Adalina listened to the toasts and applause in Oli's name, and the cries of gratitude for what he had given. The moment moved her, but mainly because of what it meant to her parents. She smiled to see them with tears in their eyes, that were not entirely of sadness and loss. But this outpouring felt, to her, like a comfortable way of ignoring everything that was still unknown. Even the medicine man himself did not pretend to fully understand what had happened.

  When the applause died down, Elder Mildred stood and waited for them to listen. She tried to start an assembly of sorts, but no one’s heart was in it.

  "Have any of the sheep been found on the plain?" Mildred asked.

  "None," replied Thilo, bluntly.

  "Then our first step must be towards a place with food. We must approach a Western town," Mildred declared. No one argued, but Angmar called out:

  "And what then? When we have found a Western town, will we just ask them to give us food?"

  "We'll work for it." The suggestion came from her father. The clan turned to him. He was no longer the next elder, but neither was he quite so disgraced, either.

  "What do we know of Western trades?" Beresa asked.

  "I know that when my father travelled West, they were amazed by some of the things he could make. He earned money in the towns more easily than he expected."

  The clan were silent for a while. Then Torvald, Joturn's nephew, cleared his throat.

  "Will we live like wandering tinkerers, surviving outside a town until the inhabitants move us on? Won't we have a home?"

  "We have a home!" Algar contested, glancing sidelong at Heridan as though expecting him to join in. "It lies behind us. Let us return with our new ally," he pointed at Kastor, "and drive the soldiers away from it!"

  There were a few cheers and those in favour of Algar's suggestion looked expectantly to Kastor. Eventually, the lithe medicine man stirred.

  "I gave you my aid, Hallin, and I may give it again. But I cannot fight an army."

  There were disappointed groans and the Hallin looked around, as though searching for a hidden option that no one had yet discovered. Mildred looked over the dejected group with tired eyes. She tried to pull herself to her full height but struggled and settled her weight back onto her cane.

  "We need an elder," she announced. There were sharp intakes of breath. "These decisions are burdens that should be shared between three. Oslef is dead, may he journey swiftly. And Joturn is still trapped in our old home behind us. I will not replace the old hunter while he lives, but there must be one to take Oslef's place."

  Adalina looked at her father. She expected to see him stung and disappointed, but instead his face was calm and relieved. She looked around to see who would stand, and the first to shout a nomination was Finn.

  "Heridan!" he called. "It should be Heridan to join your side."

  The others nodded vigorously and a few shouted their approval. Heridan was the hero who had saved them from the Sullin. He had fought harder than anyone at the wall. The clan’s agreement was clear, and it pleased Adalina. She looked at him and he caught her eye.

  His face bore no triumph or pride. To raucous applause, he stood. He was the image of a warrior from legend, with his wide shoulders casting a long, broad shadow as the sun lowered in the sky behind him. But he smiled gently and shook his head.

  “I nearly betrayed you all for Ingo. I would have betrayed you. For my son, I would have seen you become the prisoners of apostates.”

  The applause and good cheer died abruptly. In the dimming light, heads bowed low and men and women looked at each other awkwardly.

  “But you didn’t!” Algar cried.

  “I didn’t,” Heridan acknowledged. “But I came close enough to learn who I am, and I am no elder. Neither is Luthold. In that, we finally have something in common.”

  Her father looked up and smiled at his old rival. His eyes creased in genuine humour.

  “I was not angry with you, Luthold," Heridan said, looking at him directly. "I was not angry when I learned that you defied our laws to save your daughter, even though I kept those laws and watched my wife die of the fever. I was angry with myself. I should have been bold, like you were. Perhaps Ingo would still be here if his mother were alive. Perhaps right now he would be marrying her.”

  He pointed at Adalina, who reddened.

  “We are lucky, aren’t we, to have her with us?" Heridan continued. "She chose to trust me, when anyone else would have dragged me into the light and condemned me publicly. It was a fool's trust, I thought at the time. But that trust made me wiser. It made me remember who I was, and what kind of man I want to be if Ingo ever found his way back to me. That’s what the clan needs. Not someone who moves the pieces in play, but someone who changes them. There is your elder, Hallin.”

  The last statement was so unexpected that she only really understood it when Thilo repeated it incredulously.

  “Adalina!? Luthold’s daughter? An elder? She is barely an adult, man. If you do not want the honour, then so be it. Let it go out for debate. She is too young!”

