Palia moped around outside the inn, stung by the bitter winter cold. She missed South Port greatly, with its warm ocean breezes. Spring was late to the north. She wanted the Quest to end, and at the same time didn’t. Lives were lost every week they delayed, but the wight scared her. Nothing, in anything she had read, gave her even a hint of how it could be overcome or unmade. She could not bring herself to completely admit this to Anror, or anyone else. The Quest’s success rested squarely on her, and she could either accomplish it, or return to her old life in disgrace. To have come so far, and worked so hard, only to quit now bothered her. But she had kept fanning a secret flame inside of her, where she simply threw in her towel, declared the Quest hopeless, failed the school, and went back to South Port. At least it wouldn’t be too cold, and some little village someplace would hire her as a school teacher or post-office clerk. Perhaps her name would always be associated with a great failure at the College, but how would that impact her life? How would it be better to confront the wight with no idea of how to destroy it, and die herself, and kill Anror too, and for what? Palia was not about to cry, but the cold wind stung her eyes, causing them to water.

She kicked at a rock with her boot. Boots! Six years of wearing boots, and she’d almost forgotten what the sand felt like. Why couldn’t she go back to South Port for a week or two, just to rest? Lie on the beach, listen to the ocean, and become refreshed? Then she could spend a year studying the scrolls, with a clear mind. She was painfully homesick, but not really for South Port as much as to be relieved of the burden her Quest put upon her. She would have been just as happy in the Frozen North if the wight was no longer her responsibility.

A man was walking up to her. She wondered who he was, and what he intended, but he had such an open, inviting look about him that she said hello. “You look sad,” the man said. “Is something wrong?” She should have been wary of this stranger, but he seemed so out of place in the street. She felt drawn to him. She nodded a yes without saying anything. He asked: “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” Palia said, but without definiteness. She found herself elaborating without consciously deciding to do so. “I have a task to perform, a dangerous one, and I have found no way at all to do it. If I try to do it now, I will simply die, and also kill someone I am extremely fond of. We will die, the task will remain, and nothing will be accomplished. And, yet, I’m the only one who has any chance of performing it, but I can’t. If I don’t, who will?”

“I see,” the man said, with understanding in his voice although Palia could not figure how he would know anything about her situation. “This is quite a burden on your heart. Maybe I can help you?”

“I don’t think so,” Palia said, trying not to be dismissive to someone so open and concerned for her. “This is an extremely detailed, extremely complicated matter, and I’ve been studying it for years.” How could she explain all that was going on to someone who likely had nothing to do with magic, even if he could help? But she knew he could not.

“Yes, all the technical details of an obscure matter no one from the outside could ever understand,” the man said, nodding. “I may not understand all of them, but I do know something about impossible problems. Maybe the solution can not be found by learning more technical details. You haven’t found it yet, I dare say, or you wouldn’t be out here with a long face wandering aimlessly.” She had to allow his point. “So, can I suggest something? The answer may lie in approaching the problem differently, in a different way. Instead of you trying to tell me everything about this problem, let me leave you with one simple piece of advice, which, if you apply it to the problem, may make all the difference. Sometimes, if you hold on too tightly to your life, you will lose it.” He patted her on the shoulder comfortingly.

She had no idea what that meant. Hold on too tightly to life, and lose it? And what did that have to do with the wight? Her politeness had been eclipsed by the perplexing advice, and she recovered herself to say: “Thank you, anyway, for the advice, although I don’t know what it means.”

He smiled. “Another thing you should consider is not avoiding those you are fond of. You’re not out here merely to think about an extremely detailed, extremely complicated matter.” He then continued along his way before she could react to that. How would he know whom she avoided or why? Somehow, though, he had cut through everything she was wrestling with and had identified what was important. She sat down on a bench for a while, carefully studying the ground in front of her, without seeing anything. Night fell around her, and she began to be aware that being on the streets of Arrei in the dark was probably not a good idea, especially after huffily running out on her Protector. Perhaps it was time to apologize.

