“It’s … so much.”
“Every spell ever written, ever conjured, ever cast, black or white, for good or ill, is within you. This knowledge and the weight of it is yours. This trust and the burden of it is yours. Others may open the book, but it will not speak to them.”
“My father paid the price for me to stand here. There’s always a price, I know that. But I’ve seen what the cost is for not paying the price, how much worse.”
She set the book down, laid her hand on it. “It was your book first.”
“No, never mine. I helped create it, and I’ve kept it safe a very long time. This has been my duty and my honor.” He lay his hand over hers. “Will you go to the Well of Light, Fallon Swift?”
“Yes.” She let out a long breath as she turned to the cupboard, the light. “Yes, but I left my sword downstairs.”
Mallick stepped back, folded his hands. “You’ll have no need for it.”
Trusting him, trusting herself, she stepped to the cupboard. With a last glance at Mallick, she stepped inside.
And leaped.
Down and down through brilliant white light, within sheer white walls. The air rushed by her without sound.
She looked up where the light swirled above her—like water—and below where it gleamed.
She landed in a spread-legged lunge, a hand braced against the gleaming floor of the well. She felt the heartbeat pump with her own. Her blood and the living light.
When she stood, it flowed around her like the water, like the brush of hands, the flutter of wings.
She thought of the farm, her family, of riding Grace over the fields, of running through the woods. The hum of bees, the snap of laundry on the line. The years the light had protected her and those she loved.
She thought of Max Fallon, who’d sparked her life and given his own for it, and closed her hand over the symbols she wore that joined her fathers.
She thought of Mick and Twila and Thomas and all she’d come to know and care for.
She thought of great cities and deserted fields. Of the people in New Hope, and all like them who fought to survive and to build.
And she thought of Mallick, who’d given hundreds of years to bring her to where she stood.
Her choice, she thought, but they had all paved the way for it.
Bathed in brilliant light, she stared at the long trough of fire.
“Another leap. It’s faith. They have faith in me. I have faith in them, and in the light.”
She stepped to the flames.
Its heat bathed her skin; its light shined in her eyes.
She felt its breath.
“I make my choice, now hear my voice. In light and fire I make this vow, accepting what the gods endow. I am your daughter, child of wind and fire, of earth and water. With magicks bright I take up the fight. With this sword, with this shield, I will strike on battlefield.”
She reached through the flames, gripped hilt, gripped strap, lifted the sword and the shield.
“They’re mine,” she voiced. “As the book is mine, as the owl, the wolf, the horse are mine. And I’m theirs.”
She hefted the shield with its crest of the fivefold symbol, uniting the five elements with magicks. She thrust high the sword with the same symbol on its hilt.
It flashed, silver as Laoch’s wings, and the flame that ran from hilt to point burned white.
In light and fire rose The One.
Mallick waited for her. He knew the moment she’d reached into the flame by the strike of lighting, the flaming candles.
And from the change within him. Now, his clock would tick again, his life cycle would begin again. He would know age. And for that alone, he blessed her.
He fetched the sheath he’d made for her long before her birth, laid it beside the book.
When she stepped out, the light dimmed behind her. But it blazed on her face, he thought, in her eyes.
He dropped to one knee.
“What? Don’t!”
“I’ve waited hundreds of years for this moment. I will acknowledge it, so be quiet! I pledge my magicks, my sword, my life to you, Fallon Swift. I swear my allegiance to you, to The One.”
“Okay, but get up. It makes me feel weird.”
“Some things don’t change.” He got to his feet.
“You don’t have to pledge what I already know.” She glanced back at the cupboard, the softened light.
“The well, it’s amazing. The light, it’s really bright, but at the same time it’s soft—like water. I guess that’s why it’s the Well of Light. And the fire—I could see the sword and shield in the flames, shining gold in them. But silver when I took them out. And they felt like mine.”
“Because they are.”
“It’s just … Have you ever been there? In the Well of Light.”
“Once, long ago, to place the sword and shield for you.”
“You put them there,” she whispered.
“I kept this scabbard for you.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Will you name your sword? It’s a tradition,” he said, “and one that adds power.”
“Solas. Light.”
“A good name. Will you let me mark it on the blade?”
She held it out to him and, touched by her faith, he laid a finger on the blade, engraved it with its name.
“Will you sit?”
“I feel like I could run ten miles.” She paced around the room, turning the sword so the blade caught the sun. “And then another ten.”
“Sit. Please.”
She sat, seemed to vibrate.
“There is no more I can teach you.”
She stopped admiring the sword to gape at him. “What?”
“You know more than I now. The knowledge is in you, and the power far beyond my own.”
“But … What do we do now?”
“The last part of your time here I’ll help you focus and hone what you have. We’ll sort out all you’ve been given today.”
“From the book, from the well.”
“Yes. But you’ve opened the book, you’ve taken the sword and shield. I can’t make you stay. I’m asking you to trust that I know you need the time we have left.”
It struck her like an arrow from a bow. “You’re saying I could go home now?”
“Yes. You’ve completed the quests, accepted your duties. You have the knowledge. You have skill.”
“But you’re saying, too, we still have work to do.”
“Yes.”
She rose again, wandered. “I want to go home. Sometimes I miss my family so much I can hardly breathe. I’ll conjure up the smell of my mom’s hair, or the way my dad’s hand feels when he takes mine, my brothers’ voices. Just to get through until I can breathe again. I want to go home so bad.”
“It is your choice now.”
“I want to go home,” she repeated. “But I know these two years—almost two now—weren’t just about training me and teaching me. That’s a big part of it, but the other part—the side part of it—was to get me used to being away from them, from home.”
He sat back. “This isn’t knowledge gained from the book, but from good logic.”
“You’re big on logic. I’m not going to be able to stay on the farm, stay with them. I don’t know where I’ll have to go, how far, how long. But I’m going to be away from home, and them. These two years will make it easier. I’ll miss them, but I won’t miss them so I can’t breathe. And the same for them, right? It’ll be easier for them.”
She sat again. “I know I’m not finished here. Not finished, and I need you to help me finish. So I’ll stay, and we’ll work for the rest of the time. But when I go home, I need some time to be home. To be with them. And there are things I need to do there, to start there. Before I have to leave home and them again, I need time with them.”
“It’s for you to say now, not for me.”
“Then that’s what I say. And there are things that need to be done, to protect them, when I have to leave again. When I have that time, and do what needs to be done, it’ll be easier to leave again.”
“Very well. For now, take Faol Ban and Taibhse on a hunt, or ride Laoch. Take your afternoon.”
“I haven’t done the potions.”
“You’ve done other things.”
“I’ll do the potions.” She rose, grinned. “It won’t take me long.”
“Arrogance.”
“Confidence,” she corrected, and got to work.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN