Eira
The morning air tasted of pine needles as Eira and Soren pushed their horses past the mountain.
They had left their campsite behind at first light, moving through a valley where the grass was silver with frost.
The ground here was flat and packed with sand and stones, making it easy for the stallions to pick up speed without stumbling.
To their left, there was a massive cluster of grey rock that rose up toward the sky, and to their right, the forest thinned out, revealing the wide, open plains that sat below the mountain range.
Eira felt the wind pulling at her hair, stinging her cheeks. The cold made her feel more awake than she had been in many, many years.
"We're making good time!" Soren shouted over his shoulder. "The terrain is shifting. Do you see the colour of the dirt?"
Eira looked down. The pale sand was turning into a dark, moist clay. "It's getting wetter," she called back. "We're close to the water source."
She slowed her mount down just a bit, leaning over and pointing ahead to the forest. "Do you see those trees?" she smiled, "They are far away, but I can make out the bright red fruit on one of the trees. I've heard that they taste very nice in the cold."
Soren nodded, but his expression suddenly darkened. Eira watched as he muttered something under his breath. She couldn't hear him, but his lips suggested he was saying something like "red."
He pulled back on the reins slightly, slowing his horse so they could speak without shouting. Eira followed his lead, her stallion huffing large clouds of steam into the air.
"There's something I didn't tell you back at the apothecary," Soren said. "When you told me about that shopkeeper in the High-Tier. Julian, right?"
Eira felt a small jolt of surprise. She had almost forgotten about the man with the poetry book. "What about him?"
Soren gripped the pommel of his saddle. "Julian is my brother. My older brother."
Eira pulled her horse to a complete stop. The silence of the plains rushed back in, disrupted only by the heavy breathing of the animals. "Your brother? Soren, why didn't you say anything? He was right there. He even mentioned your father's name to me."
"Because he thinks I'm dead," Soren said plainly. "When the incident happened at the river, and the Wardens started hunting for the violet light. Julian was already working his way up in the High-Tier. I decided it was better if he stayed disconnected from me. If anyone knew he had a brother with a dark light, they would have stripped him of his shop and thrown him into the lower tier with the rest of us."
"So he stayed up there while you hid down here?" Eira asked.
"It was my choice as much as his," Soren insisted. "He sent word through a courier once, months ago. He offered to hide me in the High-Tier, but I couldn't do that to him. He's safe there. He has a life. And he must be happy. I'm not going to change that."
Eira rode closer to him, her knee brushing against his boot. "He didn't look like a man who wanted to be 'safe,' Soren. He looked like a man who was bored with the High-Tier rules. He told me he kept his lantern red just to annoy the Council. I think he misses you."
Soren let out a long breath. "Maybe. But they catch me, they'll probably go after him next to see if he helped me. Leaving is the only way I can protect him now."
They sat in silence for a moment, processing the weight of the secret. Julian was the last piece of a family that Soren was giving up to keep them alive.
"Let's keep moving," Soren said, his voice regaining its resolve. "The river is just past that rise."
They kicked the horses back into a gallop.
The landscape began to change rapidly now. The tall grass disappeared, replaced by smooth boulders and clusters of willow trees near the water.
The sound of the wind was slowly joined by a low thumping.
It was the sound of thousands of gallons of water hitting stone.
The path began to slope downward. The air grew damp, and a fine mist began to coat their cloaks.
They rounded a final bend where the trees opened up, and there it was.
The Great River was a massive, churning force of nature. It was a deep, muddy green, white foam spraying into the air as the current ran against the rocks. The sound was deafening.
Further down the bank, Eira could see the remains of the old passage. The wooden pilings of the original bridge were still stuck in the mud. A few yards away stood the new stone bridge, sturdy and cold, built by the High-Tier to replace what had been lost.
Soren climbed down from his horse. His movements were stiff, his eyes locked on the spot in the center of the rapids where the bridge had first snapped a year ago.
He didn't move toward the water yet.
He just stood by his horse, his hand pressed firmly against its long mane.
Eira dismounted and walked over to him. She knew this was the moment he had been dreading since they left the bakery.
The mist from the river swirled around them, dampening their hair. To Soren, this was the place where his life had ended, and to Eira, it was the place where her father had vanished from existence.
"We're here," Eira said, her voice barely audible over the water.
Soren took a step toward the muddy bank, his boots sinking slightly into the soft earth.
He looked at the water, then at the violet lantern hanging from his belt. The light inside it began to pulse, a nervous purple that mirrored the chaos of the river in front of them.
They had reached the end of the horrible memory. Now, they just had to figure out how to walk past it.