Chapter 8 | Part 2

They stood beside the road with the hot cube between them, dust sticking to Dulint’s damp palms.

The light rose and faded without a steady rhythm.

Balin edged closer. “What does it feel like?”

“It doesn’t feel like power,” Dulint said.

“What, then?”

Dulint tightened his grip.

He had held enchanted tools before. A runestone during the war had felt like standing too close to a furnace: heat, pressure, too much of something.

The cube felt like less.

“Absence,” he said.

Balin frowned.

Dulint searched for something that would make sense.

“In a mine, sometimes you know there’s a cavity behind the face before you break through. Air changes. Sound changes. The stone around it carries the shape of what’s missing.”

Balin’s expression sharpened.

“This feels like that,” Dulint said. “A hollow you can hold.”

“That’s worse than magic.”

“Much.”

He turned the cube. The brighter face kept pointing north-east.

“You carry a weight that pulls,” Dulint said, hearing the witch’s voice. “That was what she called it.”

“Pulls what?” Balin asked.

“Don’t know.”

A flicker moved on the hillside behind them.

Dulint shaded his eyes.

A figure came over the rise. Three others followed before Dulint could make out the first one’s face.

They were too far away for faces, but not for pace. All four moved with purpose along the same road.

Balin looked from the figures to the cube.

“Travelers?”

“Maybe.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’m old. Conviction costs extra.”

Dulint put the cube back into the pack.

The distant figures did not slow.

It calls.

He did not know whether the thought belonged to the witch’s warning or to him.

“We move,” Dulint said.

“Fast?”

“As fast as my knee permits without falling off.”

Balin looked once more at the figures.

“That’s not very fast.”

“Then complain while walking.”

They started toward Riverhold.

End of Chapter 8.2 —> 8.3: The Road from Zuraldi: The Nephew”s Doubt