Page 94 of Of Empires and Dust
After a while, Kallinvar opened his eyes. Ruon sat staring at the ground, her gaze following an ant that marched across the stone. She drew a breath. “Do we mean that little to each other that you would suffer alone?”
“That’s not it at all, Ruon. None of this is about you.”
“No, it isn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s about you.” She turned to face him. “And there is no me without you. We are intertwined, you and I. Seeing you in pain hurts more than a blade. I should know. I’ve felt the bite of many.”
Kallinvar swallowed hard, wiping at the long-dried tears, his eyes stinging, a headache slowly thumping. “They all look to me. The same way they looked at him. But I’m not him. And no matter how hard I try to be, I never will be. I don’t know what I’m doing, Ruon.”
“You are obsessed with being what he was.”
“Because he was better.”
Ruon shook her head. “Verathin was exceptional. The wisest soul I’ve ever known. But you are incapable of seeing his flaws – of which there were many. We are, all of us, flawed. Verathin was too cautious and took little counsel. For all his centuries, he could not wield a blade like you. Not even close. But most of all, he wasn’t a leader of men like you are. He inspired with his mind and with his heart. But you… These knights –yourknights – would do anything you ask of them. They would place their naked hands in a raging fire if you promised them it wouldn’t burn.”
“What are my flaws then?”
“Would you like me to start alphabetically?” Ruon smiled ear to ear.
Kallinvar couldn’t help but laugh. “Verathin built our knighthood back from the precipice of eradication. And then, with everything he had done, he was taken before the moon rose, and I was left in his place. I led our brothers and sisters to their deaths in Ilnaen, and for what? Tell me that, for what? Tarron is gone. Illarin is dead. Mirken, Daynin, Rivick, Lumikes. So many others. Dead.”
“And you think Verathin would have fared any better?”
“Of course he would have.”
“Verathin had four hundred years to prepare. Four hundred years. You know I loved him, Kallinvar, but what did he do with it? How did he leave us in a better place than we were before The Fall? He didn’t. He did absolutely nothing. He sat, and he read, and he learned, and he rebuilt, but he didn’t have the courage to reach out like you did. He didn’t?—”
“And what good did that do, Ruon? Where are our hundreds of thousands of allies? After I went against the wishes of so many captains. I would love for you to tell me, because I can’t see them.”
“You’ve had less than a year, in a time when the entire continent is at war, every soul grasping at whatever they can. If you’d had four centuries, don’t you think it would have been a little different?” Ruon leaned back into the desk and stared at the door of the study. “I understand you miss him. I do. But you can’t keep wallowing like this.”
“I’m not wallowing, Ruon?—”
“Yes. You are.” Ruon shifted onto her knees and stared at Kallinvar. “I need you back. Tarron is gone. Ildris has barely spoken in days. And you spend every moment lost in your own head talking to a fucking god. I need you back, Kallinvar. I can’t keep doing this alone.”
Kallinvar didn’t dare pull his gaze from Ruon’s. “He wants me to abandon them.”
“Who wants you to abandon who?”
“Achyron. He wants me to abandon the villages and the towns and the cities. He wants me to leave them to fight the Bloodspawn alone, leave them to die, so that we can focus on searching for the Heart.”
In that moment, Kallinvar realised he’d not heard Achyron’s voice in some time. He could still hear the beating hearts of the Sigil Bearers, but it was a faint noise in the background, like the burbling of a river. It was the most peace he’d found in days.
“And what do you think?” Ruon asked calmly.
Kallinvar’s jaw trembled, his hand tapping against his side, his skin crawling. He told the truth. “I think if we keep going the way we’re going, then we will all die and Efialtír will cross and everything will have been for nothing.”
“Then you know what needs to be done.”
“We can’t just leave them, Ruon. They will be like lambs. Thousands will die, hundreds of thousands.”
“But millions will live. Achyron has given us our task, Kallinvar. We must find the Heart before Fane or the Bloodspawn. What good is saving those lives, only to let them die?”
Ruon sat back against the table’s base and pulled her knees to her chest like Kallinvar had.
A silence descended between them, and after a time, Ruon shifted in her place, letting out a short, sharp breath. “You…” She drew another breath and shook her head, pinching the bridge of her nose. “You… Fuck.”
“What?”
When Ruon looked at him, her eyes welled with tears. “Almost six hundred and fifty years I have known you. There are mountains that have lived shorter lives. We have passed throughalmost everything there is in life. And yet, now, we stand at the end…” She tilted her head up and swallowed, her lips curling in a half-smile as she choked back a laugh. “Why are things like this so hard?”
