Stalking Darkness

older
, Beka thought, seeing the depths of sadness in his eyes.
    When Nanta had slipped away to the horizon Alec went below. Seregil was sitting on the end of Micum’s bunk.
    “I found something for you in Nanta before we sailed,” Alec said, handing Seregil a cloth-wrapped parcel. Inside was a small harp, like the one he’d carried in Wolde.
    “It’s nowhere near as good as yours, I know,” Alec went on quickly as Seregil folded the wrappings back and touched the strings. “But I thought it might—Well, Micum is still in pain and I thought maybe if you played for him it might give him some ease.”
    A white lie, perhaps, but it did the trick. Micum gave Alec a knowing wink as Seregil propped the instrument on his knee and plucked out a few tentative notes.
    “It’s a fine instrument. Thank you,” Seregil said, not looking up. He plucked out a few searching chords, then swept the strings, releasing a glissando of plaintive notes.
    Thero came in to tend Micum’s leg and stayed awhile to listen. Seregil didn’t sing, but plucked out tune after tune, the music mournful and soothing.
    Micum slipped into a peaceful doze and Alec sat quietly in the corner, watching Seregil’s face as he played on through the afternoon. His expression betrayed little. The mantle of silence remained in place.
    Seregil’s spirits seemed to rally somewhat during the voyage back to Rhíminee. He spoke more freely, though not of Nysander or the Helm. Never of those. He walked the deck with Alec and Thero, ate sparingly with neither relish nor complaint, and played the harp by the hour, covering his own pain a little by easing Micum’s.
    Micum and Thero took heart at these small changes but Alec, who shared a pallet with Seregil on the floor of Rhal’s cabin, knew how he trembled and groaned in his sleep each night. An intuition uncomfortably like the one that had dragged him back to theCockerel that fateful night kept him by Seregil’s side as much as possible. The man he’d known for so long was gone, leaving in his stead a quiet stranger with distance behind his eyes.
    Alec sat alone with Micum the afternoon of their fifth day out from Nanta. Micum was dozing, his face pale and haggard against the bolsters. The harp lay at his feet where Seregil had left it after soothing him to sleep. Thero’s continued ministrations had kept rot from setting into Micum’s leg, but the little cabin was stifling with the flat, heavy odor of unhealthy flesh.
    Moving quietly so as not to disturb Micum, Alec opened the cabin window and propped the door open with a pack. Just as he was about to steal out again, however, Micum opened his eyes.
    “That’s a long face you’ve got on,” he rasped, motioning for Alec to sit by him. “Out with it. What’s wrong?”
    Alec shrugged unhappily. “It’s Seregil. He’s like a shadow. He doesn’t talk, he doesn’t smile. It’s like he’s not really here at all. I don’t know what to do for him.”
    “I think you’re doing right by just standing by him for now, just as you did when he ran afoul with that wooden coin. It made all the difference to him then. He’s told me so himself.”
    “That was magic and he was fighting it, too. But killing Nysander—” Alec fiddled with the edge of the blanket, searching for words. “It’s like he killed part of himself.”
    “He did. We have to give him time to sort out what’s left.”
    “Maybe.” But in his heart Alec feared that the longer they waited for Seregil to come around, the farther away he drifted.
    Magyana was waiting for them on the quay the day they sailed into Rhíminee harbor. Alone and unattended, she wore a dark mourning veil over her silvery hair.
    Seregil placed a little bundle containing Nysander’s few belongings in her arms, his voice failing him when he tried to speak.
    “I know, my dear,” she murmured, embracing him. “Nysander and I said our farewells the day I sent him across to find you. He suspected that he would not return, and asked me to tell all of you not to grieve for him, but to forgive him if you can.”
    “Forgive him?” gasped Thero, standing rigidly beside Micum’s litter. “What could there be to forgive?”
    Magyana did not answer, but her gaze stole briefly back to Seregil, who’d turned away. Alec’s eyes locked briefly with hers and in that instant the mutual understanding ran deep.
    “It was also Nysander’s wish, Thero, that you should complete your training with me,” she