Footfalls behind him. Muffled, urgent, and punctuated by ragged gasps of breath. It had come. The ever-hovering presence, its breath a brittle trickle of ice down his neck - at last, it had caught up with him. But which one was it? Crimson eyes or blue? Not blue. Not her. Let them be crimson. Commander Rolan he could wrench out his falchion on. The Lich he could throw himself upon with renewed fury, hacking and slashing and exacting retribution for every crime the creature had ever committed.

Silence. The footfalls had ceased. Kendath kept walking, his stare nailed on the flawlessly smooth blanket of snow ahead, his fist flexing beside his falchion. Let it be the Lich. Let it be the Lich... But he knew, even before he heard his name, a whisper almost lost on a breath of wind, that it could only be Merrin. The real Merrin, not the phantom that had haunted his steps. Merrin, who'd followed him all this way. Merrin, who stood behind him now as though his dagger had never caressed her neck. As though he'd never been the instrument of her destruction. Why? How could she bring herself to come near him?

It struck him then. It struck him as so lucidly clear, as clear as the fangs of ice hanging from the branches - so clear that he marveled at how it'd never occurred to him before. Phantom Merrin. Real Merrin. What difference did it make? Their faces were one and the same. He had but to turn around and be impaled by the crystalline spear of that gaze - that gaze still carved on the bare surface of his memory. Blue eyes. White fire. Chosen of the Gods, whose shoulders bore the hope of the world. And he had tried to destroy it.

He didn't fear white fire. It was clean. It was purification, like the fire that'd blossomed from the skies to cleanse a village infested by infidelity. Could it save him? Yes. Yes, he knew, it can. As long as Merrin wields it, it can. Then, I'm sorry. So sorry... And he wanted to stop. He wanted to turn around and see her and tell her. Tell her what? Everything. Everything I've never had the courage to say. Thank you, Merrin. You're beautiful, Merrin. I love you, Merrin.

The words pounded against his chest. I'm ready to die now, Merrin.

His feet kept moving him forward. His boots sank deeper into the snow with each heavy step. He steeled himself for the flames as he heard himself say, his voice colder than the wind that carried it over his shoulder, "If you've come to kill me, do it now. I'm ready."

_________________

The knife was twisting, twisting - his every word wrenched at it one more time. She stood rigid in the deepening snow, gasping breath past the pain of it. If you've come to kill me, do it now. Never. Never him - because through fire and ice and grief, pain, loss, he'd been there. He'd stood beside her when her dragon was buried in rock, when the city she called home flew Meiltha pennants from once-white towers stained with blood.

And now he was walking away.

"I didn't," she said, her spent voice threatening to break. "Stop - Kendath, please -"

Her feet would not obey her, would not carry her after him. They might well have been rooted in the snow, because all she could do was watch as he walked away from her. Gods, she cried out silently, I can't, I can't, I need him. Silence. I love him.

He tried to kill you.

"Kendath!" This time it tore from her throat in a plea. The tracks of tears streaked her cheeks, but there were no tears left to make her words shake with sobs. Merrin raised a trembling hand to her lips. Now. Now, or there was no hope, and she would be forever standing alone against the dark. The dark that would break her. I thought you'd be with me, she wanted to cry in anguish. I told you not to let go, on that mountaintop, at the Lost Battle. Don't! Don't let go!

Instead, she raised her head and let the wind whip her hair back and sting her tear-streaked cheeks as thought it could numb away the pain. "I didn't," she said again. "I came - I came because -"

Cold mountaintop, with his arms around her. Midsummer's Eve, laughing with him in the sand. After the siege of Vryngard, sobbing into his chest. On the third test, his fingers drying her tears. No tears left, now.

"I came because I love you," she whispered.

_________________

For a moment he had actually thought of going trough with it, attacking Kendath, who had suddenly almost as, if against his own will tried to kill Merrin. How had he not seen this coming? Mind controlling the one person she trusted the most in the this world at it`s and her own darkest hour? How brittle and weak had he become, not being able to deduct such a simple maneuver by the Lich? It was as the old Garthag would have said, the one, that still kept whispering subtle advice into his ear from the bottom of the darkest pit.

Garthag breathed heavily as his heart was pounding quickly as he had almost attacked them already, the most vital pieces of board, but for a moment one of them was not his to move nor the gods either. However he doubted even with the fastest and most effective spell for the situation in his mind he could have made it in time. He could have only silently prayed in his mind for Kendath not to do the same as he had, the one act, that would scar his soul forever.

Killing the one person you love the most in this world was an act unforgivable and only had thorns hidden in it, the dagger would have struck both, not only Merrin. However they both would have been left in misery, in life and death, not to speak of the fate of what they were trying to achieve. Garthag stared at his own trembling hands, that had delivered the final blow to into the heart of his precious Lily, such a tragedy should not ever come to pass again.

Quietly, unwillingly his feet began to tread after the two and tracking them to farther away near the edge of a gorge. Quietly, somewhat stunned he stood only some feet away from the meeting, but did not make a sound from the shadow of the tree covering him. He could not be seen my normal sight and neither of them were paranoid enough to continuously check their surroundings.

If things turned wrong he would step in, detain either one of them and both to prevent another tragedy from taking places, these two had seen enough of them.

_________________

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!

Time stopped. Every step that he took, every crush of the snow beneath his boots, beat upon his temples and rebounded back to him a thousand times in the hollow silence. The wind had died. The last echoes of Merrin's words hung suspended in the air like shards of ice. I love you. He clung to every syllable. He grasped each falling shard by the tips and watched them slip through his fingers. I love you.

