Many Words

Sif looked at the pouches of food in front of her, made a decision, and cinched the pouches closed. She would want something to snack on during tomorrow’s march. “I think so too. It’s good for us—we get to survive—and it’s good for him—he gets some friends.”

Alfhilde pondered that and said, “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“He’s as human as you or me,” Sif replied. “He thinks I should be a conjurer. Some of them don’t even leave Norr— Norrderheim—” she gave up “—den Holm, and when they do, they have the best armor ever made, and a band of metal men to fight for them.” Sif stabbed a finger in the air to punctuate her words. “Metal men! Do you believe that?”

A memory floated to the surface of Alfhilde’s mind: a dweorgr mineshaft, the stubborn little buggers dug into its mouth, their cannon and rifles spitting fire at anyone who dared draw near; a magiker pointing and shouting; shining silver avatars of destruction stained red as Alfhilde and her band took the position. “You know, I do.” Alfhilde smiled briefly, driving off the recollection and bringing herself back to the present. “Do you think you’ll take his offer?”

“It feels like fate to me,” Sif admitted. “I don’t think I’ll be able to stop using magic, now that I’ve seen it. If I were backed into a corner, and I had to use magic, I would choose that over dying, even if it meant they would have to come after me. It’s better that I go somewhere I can be allowed to use magic, and where I can help people. I won’t get a better deal than that.”

Mercifully, the day’s march passed uneventfully. They found a place to set up their camp, set back from the road and out of sight. Falthejn went off to one side of the camp by himself, drew a circle on the ground, and sat in it, eyes closed. Sif watched him, nibbling at a piece of trail bread.

“I wonder what he sees?” Alfhilde said, sitting next to her.

“It’s usually bad,” Sif said, offering Alfhilde a piece of bread. Alfhilde waved it away. Sif added, “We die a lot, he told me.”

Alfhilde nodded. “That’s the life a diviner leads. You can’t know how to keep your friends alive unless you know how they die.” She looked into the distance. “He is less gloomy than most of his kind, that much I’ll give him.” A few moments passed. “Did he ever tell you why he became a diviner? I can’t see very many choosing to.”

Through a mouthful of nuts, Sif replied, “Oh, he didn’t choose it. When he was younger than me, a diviner met him and saw him use magic. The diviner took him away and trained him.”

For a long time, Alfhilde said nothing. Sif turned to give her a quizzical look, but stopped. Worried, she said, “Are you crying?”

Alfhilde shook her head abruptly, then softened and conceded, “A little, maybe. That is a—” she wiped at her eye “—a hard story for a mother to hear. He’s doing you quite the kindness to let you choose, isn’t he?”

“Most children who can use magic get sorted into whichever guild needs people the most,” Sif confirmed. “Sometimes the richest people get to pick, but otherwise, unless you know someone…”

“Good thing we met him, then.”

Falthejn could give them the slip without trouble, especially if he waited until night, and his watch. Would they go on without him? In one set of hypothetical futures, he stayed nearby to watch. They would, if he left them a message. Would it help? He pushed his sight further and saw the Jewel of the North, swelling under the weight of refugees, tens of thousands of them.

Would they lose so much ground? Perhaps they would. Every scenario in which he did not fall to an ontlig claw, a crude axe, or a black-feathered arrow saw him back to that city. He pushed himself to the very limits of his power, and saw himself consulting records—and there, months before it was to be, he saw four names in a register under Hrothgarsken: Hrothgar, Alfhilde, Jakob, Sif.

That was enough. It was more hope than they had now, at any rate, and that made it the right thing to do, hard though it might be. He snapped out of his walking trance, and felt the twists and knots he had put into the weave by his exertion. As they moved along, the air warmed noticeably, leaving behind the unnatural chill the distortions to the world had created. Falthejn stumbled.

Sif stepped up next to him. “Are you alright?”

Falthejn showed a smile she could probably see right through. “Yes, I will be. I can see to the end of our journey now.”

The girl brightened. “We make it?”

“We do.” Or, thought Falthejn, you do. Of his own fate, he was less certain.

Falthejn kept turning the problem over in his head through the rest of the day. Could he truly leave his charges? He remained convinced it was the right thing to do. They would live; that was goal. But was it a good thing to do? In the strict, calculating sense, yes. In the fuzzier environs of the real world, it was less clear to him. If he stayed, there would be a fight for survival on the road tomorrow. Of that, he had very little doubt, based on the speed of the ontlig advance and the pace they could make. He was wounded and tired, and although seeing past a melee presented a diviner with an insurmountable challenge—too many variables too close together; it was all they could do to keep up with a fight in the thick of it—he didn’t need his foresight to tell him their chances were slim. They might make it, they might not. The reason mankind hated his school of magic stemmed from that sort of gambling with lives. If he left, he had some indication, at least, that they would be safe. The odds were for leaving, and yet still it gave him pause. Why?

Because, it dawned on him, he cared about what these people thought. By leaving in secret in the middle of the night, he would hurt them deeply, and they would likely never forgive him for it.

He shook his head. Hard as it would be, his choice was clear.

Following the road with some corner of his mind, Falthejn spent most of his attention on his foresight. The effort of using his magic without his usual totems, runes, or tools of any sort, and walking besides, strained him nearly to breaking, but he had a problem solve, and one way or another, he needed only to last a day and a half. By then, they would be free and clear, and he could rest, or they would be dead, and he would not need to worry anymore.

The road bored straight on through the trees. This part of the journey presented few obstacles. Leafier trees mixed with the pines, and they’d left the hills behind in exchange for a gentle slope down toward the steppe in the center of the content. The ontr would find the walk even easier, and none of the futures Falthejn could see ended well. They were being hunted, run to exhaustion, and if Falthejn was honest with himself, he could see that he was the reason. Magic left traces, and if the ontligr shamans could trace him, he endangered the others by his very presence.

A thought struck him. Could he leave? He investigated. Certainly, he couldn’t tell the others. A vision flashed before him, Alfhilde shaking her head and vehemently telling him, “We’ll take our chances with you, thank you very much.”