Philip woke to a misty morning, prayed to Epherion, asking for forgiveness again for leaving Helios to find Scarlet. But his ask for forgiveness was couched in terms of an argument: what good is fighting a war against darkness if you can’t save the ones you love?
Love.
He stared into the coals of his morning fire and contemplated the word and its many meanings. Which of those had he meant?
It plagued him through his breakfast of cabbage soup and tea. The tea, for some reason, seemed to ease the throbbing in his leg.
The fever had come on the first day after the sting. The throbbing yesterday. Today the stiffness and swelling would come. It was then a matter of whether or not he survived it.
He was still at least seven days from Psalter’s Point, which seemed like a double-edged sword. The closer he got, the more likely it was that Scarlet had made it. But it also meant that it was more likely that she hadn’t left or had run into trouble there.
As for Ashcroft, he didn’t have enough information to know where the man might be. On the one hand, he was convinced that the undead who had nearly killed him had been in Ashcroft’s company at Tallfellow Canyon—unless the same claw marks on boots were more common than he thought.
That meant that either Ashcroft was working with the undead or that they had infiltrated the ranks of Ashcroft’s men. Philip hoped it was the latter. He hoped that Ashcroft wasn’t aligned with creatures of undeath.
But none of that gave him any idea where Ashcroft might be. Had he found Scarlet? Was he still with Scarlet? Why had the undead separated from him? Had they killed him somewhere?
He feared for Scarlet in too many ways to name. Sure, she was capable—he’d known that even when they were kids—but capable against the undead? That seemed unlikely.
At times he wanted to give up the pursuit and just return to Helios to learn and study the archive. But something made him continue pushing, hoping to find her, nor did Epherion dissuade him from his task.
The throbbing worsened and the stiffness increased as the day wore on, so that he was listing badly in his saddle in the early hours of the day, nearly folded over, holding on to Bella’s neck to stay on the horse. He could no longer guide or grip with his right knee.
By ten in the morning, with mist still rising from the thawing road, he noticed an especially dense patch of fog emanating from the forest on the north side of the trail, which piqued his interest.
But he rode on by it until he noticed many hoofprints on the soft soil on the left-hand edge of the road. With great effort, he stabilized himself on his horse and looked at the tracks. Several horses had been here, but it was probably a couple of weeks old.
Curious, he dismounted Bella, letting her graze by the road, and limped into the woods, dragging his bad leg.
Less than thirty yards in, he found fresh gravesites, sufficient to hold five or six people, along with the remains of a camp along a river.
The graves gave him pause, especially the lone grave. Fear gripped him.
Please let it not be her.
Epherion had said she had her own path, so surely it could not be her—unless that path was death.
He surveyed the area where two tents had obviously been placed. Among the tracks, he found the footprints of a woman and he stopped when he saw them, catching his breath. Then he moved back westward, downstream, watching the ground. She had crossed once in each direction along the river.
Then he found a pool, heated and steaming from underground vents.
He reached his hand into the water, gingerly, but it was perfect.
He removed his armor and set it carefully to one side. When he leaned over the pool, he suddenly withdrew, having seen his face reflected.
Then he peered back over the edge into the pool again.
He looked ten years older and, as Krang Haddagan had pointed out, there were flecks of gray in his sideburns and one streak of gray in his hair.
He stared for a while and then withdrew from the pool and sat on a rock, gently rubbing his right thigh, though avoiding any pressure over the wound.
He removed his tunic but left his breeches on. He didn’t think he could have gotten them off if he’d wanted to, much less got them back on. In a day’s time, he might have to cut them open if the swelling increased.
He lowered himself in the pool, moving slowly.
Walking around the campground had been a mistake. He was sure that more tiny fractures of the quill were poisoning him all over again, even as he lay in the water.
But the warmth did make his leg feel better. He found a shelf to lie on and still remain submerged, and fell asleep there.
He rested for nearly two hours—until the delirium came.
