“Nor am I asking you to. Nor would I expect it of you.” The aged eyes seemed to look right into him. “But finding Grianne Ohmsford may not be the answer. It may end badly for everyone involved. It may not yield the result you hope to achieve.”
“You can’t know that. You can’t know how it will end!”
“I am a Faerie creature, and I have the use of magic and the gift of premonition. While I cannot know the answers to all things, I can sense if they will be good or bad for those involved. It is so here. My sense of it is very strong.”
Railing took a deep breath to steady himself, not wanting to blurt out what he was thinking. “What are you telling me to do?”
“Only this. Make your choice wisely. Do not become wedded to the idea that there is only one way.”
“I already know that.”
The King of the Silver River shook his head. “You only think you know. In the end you may discover you are a child playing with matches and in danger of burning everything around you to the ground. Think carefully. Do you really wish to continue on after what I have just said, or will you turn back and go into the Forbidding alone?”
There was a long silence as the boy and the old man faced each other. In the distance, something splashed in the waters of the cove, and the dark shape of a bird of prey winged skyward with food for her young.
“I cannot give this up,” Railing said.
“You can give anything up just as you can take anything up. But once the choice is made, there are consequences. And you cannot change those consequences. You can only live with them.”
The insistence in the old man’s words was daunting. Clearly, he believed what he was saying. Railing hesitated. Neither of them knew exactly what would happen if Railing persisted in his search for Grianne Ohmsford, but the King of the Silver River seemed certain that it would not be anything good. Yet even creatures of magic could be mistaken. Even they could be wrong. The history of the Ohmsford family had demonstrated that often enough.
Railing was no fool; he knew he should consider carefully what he was being told. He had until at least sunrise to do so. And he had all the days of his journey after that, as well, didn’t he? He would not dismiss the old man’s warning out of hand. He would think on it for as long as there was reason to do so.
“Will the ring guide me to wherever I choose to go?” he asked the other.
The King of the Silver River shrugged. “Or out of wherever you’ve been, should that become necessary. But know this. Unlike some magic, it has a finite life. It will show the way each time you ask for it, but each time one strand of its woven threads will disappear until all are gone. Save the stone for when the threads are gone and your life is at such risk there is no other magic you can call upon. That time may come sooner than you think.”
Railing took a deep breath. “I thank you for the ring and the advice. I will consider carefully everything you have told me.”
“Will you?”
The boy nodded uneasily. The old man seemed to see right through him. “How do I get back to the ship from here?”
The King of the Silver River smiled. “Who is to say you ever left?”
Then he disappeared, and the shoreline and the trees and any view of the airship anchored in the cove disappeared as well, and Railing woke from what might have been only a dream still wrapped in his blanket and lying on wooden planking, and he was aboard Quickening once more, and all that remained was the silence and his memory of the Faerie creature’s words.
It might have been a dream if not for the ring that nestled deep inside his pant pocket.