Merrin found herself watching the torch, following the steadily flickering paths of the tendrils of flame, and letting the sight swallow up the darkness that loomed in the tunnel beyond. In the quiet, broken only by an occasional crackle of resin in the torch or water dripping with empty, amplified echoes, she found that shivers were creeping up her spine.

Eying the floor, dry and more stone than dirt, she took several deep breaths and unslung her pack, kneeling. A glance up, down the thickly dark depths of the passage beyond, had her staring down it as though hypnotized. For the first time, she felt nearly sick with the realization of what she was about to do - a portal in three to the citadel of shadow. Here, where no moon or starlight indicated that something besides darkness existed, the reality took on a looming quality that made her insides knot.

Drips of water echoed. Merrin! Stop it! the rational side of her insisted, and mechanically Merrin curled up against the chill with her pack as a pillow, and tried to succumb to the exhaustion that weighted her limbs. She wasn't sure when dreams overtook what dark reality there was.

She couldn't move. Specters loomed, shadows with no faces and hands that reached but never quite caught, and she couldn't close her eyes. There was darkness, but no starlight, no chinks through to the light she knew was there. Again and again she called white fire to her fingertips, but it sputtered and went out like a dying candle. Shadows whispered, but she couldn't see them.

Terror of being alone, without her dragon or her family or even Kendath beside her, overwhelmed Merrin. I can't do this. The words echoed, too, in this parody of reality. I can't do it by myself. Where are they? Why did they leave me alone? Where are you -

She looked for the gods, raised her face to where the heavens should have been.

But they weren't there.

Choking back a sound, Merrin woke in the dark. The torch was glowing feebly. Her heart was pounding hard enough to resound in her ears. Shivering, but this time not from cold, she tried to still the fear that pulsed through her like her loud heartbeat, burying her face in the makeshift pillow. Not even now. Not even now, half dead from exhaustion, could she escape to sleep without being haunted there. I wish it were over. Oh, gods, I wish it were over.

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Kendath slept. How long or deeply he slept he didn't know, but he woke to find his head propped against the wall and his temple sore from its hardness. His hand groped along the floor, and only when it closed around the dagger's cold hilt did he register the movement. His eyes flickered open to peer, through foggy vision, at the blade. The dying fire sputtered a few wisps of torchlight onto the steel, but aside from that he could see nothing. Disgusted, he snapped the dagger back into its sheath.

Do it.

His feet were moving. His hands were picking up his pack, and his feet were carrying him toward a bend in the tunnel, where Merrin curled in the shadows. Her face was nestled in her own back - she's asleep, he protested. But she breathed too fast, too shallowly. Even as he watched, she rolled halfway over to bury her face deeper in her makeshift pillow. She didn't hear his approach; his boots padded silently on stone. He knelt beside her, uncertain.

Do it, I said. Now.

"Merrin?" He gently shook her shoulder. "Here, get up. You need to eat something." He dug around in his pack and extracted a few crusts of bread, wrapped in soft cloth, that they'd packed in Adeila's village that morning. Dry crumbs scattered across the floor as he handed one to her.

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Merrin pushed herself halfway upright against the cold wall, feeling the phantoms of dreams diminish fractionally in the face of what she knew was real. It took a few moments before she could identify the feeling in her stomach as hunger. Briefly, the insanity of it all struck her, and she didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

That seemed to indicate a level of hysteria she'd rather not reach. Merrin sucked in a deep breath and reached for the bread, glancing up at the torch and then down, at where she could see half of Kendath's face in the shadows. "Thanks," she murmured, not wanting to ask if her nightmares had somehow woken him, too.

She managed the first thick slice, and stared helplessly at the second before handing it back with a shake of her head. "I'm not...very hungry." That was ludicrous, she hadn't eaten in days, but it was true nonetheless. The dark tunnel loomed and Merrin swallowed, fear rising. "Don't go," she managed, gaze flickering over his face and clinging to the familiarity. "I...I can't sleep."

