Estral appeared unsurprised. “Yes. I had wandered onto the frozen edges of the river and fell through the ice. I got real sick after, with a bad ear infection. I suppose I’m lucky I suffered no worse thanks to one of the men who saw me go in and pulled me out.”
Alton recalled Karigan telling him the illness had destroyed the hearing in one of Estral’s ears. So hard to believe when she was so fine a musician.
“After that,” she explained, “my parents agreed it was time for me to go to Selium to live with my father. It was safer and more civilized and all that. I’ve been there ever since. Well, that is, until now.”
“Do you miss it?” he asked. “Selium?”
“Well, I’m not much of a traveler—not at all like my father. I’m a homebody. So this has been a bit of an adjustment for me, but a fascinating one.” She smiled.
That smile left Alton feeling much too warm. He glanced away. “Fascinating, eh?”
“Very. It’s good to leave behind all that is comfortable and known every so often. It opens one’s mind to the wide world. You and Dale walking through walls, for instance, is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.”
Alton often took for granted how it must look to those without magical abilities. For most people, it certainly was not an everyday occurrence. To his surprise, Estral then commandeered the conversation, asking him about stone working and how, as was the tradition in his clan, he’d been schooled in stonecutting and masonry at a young age. He found himself describing how a stonecutter could sense the grain of the stone and how cutting against the grain could mean an imperfect piece, and how a blacksmith was essential to the process because someone had to keep the tools sharp.
He was flattered by her interest in what he considered the mundane details of his life. Her questions were intelligently framed and not too deeply probing. She appeared to listen to his answers with her full attention.
Suddenly he clamped his mouth shut realizing he’d been talking a lot. About himself. Had Karigan ever taken such an interest in him, or was all the questioning by Estral simply something minstrels were good at?
“What’s wrong?” Estral asked.
“Nothing. We’ve—I’ve just been going on and on.”
“It fills many gaps,” Estral replied. “Karigan naturally did not tell me everything about you.”
“You never did say,” he began quietly, staring into the flame of the lamp, “how Karigan regards me. I’d ... I’d like to know.” He needed to know, but now as his words hung in the air between them, a sense of mortification crept over him that he had even asked. That he’d asked Estral of all people. But who else was there that knew Karigan as well as she?
“I did tell you,” Estral replied. “She cares very much for you.”
“I was hoping. I mean . . .” Now Alton was boiling in his own skin. He looked down at his hands, unable to meet Estral’s gaze. “I thought maybe there was more.”
“When I last saw Karigan, we talked about several things going on her life. Her father, the young Rider she was training, and other matters she told me in confidence and which, as her friend, I won’t betray. In regard to you, she was confused and hurt, but it seemed to me she cared strongly about retaining your friendship.”
Friendship. The word left a sour tang in his gut, but he had to remember Estral had last seen Karigan before he’d apologized. Before his letters.
An awkward silence hung between the two of them. The tent walls rustled, sending misshapen shadows rippling across the canvas. Somewhere in the distance a soldier called out the hour of the watch.
“It’s late,” Estral murmured. “I think I’d better leave.”
“What?”
“It’s getting late. I’d best find someplace to stay for the night.”
“No,” Alton said too sharply. “I mean, please don’t leave. Where would you go?”
“I don’t know. Leese’s maybe.”
“That’s all the way to the main encampment and it’s very dark out.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“You stay here tonight,” he said. “I’ve got someplace else I can go.” He stood and without another word, so she could not argue, he left his tent, grateful for the cold of night bleeding away the heat burning inside him. He inhaled deeply, surprised by the tautness of his body. He scrubbed his face and strode rapidly for the tower.
Once he was inside, he found the tower chamber empty but illuminated by a soft glow. Merdigen had already left to confer with the other mages. He could be gone for days. Alton was relieved to be alone.
He busied himself by preparing a fire in the big hearth, first laying down kindling, then using flint and steel to ignite it. When a small flame crackled to life, he blew on it to enlarge it, then threw in larger sticks to build the blaze.
As he worked, he thought about Estral Andovian sitting alone in his tent. She awakened something in him that had been absent for a long while, aroused a craving for her company, her attention, her touch, and it was only growing. He hadn’t wanted to leave her, but it had been too dangerous to stay. He could not trust himself. Could not trust himself now not to flee the tower, run back to his tent, and immerse himself in her presence, to quell the loneliness within that he hadn’t recognized before.
Those letters he wrote to Karigan must have been in reaction to this loneliness, but her few replies had been circumspect, almost cool, which he’d found frustrating, hurtful. If she wanted to be friends and nothing more, why hadn’t she been plain and just said so?