Merrin nodded mutely, wrapping her fingers around the straps and finally feeling the relief of Wyvern steady beneath her. She took a breath, managed the ghost of a smile in thanks, and watched Kendath mount Gyre.

Adeila behind her, she stared up at the black vault. Wyvern's eyes glittered, a tremor rippled through him, and of a sudden, they had left the barren pedestal behind. Silver streaked into the night, shedding glimmers of starlight, and Merrin pressed close, squeezing her eyes shut. She opened them once, searching for Gyre's jade form. Dark sea rippled and she closed them again.

Let it be real. Let it be real. Let there be sun and wind and snow. Please.

_________________

Night embraced them. The glowing pillar behind them, stabbing into the ocean below and the sky above, pulsed green one last time, then faded to mere memory, swallowed by the darkness.

They soared on.

A ripple in the void ahead - an infinitesimal tear in the black fabric - was all the warning they had before their dragons burst upon a barrier as silken as the fine strands of time and space. Kendath leaned over Gyre, but the collision nevertheless jolted him out of the saddle. His dragon evaporated with a final flash of emerald. The jade figurine spun into his hand, then dissolved in a shower of glittering ash that spilled through his fingers.

Black ocean gladly closed over him.

-----

"You alive?"

Kendath groaned and rolled over. The floor was very hard and very comfortable. He buried his face against his nonexistent pillow. Dust flew into his nose. He sneezed.

Something that felt a bit like the butt end of a staff jabbed into his side. "Ahem. You alive?"

He mumbled something unintelligible.

"Hmm. That's interesting. Well then, I suppose you must be dead. And it seems only logical that I utilize on you the same procedure I utilize on all dead people, namely boys like yourself, which is to jab my pretty Lula into a certain sensitive area to make sure you're really dead and not just lazing about like some first-year altar hand - "

"No!" Kendath lurched to his feet, tripped over an inconveniently placed crate, and snatched the staff out of the old man's hand.

The lantern swung, flinging circles of firelight onto paneled walls and wooden ceiling beams, and Kendath had seconds to backpedal before the old man's bony foot launched out and connected solidly with his stomach. The wind spun out of him. He doubled over with an "oof." Another flurry of movement landed him right back onto the floor, his knees aching and his temples throbbing. The staff was gone. It had somehow returned itself to its owner's grasp.

Robes flapped. Twirling his staff, the old man vaulted over a mound of barrels, then pivoted to give himself more room. He double-stepped forward, hand raised as though to chop Kendath's head from his shoulders.

"All right, all right!" Kendath grappled for his falchion but found the scabbard empty. He threw his arms over his head. "See? I'm alive. Just... put down the stick..."

"Lula."

"Right. Uh. Put down... Lula." He climbed shakily to his feet and stabbed a finger at Garthag, just now beginning to stir a few crates away at the opposite end of the storage room. His voice came out slightly more strangled than usual. "Why couldn't you have attacked him?"

"That's 'why couldn't you have attacked him, sir.' Or Master Azwuld, if you prefer." The robed man shrugged. "I had no reason to. He's not the one who opened the portal." His eyes glinted under his weathered brow. He nodded his beard at Kendath's trousers.

Kendath clapped a hand to the pocket of his trousers and found, nestled within, the icy skeleton of the obsidian key. He spun around. No black archway loomed on the wall behind him. The portal had disappeared. He swiveled back to face Master Azwuld. The man had the appearance of a cleric, now that he noticed. What was a cleric still doing inside this abandoned temple? Kendath would have to wring that out of him later. For now... "Where's Me - where are my other companions?"

"The women?" Master Azwuld snorted and planted his staff down with a thump. "I found them some spare beds upstairs. Skinny things. What are you feeding them, chicken feathers? No, don't answer. You're useless, you know. Lazier than my altar boys and ten times as flimsy. You should work on that spatial judgement of yours. Hmph." He made for the stairs beyond the threshold, then stopped and flicked a peeved look over his shoulder. "Well? You coming or not? I've some coney stew boiling over the fire - should warm you up a bit. Those immature Meiltha took off with my basil. I suppose you won't be able to tell the difference anyway, disgraceful connoisseur that you are." Another snort. Then, "Hurry up, if you will. Lula's late for her afternoon polish."

_________________

Merrin could have slept for hours. Days, even. To collapse and let exhaustion roll over her in a blissful tidal wave was an alien sensation - to feel safe, even - that she clung to as though it might disappear. As though everything might.

Dusty sun was pooling on the floor when she blinked, wakened by indistinct anxiety. Drowsiness loomed and overwhelmed - Merrin couldn't remember anything past a confused blur of dark and light, and every mote dancing in the shafts of light told her to go back to sleep. The room was tiny, living quarters for some temple servant long ago.