His eyes opened, but all he saw was mist. His eyes refused to focus, and his limbs were too heavy to move. He saw vague shapes now, flashing lights—more undead creatures come to attack him and drain his life away. Voices of men, deep and slow.
They spoke to him, but he said nothing. The effort of talking was too much, and he didn’t want to listen to the undead anyway, nor see them. So he closed his eyes again, hoping that the nightmare would go away.
Then hands took hold of his face. Not the clawed hands of undead or the rough hands of a man, but soft hands that reminded him of what his mother’s might have been like if she had lived.
And then a face peered down at him, coming out of the mist. Green eyes. Beautiful lips. Blonde hair.
“Esme?” he whispered.
Scarlet remembered this stretch of road.
She could hear the small river flowing just inside the forest.
Benedict was buried just ahead. She dreaded going to his grave, not knowing what she would say to him. How do you ask for forgiveness from a man whose death was your fault? What words could she use, knowing that he could not hear them anyway?
She lightly kicked Thistledown to ride slightly ahead, rounding the corner first.
And then she reined in sharply.
A horse grazed along the right-hand side of the road.
Saddled, carrying bags and packs by someone who had traveled a long way.
But no rider.
Scarlet raised her hand into a fist, and she heard the company behind her come to a halt. Then two riders, Travis and Bertram—her cousins, who had proven themselves excellent leaders on the trip back west—rode up beside her.
“My lady?” Bertram whispered.
“Do you remember I told you about Benedict, my swordmaster?”
“Yes, my lady,” Bertram said.
“He is buried just here, inside the woods, in a single grave. Our attackers are also buried there in a mass grave. West of that, you’ll find a pool steaming with warm mists. Would you be so good, the two of you, to scout along the river?”
They nodded, drew swords, and took their leave.
Scarlet still intended to visit Benedict’s grave once she discovered who the rider was. Bringing Thistledown on a slow walk, she came near the other horse but did not encroach upon its space.
She watched as the two animals both craned their necks forward, sniffing, nearly touching noses.
She brought Thistledown a step closer and carefully reached for the reins of the other horse and gently—whispering while she moved—brought the horses side by side.
It was the pommel she saw first. A white stone, pale as the mist around it and yet somehow brighter, catching a light that wasn’t there. She stood at the horse’s side for a moment just looking at it before she reached down and drew it free. The steel carried the same quality. It was as though the light were coming from within the metal rather than falling on it. She turned the blade slowly in the grey morning air, watching it, feeling the warmth of the stone in her palm and the balance of a thing that had been made for a purpose. Then she sheathed it carefully, and left her hand resting on the hilt a moment longer than necessary.
She moved around to the left side of the horse and lifted open the flap of a saddlebag, peering inside.
Scarlet stopped.
She caught her breath.
There, just inside the flap, was a wool blanket, folded neatly, and lying up against it was a dark leather journal, worn at the corners.
“Philip!” she called loudly.
At the same time, she heard Travis calling from up ahead. “My lady! There is a man in the pool. He is very unwell.”
“Dear gods,” she whispered, and she spurred Thistledown, arriving where Travis stood at the edge of the road, dismounting before her mount came to a stop.
She ran into the woods, down the little hill, and slid to a stop near a pile of armor and clothing.
“What is wrong with him?” she asked.
Bertram, who had stayed with Philip, gently lifted a swollen, inflamed leg out of the pool.
“Poison,” he said.
“Dear Epherion!” she whispered.
She rushed to Philip, bent into the pool, and held his face in both hands.
“Philip! Philip! Can you hear me?”
He didn’t answer her.
“Philip—my love, please come back.”
His eyes fluttered open. But his gaze was unfocused, looking through her rather than at her. Then his eyes found her face. A little strength filled him, small and fragile as a candle in wind.
“Esme?” he whispered.
Scarlet stopped breathing.
Nobody had called her that in over a decade.
It was a common enough name. It meant nothing. It could have been delirium — a fever-name, some girl from his past, a coincidence of syllables. She told herself this in the half-second before the rest of her caught up.
