He was standing in an open clearing, trying to find it again, when he heard someone call. “Highlander! Wait!”
He turned in surprise, trying to identify the voice, to determine from where the speaker was calling. He was still searching the hills unsuccessfully when Panax walked out of the trees behind him.
“Where have you been, Quentin Leah?” the Dwarf demanded, out of breath and flushed with exertion. “We’ve been hunting for you all yesterday and last night! It was pure luck that I caught sight of you just now!”
He came up to Quentin and shook his hand warmly. “Well met, Highlander. You look a wreck, if you don’t mind my saying. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Quentin answered, even though he wasn’t. “Who’s been looking for me, Panax?”
“Kian and I. Obat and a handful of his Rindge. The wronk tore them up pretty thoroughly. The village, the people, everything. Scattered the tribe all over the place, those it didn’t kill. Obat pulled the survivors together up in the hills. At one point, they were planning to rebuild their village and go on as before, but no longer. They’re not going back. Things have changed.”
He stopped suddenly, taking a close look at Quentin’s face, finding something in it he hadn’t seen before. “Where’s Tamis?” he asked.
Quentin shook his head. “Dead. Ard Patrinell, as well. They killed each other. I couldn’t save either one.” His hands were shaking. He couldn’t seem to stop them. He stared down, confused. “We set a trap, Tamis and I. We hid in the forest by a pit and let the wronk find us, thinking we could drop it in. We used a decoy, a trick, to lure it over. It worked, but then it climbed out, and Tamis . . .”
He trailed off, unable to continue, tears coming to his eyes once more, as if he were a child reliving a nightmare.
Panax took Quentin’s hands in his own, steadying them, holding on until the shaking stopped. “You don’t look as if you escaped by much yourself,” he said quietly. “I expect there wasn’t anything you could have done to save either that you didn’t try. Don’t expect too much of yourself, Highlander. Even magic doesn’t always provide the answers we seek. The Druid may have found that out himself, wherever he is. Sometimes, we have to accept that we have limitations. Some things we can’t prevent. Death is one.”
He let go of Quentin’s hands and gripped him by his shoulders. “I’m sorry about Tamis and Ard Patrinell, truly sorry. I expect they fought hard to stay alive, Highlander. But so did you. I think you owe it to them and to yourself to make that count for something.”
Quentin looked into the Dwarf’s brown eyes, coming back to himself as he did so, able to form a measure of fresh resolve. He remembered Tamis’ face at the end, the fierce way she had faced her own death. Panax was right. To fall apart now, to give in to his sadness, would be a betrayal of everything she had fought to accomplish. He took a deep breath. “All right.”
Panax nodded and stepped back. “Good. We need you to be strong, Quentin Leah. The Rindge have been out exploring since early this morning, before dawn. They went into the ruins. Castledown is littered with creepers, none of them functioning. The fire threads are down. Antrax, it seems, is dead.”
Quentin stared at him, not comprehending.
“Well and good, you might say, but look over there.” The Dwarf pointed east to a steadily advancing cloudbank, a huge wall of darkness that stretched across the entire horizon. “What’s coming is a change in the world, according to the Rindge. They have a legend about it. If Antrax is destroyed, the world will revert to what it once was. Remember how the Rindge insisted that Antrax controlled the weather? Well before that time, this land was all ice and snow, bitter cold and barely habitable. It only turned to something warm and green after Antrax changed it eons ago. Now it’s changing back. Feel the nip in the air?”
Quentin hadn’t noticed it before, but Panax was right. The air was growing steadily colder, even as the sun rose. There was a brittle snap to it that whispered of winter.