Geralt's Arc

Chapter 15 of 17

By the second morning at the tavern, Rain could walk without leaning on him. Geralt found her in the common room below, holding a candle. A flame stood tall between her palms, steady now. But when he asked her to shield him, she let the fire die and shook her head. "Not yet. If Malachar strikes with his full power, I can raise a wall for a breath. No more." She flexed her fingers. "Confront him now and he burns us both." Geralt sat across from her. He had spent two nights watching the door with his steel sword ready. Waiting cost them the trail. But charging the tower now would cost them their lives. "How long?" "Another day. Maybe two." Rain met his eyes. Her cold face cracked, just slightly. "I spent everything healing you. I am not sorry. But I cannot spend what I do not have." "I didn't ask you to be sorry." He pushed a bowl of stew toward her. "Eat. Rest the arm that saved mine." She almost smiled. Then a boy burst through the tavern door, breathless, and the room went still. He was the keeper's son, sent to the eastern road for grain. He blurted that the marsh had gone wrong. Black water where the path used to be. Lights in the mist. A voice on the wind that made the horses bolt. Geralt stood. "The tower runes. He's raising his power." Rain closed her eyes and listened, the way she listened for magic. Her jaw tightened. "He's not just raising it. He's building something. A ward around the tower. Every hour we wait, the wall grows thicker." She opened her eyes. "If we let him finish, no sword and no spell of mine will reach him." There it was. The choice she'd been dreading and the one he'd been avoiding. Wait, and heal, and find the tower sealed. Or go now, half-armed, into his full strength. Geralt looked at her hands. "You said one breath of a shield." "One breath." "Then that's what I plan around." He slung his cloak over his shoulders. "I don't need you to hold a wall all day. I need it once, at the right moment, while I get close enough to silence his runes. The way you silenced them before." Rain rose. The color was back in her face, but her legs trembled. "You'd stake everything on my one breath." "I staked everything on your hands twice already." He held out an arm to steady her. "They haven't failed me." She took his arm. For a moment she did not let go, and the cold left her eyes entirely. "Then we don't wait for me to be whole. We use what I have, exactly when it counts." They left the tavern before noon. Rain's power was not fully returned, and both of them knew it. But the plan no longer needed it whole. It needed one shield, one silence, one chance. They took the eastern road toward the marsh.