Choices made and now alone

What secrets hold the singing stone?

I never should have trusted them, Ferrian thought bitterly. I knew it was a bad idea to involve them in this! I knew it from the beginning!

Mist curled around him, unnoticed. Glassy puddles shattered into liquid fragments with his passing. Exactly what he intended to do next, he did not know; had he stopped to consider the implications of his actions, he would have realised that his decision to leave the Freeroamers was a rash and foolhardy one, forged in anger, not reason.

He was heading in entirely the wrong direction, for a start. Sunsee was only a short walk south, whereas he had no idea how far it was to the next town, if there were any between here and Sel Varence. The geography of the Coastlands was hopelessly unfamiliar. He had no guide to take him into the Barlakks, no possible way of finding the hidden valley of the sorcerers on his own. Nor had he any food or supplies for the journey, and little money to buy either. He had no possessions save his knife and the clothes he was wearing.

All of these facts quivered somewhere at the back of his mind, cringing from the force of his scorching fury.

His Freeroamer uniform – the one that was meant to keep him safe but was in fact advertising him as a known criminal – was plastered against his torso like a second skin, still soaked through with no sun or wind to dry it.

Why am I still wearing this? he thought angrily. I could have been arrested! How could Grisket have put me at risk like that, especially considering our original plan of going to Crystaltina, which is FULL of Watchmen?

A sudden thought flashed through his mind, sharp as a knife blade, so terrifying that it stopped him dead.

What if that had been their intention?

What if all the talk of helping him find a cure for the Winter, all the friendly reassurance, was just a ruse and the Freeroamers were in fact taking him to the city to hand him over to the authorities? What if they wanted him to be arrested? It would solve everything, as far as they were concerned; he would be locked in prison, unable to cause further trouble, and he would be nowhere near the Outlands when the Winter took effect.

And the Freeroamers weren't exactly on pleasant terms with the Watch. Where better to deliver a cursed kid than the base of operations of one of their greatest enemies?

Ferrian's eyes widened. His heart and mind raced.

It couldn't be true…

He turned and looked behind him, but nothing revealed itself in the drifting fog.

He found himself shaking with emotion. They were my friends! I thought I'd finally found someone I could truly believe in…

But if that had been their true motive all along, why hadn't they handed him over to Commander Tarrow when they had the chance? Or were they so outraged by the Watchman's insulting comments that it momentarily slipped their minds?

Overcome with grief, Ferrian turned and ran, a tear splashing across his cheek as he did so.

He sprinted blindly through the mist, not thinking about what he was doing, not caring, needing only to escape. The damp air clogged his lungs like wet cotton wool, but still he ran, faster, faster…

Who are you running from? a small part of him whispered, barely audible through the maelstrom of his thoughts. The Freeroamers?

Or yourself?

His panting turned to ragged sobs and he stumbled to a halt, struggling to hold the dam of despair that threatened to break him apart. His own fear and doubts were consuming him, clawing at the edges of his sanity…

Ferrian closed his eyes and clenched his fists, trying to calm himself, to put his scattered senses back in order. Losing control was something he could not afford to do right now. The Freeroamers had betrayed him, but he would manage without them. Somehow, he would find another way. He had survived well enough before Commander Trice found him, he would do so again…

It was then that an odd feeling enveloped him. An icy shiver passed through his body, starting deep within his chest and blooming outwards to the tips of his fingers and down to his toes. At the same time his skin was burning, as though he were standing too close to a very hot fire, and his head was strangely light…

Some hidden instinct warned Ferrian to open his eyes, but his heart was already sinking, knowing exactly what he would see.

This time the sight hardly evoked surprise at all, merely bitter resignation. Ferrian brought his glowing fists before him and glared at them, his anger returning in a rush.

"Do your worst!" he growled.

Though the blinding flare was expected, it still caused him to gasp and turn his head aside. He squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as possible and remained that way for several long seconds, waiting for the light to subside.

It did not.

Minutes passed. The glow remained: he could still see it through his eyelids. Puzzled and fearful, he cracked an eye open to see what was happening.

He didn't even have time to react. In an instant the light tore through his eye and deep into his mind, flooding his vision with an almost wrathful vengeance, and consumed him.

Whiteness.

Gradually, the pieces of Ferrian's consciousness stirred and crept back together from where they had been flung to the far corners of his mind with the force of the explosion of light.

He remained still for a while, gazing into the glare, not attempting to think lest his thoughts slip away again, letting his awareness return fully.

When it had, he blinked, but no shadow passed across his eyes. He closed them, but it made no difference. The light remained, regardless.

