Even in the dark, Mitchell had no trouble picking his way along the uneven ground clogged thick with roots and fallen branches. Following his nose, he backtracked the path they had come and which their attackers had traversed as well. It didn’t take long for him to find what he was looking for.

He spotted Kole before Kole spotted him. The disgraced city guardsman was bound up tight and secured to a tree next to a number of rucksacks and bedrolls. Moving quietly, Mitchell made one circle around the area to make sure there were no surprises or that the squad hadn’t left someone behind to guard their prisoner before he stepped into the patch of pale moonlight in front of the man.

Kole jerked against his bonds at the sudden appearance of another person and then his eyes went wide with abject terror when he saw that it was Mitchell’s bloody and battered face and not one of the mercenaries.

“Denass, mother of night and darkness, protect me,” he whimpered.

“What did you do, Kole?” Mitchell asked him quietly, his voice like cold iron.

“They caught me! Caught me trying to lift some coin in a market! They was gonna hang me. I had to tell them something! Please! They was gonna hang me as a thief and a bandit!”

“You are a thief and a bandit.”

“You lot sent me off with nothin’!” Kole cried. “I needed food! I needed supplies! What was I supposed to do?”

“And so you told them about Allora. Tried to bargain yourself out of your punishment,” Mitchell said as he put the pieces together. “How did you know?”

The sniveling retch of a man half cried half cackled.

“Weren’t hard to figure out. They’ve been searching for her for well on two years now. Beautiful, black-haired elf with violet eyes, carries herself like a queen. Once I sobered up, I knew who she was. Knew they’d want the reward for bringing her in or killing her and they might let me go. But they made me go with them. I had to go all the way back to where you lot found me and we picked up your trail. Lost you a few days ago not too far from here and we headed back to Clayfaire to regroup when I spotted you and the red-haired one leaving the town this morning.”

Mitchell nodded.

“You spoke an oath under the sun to never steal again. And after I spared your life.”

“Yeah, well, that oath didn’t put food in my belly, did it!

Mitchell looked at him for a long time. So long that the man began to squirm under the intensity of Mitchell’s cold gaze.

“Do you know why I spared your life that morning, Kole?” Mitchell asked. “It was because I didn’t want my first official act to be an execution. Killing your partners in combat was unavoidable, but executing someone is different. So, I chose the path of mercy. And in doing so, it nearly cost me my life and the life of someone I love dearly.”

“So, what? Are you going to kill me now?”

“No,” Mitchell said, quietly as he raised his sword. “You are already dead.”

He thought of Allora’s words on the foot of the mountains outside of Belikir.

“You were dead the moment you stepped foot on the path of breaking your oath to Stollar. I’m just the instrument of your justice.”

“I–” Kole began, his eyes starting to widen but his words were cut off as Mitchell thrust his blade into the man’s heart with enough force to go clean through his body and into the tree on the other side.

Kole’s body seized and he stared at Mitchell with incomprehension clear on his dirty face. Mitchell did not blink, did not look away. He watched as the life drained from the thief’s eyes as surely as the blood drained from his ruptured heart. Only when the final breath left Kole’s lungs did Mitchell retract his blade. His body hung limply from his bonds.

“Denass, mother of death and darkness, receive this soul and judge him as you will,” Mitchell intoned, trying to recall the prayer he’d heard before. He wasn’t sure if he got it right, but it was close enough.

Then, he turned and headed back to Lethelin.

***

“You did a fair job, I’d say. Your first time with the second-circle spell?” Gilriel asked as she inspected the arrow wound.

“Yes,” Mitchell told her. “It wasn’t much more difficult than the firstcircle spell. I got it on the first try. Why are there still scars, though?”

Mitchell had hoped that the skin would heal smooth and as good as new, but the next morning when they’d awoken and he’d checked on it, he could see the pink and puckered skin of a fresh scar on the entry wound and more disfigured flesh on the back. Lethelin had said it was still a little tender to the touch, as well.

“More serious wounds will leave scars behind if you don’t use a high enough spell,” she explained. “It’s also why she’s likely to be sore for a few days yet.

"Couldn't I just heal her again?”

“Eh, you could,” Gilriel explained, her old instructor voice back on display. “But it wouldn’t help much. The tissue has been repaired, but because you only used a second level, there wasn’t enough mana to set it back one-hundred percent. There’s nothing to really heal anymore, it’s not a problem of damage, it just needs time.”

“If you all are finished talking about me like I’m a thing, I’d like to put my shirt back on,” Lethelin said a little testily.

“Go on girl,” Gilriel chuckled. “Was that your first time getting shot?”

“Yes,” Lethelin said as she slipped the shirt back over her head, wincing as she had to flex her arm and shoulder, and started to lace up the collar. “I’ve shot people plenty, but it was my first time taking an arrow. I don’t like it.”

