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“That doesn’t make any sense!”
“It’s magic!” He flung both arms around in exasperation. “It doesn’t have to make sense! If you won’t come I’ll go alone, I’ll leave right now—”
“Oliver,” his mother implored. “Stop. Stop. We loved him too. Not like you do, but he was our family too. And so are you. Don’t ride North and hunt down dragons. He wouldn’t want you to.”
“I’m not hunting for dragons,” Oliver said, aware that he looked exactly like someone who’d been jolted out of bed by a dream, rumpled and pale and burning with need, hair a pile of shaggy gold. “I’m not going to die. I know what I’m doing. I’m going to save him.”
They exchanged distressed glances.
Eventually, after more arguing, he won.
He did reluctantly agree to ride out in the morning instead of on the spot, in daylight instead of pitch-black. Cedric and a bemused Fadi and a contingent of twenty Home Guard rode with him, armed to take out anything from a fairy squirrel to a whole litter of dragons. He could tell they didn’t believe him; they were humoring his grief.
He did not care. He knew he was right.
He hadn’t been able to sleep again. He’d tried. He’d wanted to hear Tir again.
He believed that he could hear that voice now in the snowdrop chill of early morning: the faintest of whispers, a water-stain across parchment, a feather-touch of Oliver?
Tir sounded lost. Reaching out in the dark, simply hoping, not able to hear Oliver shouting back.
I’m coming for you! he yelled back as loudly as he could. Hold on, wait for me, please!
His new senses flared up inconveniently around midday. The world spun, a clamoring cacophony of saddle-leather and winter bark and crushed grass and dried jerky in someone’s saddlebag and a bizarre metallic bittersweet tang like crushed violets and bronze, and he slid off Carrot’s back and stumbled a few steps and managed not to throw up into the bushes, though it was close.
Magic. Too much. But even as he thought it, the world shifted, shook itself out, resettled: a large clumsy dog circling and flopping back down.
The air was bright. But it was better; he was doing better. He had been, these last weeks.
He felt Cedric’s hand on his back. He heard murmurs behind him: how bad, do we stop, go back, go on, is he all right?
“We’re going on,” his brother snapped. “He asked us to.”
Oliver nodded. Tried to say thank you.
“Shut up,” Cedric told him. “I’m not sure you should be here. I see how you look when you’re trying to get used to feeling magic. And, frankly, I’m glad it’s not me. Can you ride?” But the hand that gave him a water-flask was supportive.
They could ride. They could ride as fast as Ollie could handle, which was not as fast as he wanted to be going.
He tried to find Tir in his dreams, when they were forced to make camp overnight. He thought he had, or nearly; he thought that he felt Tir nearby, heard Tir’s voice, but the voice was weaker. Fading.
Tir had talked about being tired. Feeling cold.
Faster. Harder. They had to be in time. Oliver had to be in time, this time.
With the magic of the Seeing Pool dissipated, the terrain behaved itself: no acid sand, no invisible barriers. With Oliver’s extra senses, following that bittersweet taste-scent of violets and bronze, they knew which direction to turn.
He thought of Tir pointing out a ridge on a map; he thought of Tir’s hands tugging off his boots next to acid sand.
He felt tears burn, though now the burn came from mingled loss and hope.
They maneuvered around a hill and discovered a familiar narrow rill of canyon, that instantly recognizable crack running into mountain stone. Oliver swung himself off his horse and sprinted that way. His footfalls rang from high winding walls.
He saw the scorch-marks first, black wings over stone like a monument.
He saw the body lying below that. Where a small heap of ash’d been.
He landed on both knees at Tir’s side.
