The Highwayman stayed focused enough to detect movement to the side and to get his arm up just in time to block the sliver of silver flying at him through the air. Holding his torn guts with one hand, Moh Li lifted another missile with the other. The spinning, many-toothed disk flashed past the crouching Highwayman. He had to finish Moh Li quickly, he realized.
He glanced at Affwin Wi, thinking that he might have to fend her off fast and then make the run to her companion. She stood with his sword in hand.
Another disk, another shur’a’tu’wikin, a “sword hidden in the hand,” as the clever weapon was known, flashed out at him. He couldn’t dodge and had to block again, this time the disk slicing hard as it deflected off his hand, all but severing his little finger. His digit fell limply to the side, hanging by nothing more than a strand of bloody skin.
Bransen made a decision. He swung his hand around gingerly as he brought it in close, catching the swinging finger in his grasp and tucking his fist tight against his ribs. He broke into a run. With a great leap to the side, he crashed through the grated window.
He dropped to the courtyard on his feet and kept on running. Never looking back, blinded by pain and confusion and a profound sense of despair, the Highwayman ran through the Entel morning. He smashed his way through the market, upsetting carts, and rushed down an alley. He found the strength to lessen his weight and make a great leap to a low roof, then scrambled from there to the city wall.
Sentries and commoners alike yelled at him as he went right over, sprinting away, the bright morning light dazzling through the tears that filled his eyes.
To his surprise he found no pursuit, but he kept running because to stop was to face the awfulness that had found his life.
And he feared, too, that, as soon as he settled and took a full measure, his moment of clarity, of escape from the Stork, would be at its end, and he would become helpless once more.
EPILOGUE
Exhaustion finally caught up to Bransen on a rocky hill several leagues north of Ethelbert dos Entel. He stared at the crashing waves of the Mirianic for a short while, his mind racing every which way. His anger was gone, stolen by remorse, shaken by disappointment as profound as anything he had ever known. All that he wanted at that terrible time was to get back to Cadayle, to sleep in her arms, to forget the wider world.
He had lost everything.
But he knew that he would never forget Jameston Sequin. He was surprised by the magnitude of that loss. This man he had known only a few months, whom he had come to know only in the last short weeks, had become so important to him. A friend, a mentor, almost a father. And in his excitement in thinking that he had found Jhesta Tu, he had sent Jameston away.
It had been there all along, Bransen realized, as he slumped to the dark sand beside a ridge of black rock. He hadn’t needed any tutelage from the Jhesta Tu. Was there anything they could teach him greater than the wisdom that Jameston had shown him along the road? Truly?
Because most of all, Jameston Sequin had reminded Bransen to look within himself, honestly and openly. Jameston had nudged him to consider the truth of the many roads before him and to come to terms with the responsibilities of his training and skill and that gemstone brooch.
The brooch!
Bransen’s hand went up to the dried blood on his forehead, the torn skin where the brooch had been set. He tucked his legs back under him and stood up suddenly, then sprang to the ridge of lava stone, a leap of several vertical feet.
He had no soul stone.
No fury drove him.
What was this transformation? Had the gemstone’s magic, so closely attuned to his line of life energy, cured him of his malady? Was the Stork lost to him forever and without need of a magical crutch? Or was it a temporary fix?
The thought haunted Bransen suddenly. He looked away from the dark waters of the Mirianic to the north and west, toward Chapel Abelle, where he believed Cadayle to be. He had to get there, to her and to Father Artolivan. He had to be near to a cache of soul stones in case this confusing clarity could not hold.
More than that, even without the stones, even if he became the Stork again forever and evermore-particularly if he became the Stork evermore-Bransen needed Cadayle’s warm embrace.
He didn’t know if the clarity would last.
He didn’t know that King Yeslnik was even then summoning the lairds of Honce to begin a new and more determined offensive, to wipe the world of Ethelbert and Artolivan and Gwydre.
He didn’t know that Palmaristown had burned and that the rage of much of Honce was even then refocusing against Dame Gwydre.
All that he knew was that he needed Cadayle, and fast.
He started away and didn’t look back, so he didn’t see the sails of Lady Dreamer gliding above the dark water behind him, nearing Ethelbert dos Entel and the meeting of desperate men that would become the last, best hope for the land of Honce.
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