“Look at us,” he said to Mirnían through the racking sobs. “Is this what we wanted? How did it come to this, my brother?”

Mirnían’s eyes were wide with shock. “You will not kill me?” The question was full of disappointment, as though he had given up on life and wished that Voran would be brave enough to end it for him, since he couldn’t do it himself.

Voran’s body shook from his anger. Not letting go of Mirnían, holding him with the same gentle care as a mother gives to a newborn, he looked up at the cloudless sky and screamed his defiance.

“Where are you, Adonais?!” Voran’s voice echoed, broken by the sobs. “Mirnían has served you with his life. He has sacrificed everything to follow my mad lead. How could you have allowed it to come to this? You have all-power. What Vasylli has given more of himself, lost more of himself, gained more of himself in your service? Will you curse your own child?”

“You’re asking the wrong questions, my boy,” said a familiar voice. Standing under the shadow of the hawthorn was the Pilgrim, even older than Voran remembered him, leaning on his staff now for support, not merely show. The setting sun above his head hung blood red, barely touching the tips of the hawthorn. “Why do you expect the Heights to intervene for you whenever you need saving?”

“How many times has Adonais already intervened?” said Voran, forcing his voice to remain contained, though it trembled from the effort. “How many times have I been guided precisely to the place I need to be, at the appointed time? Even after I turned away from him, he found me a deliverer. Tarin died for me. Why all the extraordinary care for me, and this disregard for Mirnían? I do not deserve any of it!”

The Pilgrim smiled. “No, you do not.”

“I do not hold Mirnían responsible for shooting me.” said Voran. “I deserve much worse at his hands. I should be dead.”

Mirnían’s expression was unreadable, but he had stopped crying.

“I call on Adonais,” cried Voran. “Let him answer. Why do I, the guilty one, enjoy his patronage, while the one who has suffered the most remains cursed by leprosy?”

The Pilgrim raised his arms and grew, larger and larger until the very sky seemed to rest on his head. His grey cloak thrust back, he exploded into the radiance of a thousand suns. His knee-length chainmail was woven of light itself, kaleidoscopic, yet purely and utterly white. His eyes were as twin beacons, and his face was beyond youth or old age. His helmet-plume was a billowing flame; his hair was fluid gold on his massive shoulders. Joy poured out of him, joy like the first cry of a newborn, like the first star after a week-long snowstorm.

“I am the Harbinger, brother to Athíel of the Palymi. I am the mouth of the Most High. I am the light behind the dawn. I am the fire that burns the setting sun. I am the one who witnessed the covenant between Lassar and the Heights. Do not call on Adonais. Speak to me, if you dare.”

For a moment, Voran thought that the Harbinger spoke the name Adonais with distaste. But how could that be?

“I am a servant of the Heights,” whispered Voran, forcing himself to look at the giant of light. “I am nothing. Yet has not this man, this prince of Vasyllia, done enough to deserve more than this?”

“Do you doubt that all he has suffered is part of a design?”

“Design? What design can there be? Adonais has abandoned us, and old Powers are coming back to take the earth for themselves.”

“Voran. Consider the past days. You cannot fail to come to this conclusion. You four—Voran, Mirnían, Lebía, Sabíana—have been led. By me and by the white stag and by others, all along paths thorny and painful. You ask why? If I told you the full truth, you would not believe me. You must come to it yourself. The answer to all that your questioning heart desires is at the heart of Vasyllia.”

“The one place that I cannot reach.”

“You must reach it. Do not forget. Vasyllia is everything. Even if she falls, you must go back. Search for its heart. At the heart lie all the answers.”

The Harbinger’s light flared like a huge furnace and spun faster and faster, until the white light was a huge pillar, reaching up far beyond the sun, ending on Voran and Mirnían, blood pouring from both their wounds. The rest of the world was a colorless darkness; only they two were illumined in color and light. Then the Harbinger disappeared, and time seemed to begin anew. The sun descended behind the flowers and thorns of the weeping tree, turning the tears red as blood falling from spear-tips.

“And so it is the two of us at the end, Mirnían,” said Voran, smiling. “As it should be.”

