to the other chirped at him. He cleared his throat again. "What Rolan said. Two thousand years ago... when you..." He gave up. "What changed your mind?"

Sage's lips, which seemed to move just enough when he spoke, turned upward. "Can't you guess?" When Kendath mutely shook his head, the Druid sighed. "Love," he replied, and nodded in confirmation. "A father's love for his son. I was a grown man, but I was as helpless and lost as a child when Eruditis found me. He embraced me as his son, and with the light of his guidance was I able to find the gods." He stroked the wood of his staff, deep in thought. At length he smiled. "But I ramble. You know this story well. It is not so different from your own, is it? And yours too, Garthag. The path of redemption is the same for us all. It is never too steep, never too narrow. Anyone can climb it. All you need is your will... and a spare torch, I suppose. Without it, you might stub your toe in the dark."

He turned to Merrin and gently brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. "Never forget how to smile. It has been too long. Far too long." He unbuttoned a pouch at his belt and removed two small objects. One he pressed into Merrin's hand and the other he handed to Kendath. "You miss them. They miss you, too."

Kendath turned the figurine over in his fingers. The artisan had deftly carved it into the perfect miniature of a rearing dragon. The jade felt cool to the touch. Points of emerald for eyes winked in the fading dusk. At that instant, what Sage had just said smacked him full in the chest. "They... miss...?"

"I passed Gyre and Wyvern on my way here. They live safely and happily in the valley of wild dragons. They are still recovering from their injuries, but they asked me to relay their greetings and their love. They wanted to help, so I let them." Sage tapped the silver figurine in Merrin's hand. "A piece of Wyvern's spirit is locked inside this. Three times may you call on it in times of need. He will not be able to speak to you, but he will prove to be a great help. Yes, Merrin, he lives. Why did you ever doubt? Dragons are, after all, the children of the gods."

_________________

"Their greetings and their love," whispered Merrin, turning the tiny figurine in her fingers. Tiny diamond pinpoints for eyes winked up at her, reflecting the dying light of dusk, and the opened silver wings made her ache to fly. She remembered the feel of Wyvern's ivory horns in her fingers, the way they fit to wrap her fingers around. Their love.

She raised her head, searching Sage's face and wanting, so badly that the desire was nearly a physical pain, for it to be true. It couldn't be. She'd been there, she'd seen her dragon buried in innumerable tons of unforgiving rock, felt the presence in her mind go blank and unresponsive. The tiny imprints of silver scales pressed into her palms as Merrin stared at the little statue. Tell me it's true, she implored silently, hardly knowing who she spoke to. Tell me you didn't leave me, you're not dead, you'll be back.

She squeezed her eyes shut, exhausted enough to let fragile hope blossom, even if it were to shatter in irreplaceable shards. Her consciousness was still alone, forlorn and abandoned in a void of nothing. Wyvern, she called, the plea echoing endlessly out and out into oblivion. Wyvern, please.

The silence nearly made hope fall in fragments of broken crystal. Then the call echoed back, different.

Merrin.

The blossom flowered, and Merrin dropped the figurine into her lap to bury her face in her hands. Hope expanded, rushed into being until she tingled with it. Her heart pounded deafeningly in her ears, but she'd heard him. He'd been there. Why did you ever doubt?

"It was so hard," she said, looking now and seeing the truth in Sage's face that she hadn't trusted before. "It was so hard to keep believing, when everything else..." In the silence she remembered Vryngard, stained crimson with blood and tainted by the unhealthy light of a smoke-veiled sunset. If Wyvern could come back...? She looked down at the tiny silver dragon and smiled, really smiled, for the first time in eons. There was light again in the darkness.

"Oh, gods," she began helplessly. "I - I don't know what to say. I don't think 'thank you' really begins to be adequate."

_________________

During the confrontation with commander Roland and his specters Garthag had remained quiet, he had only watched as the events unfolded as, if knowing he could never have a word in such a play. He was irrelevant and that made him feel somewhat alive, for once he did not have to bother and no one even cared whether he was there. Before that he had felt like he had been annoyance, a piece, that never quite fit the puzzle yet was still there due to untold circumstances. It also seemed that Merrin and Kendath would have other concerns close at hand than his odd behavior before. The well woven net of lies and deceit would last after all.

