That reached head and heart both. Gerant was as human as he. Had been as human, rather—in a hundred years, a babe in arms would grow, sire or bear their own children, see grandchildren, and die, and Gerant had been a man in his prime when they’d parted. He’d be long dead by now.
They’d both known that parting might be forever. Toward the end, any farewell might have been the last. Amris had never pictured it taking this form.
“Here.” The woman took a small metal flask out of her boot and brandished it in his direction.
The contents tasted roughly as they smelled. Amris had been a soldier long enough to swallow, nod his thanks, and trust that his throat wasn’t truly on fire. “Strong.”
“I keep it to clean out wounds.” One eyebrow quirked, and her mouth twisted in a wry smile. “I’d say this counts.”
“Truth.” A hundred years. A hundred years, and only now had somebody come to awaken him, but the hall was empty otherwise. “Before you tell me the second truth, lady,” he asked, “was there another man nearby? There, roughly speaking?” He gestured to the place where Thyran had been standing at the last.
“No,” said Darya, peering at it, and then frowned. “But…wait.”
* * *
A small, uneven mound of gray powder lay heaped on the stone. Darya knelt and touched it with the tip of a gloved finger, feeling the texture as much as she dared. “Ash,” she said, “and—yes, bone. Bits of it. Wait.” There was a larger shape within the ash, but that wasn’t entirely why she’d stopped. As many shocks as it had gone through, her mind was still capable of calculation. “You’re looking for Thyran, aren’t you?”
The question sounded completely absurd. Thyran had shaped, bred, or summoned an army of things, led them against humanity, and cursed the world to years of barren cold when he’d begun to lose. Thyran was the Father of Storms and Abominations. He wasn’t somebody people looked for.
“Then you know of him,” Amris said, utterly serious.
“Bad children and old wives everywhere know of him. The Order taught us a little more of the real histories.” Beneath the ash lay a long finger, five-jointed, with a black talon at the end rather than a nail. Burial in the ash had kept most of the insects away and held off some rot, but the finger was still fairly disgusting. She grimaced. “Was he human at the end?”
“Mostly, in appearance,” Amris said slowly. He knelt beside her, squinting in the dim light. “Far harder to kill than mortals, or even any of his creatures.” Slowly he breathed out, sending ashes scattering. “And one of his defenses was dark fire.”
Darya glanced up and knew they were both remembering Amris’s own reaction to being awoken, and seeing the same scene—a man, or a once-man, not inclined to be nearly so merciful with any unknown force.
“The messenger creature that came to wake him died, then,” Amris said, “but not with its task undone. Its master walks again, and I doubt that a hundred years have lessened his hatred for the world that would not order itself to his liking. I fear I bear much fouler news for you than you brought me, lady—for you and all who live now.”
Chapter 4
The woman swore, copiously, venomously, and with a command of profanity that would’ve impressed any sailor or soldier of Amris’s acquaintance.
He knelt silently meanwhile, hands clenched against his thighs, as he tried to see a road forward, tried to see anything past sick, cold anger and the thought then it was all for nothing.
Find out more, Gerant would have advised him. To the wizard’s mind, more information was never an ill, and either the facts themselves or the quest to discover them might show a way to proceed.
A swarm of questions came to mind. Amris picked one: straightforward, polite, unlikely to further shatter his composure. “Forgive me. What is your name?”
“Darya.”
“I cannot say it’s a pleasure to meet you, but you have my thanks.”
She nodded, a quick jerk of her head. “Couldn’t leave anyone stuck like you were, even if… Oh, hell. That was the second thing.” Darya was rearming herself as she spoke, with knives, a short bow, and a long sword that had a large square-cut emerald in the hilt. She looked down at the stone, gave a brittle laugh, and said, “I wouldn’t normally forget. It’s not a minor matter. I’m sorry.”
“Your…soulsword, they were calling them in my time. It holds a spirit, yes?”
“Yes.” Darya laughed again, with no more amusement in it than the time before. Her face itself was no paler than it had been when Amris had first seen her, but color had drained from her lips.
Amris could do nothing about Thyran’s return, not just then, but he offered what reassurance he could think of. “Have no fear—I know that they go willingly. I don’t think you a necromancer.”
“That’s good,” she said. “That’s very good. Because the soul in mine is Gerant.”
“I—”
He didn’t know what else to say. He didn’t even say that much, in truth: the sound emerging from his open mouth meant nothing to him. Meaning itself was a slippery concept right then.
“Gerant.” Amris clung to the name and all the images it brought up, memories that were more solid in that instant than the hall of dust and roses surrounding him or the strange woman standing there. “Gerant?” It was a question that time, as he looked at the emerald in Darya’s sword and tried to reach out with his mind.
Sympathy softened Darya’s expression. “He says… Well, he says hello,” she told Amris softly, “and he loves you, and he’s very glad you’re alive. Only the Sentinel bonded to a sword can hear them, mostly. I’m sorry.”
“No,” said Amris, with no thought behind the words. He wasn’t entirely certain he could think; his mind felt numb, frozen. “No, of course. I presumed…foolish of me. I’m glad he…”
What was he glad about? Was he glad at all? Should he be? Part of him rejoiced at Gerant’s presence, while the rest said that such joy was selfish, when his lover could have been in Letar’s Halls long ago rather than trapped in a gem. “I hope he’s well,” Amris finished, flat, uncertain, and embarrassed.
The slight pause before Darya responded was nothing Amris would even have noticed normally. Now it stretched out into the edge of a razor. When she said, “Generally, yes,” he heard it in Gerant’s voice, at those moments when he’d combined thought with dry humor, and fought not to flinch.
“Though he admits the situation isn’t ideal,” she added, with a gesture around them. “And I agree. To say the least.”