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Kendath felt the bread come apart in his fingers. Each piece that dropped to the stone floor weighed like a thump of iron in his mind. Thump. Thump. Thump. What was that? He swallowed something lodged in his throat. Thump. Thump. Thumpthump. Faster now. Too fast. His own heartbeat.

Merrin's gaze burned on his face. His eyes flickered to hers, and for a fleeting instant of consciousness he did want to reach out to her, to pull her to his chest. But his limbs wouldn't obey him. His fingers spasmed and clenched. He couldn't make them stop. Faster, faster. Thumpthumpthump. He couldn't breathe. Are you listening to me? Now. He closed his eyes. Now, I said. NOW!

"Merrin!" Her name ripped itself from his throat in a ragged cry that rebounded off the tunnel's bare walls. Had anyone else woken? He glanced around, then dropped his voice. "Merrin, I need to tell you something." His glance flashed over his shoulder again. "Not here. Someplace... private. Outside." Impulsively, he reached across to enclose her shivering hand in his. "Will you come?"

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For a frozen moment, Merrin watched his face, briefly certain she'd seen something there. Her hands were still shaking, and she looked down, brushing the sensation away. His fingers were hardly warmer than hers, she noticed. "Tell me...something?" she repeated, a little bemused, still searching his face.

Their eyes caught and held. Merrin hadn't been this close to him since... oh, that was a thought she desperately did not want to be thinking.

Nodding, almost automatically, she got to her feet, finding her hand still in his. It was cold, out there in the midst of mountains dusted with snow, but there was light and air that was not stale and did not echo. "Aye, of course." She would not have gone back to sleep, not after that. Merrin gulped back the words that wanted to spill from her lips - how terrified she was, how she didn't know what to do or how, the thought of failure...

Instead, she glanced up. "Your hands are cold."

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"So is yours," Kendath replied without missing a beat. He led her back down the tunnel at a halting pace, unsure of his movements, hesitating for half a second before placing each step. The soft rhythm of her boots padded behind him. She trusted him. Explicitly, unconditionally. Even after what had happened earlier - something she'd couldn't have missed and surely must realize. She trusted him...

Crimson eyes flashed in the darkness ahead. A pale gash of a mouth split open. Someone was laughing.

"Outside," he gasped, groping his way up the stairs. He flicked a glance upward. Darkness. Just darkness. Nothing waited at the top of the steps. His hand trembled around hers. She couldn't know. She musn't be able to tell. He held his breath, locked his knuckles. The trembling stopped.

Yes. Yes. The voice was pleased.

The bark of the cedar cracked open, but no storm of cold blasted through. The night was serene, still. A fresh blanket of snow glittered under the trees, whose branches waved gently in the breeze. Stars spattered the soft darkness between the treetops. Kendath led them at an easy pace, away from the gorge. The gnawing within him had calmed. He looked at her. "You're shaking. Don't be frightened."

She trusted him. Utterly. The beast within him purred its contentment.

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Rasping at the edge of his consciousness, the endless paranoia ate at him and his vision made a slow recovery from the darkness enveloping it. Garthag heard voices near him, at first he had thought they had been discovered and blinked his eyes once to clear the blur. Then he realized the sudden calm and quiet, that was there, only the sounds of steps and a few words shared by two individuals. Garthag cleared his head and gazed at the space they had taken refuge in, he was alone with the elderly Adeila and it seemed rather odd for the two others to leave.

Yet then again with all, that had happened the two would certainly have nuch to discuss concerning the future of the journey. The way Garthag could see things, the easiest way he could now simplify things was, that they were pieces. Pieces in a game of chess, between light and dark, despite the obvious blur behind the goals of each. There were pawns, a king, a queen and the rest more `important` pieces. If they`d lose the king, it would be all over and logic told him, that Merrin was the key to solving the problems, which plagued this world.

Yet what were the rest of them? Simply pieces to be sacrificed on the board in order to achieve the goals of the gods? Perhaps, but where was his own place in all this? Was he a pawn or a rook perhaps, would he be a sacrifice or one, that made a difference? The sudden departure of the two worried him and he, against his own warnings, decided to follow. However before coming into hearing range, he cast a spell of invisibility upon himself despite knowing the waste it was. He still remained within the warmth of the tunnel all tough he didn`t really mind the cold pouring in from the entrance. He shook his head as he sat down at the entrance listening for the slightest of sounds and words, wondering had it always been like this.

