One More Day

One More Day

Dasher had brought them from Kael’Voryn in just less than twelve days. Drue had promised less than a week avoiding watched routes had nearly doubled it. It was longer than a usual run but their “usual” was not on their flight plan. Drue was counting on regular riders being ahead of him with news and they would have made preparations. In Amaryn, it was the end of the second harvest and several of Alster's friends would be going to the city to celebrate; he had hopes of recruiting them in a renewed search for his brother; this would be the perfect time for them to join him.

A rider was waiting in the western forest outside the great city and had been going to the Western Entry crossroads every day at the same time as she knew Drue would arrive within days. The network was working. Messages and orders, for and from Kefar made their way across the Crestrealms all on time but now with a few small additions. One such message was in the pocket of the rider waiting for them. The rider kept her hands beneath her long brown felt cloak. She and Drue had flown together carrying messages in the Ironroot Wing for a year and knew one another so well that he noticed her furtive stance.

“How was your journey?” She made the customary greeting to Drue and gave him a Emberwild flyer's embrace.

“The wind was at our backs and the clouds concealed our movement. The journey was good.” Drue rattled off as he returned the hug with a locked hand between them.

The rider turned to Alster. “Your family went back to the house less than .1 time ago, but they were waiting for you yesterday and planned on coming tomorrow,” she told Alster. “A group of Virielian Guardians have questioned the neighbours. You cannot go there. Or to the Medic Gardens they were there the day before and they rotate between those places and the city. ”

“Why are Virielians now supporting this warrant search?” Alster asked, frustrated about the decreased potential for seeing his family.

“Why does anyone do anything? Kefar has deep pockets and a firm grasp.”

“Then can you bring them to me?”

“I am arranging it.”

Drue loosened Dasher’s saddle strap. “You make hospitality sound exhausting. What is in your pocket?”

She held out a folded notice that she had been holding under her cloak. The older charges remained: aiding a defector, theft of government property in Thaloria but there were new accusations that had been printed beneath them.

He saw his name first. Then Hadrin’s. Then the word between them.

For a moment, he could hear only Dasher working his beak against a buckle.

“He was alive when we left.”

“I know.”

“Alster treated him.”

“Drue. I know.”

Alster took the notice. The rider watched him read it.

“Hadrin got loose after you fled. He went to the men from Kefar. Someone heard them accusing him of warning you. They took him away. When his body appeared, they said you had killed him.”

“Someone saw them?” Drue asked.

“Saw them take him. Heard the accusations. Nobody who can prove what happened afterwards.”

The notice supplied everything its authors needed: the wounded arm, the dislocated shoulder, the bruises. Witnesses who had seen Drue with Hadrin flying around the outer city and mountains of Kael’Voryn with his victim beneath his griffon. A promise of a difficult hundred gold pieces, now described as a dispute over payment.

“The fork was mine,” Alster said.

“That will be useful at my trial.”

Neither of them smiled.

Drue took the paper back. He remembered Hadrin’s hair brushing snow. His scream. His own voice discussing Dasher’s meals as though another man’s terror were something clever he had made.

He had left Hadrin alive. He had also left Kefar a story people could believe.

“Who has received this?”

The rider hesitated.

“How many posts?” he asked.

“They would not have reached Solaryn Reliquary yet but from Emberwild to Thalorian Tide, and from Ironroot Bastion to the Sylvan Watch and everything between. If there is one thing you can say about the Emberwild Riders is that we are effective.”

“Well just once you would think we could have run into a storm or ... something.” He imagined arriving at a familiar stable and watching someone reach for a weapon. No more contracts. No more messages entrusted to his satchel. Years of being the man who got through, reduced to a name people warned young riders about.

Even if they cleared him, who would remember all his loyal years of service before they scoffed at his crimes.

“Dasher stays out here in a stable up the road,” the rider said. “Its a place known to some of the riders that deliver “extra” goods that haven’t been ordered. And there is an inn cellar you can use tonight.”

“We are using the black riders network? Now I really will look guilty! Where do we go after tonight?”

“We have friends here but now that your charge is elevated we have more local issues to deal with. We will see who answers.”

Drue folded the notice until the words disappeared.

“Ask them separately. Nobody carries a list of names. If they refuse, leave them alone.”

“My mother wanted me to be a healer!” He looked at Alster.

“Well that isn’t working out very well either now is it?” Alster retorted.