Despite the torrent of darkness, that had engulfed the room, Garthag felt at ease for a moment and there was no fear at what might happen next. As long as he had his power he could continue, to what he did not know, but seeing it all trough might be worth something after all. It felt as, if a burden had been dropped off his shoulders and he might as well die with a smile, right then and there. He wouldn`t matter anyway, no one would care and no one would find out about him, the truth would remain hidden and his lips would not spell it out loud.

After what had felt like hours Garthag was able to step into fresh air, he quietly followed the others and set him apart from them, quietly admiring the crumbling architecture of the fallen Thyrault. It must have been quite a sight seeing the city in it`s full glory only to see it crushed at the hands of the cruel Meiltha, at the hands of the man, who had now helped them. What kind of force had convinced him of all people to change sides?

And then the man already had given Merrin the answer to that question, love. The one feeling Garthag had abandoned as a weakness, the one thing he had in his youth and he had been content, but had been crushed when all those, who he had loved had died. So had the loss of that love turned him into a heartless, selfish monster? Perhaps, but love was pain, it was like a rose bush and eventually you would get cut. Garthag hated being cut, he hated bleeding, he couldn`t stand it and wouldn`t stand it nor would have anyone help him recover from it. He had never needed anyone`s help, he had been the one capable of holding his own and even going beyond that.

He had been the one, who had helped others and he wouldn`t submit himself to the pity or care of others. Garthag sighed quietly and turned back to gaze at the ruins, the web would last, he would last without another tear or feeling shed from the shell around him. It had been shattered and cut during the tests, but he was still holding the pieces, he would hold onto that so no one else would have to get hurt or know the pitiful truth. Garthag for once felt content, he was willing to die in the battles to come and by Kendath`s hand, if it came to that. There would be no shame in that as long they hated him, as long as he was able to fool them long enough so that the truth would die with him.

Some words followed, paralyzing Garthag and making his eye stop, dead and dull. A small voice rang in his head and the whirlwind of thoughts came into a sudden conclusion as to what the words meant. The small spider, that had woven the webs of lies screamed out loud as it suddenly felt the threads failing. Then thread by thread began to snap at the weight of the spider, one by one the lies failed it and it fell into a deep dark pit. Yet the screaming never stopped, the spider kept on screaming the words, over and over.

"He knows! He knows! The *beep* knows what happened during the tests!"

Then druid had spoken enough to cause a complete destabilization of Garthag`s world, it was like a blade, that cut the lies and crushed the hollow shell surrounding him. It ran like a snake down his neck and made it`s home in his hands, creating a trembling and his teeth grinned together. How dared the man speak of redemption to him? More importantly about his past, even hinting what it was like and saying those words out loud, in front of everyone!

Garthag spun around to stare at the man with a vicious glance in his eyes, every single misleading lie he had laid before these idiots and every illusion he had ever cast to fool anyone near him had been dissolved. It would not take too long for the others to come to a few conclusions of their own and then start to ask questions, even worse dare start speculation what happened to him. Why couldn`t the stupid, bearded fool mind his own business?

The druid was just like... like the sage, the man whom Garthag had known as his master. Merrin had even called him sage, the very irony of the situation almost made Garthag attack the man and a dagger in the heart, he thought, would have been a fitting reward. Once again an old man known as a sage had ruined his well laid plans, hopes of the future. The only difference was that this man dared to think he was helping him and in his words rang pity.

"Just because one such as you has been converted to the faith of your silly gods, don`t you dare make such claims, that I might be redeemed by anything upon this world or above it."

Garthag said with a frustrated tone as he already considered drawing his dagger and lunging at the man, but held his temper. Yet still a dagger slit it`s way down from his sleeve and appeared into his grasp, he wouldn`t allow his secret be blurted out like that. No matter, who he was Garthag would not allow the man to destroy his purpose, his plans to die as the heartless one. Garthag could feel a line between past and present blurring, he could easily imagine this man to be the one behind his pain and suffering. When the words started to come out of Garthag`s mouth, they were venomous and hateful, there was a certain degree of bitterness in his tone as well.

