The soldiers were unable to follow us. Glancing back as we ran, I had seen that they indeed made as if to give chase, but they were unsteady upon their battered legs and knees, and fell frequently into the dust. By nightfall, we had shaken off their pursuit completely.
Darkness settled coldly over the Kadician wastes. The stars glinted within the draping vault overhead, like flecks of ice trapped in milky swaths of aetheric mist, which glowed palely around the waning moon. No cloud obscured the majesty of that boundless sky, and, for the first time since I had entered this region, a breath of wind stirred the air. Bryndt and I walked together still, for after our breathless flight it had not occurred to either of us to separate. I could not be sure if he shared my enduring sense that our meeting had been of the utmost importance—likely he did not, and simply feared to encounter the soldiers alone, without even a staff—but whatever the reason, we had fallen into each other’s company and remained there.
We had not spoken in all the time since our dash from the gorge, save those sober words which were necessary as we picked our way through the dark wastes which were, to both of us, totally foreign.
Now that the darkness was complete, and my human companion at last felt secure against the continued dogging of his old Svenian allies, he spoke:
“You saved my life.”
“Aye, I did,” I replied, my tone indifferent.
“I owe you my thanks,”
“Keep them. What would I do with the gratitude of a Svenian soldier?”
Bryndt appeared surprised by my knowledge, until he glanced down at his ruined tunic and inferred that I had recognized it as that of a man-at-arms.
“I am a Svenian soldier no longer,” he said. “You have seen for yourself what remains of the bond between my brothers and me.”
“No longer a soldier, but a murderer still: that mark is slower to wear away. You have slain Elves—my peaceful Miada’dyn brothers and sisters. What remains of my bond with them? Did you not willingly sever it?”
“You are a Miada’dyn?” the Svenian was amazed. “I have never before known a Miada’dyn to resist soldiers with magic. Barring, of course...” Bryndt’s voice trailed off, and a gray cast of horror crept over his sun-burnt face.
“Barring, of course, the thalaa’kura,” I finished his thought. “You know little of the shadow priests. Were I one of their number, you should now be walking in the company of the Reaper.”
“I know more of the shadow priests than I would ask to know,” Bryndt said.
“As do I,” I replied, unfeignedly.
“How came you to Kadic?” Bryndt inquired, after some time had passed.
“I came to escape from the Regent. I guessed aright, in assuming he would send soldiers in pursuit of me, after I came so close to flaying him at the foot of his own throne.”
“You attempted to kill Yulche?” Bryndt’s voice was tight with wonder.
“I did not attempt and fail: I chose not to kill him,” I replied cooly.
“At the foot of his own throne...” the Svenian echoed. Then he burst into laughter. He had not yet stopped, when I began to laugh as well.
For the most fleeting moment, the trials and fears of the exile we had both so long endured seemed to evaporate and rise off into the night sky, leaving nothing of their weight upon our shoulders. I was not amused at any jest: I merely laughed with easement, to feel that I was, for that instant, safe. I could look back on the trepidation of the solitary road which had brought me there—my assault upon the Regent’s fortress, my harrowing escape through the dark forest; my urgent and exhausting journey upon the Merchant’s Road—and laugh to see that they had not left any crippling scars.
And I laughed at the unwonted whim of Fate which had brought me a companion: something I had not had in some time. Fate had donned her benefactor mask, and it was from behind this mask, I fancied, that she dealt me my newest hand.
“You saved my life, and I beg you to accept my thanks,” Bryndt said, his face lit with what may well have been the first human grin I had ever seen.
“And I will accept them, so long as you do not expect me to ever again endanger myself on your account,” I replied, smiling in return.
“We understand each other,” the Svenian said, extending his hand to shake mine.