Eliska walked off toward the trees on the distant edges of the cinder landscape. She didn’t wait around to see if Marine followed.

Marine hesitated a lot longer than Eliska expected, but Marine didn’t go back into the river.

She hustled up behind Eliska a few minutes later. Neither girl spoke on their way to the trees.

Eliska couldn’t see them very well from the riverbank. The trees were too far away, but anything was better than staying here under the wolves’ watchful eyes.

The girls had to hike a few miles before they came to the tree line. This stand of woods stood far enough away from the Dark river and the White Spire. Whatever inferno torched the city didn’t damage the woods—or not as much.

The fields between the river and the woods lay charred and bare. The heat left the leaves on the trees shriveled.

The fire burned the bark on the side facing the river, but at least the trees were still alive. These woods would recover eventually. Eliska couldn’t say the same thing about the city itself.

She passed into the woods and continued through them for a long way until she couldn’t see the burned countryside anymore.

She found a clearing, gathered some sticks, and lit a fire. Neither she nor Marine had any food, but Eliska didn’t offer to go hunting. She wasn’t hungry and she didn’t feel like eating.

Marine sat down near her. Marine recovered her former cheery nature on the walk there. She grinned at Eliska like they were on vacation or something.

Eliska stared into the flames while she decided what she should say to restart the conversation or if she should say anything to restart the conversation. Nothing came to mind.

Marine didn’t restart the conversation, either. That left Eliska to her own thoughts. Eliska wouldn’t have known how to handle Marine’s mischievous joking at a time like this.

Marine finally broke that silence after what seemed like hours. She heaved a contented sigh and gazed into the flames when she murmured, “I admire you, Eliska.”

“Me!” Eliska countered. “What do you admire about me? There is nothing admirable about me. Believe me.”

Marine’s eyes darted up to meet Eliska’s and Marine smiled. A deeper level of understanding and sympathy in those dark pools caught Eliska in an undertow. “You don’t see what other people see.”

Eliska had to look away. “You have more power than I do. You’re the one everyone admires—or they would if they knew what you’ve been doing.”

“Why do you think Yann and Anríq like you so much?”

Eliska snorted. “Don’t start up about Yann and Anríq liking me so much.”

“They do. They both admire you.”

Eliska groaned. “Can we please talk about something else? Tell me anything else you know about the Voyant and his plans.”

“I don’t know his plans. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“Then tell me what you do know about him. How did you find out that he controls the Coil’s movements?”

“I read about it in the Guardian Templars’ library.”

Eliska’s head snapped around so fast she gave herself whiplash. “You….what?”

“I belong to the Guardian Templars. That’s how I learned so much about him and how to travel in the Dark Layers. That’s how I know that Wesh’s order isn’t as informed as they should be. Some orders fall behind the others.”

Eliska gaped at Marine in dumbfounded shock—almost as much dumbfounded shock as she stared at Marine when Eliska found out that Marine wasn’t really insane.

Marine gave her another sad little smile of pure, warm understanding. Of course Marine understood why Eliska would react like that.

“My father sent me to the Templars when I was fifteen,” Marine explained. “I didn’t want to go, but he didn’t give me a choice.”

“But….” Eliska stammered. “The Guardian Templars is a voluntary order. You should have been able to leave whenever you wanted and you…..” Eliska’s eyes darted down to Marine’s ruined dress. “I thought you were a princess.”

“I am a princess,” Marine chirped. “My father is a king in the Hallowed Vales.”

Eliska’s jaw hit the ground. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even think. She wasn’t hearing this.

Marine grinned more broadly at Eliska sitting there slack-jawed in shock. How long had Marine been sitting on this bomb just waiting to blow Eliska away with it?

“Now maybe you’ll understand why I admire you so much,” Marine went on. “I grew up surrounded by luxury. I never wanted for anything….and I had an older brother who loved me more than the whole world. Anríq reminds me of him……”

Marine turned back to the flames and stared into them in brooding silence. Words failed Eliska.

Marine said she had an older brother. Did he die? Eliska couldn’t ask. She and Marine had been friends for less than a day.

She didn’t see how losing a brother could ruin Marine’s usual bubbly mood. She grew up in luxury with every advantage and a family that loved her. What could possibly be wrong about that?