• • •

The next morning inside the cellar of the inn near the Western Entry Crossroads Alster’s mother brought bread wrapped in a cloth and a cloak that belonged to Alfer.

She put them on a barrel, embraced him and held the back of his head with both hands. His father stood close until his mother released him and then kissed him on both cheeks before embracing him then standing back to wipe the tears on his cheeks. His older siblings waited beside the stairs, aware they needed to keep watch but they longed to be part of the reunion so soon gave up their duties and joined them.

“Where are the little ones?” Alster asked.

“At home,” his eldest sister Alma said. “Where some of us have to stay now, because of you.” She poked him playfully.

Their mother grabbed him again and squeezed him before releasing him slowly.

“Have you eaten? You look so thin.”

“What have you heard?”

“Alster.” She hushed him so that they could talk more freely.

“About Alfer.” He said impatiently with his mothers hand on the small of his back as she guided him away from the stairs.

Above them, a chair scraped a shriek across the inn’s wooden floor. Everyone looked up.

His father spoke quietly. “There is nothing new, no news at all.”

“Then I need the names of everyone you asked. Every road you searched.”

“We gave many names to the Virielian guardians and we even passed a list to Felib in hope that he might recruit searchers, but it seems your exploits in Emberwild dominion have put an end to help from Virielian Bloomland. They are no longer on our side.”

“Then we can do this without them. We will begin tomorrow.”

His sister closed her eyes.

“What?” he asked.

“You have just arrived.”

“That is why I can begin tomorrow.”

“You came home last time, ate supper, and left it to us to find out what happened to him.”

“He told us to leave, he was helping us escape."

“He told you to hurry. He did not tell Mother how to get through the next morning.”

“We searched,” his father said. “We paid people. We went ourselves. Your mother walked until I had to carry her back to the cart.”

Alster looked at her feet beneath the hem of her dress.

“Then I will go further.”

“With what?” his brother asked. “There is no money left for men who remember something only after they have been paid.”

“I am not asking for money.”

“You are asking us to begin again.”

Drue shifted beside the wooden column that reminded them all they were in a cellar. “Perhaps we could look through the accounts before deciding....”

“We have decided,” their mother said.

Her voice was so unlike the one Drue remembered from supper that he stopped.

“I want to mourn my son.”

Alster stared at her. “You do not know he is dead.”

“No?”

“Then how can you mourn uncertainty?”

She pulled at a loose thread on the bread cloth.

“Every knock. Every person who stops outside. I cannot keep making him alive and losing him again before I reach the door.”

“He might be waiting for us.”

“And your brothers are waiting at home,” his father said. “Your sisters. Your mother. You are here, and already we cannot keep you.”

“I cannot abandon him.”

His mother flinched.

Drue wanted to retrieve the word, put something gentler in its place. Alster’s father moved quickly, laying a hand on his son’s arm.

“I cannot pay for the search with another son.”

Alster looked down at the hand until his father removed it.

When they left, his mother pushed the bread into his arms.

“Be angry,” she said. “Eat anyway, you are so thin.”

• • •

They spent five days following the northern diversion from Alfer’s message.

Drue found riders willing to carry questions without entering them in the official traffic. In return, he asked for warnings of arrests, changed loyalties, and routes that had become unsafe. One refused to help but said he would not reveal his location. Another sent back food with no message.

He thought long about both answers until after he should have been asleep.

The search yielded a roadside inn where a boy had supposedly left with six Guardians, and another where someone insisted there had been five. A trader remembered the white-and-red coat. A woman remembered a Virielian boy travelling with some Kefarian men, but could not be certain when.

At an abandoned camp, Alster examined an old strip of cloth caught beneath a stone.

“Medicinal cloth,” he said.

“His?”

“He was selling it.”

“That does not make it his.”

Alster folded it carefully anyway.

The hilltop inn gave them the strongest account. Yes, there had been a map. Yes, the Guardians had been angry. No, the boy had not come back.

Beyond the hill they found a scrap of red cloth caught in roadside shrubs. Farther down the slope lay a second piece, and a boot mark hardened in sheltered earth.

Alster crouched beside it.

“He got off the road.”

Drue looked at the steep bank. Someone could have fallen there. Been thrown.

“Perhaps.”

“He could have found shelter.”

They searched until the light failed.

The following morning, Alster sat with the scrap across his knee.

“If we go back,” he said, “they will think I agree.”

