"I love you," she said, very softly. "Freely. And always will."
Aeriel reached to touch her cheek, but Erin turned away, crossing her arms. The pale girl eyed her a few moments silently, before murmuring, "So you alone did not believe I had been taken by icari."
The other shook her head. "No. I saw the darkangel in Pirs scream and flee at the sight of you."
"Did you tell Irrylath this?"
Erin snorted. "Your husband does not listen to me."
Aeriel looked down, deeply grieved for Erin's suffering on her account. Irrylath's, too. She had never meant to cause either of them pain. Aeriel lifted her gaze toward the distant, unseen Witch's Mere. The soft white glow of the pearl filled her eyes.
"So you set out on your own in search of me."
"If Ravenna's heron had not found me a daymonth past, I should be searching still," Erin answered, calmer now. "What will you do with Irrylath when you return?"
Aeriel sighed and shook her head. The wind from the desert was cool and full of fine sand that polished at her anklebones. The heron, testing her wings, rose into the air, hovering a moment before realighting. Aeriel looked away.
"I am not returning with you, Erin."
The dark girl pivoted to stare at her. Abruptly, she shoved away from the Dome and halted a few paces from Aeriel. "What do you mean?" she demanded. "You must ride at the head of the army that has gathered in your name! I did not travel all this way to be told you will not go back."
Carefully, Aeriel unbuckled the sword at her hip. "Ravenna has given me another task. I mean to meet the Witch, but not in battle. I must confront her face-to-face."
"Are you mad?" Erin cried, catching her arm.
"Bear word back," Aeriel told her, "of our allies the duaroughs marching underland against the Witch.
Say that I have spoken with the Ancient Ravenna."
"No!" Erin exclaimed. "I won't. I'll not leave you." She did not let go of the pale girl's arm. "If you mean to face the Witch unguarded, I'll stand at your side."
Aeriel shook her head and held out the sword. A little of the Ancient rime was slowly becoming clear to her. The glaive burned and whispered in its sheath. "Someone must champion the fight in my stead,"
she said softly. "Whom can I trust but you?"
Erin looked at the sword, then back at Aeriel. The pale girl waited. At last, very reluctantly, Erin took the sword. "Oh," she cried, gripping the pommel and sheath. "Oh, what is this? It feels alive."
Aeriel did not answer—for truly, she did not yet know what power the sword might hold. The Witch's pin was what it once had been. What manner of thing into which Ravenna had now transformed it, she could not say. Intently, the dark girl girded it about her waist. The sword hung, shimmering in its sheath. As Erin lifted the now-plain scabbard to study the silvery grain of the wood, running one finger along its sheath's smooth edge, Aeriel felt a strange sensation, as of something lightly stroking her side.
She shivered, frowning, and brushed herself. When Erin warily tried to pull the blade free, it would not come.
"Soft," Aeriel murmured, sure only as she spoke that what she said was so. "Now is not the time, though you will be able to draw it at need." The pearl told her this, she realized, scarcely stopping to wonder at it. She gazed out over the dry, crested dunes before turning back to Erin. "Fare you well," she said.
"Wait—" the dark girl began, groping for words, unwilling still to let her go. "Have you no journey fare, no water?"
For the first time Aeriel noticed the little sack of provisions and the waterskin slung from the other's shoulders. The pale girl shook her head. She felt not the slightest hunger or thirst.
"The pearl feeds me," she answered, certain suddenly that she would need no nourishment so long as she wore Ravenna's jewel upon her brow. As Erin embraced her, Aeriel pulled the wedding sari from her bodice and handed it to her. "Give this to Irrylath," she said, "to make a banner of. And tell my husband he will find me at the Witch's Mere."
The dark girl carefully tucked the folded square of yellow silk into her shift. Aeriel drew back. Behind them, the City's bright beacon flared suddenly from the highest tower within the Dome. Aeriel started, turning.
"Heron, what is it?" she cried.
The white bird skimmed to her across the dunes. "Melkior is burning my lady to ash," she said. "Time we all of us were gone."
She veered away then, but Aeriel reached to catch her wing.
"Wait, heron. Where are you bound?"
The Ancient's messenger indignantly shook herself free.
"I have my own part still in Ravenna's task" was all she would say before gliding away across the crests of sand. The desert air lifted her up, soaring. Within the Dome, the beacon fire blazed higher, brighter still. Aeriel and Erin watched the white bird dwindle in the distance and disappear. The dark girl shouldered her pack and water bag and embraced Aeriel again. At last she lifted her hand in farewell as she started away. Aeriel raised her own in reply before the other disappeared among the dunes. A moment later, she herself strode off in another direction across the sand.
