“From almost the very moment he was taken.” As if to delay speaking more, the fisherwoman took a bite of bread; but only a crumb, perhaps fearing she couldn’t swallow a mouthful. “His armies left us bleeding in the mud with our legs spread. Mothers, fathers—though they killed most of the men after using them. But there were so many of us who immediately began to follow. My husband was dead, my home burned, my sisters . . .” Her voice faltered. “And they had taken my son. What else was left but following?”
Lizzan had no answer. She shook her head.
“Many were in a daze as we walked. Not eating, not sleeping. And those who could sleep were always awakened by the others screaming. Most died that first winter. We hadn’t taken provisions. We simply followed.” Her throat worked, and she looked down to tug on the line. “The Destroyer reached the sunset shore in five years. It took me seven—and by then, I was the only one of our group left. Though I have met other groups of followers since.”
Chest swollen with emotion, Lizzan asked, “You followed your son to the edge of the continent?”
The woman nodded. “And farther. Though not as quickly as I wished. The Destroyer leveled a forest to build the ships that carried his army across the western ocean, and had also taken possession of every boat there already was. But eventually I found passage and began following them west again. I followed until I reached the eastern shore of Temra’s Heart.”
The ocean at the center of the world. Now she was here, not far from the western shore of Temra’s Heart, and Lizzan was breathless with the realization. “You walked around the world? You must have seen so much.”
“In the Destroyer’s wake?” The woman shook her head. “There were only piles of rotting corpses.”
“But you didn’t follow when he marched east again?” Back the way he’d come.
“When I reached Temra’s Heart, already I was years behind him. And when I learned that he had not sailed across the ocean but turned south along the coast, I thought he meant to return to the western realms by marching over the Bone Fields at the bottom of Temra’s Heart. And I had been fortunate in my travels until then, but knew I would not survive through Farian lands.”
The savages that plagued the far southern realms. “I wish the Destroyer had taken that route. Perhaps they’d have eaten him.”
“Or perhaps he would have enslaved them to his purpose, and they would soon be eating us, instead.”
That seemed more likely. “You didn’t know that he’d circled back east?”
Shaking her head, the fisherwoman finished her last bite of bread, then reached down to rinse her fingers in the river. “I crossed Temra’s Heart, hoping to finally get ahead of him, and returned to the western realms near to the same spot where he landed with his army a generation past, at the far edge of the Burning Plains. All those ships still lie upon the sands, rotting.”
“If that was where you landed, you must have seen the monoliths of Par.” Giant structures said to be built by the gods themselves. Not even the corpses left in the Destroyer’s wake could be piled high enough to obscure them.
“Only from a distance. That place is besieged by wraiths. But the monoliths are . . .” She tilted her head back, looking up, perhaps remembering their unimaginable height. “Extraordinary. If only because they were one of the few things he didn’t destroy. Or couldn’t destroy.”
“I like to think he could not.”
“As do I.” A quick smile touched her mouth. “From there I walked toward the Boiling Sea . . . all the while, waiting to hear of the Destroyer’s approach from the south. Yet that word never came, and I realized he’d not taken the route through the Bone Fields but intended to sail back across the western ocean, instead. I began walking north, so that if my son did return, I might meet him.” She huffed out a soft laugh. “I hadn’t heard that Stranik’s Passage was open.”
And she must have taken the long way around the flaming mountains, through the western passes. A two-year journey that was. Longer, if on foot.
Lizzan’s throat felt thick, for beside her sat another marvel that the Destroyer hadn’t been able to destroy. “You are extraordinary.”
“I am tired,” the woman said, then gave another quiet