However the endless paranoia never stopped lingering, teasing him and he needed to know what the two were talking about behind his back. The cold and calculative side had taken over for a moment, despite the protests of the one, that knew it might have been none of his business.

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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!

Don't be frightened? He knew where they were going and why, he knew what was waiting - Merrin shook her head mutely, breathing the reassuringly cool air. Even curled in his, her hand was trembling. She wasn't cold; the bite of the wind, from earlier, had dwindled to nothing but a breeze that whispered through the treetops and didn't touch the pair of them. "Sorry," she managed, half a whisper. "I can't help it."

That seemed to require an explanation, but Merrin felt as though to let those few words through would be to fling open the floodgates - and she could not acknowledge how terrified she was, not now, not so close. "It's - nightmares -" she tried to say helplessly. Unconsciously, she bit her lip to stem the threat of tears before it began. Staring away into the forest blanketed by night, she took a deep breath and blew it out, and tried to begin again. "I can't stop thinking about it. I can't stop - even dreaming - I just -"

She gestured with her free hand, trying to express what she felt and failing. Words were inadequate. "I'm so scared," she said, numbly, and listened as the expression barely scratched the surface of her terror.

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Kendath halted, and the snow ceased to crunch beneath their steps. Silence blanketed the forest like a stifling fog, pierced only by the whisper of the breeze plucking at the treetops. In the treetops overhead, an owl crooned once to the frozen stillness. A pair of their tracks meandered from the cedar to where they stood now. Finish it. You can't go back.

Somewhere in the void where space and time entwined, he registered her pain. Somewhere in the emptiness of his mind, the terror shaking her voice cried out to him, and he did want to comfort her. He did want to show her... His hand stretched out - to do what, he didn't know. He'd only halfway meant to do it - he hadn't meant to reach so far, hadn't meant for the back of his fingers to brush her cheek. Her skin was smooth, flushed a pale pink from the cold.

That's right. Draw her in. Make her yours. She trusts you. She trusts you!

"The gods chose you for a reason," he said, and as the words fell from his lips, he knew that those were the words she wanted to hear. "They have faith in you, Merrin." His hand approached a quivering stop at her chin. He stroked it for a moment, letting his fingers drift along the delicate line of her jaw, then tilted it to lock their gazes. "I have faith in you."

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Wordlessly, Merrin looked up at him. His fingers, tipping her chin to meet his eyes, were still as cold as her own. The touch was enough to make a tingle race through her, enough to edge her delicate emotional balance just a fraction more over the precipice. If it plummeted, she knew beyond doubt that her resolve would shatter into irretrievable pieces.

Another breath, slowly in and blown out, kept the tears at bay. Merrin raised her hand, threading her fingers through his. "I know," she said, feeling the weight of all the belief that rested in her. Suddenly craving the assurance that he believed she could do it - even after all this - she stared up, trying desperately to penetrate whatever was behind his eyes. Then, softer - "I wish - ah, gods, I wish I believed it, too."

Luminous moonlight blurred the edges of the shadows on his face. The longing to press close and bury her head against his chest was nigh unbearable. Her breath caught raggedly in her throat, shaking with the tremors she couldn't quell. Fear clawed its way up to speak with her voice and plead for the reassurance she craved. "Kendath - what if I can't?"

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"Shhh," Kendath murmured, and drew her to him, pressing her head against his shoulder and stroking her soft hair. So pale, so delicate. Her slender form shivered in his arms. He enfolded her more closely, as though he could shield her from the cold. All the while he whispered, a quiet breath on her ear, "Have faith, Merrin. Have faith..."

The dagger stood poised at her neck.