Palia went back to their room in the inn slowly. She closed the door quietly, hearing Anror’s even breathing. She could see him lying on the bed, having fallen asleep. She removed her boots as quietly as she could, and padded over to the bed. Uncertain whether or not to wake him, and what to say if she did, she looked at him in silence for a moment.

Anror was either sleeping lightly, or not asleep at all, because he turned over and looked at her. She moved no farther than the edge of the bed, and remained motionless. “I’m sorry,” Palia whispered. “I should never have walked out on you. I should have talked about this with you, shared more about what I was thinking, rather than closing up.”

“Come here,” Anror said. Palia sat down as far as she could get from him on the bed. He sat up, looking at her in the pale light of the room. She was just out of his reach, so he could not touch her. “Don’t worry so much. I’m not going to quit being your Protector just because you got mad at me. I figured out you were stubborn a long time ago, after all.” Her lips twitched slightly at that, but she did not smile. “If that bothered me, I never would have demanded that I be made your Protector. I chose you, you didn’t choose me, so you don’t have to worry about losing me.”

“You did what?” She had never considered anything like that. To her, it had been obvious that Aeral and the Headmaster had paired them up to exploit Anror’s motivation for avenging his friend’s death. No one else in the College of Swords would have an interest in the Quest like that. Anything else that developed between them was a simply an unexpected bonus.

“I demanded it of the Headmaster. He’d never heard of such a thing. But somehow it worked out.”

Palia felt even lower than she had when she earlier realized how childishly and peevishly she had treated her Protector, knowing this. But also relieved, as if part of the burden she was carrying had been removed. “I am glad you told me. I am fortunate to have you as a Protector. But I have treated you badly. I apologize.”

“I would accept your apology, but I’ve already forgiven you. Why don’t we both get some rest, and we can talk about this in the morning? When we’re less tired?” Anror said with a yawn which Palia thought might perhaps have been for show. Anror sat up far enough that he could reach her, and gently pulled at her shoulder until she sank down beside him. Anror, comforted by having Palia near him, descended back into a cloud of sleep. Palia lay beside Anror, her head leaning on his arm, but could not sleep at all. The moonlight moved the shadows from the window across the room in an agony of slowness, each slight movement separated by an eternity. Palia’s mind could not stop. She had missed something. The man had told her to be willing to give up her life to gain it, or words to that effect. What if she did that? What if she was brave enough to fight the wight without regard for herself? What clue had she missed? Was that where an answer could be found?

She got up as silently and easily as she could, but from Anror’s loud breathing, waking him up would take much more than that. Palia formed enough magic light to read by, but not enough to disturb her slumbering Protector. She carefully went back over her research, from the beginning, reading it in a new way. Could there be a hope? She felt as if she stood at the turning point in their Quest, if she could only figure out what she was missing.

The sun put in an appearance many hours later, and Palia gradually dimmed her magical light until it faded to nothing in the sunlight that filled their window. Anror’s breathing changed, and Palia soon heard a cough. He had awoken. He immediately realized she was no longer with him, and looked up in surprise. “Why didn’t you sleep?” Anror said worriedly, raking his hand through his hair. “Have you been up all night?”

“Yes,” Palia said distractedly, her bleary eyes still poring over an ancient manuscript. “And I think I finally have it. Finally. I understand.”

“Have what? Understand what?” He wondered if Palia had lost her mind. The morning was too new for him to fully grasp what she was trying to tell him. How could staying awake all night give her anything but a headache?

“I believe,” Palia said slowly, looking up from the manuscripts, “that I have the answer about how to destroy the wight.”

Anror felt more wary than relieved, as much as he was tiring of the city. How did she suddenly come to this conclusion. A million questions jumped through his still sleepy brain. All he said was: “What is the answer?”

“The answer is in the one place we have not looked, and where I would never think to look because I was too afraid. But when I looked at everything I knew about wights and the making magic that forms them, the key had been there all along. I’ve just got to be brave enough to go after it. We’re going to the wight’s lair in Morran.”

“The what?” Anror said with surprise, wondering if he had heard her right. He felt a lot more awake, as if he had been doused in cold water. The wight’s lair? If so, he saw a certain inevitability in the direction their Quest was about to take, as if they’d known it all along but would not admit it to themselves. He did not understand anything much about magic, but he had a fair appreciation for when things came full circle in life.

