Chapter 30
Chapter Thirty
Alwyn
When Alwyn opened his eyes again, he had no idea how much time had passed.
The last thing he’d been aware of was Krujha holding him, the fire going out, Zesh and Yarug dead behind him—but now he was somewhere else, and pain radiated through his body, so intense that he couldn’t focus on anything else.
He tried to move, whimpering in agony, but something was keeping him bound.
But he was moving, maybe on a horse, and every step felt like someone shoving salt into his wounds.
Even the light in his eyes was excruciating—he squeezed them shut, groaning.
His tongue felt like sand in his mouth, and his pulse throbbed painfully in his hands.
He thought the fire was out, but now he was sure that flames still bit at his skin. Vaguely, he could hear voices near him, bits and pieces of their words filtering through his consciousness. He’s waking—too soon—can help him?
Something washed over him, the cool touch of a healing spell, and the relief was too great for him to wonder where it came from as he gratefully sank back into sleep.
This time, though, he dreamed.
He sat on the bank of the river by the cottage, the distant, familiar sound of the waterfall in the background.
A small fishing pole was in his hands, and he was watching an older man with a fishing pole of his own.
The man’s voice was indistinct as he spoke; he couldn’t make sense of the words, but he somehow knew the man was his father, and that they had been here many times before.
He could hear a woman’s voice calling him, just as familiar, and he dashed off.
It was warm and humid, but not painfully hot, not like the fire.
Rocks dug into his bare feet as he ran, but the cold water of the river splashed his legs, too, until he turned to clamber up the hill to the cottage where his mother waited for him.
Then they were all sitting around the table, three of them together.
His parents were talking to each other as they ate supper, and Alwyn looked up at them both, trying to make sense of a conversation clearly not meant for him.
But he felt content just to be here with his family.
He was still warm from having spent the day out in the sun, and he knew the next day would be more of the same.
Then his mother was tucking him into bed.
He couldn’t hear her voice, but he knew she was telling him goodnight, and that she loved him, and that they would go fishing again in the morning.
Then it was dark, and he was frightened, so he felt for the candle she had blown out just a moment before.
The flame burst back to life as he reached for it, sending the warm, comforting light flickering through his room.
He smiled, the frightening dark banished, and settled back into his bed.
Still, he could hear the roar of the waterfall in the distance, and when his eyes closed, the flow of the water consumed his vision.
He could feel it now: the water flowing through him, the weight of it slamming into his shoulders as he ducked his head into the stream, the rush of it filling the space where his magic had been.
It was part of him for just a moment—only as long as it rushed down from between the rocks high above, then quickly flowed over and through him, and away along the river that would eventually reach the ocean.
It was all part of him, and he was part of it all, the enormity all at once terrifying and sublime.
For a long time, a lifetime, all that existed was the rushing water, the sound of it so loud it drowned out everything else.
But then the noise morphed, the rhythm and cadence of it changing, until it sounded almost like words.
It was words, and the sound he was hearing was a voice, distant but familiar—then a second voice, one that was unknown to him.
The familiar voice was a man’s. Not an elf, but an orc. Krujha. He remembered it all at once. Their mission together, their cold nights made warm in the wilderness. His smile, sweet and earnest. Why had he ever tried to convince himself that he hadn’t fallen in love with him?
It sounded like he was singing, the way he did when they traveled. Alwyn clung to the words, riding them up and up as if they were a raft, carrying him through the river that had so thoroughly consumed him just moments before.
When he opened his eyes again, everything was hazy and indistinct.
His eyelids felt heavy and scratchy as he blinked, trying to make sense of his surroundings.
He was looking up at the sky, but he was moving—from the way the movement bumped and jostled him, he thought he must be in a horse-drawn cart.
Pain was a dull thrum in the background as he stirred to wakefulness, but quickly rose to a sharp point when he tried to look around. Any movement at all felt like being stabbed with a hot iron, so he quickly gave up the effort.
“Alwyn,” he heard Krujha’s voice, somewhere above him. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Try to relax. You’re hurt. We have you bandaged up pretty tight right now. But we’re with a healer, and we’re taking you back to Aefraya to see another healer, too.”
