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“I pointed him in the right direction, but before we got here he turned on me. It seemed that he had no intention of apprehending a suspected murderer and bringing her back for a trial. He was cleaning up loose ends, and one of those loose ends was me. He must have figured we were close enough for him to be able to find you without magic.”
“That’s how you got hurt.”
He nodded. “He attacked me. I had no idea how to fight, so I mostly tried to dodge him.” He rubbed absently at the spot on his face that had been bruised. “That came from losing my footing and bumping into my saddle. I could feel myself getting weaker once I was hurt, and so I tried using magic out of desperation. I did a memory spell to make him forget where he was and what he was doing and make him want to turn around and go home. But, as usual, it went wrong and hit me, too, wiping out not only the memory of why I was there, but everything else. I guess I got turned around and headed here instead of heading home.”
Elwyn wondered if that had been the village luring him. If he didn’t have a real home of his own, the village might have been the next best thing. “I wonder how much of an effect it had on him,” she mused aloud. “Did he forget who he was or did he merely forget coming after me and how to find me?”
“I don’t know. I also don’t know how long the spell on him will last or if it can be broken. It’s possible that when it broke on me, it broke for him, as well, since it was the same spell.”
“So I have to be prepared for him to come here for me.”
“I’m so sorry,” he said, his face twisted with pain. “I wish I could say that I jumped to your defense when I learned his plan, and that’s how I was wounded, but I was trying to save myself. I didn’t know whether or not you were guilty, though I did start to wonder when he attacked me rather than let me be present when he found you.”
“How soon could he get here?”
“It took about two days to get here. We got a late start, stopped for the night, then were in the woods around sunset.”
“So if the spell on him broke at the same time as it broke for you, he could be here sometime tomorrow. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I should have, I know, though I didn’t think about the spell having broken on the baron until now. I’m sorry.” He looked at her with eyes so full of remorse that she knew he was being honest.
“I’d better leave in the morning,” she said
“I’ll go with you.” She started to protest, but he hurried to add, “He’s not going to be happy with me, either. If you don’t want me traveling with you, I’ll understand, but we don’t have to do this alone.”
She studied him for a long time. He was different from the man she’d come to know—sadder, more tired. The life had left his eyes. But when he’d forgotten everything, he had become the person he had the potential to be, and she’d liked that person. “We can leave together,” she said. “I don’t know how long we’ll stay together. It depends on where we want to go. I don’t have a destination in mind. I don’t know if there’s any way I can get beyond his reach, and if I use any of my gifts or knowledge, that only makes me easier to find.”
“At least you know something you can do. I can’t do the one thing I’ve been trained to do. I can’t work as a wizard without passing that final exam, and even approaching another wizard to take me on as an apprentice would make it possible for my master to find me and hand me over to the baron.”
“You think he would?”
He gave a bitter laugh. “I know he would. He’d want me dragged back to him, since I’m still technically his apprentice.”
“Have you ever considered that your master didn’t want you to pass the final examinations because he’d lose his servant?”
“Oh, I definitely failed.”
“Let me guess, he constantly berated you and told you nothing you did was any good. You believed you were a failure because he told you so, constantly. And so, you lost all confidence and failed.”
“More or less. But believe me, some of my failures were pretty spectacular. Fire was often involved. I haven’t even been allowed to use magic at all for the past two years.”
“How can you learn to do magic if you’re not allowed to use it? But when you instinctively used magic to save the Chicken Lady, it worked—when you didn’t expect it not to.”
“Unfortunately, I’ll never be assigned a new master by the guild, so I can’t know.”
“There’s got to be a way for you to learn and train, and then you could present yourself for the exams.” She couldn’t help but smile. “You could always work as a cook.”
“I’d have to find someone desperate enough not to care about references. First, though, we’ve got to survive the current situation.” He yawned and said, “If we’re going to get an early start, we should probably get some rest.” He glanced at her in a way that reminded her of a scolded puppy. “Are you still mad at me?”
“I don’t know how I feel. For most of the time I’ve known you, you had no idea. You weren’t lying to me or hiding anything from me. But I am mad that you didn’t tell me once you remembered. I could have been well away from here by now.”
“Honestly, I didn’t want to lose you, and I knew that’s what would happen as soon as I told you.” He stood up and faced her squarely. She could see the effort that cost him. “I love you, Wyn. I think I have ever since the moment I opened my eyes and saw you there, and it’s only grown since then. Being with you has been the first time in my life I’ve felt like I had a purpose, when I could believe in myself. I wish I hadn’t got my memory back. I liked who I was without it much better.”
“So did I,” Elwyn admitted. “But you have the potential to be that person. That’s who you are at heart. You’ll have to find that person within yourself again. And I will have to get to know who you are, all of who you really are, to know how I feel about you.”
“That’s fair,” he acknowledged. “But I want you to know that my feelings about you didn’t change when I got my memories back. If anything, I think I appreciate you even more. I’ve never had anyone like you in my life before. I would have been different if I had.”
“We’re all the sum of our experiences, including the people who have been in our lives. Now, good night. I’m leaving at first light.”