How many times had he held her and breathed those silent words into her hair? How many times had he looked her in the eyes and yearned for all those unsaid secrets to burst free and scatter her tears like white doves in the breeze? How different it sounded, dropping from her lips and not his, yet each inflection of that tiny phrase could have melted the snow at their feet and sprayed beads of dew to spring rains. I love you, she'd said. I love you, I love you, I love you...

His boots thudded one last time. He remained there unmoving, feeling the wind pull at his shirt, hearing the river slosh in the gorge so far below. It sharpened to stark clarity that long-ago moment... Standing at the prow of the Albatross. Raising his face to the bitter tang of the sea and bracing his feet against the pitching deck beneath him. He'd sworn never to hurt her. He'd sworn... he'd sworn to end it.

Somewhere beyond the gray mountains, the towers of Dey'tarn lifted their heads to a sky of silent stars. Somewhere under the turrets where sunburst pennants had once flown, an empty temple wept tears of shimmering moonstone. His father's last breath had been a blessing - no, a plea. A plea for the gods to spare his son. They'd spared him, all right. They'd spared him for a purpose. And now he knew. He knew what he had to do.

Kendath's own tears were acid against his eyes, but the cold froze them to his cheeks before they could fall. He had sworn, that long ago day that he'd stared out to sea. Enough promises had been shattered. This would not become one of them.

Merrin needed him no longer. And he knew - knew all too well - that only one emotion in the world was powerful enough to make her see.

"Everything," he began quietly, his gaze riveted on the colorless snow before him, his voice reeling on the edge of a chasm that would swallow him forever. "Everything - every word, every gesture, every move - that you've ever received from me... has been a lie." He spun around to face her, and the clear lance of her gaze nearly staggered him where he stood. Nearly, but not quite. Slowly advancing, he continued, "This entire time, Merrin, you naive fool. You never knew, did you? You never suspected. Did you honestly think that you could... you could seduce me with your pretty speeches? Did you honestly think I might be moved by this sentiment... this thing you call love?" He tossed back his head and laughed - just like he'd laughed so many instances before, in the early times, when the warm blood pouring over his hands had become unbearable. He laughed, and every mirthless rasp tore out his chest, his very heart.

He was the assassin. He felt nothing, killed for nothing. He looked into her eyes one last time. One last time. And he twisted the blade home.

"You are nothing to me."

Merrin's hatred for the Shadowers would be nothing compared to her hatred for him. She would hate him until the sun fell from the skies and eternity splintered among the stars. She would hate him forever, and forever was long enough to keep her from pursuing him, to keep her from remembering his name.

And as Kendath walked away from her, walked away from her one last time, he could feel the blood staining his hands, his arms, his chest. Never would it wash away.

_________________

Something was breaking. Something was shattering, millions of shards of blown glass ringing endlessly against stone. Every piece was a dagger, every piece a tiny knife. The ringing was louder, louder, then deafening, and Merrin was pressing her hands over her ears, crying out with the pain. The shards whipped into her face on a cold wind - not cold enough to numb her - and tore at her skin, and she moved her hands to shield her face.

The knife was gone. It no longer existed. Were those the tiny shards, tiny blades - had the blade shattered beyond retrieval?

Or was it her heart that lay in a million million pieces?

She opened her eyes. The snow, like daggers, stung them. Unfeeling, she raised her face to the unforgiving malice of the wind. It spoke the words over and over again, and every sound swept crystal shards to the four winds. ...naive fool...seduce me...this thing you call love. All it told her of that were snatches, but the last words were deafening no matter the intensity with which she pressed her hands over her ears. You are nothing to me.

Her hands moved, first covering her face, then her ears, then her eyes again. If she tried to stifle the sounds, they echoed louder in her head. If she tried to block the sight in the darkness, it replayed on the inside of her eyelids. Over and over, she saw him breaking the fragile sphere of glass that was her heart and flinging the pieces in her face. Every time, he turned to walk away. Every time she knelt, crumpled in the snow where her knees had given way, and hoped with all the pieces of her shattered heart that he would turn around, and the viper's hiss of his words would be whipped away by the wind. Like her nightmares. Her nightmares.

"Wake up, wake up," she gasped. "Wake up! Kendath!"

Any moment now. Any moment now he'd shake her shoulder, and she'd roll over and press her face to his chest and cry because she'd been so terrified, and the nightmare would fade, and he'd rock her and stroke her hair and tell her that it was all right, because he'd always be there. He'd never leave her.

He'd tell her all the lies that he'd told her since he'd known her.

When she raised her face to the wind once more, she knew there would be no waking. Not from this nightmare. "I trusted you," she whispered through lips blue from the cold. How could the words keep tearing her apart when her heart was already broken? "I trusted you."

She whispered his name one more time, feeling the word meld with snow and blow to the skies with one last caress of her cheek.

Somewhere in her consciousness, a dull instinct forced her to her feet and told her that she would freeze if she stayed here. It led her back, taking her hand and guiding her blindly through the snow. It placed her palm on the bark of the redwood and opened the door, and made her stumble down the stairs.

At the bottom, it let her go. Like everything else. Like everything else, it left her alone.

A foreign name brushed her mind. She spoke it. "Adeila?"

Adeila. Adeila whose hands had mended her side and who voice had told her to rest. She remembered now. Again the wave of anguish broke. Merrin collapsed to her knees, seeing torchlight waver in front of her eyes like a ghost. "He's gone," she said, and saying the words aloud made her believe them. "Gone. Forever."

Forever. He tried to kill you. You are nothing to me.

