Princess Willowyn's Arc

Chapter 46 of 70

The rider reined in before Willowyn and dropped from his horse. He knelt in the wet mud, white flag still in his fist. Behind him, the far bank stirred. A second rider crossed the cleared road under a matching white flag. Both kings had seen her drain the flood. Both wanted the elven girl who mended what water broke. Willowyn steadied herself on Kai's arm. "They come in peace," she said. "But not with each other. With me." The two riders stopped short of one another. Neither king had come himself. Each had sent a voice. The first man spoke fast. "My king thanks you. He says the other broke the river to drown our grain and starve our people. Name your price and he will end them." The second rider shouted him down. "Lies. His king cut the bank upstream. We buried three hundred men and my king's own son." "Enough," Willowyn said. Her voice was quiet, but both men stilled. "Each of you lost a son. Each of you blames the other. I have no proof of either." She looked at the swollen river. "But the water does." Kai frowned. "What do you mean?" "A cut bank leaves a wound," she said. "A natural flood does not. If a man broke the river, the earth will show where." She turned to the riders. "Take me upstream. Both of you. Together." They rode along the river's edge, kings' men on either side of her griffin. Willowyn walked the bank on foot, reading the ground the way Aela had taught her long ago. She found no spade marks. No fresh dug channel. She found instead a fallen ridge of loose stone where the old bank had simply given way under too much rain. "Here," she said. She knelt and pressed her palm to the slumped earth. "No man did this. The rains did. The bank was weak and it broke on its own." She raised a thin thread of water from the river and let it trace the slide, showing both men how the stones had rolled. "Your sons died in a war neither king started. The river started it." The first rider stared at the broken bank. The second lowered his flag. For a long moment neither spoke. Then the first man said, "My king will hear this. From your mouth, not mine. He will not doubt the water-witch who cleared the road." "Then bring me to both kings," Willowyn said. "At the same table. I will tell them what the river told me." The riders looked at each other across their horses. The second gave a slow nod. "One table," he said. "You have proof. That we did not have." Willowyn rose. Kai stood beside her, quiet with pride. She had come to share a road and found a truth instead. Two kings who blamed each other would now sit in one tent. The war had a cause at last, and it was no one's fault but the rain's.