I had expected darkness and disorientation. I had expected the Skill pulling at me, and a struggle to hold the Prince and myself together. I forced myself to be aware of both of us, and to keep him intact. Holding onto him within my Skill-barriers was much like clutching a handful of salt in a deluge. There was the same sensation that if I relaxed my grip at all, he would trickle away from me. There was all that, and an illogical sensation that we fell upwards. I clutched Dutiful to me, promising myself that it would soon be over. I was not prepared to fall from the pillar into icy seawater.
Saltwater flooded my mouth and nose as I gasped in shock. We tumbled together in the water. My shoulder struck something. Dutiful struggled wildly, and I nearly lost my grip on him. The water sucked at us, and then, just as I saw light through a layer of murky green and deduced which way was up, a wave gathered us and flung us against a rocky beach.
The impact broke my grip on the Prince. The wave rolled us on the rocky shore without letting us reach air. The mussel-and-barnacle-encrusted rocks tore at me. Then, as the wave retreated, my body snagged on the rocks hooking my sword-belt and the water stranded me there. I lifted my head, choking and gagging out water and sand. I blinked, trying to see Dutiful, and spotted him still in the water. He was belly-down on the beach, scrabbling to catch hold of rocks as the outgoing wave sucked at him. He slid backwards towards deeper water, then managed to find a grip and lay still, gasping. I found a breath.
‘Get up!’ I yelled. It came out as a hoarse caw. ‘Before the next wave. Get up.’
He looked at me without comprehension. I staggered upright and flung myself towards him. Catching the back of his collar, I dragged him over the shredding barnacles and up the rocky beach towards the higher shoreline. A wave still caught us and flung me to my knees, but the water was not powerful enough to drag us out again. The next time the wave went out, Dutiful managed to get to his feet. Holding on to one another, we staggered up past the toothy rocks and into a belt of black sand festooned with squelching strands of tangled kelp. When we reached the loose dry sand, I let go of Prince Dutiful. He took perhaps three more steps and then dropped to the ground. For a time he just lay on his side, breathing. Then he sat up, spat out sand and wiped his nose on his wet sleeve. He looked all around us with no comprehension, and when his eyes came back to me, his expression was that of a confused child.
‘What happened?’
The sand in my teeth gritted whenever I moved my mouth. I spat. ‘We came through a Skill-pillar.’ I spat again.
‘A what?’
‘A Skill-pillar,’ I repeated. I looked back to point it out to him.
There was nothing out there but ocean. Another wave rushed in, reaching higher up the beach. Scummy white foam laced the sand as the water retreated. I came awkwardly to my feet and stared out over the incoming tide. Just water. Moving waves. Crying gulls above the waves. No Skill-pillar of black stone broke that heaving green surface. There was not even a clue as to where it had spat us out offshore.
No way back.
I had left my friends to die. Regardless of what the Fool had said, I had resolved to return immediately via the pillar. Otherwise, I would not have gone. I would not have done it if I had thought I was not going back to them. Telling myself that did not make me feel a shard less cowardly.
Nighteyes! I quested desperately, flinging the call with all my strength.
No one answered.
‘Fool!’ The word ripped out of me, a futile scream of Wit and Skill and voice. Distant gulls seemed to echo it mockingly. My hope faded with their dwindling cries over the windswept sea.
Unmoving, I stared out over the water until an incoming wave lapped against my feet. The Prince had not moved, except to fall back onto his side on the wet sand. He lay, staring blankly and shivering. I slowly turned away from the surf and surveyed the land. Black cliffs rose up before us. The tide was coming in. My mind put the pieces together.
‘Get up. We have to move before the tide traps us.’
To the south, the rocky cliffs gave way to a half-moon of black sand. A grassy tableland backed it. I reached down and seized the Prince’s arm. ‘Up,’ I repeated. ‘Unless you want to drown here.’
The lad lurched to his feet without protest. We trudged down the shore as the waves reached ever higher towards us. Desolation was a cold weight inside me. I dared not look at what I had just done. It was too monstrous to consider. While I walked down this beach, did their blood flow down swords? I stopped my mind. As if I were setting walls against an intrusive mind, I blocked all feelings from myself. I stopped all thoughts and became a wolf, concerned only with the ‘now’.
‘What was that?’ Dutiful demanded suddenly. ‘That … feeling. That pulling …’ Words failed him. ‘Was that the Skill?’
‘Part of it,’ I answered brusquely. He seemed entirely too interested in what he had just experienced. Had it called to him that strongly? The Skill’s attraction was a terrible trap for the unwary.
‘I … he tried to teach me, but he couldn’t tell me what it felt like. I couldn’t tell if I was doing it or not, and neither could he. But that!’
He expected a response to his excitement. I gave him none. The Skill was the last thing I wanted to talk about just now. I didn’t want to speak at all. I did not want to break the numbness that wrapped me.
When we reached the black sand, I kept Prince Dutiful walking. His wet clothes flapped around his body, and he hugged himself against the chill. I listened to his shivering breaths. A greenish sheen on the sand proved to be a flow of freshwater over the beach to the sea. I walked him upstream, away from the sandy beach and into a field of coarse sedge grasses until I reached a place where the trickle was deep enough for me to cup handfuls of it. I washed out my mouth several times and then drank. I was splashing water on my face to get sand out of my eyes and ears when the Prince spoke again.
‘What about Lord Golden and the wolf? Where are they, what happened to them?’ He looked out over the water as if he expected to see them there.
‘They couldn’t come. By now, I imagine your friends have killed them.’
It amazed me that I could speak the words so flatly. No choking tears, no gasping breath. It was a thought too terrible to be real. I could not allow myself to consider it. Instead, I flung the words at him, hoping to see him flinch from them. Instead he just shook his head, as if my words made no sense, then asked numbly ‘Where are we?’