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Chapter 397: The Return of the White witch:
They camped that night in the lee of a rock, in a hollow of red stone sheltered from the wind. Sable made a small fire from dried thornwood and a few scraps of flotsam. It crackled low and blue in the dark. Overhead, the stars were fierce and close, and the Milky Way spilled across the zenith like a river of spilled salt.Arkamon sat with his back to the rock and his face tilted to the sky. He had not slept. Sable was not sure he would ever sleep again. He was counting stars, he had said, in the old way, by their colors, and he was not yet halfway through.“They have moved.” he said softly.“Yes.”“The Hunter has turned. The Lantern is gone entirely. There is a new one, in the north. Bright. Blue.”“The Sentinel.” Sable said. “It appeared two hundred years ago.”“It is lovely.”“It frightens the Council.”“Good.” Arkamon said, with a small, wicked smile.Vandel had withdrawn to the edge of the firelight. He stood, arms folded, staring out at the dark dunes, and he had been standing th
Chapter 396: The Staff and the Grave:
They walked for most of the day. The heat came up in shimmering waves from the sand, and the horizon rippled and danced. Sable, who knew the desert, led them by a dry watercourse, a path of pale cracked mud winding between the dunes. Arkamon walked with his long, slow stride, his bare feet leaving no mark. He had said very little since leaving the cave. His head was tilted, and his silver gaze was fixed on a point somewhere ahead of them, and once or twice his lips moved, as though in silent calculation.“What are you doing?” Sable said at last.“Looking.” Arkamon said.“At what?”“The threads.” Arkamon said. “The way things are tied. It takes time. After so long blind, the world is very bright.”“Do you see everything?”“I see a great deal.” Arkamon said. “I see a boy named Tam, in a stable loft, who cannot sleep. I see an old woman on a cushion, praying. I see a great black door, very far down, with a woman sitting before it.”“Sitting?” Vandel said sharply.“Waiting.” Arkamon said.
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.
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