Arc 5: Chapter 29: A Bitter Duty
I walked aimlessly through the elfwood for some time. An hour, perhaps two, and all the while I was blessedly free of intrigue and duty.
I was not free of the memory of Catrin’s shocked face, or the image of the demonic fly looming behind her. Nor was I free of Fen Harus’s pointed words. Will you not at least attempt the less bloody path?
Maybe I wanted blood. Perhaps it would wash out all this doubt. Freeing myself of all restraint had worked well enough against the Priory. Why not here?
I knew why. I just resented it.
Within the protected bounds of that faerie wood, the more insidious ghosts did not trouble me. Neither was I fully free of them. There were less malignant shades the elfwood did not repel, and they watched me from the shadows with sad eyes. I could not hear them with my ears, but their pleas plucked at my soul.
Help us. Warm us. Protect us. Guide us. Bless us.
Once, that had been all the land’s dead had wanted from me, from any True Knight. Now, most of them abhored my fire even as they longed for it.
Those hollow eyes became too much to bear, and I fled from them. With my red cloak rippling behind me in a soft wind, I followed the scent of the sea until I came to a cliff overlooking the bay. To my left I could see Garihelm’s sprawl, lit by ten thousand lights, the high shadow of the Fulgurkeep marked by a crown of swirling storm clouds. The outer sea wall kept the lashing waters of the Riven from overtaking the metropolis, but further out the illusion of distance made the waves seem more calm. I focused on that, standing there in the glow of the Living Moon as it heaved its bulk through the stars.
Closing my eyes, I breathed in deep of the clean air and let the od shining down from on high warm me. It almost drowned out that constant inner warmth, let me pretend like it came from somewhere else. When the undergrowth rustled, and my senses felt a brush of something not unlike the moonlight against my back, I knew who’d followed me.
“Oradyn.”
The elf shuffled over to stand just out of arm’s reach, joining me on the cliffside. “Your companions worry for you,” he told me kindly. “Should they?”