_________________

Garthag gasped for breath at one point as with every moment he felt like he wanted to attack the two idiots, he was now solely guided by his anger due to the idiocy of these two. He had finally struck the dagger home, in a manner, that Garthag had not expected, but he knew the consequences would mean the same. Kendath and Merrin, both would be doomed to perish from now on as, if the king did not have any need for the queen on the board. Either Kendath had been faking it all along, which would have even amazed Garthag as his acting skills and reactions would have been commendable. Yet letting her come this far as Meiltha had been on their tail for a long time made no sense, not the shadowers either as they should have been more aggressive, if Kendath had been under their command.

Something did not add up and the only source of information was Kendath, who was currently walking some feet before him. Garthag openly admitted to himself of his own sadistic nature as he thought this would prove to be fun, the years of cruelty could not be washed away so easily. However this also had another meaning as he had been fascinated by Kendath`s transformation from the start and here would be the perfect way to solve the cause.

Garthag stopped and concentrated, not knowing whether the assassin knew he was being tailed, but Garthag saw no risk at the moment. In a few moment and mumbles Garthag released his spell, encasing Kendath in a ball of webs, which glued him to the ground due to their magical nature. They could be cut even with normal steel, but mainly the idea of the spell was to stop the enemies hands from moving and tying them against his body. Garthag smirked slightly and snapped his fingers, appearing into sight and not beginning with words, but a few claps of his hands together. Quietly his steps drew closer to his victim, he stopped his walk and claps when he arrived next to Kendath.

"Bravo my deceitful friend, indeed a masterful act. You fooled even me and you even made me think the ever resourceful Meiltha assassin was dead, but he was never gone was he? To even deceive my eyes, my intellect, I commend you for that. To get near to Merrin like that and gain her trust, complete trust and love would have been the final ideal position to assassinate her.

However... you aren`t that sloppy, your `blade` hasn`t at all hasn`t it? But yet you miraculously fail to kill her? And where would you go after failing to kill her? Nowhere."

Garthag inquired with a calm and steady tone, but his fist was tempted to pound the living daylight out of Kendath. There could not be any explanation for this, if Kendath had been truly an agent of either of their foes he could have acted ages ago. There had been too many chances and opportunities, he like a certain prince Feldwar had no doubt faced the same fate. This however was only a guess and as part of that guess fit the picture of not carrying out the kill.

Garthag spoke as, if he was going trough the events out loud and trying to make some sense of it all with Kendath. However the situation was more like an interrogation where Garthag did not allow Kendath to have a word in. Garthag rubbed his forehead with a bothered face, but there was the same kind of coldness as before, it was true, the darkness had not died out completely.

"No... forgive me I speak not in the right sense, you have already killed her from the inside and all, that remains is for her to die in the hands of her enemies physically. By crushing her heart, you have masterfully sentenced her to death I presume and not even I can save her from such a fate...

I saw this coming, your love becoming an obstacle, but I never thought it would manifest to such a devastating effect... However something is not right here, I watched your chats and realized you seem aren`t that kind of person. You are not a coward are you!? Nor would you kill the one person you loved the most, you wouldn`t dare bring such pain to yourself and most of all to Merrin...

It is the worst kind of pain... I should know as I have gone trough it in fact, I killed my little sister. I stabbed a dagger right trough her beating heart at her own request and at the same time I realized I cut myself even more deeply ... yet you could not become like me, but you will become a coward and allow Merrin to suffer before her inevitable death? I wonder what Gyre would say? I wonder whether you in retrospect would come to regret this decision?"

Garthag said gesturing with his hand towards the direction they had come from as, if to say he still had a chance to take things back and that he had not fallen as far as he could have. Hope, was that what Garthag was trying to offer to this man? How very noble of him.

_________________

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!

Adeila had only barely been sleeping when the others had begun stirring. She considered herself an individual with very few needs, but rather unfortunately, she was discovering that a bed happened to be among those needs. Thus, when both Merrin and Kendath abruptly got up and exited the tunnel, Adeila was fully aware, though not inclined to do anything about it. If they had something to discuss, then that was their matter and not hers. It was not until Garthag made to follow them that she donned her own cloak and left with the intent of telling him to let them be.

She regretted the decision the moment she stepped outside. The snow had fallen quite a bit more heavily since earlier, and the closest things to shoes that she owned were leather sandals that provided very little protection against the freezing snow. That, compounded with the fact that Garthag was already nowhere to be seen and none of the nearby tracks seemed fresh, was enough to convince her to simply return to their comparatively warm shelter and wait for the others to return.


It was quite a few minutes later when the concealed door opened once more and Merrin stumbled in. Only Merrin. Neither Kendath nor Garthag was anywhere to be seen. Adeila rose to her feet even as Merrin collapsed, moving to support her. Snow clung to Merrin's hair and clothes, both of which were practically soaked through. The young woman was literally almost blue from the cold, and the fact that she was not shivering made Adeila more concerned, rather than less.

"Shh...shh..." she murmured, smoothing Merrin's wet hair and offering a comforting embrace. "First things first; we simply must get you warm. Boots off." She pressed the girl's hands - more like blocks of ice, from the feel of them - firmly between her own and began rubbing in an attempt to restore some modicum of warmth. When she was finished there, she moved to the feet, bringing over the torch for the small flame that it provided.

"Now," Adeila said calmly once she was satisfied that Merrin was not going to freeze to death then and there, "try again. Who is gone forever?"

For a few paralyzed seconds, Kendath had no idea what hit him. One moment he was walking, striding with increasing urgency along the edge of the gorge, and the next he was sprawled flat on his back, his limbs plastered to his sides. He reacted on reflex, thrashing against the threads wound around his chest, his arms, his legs. The bands bit through his sleeves and into the skin of his arms. Still they wouldn't break, and he strained his neck to get a better look. Silver gleamed under a pale moon. It wasn't rope. It was silk. Magic at work.

