The encounter with the dying oak left Kaelen with a fragile, hard-won clarity. He had looked into the abyss of the whisper's promise and chosen to step back. But the cost of that choice was written in the deepening lines on his face and the constant, low tremor in his hands. He was a man holding up a collapsing ceiling, and every day the weight grew heavier.
Roric's condition worsened. The fever had taken full hold, and his breathing was a wet, ragged sound that filled their makeshift camp each night. Elara stayed by his side, using the last of their clean cloths to cool his brow, her face a mask of grim determination.
"The wound is infected," she told Kaelen one evening, her voice hushed. "It's not… it's not the Blight. Not yet. But it's festering. He needs proper medicine. A healer's touch."
Kaelen looked at the big man, now shrunken and vulnerable in his bedroll. Roric, who had always been a pillar of stubborn strength, was crumbling. The sight was more frightening than any Blight-knight.
"The Lady of the Lake," Kaelen said, the title feeling like their last, desperate prayer. "Finn believed she could help. We have to get there."
"And how much of Roric will be left by the time we do?" Elara's question hung in the air, unanswered.
The next day's travel was agonizingly slow. They took turns supporting Roric, his massive frame a dead weight between them. Kaelen's already depleted strength was sapped further, every step a battle against the leaden fatigue in his own limbs. He could no longer afford to use his power to smooth the path. All his focus was on putting one foot in front of the other, on ignoring the cold, hungry void in his chest that seemed to feed on his exhaustion.
It was Hemmet who found the stream. A narrow, trickling thing cutting through a rocky defile. The water was clear.
"Thank the stones," the old baker breathed, scrambling towards it. He cupped his hands and drank deeply.
"Wait!" Kaelen called out, his senses screaming. He lurched forward, his body protesting. He didn't need to touch the water. He could hear its song. It was clear, yes, but there was a high, thin dissonance running through it, like a single, out-of-tune string on a lute. It was the same subtle wrongness he'd felt in the meadow and on the oak tree. A dormant poison.
But he was too late. Hemmet had already swallowed. The others were moving to follow.
"Stop!" Kaelen's voice was a raw crack of command. Everyone froze. He knelt by the stream, placing a hand just above the surface. He didn't need to touch it to feel the latent corruption slumbering within. "It's tainted. Not enough to kill, not quickly. But it's sick."
Hemmet stared at him, his face pale. Then, a strange defiance entered his eyes. "It's water. It's clean. I can taste it. Are you going to deny us water now? Is your 'song' so much wiser than our own thirst?"
"He's right, Kaelen," a woman named Anya said, her voice trembling. Her child was crying softly, its lips cracked. "We'll die of thirst if we don't drink."
Kaelen looked at their desperate faces. He saw the trust warring with suspicion. He saw Hemmet, who had already drunk, a new, reckless boldness in his stance. The whisper, ever opportunistic, slithered into his mind. You could cleanse it. A small act. A focused application. You wouldn't be destroying the stream, just… purifying it. For them. It would be a mercy.
He saw Elara watching him, her eyes begging him not to.
"I can't," he said, the words tearing from him. "I can't cleanse it. That's not my power. To try would be to use… the other way. The poison." He looked at the crying child, his heart breaking. "We have to find another source."
A wave of despair passed through the group. The hope that had flickered at the sight of water was extinguished, replaced by a deeper, more profound hopelessness.
It was then that Roric stirred. With a superhuman effort, the big woodcutter pushed himself upright, his face beaded with sweat. His gaze was cloudy, but it fixed on Kaelen with startling intensity.
"The boy… is right," Roric rasped, each word a struggle. "I've… cut enough timber… to know sick wood from healthy. This place… is sick." He coughed, a wracking sound. "You follow him… or you die. That's the truth of it." His eyes held Kaelen's. "Don't… don't break for us, lad. If you fall… we all fall."
Then, his strength spent, he collapsed back into his bedroll, his breathing more shallow than before.
His words, spoken from the edge of death, had more impact than any of Kaelen's pleas or demonstrations of power. The group fell silent. Even Hemmet looked chastened.
They moved on, leaving the trickling stream behind. The thirst remained, a dry, aching presence in all of them. But Roric's words had forged a grim, new solidarity. They were in this, for good or ill, together.
That night, as Kaelen took his watch, he looked at his hands. They were no longer just the hands of a mason, or a Stone-Singer. They were the hands of a leader, and they felt stained not with Blight, but with the consequences of his choices. He had denied his people water. He had let a good man sicken. He was upholding his principles at the cost of their comfort, their safety, their very lives.
The weight was no longer just physical. It was the crushing, lonely burden of command. And as he listened to Roric's ragged breathing and the thirsty whimpers of the children, he wondered if an anvil could truly bear such a weight without, finally, shattering.