"Kendath," she murmured into the pillow, sighing, and disjointed memories filtered back. Merrin pushed herself upright, even while aching for sleep, and looked helplessly for her boots. When she sat up, listening, all was very quiet.

Insistent anxiety knotted in her stomach, refusing to be ignored. Merrin stood unsteadily, trying to disregard the way the room spun and the motes in the sunlight whirled around her. The corridor, too, was very still - perhaps those were echoes of a voice, somewhere near -

Somehow she made it back to the makeshift bed and collapsed, burying her head in the softness, wanting to go back to sleep.

_________________

"We fell without a struggle." Master Azwuld shook his head. "The Meiltha had been camped outside our gates for a fortnight. The fool who calls himself Lord of Dey'tarn - bah, this is too bland." He scowled at his ladle and reached for the salt bowl.

The aroma of the stew wafted across the kitchen. Mouth watering, Kendath pulled himself a chair at the end of the long supper table, closer to the hearth. He watched the flames cavort under the cauldron. The fire mingled with the dusk creeping in through the window to cast a rosy glow on the swept floor and polished countertops. The conflagration that had ravaged the temple nearly two decades before seemed not to have touched the annexes - the kitchens and the acolytes' quarters set apart from the main structure. A stroke of luck, he thought, else there'd be no coney stew.

Master Azwuld resumed stirring. Sweat beaded on his crooked nose. "Where was I? Ah, yes. We defended these walls. Men died. Fire ran rampant. But at the end of a fortnight, that imbecile - did I mention the Lord of Dey'tarn? - did little more than hand the city over. Most people can't blame him. Our supplies were suffering, our citizens crying out for cease-fire." The ladle slammed into the rim of the cauldron. "The fools. Cease-fire? The Meiltha have a term for that concept. They call it 'unconditional surrender.'"

Kendath leaned forward and glanced at Garthag a little ways across from him, then wondered why he bothered. He would have gotten more emotion out of the wall. He turned back to the cleric. "They surrendered? Do they regret it?"

"What's there to regret?" A snort. "We'd depleted our strength fending off the northerly invasions. Besides, our markets were suffering. The neighboring villages refused to trade with us, as they'd already turned over their allegiances. The citizens have been steadily losing faith since the fall of Vryngard, and Dey'tarn never had much of that to begin with. Faith, I mean. Despite this temple. Or perhaps because of it."

"People were bitter."

"Yes. Yes, they were. They still are. They want evidence, they say. Evidence! If the gods are so powerful, why do men die? Why do children starve every winter? And I say" - he thumped Lula against the floor - "I say, where is your faith? Do you not have supper on your table? Are the barbarians not driven back every year? The gods can't mend every wound. Some wounds are not meant to be mended - how else might we be grateful for our very lives?"

Merrin, lying cold and still in the darkness. Kendath shuddered away the memory. Restless, his forefinger twitched against the wooden surface, worn smooth by years of sliding bowls and propped elbows. He glanced at the door. A sliver of dusk peeked through the crack and extended a ray of pastel pink across the table. The dome of the temple, shining in the sunset, was just discernable across the strip of loam. He thought he glimpsed a flicker of movement through one of the windows, then dismissed the fantasy with a shake of his head. For a long while, there was only the simmer of the stew and the crackle of flames in the hearth.

"You want a bandage?"

Kendath jerked. "What?"

"Your hand, you brilliant boy." Master Azwuld waggled his beard. He tossed a roll of white strips, which Kendath caught and blinked at blankly. "It's an eyesore. People like staring, but they won't as much if they think you're ashamed of it."

Kendath conceded the point with a nod of thanks.

"And you. Magician." The ladle stabbed itself in Garthag's general direction. "Garthag, did you say? I took the liberty of inspecting your shoulder while you lazed around. Your healer friend knows what she's doing, but I worked a few spells on it to speed the process. Nasty cut. You should learn to be more courteous next time - you might find that people like you better when you're polite."

Garthag. Polite. Funny, that. Midway through binding his palm, Kendath looked pointedly at the mage's shoulder. Their gruff host seemed to have lost interest in everything except the stew, but he dropped his voice anyway. "Did you get that fighting... the elf? You killed him, I assume."

_________________

Garthag had awoken from his surprisingly peaceful rest, in haste he had followed Kendath and Azwuld, who was offering a comfortable place to continue their conversation. At first Garthag did not bother himself with listening to them and simply gazed around, slightly curious yet mostly bored. He attempted not to ponder the events of the cavern despite their nature and the fact, that they bothered him as well as where they were at the moment.

