CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Merk jabbed his staff into the moist forest floor, poking leaves beneath his feet, hiking as he had been for days back through Whitewood, and determined to stop at nothing this time until he reached the Tower of Ur. As he walked, he closed his eyes and, try as he did, he could not stop seeing that scene of grief flashing through his mind, the girl, her family, her weeping…. Her final words still rang in his ears. He hated himself for returning for her—and he hated himself for leaving.
Merk did not understand what was happening to him; all his life he had been unsusceptible to guilt, to rebuke, to anyone else’s problems. He had always been his own man, on his own island, his own mission. He had always made it a point to keep himself at arm’s length from the world, not t
