woman?”
Cale shook his head.
Abelar put his other hand on Cale’s shoulder. “I am sorry, my friend.”
“Thank you,” Cale said.
Abelar’s eyes grazed Riven’s holy symbol, moved away. His jaw tightened and a tic caused his left eye to blink.
“We came to warn you about the storm,” Cale said, nodding back at the growing blackness. “Seems you scarce needed it.”
“We thought it dark magic out of Ordulin. It seemed best to stay out of its path.”
“It did not originate in Ordulin,” said Cale. “But in the Plane of Shadow, with Sharrans.”
“Sharrans,” Abelar said, the word a curse. His eyes again returned to the surface of the lake.
“I fear Ordulin may be … gone,” Cale said, thinking of his conversation with Mask on the Wayrock.
Abelar turned to him, a stricken look on his face. Cale envied him his empathy.
“There are tens of thousands of people there,” Abelar said. “And the Dawn Tower? Gone? What magic is this?”
Before Cale could answer, a voice from atop the bank carried over the rain.
“Papa! Papa! Rain coming! Hurry!”
The three men looked up to see Elden appear at the top of the riverbank. Exertion reddened his round face. Labored breaths came from his mouth, still somehow slack even in a smile. But his eyes shone with … something. Cale thought it insight or perhaps unfiltered love. He found he envied Elden, too.
The boy’s expression fell when he saw Cale and Riven. He looked uncertain, eased back a step, and looked over his shoulder.
“Grandpapa.”
Endren appeared behind him and his reassuring hand on Elden’s shoulder seemed to steady the boy. Endren, dressed in mail and with a blade at his belt, nodded at Cale and Riven, crouched, and said something in Elden’s ear. The boy visibly relaxed.
“The healers have done well by my son.” Abelar said, waving to Elden. He smiled at his boy, though the fate of Ordulin still haunted his eyes. He took Cale and Riven each by the shoulder and turned them around. “Come.”
They started up the rise and Elden’s eyes grew wider at Cale and Riven’s approach. He looked like he might bolt, but Endren kept a hand on his back and the boy held his ground. Father and son both had nerve, it seemed.
“These are the men who brought you back to us, Elden,” Endren said, loud enough for them all to hear.
“My knows,” Elden said. He slid behind his grandfather and peeked out from behind his legs like an archer through an arrow slit.
They gained the rise. Cale and Riven nodded a greeting at Endren, at Elden. The boy avoided eye contact.
“It rain again soon, Papa,” Elden said to Abelar, avoiding eye contact with Cale and Riven. “Hurry to tent. Hurry.”
“First, a dragon grab,” Abelar said. He knelt, arms out, and the expression he had carried when looking at the lake—the look of having lost something—disappeared entirely. Instead, he looked like a man who had found something.
Elden smiled and braved his uncertainty. He charged Abelar and leaped into his embrace. Abelar roared like a dragon, nuzzled the boy’s neck, and Elden giggled uncontrollably.
Cale could not help it. He chuckled, too. The boy’s laugh was as contagious as plague. Even Riven smiled.
Abelar stood, his son under one arm.
“Elden, these are Papa’s friends, Erevis and Riven. Do you remember them?”
The boy didn’t look at them. He pointed at the sky. “It going rain.”
“These are the men that saved you,” Abelar said to him. “They returned you to me.”
A cloud passed over Elden’s face, a personal Shadowstorm. He put his cheek on Abelar’s shoulder.
“Rain, Papa.”
“It’s all right,” Cale said to Elden, to Abelar. He could imagine how he must appear to some children. He would not have made much of a father.
Abelar kissed his son and placed him in the ground. “Grandpapa will take you back to the tent. I need to speak to Erevis and Riven. I will be along soon.”
Elden nodded and hugged his father again. He turned and actually looked at Cale and Riven, studying them. The peculiar vacancy of his other features contrasted markedly with his eyes, which looked as sharp as daggers.
“Tank you,” the boy said.
Cale kneeled down, forced the shadows leaking from his flesh to subside. “You are welcome, Elden.”
“Watch this, boy,” Riven said.
The assassin produced four small, painted wooden balls from a belt pouch.
Elden eyed them with curiosity. “What you do?”
“Watch,” Riven said. He tossed them into the air one after another and juggled them with facility.
Elden grinned and clapped with delight. “Him juggle!”
Cale thought that of all the sights