Footsteps in the snow. Crunch. Crunch. And clapping, too. He froze. White robes swished in his peripheral vision. He cocked his head the farthest it would turn against the threads curled around his neck. A single glance told him everything he didn't want to see.

His arms were glued to his thighs, and his first instinct was to grope for the strap of poisoned darts he knew to be concealed there. Nothing. Curse it, he should have remembered. The strap was on his weapons belt - the same place it had always been since he'd stripped off his leather on the island. What did Garthag want? Garthag couldn't kill him tonight - where Merrin had failed, Garthag couldn't succeed. But before he could open his mouth to scream what in the abyss was going on, the mage began talking - launched into a speech, more like - and Kendath slumped.

Garthag said much. Too much, possibly. Maybe not enough. The entire time, Kendath's gaze was riveted on the blackness far above. The stars gleamed like the blades of daggers, or perhaps the shards of ice that had once fallen from Merrin's lips. Like steel. Like ice. Like Garthag's eyes as he hefted the frozen stake and prepared to plunge it the deepest that it could possibly go. He was talking too fast for Kendath to comprehend it all, but he could hear... he could still hear... You have already killed her... crushing her heart... her inevitable death... The words resonated in the silence.

Shut up, you *beep*, shut up! His heartbeat was back again, roaring in his ears. He battled for every breath against the tangle of webs stifling his chest.

Like steel. Like ice.

"You're wrong," he said, evenly. His breath had been found. He countered Garthag's gaze with an unwavering stare of his own. "I do have faith in her. And she has faith in the gods - something that you and I sorely lack." He looked the mage up and down. "Love. You once called it a weakness. Maybe it is, and maybe it's not. But you stopped feeling it long ago, didn't you. Someone like you shouldn't be standing here."

_________________

Merrin gasped a shuddering, convulsive breath, then another. Torchlight melded with blackness and turned crimson, spinning, distorting Adeila's face. She wanted to wrap her arms around herself and be lost to the world, withdraw and not feel the pain that was tearing her apart, the pain that even the ice couldn't numb. You are nothing to me. The wind couldn't reach her, but still she heard laughter that swelled and mocked her for her naivete and her love. This thing you call love.

Her own voice echoed, as lost as she was, in her ears. I came because I love you.

"Kendath," she whispered, clinging to the name like a sole lifeline in the storm. Her hands were not her own - they trembled between someone else's warm palms. The world fell into its relentless place no matter how she shrank from it and begged for blissful release from reality. When she next raised her eyes, crimson kept to the torch, and she could see Adeila. There was no veil of snow or stinging shards of crystal, but intense, painful clarity.

"Kendath," she said again, numbly, this time in answer to the question. Oh, gods, she was so cold - so cold - warmth started in her fingers and hurt them. Instinctively she tried to pull away. Still the world pressed in and stifled her. Adeila wouldn't let go. Because she would not look at the dark of the tunnel or the crimson of the torch, and merciful escape was withheld, Merrin fixed her eyes on the sole haven of Adeila's face.

It all spun through her head like a nightmare within a nightmare. Words choked in her throat before she could voice them, but the recollection beat against the confines of her mind. "He tried - he said -" she managed, the words unsteady and punctuated by gulps for breath that seared in her raw throat. Vaguely, like a memory, the cut across her cheekbone stung. A dagger. She must say it, she must, because the memories would drive her mad. Merrin clenched her teeth.

"He tried - to kill me," she started, the bursts of words hurting near as much as the thoughts. Some relentless urge forced the recounting to her lips. "I was so scared - I'm so scared - and he didn't, he didn't, I don't know why - oh, Adeila -"

The rest of it would not be voiced. It must. She had to say it, because the agony was unbearable. "I love him," she whispered like a confession, a last attempt to loosen the iron fist around the remnants of her heart, searching for the understanding in Adeila's face. She must make Adeila understand. "He told me - he told me -"

But the words simply would not pass her lips. A storm of tears demanded their impossible release. There were no tears left for Merrin to cry. "He's not coming back," she said again. And the pain was as unbearable as before.

_________________

"Hmh, perhaps you are right about me, perhaps I should be sleeping beneath the snowy plains of the north along with my family... It is there, that my frozen feeling of love lays and will remain. However..."

Garthag interrupted his own words with a kick into Kendath`s ribs and disgust shone off his face as he backed away from the assassin. He did not even realize his own voice had grown in anger, but for what? For Merrin`s sake? No, it was nothing like that, but the only thought it might have been Lily in her place made him furious. The thought screamed at him, made his eye blurry and made him want to punish this fool laying before him.

In the end he had always thought of Kendath as an equal, a worthy foe, but the weakling laying before him was not even worthy to be called anything. He had shrunk and withered into pathetic form of existence, but for reasons unknown and Garthag wished to solve this puzzle. It disturbed him and fed his curiosity, but it might be the death of him, if Kendath managed to escape the web at this range. There would not be anytime to cast, only a quick step and a slash, his cold blood would color the snow in a grim spree. Garthag finally pulled back his hair, that had fallen before his eyes and his breathing appeared heavy.

"I have not given you the right to look down on me! Don`t talk to me like you know more than I, you a meiltha assassin, who has never been loved by anyone and has treaded an empty existence his whole life could not see the meaning of love. Yet when you are confronted with it, blessed with it, you stab and run as, if hoping it had all been a bad dream and the one`s heart you have crushed will recover.