Drue watched three birds turn above a neglected trail north of the road. He had seen them there the previous evening. They settled beyond the rise, disappeared, then lifted again.

“Wait here.”

Alster followed him.

There was very little left that the weather had not changed.

The white of the merchant’s coat had darkened into the earth beneath it. One boot remained. Beside the open bag lay the warped cover of a ledger, its pages swollen and stuck together.

Alster reached it before Drue could stop him.

He touched the ledger. Opened what remained of the cover.

Near the binding, sheltered writing survived: a column of figures, corrected twice. Alfer’s hand.

“He always pressed too hard,” Alster said.

Drue knelt beside him.

“He said ink cost money. He thought pressing harder made less of it do more.”

Alster put the ledger down and reached towards his brother.

“Alster.”

“I need my bag.”

There was no uncertainty left. Drue wished there were. He wished he could have never found such a terrible road.

“Give me my bag.”

Drue did.

• • •

They wrapped Alfer in a blanket and bound it for the journey.

When Drue lifted him, Alster said, “Mind his head.”

“I have him.”

“Your arm needs to be higher.”

Drue moved it.

Twice before they reached Dasher, Alster made him stop. He opened the binding, rearranged a dressing, searched for somewhere to put a salve that had helped living flesh close.

The third time, his fingers could not undo the knot.

“You have pulled it too tight.”

Drue set the burden down.

“Let me.”

“No. I can do this.”

Alster tugged until his nails split against the cord.

“Felib knows things they never taught us in Kefar. I have heard of potions that extend life. There might be one that....”

His hands stopped.

Then started again.

Drue remembered those same hands setting Hadrin’s shoulder when Alster had intervened even when it was against evil. “Because I am still one.”

“We will take him to Felib.” Alster nodded. He had decided that the only hope lay with him.

Drue was unsure of how to help Alster. He could see his pain but did not want him to continue down the road or say out loud what he was thinking. For now all he could do was carry the body of a brave young Virielian for it was as much as he could bear.

• • •

Alster asked that they not stop on the return. He acted as though the moment were urgent. When they arrived outside Amaryn they concealed Dasher and waited for nightfall. Drue carried Alfer through the last part of the journey after dark. They found Felib in his apartment inside the Medic Gardens and beckoned him down. His pruning knife was still tucked behind one ear as he had been doing so late-night pruning.

He removed it when he saw what Drue carried, as though even that small blade had become inappropriate.

“Put him here.”

Alster began speaking before the blanket touched the table.

“We found him beyond the northern road. There was cloth at the camp, and I think he moved after they left him. I cleaned what I could, but my supplies..completely inadequate”

Felib touched his wrist. “Let me see him.” He examined Alfer without haste. Alster watched every movement.

At last, Felib covered him again.

“I am so sorry Alster, we should make arrangements for his interment.”

“You have not tried anything.”

Felib was incredulous and spoke without restraint. “There is no treatment that will bring back the deceased." Then he looked at the grieving Alster and saw that he was in no state to listen.

“A crystal?”

He spoke more softly as he realised Alster was in a delirium of sorts. “Alster, my son. A crystal can restore energy. It cannot restore the person whose pattern has been lost.”

“Then healing herbs or energy from water?.”

“Works with life already present. We accelerate it. Guide it. Help it repair what it can.”

“You taught me never to decide a patient was beyond help because the work was difficult.”

Felib’s hand tightened on his wrist. “This is not difficult work, Alster. He is dead.”

The word hung between them. Drue looked towards the door, ashamed of wanting somewhere else to look.

“We have seen Veylborn,” Alster said. “Things we could not explain.”

“An appearance is not proof that a dead person can be returned to life.”

“You.. you do not know everything.”

“No.”

“Then do not tell me there is nothing.”

Felib took the accusation without lowering his eyes.

“No healer, crystal or plant can bring your brother back.”

Alster pulled away. “Then why are you standing there?”

The old man drew up a chair.

“Because you are here.”

• • •

Later, while Alster washed his hands, Drue emptied the remaining boot.

Coins fell into his palm.

He closed his fingers around them before Alster turned.

“What is it?”

Drue opened his hand.

Alster stared at the money.

“He was bringing some home.”

They sat beside the covered table. Alster chose one small coin, rubbed the dirt from its edge and put it in his pocket.

“Mother should have the rest.”

“I will see to it.” Felib said quietly.

For a while no one spoke.

“I did not ask about Hadrin,” Alster said eventually.

