Merrin swallowed, pressed her lips together, fought the tears until her eyes stung. Twisting her fingers together, she stared at the floor, fighting the memories. You are nothing to me - but he'd said it, just now, he'd looked her in the eye and she'd seen it there...I love you more than you will ever know. She raised a hand to her pounding head, the threat of tears making it ache.

Sitting there, not looking at him, just listening as the story fell raggedly from his lips, she wanted to bury her face in her hands and let the tears come as they would. I couldn't have done it if I hadn't wanted to die.

"Don't," she whispered, but he hadn't finished.

Her head whirled, pounded. Kendath. Kendath had killed the Lich, where she had been meant to do it - Kendath had flung white fire, while she lay dead. And because she'd died - the thought sent icy shivers clawing up her spine - he'd wanted to. He hadn't wanted to live?

Drawing her knees up to her chest, leaning against the wall, she dared to reach for his hand. Her own was still trembling. His felt rough, blistered in the places the bandage didn't cover. Merrin clenched her teeth against the lump rising in her throat. "If - if something else ever - happens - promise me you won't try to die. Promise me." She turned her head to face him, curling her fingers around his hand. "I...I would never...want that. Not because of me."

Her head ached. The room spun and Merrin blinked to clear her vision. There was nothing else to say. "I love you," she whispered helplessly.

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Kendath convulsively tightened his hand around hers, recalling with a pang the savagery with which he'd snatched it away only moments before. He couldn't feel her grip, but he could all too vividly imagine it - soft, the slender fingers curled around his larger ones. The bed creaked again as she shifted to rest against the wall.

For seconds that pounded into minutes, they were all that existed. Merrin, sitting quietly beside him. Him, with his eyes closed, listening to the gentle exhalations of their breathing. Separate yet unified in rhythm.

At last, he opened his eyes and glanced at her in the darkness. Promise, she'd said. He shook his head. "I'm sorry," he murmured, and he really did mean it this time, "for everything." Her cheeks fit in the palms of his hands. He pulled her close and brushed his lips against her forehead. "Promise me you won't leave me. It's a promise you can't keep."

Abruptly he relinquished her and, swinging his legs over the side of the bed, stood up to go. He paused at the archway of the door. "Sleep, Merrin. Don't worry about... what I said."

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Moonlight pooled on the floor. Shadows pooled where the moonlight didn't touch. Merrin looked at the darkened lamp on the bedside table, then out at where a night sky veiled Dey'tarn. She rubbed her fingers on her tunic. His hand, blistered, scarred.

She drew her knees against her chest, swallowing. Maybe they all had scars.

"Will you...will you stay...just until I go to sleep?" There was a moon here, but the dark still crept through the cracks in the shutters, still lurked in the corners where the moonlight didn't reach. She felt small, a child afraid of the dark. Afraid of nightmares. "It's...it reminds me..." she trailed off. Of endless night. Of falling into nothingness. "Please?"

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Kendath hesitated and found that he would have stayed with Merrin all night if she'd asked. Three strides took him across the room once more to lower himself onto the edge of the bed.

"Sleep," he said again, and watched as she uncurled herself to lie back. Wind, gusting through the cracks in the shutters, plucked at the blankets. A shiver rippled through her. He drew the thick coverlets over her breast, then returned to his position leaning against the wall. He brushed wayward strands of hair out from her face, before settling his hand - the unscarred one - on her shoulder. "Shhh. Sleep, Merrin. Sleep."

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Merrin burrowed into the blankets, feeling drowsiness overtake her almost instantly. She was so tired. So tired, still. The hollow in her pillow beckoned. Would the exhaustion ever go away?

Just before sleep swept dark curtains over her, she reached up to twine her fingers through his. The shadows were merely dimmer places, unthreatening, innocent of the dark. The true dark. Merrin closed her eyes. "Don't go," she murmured, already half asleep, tightening her fingers for the briefest moment before slumber overwhelmed. So tired.

A sigh, and the moonlight shifted into stars. No nightmares. Not tonight.

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Kendath did stay with her all night, as he realized when a thump and a sharp pain stabbing through his skull jolted him awake. He lay on the floor, his head against the wall, and blinked at the orange sparks spinning across his vision. The fireworks eventually coalesced into sunbeams, spilling through the ajar shutters and painting the walls with gold.

Quiet curses leaked out as he sat up. His head throbbed. He blinked to clear his vision, and it wasn't until he spotted Merrin's hand curled at the edge of the bed that the night before came flooding back. The memories nearly knocked him back onto the floor. Sitting on the bed beside her. Holding his dagger to her throat. Saying... then hearing... I love you.

He stifled a groan.

Sleep would elude him now, he knew. He'd never been a sound sleeper, especially not with daylight clouting him over the head. He stood, stretching the kinks out of his back, and glanced at Merrin still slumbering under the blankets. She looked carefree, serene – just as she'd looked yesterday evening, before she'd woken. With a last glance at her over his shoulder, Kendath stepped out into the corridor. He veered right, toward the kitchens glowing in the clear dawn.