Are you afraid or is something else forcing your hand, for you to do so and run as, if running was the best option? As, if it was something you had truly chosen? What your answer will be shall determine your fate for I cannot allow you to tread alone anymore, you give me one reason to see you an obstacle or a problem. I will kill you right here, there will be no miracles nor gods to save you here Kendath.

It is time we brought this charade to a conclusion.... why are you running Kendath?"

Garthag said, posing Kendath with a final question, that was the only one making sense at the moment. He was running away, but from what and why Garthag did not know. Whether the answer would be satisfactory was up to Kendath alone and Garthag for one knew, that it was time to place Kendath`s motives and thoughts under suspicion.

_________________

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!

The world had gone insane.

This single line of coherence chased itself around Kendath's mind as he sprawled there, wrapped in a silk cocoon and shivering from the trickles of melted snow dribbling down his scalp. That, and the barely restrained urge to laugh. Garthag was telling him that Merrin loved him. Garthag was lecturing him on the blessing of love. Garthag was asking him - him! - why he was running. It all sounded madly ironic - hysterically ironic. What had Kendath once said to the mage, in the dimly lit room of an inn, so long ago? Something about cowardice? Feeling pain? Why should Garthag of all people be the one to care?

Whatever he'd told the mage in that inn - something about the power of humanity, of love - waved at him from across a chasm as vast as the gorge beside which he lay. Humanity and love didn't exist here, in this land of barren mountains and silent skies. Humanity and love had died long ago, ripped to shreds like the sunburst pennants no longer soaring above the gray towers. Burned to the ground like a moonstone temple.

"Why am I running?" Kendath repeated, as though mulling it over. The laughter could not contain itself, but the silken threads bound his chest too tightly. He compromised by flashing Garthag a grin. His hand, finally unstuck and now creeping under the tangle of cocoon, closed over something icily familiar. "Why am I running?"

His response came in the form of a dagger streaking toward Garthag's face. Thrown off by his awkward position, it whipped by the mage's cheek and embedded itself, quivering, into the trunk of the nearest tree.

Kendath was already launching himself to the side, away from the counterspell he knew was coming. He began rolling himself to his feet but instead tripped over the webbing around his ankles and plopped right back into the snow - and snow actually hurts, when thinly veiling solid rock. Stupid bloody mage! Another slash of his dagger freed his legs, and he was up again, the shreds of silk drifting away from his chest where he'd previously slashed it. His knees throbbed.

He stood opposite the stupid bloody mage, breathing heavily, his arm thrown back with a second dagger, as though daring Garthag to attack him. To kill him. "Leave me," he growled. "I never asked for your thoughts, so you can bloody well get out of my sight."

_________________

((You're welcome. ))

To be perfectly honest, Adeila had no idea what to say, nor could she pretend to understand. Sometimes, there were situations in which words simply would not suffice, and she never fully understood. In all her years as a healer, she had never been able to tell a child why Papa would not be coming back, or explain to a young couple why their little boy would likely never walk again. How such things happened to innocent people, she typically understood, but never why.

In this case, she was not even certain that she understood how. She had only known these people for a few days - had it truly only been that long? - but she considered herself a fairly good judge of character, in most cases. Kendath was quiet, yes, and often unsmiling, and had clearly seen and done far more than anyone deserved to endure, but he loved Merrin. Adeila was certain of it. She had seen the way his gaze worshiped the young woman every time she turned away, the slightest of smiles shared between the two. Had Merrin told her that Garthag had turned, Adeila might not have been surprised in the slightest (though the mage had proven to be no less unpredictable, of late), but Kendath? There had to be more to it than that.

Quelling her powerful sense of curiosity, Adeila voiced none of these thoughts. Where words failed, actions often compensated. She wrapped an arm around Merrin's thin shoulders, held her close like she had the child and the young couple. She whispered soothing words and let the girl grieve. Svit came over at one point and cocked a head curiously at them, but eventually just curled up in Merrin's lap and went back to sleep. They sat there for quite some time before Adeila slowly pulled away a bit.

"You need to sleep, Miss Merrin," she murmured. "Let me have a look at your side again first, if you feel that you can stay awake that long."

Traitorous, Merrin's body moved without her consent, and she was nodding numbly before she had realized what Adeila wanted. Blissful unconsciousness beckoned as the escape she craved, but somewhere in Merrin's mind she knew the waking would bring no relief. In the darkness of the tunnel beyond, her imagination conjured specters, whose insubstantial hands shattered her feeble defenses and reached to consume her. Face them, whispered some subconscious intuition. It's not over. You have to face them. You have to defeat them.

She reached for white fire, felt the presence of it flare briefly in her mind, but it was merely blinding flame. The effort nearly made her black out in earnest. "Gods," she whispered, the prayer falling in barely a desperate whisper from lips that hardly knew what they asked any more, "help me. I can't do it."

If there was an answer, she didn't hear it. Maybe the comforting arms that held her while an agony of memories pounded through her again and again was a reply in itself; but maybe it was only Adeila. Svit, tiny reptilian form curled in her lap, made the echoes of happiness - happiness snuffed out like the briefest of candles - erect their feeble walls, soon utterly demolished, against the anguish. Tiny silver wings spread on the dragon in her belt pouch, but Merrin didn't reach for it. Silver and diamond were not the dragon that was so far away, and whose comfort must be fleeting and insubstantial.

Exhaustion was moments away from overwhelming her completely. With fingers that, no longer cold, trembled only barely, she lifted the edge of her tunic for Adeila's gentle hands to probe at the dull ache in her side. Gods, she asked once more, give me strength.

Maybe the wave of sleep that rolled up to consume her was an answer. But maybe not.

