“What happened?”
The sand in my teeth gritted whenever I moved my mouth. I spat. “We came through a Skillpillar.” I spat again.
“A what?”
“A Skillpillar,” I repeated. I looked back to point it out to him.
There was nothing out there but ocean. Another wave rushed in, reaching higher up the beach. Scummy white foam laced the sand as the water retreated. I came awkwardly to my feet and stared out over the incoming tide. Just water. Moving waves. Crying gulls above the waves. No Skillpillar of black stone broke that heaving green surface. There was not even a clue as to where it had deposited us out offshore.
No way back.
I had left my friends to die. Regardless of what the Fool had said, I had resolved to return immediately via the pillar. Otherwise, I would not have gone. I would not have done it if I had thought I was not going back to them. Telling myself that did not make me feel a shard less cowardly.
Nighte es! I quested desperately, flinging the call with all my strength.
No one answered.
“Fool!” The word ripped out of me, a futile scream of Wit and Skill and voice. Distant gulls seemed to echo it mockingly. My hope faded with their dwindling cries over the windswept sea.
Unmoving, I stared out over the water until an incoming wave lapped against my feet. The Prince had not moved, except to fall back onto his side on the wet sand. He lay, staring blankly and shivering. I slowly turned away from the surf and surveyed the land. Black cliffs rose up before us. The tide was coming in. My mind put the pieces together.
“Get up. We have to move before the tide traps us.”
To the south, the rocky cliffs gave way to a halfmoon of black sand. A grassy tableland backed it. I reached down and seized the Prince's arm. “Up,” I repeated. “Unless you want to drown here.”
The lad lurched to his feet without protest. We trudged down the shore as the waves reached ever higher toward us. Desolation was a cold weight inside me. I dared not look at what I had just done. It was too monstrous to consider. While I walked down this beach, did their blood flow down swords? I stopped my mind. As if I were setting walls against an intrusive mind, I blocked all feelings from myself. I stopped all thoughts and became a wolf, concerned only with the “now.”
“What was that?” Dutiful demanded suddenly. “That . . . feeling. That pulling . . .” Words failed him. “Was that the Skill?”
“Part of it,” I answered brusquely. He seemed entirely too interested in what he had just experienced. Had it called to him that strongly? The Skill's attraction was a terrible trap for the unwary.
“I ... he tried to teach me, but he couldn't tell me what it felt like. I couldn't tell if I was doing it or not, and neither could he. But that!”
He expected a response to his excitement. I gave him none. The Skill was the last thing I wanted to talk about just now. I didn't want to speak at all. I did not want to break the numbness that wrapped me.
When we reached the beach, I kept Prince Dutiful walking. His wet clothes flapped around his body, and he hugged himself against the chill. I listened to his shivering breaths. A greenish sheen on the sand proved to be the flow of a freshwater stream over the beach to the sea. I walked him upstream, away from the sandy beach and into a field of coarse sedge grasses until I reached a place where the trickle was deep enough for me to cup handfuls of it. I washed out my mouth several times and then drank. I was splashing water on my face to get sand out of my eyes and ears when the Prince spoke again.
“What about Lord Golden and the wolf? Where are they, what happened to them?” He looked out over the water as if he expected to see them there.
“They couldn't come. By now, I imagine your friends have killed them.”
It amazed me that I could speak the words so flatly. No choking tears, no gasping breath. It was a thought too terrible to be real. I could not allow myself to consider it. Instead, I flung the words at him, hoping to see him flinch from them. But he just shook his head, as if my words made no sense, then asked numbly, “Where are we?”
“We are here,” I replied, and laughed. I had never known that anger and despair could make a man laugh. It was not a pleasant sound, and the Prince cowered away from me for an instant. Then in the next, he stood up very straight and pointed an accusing finger at me. “Who are you?” he demanded, as if he had suddenly discovered the one mystery that underlay all his questions.
I looked up from where I still crouched by the water. I drank another handful before I answered. “Tom Badgerlock.” I slicked my hair back with my wet hands. “For this. I was born with this white streak at my temple, and so my parents named me.”