"I once knew a certain sage, my very first master in fact and do you know how I repaid him for years of tutelage? I drove a dagger deep into his back and watched him die just before my village went up in flames along with my family. I won`t mind doing the same to you, I won`t mind a bit, never minded it back the... never will."

Garthag said, now with a more determined tone, but the viciousness in his eyes had almost turned to panic and chaotic anger, that urged him to stab the man right in the gut. The eight-legged monster tried hard to pull it`s way up from the pit, every led scratching the surface of the darkness and trying to raise the body up. New plans had to be laid, new lies, new illusions to make the others believe he was what he had always made himself out to be. He would not have them watch down on him, he wouldn`t have to stand their pitying eyes or their mock. Long ago he had known a group of mages, who had mocked him for what he had been, a stupid idealistic brat and for that they had even punished him.

He wouldn`t have, that kind of existence showed onto him once again, never again.

_________________

Let him curse my name
On these blood stained pages of misery
Let him call me a tyrant so cruel
Let him curse my name, but remember the truth!

Kendath wrapped his fingers around the jade figurine. The needlelike spikes on its flared wings and curled tail pricked his skin. The flecks of emerald blinked at him, and in their glittering appraisal he recalled Gyre in her last moment - her sinuous frame arced against the tumbling rocks, her wide-eyed gaze meeting his and begging him to save himself, to run without looking back.

Except that hadn't been her last moment. She lived, and she missed him. She loved him and wanted to help. He stroked the tiny snout, wondering at the irony of their union. The dragon who'd lost her rider to plague. The rider who'd lost his dragon to darkness. Renegade and once-Meiltha, the former pure of heart, the latter... confused. Kendath let escape a rasping chuckle. She had chosen him, that long ago day in the courtyard of Vryngard. Why? They had worked well together, but only as allies thrown together by circumstance. Gyre had been kind, but she had never truly shared her thoughts with him. Kendath knew little of her hopes and ambitions, of her past. He had never asked.

Neither had her loss stabbed him as deeply as had the loss of Demon. He'd accepted her death, filled the hole with resignation, and moved on. He'd used her hovering presence at the back of his mind to distract him from the gaping chasm left by Demon. But she was - is - still my dragon. He held the figurine in his palm and watched its gleaming mouth catch rays of twilight like dragonfire. She misses me. Shame weakened his grasp on the figurine. I miss you too, Gyre. I'm sorry. I'll come back for you, I swear it.

"Where's the valley of - " Kendath's inquiry hung, unfinished, on his tongue.

Sage was no longer paying attention. He stood instead before Garthag. The mage had seemed much taller, but now that the two men stood facing each other, Kendath noted that their gazes drew level. The Druid shook his head. When he opened his mouth to speak, his jaw quivered, forcing him to shut it again. At length he said, barely more audibly than a whisper, "You do not think of yourself as a child. You have seen the world - too much of it, by your standards - and have determined your standing. I am not a priest, speaking for the gods themselves, so the dichotomy of right and wrong is not for me to preach. That journey you must take on your own. Even I do not know every step of the way.

"I ask of you only this, and I speak to you all." Staff thumping against the flagstones, the Druid pivoted in a full circle, his gaze impaling each of them in turn. "Who are you?" The words, though softly spoken, bounced back from the silent buildings as a chorus of the same taunting question: Whoareyouwhoareyouwhoareyou? He pivoted again, and his forest-green robes swelled around him. "Who are you, I said, and what is your purpose here? When you stand at the brink of an ocean you cannot swim, and a thousand voices call you from the opposite shore, will you listen? When your life scatters beneath your feet, and you are too tired to bend and look for the pieces, will you see more than dust drifting to the four winds? When your loved ones cry your name from the other side, will you shout back at them, tell them how much you've enjoyed the journey? Or will you fall to your knees and try to crawl back because you have wasted your years?"

His gaze encompassed them all again, but it lingered on Garthag. He took a step forward. "The path of yesterday is already trod. Those who walk a road always looking over their shoulders are certain to stumble. Watch the road ahead! Tell me, Garthag. What are you living for? What will you die for?"

_________________