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Thin red line, it opened, breathed and bled, creating a grimace on Garthag`s right cheek. The blood slowly squiggled it`s way down his cheek and dropped onto his white robes, coloring them in crimson red. He raised his thin fingers to grasp a drop onto their tips as an amused smile rose onto his face.

"You managed to struggle free of my spell, that is the least I expected of you all tough I miscalculated the time of your release from their hold, ah you cannot always win. However I am disappointed, you did not follow trough, you did not strike. You have become softer than I had thought, the one man, whom you still loathe, no matter how human he has proven to be. You still do not kill him? Yes, I suppose if I had not suffered, that outburst back there I wouldn`t be standing here, would I?

Instead I would find myself in a pool of my own blood, it is so much easier to kill a monster than a human."

Garthag said with a melancholic tone as he turned away from Kendath and did as he had wished, but stopped to share a few final words with Kendath. This might be, and most definitely would be, the final time they would meet and the irony of the situation was overwhelming. Garthag would walk back to the entrance to join Merrin, to help her complete her quest, despite for selfish reasons and Kendath would run away. The blade of irony was sharper than ever and it amused Garthag to no end.

"Run away little dog, run away and never look back because the past will come to haunt you, if you dare even peek over your shoulder. Whether you live or survive is no longer relevant, all that matters is how you choose to spend, that time before the Shadowers or the Meiltha kill you."

Garthag said with an amused expression on his face as he waved his hand as a goodbye to Kendath, in the belief, that they would never see each others again. Truly, Kendath had been an interesting subject to travel with and a worthy foe non the least, but unfortunately they did not part in the way Garthag had intended for them to.

Always he had imagined seeing Kendath`s blade gleaming with dark blood as it had pierced his body and would eventually cast a spell of never ending rest upon him. A shame.

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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!

Kendath didn't know how long he stood there, watching the spot where Garthag had melted into the forest, letting the wind sigh upon the bare skin of his hands and face. Something clattered onto an exposed patch of rock. Without taking his stare off the trees, he bent to pick up the dagger, slipped out from nerveless fingers. He heard the hiss of its blade sliding back into its sheath, followed by the thud of his boots carrying him to the edge of the trees. The dagger that had slashed open Garthag's cheek jerked back into his grasp. Blood smeared the steel. Her blood. It could have been her blood.

Coward. Little dog. The gods had spared him for a purpose.

He hurled the weapon into the gorge.

When his mind failed, his feet knew the way back to the cedar. The wind mustered again and stung him, drove him back with volleys of snow that blurred his vision. He tossed up a sleeve to shield his eyes. His flesh couldn't feel the scrape of fabric. His arm dropped back to his side like a wooden block. His heels dug into the snow, and finally he collapsed against a massive trunk that cracked open beneath his weight. Warm gulps of air burned his lungs. He crouched on the landing and waited for his breathing to steady, for the numbness to drain out of his limbs.

A flicker of orange drew him down the steps and into a silence broken singularly by the sputter of the dying torch. Merrin lay curled just outside the radius of firelight. He brushed past Garthag and edged around Adeila to stand beside her, contenting himself with watching her sleep. The rise and fall of her chest. The softness of her features, girlish in slumber. One last time. Good-bye, he said, and in the solitude of his mind, she heard him and smiled.

It was over. He tore his eyes away. The maw of the tunnel beckoned.

He'd traversed this passage once before, but never in total darkness. As the sanctuary of torchlight shrank smaller and smaller behind him, the black throat ahead gaped wider, an invitation into the belly of the beast. He pressed close against the wall and drove himself onwards. The tunnel seemed to drag on indefinitely. Sometimes it curved, and other times the ground dipped up or down with the contours of the earth. Time had dissipated. His sole indications that he moved - that he even lived - were the rough stone scratching his fingertips and the rasp of his breath in the stale air. All else had become illusion.

At last, the strain in his ankles sensed the upward slope. A cold droplet dribbled down his scalp - water? He remembered now. The tunnel, which would eventually rise to the crown of a knoll, had to first pass beneath a lake in the center of Dey'tarn. Ascending out from this lake would be the temple, pinnacling a sphere of land called the Ivory Isle. The lake was sacred. He had learned that the hard way, one sweltering afternoon in midsummer.

A stub of his toe against rock reminded him, an instant too late, of the second set of winding stairs that ended the tunnel. Muttering an obscenity or two, he groped to the top of the steps and leaned against the wood. It gave way.

Kendath tumbled. He didn't tumble far - just far enough for a collision with grass to hurt his rear end. This time the crack, carved into a gnarled trunk, was above him, veiled by a curtain of branches that murmured in the breeze. Beyond the sweep of the weeping willow, water glittered under wan moonlight. The expanse was bridged by a flagstone path. He recognized the view from here. Another sacred tree. Another lesson he'd learned the hard way.

He scrambled onto the island's loamy shore and cast his gaze out over the lake. The flagstone bridge, which should have been luminous with lanterns hanging from its sides, was misted in gloom. The only light he could see winked from the opposite shore. From streets swarming with Meiltha.

Flame and Thorn pennants would never - could never - leer over the Ivory Isle, the solitary haven in this madness. He turned back to the willow. Around its thick trunk, he glimpsed a familiar gleam of marble. His heart caught.

And the temple would have stretched into the night, the diadem of its dome sparkling under the silken skies. The white path would have flowed through a garden of blossoming trees and fragile night lilies, and he would have ascended the steps between the columns to enter through a vast archway.

There he would have stood, at the start of a walk spanning the breadth of the chamber, and the moonstone would have guided him to the foot of a marble dais. There he would have faced the gods.

