Vidar
Isail away with a troubled mind. It’s not that she didn’t give me the answer I sought – oh she did. But she broke the rules. She let me leave with two visions.
The first came easily, simply, and I thought we were done but then she tugged my mental hand and wrestled me down a different path, and what she showed me there has left me wrung and troubled and worn.
I have been tricked. And I am used to doing the tricking. I feel as though my own hand has turned on me and tried to gut me. My mouth is very dry and my hands sweating as I sail away – but I do have my answer. I need never come back again – if I don’t want to.
Two visions. Two paths.
Down one path she showed me the Court of Sparrows – the next targets of the Court of Madness. I can get there before they attack with a force large enough to stop them. I even saw easily what vulnerable part of the Sparrow’s defenses they will strike and overcome. All I need to do is fly back to Precatore and confess all to him and he’ll lead the glorious armies of Iceheim there in time to wipe the scourge of the Court of Madness from the face of the earth. My king would be happy. My kin would be happy. The Court of Sparrows would be free, and the Court of Madness stymied. And Precatore’s threat would evaporate as if it never was. Is that not enough?
It’s what I came for. It should be enough.
And yet, I find myself chewing my lip and tapping my fingers restlessly on the wooden tiller of my small sailing boat. The waves strike the hull in a broken pattern and the wind whips them up to spray across me as if to remind me that things are never so easy, never so simple.
The other path intrigues me – and yet it feels like a trap.
It certainly ends with me dead, which should be enough reason not to try it … and yet.
I worry my lip so hard it is bleeding by the time I reach the shore and stash my sailboat in the little cove where it stays, waiting for me.
If I am to take this other path, I must leave immediately, too. I can’t save the Court of Sparrows and do this at the same time. It’s one or the other. Either I risk everything on a desperate gamble that has as many chances to fail as a boat with seven holes in the hull and if I do that, I will enrage Rowan of Iceheim and Precatore. Or, I take the familiar path, play the sinister hand, and warn my court in time for them to ride in heroic, sated for another day, until they turn their threats on me once again.
I have but minutes to choose or I’ll be too late for either one.
My wings spring open, my body bracing to fly – to move – tochoose.
And with a muttered oath, I make my choice and I take to the skies.
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