Kaldir
Dulrain slid the sword slowly from its scabbard and, laying the blade across his left arm, held it out toward Kaldir. "If he asks it of me, I would gladly return it," he whispered.
Kaldir hesitated. His eyes narrowed as his mind was again assaulted by a flashing montage of images and sensations, none of them clear this time. The memories overlapped each other like pictures painted on glass. The colors bled, lines bent and melted into each other, creating monsters of the ordinary, nightmares of the mundane. The clarity he had felt moments earlier receded, leaving him confused and angry. The man before him no longer seemed so familiar, the sword, tainted. They had left him to die. He should have died. Kaldir looked hard at the gleaming blade of the offered sword. Perhaps it was he himself who was tainted, rather than the sword. It should only have been parted from him in death.
For a long moment, Kaldir's eyes met Dulrain's. That Kaldir, the one who had once wielded that sword, no longer existed. Naiore had killed him. The body, the fragments that had survived, did not deserve to carry such a weapon, especially not when its only purpose would be revenge. When Naiore had been destroyed, then, maybe, his soul would be cleansed enough where he could seek out this Dulrain again and try to resurrect something of the past, but until then? Until then, Kaldir belonged to Naiore.
He shook his head. "Your friend is dead," he said softly. "Do not give such a thing to a ghost."
Dulrain opened his mouth to say something else, perhaps to protest, but Kaldir silenced him with a raised hand. "Keep it in his memory," he added and turned his horse to go, driving Gilly and Benia ahead of him.
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