At that moment, a bath sounded highly appealing.

-----

An hour later, Master Azwuld found him standing at the front of the temple, facing the dais where towered the gods. The cleric stopped a little ways behind, his rustling robes falling quiet. The silence dragged on.

"You are a very strange man."

Kendath allowed the barest hint of a smile to creep over his face. He kept his eyes closed, his head upturned toward the gods' marble visages. Warm breaths of sunlight poured in through the sunburst in the ceiling and caressed his eyelids. His hair, still damp from his soak in the kitchen tub, tickled the nape of his neck.

He didn't pray. He didn't think. He simply stood, inhaling the crisp air and listening to the calm of the temple - the silence mingling with distant waters lapping against a distant shore. The silence was familiar, comforting, and because his eyes were shut, the forgotten rubble by the archways didn't exist. Neither did the burn marks slashing the pristine walls. He could pretend, just for a moment, that none of it had happened. That the passage of time left no scars.

"Lovely, isn't it. Hmm. He was right, if you remember. About faith being a mountain."

His eyes snapped open. He spun to stare at Master Azwuld.

But the cleric was already walking away, shooting a glare over his shoulder as he went. "What are you looking at now, boy? If you're done dillydallying, you can come with me. Make yourself useful for once. I need your help with something, and the help of your lady friend too, if she's awake. I imagine her brother would be quite delighted to see her."

Kendath blinked at Master Azwuld's retreating back. He jogged to catch up. "Her... brother?"

"T'mor, isn't it? Charming chap. Smiles too much, but I suppose it runs in the family." He veered into a sunlit corridor with a thunk of his staff. "What, didn't I tell you? There's a mob of refugees camped outside the city walls. Almost got flattened by the Meiltha patrols, they did, but no doubt the gods keep their own. Here, this way." He swerved. Lula tipped around, inches away from smashing Kendath's nose. "Reflexes, boy!" came the predictable bark. "Were you born slow, or do you simply enjoy slamming into solid objects?"

Kendath wanted very much to throttle him.

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Half asleep, Merrin murmured and rolled over at the faint voices. Absently, she curled and uncurled her fingers, feeling as though something was missing, wondering where...

She sat bolt upright at the rapid flood of recollection, and the movement made her head spin. Sun lanced down through the window, and glittered on the lake beyond. Merrin took a deep breath, watched the room settle. Absently, she touched her fingers to her forehead, recalling. The evening, where the day had been blurry, was clear in her memory. Merrin twisted the coverlet between her fingers. She could almost feel the gentle touch on her hand, on her forehead, simultaneous with -

Shaking her head to dispel the memories, Merrin gingerly moved to the edge of the straw mattress and searched for her boots. The voices were coming closer. "T'mor, isn't it? ...smiles too much...I suppose it runs in the family..."

T'mor and the refugees! Pursued by Meiltha - Merrin had to stop and separate the real events from the scene she'd witnessed atop a mountain with the skeletal figure of Commander Rolan. Jamming her boots on, aware that she could hear Master Azwuld's voice moving further away, Merrin stood up to evidence that she could, in fact, walk without feeling as though her stomach might empty itself. She was not entirely convinced.

Hurrying, noting that the corridor opened onto the temple sanctum, she rested a hand on the wall for support. An unsteady foray towards the light of the sunburst, and she caught sight of the pair of them, Kendath with their eccentric staff-wielding host. "T'mor?" she said eagerly, making to catch up. "T'mor's here?"

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At the familiar voice, Kendath turned in time to see Merrin catching up with them. Her tunic was rumpled, her hair tousled, as though she'd just rolled out of bed. He smiled at the sight.

Master Azwuld didn't so much as spare her a glance. "Well, yes," he replied, maintaining his stride down the corridor. Kendath, hurrying to catch up, noted that they were headed toward the stairs spiraling down to the storage room. "He's been here since the night before last. Almost got his head whacked off by the Meiltha guards too, but by some friendly intervention I managed to keep his neck intact. Young people. Idiots, the lot of you." He snorted, snatched a lantern from its wall fixture, and proceeded to sweep down the stairs. "I've been bringing them supplies. They're leaving today, I believe. Your brother's taking them to some kind of river."

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Some kind of river - Merrin stopped. T'mor would be going home. "Riversmeet?" she inquired, following Master Azwuld down the spiral stairs with a hand on the banister. A wary glance at the far wall revealed no shimmering dark expanse of portal. She let out a breath, watching them with the crates of supplies.

T'mor, going home. The thought made her unexpectedly envious. "Are you going to see them now?" Merrin asked. The thought of T'mor bringing back a train of refugees was enough to evoke the ghost of a smile. Their mother would likely mentally adopt every child she saw. And the twins - Merrin shook her head, trying not to think of it. "I would like to see T'mor, before he goes."

