those moments where I’d scored a point as a boy I had never been in any danger of actually hurting him, so thoroughly had he controlled our exchanges.
“I . . . I’m sorry. . . .” I stammered as I reverted briefly to nine. “I didn’t . . . I . . .”
Kelos stepped back, pulling himself free of my sword. “Good point, boy. Excellent!” He had a huge smile on his face. “Totally unexpected and you’d have hit bone if you hadn’t pulled it. No one’s pricked me that solidly since Nuriko.”
“I didn’t think I would actually hit you,” I said. “You’re so much better than I am . . . I just . . .”
“Stop apologizing, Aral. That thrust was a thing of beauty. Riskier than anything you’d want to try if you didn’t have to, but I am better than you are, and if you can’t outfence an opponent you have to outrisk them. You’re a thinker and a planner, always have been, and damned good at it. But that’s made you overly cautious. Sometimes you simply have to take a leap in the dark and hope.”
I realized then that I was grinning like a madman, and mentally kicked myself. I hated that praise from this man could still light me up like a fucking schoolboy. But somewhere, deep down inside, no matter how much I hated what he had done to the goddess and my order, no matter how much I might hate him, he was still my master, still the man whose approval mattered most to me.
Would I ever be able to let that go?
* * *
Whether it was the two weeks on untamed water, or simply that the last of the risen who had attacked us in Wall had fallen to the forces of the Magelanders, I couldn’t say, but we didn’t encounter any more of them in Uln or on our way into the mountains above. The series of high passes that led from there into Dalridia were little more than goat tracks, totally unsuitable for trade or anything other than the fittest of foot traffic.
We climbed higher and higher, now edging our way along the narrowest of tracks, now skirting huge drops, now scrabbling up one of the many short vertical climbs that punctuated the trail. Often, as we negotiated a particularly difficult stretch, I thought back to my last passage this way hauling three badly injured comrades and wondered how we had made it at all.
It snowed twice. Both falls were light enough, but a reminder that we needed to hurry if we wanted to get through the mountains to the temple before winter closed the passes on the west. We were midway through the month of Harvestide, which meant summer was winding down, and the western road that led down into the Kvanas lay at the far end of Dalridia. Though travel usually continued well into Talewynd, early blizzards had been known to shut the passes down before Harvestide’s end.
By the time we descended into the mountain valley that held the kingdom of Dalridia we were all pretty ragged and grimy. Fortunately, the royal castle Jax’s brother had set aside for her and Loris and their students was on the south end of the kingdom, and we didn’t have to pass through any heavily populated areas to get there.
When we reached a point on the road where the castle was visible high on the slopes of the mountains ahead, I waved our little group to a stop. “I think it might be best if Kelos and Chomarr waited here in the wood below the village, while Siri and Faran and I go on ahead.”
It was a cold afternoon with a fine rain falling, and waiting in the evergreen forest wasn’t going to be much fun, but Kelos nodded. “That’s probably the wisest course, given the time Jax spent with the inquisitors of the Hand, and Loris’s death. I don’t think she’ll be at all happy to see either of us.”
“Neither will her students,” said Faran. “Most of them would kill you both given the chance.”
Chomarr pointed back up the road. “Perhaps we should meet you above the western pass? We could wait for you at Riada on the lake.”
It was tempting for a number of reasons, not least that it would give the rest of us the option of simply skipping over the part where we picked them up, but I shook my head. “No. We have plans to make