  Adalina stood to shout her agreement but Heridan replied:

  “It’s true, she’s young. She’s barely a year older than Raska was when she led our people east. And how like Raska she is. Wherever you look, there is Adalina, giving us hope. There’s never an idle moment for her, and yet she’s never too busy."

  The clan broke into a noisy discussion and Adalina watched as though this were happening to someone else. She withdrew into her memories of the previous weeks. Had she asked for this? She watched herself in her memory moving from one disaster to another, canvassing opinion, persuading and encouraging. She had done that for her father, hadn’t she? Not once had she dreamed of leading in his place. But she recalled, too, how they had begun to look at her as the days went on. With reassurance and gratitude for her presence. Where did that come from, she wondered? All she ever did was listen for what they feared and try her best to speak to that. She drifted back to the present. Mildred stood, waiting for quiet and watching her. Her eyes were hard. Not in jealousy or disapproval, but in cold calculation. She cannot afford to make a mistake, Adalina thought.

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  "Well, then," asked Mildred, speaking quietly over the hushed assembly. "Let us test your nomination, Heridan. Tell us, Adalina, where would you have us go? What would you have the clan do now?"

  Adalina looked around. She caught her father's eyes and he nodded. She knew what plan he had wanted to follow. He wanted to go to the Western king and petition his court for a new home. Is that what I believe we should do? Adalina thought about the Levonin they had left in the woods. She thought of the mysterious powers that had only just been unleashed, on the very day the Hallin had fled. It was true, they could not return there as they were. But she could not picture them living elsewhere. Perhaps she was being na?ve, but she believed there was another way; a middle path that embraced the two. She'd been asked to speak, so why shouldn't she?

  “When our ancestors were given that land,” she pointed towards the dark shadow in the evening, where the green trees were transforming into a black shroud, “they made it a home for the truth. The truth of the Seveners. We can try to keep our ways alive as we travel. Find some scrap of forest to eke a living out of until we’re moved on. But without a home, we won’t stay together. We’ll pull apart like the seven gods did, and the truth we preserve will drift into a distant memory. We need a home.”

  Before the faction who had argued for return could applaud, Adalina continued:

  “And the way home is West. The ragged remains of a wounded clan cannot face the armies back there. We’ve had a taste of their might. Just a taste, and it tasted bitter, didn’t it? Can one medicine man take down a whole city, bolstered by years of preparation and powered by hatred?” She almost reprimanded them. “You wouldn’t have dared speak to him a week before today, and now you want to place our future in his hands. The new weapon they used injured him, too."

  Adalina lowered her voice.

  “King Cadrafel gave our ancestors that land. It’s his descendant we must petition to protect it. That is the way for us. And that is the gift we will bring to the West. A warning about their new enemy and everything we have learned about the powers they possess. We will petition King Brunulf – not for a new land, but for the strength of his army to retake the old one."

  The clan listened in stunned silence. No one had yet dared to suggest so bold a plan. Elder Mildred smiled. Heridan nodded. Her parents stared at her in admiration. But Aimar challenged her:

  "How will the Western king receive us? The descendants of those who turned away from war, who went to live in the forest to avoid fighting the South, now asking him to join a war of our own?"

  "I share the same fear, Aimar," Adalina replied. "But I fear even more the slow death of our people, drifting from one place to another and slowly slipping into the shadows. Remember, our ancestors left because they would not fight other followers of the gods. The Republic is different. They seek to destroy us all. Perhaps King Brunulf will send us away, or perhaps he'll be grateful to be warned of the danger. Perhaps what Erlends said is true; that the king is frail and ineffectual. But my Grandfather used to repeat a Western saying; one he learned on his travels there. 'It never rains on the Godsroof.' He said that it's true. The skies are always clear above the Western throne. The Lord of Heaven protects his people."

  Elder Mildred stood.

  "The decision is yet to be made, but as for Heridan's nomination, I accept it. We will put it to the vote."

  Adalina awoke with Beresa’s hand pushing her shoulder.

  “It’s your turn for watch.”

  “I've barely slept.”

  “They say elders never sleep,” Beresa joked.