Crimson eyes flared once more behind a helm colder than the frost at their feet. The gash of a mouth slashed open, and the laugh this time was louder, a keening shriek that seemed to still the forest and shake the very pine needles on their branches. Commander Rolan stared back and laughed, and laughed harder, but now it wasn't the helm anymore but a hood of black velvet. The crimson eyes blinked shut, sucked into the vortex in the hood's shadows. A claw of a hand, so white it was almost translucent, lunged forth as though to seize the handle of the dagger. Now is the time!

Kendath's gaze nailed on the creature he knew to be the Lich, knew to be the prow of the Shadowers' power. His own hand trembled. Tendrils of flame flashed once on the dagger, then dimmed, replaced by the Lich's devouring darkness. The blade's tip wavered over Merrin's neck. No, not Merrin! Not Merrin! someone cried from a forgotten recess in his mind. That someone thrashed like a madman, and the clanking of the iron shackles hammered against his skull. Clankclankthumpthumpthumpclank. His heartbeat - faster, faster, until he thought it would burst through his chest. ThumpthumpTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP -

Finish it. FINISH IT!

"No!" His bellow tore apart the silence. He staggered back. The dagger, falling from nerveless fingers, struck the snow with a thud.

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Steel brushed her skin with the barest of deadly caresses - Kendath's heart was thudding wildly in her ear where she'd pressed against him - Merrin didn't understand, didn't understand -

He shouted, the sound an agony that could have been ripped from his very soul, and with blind instinct she was halfway across the clearing and stumbling through snow, whirling, still not understanding, then suffocating as the truth smothered her, stopped breath in her lungs. The dagger was a shard of ice in the moonlight. Her eyes flew, spinning from the blade to his face.

His face made the knowledge complete. Comprehension drove the icy knife home better than his hand could have done it. Her mind, cruel as the weapon itself, pounded all the conclusions home like stinging nails. Merrin, I need to tell you something. Don't be frightened. I have faith in you, Merrin. The place his fingers had brushed her cheek seared like a burn, hot against her cold skin. The knife twisted again. All the time. While gazing into her eyes, while whispering the words she desperately needed to hear, while holding her close in the protection she wanted so badly from him - all the time he'd been waiting, murmuring lies in her ears.

When she could finally breathe - after endless eons contained in mere seconds - the sound that broke from her lips was half a gasp and half a sob. Still her limbs would not obey, still her eyes would not move from his face. What was she looking for? The knife might as well have been in her heart. The dagger in the snow might as well have been stained red.

"Kendath," she choked, as though his name might call back the Kendath she knew - the Kendath she thought she'd known? They were the same. The same. Whose arms had drawn her close, and whose hand had held the dagger in the snow.

Betrayal blinded her with tears. The knife twisted one last time.

Merrin turned and fled.

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The way she looked at him. The way her mouth parted, the way his name rent her throat to fall, like so many shards of glass, upon the frozen air. The same glass seemed to glaze her eyes, to darken them from sparkling blue to wintry gray, and Kendath started forward, almost as though he could cross the canyon that gaped wider between them with each slipping second.

Too late. It was too late. Merrin was gone.

Kendath's world tipped. The sickly spines of trees spun around him, green and brown and white and then crimson too - crimson like the stare, like the laugh - and spiraled together until he could see nothing through the fog clouding his vision. Faster, faster. Just like his heartbeat, except he could no longer hear his heartbeat. Faster - and yes, he could hear something. A hammering on his head, through his mind. The pound of Merrin's gaze beating into his. The icy tears in her eyes spearing it home.

She'd never looked at him that way before. Never, in all that they'd endured together. Not even in the earliest days, when he'd bound her wrists behind her back and had told her he didn't believe in gods. He'd merely been another Meiltha then - a faceless, heartless Meiltha with blood on his hands. What was he now?

He stumbled into a wall - a tree, actually - and stayed there, leaning on the trunk, shaking his head to scatter away the phantom of her face etched into his memory. He'd promised himself - he'd promised himself as he'd teetered upon the precipice of the fourth test, watching the jagged rocks below. He'd promised himself that he'd not forsake her. Their enemies might tear her hope down, bring it crashing around her ears, but he... he would stand by her until the end.

What have I done?

