When the Consort vanished into that darkness, what did he find?

Ilgast remembered when Mother Dark was known by her birth name; when she was simply a woman: beautiful, vivacious, possessor of unimaginable strengths and unexpected frailties – a woman like any other, then. Until the day she found the Gate. Darkness was many things; most of all, it was selfish.

Dusk was fast closing, and directly ahead Ilgast Rend could see the midnight line of the grasses of Glimmer Fate, and there, crouching at its edge, stood a stone gate that marked the North Road. Down that road, in a short time, they would come to the outpost where Calat had established his headquarters this season.

The Wardens were an odd lot, a loose rabble of misfits. This was what made them so important. In a decent society, there must be a place for misfits, a place free of prejudice and torment. In a decent society, such people were not left to the alleys, the shadows beneath bridges, the gutters and the slums. They were not thrown out into the wilderness, and not throat-cut either.

Misfits had a place in the world, and must be cherished, for one day, they might be needed.

Torches flared at the gate. Guards were at their post.

Ahead, Hunn Raal twisted in his saddle and glanced back, though it was too dark to see where his eyes fixed. Facing forward again, he muttered something, to which Osserc shot a look over a shoulder. Then, turning back, he laughed.

Overhead, the stars appeared, a swirling whirlpool spanning the entire sky.

Chapter Five

FIVE

BARETH SOLITUDE WAS a vast plain crossed by ancient beach ridges of water-worn limestone cobbles; these ridges ran for leagues but they were relatively shallow, evidence, explained Tutor Sagander months ago, of an inland sea that had taken thousands of years to die. If he let his mind wander, Arathan could imagine that they were now riding through the thinnest water, the water of the past, the water of dim memory, and the seabed under the horses’ hoofs, with its ribbons of wild-blown sand and its blooms of yellow grasses, was far beneath the surface of another world.

If he let his mind wander, he could almost feel himself rising up, lifting clear of this hard, brutal saddle; he could ride his thoughts instead, as they floated out of his battered, weary body, ever upward. Thoughts alone, thoughts unfettered, could find a thousand worlds in which to wander. And none here, riding with him across the plain, would know; his body would give nothing away. There were many kinds of freedom, and the most precious ones were secret.