“Where it all started. Something happened on that long-ago Special Quest to set free the wight. So far, I’ve been trying to find some way to encounter the wight with a weapon or magical resource that would stop it in a battle. And I’ve shrunk back, sorely afraid, more than I have told you, because I knew that in a direct fight I have nothing that would stop the wight, and at best I’d be killed. I kept trying to find some way to win a fight. And you’re right, I have found nothing, and I knew in my heart of hearts I would find nothing. That’s because I wasn’t framing my search correctly. I had put blinders on myself. The only way to find answers is to go directly to the source, the source of the wight’s power, where it was created.”

“You mean the ruins, where your Master told us his apprentice awakened the wight?”

Palia nodded. “Or set it free, whichever. But I must tell you, I do not know if, by so doing, we will find any new information. I feel the answers are there. But I don’t know.”

“Only one way to find out,” Anror said, trying to prop up her sagging courage with a smile of affirmation. “What are we waiting for?”

“Nothing, now that I’ve decided. Honestly, thought, I am afraid. We have only slim hope, where we had none before, and the slim hope is not much. I feel an ache deep in my soul, of fear and uneasiness. This will not be a safe journey.”

“That’s why you have a Protector,” Anror said with a bravado that was painfully obvious to both. This was one Quest for which a Protector, however much help he could be in mundane matters, could offer no protection at its ultimate end. Whatever would be done to stop the wight would have to be done by pure sorcery.

The journey northwest to the Morranreach was a blur they would never clearly remember. They pushed their horses as hard as they dared, without killing them. Palia’s waking days were filled with the fleeing countryside, and her evenings with the uneasy talk in the inns about the wight’s activities, and her nights with nightmares about facing the wight. She began to nod off in the saddle, with Anror leading her horse. He grew more and more concerned as her face grew pale and her eyes lost their spark. Whatever tan she had once had from South Port was completely gone, leaving only a pale girl. When Anror suggested slowing their pace, Palia flatly refused, telling him that time was running out. She hurried them on.

At one point, Palia felt a cold wave engulf her. A magical energy, a draining, and a pulling. She had felt a nagging sort of magical noise at the back of her mind for some time, but now it had grown into something more. “The wight is following us,” Palia said. “I don’t know how or why, but I feel it. Somehow, it knows I am going to where it was created, and that alarms it. It is coming.” In a way, she reassured Anror, that meant that her hunch was right. They were, finally, on the right track.

They covered the distance from the bazaars of Arrei to the outskirts of the Morranreach in a time that Anror would have said was impossible before they did it. The lowlands of Arrei had climbed up into the hilly country southeast of the Morranreach, before rising higher into the mountain valleys where the settlements of the Morranreach lay. They had brought general maps of the kingdom for their Quest, but had not planned on going to the Morranreach beforehand, so they navigated by a combination of their maps, the general terrain, main roads, and the directions of locals.

Eventually they reached a landmark of sorts, for which they had been steering. The tiny, dirty settlement of Pollar had seen better days in the past. Since Gath and Euris had visited, the town had grown even more despondent and small. The population had been decreased by casualties from the wight’s rampage. What little trickle of visitors had completely dried up, leaving the remaining people isolated and fearful. Even the simplest of repairs to the pitiful buildings had not been done, leaving them little more than hovels. Disconsolate dogs roamed the streets, and no children played.