Drue looked up. “You have other things to think about.”

“Are you frightened?”

His usual answer rose readily. Something about prison food, or whether Dasher could fit through a courtroom door.

“Yes.”

Alster waited.

“I keep wondering who has read it. Who believes it. Whether I will ever carry an honest message again without somebody checking that I have not slit the sender’s throat.”

“You carried my brother.”

Drue’s face changed before he could prevent it.

Alster looked at his hands. “I know our fates are not the same but I am grateful.”

“No,” Drue said softly. “You don’t have to thank me.” He fetched the now stale bread Alster’s mother had brought. It was hard at the edges. He broke off a piece and held it out.

“I cannot.”

“Neither can I. Half each?”

Alster accepted it.

They ate slowly, sitting shoulder to shoulder. A crumb caught in Alster’s sleeve. He brushed it away with tremendous care, and then his whole face crumpled.

“He was only fifteen.”

Drue put down the bread.

Alster leaned against him, cautiously at first, as though this too might be asking too much. Drue wrapped both arms around him and held on when the first sob hurt its way out.

“I have you,” he said.

He had said it to Alfer on the road. This time he could feel an answer: Alster’s fingers closing desperately in his coat.

• • •

By the time his family arrived, Felib had finished preparing Alfer’s remains.

The blanket was clean. His mother’s cloth lay folded beneath his head, and the cloak she had brought for Alster rested over him. There was nothing more Felib could do to make the room ready, but he straightened a chair when he heard them outside.

Alster’s mother stopped in the doorway.

His father put a hand against her back. For a moment she leaned into it. Then she crossed the room.

“Here you are,” she said.

Alster had prepared explanations. Where they had searched. How they had recognised the coat and the ledger. He could not remember any of them now.

His mother laid her palm over the blanket.

“Here you are.”

Alma stood beside her. Their father remained at the foot of the table, looking down at the shape beneath Alfer’s cloak.

“Did he have this with him?” he asked.

“No,” Alster said. “Mother brought it.”

His father nodded.

“I thought perhaps he had been warm.”

No one answered.

Felib drew another chair close to the table, and Alster’s mother sat. She smoothed the cloak with both hands.

“He would tell me I was creasing it.”

“He would tell you what it cost,” Alma said.

Their mother gave a small, broken laugh.

“He would tell me what he wanted me to think it cost.”

Alster looked at his sister. She was crying without trying to hide it.

Drue placed the recovered coins on the table.

“These were in his boot.”

Their father touched one with the tip of a finger.

“He always said a purse invited questions.”

“He was bringing some home,” Alster said.

His mother covered the coins with her hand.

“He did not have to bring us anything.”

For a while they stayed around him, speaking when they could. Alma recalled an argument over borrowed money. Their father began a story, stopped halfway through it and could not begin again. Their mother listened with her hand resting on the blanket.

At last Felib spoke.

“We should discuss where you would like him laid to rest.”

“The tomb,” Alster said.

Drue looked at him.

“What tomb?” his father asked.

“Alster,” Drue said quietly.

“Beneath the etheria tree.”

Felib went still.

His mother turned towards him. “There is a tomb beneath the Gardens?”

Alster nodded.

“We found it when we were here before. There is a chamber beneath the roots. A sarcophagus, and a statue of the Angel of Amaryn.”

Drue stepped closer.

“We promised.”

“They are his family.” Felib allowed his defense to slip out.

“That was not only your promise to break.”

Alster looked at him, then back at his parents.

“We believe it is Syterra’s tomb.”

The room fell silent.

Alma looked towards Felib.

“Is that true?”

The old man took time before answering.

“We found a place of considerable age. The figure resembles the Angel of Amaryn, and what Alster’s companions know of Syterra. We cannot be certain who lies there.”

“But you think it could be her?”

“Yes,” Felib said. “It could.”

Alster’s mother looked down at her youngest son’s cloak.

“And you want to put Alfer there?”

“Beside the sarcophagus. We would not disturb it.”

Drue watched Alster’s face. He had heard him asking about crystals only hours before.

“Your family needs to understand what you are proposing.”

“I want him somewhere safe.”

It was true. Drue could hear how carefully Alster had chosen it.

His father drew a breath.

“A place that has been hidden all this time. Would we be allowed to see him?”

Alster hesitated.

Felib answered before he could.