But the sight before him now was no house of gods.

Here and there, remnants of the white path suffocated underneath snarls of weeds. He tracked them, following them between splintered trees hunched in their own shadows, up to the front steps of the temple itself.

The pillars had toppled over, along with a protrusion of the roof, blocking the archway from sight. He climbed over the debris and found an opening where a portion of the wall had crumbled. A smooth surface caught him when he vaulted over to the other side. Moonstone floor. Illumination, silver and filtering through a sunburst hole in the ceiling, set it shimmering like ripples in a pond. Then the clouds blotted out the moon again, and the enchantment was gone.

From the platform spanning the front of the temple towered twelve gods of equal majesty. He crossed the distance, his steps echoing throughout the barren chamber, and came to a stop three paces before the center of the dais. Within those three paces was a dusty channel slicing through the floor, parallel to the dais and isolating it from the rest of the chamber. The channel had once been flooded with water from fountains in the walls. It represents a river, his father had told him, long ago, a gap that you must ford in your quest to find the gods. But the river had already dried.

High above him, the nearest god's cheeks were hollowed, the nose chipped. Scorch marks scarred the regal brow. Now that he looked, the marks were everywhere. Everywhere he flung his gaze, he could see the burns, streaking the marble walls, smearing the blue moonstone with black. Stigmas branding a tainted temple. Fire and ash.

Kendath fell to his knees.

Dragonfire. Dragonfire lit the candle on the dais, and dragonfire would keep it lit for the rest of eternity, as a beacon forever symbolizing the hope of the gods. When the candle toppled - knocked over by the fury of thunderstorms clashing in the heavens - it was dragonfire that roared against the marble confines and kindled the night like a fallen star.

Amrinev reached out, and Kendath clutched at his father's fingers, and with his final sigh the High Priest said -

"Gods keep my son." The words trickled from his lips in a barely audible whisper. His chin slumped onto his chest. "Father. Father, I have failed. I'm sorry. I don't..." He swallowed. "I don't expect forgiveness."

As always, the gods responded with silence.

Of course. What had he expected - the heavens to part and a voice to ring down from above? Slowly, he climbed to his feet and turned away.

Arches similar to the one at the entrance lined the wall on his left. Most of them had collapsed, buried beneath mounds of charred rubble, but a few remained intact. It didn't matter - they all led to the same place. Their soaring edges cast heavy shadows upon the corridor on the other side.

He approached one of them but hesitated before passing through. Don't look back. Why should he? The gods never answered. Don't look back. He grit his teeth and propelled himself forward, and was halfway through the arch when he caught a glimmer in the corner of his eye. Don't look back...

The clouds had parted. A single shaft of silver was lancing through the sunburst in the ceiling, its lips caressing the shining floor and moving up, up to kiss the heads of the gods. Radiant, defying all reason, the gods lifted their alabaster visages, and they were no longer carved of marble but of molten moonlight. Arms ceased to be arms but became the blazing wings of dragons. Hope, they said.

Hope.

He closed his eyes, and white brilliance seared his eyelids. When he reopened them, it was gone. The gods were gone.

Hope.

He turned into the archway and allowed the darkness to swallow him.

Gloom hung, a perpetual shroud, upon the corridor beyond. Kendath lit one of the lanterns affixed to the walls and held it out before him as he made his way past more arches leading to rooms on both sides - living quarters for clergy, as well as studies in which blackened smudges were all that remained of the bookshelves. Finally, he halted at the end of the corridor, in front of a blasted frame that had formerly been fitted with the only door in the entire temple. This door, in the brighter days of its existence, had always been locked. No amount of begging could budge Amrinev to tell him why.

Beneath the moonstone of a now tainted temple.

Ahead of the threshold yawned a staircase. It dove down, down into a murk barely kept at bay by the flickering lantern. The plunge wasn't deep. At the bottom, striped by twisting orange from the flame, was another door, scorched but solid. He offered it an experimental shove. It creaked eagerly open. He hastened through, raising the lantern to reveal -

Crates. Barrels.

He'd stumbled into a storage room.

The lantern swung around, tossing the glow of its fire on the wooden ceiling beams, the piles of boxes littering every corner. He charged forward, brushing aside a cobweb, and waved the lantern in every cranny of the room, searching for some kind of clue - a hidden entrance, perhaps, or a sliding panel - because he'd been so certain, so certain, and if it wasn't here he had no idea - and why were his pants warm?

Gleaming ebony, the obsidian key sprang out from the pocket of his breeches and clinked onto the floor. He picked it up. It singed him. He dropped it. He stared at it for a while, then tried again. Singe. Drop. Singe. He threw it across the room. It struck the far wall and bounced right back onto the floor. He swore and trudged off to retrieve it. As he stooped a fourth time, the lantern swung near some odd reliefs on the wall, half hidden behind a carton labeled "salted pork."

No. He peered closer. Not just reliefs.

They were dragon heads. Three of them, a little bigger than his fist, their snouts projecting from the wooden panels. Ivory, granite, obsidian. Embedded within each gaping jaw was the tiniest key slot. Three slots.

A portal, in three, to the citadel of shadow.

The key, now pleasantly warm, slid between the fangs of the rightmost dragon. Perfect fit. Wall panels shifted, melted, ground together to form a flawlessly rounded archway, no different from any other in the temple. But this time, the darkness beyond the entrance was complete.

If he'd allowed himself time to think, he might not have done it. He might have hesitated, and the hesitation might have lasted a second or a minute or an hour, and by that point all the resolve would have spluttered out from his legs, and he would have flopped onto his back, a spineless, landed fish, and refused to go on. He might have lost everything. He might have lost himself.