Perhaps Demon was right. Perhaps he himself had been right, that long ago moment when he'd stood at the prow of the Albatross and had sworn that he'd never be the one to hurt her. Once a Meiltha, always a Meiltha. There could be no redemption. He hadn't even the willpower to defy an intruder in his own mind, not until it'd nearly destroyed the one person in this world still worth fighting for.

"Merrin... I'm sorry, Merrin, I'm sorry," he whispered, over and over, again and again. But she was gone. It was too late.

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Branches whipped at her face, reached to grasp with dry, thorny fingers at her tunic. Harsh flakes of snow, like sand, were blowing through the bare trees, stinging her face and mixing with the tears there. A whiplike shoot slapped at her cheek, leaving a stab of pain like a dagger.

A dagger. Spent, Merrin tripped in the undergrowth and fell to hands and knees. A dagger.

He tried to kill you.

"No!" She meant it as a cry, but the word broke from Merrin's lips in a whisper. Not Kendath. Oh, gods, not Kendath - why? Why?

Now she was shaking with the cold, trembling uncontrollably. Images and sensations burst into her mind with agonizing clarity. She could feel his fingers brushing her cheek, moving to her chin, his arms around her. Memory of the embrace she'd craved in her fear was no longer memory of protection. In her mind, deadly steel brushed the back of her neck like a kiss. Kiss, embrace, caress - all twisted, all wrong from what they should be, all as cold as the wind that stung her face with hard grains of ice. All betrayals.

As if running from the haunting recollections could force them to leave her alone, Merrin staggered to her feet and broke from the tangle of forest. A field of snow stretched before her, illuminated by the pale blur of the moon in the black void of sky. The wind attacked her, standing unprotected in the barren wintry night, and the thought of raising her arms to hug them around herself for warmth only brought more recollections crashing down. Tears numbed her cheeks, made frigid by the icy air.

He tried to kill you.

Again, the denial was a whispered word. Merrin raised her hands to her face, feeling tears leak from between her fingers. She pulled them away and the fingers of her right hand were smeared with blood. Somewhere, her mind mechanically noted that the last slap from the twig had broken skin across her cheekbone.

Letting her hands fall, Merrin raised her head to the wind. It drove snow into her eyes, stung the cut on her cheek, numbed her nearly to her very core, because she didn't want to feel it. It was too much. For the first time, she understood Garthag and his denunciation of emotion... love... as weakness. Because it was love that made tears spill down her cheeks. Love that had driven the knife into her heart, love that twisted it, and love that writhed in agony as her ruthless thoughts pounded like heartbeats. How many times? How many times had the words been on her lips, a beat away from utterance, held back by the least of doubts? How many times had she almost told him? I love you, Kendath. I love you.

Merrin, I need to tell you something. "I need to tell you something," she repeated in a broken whisper. "I need to tell you something." The wind whipped the words away, but she knew them. She knew them. With the wind at her back, Merrin turned around. The forest stretched up, steeply, to climb the sides of the towering mountain. The green of the pines was black by moonlight, and frosted with snow.

He tried to kill you. "I need to tell you something," she repeated like a shield against the truth of it, wondering with strange detachment if the words were all that held her back from the brink of utter despair. Laboured steps through the deepening snow took her back. Once within the trees, the stinging snow softened in its harshness. Still every step was a battle with the cold, the cold inside and out, and every breath hurt like the same dagger that had lain glittering in the snow.

She would not give up. I need to tell you something.

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The breeze had escalated into a wind that tossed tiny fragments of ice and whipped dead pine needles across the snow. The trees loomed, striping the forest with shadows within deeper shadows, their edges smeared by a blur of moonlight no brighter than the sullen stars. Somehow, this illumination didn't sharpen the lines but smudged them instead. Kendath might as well have stumbled through the trees blindfolded.

Move. Keep moving. White snow splotched the black profiles of pines, their shapes bent like emaciated men in the darkness. Branches like bony fingers shivered in the whispers of wind, and the rattling of their needles raked chills down Kendath's neck. His toe caught on something jutting out of the snow. He lurched forward, just barely managing to catch himself on the thin trunk of the nearest conifer. He braced himself there for a moment, catching his breath, as his surroundings spun around his head.

