Light and Shadows

Lost Souls

Several months after the imprisonment of Denathrius and "Taking the Tremaculum"

"Is it... wise... to continue traversing the Jailer's Tower like this?" Renathal asked, working hard to keep his voice even.

"I don't know that it's ever wise to enter Torghast, no," the Maw Walker replied, dropping heavily onto the dark velvet chaise in his room and letting her head flop back. "But it cannot be helped. So many souls still remain there."

Little rivulets of water slipped down the side of the chaise and dripped onto the stone floor from the Maw Walker's still-wet hair. She must have lacked the energy - or magic - to dry it, Renathal surmised, and his agitation deepened.

"Do you not think," he said with careful calm, "the amount of time you spend there might be considered excessive?"

"I assure you, I am not there a second longer than absolutely necessary."

Renathal drummed his fingers moodily against the table separating them.

"And is it always absolutely necessary for you to be the one to do these missions?"

"Yes."

The word was clipped. Another sign of the toll Torghast took on the Maw Walker. She was never so short with Renathal as when she came back from long hours in the Maw. And it frayed holes in Renathal's already dangerously worn patience. He inhaled raggedly through his nose, trying to quell his rising temper, but it only made his nostrils flare and his face look more pinched.

"So, you consider it your responsibility, then, to single-handedly rescue every soul in the Maw? Or just every soul in the Jailer's Tower?"

Renathal's sarcasm had a bitter edge to it that caught the Maw Walker's attention. She lifted her head to eye him steadily.

"You had no complaints when it you I was rescuing. Or your friends. Should I have left the Curator and Tenaval and Dehavia in Torghast because they weren't my responsibility?"

Renathal stood abruptly, the wooden legs of his chair scraping harshly against the stone floor. The Maw Walker flinched and pressed fingers to her temple, and part of Renathal felt guilty for forcing an argument on her when she was so clearly drained. But the swirl of mingled anxiety and thwarted longing building in him for weeks now was pulsing for some sort of release.

With Denathrius imprisoned and Revendreth in recovery, the Maw Walker was spending less and less time with Renathal and more and more time in the Maw: days-long assignments in the newly found Korthia, and almost every free moment on soul-searching expeditions in Torghast. It would be petty, Renathal grudgingly acknowledged, to pick a fight about the amount of time the saviour of the Shadowlands had to spare for him, but an argument about her well-being, which she was also obviously neglecting, felt reasonable.

Renathal walked the length of the table, then around to the other side slowly, taking his time, weighing his words before he spoke.

"You know, not every soul requires rescuing from the Maw. There are many souls that deserve to be there. Souls sentenced there before the drought."

"I don't think anybody deserves to be there."

The Maw Walker's tone was quietly belligerent, and the friction rubbed a spark of anger to life in Renathal.

"And what of the souls I myself sent there? You think my judgment was wrong?" The growl in his voice made the Maw Walker sit up. "You think, perhaps, there was more I might have done to save them? More centuries, eons, I could have spent with each unrepentant soul that I did not? I assure you it was never a decision made lightly. If a soul was sent there, it was because there was no other choice. They deserved to be there."