Prodigal - Book III

The Rider on the Pale Horse

It's a pale, egg-white dawn set against a dark horizon, a kind of serene mutedness that speaks more to slow awakenings, peaceful stirrings, than violence and drive. There's dew on the grass and leaves, and cold, white mist drifts and swirls around the horses' legs; mist that hovers out across the green-blue plains, obscuring this familiar land. This is the beauty of nature—these quiet, stolen moments; the singular reminders of how little space these human games take in the world.

In the idealistic corners of Ben's mind there is a time and a place, fixed firmly in the nebulous future, beyond the fire and blood and steel, the bones and the rage, when he walks these lands every morning at a quiet hour. When, amongst the trees and glens, there is a small cottage set out in the rolling fields and all this subtle, silent splendor. This is his plot, his space, and maybe there's a farm here, or a shop, or something else. Something that tinkers quietly so not to disturb the peace. And he walks out here, walks and returns home with dew on his ankles and in his hair, and maybe inside the cottage someone is waiting, waiting to open the door.

"There has to be another way," she says, something fixed firmly in the carved past.

There's no one waiting in the cottage, Ben knows. Not anymore.

"Some of it makes a lot of sense," she echoes, "but I can't wrap my head around killing someone for something they had no choice in. How is that fair?"

The party goes at a trot down the narrow road, following its weaving, undulating length toward the hazy, leaning forms in the distance.

He knows what this is, a fragment of guilt, laced with doubt, and sharpened in longing. The Allayria he fears isn't the one in the West, the one he will have to eventually face; it's the one who visits at night, the one who doesn't fight back, the one who echoes the language lost between them.

I will bear this too, he tells himself because he can spy her out of the corner of his eye, riding just behind him on a pale horse. I can bear this.

"Message from ahead, sir."

Hooves clip on rock and earth, trotting nearer, and Ben turns to see Davelin come up to his side.

"Everyone is in position, sir," the Smith-caller tells him. "They wait for our approach."

"Good," Ben murmurs, and his hand touches the carved eye strung on his neck.

We are so close.

On the ship he could have grabbed the Skill master—might have even, had the opportunity presented itself—but this path is easier. Easier tactically, but also, he can admit privately to himself, easier on Meg. She is steadfast, but the old man was still the first one who had taken her in and some bonds, Ben now understands all too well, run deep enough to crack you.

But that doesn't matter anymore—Ben doesn't need him now: he knows who has the bow. The only question is where, and he knows Ruben would not let anyone, not even himself, know both.

Ben, who taps absentmindedly on the Eye pendant, has a good idea of who does know the where. A calculated guess, but if there's anything Ben knows it's that his guesses are often good, his instincts almost always on point.

And if, in the end, they don't have the information, Ben will just pick another path.

"There has to be another way," the memory repeats.

But there isn't. And he doesn't look at her, beautiful, like copper sunlight, a figment of memory and dreams, as he urges his horse forward. For today, this quiet tranquility must be disturbed.

"I like you—all of you—a lot. But this..." it says, and he knows what comes next, and it splinters him in all the new ways he now understands what she had meant, what she had foretold.

"I feel like this could destroy me."

A/N: The pressure builds on the man set on dismantling everything.

Chapter notes: Allayria's haunting dialogue is from Paragon's "Removing the Linchpin."