The sun was rising when the three riders passed through the outskirts of Orchyre. Terciel was exhausted, and fought to stay upright. The cuts on his head and face had closed up, but he imagined that he still looked frightful with blood caked all around his hairline. Andrael, who was unused to such long hours and demanding work, looked to be almost asleep in the saddle. All three horses were spent, their flanks soaked with sweat despite the freezing temperatures. They had long since refused to gallop and even to trot. They now plodded along dishearteningly, mirroring the fatigue of their riders.
Only Abhorsen still seemed alert. Her eyes and posture never drooped, and she continually scanned the road ahead for traps or further ambushes. But Terciel could see that her face was drawn not with caution, but with weariness and pain. The bloodstain that he had glimpsed beneath her arm had begun to soak through her outer cloak, though the mud and the color of the fabric helped to hide it. He said nothing. Even if he had had the strength to speak, he knew Abhorsen would only deny any discomfort.
They stumbled into an inn and Abhorsen, after paying the startled-looking innkeeper, led her two wards to the set of adjoining rooms they would be sharing. Then she hurriedly kicked them out of the main room while muttering something about a bath.
Terciel and Andrael didn't mind. They wordlessly flopped onto the straw mattresses laid out on the floor and were instantly asleep.
When Terciel awoke, he suddenly felt every ache and pain that his body had been keeping at bay. He couldn't suppress a groan as he levered himself upright. How long had he slept? An hour? A day? A glance out the window told him that it was either dawn or dusk.
Andrael was still asleep beside him, but at his movement she stirred and woke. Her eyes fluttered open, then immediately closed again as she stretched with a grimace. "Oh," she complained, "I never knew I could be this sore. We'd better be staying here for at least a month, because that's how long it will take before I can move my legs again."
Terciel agreed, but said, "Abhorsen doesn't like wasting time. We'll probably only stay for a couple of days."
Sighing her disappointment, she studied his face. "You look a fright," she said, "Let me clean you up a bit." She stood painfully and went to the basin of water that had been left for them hours ago, which was now cold. She wetted a cloth and began to scrub Terciel's face with it.
"That hurts!" he protested as she loosened the scabs over his wounds.
"You're filthy!" she said, holding him still, "If you don't want to get gangrene you'll let me finish."
He sat still while she worked, and the silence quickly became loaded and awkward. Even the roughness of her scrubbing couldn't negate the intimacy of the moment. Her fingers moved in his hair, and her face was bent close over him. Her neck was at the level of his mouth. He found himself keeping still, not to make her job easier, but because he feared that the slightest movement would break the spell.
There was a wet slap as the cloth fell to the ground, but Andrael's hand remained on his head. When neither of them moved after a moment, Terciel forced himself to say, "I thought we weren't going to do this."
"I'm sorry," Andrael whispered, but she didn't move. When she next spoke, her voice began to break. "Are you sure I can't just stay with you? I've never even met my relatives in Sindle. What if they're horrible? And even if they're not, how can I go back to my normal, boring life after all this? I want to learn to fight, and to do more Charter magic. I could be useful. I could even be like a servant; I don't care as long as I can keep learning and keep close to you."
Terciel couldn't think while her hands played with his hair, so he grasped her wrists and moved her down to eye level. But meeting her gaze was even more distracting, so he stood and paced restlessly. Finally he spoke, "Remember when I told you that I had an older brother?"
Andrael nodded, confusion and impatience making he whole body stiff.
"Well, he's dead," said Terciel, "So is my mother. Abhorsen, my aunt, was the oldest of four. She's the only one still alive. Before her, my grandfather was the Abhorsen. His wife died before I was born. So did his two siblings. None of them had particularly peaceful deaths." He paused and let that information sink in. Andrael was silent.
"If I could," he continued, "I would bring you to Abhorsen's House. I think you'd make a great Charter mage, and I'd be happy to have you there. But I have feelings for you too, Andrael, and that's why I have to let you go. Because the Abhorsen does more than walk in Death. We breed Death, invite it. It hovers around us always. People close to us tend to die."
Having found his resolution, Terciel knelt again and took up Andrael's hands. "I don't want you to die," he said.
