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  The sad little cortege made its way up the side of the mountain, unimpeded by snow, ice, or trees. It was the most utterly lifeless place that Pol had ever seen; not a bird, not an animal, not even an insect. The total silence made the ears ring and made Pol shiver.

  But when it came to time to climb the last bit of the trail, there was a problem; the heat of the fire had cracked the rocks and made the trail unstable, and too dangerous to try.

  But Wulaf, the shepherd-turned-scout, stared at the trail with his jaw set. “Gi ’e me yon box,” he told Fedor, who wordlessly brought over a beautifully carved box that had held the Lord Marshal’s Seal until that morning, and handed it to him.

  The boy stuffed the box into the front of his sheepskin jacket, dismounted from his pony and took his shoes off. Before anyone could move, he was scrambling over the rocks above the trail and out of sight.

  He was back before Pol could start to worry.

  “ ’Tis same as th’ pass; naught but ash,” he said quietly, taking the time to put his sheepskin boots back on over his stockinged feet. Wordlessly, he handed Fedor the box.

  Elenor sobbed into her mother’s shoulder; Tuck’s red cheeks were lined with tear-streaks.

  He didn’t open it, and no one asked him to. All eyes turned to Pol, who swallowed down his tears.

  “Well,” he said at last. “Let’s take them home.”

  EPILOGUE

  POL and Ilea picked their way along the goat trail to the place on the mountain where Lavan Firestorm and Kalira had died, with Satiran pacing alongside, though Pol no longer needed his eyes. Intensive work by the Healers had given him back the use of his own, although his vision would never be as good as it once had been. He never knew from what sources of strength Ilea found the way to Heal him, nor from where the Healers she recruited got the knowledge they needed to do so. But he could see again, however imperfectly.

  It was the same procession that had gone up the mountain to be thwarted by the unstable trail, for the shepherds of this area under Wulaf’s direction had worked all these months to make it safe for them to return. But there was a new addition, for Tuck had brought Lan’s sister Macy, who rode pillion behind him.

  Elenor had accepted no consolation whatever for about a month—but then, surprising even herself, she came to the end of her tears. Perhaps it was because it was difficult to sustain the illusion of an undying love on notes like, “Thank you for the headache potion, but can’t you make it taste any better than that?”

  Macy and Tuck helped her and each other, and Macy moved out of her parents’ home and into the Palace as a member of the Queen’s household—one of Queen Fyllis’ personal embroiderers. It was a more comfortable place for her than her own home, and kept her near the people her brother had loved best.

  When spring brought life back to Valdemar, and Wulaf sent word that the trail was safe, there was no question that they would all go. And now, once again, they rode single-file through the blasted pass. The ancient pine forest was completely destroyed, from the tallest tree to the earth itself, to a depth of the height of a man, as an experimental trench proved. Nothing would grow in the soil; perhaps nothing ever would again.

  There had been no sign of Karsite activity anywhere along the Border. Then again, so much of the army and priesthood had been destroyed, it wasn’t likely that this Son of the Sun would be able to hold his preeminence much longer.

  The trail they rode now, although they had to go single-file, was far from the goat track Pol had first seen. This was a real trail, lovingly smoothed by hand and pick, that even an aged pony could follow. The shepherd’s memorial to the one who saved us, Pol thought, with a painful lump in his throat. There might be more impressive memorials, but never one created with more sincerity and heart.

  “Here,” Wulaf said, pausing in a shallow, dishlike depression halfway up the side of the mountain. “This be the place.”

  Pol squinted, peering down at the pass, wondering what had happened up here. Something had happened to Lan even before Kalira’s death. A touch of encroaching madness, perhaps? If I had been here, could I have prevented that? And if I had been here, wouldn’t Satiran and I have detected the marksmen, even cloaked by the Dark Servants?

  He, Tuck, and Satiran had pummeled themselves with might-have-beens for the past several months, with no answers to be found. It didn’t look as if he would find any in this barren place either.

  “Look!” exclaimed Ilea behind him.

  He turned, to see her cupping something between her hands, down in the ash. He knelt down beside her.

  It was a seedling, a tiny speck of green with two miniscule leaves.

  “It’s a firecone,” Ilea said softly. “They’re very rare, even here—it takes a fire to free the seeds from the cone, and even then, more seeds burn than ever sprout. It must have been here for years before—”

  “Before it was freed,” Pol finished for her, looking at the tiny thing with wonder. “But how it got here, of all places—”

  Ilea shook her head. “There’s no way of telling.”

  “Should we take it back with us?” Elenor asked, and a momentary thought of transplanting this bit of life and hope to the grave that held only ashes flickered through his mind.

  “No,” Ilea said. “It would never live. It needs ashes, mountain winds, and winter storms to thrive. Look—” she scraped the ashes away from the bare rock, to show how it was cracked and crazed. “This is what it needs; it can send its roots deep into the rock, and rise out of the ashes tall and strong.” She patted the ashes around the seedling with a motion that was almost affectionate, then carefully dripped water into the mound of ashes from her water bottle. “It needs adversity to thrive.”

  He held out his hand to her, and she used it to get to her feet. “Something like Valdemar?”

  She smiled, and if her smile held sorrow, it also held joy. “And—something like us. All of us.”

  :All,: Satiran confirmed. :All of us, together.:

  For one last moment, they looked out over the mountains, wondering when adversity would cross them to find Valdemar again. It won’t be soon. Lan bought us that—peace, for a while.

  “And thanks to Lan, for a time we will have peace to grow,” Tuck said, with unusual eloquence.

  Pol nodded, and moved to put his arm around Tuck’s shoulders. “Yes we will,” he replied. “Just like this little tree. If it hadn’t been for Lavan Firestorm, neither we nor the tree would still be here.”

  They stood together in the silence for a long time, each of them with his own thoughts. Wulaf was the first to move, collecting a handful of pebbles, and carefully ringing the seedling with a protective barrier.

  Fedor did the same, then added the silver arrow-pin of a Royal messenger, burying it in the ash within the circle. One by one, they each built the wall of protection a little higher and thicker, some adding tiny keepsakes to the ashes. When Elenor’s turn came, with only Pol and Ilea to go, she added a covering of paper torn into the tiniest of scraps, then wetted with water from her water bottle, to the top of the ashes to keep them from blowing away. Pol had a fairly good idea where the paper came from, for she had brought Lan’s few notes with her, and he had noticed her shredding paper as the others made their offerings.

  Ilea simply held her hands over the seedling, giving it the strength only a Healer could impart.

  Then it was Pol’s turn.

  He slipped over the seedling a thin bracelet that Macy had made for him, braided of his hair and Satiran’s together. He hadn’t come here with the intention of leaving it, but—it seemed right.

  He straightened up, and met the eyes of each of the others in silence. Now, he sensed that some deep wound in each of them had begun to heal. It was not closed yet—but in time, they would all be whole.

  “Time to go,” he said quietly, and they turned their faces home.

  1 Forthcoming in hardcover from DAW Books

  p; Mercedes Lackey, Brightly Burning