Chapter Text
Once Caranthir regained consciousness, the first thing he saw was the willow green irises of the seeing one* Lanis. She was leaning over the navigator who was at the moment reclining on the Cradle of Revery*. She was gazing straight into his golden eyes.
'So?' she spoke with a smile. 'Are you content with what you have seen?'
He squirmed as he tried to loosen his stiff muscles, very stiff after lying for a long time in the same position on a too narrow boat-like bed. A memory of his prophetic dreams was lingering in his mind. It made him chuckle. Propping himself up on one elbow, he slowly sat up and put his feet onto the cold and solid floor.
'I am.' he replied. 'I've seen everything that I wished to see. How it's going to happen...'
'And are you planning to change that?' asked the seeing one.
'It is but my thing.'
'Are you aware of the fact that by looking into the future you are only inviting it?'
'It remains to be seen. I'm not going to sit around and wait for the future to unveil.'
'Are you going to defy the Destiny Itself, Golden Child?'
'I don't believe in Destiny one bit. This word was invented by the knowing ones to justify the foulest of their decisions and deeds.'
'You still have a grouch against them, as I see it.'
'No grouch at all. I despise them, that's all. Each one of them.'
'Even Avallac'h?'
'Even him sometimes. But I don't hate him.'
'It was not your mentor's fault that you couldn't become part of the High Council.'
'Oh, it was. He could have helped me. They all could have made the right decision. They just got scared that I might become stronger than they are one day.'
'Your unicity is matched only by your pride, Caranthir.' Lanis shook her head and looked away. 'Well, if this is the path you choose, then you must follow it, and only time will tell who is right and who is wrong.'
***
The fog over the Tarn Mira Lake was as dense as spilled milk and the pre-winter cold was getting fiercer as it was causing tingles on Caranthir's cheeks and finger-tips. His eyes, unaided by magic, could hardly see anything farther than a few feet away from him. The weather was blatantly shitty, so unlike Tir na Lia's gentle spring. With a gesture of his hand he put up a shield over himself that would protect him from losing warmth. He could have done it earlier, three hours ago, but his thoughts had been in such a whirl since today's morning that he had simply forgot. Today was the day.
He looked at the white sky, questioning his own actions: how much longer did he have to wait before destiny was fulfilled and his eyes beheld the promised genetic mistake? Oh, sorry: he should think of her as 'a prodigy of nature'. Unfortunately, clairvoyance is not an exact science and requires a good bit of patience.
He looked behind his back to take a glance at the spot where many years ago the black, basaltic Tor Zireael had stood high, in the ill-fated and vanished City of a Hundred Lakes*. Now one could notice but a swell of the ground therein, covered by a thin layer of snow. Caranthir could easily make the tower visible but the city itself he had never seen, unlike his mentor Avallac'h and the Lovebird brothers*, although none of them had ever had an opportunity to touch the city's walls or find out what had happened to its inhabitants.
The portal inside Tor Zireael was still operating and somebody, like Caranthir, could still make use of it but, to tell the truth, it was a bad and broken one. Unpredictable. Until now the Golden Child had never attempted to walk through it and was not going to try today.
As for the girl... the dh'oine girl was destined to walk through it. Unthinkable. Unbelievable. And Caranthir had not even the slightest idea what she looked like. Was she going to remind him of her notorious ancestor who had managed to escape from her destiny? And today the Elder Blood was allegedly supposed to reunite with its folk – that was at least what the knowing ones believed in. No one spoke about it outloud, and the Council kept silent on the matter but the walls had ears and the elves had tongues in their mouths. Caranthir's sixth sense was telling him that changes were due and that his own world would soon go topsy-turvy.
Until the present he had managed to oppose the pressure of the Council, although the pressure on him had been only increasing with each passing year. But what if (Dana forbid!) The Elder Blood truly returned to its native land? Caranthir's life would turn into a nightmare! He did not believe in Destiny, of course, but it's always better to play safe. He had not come up with any better plan than to stand on the thin ice of the lake and to wait for the girl: to head her off, get in her way, prevent her from becoming anybody's destiny. Not his own destiny. Not his mentor's destiny. Not his folk's destiny. Should she succeed, her hairy hands would besmear, befoul and destroy everything.
As to his dear mentor, Avallac'h would not even mention her in Caranthir's presence. It might be that he discussed her with someone else but not Caranthir. He had become more secretive than ever. 'Avallac'h' and 'candour' had never been the words, mentioned in the same sentence, but there had been a moment (that moment the Golden Child had missed) when the Fox had pulled away, retreated into himself more than before, and almost became a stranger. The door to his laboratory would suddenly be locked. The grip on the former pupil would loosen. His unfocused aquamarine eyes would stare into distant fractions of time and inconceivable curvatures of space. He would not look at Caranthir anymore, he would look right through him. The matured version of his student suddenly became less interesting, and although Caranthir had befriended Eredin and his Red Riders and never felt any lack of company since then, in his golden heart he harboured a grudge agaist Avallac'h. For a long time he could not understand for whom or for what he had been bartered away until one day in the curving corridors of the Palace of Awakening he overheard the echo of a new name: Zireael.
He clenched his teeth and fixed his gaze on the fog that was getting denser over the lake. His eyes were hurting and his memories were haunting him...