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Oliver woke up hours or years later. He felt wet and cold and uncomfortable; he felt as if he was lying in a puddle on rocks.
He opened both eyes, agonizingly, to discover that he was in fact lying in a puddle on rocks.
The rocks arched up in voiceless agonized molten shapes, smoothed and seared by dragon’s fire. The shape of wings lingered, flash-burned onto stone above a small heap of black ash. The sky swung in dull flat iron overhead. The Seeing Pool was dead; when Ollie sat up, he discovered he’d been unconscious in it, or rather in what remained. Water had splashed out across the ground and onto rocks like blood, only a few drops pooling at the bottom of the basin.
He wasn’t on fire, so that was good, but he was stiff and sore everyplace, not a surprise, and if he felt this bad then Tirian must be worse, having pushed him out of the way and dispatched a dragon singlehandedly; so he looked around and said, “Tir?”
His voice echoed back from canyon walls and empty stone.
“Tir?”
No reply.
“Tir,” Oliver said, “this isn’t funny, tell me where you are, if you’re hurt, if you can’t come to me I’ll come find you, just say something, please.”
He said, “Tir, please.”
He got to his feet, limping and wincing, and said, “If you still have spare socks can I have them?” because Tir would always come when Oliver needed him, Tir always did, that was—
The dragon was gone, but the heap of black ash stirred, coaxed by wind.
Oliver took a step that way.
Tir’s second knife—the slim twisted sliver of enchanted metal that was no longer a knife, barely even a hairpin—glimmered dull silver under dark dust.
Ollie picked it up. Little flecks of ash clung to the metal, to his fingers, until the wind took them away.
Ollie said, “Tir…?”
After a minute he sat down, very slowly, back against the sheer rock wall.
He did not move. He held Tir’s knife in his lap. He was not seeing anything.
The sun went away and came back again.
The Seeing Pool did not refill. Oliver’s pack sat abandoned beside the rock basin. The pack held food and medicine. Healing salve. For burns. For—
It was useless.
The sun went away, and came back. Again.
He felt hands on his shoulder. On his face. Checking him for injuries. Shaking him. “Oliver?”
“He’s dead,” Oliver said.
“I know.” Cedric knelt in front of him. His younger brother’s face had grown older: etched with fear, with a hard ride North, with grief and love. “Oliver. Look at me.”
“But,” Ollie explained, “he’s dead. Tir.” It was important that someone knew this. That Cedric knew. That his brother understood: this was why he couldn’t move, couldn’t look up, couldn’t even blink, because if he moved that means he’d be moving on and leaving Tir here to—
To be dead without him—
“I know.” Cedric’s eyes were red-rimmed, and his face was drawn. Ollie registered this academically, a fact without meaning. “We saw the end of it. Mother’s old scrying mirror. She never could get the damn thing to work, and then she could, just then, like mag—well. We saw. But we’re not going to lose you too, so get up, dammit, Oliver, please.”
“I don’t think I can,” Ollie said.
“Yes you can,” Cedric said, angry and frightened, “you’re the Heir and you—we love you, Oliver, please, please.”
“He’s dead,” Oliver whispered, and started to cry, and his brother put both arms around him and held him as he wept, great wracking shudders that turned him inside out, that he couldn’t seem to stop, that he thought would never leave his bones.
