Slowly, Gabe woke up.
He’d never wondered why there was no flame on the elemental stone. Maybe because somehow, he knew, by virtue of the god burrowing into his head. Did that mean he would have to find it in order to surrender his power to the Fount? One more impossible errand in a list of them. He closed his eye, pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead.
Surrendering is not so easy, Hestraon said.
“I don’t have a choice,” Gabe murmured aloud.
You have more choices than you think you do.
Gabe didn’t reply.
“We should never have agreed to this.”
Caldien’s wealth of taverns made finding one to kill time in before their first meeting of the Brotherhood of the Waters an easy task. This one was dirtier than most, on the outskirts of Farramark. Everyone here was too drunk to remember their faces, which seemed prudent even with Eoin’s protection.
Gabe was half tempted to join them. But he mostly just stared into his beer, his stomach too unsettled to do more than sip it halfheartedly. “And you used to be an optimist.”
“All my optimism is gone.” Malcolm was on his second drink, his eyes going glassy. “Who knows if Eoin can actually help Lore and Alie? Or if he’ll give us the Fount piece?”
“There’s a chance,” Gabe said. “And we have to take it.”
Malcolm threw back the rest of his ale. His hands had stopped trembling, but there was still a faraway look on his face. The same one he’d had since they were captured, the one that seemed to be about more than their present circumstances. Gabe had known Malcolm for most of his life. He could tell something was badly wrong.
“What happened last night, Malcolm?”
“Other than being chloroformed in an alleyway like a non-sanctioned channeler?”
“You know what I mean.”
Malcolm shook his head, just slightly. He sat back, staring down at the table, and for nearly a full minute, he was silent. When he finally started talking, his voice was low.
“I was scared,” he said. “I think that’s why it happened. I was looking for a way out, after they got you, any way out. I panicked, and then…” He waved his hand, trying to conjure words fromthe air. “I changed. I could feel earth all around us, every particle of it, and I… went into it. Disappeared, became something else. I could have gotten away like that, I think. Followed the earth elsewhere, traveled through it. But I didn’t.”
So he wasn’t the only one beleaguered by the god in his head. Gabe’s relief felt mean-spirited.
He clenched the handle of his tankard. “Why?” If there was a way they could use this power to travel undetected, to get back to Auverraine, to the Isles…
“Because Braxtos was there,” Malcolm spat. “Like He was waiting. I thought They couldn’t do that, Gabe.”
Blame, fire-hot and just as easy to see. Not because it was Gabe’s fault, but because there had to be someone to blame for this.
“We were wrong,” Gabe said, staring into his beer. “I’ve been having strange dreams. Memories.” A pause. “I heard Him.”
He hoped that Malcolm didn’t ask what Hestraon had to say.
Malcolm breathed harshly, raising his hands to press at his forehead, elbows on the table. A moment, then he lowered them carefully and set them on either side of his cup, and continued speaking as if Gabe hadn’t interrupted. “I could feel Him taking over. And I knew if I stayed like that, used it like that, whoever came out on the other side wouldn’t be me.” He finally looked up. “It isn’t worth it. Especially if you’rehearingHim.”
Surrender is not so easy, the god had said in the dark predawn. Power was a hard thing to ignore, for someone whose power had always been at the whim of another, easy to take away.
Gabe’s fingers curled on the table. “But if we—”
“No.” He’d never heard the word said with such vehemence. Malcolm glared, all the glassiness of drink gone in a blaze of determination.
Gabe stared at his friend, mouth pressed tight. Then he nodded.
They sat in silence, the patrons of the tavern getting steadily drunker around them. When Gabe spoke again, it was on acompletely different subject, since the more pertinent one was clearly off limits. “How do you think this is going to go?”
“Any group that calls themselves the Brotherhood of the Waters seems like a hotbed for drama.” Malcolm sat back, relieved that they’d moved on. “I’m thinking cloaks and chanting, at the very least.”