  Adalina sat up and looked around at the sea of bodies, spread out without tents or blankets. She trod around them towards the low incline they were calling a hill. No fire lit her way, and she came close before she saw that Heridan and Kastor sat together, sharing the end of their watch. The medicine man and the warrior were deep in conversation, and she stepped loudly as she approached to let them know she was coming. Heridan patted the ground beside him. She sat with them, watching the stars. The spring constellations had taken their places. Farlean’s fish had leapt from the river.

  "You can go to sleep now, Heridan. You too, Kastor. You were up all of last night, too."

  Heridan turned to face her and smiled. His eyes glinted in the moonlight.

  "I'm not going back to sleep, Elder Ada. I'm going back to the forest."

  “You’re not!?” Adalina almost exclaimed. "You put me in this position, and now you want to abandon me?"

  "Abandon you?" Heridan raised an eyebrow. "You have your mother and father. You have Elder Mildred. And you have your own heart. You'll be alright, Adalina. You know why I can't leave."

  "You still believe you can find Ingo..."

  "I know he's alive. Erlends wasn't lying. This medicine man saw the soldiers take him captive. I will go to find my son. I will hold him again. You will find an army to fight for you and when you return I'll be there, to meet you on the battlefield."

  Adalina looked up to the night sky. She understood the other reason, the one which Heridan left unspoken. He didn't want to travel with the people he had almost betrayed. Perhaps some desire for redemption spurred him back into the forest, as well as the pull of his lost son.

  “The clan will miss you, but I understand," she said.

  “You’ll need politicians where you're going. Men of letters, like your father. What is there in the West for me to swing my sword at?”

  “Will you miss the clan?” she asked.

  Heridan did not reply for a while. Eventually he conceded:

  “Some of you weren’t so bad.”

  The three of them chuckled and Heridan added: “I'm not going alone.”

  Kastor leaned forward and Adalina gasped. She had assumed her people would have his guidance. The thought of him leaving with Heridan terrified her. Even more responsibility now fell on her shoulders. She whispered a prayer into the night for Elder Mildred’s health. Heridan and Kastor stood, and Adalina stood quickly and took a step towards them, as though she were considering throwing her arms around theirs to stop them from leaving. Kastor faced her.

  “I have unfinished business in that forest. I have discoveries to make. And Oli once asked me to help him with something that I couldn't face. Not then. He wanted me to save his friend and I was too absorbed in my own fate. I'll help him now, and hope that I haven't left it too late."

  “Look over there!” Heridan interrupted and pointed towards the forest. Adalina looked and saw a strange, new light; a colourful cloud with tiny dots like fireflies dancing in the middle.

  “It comes from the tower. That’s where the Godless City is,” Kastor said in a hushed voice. Heridan pulled his cloak tighter beside her.

  “What are they doing?" Adalina asked. "How are they able to light up the sky? Must they set everything on fire?”

  “Who knows what they are capable of,” said Kastor. “These people who have cut themselves off from the gods.”

  Heridan and Kastor prepared to leave. Kastor's familiar settled on the ground and Heridan swung his sword onto his back.

  Heridan embraced her first. He held her close for a long time and she rested her wet cheeks on his chest. When he let her go, he turned and walked without looking back. Kastor moved closer and spoke into her ear, out of hearing of the departing warrior:

  "I do not know what awaits us in the forest, what struggles and battles lie ahead. But I know that something has awoken there, and your brother has much to do with it. I can feel something on the edge of my thoughts, where the old rot and madness used to be. Something fresh and living, but vulnerable and new. Tell me: do you feel, deep down, that your brother is gone?"

  Adalina's heart jumped and she looked at Kastor. The young man's wild eyes burned with hope and excitement. She wanted to believe. Was that why she felt as she did?

  "Help Heridan to find Ingo," she said. "And find my brother, too."

  Kastor turned and caught up with Heridan, swinging his crooked staff as he walked. She watched them depart under the moonlight, towards the forest and the unnatural lights that burned beyond it. Then, as they grew smaller and more distant and she felt more alone, another light lit up the sky. She turned to face west.

  The new light shone as brightly as a second moon. It shone over the place to which they travelled: the legendary home of the Western kings. But it was not still. The Pilgrim Star, Hurean, never was. It would blaze a trail this way and that across the sky throughout the summer, both day and night. Some said the Lord of Heaven patrolled his domain. Others said he searched in vain for his lost daughter. Adalina looked closely, as he burned a path across the heavens, racing directly towards her.

  Towards the forest.