He stood up awkwardly, nearly fainting again, and unsheathed his sword. His left hand limp and throbbing with fire, he somehow leveraged himself with his right, sword in hand, and clambered up the rock, foot by foot, until he lay under the shadow of the branches. Breathing with difficulty, he rose to his knees and touched the pale flowers, grazed his fingers over the thorns. It was so beautiful. His tears returned, and he spat in disgust at himself.

“No one should have to make this choice,” he whispered. “Forgive me, Mother.”

He breathed in, braced himself, and hacked at the thin trunk with his sword.

“What are you doing?” shrieked Mirnían.

Voran struck again and again like a man possessed, his eyes blurry with the flow of tears, his hands unsteady from the pain.

“No one should have access to so much power,” he said.

He saw Aglaia’s stricken body in his mind, and he despaired.

The sword finally broke through the trunk, and Voran pushed the hawthorn down the far side of the cliff. It fell out of sight. A fountain of fragrant water blossomed from the raw, jagged stump and immediately began to ebb. Voran had a sudden compulsion to drink the water before it disappeared completely. He caught a little in his hands. It sparkled in his cupped palms, multifaceted like a fluid diamond. He drank.

The waves of hot pain receded into the back of Mirnían’s awareness. He was tired, so tired that he could easily fall asleep on the bare rock. Now that it was over, now that Voran had singlehandedly destroyed Vasyllia and dashed all their hopes, there was little left to do except die. But he remembered Lebía; he remembered their coming child; he remembered the life in Ghavan, and somehow he knew he would press on.

Voran had stopped weeping. He looked at Mirnían with eyes that seemed centuries older, eyes so green that they seemed almost mad. Voran slipped off the top of the rock, holding on to the stone with his left arm and balancing with his right.

His left arm?

“Voran, your arm!”

Voran looked confused for a moment, then looked down at his shoulder. The black fabric was clotted with blood. Voran poked his fingers into the rip made by the two arrows, and his face turned white.

“Mirnían, I am healed.”

Mirnían’s heart raced. He thought he understood what had happened. He got up, groaned from the pain, and hobbled to Voran, feeling more an old man than a youth of twenty-two years. He took Voran’s right hand in both his own.

“No, Voran,” he said, strangely elated. “You are not healed. You are the healer.”

Mirnían placed Voran’s right palm on his own exposed chest, and his entire body felt as though it were burned with hot irons. He screamed, but held on to Voran’s wrist as if his life depended on it. It lasted a long time, but then the pain went out, like a fire extinguished by a gust of wind.

Mirnían knew that he was healed—this time completely—but to see that truth reflected in Voran’s expression was glorious. Voran looked like a gleeful boy, making his wiry, sparse beard seem a storyteller’s disguise. His strong features softened into a smile so full of joy, Mirnían realized he did not know the meaning of the word until he saw it in Voran’s face.

“Voran,” he said, unsure of the words, “I—”

“No, Mirnían,” said Voran, more calm and in control than Mirnían had ever seen him. “All that is past. There is a great deal of work left to be done. A great deal of hardship to be overcome. It would be easier to overcome it all together, as family.”

Mirnían felt as though an old version of himself died in that moment, and a new Mirnían arose in his place, a Mirnían who did not merely act the part of the solicitous leader, as he so often used to do in Vasyllia. At that moment, Mirnían felt ready to contain all of Vasyllia in his heart. It occurred to him that his father must have felt the same way every day of his life.

“There is something you should know, Voran. I married Lebía, and we are expecting…”

Voran grabbed him and raised him off the ground. At first, Mirnían thought that finally Voran’s temper had the better of him, but there was nothing but warmth in his embrace, and then Voran laughed. It echoed over the mountains.

“My little swanling picked you?” He chortled.

Mirnían felt himself blush violently, something he could not remember ever doing in his life. It was very strange for their roles to be so reversed, but there was something liberating in it. He returned Voran’s embrace.

“It is time, my brother. We must go,” said Voran, staring over Mirnían’s shoulder, his eyes illuminated by a golden light. Mirnían turned to see a majestic stag, his fur completely white, his antlers sparkling gold. It wasn’t entirely there. It shimmered, as though it were in water.

“Will you consent to bear us to the waystone, old friend?” asked Voran.

The white stag lowered its head.