9
Bright Burning
Aeriel traveled alone over the endless dry dunes toward the Witch's Mere. The pearl helped her see soft places in the sand, avoid those banks that had begun to shift. She walked a long time before pausing to rest, and even then it was not fatigue that stopped her. If I press on too hard, Erin will do the same, she found herself thinking, illogically, and yet she halted, strangely sure it was for Erin's sake.
She envisioned the dark girl, miles away, sinking down, one hand resting on the pommel of the sword, unwilling to unfasten it, even now. When Erin brought her little skin water bag to her lips, Aeriel tasted water. The dark girl took a handful of flavorless chickseed from her pouch and chewed on it, coughed dryly, sipped again. She sighed heavily and at last lay down, cheek pillowed on her arm.
Shoulders slumping, Aeriel felt a kind of resonant fatigue. Abruptly, she caught herself, surprised how vivid her imagining had been. It was not her own weariness she sensed, but that of her far-off friend. Did some connection now link them: pearl to sword? Aeriel frowned, wondering. The dark girl's presence seemed to overlie her own vision—lightly, yet as distincdy as an image reflected on water. If she ignored it, it faded. Yet when she paid it heed, it sharpened, growing more vivid. Exhausted, Erin slept. Later, when she awoke, Aeriel rose and walked on.
The night lengthened. At last Aeriel neared the desert's edge. The sand underfoot turned from pale orange to greyer drab. Bits of parched, broken ground showed through. An occasional frayed shoot thrust up through a crack. She sensed Erin, leagues distant, also nearing the desert's edge. The dark girl hove into sight of the allied camp sooner than Aeriel had expected. The terrain of the Waste was uneven there, fraught with canyons and cliffs. Guards and sentries stood posted everywhere. They stared at Erin as though she had returned from the dead.
"You know me," she snapped wearily. "Stop gaping." They made no attempt to stop her, only called for their captains. "Where is he, Irrylath?" Erin demanded. "I bring word of Aeriel."
They stared at the glaive, burning white in its sheath. "The Aeriel!" she heard others murmuring, abuzz.
"A message from the Aeriel…"
Far away, the pale girl had to smile. Already her name, like Ravenna's, was being used as a title.
Impatient, Erin strode past the sentries without waiting for their leave. She headed toward the great council tent at the center of the camp. Rose silk, it billowed huge, breathing and sighing in the slight desert wind. Again, the sentries gaped, but these had the presence of mind to cross their pikes. Erin halted.
Aeriel heard voices through the tent's open entryway.
"My son, we must press on…"
"Brother, Aeriel or no Aeriel, our troops cannot simply continue to languish here."
"… nightshade upon daymonth, Cousin, going nowhere—"
Hand resting on the pommel of her sword, Erin told the sentries, "Let me pass. I come from Aeriel."
Within, the drone of discussion abruptly ceased.
"Who's there?" demanded a voice. Though rough, it was surely Irrylath's. Aeriel fought the leaping of her heart.
"Sentry, answer your commander," a second voice directed, lighter pitched, but for all that, more like the prince's than Aeriel had ever realized: his cousin, Sabr.
Aeriel's throat knotted, and a bitterness welled in her mouth. She had not wanted to think of the bandit queen again so soon. Other voices murmured. At Irrylath's word, the two guards uncrossed their spears and stood aside. Erin entered. Through the dark girl's eyes, Aeriel glimpsed the Lady Syllva and her Istern sons, her own brother Roshka and Talb the Mage—even the lyon Pendarlon.
They clustered about a folding camp table on which rested a map weighted with odd objects: a sheathed dagger, a flagon, a stone. Someone moved through the others from the table's far side. Walking the Wasteland, absorbed in her vision, Aeriel stumbled. Dismay glanced through her. She scarcely recognized the man. She felt Erin's start of surprise echo her own.
"Oh, husband," Aeriel murmured. "Irrylath."
He was so thin, he looked weadiered to the bone. The broad, high planes of his cheeks stuck sharply out, the cheek beneath hollow and shadowed. His sark hung loose from the shoulders, the sash at the waist cinched tight. He looked like a whippet, like a desert racing cat, like a man in whom some guilty inner fire burned, consuming him.
"He won't live to reach the Witch's Mere!" Aeriel found herself whispering in terror, and the image came to her again, unbidden, of Irrylath falling toward stormtossed emptiness. Desperately, she thrust the fearful thought away. She stood halted in the middle of the flat, grey expanse of Wasteland now, staring at nothing, seeing only what was happening in Syllva's camp leagues upon leagues away, watching through Erin's eyes.