At this moment he actually bothered to listen to the wailing of Azwuld, who spoke of the barbarians being driven out every time and complaining about children dying in winter. Both matters all too familiar to Garthag as they were amongst the few horrors of his childhood, but he always believed he and his village had simply been fortunate. The few barbarian raids directed at them were repulsed by the aid of his master and since no barbarians even dared step close to the village, fearing the wielder of a power beyond them. Starvation nor disease had hardly bothered him, he had also been fortunate in that respect as well, but a few times he had sworn that it would have required only a brief chill and might have dropped dead.

Azwuld`s comment about his shoulder made Garthag nod slightly, but he did not attempt to smile at the compliment as it was true, that without Adeila and her abilities he would have been a goner. After that he solely concentrated on his stew only to be interrupted, by an awkward question, from Kendath. The way he presented this inquiry made it seem he was ashamed to talk about it out loud, but then again it was no wonder considering how they had bickered in the past, more like to constantly seek opportunities to slit each others throats.

"A man of such nature would not have yielded peacefully and it was his very nature, that disgusted me. He died, a slow and painful death I assume, I did not have time to concern myself with his slowly flowing blood. And as to the wound?"

Garthag ceased talking all of the sudden as he could not, but help wonder whether Kendath was at all aware of what had transpired in the middle of the lake. Also the irony of the `sacrifice` he had made for their sake, for the sake of their cause seemed overwhelming and were Kendath to ever learn he might as well laugh till his own head dropped off. Garthag shook his head, sighing heavily before staring at Kendath a bit frustrated at the situation he was in.

"Frankly? No, the elf did not cause me, that particular wound. It is a wound inflicted by a certain malevolent hag, who had been promising me ultimate power, I was tempted all along yet I betrayed her in the end. In an apparent streak of vengeance she decided to slash out at me as her last act... incidently had I relinguished the shard, that at the time I held, to her we would not be sitting her having this conversation..."

Garthag answered with a slight annoyed, but careless tone as, if not even paying attention to his own words. It was the sort of defense mechanism, that had helped him cope with these kind of situations when he did not wish to admit the truth. Speaking about the matter lightly and not even paying attention might bother everyone else, but it made it easier for himself and he did not want to show Kendath his torn side at this moment.

He had still things to think about and ponder before he were to do anything. However when he thought about how things had changed ever since he had began his journey with them, how he had changed during the course of their various trials. Changed back to be correct, to be truthful he found it slightly amusing and couldn`t help hide his chuckle as he shook his head again after ceasing to talk.

_________________

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 waited for an explanation, but the mage only chuckled and said no more. What a conversationist. He was only a little less bemused than he'd been three minutes ago, but at least now he knew for certain that, with both potentates gone, the Shadowers would pursue them no longer. Pretending to watch Master Azwuld, he studied the mage in the corner of his eye. Garthag was a man who'd have no qualms about lying, and yet...

The Celestial Shard had been within his grasp. It was now in Adeila's.

What had happened in the middle of that lake?

The question was at the tip of his tongue when a bowl slammed onto the table, cutting short any further rationalizing. Kendath had just enough time to note that he disliked carrots cooked in stew before he found a mouthful of the stuff already choking down his throat. It scalded his tongue - he meant to wait for it to cool, he really did - but a second spoonful had already shoved itself into his mouth. The carrots tasted wonderful. The coney was heaven.

He finished the first bowl - throat scorched, eyes watering - and concluded that he was still hungry. He snuck a glance at the cauldron.

Master Azwuld flapped him away. "Not now, you bottomless pit. You look like you haven't eaten in days; you'll ruin your stomach. Haven't you ever heard of indigestion?"

Kendath glared.

Master Azwuld glared back. "It's getting late. Why don't you go laze around some more? My eyes are poor enough without having to subject them to the sight of your ugly face."

"That hurts." He rose to his feet. "Where are you keeping Merrin?"

Bushy eyebrows shot up. "Planning on disrupting her rest, are you?" The old man snorted, then grabbed another bowl and again bent over the cauldron. "Second door on the left, if you enter through the back. Here, take her some stew before it gets cold. Both hands, boy! What kind of reflexes do you think you have? You'd better not spill it!"

Kendath shrugged and balanced the bowl in his bandaged hand, which didn't register the heat. He emphatically walked away and pushed open the door, then paused, reconsidering, just beyond the threshold. A cough. "Ah... Thanks for... the stew. Among other... things." He winced. Waited.

"Bah. You're welcome. Keep dawdling, and it's you I'll be tossing into the kettle next time."