So he didn't think. Mindless, instinctive, he simply leaned forward.

The portal closed in.

_________________

When Merrin woke, the blackness was complete. At first, she lay very still, listening to nothing except the pounding of her heart. Something small and scaled moved beneath her hand when she raised herself on one elbow, and she felt the flick of a tiny tail on her fingertips. Some instinct, vague memory, made her grope for the torch she knew was there. The faintest of coals blinked from a cocoon of ash, and she cupped her hand and blew to reignite it. Weak flame cast deep shadows against the walls.

And recollection, like a monster lurking in the shadows, smote her with a crippling blow.

In Kendath's arms. Shaking against cold and fear. Ephemeral comfort began to warm her - and then she felt steel caress her neck. Cold. So cold. Stumbling through snow, looking for him, finding tracks - "I love you," whispered Merrin, numb - and then the knife twisted unbearably in her heart and it shattered beyond repair, and when she turned there was snow in endless dark. Skeletal fingers reached and she could not even scream -

Nightmares. Nightmares. What was real - what was false, visions of terror? Frantic, Merrin raised the torch, spun in the confined space. Garthag. Adeila. No Kendath. Once more she swiveled, hoping against hope, taking a few faltering steps down the black passage of tunnel that yawned before her. The torch flared unexpectedly into brilliance.

Merrin started back, fingers flying to her mouth, stifling the cry that rested ready to spring from her lips. This time she had seen it, the flash of a black cowl turning toward her, the barest ghosts of fingers reaching in the darkness that they thought she couldn't penetrate. She thrust the torch ahead of her like a shield, gaze flickering with the light over the silent curves of the tunnel walls. Nothing.

You're going insane, whispered a voice that needed no faint breeze to carry its lies to her ears. "No," said Merrin from between clenched teeth, her own lie breaking from her lips. "I'm not afraid of you."

This time it laughed at her pathetic attempt to banish it, and in defiance she flung the torch from her fingers and white fire flared in its place. Like ripples of cleansing water, it cast a sphere of glimmering patterns on the dark walls. "In the name of all the gods -" she started, turning, sure that somewhere would be the tattered edges of insubstantial, rotted cloth just flicking from the edges of her vision. Sure that specters waited just past the limits of the firelight.

Silence. Nothing whispered. Nothing spoke. Merrin's own words brushed her ears in the faintest echo. In the name of all the gods...

What? Nothing. Because there was nothing there. Straining to see, a few more faltering steps took Merrin forward and showed her the path that beckoned. Come, Merrin Dragonrider. This way. The way is safe. What is at the end but a temple of the gods you so revere? The whisper still penetrated her consciousness. Ghostly laughter still echoed. "I know what's at the end," she told it, forgetting that she conversed with the voice she'd defied. "I know what's waiting for me. I know...I know who is waiting for me."

Do you? Again, that laughter, and this time Merrin could not drive it away and it swelled, and this time she let white fire vanish too and pressed her hands over her ears. Everywhere she turned terror loomed in huge shadows that no torchlight could banish.

The sound fell away to leave her with nothing but her own panting breath. The longer she stayed there, poised on the brink of destruction, the longer images flashed, and with every second defiance grew more and more fragile. The darkness that would break her.

With movement born of sheer, unadulterated terror, Merrin snatched the torch and darted back. Sparing no more than an instant for shaking first Adeila, then Garthag, she whirled to grab at her pack. Her voice was thin and high, as near as the rest of her to plummeting over the edge of fear's precipice - "Wake up! Wake up!"

Pausing only to see that they did so, she curled her fingers tighter around the handle of the torch, staring into the blackness ahead as though staring could make it part before her. Too long, too long! A dagger flashed in her memory, and snow, and her lips started to form the name that would shatter her heart all over again. She could not stop to remember. The darkness that would break her.

She did stop long enough to fling words over her shoulder - "We have to go, we have to go now," - and then Merrin's feet were flying, carrying her into the darkness that did part before the light of the torch. And walking, panting for breath, half running, she could almost convince herself that all the darkness would pale in the light. All the darkness would fall before white fire. She whispered under her breath, footsteps marking a trail she couldn't retrace. "I am not afraid of you. I am not afraid. I am not afraid."

Once, a thought pierced her defenses, after what could have been minutes or hours or eons of her feet moving in their frenzied rush through the dark. What if the dark never ended? What if the light flickered out like a candle after countless ages, but the dark never ceased? Laughter threatened and Merrin clenched her teeth. "I - am - not - afraid!"

Her footsteps had faltered. She looked back, checking that Garthag and Adeila still followed, not failing to note the black that sprawled back behind them. What if the dark -

No. Every step pounded no, no, no.

The questions must be beat back, too. Where am I going? Who's waiting? What will I find? They must, because they subtly cleared the way for others. Why did he do it? Why didn't he do it? Did he ever love me - did he ever - and her footsteps drowned her mind's unceasing words.

She hardly noticed when the ground sloped up, when her knees began to protest at the uneven stairs that promised air and light. Longing to burst above the surface like escaping from a sea that threatened to drown her, Merrin let the one thought swallow any others. Keep going. Keep going. Don't stop. If you stop - and it went uncompleted. She was suffocating, she was going to drown in the dark and the light would have died and for ages on end it would reign and she must drive it back -

A crack of unbelievable, unreal light broke the dark. It curved, open just enough, hinting at the edge of a door. Merrin groped, fingers trembling so very slightly, desperate that the promise would not wink out into another lie. It moved on hinges and her limbs, suddenly weak, would not support her when she dropped onto grass.

The dark that would break her. She staggered to her feet.

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