She trusted you.

With a guttural snarl, he detached himself and broke into a run, in and out among the twisting shadows, his boots skidding on the snow but his momentum propelling him on. Anything to escape - anything to flee from the ever-hovering presence behind him, to be free from the memory of crimson eyes one moment and blue eyes the next - those flat blue eyes that locked stares with him and mutely demanded, Why? Why? Why?

He recalled the last time he'd run like this, through these same forests. Over ten years ago - had it really been that long? He hadn't known Merrin, then. But he had known his father, and he had known the burning temple, with its lustful flames that'd licked long trails of smoke across the heavens. He'd known the betrayal of the gods.

There was nothing to know now. Nothing but the slap of the snow against his boots and the wind freezing his sweat to his brow. He had to keep moving. Had to keep -

Everything fell away beneath him. The gorge yawned at his feet, and the river within frothed sluggishly in the cold. He stood upon a lip of rock jutting out over the eager chasm. How perfectly balanced... how perfectly delicate... How long he stood there he didn't know, but when he resumed moving at last, it was to turn, following the edge of the gorge, and begin to walk.

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Stinging snow. Tears, threatening to freeze on her face. Exhaustion that made her limbs heavy and blurred the stark white of the snow and the jagged black shadows of the trees into grey. Merrin collapsed against a birch tree whose naked branches reached like a skeleton to the black sky, which seemed no longer dotted with stars, but veiled by snow. She raised her face to stare up at oblivion. The blackness could have convinced her that no sun existed; that no sun ever had.

Too numb to feel the pain the movement could have brought - pain both physical and mental - she wrapped her arms around her chest and kept walking. Unbidden, disjointed memories floated to the surface of her mind, made irregular by the grief that she held back only by the most fragile of barriers. She remembered sea air blowing into her face, a deck rocking beneath her feet, unreasoning panic at the thought of losing him. The words I need you.

So close. But she'd never told him. She'd never been brave enough to push past the walls he erected against her and admit that yes, she was in love.

Is this bravery? she asked the silent skies in anguish. When everything you love is taken away and you have to keep going when there's no one, no one left to lean on? I never asked for this. I trusted you. I trusted that you would take care of me.

Tears were streaking silently down her cheeks again. Merrin didn't have the stamina to stop and wipe them away before they were turned chill by the wind. Where was the redwood...where was she going...why was she here...when did the endless night dawn? Did it ever? No, despair answered dully. It never ends. It only grows darker and darker until the hope of dawn is nothing but a memory. Why hope?

The Merrin who'd flung defiance in the face of even death, who'd given dying villagers faith, would have seen the lie she told herself. But the Merrin of now was exhausted, becoming more spent with every frozen tear she shed, and this Merrin couldn't separate the truth from the lies any more. There were too many. Too many lies, and truth might well have been a single flake of snow among the millions, for all that Merrin could find it to raise as a beacon.

Why was she still stumbling through the storm? The thought fought its way to the surface of her mind, relentlessly repeating over and over. I need to tell you something. "I love you," she whispered, as if afraid that she'd forget the words. Those words drove her up, up, to the edge of the precipice that yawned, its voice the edges of ice that crashed in the brook below. She cast it barely a look. What drew her eyes, what made her gulp the frigid air even as it increased her uncontrollable shivering, were the half-filled footsteps in the snow. The footsteps that followed the edge of the gorge, away from the redwood.

With some last reserve of energy that she didn't know she possessed, Merrin broke into a run, her footfalls muffled by the snow and her frequent gasps for breath somehow smothered by the silence.

It wasn't far.

The silent black-clad silhouette, whose shape broke distinctly from the rest of the black night, had his back turned. He was walking away. Walking away from her.

Renewed despair choked in her throat, but Merrin had no more tears. Perhaps the little pain she could feel past the numbness was hope. Idiot, her mind told her bleakly. Don't hope. She'd been an idiot, all this time. She still was.

He tried to kill you.

"Kendath," she whispered, stepping forward one more time.

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