Blade Kin by David Farland Page B

across space, across any distance, and he would never dare to violate her trust.
    But he wasn’t a Pwi. He was an emotional cripple, half-blind to kwea. If Tull were a legless beggar sitting outside the inn, his injuries could not have been more horrifying.
    She turned, ran out the back door and stood in the full sun, there under the redwoods, wondering what to do, almost choking on despair.
    The air seemed cold with the afternoon chill, and Fava sat on a chopping log and stared down at the cream-colored chips of alder by the woodpile. She could see no way to make Tull understand what she felt for him. She’d always known that his human ancestry made him different, made him somehow difficult to communicate with, but she’d always hoped he would overcome it. Now Fava saw the truth: Tull could never love her as deeply as if he were a Pwi. They would always have a chasm separating them.
    Tull came out and stood behind her, his shadow making a cool spot on her back. Fava cried uncontrollably for a while, and Tull did not try to touch her. The kwea of love seemed to radiate from him, as if his warm fingers stroked her hair, played down her shoulders.
    “I love you,” Tull whispered.
    Fava remembered something her father once said when she was a child. “Humans must explain their emotions so much, because they feel so little.” Her father had said it as a joke, but now Fava saw the bitter truth hidden beneath the words. Words. They seemed such an inadequate vehicle.
    Fava wiped the tears from her eyes, and realized that Tull could not read her. If he was ever to understand her love for him, she would have to speak it, instead of relying on him to read her emotions. “I know that you love me, and I know you are different from me.”
    Tull came and stood behind her, wrapped his arms around her. She took his big hands and just held them.
    “If you hunt for happiness in the future, like some human, then you will need my father’s training. I wish you peace like a meadow, joy above the mountains.”
    ***

Chapter 12: Balance Lessons
    Tull slept throughout the day, while the Pwi guarded the town in an effort to keep the mayor from escaping. Chaa did not come home until late afternoon, and by then his eyes were red, with dark circles beneath.
    After a quick dinner, Tull went to Chaa’s spirit room and asked, “As a Spirit Walker, can you use your power to find the mayor?”
    Chaa was sitting cross-legged on the mat on the floor. He looked up. “I could try, but it is hard,” Chaa answered. “If he wants to remain hidden, his spirit will make itself invisible to me.”
    “Do you know where he is now? Have you seen where he would hide during one of your Spirit Walks.”
    Chaa hesitated. “No,” he said. “His spirit is dark. On my Spirit Walks, I avoid touching the souls of corrupted men, as you must. Long ago Terrazin Dragontamer showed us the folly of that path.”
    “So you have never walked Garamon’s future?”
    “No.”
    “Then how shall I find him?”
    “Look inside yourself. Perhaps you already know part of the answer,” Chaa said. “Last night you began to open your spirit eyes, and you saw a slaver of the Blade Kin. He may be the answer. If you find him, you will find the mayor nearby.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I am not certain,” Chaa said, “But you touched the Land of Shapes, and there you saw something from the future. Your spirit eyes knew that you would be hunting Garamon soon, and so it showed you something.”
    “It showed me the answer to a problem before I knew of the problem?”
    “I believe so,” Chaa said.
    “I know where I saw him,” Tull said. “He was on the hill above my cabin.”
    “Yet, do you know when he will be there?” Chaa asked. He became silent a moment, and hung his shoulders as if tired. Through the smoke hole in the roof, Tull could hear some children laughing on the street outside.
    Among the Pwi, if a man seemed too eager to purchase something, the Pwi had the