(Alash Vortex POV)
I woke the next morning and nobody was sitting in the chair.
I checked. I lay still for a while first, listening, and then I turned my head and looked at the chair in the corner of the little room at the ford, and it had a folded blanket on it and nothing else. I looked at it for some time to make sure.
It stayed empty. I considered that a real improvement in my circumstances.
It was also the only one. The Hermit had gone west and taken his questions with him, but he had left the answers behind, and they were mine. Whatever we carried had moved our cores two stages and left our bodies where they were.
It still told each of us where the others stood. It had shaken his illusion at Zenith and lit gold under our feet on a ridge at the other end of the kingdom, and I knew what it was made of and almost nothing about how it worked.
And he had offered to train us.