Marine pulled herself out of her thoughts, straightened up, and shook her hair out of her eyes before she smiled at Eliska again.

“I was the only magic-user in my family—the only magic-user in twelve generations,” Marine explained. “I didn’t know how to use my magic, so my father sent me to the Guardian Templars for training and education.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” Eliska remarked. “I guess he had to send you somewhere if he couldn’t teach you himself.”

“The day I left my father’s palace for the Temple was the worst day of my life,” Marine went on. “I begged my brother not to let me go, but my father said I had to. I begged the Templars every day to let me go home. They said my magic could do my people some good if I learned how to use it and they promised I could go as soon as I finished my training…..” Marine heaved another sigh—a broken one this time. “And then all of this happened and I never saw my father or my brother or my family ever again. Now I probably never will see.”

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“Um…..” Eliska hardly dared to ask. “And then what happened?”

“All of this.” Marine waved her hand at the countryside around them, but she still did it casually like she was talking about the weather or a normal day’s activities.

“The Voyant started twisting the Coil to raze cities and kill millions of people. The chaos and instability escalated and it will only keep getting worse. My order took it as our mission to find out what he’s doing and try to stop him. I learned in my training how to go into the Dark to commune with the Darklings, so I volunteered to do that to find out about his plans.” Marine turned away from the fire to gaze down into Eliska’s eyes. “Don’t you see? I’m not strong like you, Eliska. I could never do what you do. You can handle anything. You know how to survive in the Coil. I go into the Dark….and I like it. It’s terrible…and dangerous….and I like it…..and I can’t stop.” She turned away with the first grimace of disgust and misery Eliska had ever seen. “I just want to go home, but I know now that I can never go home—not after all the Darkness that has passed through me. I couldn’t take that back to my family. I hate what I am—and yet this is the only way I know how to make any difference to what’s happening. My family wouldn’t even know me—and I wouldn’t go home anyway—not with the threat hanging over everyone…..”

She trailed off and went all silent and serious staring into the flames. Eliska told herself again and again to say something—anything.

Marine’s joking, casual nature unsettled Eliska. Eliska liked this version of Marine much better.

At least now Eliska knew there was a real person under all that sunshine—a person who understood the gravity of the situation and was doing everything possible to save people from it.

Eliska forced herself to say the words she’d always kept buried before now. “I’m not strong, Marine. I’m not strong at all. I’m weak and scared to death of everything in the Coil. I would never go into the Dark Layers the way you do. I’ve only survived as long as I have by staying away from them. You’re so much stronger and more powerful than I am. You’re everything I wish I could be. You’re beautiful and alive and warm and happy. You know how to talk to people. You know how to have fun. That’s something I could never do.”

Eliska had to stop when her throat constricted the rest of the way. Whatever happened to her today crushed her under an unbearable weight.

She never admitted to anyone just how terrifying her life had become. She stayed away from people and towns—not because they posed any threat to her—not like that.

She stayed away because they scared her. People scared her.

She never learned how to talk to them and make them like her. Part of her was too afraid to go looking for Yann and the others in case she started liking them too much.

She already did like them too much. She should have run from them to stop herself from liking anyone this much. Liking them and having them like her scared the crap out of her.

Marine snapped back to life in a flash, sat up straight, and went back to grinning at everything. “Anyway, that’s enough of all that doom and gloom.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Eliska murmured. “You can tell me anything anytime.”

“I just haven’t talked to anyone about all of this before. I never told anyone…..” Her features started to darken again, but she waved her hand in front of her face and shook that off, too. “Anyway, I don’t want to blabber about it anymore. That’s where I found out about the Voyant….so yes, he controls the Coil and he’s the one causing all this instability. We would be in a stability cycle now if not for him.”

“Wesh says the Coil goes through patterns of stability and instability all the time. He says it’s a natural cycle that repeats forever. He says he got that information from the Guardian Templars.”

“Either his order has incorrect information or they’re interpreting it incorrectly. The cycles can be shorter or longer, but they always happen at the Voyant’s direction.”

“Are you saying the Voyant Mendicat is a recurring position….or something? Are you saying there have been others like him….and that they’re the ones who are causing these cycles—all of them together?”