“It’s not pleasant, I agree,” replied Gilriel. “But you did alright. The arrow missed anything vital and Mitchell’s healing took care of the rest. Go on and rest up until dinner.”

“Thank you, Lady Gilriel,” Lethelin said as she made her way into the house leaving Mitchell, Allora, and Gilriel alone in the yard.

“It was Kole,” Mitchell explained. “He identified you and tried to use the information to avoid execution.”

Mitchell then proceeded to tell them all that had happened now that Lethelin was given the all-clear. That had been his first priority, even though she insisted that she was fine beyond some stiffness and soreness. When he got to the part about backtracking and finding the former guardsman tied to a tree, Allora reached for his hand and held it as he told of the conversation and the execution.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

“Do you regret sparing his life that first time?” Allora asked him gently.

Mitchell inhaled through his nose and let it out in a huff.

“No,” he said. “I still think that was the right thing to do. But…”

He struggled with how to explain his feelings about it now.

“In my own world, I was against what we call the death penalty. Executions for crimes. Our system of justice, while better than many, also has some big flaws in it. Many innocent people have been executed over the years. I never supported it. I also didn’t think it was right for a state to punish people for murder by killing people in turn. But I executed Kole and I’m not even sure I was wrong to do it.”

“You had no doubt about his guilt,” Allora said. “He admitted his crimes to you.”

Mitchell nodded.

“I know. But… we say in my country that justice is supposed to be blind. It doesn’t matter who you are, you will be treated fairly and judgment will also be made without regard to one’s race, gender, or position in society.”

Gilriel chuckled.

“I suspect that doesn’t work as well in practice.”

Mitchell wobbled his head, which still felt strange to him.

“No, it doesn’t. But that’s the ideal. I believe in that ideal. I am against the death penalty. But when I was standing in front of him all I could think about was that Lethelin had nearly been killed because of him. If it had not been for Vras, I would likely have been killed as well. I couldn’t have taken four of them on my own. Not yet. So, I don’t know if I killed him for justice or for revenge.”

Allora and Gilriel were quiet, leaving him alone with his thoughts.

“We have a saying where I’m from,” he said at last. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown.”

“Hmm,” Gilriel said. “I like that. And it’s true enough.”

“You will have many such decisions to make in the future,” Allora told him. “But I have faith that you will make the correct ones. You are a good man, Mitchell Allen.”

He smiled at her.

“I don’t think I could ask for higher praise,” he said and brought her in for a kiss.

***

They rested in the grove for another four days. Mitchell worked on his sword play and spells and practiced his reading skills which were still far behind his speaking skills. The evenings were spent around the fire pit or in the cabin when it rained. They talked, shared stories, and enjoyed what Mitchell knew to be the last bit of quiet before the storm. Beyond the borders of Gilriel’s warded enclave, his enemies were waiting.

The night before they were set to depart, Mitchell found Gilriel in her garden. The rain had stopped some hours before and the ground was still damp, but she was still there tending to her plants. The air was so clean and pure in this place that he felt like he’d never really breathed before he stepped into the forest. She heard his quiet footfalls and looked up to see him stopping at her fence.

“Night blooms berries,” she told him as he watched her pruning a long, willowy plant with pinkish-red petals. “They only bloom in the dark and I have to trim away the dead petals to get the best berries. They’re handy in potion making.”

“I’d like to learn some of that one day. When I’m not trying to save a kingdom and all that.”

“It’s useful. I took it up when I moved out here. My potions fetch a fair bit of coin when I head to one of the villages to sell them.”

“Can I ask why you left Lorivin? Allora told me that knights almost never leave the service but you did. Right around the time Baylor became monarch.”

Gilriel stood up slowly from her pruning and fixed him with a level stare.

“I would imagine,” she said, her voice carrying a subtle note of warning, “that she also would have told you that I didn’t give her the reason when she asked me either.”

“She did. But I wanted to ask you why myself.”

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told her. It was a long time ago and it has nothing to do with anything now.”

Mitchell nodded. Truth be told, he had not expected her to give him an answer but he thought it worth trying.

“If I wouldn’t give the answer to Allora, whom I’ve come to love like my own daughter, what made you think I would tell you?”

“I didn’t think you would, honestly. But I had to ask anyway.”

“Why?” she peered at him.

“Because I want you to come back with us.”

“Ha! Stollar’s cock, boy. I vowed I would never set foot in Lorivin again and in eighty-four years, I never have. I’ll not go back for you nor anyone.”

“I’m not asking you to go back for me or for Allora.”

“Then you’ve got no coin left to barter with because Allora’s the last person in the world I care about and not even for her would I do it.”