It occurred to him that he should feel afraid; he sensed that something terrible had happened, but he felt only… curious, and vaguely confused. He thought he could hear rain but it was very faint, as though a long way off and he could see nothing but the white light, and felt nothing on his skin.

His skin…he looked down.

Nothing but the light. He could not see his body, no matter how hard he stared.

Am I dead? he thought.

Or am I blind? Is this some kind of reverse blindness? Were my corneas damaged with the blinding flash?

And if so… why don't I care?

He knew he should feel something, some emotion other than what he was experiencing, but the thoughts evoked only indifference. He sensed that the answer to those questions didn't matter…

He lifted his gaze upwards, and to the sides and down and all around, studying the glare for anything that might give a clue as to what had happened to him, and what he should do next. There was nothing to see. The light looked exactly the same in every direction, if indeed directions still existed; he had no ability to judge spatial dimensions. He could not feel or see his body, could not determine if his head or eyes were moving at all, or if he was paralysed, staring at the same point in space.

Frozen in time, perhaps?

Then, over the quiet steady cadence of what he presumed to be rain, he heard something new. It was almost inaudible, a whispering murmur, barely more than a tingling on the edge of hearing.

He focused his complete attention on the sound, for there was nothing else for him to do.

As he listened carefully, the murmur became a voice and assumed a musical quality, as of a rhythmic chanting or singing. Slowly it increased in clarity and he discerned that it was a woman's voice, divinely beautiful, but he could not understand her words: they were formed of a strange tongue that he had never heard before.

Yet they were spoken with love, of that Ferrian had no doubt. They brought with them a gentle, yet powerful feeling of reassurance and peace. He wanted to listen to her forever. He wondered if it was some kind of lullaby.

Who are you? he asked suddenly. His voice echoed both inside and outside his head, layered with resonance.

The woman's voice stopped.

Ferrian waited expectantly, but no reply came. He was sure that she had heard him, had she not fallen silent because he had spoken?

The singing resumed.

Are you my mother? he tried again.

Once more, the woman paused. After a few moments, she continued singing.

Ferrian listened more intently, trying to extricate some sort of meaning from her words, thinking that perhaps the answer lay in her song.

The lyrics slipped through his mind like water in a stream: he could grasp none of them.

Then something caught his eye: an object, hazy and indistinct through the dazzling glare. Intrigued, he moved towards it.

The object was a pedestal, tall and spindly, made of blue-grey stone and polished silver. Atop the pedestal were two curved prongs, looped and twisted together like vines, and balanced delicately between these prongs was a huge, perfectly spherical diamond, the diameter of both his fists placed side by side. White light passed through thousands of facets inside the gem, scattering tiny rainbows all across its surface.

It was like a fallen star. Ferrian gazed at it, entranced. He did not know where it had come from or why it was here, only that it was the most astonishingly wondrous thing he had ever seen.

It took him a while to realise that the woman's voice was emanating from the diamond. The revelation surprised him, but only slightly. It seemed fitting, somehow.

He stared deeper into its prismatic depths, longing to catch a glimpse of the source of the voice. The diamond caught his reflection and shattered it into infinite fragments.

A strong desire to touch the stone overcame him. He moved closer, becoming aware as he did so that his body was now partially visible, though no more than an insubstantial grey shadow. Nevertheless, he reached out a hand and placed his fingers upon the exquisite gem…

It cracked.

Startled, he drew his hand quickly away. But the crack continued, leaping from one facet to another, splintering throughout the entire sphere. As it did so, the white light encompassing him began to dim and pull back from the edges of his vision, shrinking towards the diamond, whereas the light inside the stone grew brighter. The woman's voice changed, becoming warped and out of tune, until it melded into one long, wavering eerily-pitched note that grated against his ears.

Ferrian's emotions began to return, fear and trepidation flooding back. What have I done?! he thought in panic. I only wanted to touch it, I didn't know it would break!

He took a step backwards. He was now surrounded by impenetrable darkness. Light filled the diamond, so bright now that he could no longer look at it. The wavering note strained painfully like an over-taught harp string, increasing in pitch…

And then the diamond shattered.

Trees thrashed in the gale, sending leaves, gumnuts and strings of bark across the road as they fought the fury of the sky. Clouds hunkered, low, blue-black and angry, plunging the highway into premature night. The mist had fled, torn away by the raging wind.

The storm had returned.

Just inside the fringe of trees bordering the road, a black shape lifted its ravaged head to taste the air. It had torn out what was left of its ruined eyes and eaten them. This had provided it with some sustenance, some strength to keep it alive a little longer, but it wouldn't last. It knew that it did not have much time.

The Muron emerged from the treeline, climbed a short embankment and stepped onto the ice-slicked road. Hail poured out of the sky, clattering off its obsidian scales.

