Taking Flight

“No, it’s all right,” Irith said, breaking the impasse. “He’s right, I’m not really tired. I think it’s really sweet that Asha’s worried about her father, and I’d be glad to go tell him.”

Ezdral wavered.

“Thank you, Irith,” Asha murmured.

“Sit down, Ezdral,” Irith said.

Kelder, tired and fed up with the whole situation, said, “Yes, sit down.” Angry that the man he was trying to help was turning against him, he added the cruelest thing he could think of. Then, remembering the nature of the spell Ezdral was under, he immediately regretted it.

“Have a drink,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-Five

For much of the next morning the Forest of Amramion was visible off to their left, and Ezdral, once he had sobered up sufficiently to focus, marveled at it. He hadn’t seen a forest in over a decade.

The guards at the border post between Amramion and Hlimora waved a greeting to Irith, but made no attempt to hinder the party.

Irith had been quiet ever since returning from Abden the Elder’s house, and didn’t return the guard’s greeting. She had given no details of her encounter with Asha’s father, but had merely said that the message was delivered.

Shortly after crossing the border into Hlimora, though, she burst out, “Asha, how could you live there?”

Asha looked up, startled but silent.

“She couldn’t,” Kelder said quietly. “That’s why she’s here.”

“It stank,” Irith said. “The whole place, and it was filthy, and the house was practically falling down, and one shed had fallen down. And your … that man was drunk and singing to himself, and when he saw me he … When I gave him the message and told him his son was dead he started crying, and that wasn’t so bad, I expected that, but then he started complaining about how there was no one to help him, and you’d run off, and when I told him you were all right he got angry and started swearing and saying all kinds of horrible things, and he tried to grab me, but I turned into a bird and flew away, and I heard him crying again as I left.” She shuddered. “My father was never like that.”

Asha didn’t say anything.

Irith looked at Ezdral, and said angrily, “He was even worse than you were, when we found you!”

Kelder expected for Ezdral to make some cutting reply, or to stand silently on his dignity, but instead the old man muttered, “I’m sorry, Irith; please don’t be mad at me.”

Kelder shuddered.

Ezdral’s subservience was appalling-but on the other hand, Irith seemed to be showing more compassion than was her wont. Kelder wondered if she might be learning something from Asha and Ezdral.

He certainly hoped so.

And his own presence might not hurt, either.

They were two and a half hours from the border when Kelder stopped and looked closely at the hillside to their left.

“What is it?” Asha asked.

“This is where I first saw the Great Highway,” Kelder explained. “I slept on the slope there. And it’s where I met Irith.”

The Flyer nodded. “That’s right,” she said. “I remember. At first I thought you were going to just turn around and go back to your farm in Shulara.”

“I thought so, too,” Kelder admitted.

It occurred to him that he could do that now-he could simply head south, up that hill and down the other side, and go back home to his family, and not worry about where his next meal was coming from, or Ezdral’s love spell, or Asha’s homelessness.

He started to think about it. He turned to look at the others.

He saw Irith’s face and forgot the whole notion. She was obviously not yet ready to come with him and settle down to the life of a Shularan peasant, and he wasn’t yet ready to give up on Zindre’s predictions and go home without her.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ve still got a long way to go.”

They had scarcely covered another hundred yards when the turrets of Hlimora Castle came in sight. Kelder remembered how hungry he had been that morning-when was that, a sixnight ago? If he had known how close the castle was, he would never have turned east.

And in that case, he might never have met Asha or Ezdral-but he might have met other people instead. There was simply no knowing what might have happened-not without magic, anyway.

Zindre would have known, he supposed. She must have known that he would go east, as he had-or perhaps she hadn’t known any details at all, just the generalities. Perhaps he had been fated to meet someone lost and forlorn, but exactly who had not been predetermined.

The whole question of prophecy was an interesting one; despite his obsession with Zindre’s predictions, he had never really thought about the mechanics before. Were all his actions predetermined? Some, but not others? If so, why?

If everything he was to do was predetermined, then he didn’t really have any control over his own life at all, and nothing he did or thought mattered. That was an unsettling notion.