Darkwell - Douglas Niles [119]
"We'd better move back away from the fissure to camp," announced the king as the prepared to stop. "It could grow during the night."
"Very well." Brigit, now in the lead, agreed and turned toward the south. After another ten minutes, they judged themselves safely removed from the pit.
Robyn leaned against a tree and slowly sank to the ground. Her pale face seemed frozen in a look of bleak determination, but the redness in her eyes belied her apparent stoicism. Tristan pulled his tattered cape from his shoulders and spread it on the snow beside the tree. "Sit here. It'll help keep you dry," he said.
The other companions set about making camp in the snowy forest as Robyn moved to sit beside him. When she looked at him, he had never before seen such despair in her eyes.
"What's the use? I don't think we'll ever get there. We might as well turn around and go home!"
"You don't mean that. You can't! We've faced greater obstacles than this before, and we've always overcome them!"
"But I've always had the goddess beside me!" Robyn put her hands over her face so that Tristan could not see her weeping. "She's gone now… I know it! This blackness has killed more than the trees and the animals. It's killed the Earthmother herself!"
"Robyn, I know I've never fully understood your faith, but I have always trusted in it. Your faith is still the fiber that holds us all together, that compels us to go on! You may be right… perhaps the goddess is gone. But we aren't gone! I have seen you, even in the absence of the Earthmother, call a stream from the bare rocks and light a fire with no fuel that kept us all alive through a killing night!"
Tristan reached an arm out to Robyn, but she turned harshly away. The rejection struck through all the layers of his soul, knifing into his heart. In this, her moment of greatest despair, he was powerless to comfort her. He himself had destroyed the bond of trust that had once drawn them together.
He swore a silent, agonized oath. If only he could take back that blurry night in the castle, erase it from his memory, from hers! Tristan would do anything, he vowed, could he but right that wrong. But all this time, Robyn's back, trembling from cold or tears, mocked his good intent.
He recalled his own self-pity and how she had directed his thoughts away from his troubles to their combined hopes. He spoke softly to her, trying to do the same for her.
"You've said that the fourth scroll is the key to freeing the druids from their petrified forms. Well, there's no reason that scroll shouldn't work as well as the others. All we have to do is reach the grove, and I know we will do that!
"I don't know if you can believe me anymore, but I love you more than ever. If that love, whether you return it or not, can help you reach the end of this quest, please accept it. I ask nothing in return." Hesitantly Robyn looked into his eyes and smiled. At least, he thought it was a smile. Actually, it was more a faint twisting of her lips below her tear-stained cheeks and her reddened eyes, but he decided that it counted.
"Let's make camp," she said, very softly.
"Tomorrow we'll cross the fissure," he promised, "and that day, or the next – but soon – we will triumph!" He didn't explain how, and he was relieved that she didn't ask, for of course he didn't know the answer. Nevertheless, he believed in the truth of his words.
* * * * *
The wind from the north blew fair, though the gray clouds threatened a winter gale. Even had a storm roared through the bay in full force, Grunnarch the Red would still have put to sea, so compelling was the combination of his own promise, the prophecy, and the miracle of this floating castle that had sailed to the wharf of his town.
That town lay far behind him now, and once again his horizon was defined by the rolling gray swells of the Sea of Moonshae. This time he did not sail alone, however. The bright sails of his countrymen blazed across the gray water,