It felt strange, to be going south once more. The last time Scal had gone south, it had changed him—he had gone seeking Vatri, to show him his place in the world, and she had done that and more. The last time he had gone south, he had not stopped regretting it.
The forests that ringed the Highlands were not the snowy wastes of his early lives, but they had felt enough like it. Secluded, solitary, where a man could walk a straight line for hours and never see another living creature. In the forests, he was a man. Only a man.
There is danger in being alone. Someone had said that to him, but he could not remember who.
But now he had left behind the forests and the Highlands. The distant mountains were disappearing over his shoulder, seen only when the moon was bright enough as it rose. He could not see the forests at all, even when he turned and stared, even when the moon was full.
There were flat roads, and there were fields, and there were people all around him, and it felt nothing like a home.
He was their leader, he was the Nightbreaker, and so he walked at the front. Vatri was beside him, and Edro was beside her, always. Joros had taken to Scal’s other side, and pulled Aro with him, always. The others scattered behind them, loose ranks, a rough march. Deslan was wise enough to guard their rear, to send her people ahead and aside, scouts for any signs of danger.
“A group this big,” Joros said, “traveling through the Long Night? We won’t find any trouble.”
“Better to be prepared,” Edro said agreeably. Scal was not surprised that the two had found common ground to walk. He was surprised that Vatri allowed it. She glared, but said nothing to halt their talking.
And all the while they moved south, along roads that could have held their number five times, and they saw no one.
The first town they found sealed its doors to them. Even when Vatri nudged Scal to draw his blade, and its flame lit up the center of their town, they did not open their doors. He might have thought them dead, save for the moving and whispering they could hear within the houses. They slept in the town center, hoping to put its residents at ease, but when they woke they were still alone.
They moved on, and Vatri was more upset than Scal had yet seen her.
“The Fallen have no doubt passed through here,” Joros said grimly. “We saw it on our way north: small bands of them corrupting villages. We did what we could to put an end to it, but the longer the Long Night goes on, the more people start to question, and to doubt . . .”
“They’re not only making them question,” Edro said. His face was stone-hard. “They’re killing the people they corrupt. Entire villages, dead. We’ve seen it.”
Joros frowned, and said nothing.
Scal spent his time watching Aro.
Vatri had said he was a witch. Dangerous. That he had killed a dozen people with witchfire. Scal had not wanted to believe it, but he watched Aro. And his shaking and muttering and flickers of madness made Scal think of Anddyr, the mad witch. It was hard not to.
He dropped back to talk to Deslan, soft-voiced. The ones who had come with Joros and Aro, the ones they called “the pack,” had fallen in with those who followed Scal. They fit as though they had chosen to follow, too, or as though they had lived among the others all their lives. Scal had asked Deslan and her people to ask them careful questions, and she told him with certainty, “He’s a mage. They say he’s sick, just like all the other mages they’ve seen.” She paused, frowned. “I’ve seen sick mages, too. Not many, but . . . it’s not something you forget. It sounds like our new friends have seen a fair number of sick mages. Many more than I’ve seen. Many more than I would have expected.” She did not look at him as she kept talking, did not look to the front of their column, did not look at anything but the stars above. “The only sick mages I’ve seen, and the only ones I’ve heard of, have all been with the Fallen. Seems a little strange to me, our new friends knowing so many.”
Scal could see the shape of the question in her words. Is it safe? He had seen Deslan sharing a tent with Joros. Had seen her mothering heart stretch out toward Aro. Had seen her companionably comparing daggers with the woman called Harin. Are they safe to love?
And Scal did not have an answer for the silent question. “It is strange,” he said. With Deslan’s eyes hard on his back, he returned to the head of the column, where Joros and Vatri were bickering.
It felt like the old times, his old life, only it was nothing like it at all.
When they stopped, Scal asked Aro if he would like to help find wood for a fire. In that old life, when Scal had traveled north, all the way North, with Aro and Joros and Vatri and Rora and the witch, Aro had been eager to be useful. Offering to help when it was not needed. Scal had refused at first, but the younger man had often pushed past his refusals to help anyway, and he had been useful enough. Had been a good companion, even when he was not useful. They were memories from an old life, the bonds of a man who no longer was, but Scal had not forgotten.
No. He had forgotten. He had not thought of Aro since his end in the snows, since he had left the group Joros had assembled. But seeing Aro again had opened a gate to the memories of that old Scal. And he saw weak, sick, pale Aro next to the Aro of his memories, who was bright and laughful and eager, and there was something wrong there that Scal would not let himself forget again. The reborn Scal had no ties to Aro, but for his old self, the man he had been once, he would try to help.
And so he asked Aro if he would like to help find wood for a fire. In truth they had more than enough wood, but it was never a poor idea to find more when they could. It was a task Aro had liked to help with, before. And it would give Scal the chance to see him alone.
Aro did not answer right away—or his answer was to look to Joros. Request glistening in his eyes. Joros did not even notice it, absorbed in his conversation with Deslan. She did notice, and when she nudged him, he faced Aro with an impatient look. “What?”
“I . . .” Aro’s mind had slipped—he made small noises that were not words. “Go—”
“I would take him with me,” Scal said. “To collect wood for a fire.”
Joros snorted, and turned away. “Why should I care?”
Aro looked back to Scal, uncertainty in his face. Scal made a motion for him to follow, and after a pause of a few heartbeats, he did.
In the grasslands and farmlands they traveled through, there were few trees to be found. Little enough wood to be picked or cut. It did not matter—it was not the point. Scal walked beside Aro, both searching, though Scal was also waiting. Waiting for his friend of an old life to begin chattering, as he always had when they had done tasks, constant talking and questions and laughter.
But Aro remained silent, his eyes fixed to the ground, scanning for stray pieces of firewood.
Finally Scal could not stand the silence. “Aro,” he said, and the younger man’s head swung up to face him. “What is wrong?”
Aro frowned. Forehead wrinkling as though in deep thought. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“You have changed. Been changed.”
One shoulder shrugged. “Things happen, and people change. You’ve changed, too, you know.”
Scal shifted his weight to one foot. Back to the other. “I have not.”
Aro laughed, and it was the last thing Scal had expected. It almost sounded like his old laugh, though the differences crawled spider-light down his back. “Then maybe I have, too. Maybe we’ve both changed so slowly that we can’t see it from the inside.”
Scal did not like this direction. “Where is your sister?” Joros had not spoken of her, beyond to say that she was safe, and waiting for them.
“She hasn’t changed. Not at all.” Aro stared at the ground once more, but he was not looking for sticks. “Joros is so hard to face without her . . . everything is so much harder alone. I didn’t think it would be. I’d been alone before, I could make it on my own. But I was wrong . . .”
Starlight showed tears on his cheeks. Scal reached out, and put a hand to the younger man’s shoulder. “What has happened?”
“You left, and Rora couldn’t protect us alone. You left, and it all had to change.”
Scal was not the same man who had left them—it had been a different life, and he had changed. But he still felt the weight of responsibility, of blame, as heavy on his shoulders as the sword strapped to his back. One could crumble from the weight. Or one could learn to bear it. Vatri had told him once, We all carry things with us we don’t want to. He said to Aro, “I will not leave again.”
Aro stared at him, and there was something in his eyes that was familiar and frightening. Not from Scal’s last life, but further back—to his second life, when he had been a boy plucked from the killing snows. When he had lived inside high walls and slept to the sound of clanking chains, and to the snores of a red-robed priest whose face he could not remember. He had lived with the prisoners of Aardanel, and they had all had haunted eyes. Eyes that knew death, and were themselves half dead. Aro’s eyes looked like their eyes. “I want to help,” Scal said.
Aro looked away. “I think it might be too late.”
And Scal believed him. He bowed his head. “I am sorry.” He had never known how to talk to the dead.