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Chapter 395: The burning caves:
“I do not know.” Vandel said, with raw honesty. “I thought I did. Now I look at you and I see a man who loved a woman, once, and lost her, and tried to do something about it. I do not know what to do with that.”“Neither do I.” Arkamon said, with the first real smile Sable had seen on his face. It was warm, and tired, and astonishingly young. “Perhaps we shall work it out together.”On the second day, they left the cave.It was a morning of flat, brilliant, merciless light. The sun stood white in a sky the color of an old coin, and the desert rolled out around them in great red waves under a sky so vast it seemed to swallow sound. They came up out of the narrow fissure, blinking, and stood on the sand in a row, three figures in a landscape of stone and fire. Sable shielded her eyes. Vandel lifted his face and breathed. And Arkamon, tall and white and ragged, with his silver hair streaming, stopped dead in the mouth of the cave, and made a sound like a man struck.He stood very still.
Chapter 394: The four hundreds:
Vandel told him. It took a long time. He spoke in a quiet, level voice, without ornament, and Arkamon listened without moving. He told him about the fragments, the nine locks, the Council’s slow forgetting. He told him about the Forbidden Realm, and the long hours of reading, and the marginal line. He told him about the seer purges, and Vandel’s own part in them, without softening a syllable. He told him about the Crest, and the twins, and the voice that had said wait. And he told him about the silver cord, the thread that ran upward from his chest, and the star bearer who had cut it.When he finished, Arkamon was silent for a long, long time.“A star bearer.” he said at last. “Of the line of Alderic.”“Kaelen Ashwright.”“I know that blood.” Arkamon said. “I knew Alderic, a little. Or his ancestor. A young man with a very straight back and a very large sword. He came to the Veilhall once, on a pilgrimage. He asked the right questions.”“Four hundred years ago?”“Closer to two thousan
Chapter 393: The Living manifestation of destiny:
They sat on the dais, in the faint pearly gleam that Arkamon’s hands gave off when he held them out. Sable sat apart, close to Garron’s body, her knees drawn up, her knife across her lap. She had not sheathed it. Arkamon had made no comment. He sat cross-legged on the white stone, an immense, gaunt, ragged figure with his silver eyes fixed on nothing, and for a long time he did not speak.“What year is it?” he said at last.“The nine thousand two hundred and fourth of the Council’s reckoning.” Vandel said. “By the older count, I do not know.”“Three thousand and eleven years.” Arkamon said, after a moment’s silence. “And some months. I kept track. In the early days. By the drip of water, by the rhythm of the stone. Later I stopped. It did not seem to matter.”“How did you endure it?”“I did not.” Arkamon said, with a thin smile. “I went mad in the first century. The second, I was a child again, a seer boy in his master’s kitchen. In the third, I was a grandfather, telling stories to a
Chapter 392: The Breathing skulls and flaming stones:
It was a great, ragged, hungry inhalation, the sound of someone surfacing from deep water. It echoed through the cavern, and the echoes seemed to go on forever. The white light dimmed, and settled, and contracted, until it stood only as a faint nimbus around a tall figure that had stepped down off the slab onto the white dais.He was very tall. He was taller than Elder Stone, taller than any man Sable had ever seen, and thin as a reed. His skin was the color of old parchment. His hair, long and wild and white as a swan’s wing, hung to his waist, tangled with silver thread. He wore a plain gray tunic, ragged at the hems, and nothing on his feet. He stood with his head bowed and his hands pressed against his face, and his whole body trembled.Then he lowered his hands.His eyes were silver. Not the pale ethereal silver of Clara or Mirabel, nor the pearly shimmer of Eric. They were metal, bright, hard, without pupil or iris, two coins of living mercury in a gaunt, noble, beautiful face.
Chapter 391: The return of Lord Arkamon's trios:
The ritual was simple, and terrible.Vandel set the stone upon the slab at the foot of the shrouded figure, in a shallow hollow carved there for the purpose, as though the builders of the tomb had foreseen its use. He drew a long thin line of silver powder from a vial and traced a circle around the dais. He spoke a word, soft and ancient, in a language neither of the others knew, and the blue flames of the ten thousand lamps bent inward, all together, as though a great wind had passed.Garron stepped into the circle. He knelt, as he had knelt an hour before, with his hands open on his knees. He did not look at Sable.“Is there anything you wish to say?” Vandel asked.“Only that I forgive you.” Garron said. “For whatever you think needs forgiving.”“I do not deserve it.”“No one does.” Garron said. “That is why it is given.”Vandel closed his eyes. He laid his palm against Garron’s brow, and his lips moved. A pale, trembling radiance rose from the old man’s chest, like breath on a wint
Chapter 390: The Lazarus stones and the living pits:
The Lazarus stone had traveled with him for three centuries.He had never told anyone. Not Veyla, who would have known how to use it. Not Hollowgrave, who would have known its worth. Not Elder Stone, who had asked, once, in the watchtower by the Black River, whether Vandel had any other tricks in reserve, and had received only a thin smile. It lived in a pocket sewn into the lining of his robe, directly over the place where the fragments burned, wrapped in three layers of black silk and a fourth of lead foil. It was no larger than a plum.He drew it out now, in the cold blue light, and unwrapped it with the care of a man defusing a bomb.It was pale gray. It was smooth as river rock, and perfectly round, and in the lamplight it seemed to swallow what it touched. A faint, dim glimmer ran under its surface like a thread of silver in a stone. Sable made a small sound. Garron, behind her, murmured a word under his breath, and made a sign against evil with two crooked fingers.“I know that
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