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"Of course, lass. What'd you think I needed you for, to stand there and ogle? Prop that door open, will you." Master Azwuld hoisted a burlap sack bursting with soft bulges that looked like blankets. He swung it over his shoulder as though it were filled with feathers. Staff thunking, he stepped over a crate labeled rye. He nodded at Kendath. "Pick that one up, will you. If you drop it, I'll have your kidneys with my noonday tea. Wider, lass, wider!" Grumbling to himself, he disappeared over the threshold in a flurry of robes.

Kendath exchanged a look with Merrin. He pointed at Master Azwuld's retreating back, then slashed a finger across his throat. That settled, he bent to heft the crate.

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"He's not that bad." Merrin attempted a teasing shove and found that Kendath was slightly too solid for this to be effective. She followed, letting the door close behind her, and cast a glance upward and sideways to gauge his mood. "Not as bad as the dwarf, in Baste."

The crate of supplies made her think of the journey to Riversmeet. It would be long, especially with all the children who'd fled Adeila's village. "I'd like for you to meet Mama and Da and Jayen," she said, after a pause. She grinned at the floor. "And the twins."

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Kendath nearly dropped the crate.

"Meet... them?" He threw a sideways glance at her to see if she was joking. She wasn't. He cleared his throat. "Sure. Meeting... this family - that is - your family... sounds like..." He coughed. "... a good idea." By some stroke of serendipity, the crate survived it to the top of the stairs intact. Kendath grudgingly admitted his relief. The privilege of keeping his kidneys struck him as a pleasant prospect.

They followed Master Azwuld out the back exit of the temple. The glassy expanse of the lake glimmered azure under a cloudless sky. Beyond the distant shores, the towers of Dey'tarn stretched their jagged battlements, gray against the glistening white of the mountains.

"It makes me... angry, to think of it," Kendath murmured, half to Merrin, half to himself. As he made his way across the thick grass, he cast his gaze far out across the lake, to the stone city enclosing the Ivory Isle. He could just faintly discern a glint of steel - Meiltha troops patrolling the streets. "This city was once a Renegade stronghold. One of the best. It fell without a struggle."

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Merrin paused, glancing over her shoulder at the temple. She was barely able to imagine the stones beneath her boots, overgrown with grass and weeds, as pristine and inviting. The temple itself rested cloaked in greenery, like a giant fallen asleep. The sparkles that rebounded off its diamond sunburst were as quietly forgotten.

The fissures in Dey'tarn's streets and walls, the cracks and the ruined towers, were far more recent. They were raw like open wounds, where the temple's scars were, if not healed, older. Sadder.

Dropping her eyes to watch her feet, Merrin followed. "Like Vryngard," she said softly. "And Thyrault." And how many others? How long until Baste, Port Dragonhelm, held only Meiltha ships in their harbours? How long...No. No, not if Merrin could stop it. I am the Chosen...

She didn't complete the thought, only hurried to catch up. "Do you know...was the temple ruined, before? It seems...it's been ruined a long time."

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Kendath shifted the crate to get a better view of Merrin's face. He couldn't see much - the sunrise blazed behind their backs, and her gaze was dropped to the grass beneath her. He returned his own gaze to the crushed path ahead. "Years," was his only response.

They'd slowed their pace. Master Azwuld's long strides had taken him far ahead of them now, headed toward the weeping willow that guarded the underground passage. The cleric had spoken of faith. Of faith being a mountain. Kendath breathed deeply.

"Sixteen years."

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Merrin followed the path down with her eyes, watched it roll through the tall grass and stop at the base of the willow. Kendath was ahead of her, and his expression was difficult to read at the best of times, but something...sixteen years. Hesitating, she fell silent and kept following him. "We'll stop it," she said quietly, as they approached the base of the hill. "Someday. Someday we'll have Vryngard and Dey'tarn back. Someday there won't be a war."

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No war? Laughable thought. The day those aristocrats perched on their stuffed thrones ceased to be bloodthirsty hypocrites - Kendath bit his tongue and shook the thought off. "Right. Someday."

"Am I interrupting?" Master Azwuld thunked his staff against the willow. Branches shook. Leaves fluttered. He jammed Lula against the knot in the willow's trunk, and the bark cracked open. He glared at Kendath as the younger man drew closer. "Are you climbing the tree or not?"

"What about - "

"I'm arthritic. Or do you lack the observation to tell? Bah. Up you go." He dropped his burlap sack at Kendath's feet. "Toss it down gently now, when you reach the knot. And you best climb fast, boy, because there's a dozen more where those came from."

-----

By midday, Kendath had concluded that Master Azwuld had been exaggerating.

There weren't a dozen. There were at least a hundred.

Even with all three of them breaking their backs and trudging back and forth, back and forth, between the storage room and the willow, by midday the larder was only halfway empty. It took a moment for Kendath, slumped sweaty and hungry and tired against the wall, to assimilate this. Horrified, he flung his glance from the remaining mound of crates to Master Azwuld's face. "Tell me you're joking."

"Very well. I'm joking. Here, this barrel's yours."

"People don't eat that much!"

"Did the bottomless pit say something?" Master Azwuld glanced at Merrin. "You're not about to keel over, are you? I've had my fill of carrying you up these stairs."

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