Chapter 22 | Part 1 | The Pressure

Dulint hadn’t slept properly in six days.

Since finding the body, he saw the carved message whenever he closed his eyes: GIVE US THE BEACON. He kept remembering what the seer had told him before they left.

You will fail.

He carried the Beacon and the fragment from the ice cave in his pack. He still did not understand what their joining had done. Nor could he stop wondering which decision would prove the seer right.

They were moving east through dense forest, following Eldric’s compromise route that sacrificed the Beacon’s desired heading for cover and distance from the hunters. The soldier had been right about the trees. Under canopy, they were harder to track, harder to spot, harder to reach. But harder wasn’t impossible, and Dulint could feel the pursuit like a hand resting on the back of his neck.

“Slower,” he said as they hit a fork in the game trail.

Eldric turned. “What?”

“The left fork. It goes around the ridge. More cover.”

“It adds half a day.”

“It adds cover.”

Eldric’s jaw tightened. This had been happening more frequently over the past week. Dulint choosing the slower path. The cautious option. The route that traded speed for safety. Each time, the argument was sound. Each time, Eldric conceded. But the concessions were getting thinner.

“The right fork is faster and takes us to higher ground,” Eldric said. “Higher ground means better sight lines. Better sight lines mean we see the hunters before they see us.”

“Higher ground also means silhouettes. We’d be visible from every approach.”

“We’d be visible and armed. That’s better than hidden and cornered.”

They stood at the fork and the others watched. Maris, pale and drawn, leaning on her staff like it was the only thing holding her up. Balin kept his hand on his sword, looking between his uncle and the soldier. Xandor said nothing and saw everything.

“Left,” Dulint said.

His voice stayed firm. He wished he felt as certain as he sounded.

Eldric took the left fork. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The set of his shoulders said enough.

They walked without speaking. Moss hung from the branches, and the trees grew so close that Dulint could rarely see more than a few paces into the forest.

Dulint clutched the pack straps and tried to think clearly.

The seer had said he would fail. Not might fail. Would. The certainty of it had been the worst part, worse than any specific prediction. Not “you will die” or “you will lose the artifact.” Just: you will fail. The most comprehensive condemnation available. No parameters. No conditions. No loophole.

He hadn’t told anyone.

How could he? Tell Balin that his uncle was destined to ruin them? Tell Eldric that every decision was already compromised? Tell Maris, who was literally being torn apart by visions, that the person responsible for keeping them alive had been told he couldn’t?

He had almost told Balin twice. Each time, he had found a reason to wait.

The compromise had been his idea. East, then north, then west. An arc that would lose the hunters and reconnect with the Beacon’s heading. It was sound strategy. It was also delay. Every day spent arcing was a day not spent following the Beacon’s signal, and the Beacon didn’t understand delay. It pulsed and pointed and demanded with the patience of something that would outlast everyone carrying it.

At dusk, they made camp in a hollow where two fallen trees had created a natural shelter. Eldric set watches. Xandor prepared a meal from their shrinking supplies. Balin gathered firewood, moving through the forest with the new quiet competence he’d developed since the ambush.

Dulint sat with his back to a tree and his hand on the pack and watched the Beacon’s light leak through the canvas, pulsing without pause.

You will fail.

When? How? Fail to deliver the artifact? Fail to keep them alive? Fail to be the leader they needed?

The seer had given him nothing he could prepare for. He resented her for that, and himself for still trying.

“Uncle.” Balin crouched beside him, offering a cup of water. “You need to drink.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine. You haven’t been fine since Stonehold, and whatever you’re not telling us, it’s eating you from the inside.” His nephew’s voice was gentle. Not accusing. Not yet. “We can see it. All of us.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

Dulint drank rather than meet his nephew’s eyes.

End of Chapter 22.1 —> 22.2: The Fracture: The Challenge