How did I, oathbound, come to this? His mouth searches out mine under the grass-green sky. The pink and green ribbons of light arc above our heads; silent, impassive beauty. The ice in the ink black water flushes pale mint and rose. It seems to me that a different dawn rises over a grassy land far across the bay.
He says, his arm snaked over my shoulder, that beyond the world there is a golden land, which we do not see. I do not know - yet he once said that the sky was green, over the snow. And the stars tonight hang from curtains of colour, gauze veils and mists.
His lips press a second ragged truth against mine. That the coin this harsh and beautiful land demands in payment for its secrets is too rich for my purse.
Will I be forgiven for turning back? Will I be branded an oathbreaker because I did not spend his life for my Lord Steward?
We crouch beneath an ice cliff at the edge of the world. The bay, sharp ice teeth in its crescent bite, is rimmed with uncharted mountains to the east. Would our deaths be deemed a worthy payment for the final knowledge of this land?
I feel my binding oaths creak within me like strained bones. But his face finds my neck in the fur of my cloak, like a wolf nuzzles the warm pelt of its prey.
