She, of course, would he most pleased and eager to have it happen now.
His eyes lifted to the darkness of the room, and for the first time he felt the cold. He must change his plans. Any other enemy but this one would not require the adjustments he was now forced to make. But a confrontation with her—a confrontation that must surely come-would be resolved only if he could blunt her rage by revealing a truth that had been hidden for many years. It pained him anew to think that he had not been present to prevent that truth from being concealed when it might have had a more immediate impact. But there was no help for it now; the events of the past were irreversible. What was given to him to do was to alter the future, and even that might be possible only at great cost.
He placed Kael Elessedil’s body back in its niche, extinguished the torches, and went out into the night once more. Darkness and rain closed about him as he threaded his way through the forest trees towards the center. He must act quickly. He had thought to go next in search of a ship and crew, but that would have to wait. There was a more pressing need, and he must see to it at once.
By midnight tomorrow, he must speak with the dead.
EIGHT
By sunrise of the following day, Walker had left Bracken Clell behind. Back aboard Obsidian and seated just behind Hunter Predd, he watched through a curtain of rain as the eastern sky slowly brightened to the color of hammered tin. The rains had lessened from the night before, but not abated altogether. The skies remained clouded and dark, pressing down upon a sodden earth with a mix of shadows and mist. Hunched within his travel cloak, cold and damp already, he retreated deep inside himself to help pass the time. There, he worked his way carefully through the details of the tasks he faced. He knew what was needed, but he found himself wishing again and again that there could be others with whom to share his responsibilities. That he felt so alone was disheartening. It lessened to almost nothing the margin of error he was permitted. He thought of how he had disdained the work of the Druids in his youth, of Allanon in particular, and he chided himself anew for his foolishness.
They flew through the morning with only a single stop to rest Obsidian and to give themselves a chance to eat and drink. By midday, they had crossed the Tirfing and left the Westland behind. The Duin Forests passed beneath, then the slender ribbon of the Rappahalladran. The rains began to lessen, the storm clouds to move south, and snatches of blue sky to appear on the horizon. They were flying east and slightly north now, the Wing Rider taking them along the southern edge of the Borderlands below Tyrsis and across the Rainbow Lake. Lunch was consumed on the lake’s western shores, the day clear and bright by then, their clothing beginning to warm in the sun, their interest in their mission beginning to sharpen once more.
“The castaway, Walker—was he Kael Elessedil?” Hunter Predd asked, as they finished the last of the cold grouse Dome had provided them on leaving that morning.
Walker nodded. “He was. I couldn’t tell at first. I haven’t seen him since he was not much more than a boy and don’t remember him all that well in any case. Even it I had remembered how he looked then, it would have been difficult to recognize him after what he had been through. But there were other signs, scattered traces, that revealed his identity.”
“He didn’t die in his sleep, did he? Not of natural causes.
Someone helped end his life.”
The Druid paused. “Someone did. How did you know that?”
The Wing Rider shrugged, his whipcordtough body lengthening as he stretched. “Dorne is a talented Healer and a careful man. The castaway had survived days at sea before I found him. He should have survived a couple more in a Healer’s bed.” He glanced at Walker questioningly. “Our assassins’ employer?”