A body lay on the road, only a few yards away. Ice had collected around it in small mounds.

The Muron could not see the body, but sensed its presence. The scent of it should have been scattered and barely detectable in a storm like this, but there it was, clear and sharp like frozen metal.

Hunched and cautious, the Muron crept towards the body. Its skeletal wings rattled uselessly behind it, bits of charred membrane flapping in the wind.

It crouched low over the still form, letting the aroma fill its senses, felt its power humming through its skull. Yes, this is the one, it thought. This was the boy it had been tracking for several hours, the one with a curious aura that could not be masked.

The one who tasted of magic.

It prodded the body onto its back, but it made no movement. Yet, the Muron could feel a faint heat upon his skin; his life-force still radiated from him, though dimly. The boy was alive.

It opened its jaws, mere inches above the boy's chest, saliva splattering onto his dark, sodden shirt. It pawed at his clothes and skin with its huge talons. It was hungry, so painfully hungry. The thought of fresh warm blood trickling down its throat almost drove it into a frenzy, but it kept control of itself. There was one desire that overrode even its need to feed:

Revenge.

This piteous weakling and his party had crippled it beyond healing, killed its companion and stolen the servant that it had been sent to retrieve. These actions would not be forgotten.

The Muron snarled in anger. The boy knew where the other Humans had gone. It would have gone after them itself, but it was weakening. It could not travel well on foot. The Humans would reach the city of Sunsee before it caught up to them, and once inside they would be difficult to track by scent alone.

No, the Muron decided. It would let the others go for now, let them think they were safe. It would take this boy back to its more able-bodied kindred, where they would torture the truth out of him, hunt down the ones who had dared interfere with Lord Arzath's orders, and destroy them. His master may even have use for the boy's magic.

The Muron expected nothing in return, but it would die knowing its attackers' deaths were assured.

It raked the boy's clothing blindly, searching for hidden weapons. It found only a single knife and tossed it away. Then it curled one clawed hand around the boy's throat, another around his ankles, picked him up and shambled away into the forest.

* * *

Commander Trice paced impatiently.

"He will return," Sirannor assured him.

"Gah! How do you know that?" Grisket snapped.

"He has no supplies. Sooner or later, he will realise that he must come back this way." The Captain was standing exactly where Ferrian had left him, arms folded, hair blowing crazily in the wind, staring fixedly down the road. Ardance stood under the trees, Cimmeran on the wet ground beside her, his head nodding as he began to doze off again.

Grisket couldn't keep still. He wrung his hat in his hands and shook his head. "Aari was right, we should've told him the truth straight up." He shouted suddenly in frustration: "Curse it, we should have told him!"

"He would not have trusted us," Sirannor replied levelly.

"He doesn't trust us now!"

"We managed to get him this far, did we not?"

Grisket scowled at him. "What's the use of that if he gets himself killed out of stubborn-headedness?"

"Ferrian will not get himself killed."

The Commander huffed in exasperation and took to rubbing his beard in an agitated manner instead. After a while, he said: "What if he circles around–"

"He won't."

"You're damn sure of that?"

This time Sirannor looked over his shoulder and gave Grisket a philosophical look. Then he returned his gaze to the road. "The boy is sensible and level-headed, for the most part. He has momentarily let his anger and pride get the better of him, but it will not last. He has survived for as long as he has by taking risks, perhaps, but not unnecessary ones. He will come to remember why he accepted our help in the first place."

Grisket continued to scowl. He walked over to Ardance and checked on Aari, muttering under his breath. His frown deepened when he felt the Angel's forehead. "Damn it," he cursed. His stomach tightened. The fear that had been nagging him ever since Aari had taken a turn for the worse could no longer be pushed aside. The hard fact was that Aari would not survive another night out here in the damp. He would be exceptionally blessed if he managed to make it through the night in a warm bed with medication.

Grisket took his winged friend's pale, limp hand and held it in his own. I'm sorry I failed you, my lad.

He took a sudden deep breath, blinking away his emotion. "His condition's getting worse," he said when he had regained his composure. "We don't have time to hang around here." He walked over to Sirannor. "Captain, you take Aari and Cimmeran on to Sunsee. I'll wait for the boy."

Sirannor regarded him in silence for a moment, then nodded. “You will need these." Sirannor took the tiny lantern and a tin of matches from his belt. "It will be dark, soon."

Grisket nodded and accepted the items gratefully. As Sirannor turned to leave, he put a hand suddenly on the other's shoulder. They shared a look, and the Captain nodded, understanding his old friend's unspoken words.

Whatever happens, may luck be with you.