She began to step carefully around her plants towards the gate.

“I’m asking you to come back for Awen. To do your duty.”

That brought Gilriel up short. She turned around and Mitchell could see the anger building up beneath the surface.

“What did you say to me?” she asked. Her voice was low and hard and promised violence.

“I think you heard me.”

Mitchell knew he needed to tread carefully here. He needed to push her but if he pushed her too hard, he didn’t know what she might do. One thing Mitchell was sure of, though was that they needed her and she had been in hiding for long enough.

“You swore an oath to protect the monarch and to protect Awen. You—”

Before Mitchell could finish his sentence Gilriel’s krisa flashed and Mitchell felt his body bound up in invisible bands of force and then he was lifted up off the ground and shoved back into the wall of the house. He struck the vine-covered stone hard enough that he saw stars for a moment. As his vision cleared, he was met with the sight of Gilriel stalking through her garden now, heedless of the carefully tended greenery. She smashed right through her fence. She stopped only inches from his face, her face a cauldron of anger and eyes like glacier ice.

“Do not ever speak to me of oaths, you festering pile of troll shit! You think that heart stone gives you the right to speak to me of oaths and duty? It does not. I was serving Awen before your grandmother first got on her knees and sucked your grandfather’s shriveled cock! I was born into the Knights and was fighting and killing for the crown before my eighteenth high sun. You do not get to tell me of my duty, you nameless whoreson! You are not the monarch yet and even if you were, I would sooner take council from a toothless cloud addict than an off-worlder who picks up a sword and thinks himself a king who can speak to me of my oath. Do I make myself clear?”

Her eyes burned holes into the back of Mitchell’s skull and he could feel the bands of force squeezing him tight enough that drawing a breath was becoming difficult. Mitchell had no doubt that this woman could end him. He’d come a long way since he first arrived but he was not so stupid as to think he could really defend himself if Gilriel actually decided to hurt or kill him. She’d probably forgotten more about how to kill someone with a blade, magic, or her bare hands than Mitchell had even learned yet. But he couldn’t let that stop him.

“Awen,” Mitchell grunted, fighting to talk as his chest was constricted, “Will die—” he sucked in a small breath. “If. We. Fail,” he coughed and dragged in as much air as he could. “And you. Will be partially. To blame.”

Mitchell’s lungs were burning and he could feel his head growing hot as he fought to draw breath.

That seemed to resonate with Gilriel as, for the first time, he saw doubt flicker through her eyes. The bands of force constricting him began to ease and he sucked down several deep breaths. Mitchell tried to exploit the gap in her certainty.

“I think you could tell yourself that there were other knights,” he said, still feeling winded. “Before the coup. You could hide here and it wasn’t really a big deal because the other knights were protecting Awen and Baylor. But that’s all gone now. Allora is all that’s left.”

Gilriel was starring at him now, fear beginning to replace the rage.

“Allora and you. Maybe you told yourself that you were just on vacation and one day you would go back. That you weren’t really abandoning all that you swore your life to. That you weren’t abandoning your oaths. Maybe that helped you make it alright in your head. But it’s not alright anymore.”

At once, the glow of her krisa winked out and the spell holding him vanished. Mitchell dropped the few inches to the ground and braced himself against the wall to regain his balance.

She stepped away from him and turned her eyes towards the forest. Then he saw her head track upward to where Ithstasy was about a third of the way across the sky, peeking through the scattered clouds left over from this afternoon’s rain.

“I don’t know much,” Mitchell said softly as he walked up beside her. “I barely know what’s going on half the time. And the other half I’m just making up as I go along. But I know what Allora has sacrificed to keep her oath and in the name of her duty to Awen. I know what she has suffered. In the face of all that, in the face of an entire army hunting for her, of watching her friends and family get slaughtered, of traveling to an alien world alone, with nothing more than a hope and a prayer to keep her going, she kept her oath. If you can tell me that you have suffered more, have sacrificed more, than that woman sleeping on the other side of this wall, then I will never speak of this again.”

In the forest beyond the clearing, the sounds of the night filled the air. The wind kicked up and blew strands of the elf’s hair free. She was old enough to be his great grandmother but she was an elf and she looked like a woman coming into the kind of beauty that only maturity can bring about. The moonlight played across her skin and Mitchell could see lines of moisture trailing down her cheeks that glinted in Ithstasy’s glow.

“But if you can’t say that,” Mitchell continued. “Then I ask you to remember your oath and to return to Lorivin and help us save Awen. She needs you.”

Mitchell lifted his hand up and rested it on her shoulder. She jumped at the sudden contact but she didn’t look away from the sky, nor did she speak.

“Goodnight, Lady Gilriel.”