“You would come to the etheria tree that grows above the tomb anytime the Medic Gardens are open. But you could tell no one where he lies. Not even those you trust to mean well.”

Alma wiped her cheeks.

“Alster has just told us.”

“Yes,” Felib said. “He has.”

Alster lowered his eyes.

His mother rose slowly.

“May we see it before we decide?”

Drue caught Alster beside the doorway while Felib gathered what they needed.

“Tell them.”

Alster looked towards the table.

“They have only just seen him.”

“Then do not ask them to agree to something you have not explained.”

“I am asking them where he should rest.”

“And when they leave?”

Alster did not answer.

Drue lowered his voice further.

“They think you are saying goodbye.”

“I am letting them say it.”

For a moment Drue could only look at him.

Then Alster’s father came to help lift his son, and the conversation ended.

They descended slowly.

Felib went first, warning them where roots had broken the steps. Drue and Alster’s father carried Alfer between them. Twice they had to stop and turn him carefully through the narrowing passage.

Alster followed close enough that his fingers brushed the blanket.

At the bottom, his mother stepped into the chamber and stood quite still.

Green light moved through the fine roots along the walls. Above the white sarcophagus, the winged woman held her open hands towards the ceiling. Gold caught the light within the marble and crystal.

Alma reached for her mother’s hand.

“Oh,” she whispered.

They laid Alfer beside the sarcophagus. His father straightened with difficulty and looked up at the statue.

No one spoke for some time.

Then Alster’s mother knelt beside the blanket.

“I thought we would have to leave him somewhere cold.”

Alster crouched beside her.

“The roots give light all through the night.”

She nodded, watching a pale green pulse pass through them.

His father rested a hand on Alster’s shoulder.

“If Master Skan believes we may leave him here…”

Felib looked at the sarcophagus, then at the family gathered beside it.

“I will care for this place.”

Alma knelt on their mother’s other side.

“He would have something to say about this.”

“He would ask what it cost,” their father said.

This time the little laugh passed between all of them. Even Alster managed it.

Their mother bent and kissed the blanket.

“Rest now,” she whispered. “You have done enough.”

Alster bowed his head.

Drue watched his hand move towards one of the luminous roots, then stop before touching it.

When the family was ready to climb back, Alster remained kneeling.

“I would like to stay a little longer.”

His mother stroked his hair.

“Of course.”

She believed the hardest part had finally begun to pass.

Drue waited until their footsteps had faded above them. Then he sat on the lowest stair.

Alster turned towards the statue.

“You remember me.”

The green light passed through the roots.

He took the coin from his pocket and placed it upon the blanket.

“This is my brother.”

Felib stood against the wall. Drue remained near the stairs.

“He helped us. We would not have reached the other places without him.”

A regular pulse moved through the chamber, neither brighter nor slower than the last.

Alster waited until it faded.

“Please.”

Nothing answered.

Alster took a crystal from his pouch and closed both hands around it. He thought of Alfer at the supper table, talking over everyone to announce a profit too small to justify the celebration. Of his grin when someone finally laughed. Of the warmth of his shoulder pressed against Alster’s as they made room for another sibling on the bench. The crystal answered. Alster held those memories fiercely and directed its energy beneath the blanket, searching for life he could strengthen, something that would take what he was offering. Blue light spread across the folds. “There,” he whispered, although nothing had moved. He remembered another laugh, another supper, feeding every bright thing he could recall into his hands until sweat ran down his face. Drue knelt beside him but did not interrupt. At last the light thinned and vanished. The crystal lay grey against Alster’s palm. He waited, watching the blanket for the smallest rise. Then he reached towards his pouch, stopped, and slowly drew his empty hand away. “He used to laugh so hard he couldn’t finish telling you why,” he said. Drue stayed beside him while he put the spent crystal down.

• • •

Through the night, Drue listened from the lowest stair.

Alster spoke to the statue first. Asked whether a crystal would help. Whether they had put Alfer in the wrong place. Whether the paths they had felt could reach wherever he had gone.

Then he spoke to his brother.

“You should have taken their money and run.”

A long silence.

“I know. I would have told you that was dishonest.”

Drue rested his forehead on his hands.

“You could have been dishonest once.”

Alster’s voice grew rough. He drank when Drue brought him water, then seemed to forget he was there.

“Mother brought bread. She is angry with me.”

He touched the blanket.

“I told her she had abandoned you.”

The green light rose and faded.

“She walked until she could not walk any more. I did not know.”