The inn in Pollar had recently changed hands, and its proprietress was a young woman several months pregnant with a freckled, smiling face, red-gold hair, and an exuberant personality, who seemed thrilled to see them when she recognized the Journeyman’s necklace Palia wore. The two travelers were treated to a groaning spread of food, enough for a feast, and the young lady related why she was so happy to see them. She first gushed about the handsome Sorcerer Gath (to Anror, this woman seemed to be quite taken by someone who had been described to him as a sickly young man) and his beautiful Protector Euris, who had killed Brakka, who was some sort of byword for a ruffian in those parts. She had met a sweet, loving young boy (Anror was privately skeptical about the wonderful qualities of these provincials) who had been conscripted into Brakka’s gang, but who was now free of coercion and had settled down into a job at the inn. With the wight menacing the village, the old innkeeper had shown a spark of leadership and valor which no one in the city would have ever guessed and got together a posse of the men in the town. They attempted to drive off the wight. He died in the battle, but the wight decided to move on to easier hunting and left the town alone. From the innkeeper’s widow, this woman had bought the inn using the money Euris had lavished on her. She had married her young man, she explained, and she patted her growing belly to demonstrate the fruit of their union. The wight had long since moved on, and besides the tragedy it had wreaked on Pollar, the woman could not complain. Having fed them, and talked their ears off, she showed them to a room which was completely free for the night, the least she could do for anyone attempting to stop the wight.

The next day, after a send-off from the proprietress of the inn which included supplies and even pastries for breakfast, the two headed off to the north for the ruins where Gath and Euris entered the underground precincts of Morran. As Palia licked the glazing off her fingers, she couldn’t help but think it was a good last meal, if that was what it would be. The feeling of bone-deep dread had departed slightly when they had been welcomed into the inn, and had heard the woman’s story, which Palia thought interesting despite the obvious exaggerations. Now the cloud was back. Anror attempted to distract her, by carefully questioning her about the story Master Aeral had told her, and comparing it to the innkeeper’s version, trying to accentuate the hyperbolic parts. His attempt fell somewhat flat, since Palia was fighting down a queasy stomach that had nothing to do with her breakfast. She didn’t feel like finding the humor in anything right at that time, but tried not to take it out on Anror, whom she noted sourly was facing their oncoming encounter with the wight with entirely too much cheerfulness. Maybe that was how he hid the same feeling she was feeling now, she considered, but didn’t want to start a conversation on the topic of fear and fuel her own dread. She allowed his light talk to wash over her.

The northern path to Morran, still overgrown and weed choked, wended its way through the “ambush copse”, one of the most anticlimactic parts of the story, for all of Aeral’s building up to that part with excruciating slowness and foreboding only to pop his own bubble of tension with a laugh. They were, in fact, navigating now almost entirely by Palia’s memory of Aeral telling the story.

More quickly than Palia would have liked, they emerged from the dense forest into a wide clearing filled with the rubble that was once part of the outskirts of the city of Morran. Palia had half-expected to see skeletons lying strewn in the clearing where Gath and Euris had fought the ruffians. Such a scene would have added a story-like quality of detail to their adventure, which had so far been one of travel and reading books, not exactly the high drama of which stories were constructed. She reflected that someone would probably add that detail someday if their story was ever told. The truth was, someone had buried the bodies of the ruffians. Neither Palia nor Anror speculated about who would have gone to that effort for such men, but off to the side of the clearing was a grave with a cairn made up of pieces of stone and rubble, marked by a simple block.

The cellar door through which the previous adventurers had descended many years ago was still open, and in fact hanging precariously by one hinge. The kudzu had engulfed the cellar door, erasing all signs of the passage Gath and Euris had cleared years before. Anror fell to the task of clearing it out and soon had it hacked away.

Palia’s stomach hurt so bad she clutched at it. Her dread had become palpable, and she went over to the side of the clearing and threw up. Her stomach emptied in sickening heaves which sent cold shudders through her body, and the goose bumps rose up all over her. She wiped her mouth, disgusted by the bitter taste in it, and now felt all lightheaded and empty. Anror eyed her, as she came back towards him, with some concern as he put the long, slashing knife he had borrowed at the inn back in its scabbard and tied it back to his saddle. “No shame in being afraid,” Anror told her in a deliberately mild tone, “as long as it doesn’t master you. That’s what Fallir taught us. I’ve done that several times myself.” He wouldn’t have minded throwing up now, and running for his life, but he figured one of them had to be even and calm and it was up to him to bolster his Journeywoman.

She waved at the trees, vaguely. “The wight is almost here,” she said, after swallowing several times to try to get her mouth clear enough to talk, and making a face. “I can feel it coming. I want you to go back to Pollar.”

“No,” Anror insisted without even thinking, “I’m not leaving you. I can’t abandon you now!”