Alwyn could feel his heart pounding, but he tried to slow it down. He took in a long breath, his lungs groaning in protest, before giving a tiny, cautious nod. Another voice came—a woman’s, one he didn’t recognize.
“Alwyn, I’m Iefyr, the healer traveling with you,” she said. She, too, was out of his range of vision. “I can help you go back to sleep if you’d like, but Krujha said maybe you wouldn’t want to be sedated too long. Do you want to go back to sleep?”
Sleep. He thought of the dream he’d just had—how sure he’d been that the man and woman he’d seen were his parents.
He didn’t know how he’d gone from the cottage by the waterfall to the orphanage where his first true memories were formed; but if those dreams were memories themselves, and not figments of his imagination, he thought maybe he did know after all.
But he didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to dream it.
For all he knew, none of it was real—it would be easier that way.
“Alwyn?” the woman’s voice came again, pulling him back into reality. He shook his head, which sent another wave of pain coursing through him. He bit back a groan. “Alright. Let me try to reduce some of your pain, at least.”
“Wait,” he croaked, some of the fog in his thoughts clearing. How had he ended up here? The last thing he remembered was the fire on the mountain, but now it looked like they were somewhere entirely different. “Krujha. What happened? Our mission?”
Krujha’s face entered his field of vision, peering down at him with a small, almost sad smile.
“You did it,” Krujha replied softly, and all the tension drained from Alwyn’s body in relief.
He thought he remembered as much; but his head still felt stuffed with cotton, and he wasn’t sure anymore what was a memory and what had been a dream.
“Zesh is dead, and so is the druid. Some rebels got away, but they’ve mostly scattered.
What happens to them isn’t our concern anymore, alright? Just try to rest.”
Alwyn nodded, closing his eyes. Yes, he’d done it. No one could say that he had failed by any measure, and now he could rest.
A small hand pressed onto his shoulder, and a cool wave of magic washed over him, dulling some of the pain.
He didn’t quite drift back off to sleep, but he didn’t feel entirely awake, either.
As he dozed, he was vaguely aware of Krujha and Iefyr speaking to each other, the rhythmic sound of horse hooves on a dirt path, and the faint jostle of the cart.
For a while he lingered there, in that quiet space between sleep and wakefulness, aware of the world, but letting it pass him by as a silent observer.
At some point, he must have drifted off entirely; when he blinked his eyes open again, the sun had sunk low enough that it was in his field of vision, making him wince and turn his face away.
Now that he felt more aware, he turned his head to the side to get a better look at his surroundings: he was in a narrow wooden cart that looked like it had originally been a hand-pulled wagon for transporting produce, which had somehow been modified to attach a horse.
He craned his neck to see Krujha atop the horse drawing the cart, and an elf woman—Iefyr—on a smaller horse beside him.
The woman was dark-haired and slender, with nothing Alwyn could see that indicated she might be part of the Order, or a spy from the Library.
They were traveling through a rocky grassland, which gave little indication as to where they were, since so much of the wildlands was the same.
But they had been further north before, which was more forested—and hadn’t Krujha said they were going back to Aefraya?
This did look like the stretch of wildlands closer to the Aefrayan border, but it was impossible to say for sure.
She noticed him stirring and turned back to get a better look at him. “Oh, the sun must be right in your eyes, isn’t it?”
Krujha glanced back at that, grimacing. Alwyn nodded, and they paused so Krujha could pull a hat with a wide brim out from one of his bags. It was far too large to sit correctly on Alwyn’s head, but it blocked out the sun entirely, so he tolerated it.
“Krujha,” he said, as the orc was stepping away to mount his horse again. “Will you tell me what happened? I don’t really remember much.”
Krujha hesitated. “Are you sure you want to talk now? If you’re tired, you can keep resting.”
Alwyn resisted the urge to shake his head. “No, I’m awake.”
Krujha climbed onto his horse, and for a moment Alwyn thought the orc was ignoring him. But as they set back on the road, Krujha spoke again.