He sat back on his heels.

“There was a doll. Do you remember? I made everyone be quiet because I was treating it. They still tell that story. Every time I come home.”

His mouth trembled.

“I could not even cure a wooden doll, and you thought I was worth six Guardians.”

Drue came off the stair.

“Alster.”

“I know. That is not why.”

“He was your brother.”

“I was his.”

Drue sat beside him.

Near morning, Alster began bargaining again. He would stay. He would give up travelling. Teach. Work wherever he was wanted. If there had to be a cost, someone needed only to tell him what it was.

The roots lit his face and let it darken.

There was no voice, no movement beneath the blanket, no light rising in the shape of a boy.

At last he lay beside Alfer, one hand resting where his brother’s shoulder should have been.

“I came back,” he whispered.

• • •

Felib brought them out after dawn.

Alster left the blanket there. He took the coin.

“I cannot put him farther away yet,” he said.

Felib closed his eyes briefly, then helped restore the covering over the passage.

That evening Alster asked Felib where he had learned about a person’s pattern.

“Some of the older writings discuss it.”

“How old?”

Felib studied him before answering.

“Earlier than our medical tradition. The Library of the Astryx Arcanum holds texts concerning bodily preservation, crystalline memory, unnatural extensions of life. Some pre-Sundering theories of consciousness.”

Alster sat forward. “Then I should read them.”

“They do not promise what you want.”

“You have read every one?”

“Do not make my ignorance into evidence.”

“Tajan got in.”

“With permission.” Drue reminded him. “You require official sponsorship, and right now your own name or mine will bring questions we cannot survive.”

“You know scholars at the Astryx Arcanum don’t you Master Felib?”

Alster looked at the older robes hanging nearby. Felib followed his gaze.

“Absolutely not.”

• • •

It took two days to wear the old man down.

Drue used them to arrange passage and leave the beginnings of a working relay. Warnings would pass through trusted hands towards Sella; safe contacts would carry word along the routes towards Ironroot to let Kaelen and Blena know of their plans. There was still no reply from any of the others.

He wanted desperately to send a defence of himself to every stable and town along the networks.

Instead he wrote which roads were watched, where messages could be left, and that Alfer had been found dead. He sat a long time before finishing that sentence.

The riders needed information they could use. His fear would have to travel with him.

On the second evening Felib laid his papers beside the old robes.

“I am lending you my name,” he said. “I know what I am doing. That does not make this wise.”

Alster reached for them. Felib kept his hand on the packet.

“You will be asking scholars to trust a lie. Every answer you receive will have that at its beginning.”

“I understand.”

“I doubt that. I want you to remember it.”

Drue watched Alster lower his hand.

“The voyage and the overland journey will take months,” Felib continued. “A beard may help. It will not give you my years. Nor does my reputation guarantee access to everything you request.”

“I will be his assistant,” Drue said.

Felib looked between them.

“Promise me you will not confuse knowledge with hope.”

Alster stared at the papers.

“I promise I will try.”

It was the first answer Felib seemed to believe.

• • •

At Contanium, they boarded a ship bound for the harbour at Lower Helion in the Mystral Archive. From there they would travel overland towards the Astryx Arcanum, far to the northeast.

Dasher made quiet boarding impossible. Drue had arranged a place for him with the ship’s master beforehand; even so, work stopped as the griffon came aboard. Every watching face made Drue think of the folded notice inside his coat.

He kept his attention on Dasher until Alster stepped onto the deck.

Felib’s old robes hung awkwardly from younger shoulders. There was hardly the beginning of a beard. In one hand Alster held the borrowed papers; the other stayed closed around the coin.

“Plant Master Skan,” Drue said quietly.

Alster did not turn.

Drue touched his elbow.

“You will have to practise.”

“Yes.”

They stood together while the last cargo came aboard.

“You should be with Dasher,” Alster said.

“The crew knows what to do.”

Alster moved closer until their shoulders touched.

Below the etheria tree, his brother lay beside a woman whose open hands had given nothing back. Ahead waited months of water and roads, borrowed authority, books that might teach him only how completely he had lost.

He turned the gold coin over in his palm.

Then he put it safely away, and stood beside his friend.

Thy Quest: What Do You Believe Happens After Death?
What do you believe happens to someone when they die? Explain your belief, or the questions you have if you are unsure, and reflect on how it shapes your understanding of Alster’s response to losing his brother.