The Price of Power
力の代償
Three days later, the travellers were on a mountain path.
Behind them, the grey emptiness had swallowed the road they had climbed.
Ahead, a deep and rocky blocked their only way forward.
Cade searched for a path, but every route had already disappeared.
Night was falling, and the cold mist was creeping steadily closer.
"We cannot cross this," Mira said, staring into the black .
Finn understood that ordinary ink would be far too slow to help.
With trembling hands, he opened the bottle of forbidden black ink.
"Do not do it," Cade warned, but Finn had already decided.
He quickly drew a stone across the empty .
As his pen lifted, a solid appeared over the dark drop.
The three companions ran across it just before the mist arrived.
On the far side, Finn suddenly stopped and looked deeply .
"Who are you two?" he asked, staring at his own friends.
For a moment, he had forgotten the faces of his companions.
Slowly, painfully, some of his memory returned to his tired mind.
But one thing had vanished and would not come back at all.
Mira told him gently that he had forgotten his mother's face.
They told him what he had lost, and Finn began to .
He could remember her voice, but her face was now an empty space.
"This is the ," he whispered, "that the ink demands each time."
Cade placed a heavy hand upon the young mapmaker's shaking shoulder.
"You saved our lives, and we will not forget that," he said quietly.
But Finn feared how much of himself the next map would take.