-----

The last rays of dusk were just slipping from the walls when Kendath entered Merrin's quarters. Wind had swept down from the mountains and cooled the stew, but last residues of steam still ghosted its surface as he set the bowl on the bedside table.

She was asleep, snoring softly, her back rising and falling with each breath. Shadows pooled upon the rumpled blankets and around the indentation of the pillow where she burrowed her head. Another gust of wind hissed in through cracks in the shutters. It stirred her hair, spilled out over her face like a curtain. She murmured, curling her knees to her chest as though warding off the dark.

Kendath gazed at her for a moment longer, then smoothed out the blankets and tucked them in around her shoulders. He meant to leave her to her sleep, but instead paused and turned at the edge of the corridor outside. The first slivers of moonlight brushed her neck, white under the copper waves of her hair. She breathed calmly, peacefully. Her innocence - her gentle girlishness - smote him a blow that slumped him against the archway of the door.

There he remained, smiling to the darkness and listening to the silence of her slumber.

_________________

It wasn't the touch of hands that woke her, nor the fingers of the lonesome wind on the shutters. Merrin found herself breaking the surface of blissful slumber, blinking at the sudden darkness - the absence of dust motes dancing in the ray of sunlight, which was now the slenderest of fragile silver moonbeams - and lying there, listening to the quiet. Perhaps it had been the quiet that had woken her.

Silver curved around the shutters, spilling glimmers across the floor, and she burrowed deeper into the nest of blankets. Faintly, even lying still, her head ached dully, and her limbs begged to be allowed to relax once more into sleep. Merrin fought back the edge of exhaustion, still not kept entirely at bay.

She raised herself on one elbow, shaking off the dizziness, and in the dark doorway there was movement. A breath of steam rose from the surface of the bowl on her table. Merrin rubbed her eyes. "Kendath?"

_________________

Merrin's voice jerked him back to earth. Kendath cursed himself for waking her, but a moment of thought concluded that he hadn't made any noise. Still, she'd caught him. He considered leaving.

Another moment of thought decided that he really didn't want to leave.

Her expression, turned his way, was unreadable in the darkness. He cleared his throat and took a step inside the archway. "Merrin. You were sleeping." No, really? He resisted the urge to kick himself. An oath lodged in his throat. He swallowed it and nudged his feet into another step.

Impulse won over.

Three strides took him to the edge of the bed, and a lunge and a grab placed the bowl of still-warm stew in her hands. "Eat," he said, sinking onto the blankets beside her. "That's not a request."

_________________

Merrin stared at it. Exhaustion told her she was too tired to eat, but holding the warm bowl, she could smell the aroma of meat and vegetables, and a wave of hunger overwhelmed. The first spoonful had her ravenous.

Between bites, to assuage her groaningly empty stomach, she cupped the bowl in her hands and looked up at him, sitting opposite. The room was too dim - she reached up and unlatched the pair of shutters. Moonlight, scarcely more illuminating but at least brighter, tumbled in.

She attempted a tentative smile. "I don't need very much convincing." True, that - she couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten. "Did you sleep?"

_________________

Kendath emitted a noise somewhere between a cough and a snort. A wry grin flashed, then disappeared as he shifted his gaze to the window. Moonlight cloaked the grass and the shimmering lake beyond in silver. The lake. He looked away, and yet another burst of impulse placed his hand over hers. Her fingers - her warm, warm fingers - curled under his palm.

"I slept." What else had he planned on saying? He couldn't for the life of him remember. Useless boy indeed. The silence seemed deafening.

_________________

Merrin looked down, not wanting to move her hand from beneath his but unable to hold both bowl and spoon with only one. A faint tingle - perhaps it was the wind - rippled through her, and she shivered reflexively and wrapped her hand around the warm bowl.

"How long -" she started, but a twitch of her fingers made her look sharply down at his hand, and bandages were white in the moonlight. Worry mounting, she put down the bowl and lifted his hand with both of hers. Merrin bit her tongue, chiding herself for not noticing, and looked up to search his face. "Oh - what happened?"

_________________

"Nothing." Kendath snatched his hand away and dove it under the blanket. He'd only bandaged his palm - any closer look would spot the fingers, blackened and blistered. Besides, "nothing" couldn't be closer to the truth - the last thing he wanted to talk about at the moment was her... her death. Not now. Not when she sat beside him, so warm and alive.

"Are you finished with that?" With his other hand, he took the empty bowl and set it back onto the table. It slammed. He winced, and for reasons he couldn't fathom he suddenly found himself back on his feet. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have woken you. You must be tired."

_________________

Jarred by the suddenness, Merrin stared up at him, then at the bowl. "You didn't," she said indignantly. "I didn't even hear you."

