Lorzok glanced back. “Hear what?”
“Someone was crying out there,” Kell said.
“He didn’t hear it,” Saeldian said, “and neither did you.”
“I did.”
“You didn’t hear anything that was your business to wonder about,” Saeldian said. “Wish them peace and move on.”
That was cold. Kell understood why Saeldian was rejecting the cry. They were right to do it. But how could they have heard it and not felt that loss?
Because they had never felt loss like that.
Saeldian had never felt anything but a mild kindness or minor annoyance for anyone. Only Kell had been their friend. He hadn’t seen it then, but now he understood it—Saeldian had never feltdeeply for anyone. They didn’t hate anyone. They didn’t love anyone. It was like they couldn’t.
Why had Kell not seen that before?
“Will it help you move faster if you talk?” Saeldian asked.
“Do you want to pass me?”
“If I did, you’d go chasing after some distressed beauty or another and then I’d have to tell your father we let you get eaten by a…I don’t even know what dwells in the shadowed truewild.”
“I wasn’t going to go chasing after that sound,” Kell grumbled. “That’s the oldest trick in the book.”
“Old tricks become old because they work. They’re too far ahead again.”
Lorzok wasn’t much more than a moving shape glimpsed between swaying locks of moss. How had he gotten away from them?
“Hey!” Kell shouted. “Wait!”
“I don’t think he heard you,” said Saeldian.
“Lorzok!” Kell shouted again as Lorzok went around a bend and disappeared from sight. Not far. Not too far. But far enough. Kell ran with Saeldian on his heels till they went around the bend and Kell had to leap fast to hop onto the fallen log that forded dark, still water, clear enough to see pale stones—
Too fast. He slipped a little and had to swallow his heart as he danced his way back to balance and those weren’t stones, those were faces, upturned. Kell could see their still, closed mouths and eyelids through the gentle floating fronds of their hair.
That one looked like Ikariel.
It couldn’t be. She died at Essanderon’s Rest. He’d seen her running; he’d seen her fall. But then her eyes opened, and her mouth saidKell,her face crumpling with relief, with hope, with bone-deep terror. She reached up with one hand, and waves warped the sight of her, but her hand was so close to the surface. He could reach her, if he just—
He lurched upright. Saeldian took their hand out of the collar of his jerkin and put it on his back. “Whatever you see, it’s not real. Walk.”
“But it’s Ikariel.”
“Walk,” Saeldian repeated. “We’re way behind, and if we get too far—”
Behind them, a heavy splash of water and the smell of rotten mushrooms seized Kell’s heart.
Saeldian never faltered. “Walk.”
“The Eaters. I can smell them.”
“It’s not real,” Saeldian repeated. “Unless the Eaters smell like torched sugar.”
Kell stepped off the log. “You can’t smell that? It’s awful.”
“No. Run!” Saeldian shouted.