Her hands were shaking.
“Tell me true,” she said. Her voice came out steadier than she had any right to expect. “Your name before the Knights Celestial. What were you called then?”
He looked up at her. Held her in his eyes with the last of what he had.
“I’m Edmund,” he said.
The word hit her like something physical.
She stayed where she was. Her hands were still at his face. Something that had been wrong for twelve years was suddenly, irrevocably right, and she had no words for it yet.
Edmund.
The ring spinning under his thumb on the garrison road. The dark curls. The blue eyes. The way his hands at her waist had felt like something she already knew and couldn’t account for.
She had kissed a boy named Edmund when she was twelve years old, in an abandoned building. It had very nearly been accident, but she knew it wasn’t. It had been a moment of realization about a boy who was then simply gone. And she had carried the absence of him like a stone in her chest and measured everyone who came after against him.
She wept silently, holding his head, his face in her hands, but she cried out from her heart to the creator.
Epherion! Giver of life. Hear me! Hear my prayer. I give my life for him. Let him have my years.
She had no promise it would work. No sign. Nothing but the asking, and the willingness to mean it completely, and she did — every word of it, with nothing held back.
His breath became shallower. His eyes never left her.
She bent to kiss him, her lips at the corner of his eye.
And then a flash in her mind — she heard the voice. Ancient and echoing, and it seemed to echo through the forest. Her body shook. Her hands trembled. She tilted her head back and looked up just as a sunbeam broke through the morning mist and made its way through the canopy to touch her face.
Daughter, be blessed, for you are chosen.
It began as a lion’s roar, coursing through her, and then stilled to a quiet whisper as she felt the love of Epherion flow through her, through her arms, through her hands, and her fingertips, which took on an otherworldly glow. The glow passed into Philip, lighting the pool.
From his swollen thigh, pieces of a quill emerged, falling into the pool along with a viscous, clear fluid. It ran for several seconds, followed by blood, and then the wound closed on its own. The swelling abated, the redness left, leaving healthy pink, and the glow faded from the pool.
Bertram and Travis withdrew to the road without a word and left the pool to the two people in it.
Philip’s eyes changed — from softness to strength — and he rose from the pool.
He stood in the water a moment, breathing, his hands out as if trying to understand the balance of his life. Then he looked at her.
She had not moved. She was still kneeling at the pool’s edge where she had held him, her hands resting open in her lap, her face wet. She was looking at him in awe — a dream she had stopped letting herself believe.
He reached for her hand.
She took it without thinking and stepped down into the warm water beside him, boots and riding clothes and all, and did not look back toward the treeline or the men or any of the things waiting for her beyond the edge of the mist.
The water rose around her. The warmth settled in.
He put his arms around her and she leaned into him, and for a long time neither of them said anything, because there was nothing that needed saying yet, and everything that did could wait.
The pool steamed quietly around them, and the forest held its breath, and the morning light came down through the canopy in long gold shafts that touched the water and made it shine.
She sought his mouth and found he was already seeking hers.
His hands came up slowly — one at her jaw, one at the back of her neck, his thumb tracing the line of her throat as though he was learning something he had forgotten. The water moved around them, warm and unhurried. And unlike her dreams, she felt the solid weight of him under her hands rather than vapors—the steady rise and fall of his chest, the realness of him.
The kiss was careful in the way that you are careful with something you have been without for a very long time. When you’ve crossed a desert and are parched, you do not spill a drop. And Scarlet did not spill a drop. It became warm in a way that had nothing careful about it at all. And then the warmth became heat that had been gathering for years.
It wasn’t the beginning. It was the continuation of a long delay. Surprise, suspended for so long, had finally become something fiercely wanted.
When they finally stopped, neither of them moved far. His forehead came down to rest against hers. Her hands were still at his chest. The water steamed around them. Somewhere beyond the treeline, people were waiting, and neither of them cared even slightly.
“Esme.”
“Edmund.”
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.