Anxiety was knotting again in her stomach - wind whispered through the shutters and Merrin shivered once more. "I'm done," she said, even though her stomach protested - but Kendath was going to leave, and some fragile part of her shuddered at being alone in the dark. Rising unsteadily, she managed to catch his non-bandaged hand, looking up pleadingly. "Don't go - I'm not tired, really I'm not." Now her head protested at the lie. Merrin ignored it.

_________________

The way Merrin pleaded with him - the way she clung to his hand as though her life depended on it - sent bile clawing up his throat. Kendath looked down at her, so pale in the moonlight, and envisioned rose petals in her cheeks. He remembered how she'd trembled in his arms. His arms. His arms.

He felt sick.

What was the matter with him? He'd been peaceful - even happy - just moments before, watching her sleep in the soft darkness. What had happened? What had she said - what had he thought - He looked down at their entwined fingers and remembered those same fingers curling under his palm. He remembered another night when she'd clung to him, when he'd held her in his arms and -

A vein slashed open. The words poured out.

"Why, Merrin?" Barely above a whisper. He met her gaze, and more words tumbled out. Louder. Calm. Measured. "I could have killed you. I nearly did. It would have been easy, as easy as - " And faster than the eye could follow, he'd lunged forward and seized her shoulder, baring her neck to the dim light. His dagger found her throat. The blade hovered there, its tip just barely grazing her skin.

He shoved his face close. "I could kill you. Right now. You'd die alone. No one would hear your scream. And why shouldn't I? I've killed before. A dozen times. A hundred times. Why should you be any different? You bleed, just like the rest. Do you have any idea what I am, Merrin?" His last syllable broke. He masked it with a snarl, pressing the dagger against her neck. "Are you afraid?" Blue eyes stared back at him. He shook her, the snarl ripping out of him in a cry: "Answer me!"

_________________

Gods - oh gods - Merrin could almost feel the snow under her boots, hear the sigh of the wind in the treetops, listen to the expectant silence. Feel the steel brush her throat. Trembling, rigid and shaking, she forced her gaze up to meet his. For the first time, she could see the wild desperation there. For a moment her gaze whirled and she clenched her teeth, determined - determined - determined to what?

The way his fingers dug into her shoulder made her want to cry, fling herself to him and tell him that it was all right, that in that agonizing battle the Lich had told her...and the thought made her quiver in earnest. Was she afraid? General Ironlegs had asked her the same thing. Merrin's lips trembled. She wasn't! She was not afraid, not afraid of him - laughter in the snow - you are nothing to me - how badly she wanted to say no, not afraid, never. Instead she forced herself to meet his eyes. Forced the whisper out. "Yes."

Why shouldn't I? She would not cry, she would not. Merrin pressed her lips together, raising one shaking hand, finding the dagger. It was so close, terrifyingly close. "You - because -" she tried to articulate what she wanted to say, pushing the sharp edge away with her fingertips. "You didn't - you won't - because...because you love me." Oh, curse it, she was going to cry. "Don't you?"

_________________

With a flurry of steel, the dagger snapped back into its sheath. Kendath withdrew, and he didn't realize how hard he was breathing or badly he trembled until he pried his hand off of her shoulder.

"Yes, curse it. I love you. I always have. I shouldn't. I don't want to." He swallowed, wrestling to keep his voice under control. Merrin had met his gaze. She was afraid of him, but she hadn't backed down. She hadn't cursed him, hadn't condemned him, hadn't twisted away in revulsion. He'd shown her the side of him that he'd always cringed from in the mirror - the dark side, the ugly side - and she hadn't shrunken back. His composure returned. His next words fell out of him as simply and as flatly as stating his own name.

"I love you, Merrin. I love you more than you will ever know."

The bed creaked as he sank down beside her. He couldn't look at her, but even at the edge of his vision he could spot the hard glint of tears. Gods, what had he done? More than ever he wanted to leave, to escape her without looking back, but his feet refused to budge.

The vein was still open. The words continued to pour.

"You want me to tell you something funny, Merrin? I killed the Lich. The gods helped me. They gave me white fire, but the killing stroke was mine. With this hand" - he slashed an invisible blade through the air - "I drove my dagger into the creature's... the creature's darkness. His coldness." The bandaged hand dropped back onto the blankets. He turned to stare at her. "I couldn't have done it if I hadn't wanted to die. I was ready. I thought I'd lost you, Merrin."

She couldn't cry. She couldn't. Closing his eyes, he slumped back against the wall. "Garthag killed the Shadower Lord. Adeila has the Shard. And then... well, you know the rest."

_________________