"I'm not afraid of death," said Andrael, but her voice was weak and unsure.
Terciel was about to assure her that everyone was afraid of death, even the Abhorsens, when the door behind him opened noisily. Abhorsen stood in the doorway, clean and wrapped in a bathrobe. She carried her bandolier and sword belt in her hand, unwilling to part with them even now. "Good, you're awake," she said, ignoring the children's intimate pose and guilty expressions, "Andrael, it's your turn for the bath. The servant-girl is drawing it up right now."
Andrael still looked troubled by Terciel's words, but it was clear that she wasn't about to argue against a bath. She hurried into the next room, unbuttoning her coat as she went. Terciel suddenly realized that they had slept in all their clothes - mud, gore, and all.
As soon as Andrael was gone, Abhorsen turned to her apprentice. She loomed over him, looking as fierce as she had in battle, and Terciel suddenly remembered that she had been saving up a lecture for him. It had had days to brew, and it now seemed to be about to erupt.
"What," she demanded in the voice whose power had commanded countless Dead, "Happened?"
He knew what she meant. His failed ringing of Saraneth the day before had been unacceptable. "I don't know," he said, shrinking under her gaze, "I thought I was in control. For the first time, I was so confident that I didn't even feel scared."
"But you should feel scared!" Abhorsen said. Her voice wasn't loud, but her rage simmered violently beneath the surface of her calm, "You should always feel scared. A lack of fear doesn't mean you've grown up; it just means you're not recognizing the danger. In our line of work we're in danger of death at every moment. Only an idiot wouldn't be scared. Are you an idiot?"
"No," Terciel was forced to answer.
"You need that fear to keep you sharp," Abhorsen continued, "The moment your pride gets the best of you, that's when the bells will desert you. That's when you'll miss something. All it takes is one mistake, one bad day, to kill you. And you can't die, you hear me? You can't die! Even if I were young enough to train another Abhorsen, which I'm not, there's no one for me to train anymore. You're the only one left!"
"I'm sorry," he said through gritted teeth, "But it was just a mistake."
Abhorsen's calm façade finally cracked, and she shouted, "You can't afford to make mistakes! Not when you're the Abhorsen!"
But she quickly composed herself, quashing the fire that had flared up momentarily. Her rage extinguished, she sighed and sat down next to her nephew. "Maybe I pushed you too hard," she muttered to herself, "Or maybe I held you back for too long. You have to be ready, but you also have to be safe. It's so hard to know what to do."
Her voice became kinder as she said, "Mine isn't a life I would wish on anyone, much less my own kin. We pretend to wonder whether the walker chooses the path, or the path the walked, but the sad truth is that we Abhorsens know the answer. Our paths were always chosen for us."
Terciel didn't dare speak. He sat, taking shallow breaths, hoping not to provoke another tirade. He had suffered worse verbal beatings than this from Abhorsen, but somehow it was her quiet introspection that confused and terrified him. He preferred her angry. At least then she didn't seem so old and weak. Already the truth of the matter was beginning to take shape in his mind, but he refused to see it, and it obliged by remaining comfortably amorphous.
Presently, Abhorsen got dressed and went downstairs, and Andrael emerged from the adjoining room happy and clean. Forestalling any further conversation, Terciel immediately took her place and closed the door. After the servant had finished refilling the basin with hot water and gone, he was finally, blissfully alone.
He stripped off his clothes layer by layer, and they were so filthy that he could stand his surcoat against the wall and it would stay in the shape of his body as if it were a mannequin. He would wash them later. For the moment, all he cared about was getting himself clean.
As he tipped the hot water down his back and breathed in the steam, he tried to clear his mind and take advantage of the brief moment of respite. As a child, he had savored such moments, when he could let his worries melt away and forget the rigor of his training, his apprehension of the future, and the pain of loss. But he found that he could no longer do it. His mind kept slipping back to the danger of the road, Andrael, their shadowy foe, and Abhorsen's strange words. They harried him at every turn.
He wondered if this was what Abhorsen had meant. To be a true warrior, he would have no rest. He would have to let go of his pride and confidence, and embrace his indecision and fear.