“Yes, the wight wants to stop me. It’s coming for me, not you. I must be right, the answers must lie down below. Only I can stop it. There’s nothing you can do. Wait for me one day, and if I have not returned here, fly: go back to the College and tell them what befell us. Give them warning that the wight is still loose.”

Anror pulled Palia to him and gave her a quick, hard kiss, not even minding the taste of bile on her lips, and then pushed her towards the stairs abruptly, while he still had the courage to let her go. He rode out of the clearing as she descended. She did not see the frustration and tears on his face. Just when she needed a Protector most, there was nothing he could do, and he knew it. No matter how he had prepared for this time, which he knew would come, he still was not ready to face the helpless feelings welling up inside of him. He wanted to turn around and run after Palia, to at least comfort and encourage her. But, like any soldier, he had his role to play in the operation, and if he did not follow his orders, the battle could be lost. Fallir had told them, time and time again, there were no unimportant duties on a mission. He had to get out of sight so the wight would not see him if it came that way and kill him offhandedly, leaving Palia completely alone. When Palia completed her mission, he would have to be ready to get her out and tend to any wounds. He didn’t want to think about the other possible outcome, and did not know if he could make himself leave the clearing even after the agreed amount of time had elapsed.

Palia walked down the stairs into the cellar. Shadows jumped up into the corners of the passage as Palia lit a pure, white magical light. The dusty, dry cellar still showed footprints from what she supposed was Gath and Euris’ expedition down into them all those years back. She saw stacks of dry goods. The air was unnaturally dry, preserving blankets and tapestries, threads and powdered ink, scrolls and parchments, in better condition than the century of neglect should have left them. She passed among the barrels and boxes, seeing no sign of any disturbance. Her ears strained, but she could pick up no other sounds other than her quiet steps. No water dripping, no animals moving. The magical seals on this cellar must have been powerful.

At the end of this long cellar, Palia saw a section of a wall which had been pivoted inward to reveal a stairway. Whatever mechanism had worked the door, it was now broken and useless. She thought this must be the hidden door Master Aeral described when recounting Gath’s adventures. Palia had not gone back to the Gray Tower, to consult maps or Master Aeral, when she made the decision to visit these ruins, because her Master had told her of Gath’s adventure in as much detail as he could. Unfortunately, Gath himself had not been able to relate the adventure from his own Sorcerer’s perspective, which would have been helpful, and Palia had to settle for Aeral’s reconstruction of the Journey through Gath’s Protector’s eyes. Information never seemed plentiful or easy to come by, Palia had often lamented, and what she needed most always seemed to be lost forever.

Her going slowed when she descended to the level below the broken door. The previous adventure down into these caves had resulting in the collapse of an important tunnel. Gath’s narrow escape from the wight had been possible only because he caused the tunnel to collapse which had led from the large, open library area with its stacks of books down to the rock-hewn tunnels to the galleries where the Book of Ages was found. She knew that the wight must have come from a lower level than that. She had to get down there, and below, but the main passage was blocked.

She carefully inspected the room with all the books along its perimeter. The near walls closest to the collapse showed no other passages. Over on the other side, she felt a hollowness to a segment of wall which was more promising. No footprints were on this side of the library. Palia smirked when she realized that the volumes on these shelves must be a complete set of the King’s History, and she thought there would be little danger of anyone prowling these stacks. Like the broken door above, this side of the room had a hidden door as well, and Palia opened it, thankful that the mechanism was not broken. These doors were merely clever, not magical, and unlike a magical door their human mechanisms were vulnerable to the years of neglect everything in this underground area had been subject to.

Behind the hidden door was a natural shaft in the rock. Along the rim of this shaft, a winding spiral stairway had been cut. Shining her light into this passage as far as she could, she could not see the bottom. She noticed a change in temperature, as a draught from below wafted up cooler air from the depths. The air was also dank and heavy, as if the protective magic causing the dryness above had never penetrated this area. For the first time, she heard the familiar underground sound of water drops falling from one unguessable place to splatter on another unguessable, unseen piece of rock or in an unlit pool of collected heavy water.

On to ... Chapter Eighteen: End Game