“I don’t know about that, but if he’s the one causing this one, then it follows that other people caused the other cycles.”

“I don’t see it that way, but okay. You know more about it than I do.”

“What other explanation is there?” Marine countered.

“That the Voyant is causing this cycle and the others occurred naturally. Maybe he has some reason to cause the instability—like maybe he thinks the instability will give him a better chance of finding whatever it is that he wants to use to boost his power.”

Marine shrugged that away. “Maybe.”

“The question is how we can find out what he wants from the Black Watch. Did you see anything when you were with them to indicate which of them has it—or which of them is it?”

“No, I didn’t see anything.” Marine turned back to stare into the flames. “Whatever it is must be masked somehow.”

“How can we find out what he wants—apart from waiting for him to attack the Watch again?”

“We could get Wesh and Anríq to help us break into the spire,” Marine suggested. “The four of us could combine our magic.”

“That means we have to find our way back to the Watch—and we can’t find the Watch.”

“We might be able to,” Marine suggested.

“I doubt it.”

Marine’s eyes suddenly burst open and she pointed at Eliska with an excited gasp. “I got it! We could combine our magic! Yes! That will work!”

“It might work, you mean,” Eliska corrected. “We hope it will work.”

“Yes, it will!” Marine shot to her feet. “Come on! Let’s go.”

Eliska didn’t move. “Sit down. We aren’t going anywhere tonight.”

“But we have to!” Marine insisted. “We have to stop the Voyant as soon as possible. We can’t let this instability cost any more lives.”

“If we can stop him at all, we won’t do it tonight. It will take us a long time to find our way back to the Watch even if you’re right that combining our magic will lead us back to them. Even then, all four of us working together might not be able to overcome the Voyant’s defenses. Sit down. Losing sleep over this won’t help anything.”

Marine said, “But……” and stopped.

Eliska stayed where she was and stared into the flames. She’d seen enough of the Voyant’s defenses today. It would take a lot more than Marine’s youthful enthusiasm to convince Eliska that Wesh’s, Anríq’s, Marine’s, and Eliska’s combined magic would defeat him.

Marine finally sat down and sighed again. “This is why you know so much more about this stuff than I do. I don’t know how to plan a campaign like this.”

“I don’t know anything about stuff like this—as you call it,” Eliska countered. “I have no idea what I’m doing out here.”

Marine brightened up and looked all around her with interest. “So…..where should we sleep tonight?”

“Um…..right here,” Eliska replied. “Where else would we sleep?”

“You mean right here on the ground?!” Marine practically shrieked.

“Where have you been sleeping all this time while you’ve been out of your mind and communing with Darklings? You must have slept on the ground. You slept in the snow when the Watch stayed in that cabin.”

“I don’t remember that,” Marine replied.

Eliska’s eyes fell out of their sockets. “You don’t remember…..any of it?”

“I don’t remember where I was. I remember the Dark Layers I passed through and the Darklings I tried to communicate with. I don’t remember sleeping in the snow.” She made a face and snorted. “I would have remembered that.”

“Well, we don’t have any castles or servants or feather beds for you to sleep in here. I’ve been sleeping on the ground practically every night my entire life. We’re lucky to have this fire.”

Marine heaved another tortured sigh. “I suppose this is the price of sanity—dealing with the real world.”

Eliska laughed at her. “Maybe you should go back into the Dark Layers so you don’t feel it.”

Marine cracked a grin. “I wouldn’t be able to talk to you if I did that.”

“How is it that you’re so sane here and not in other Layers?”

“I can’t explain it. I can commune with Darklings in some Layers and not in others, so I’m sane in some and not in others. I don’t know if I’ll be able to until I get somewhere. My whole mission is communing with them, so I try to stay in the Layers where I can do it.” She looked around at the night closing in on their fire. “This is the first Island I’ve come to in a long time where I can’t connect to the Dark.”

Eliska looked down into the flames and shook her head. “It’s amazing. I would never dare to go into the Dark. I’ve been doing everything the opposite way and staying away from Dark Layers.”

Marine burst into another brilliant grin. “Then I guess it’s a good thing that we met here so we could get to know each other.”

“Yeah,” Eliska breathed and gazed at her friend. “I’m glad about that even if we can’t do anything about the rest of it.”

End of Chapter 50.