by Megan Bannen
Tavik looks down, first at me, then to the ground. I know he’s judging the distance, and I know it’s too far for him, Two-Swords or not. He looks back up at DeRopa. “Then don’t let it end like this.”
“I made my choice when I was your age, and I know you’d make the same choice if you’d just stop and think.”
“You chose death,” Tavik spits, and he makes a break for it, climbing down as fast as he can.
DeRopa saws at the rope.
“Please,” I beg the Father and Mother and all the saints, but the rope snaps well before Tavik can jump down safely. The remaining rope swings wide as it takes his full weight. His feet hit the tower wall, running along the brickwork, gaining momentum. He pushes off and swings himself back onto the top of the tower just as DeRopa cuts the second rope, and the ladder falls at my feet, as useless as I am.
The Two-Swords face each other on the wall, blades out, and my heart screams in my chest.
“Impressive,” DeRopa says, his mouth the only thing about him that moves.
“You underestimated me.” Tavik coils tighter. “Again.”
“I’m going to sheathe my swords. I just want you to listen to me. Can you give me that?”
Whether Tavik moves or speaks I can’t tell from my vantage point twenty-five feet below. DeRopa slowly sheathes his swords anyway and holds up his hands, just as Tavik did with me in the Dyers’ workroom, a sign of good faith. The danger isn’t over, but I breathe in relief.
The captain chooses his words slowly, carefully. “I was like you once: ignorant of the world, full of sanctimony, blindly serving a religion that died hundreds of years ago. And for what? How many Kantari lives have been wasted because our country won’t give up the ghost?”
“You’ve never looked into the Mother’s eyes. You’ve never seen Her light.”
“Don’t fall for that! She only shows you what you want to believe. Imagine what good you could do in the world if you would only see reason. You’ve got so much talent, Tavik, so much potential. Don’t waste yourself on this.”
“You didn’t think I had talent or potential when you sent me on a suicide mission.”
“That’s not true. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Good Father, do you have any idea how proud I am of you?”
Tavik lets loose a bitter laugh. “I’m sure that will be a great comfort to me when you try to send me to the underworld. Now bring out your blades, because I’m not going to kill you unless your swords are in your hands, you backstabbing traitor.”
Part of me wants to kiss him for those words, but the other part of me wants to kill him myself for choosing to fight this man, who could more easily take his life than any Knight of the Order ever could.
DeRopa reaches behind his back to draw his swords. “So be it,” he says darkly.
They fight at a pace that’s hard to track, their movements so swift they become blurs, two smudges of men, fighting to the death. I have to keep shifting position, tripping over tree roots and fallen branches in a desperate attempt to follow along, all the while praying to any god who will listen to keep Tavik safe.
The fight slows as it drags on, making it easier to track. Tavik launches himself off the wall to hack downward with the Sword of Wrath, while DeRopa leaps, blocking the blow with such force that Tavik goes careening through the air and flies clear of the wall. He sheathes a sword, catches the iron hook of a crossbow support, and swings himself back around, kicking DeRopa full in the chest and sending him slamming into the tower wall. By the time DeRopa recovers, Tavik has both swords in his hands once more.
Watching is unbearable, but I can’t look away until, once again, there’s movement to the left. I stare in disbelief as the Goodson takes a running start across the east side of the bridge and jumps toward the west.
And he makes it.
The blood in my veins turns to ice. A memory bubbles to the surface, the image of him killing a telleg, bending and stretching and fighting in ways no normal man could.
My friend placed the seedpod in my hand, and it opened.
I just watched Goodson Anskar sail through the air like a Two-Swords.
Because he is a Two-Swords.
And now Tavik stands between him and DeRopa, the Sword of Wrath pointed at his captain, the Sword of Mercy—the Hand of the Father—trained on the Goodson. As they close in on him, he goes on the defensive, his blades moving in two different arcs, deflecting first one attack and then another. The Goodson swings his new sword at Tavik’s belly, but Tavik sinks to one knee, and the blade rings through the air over his head as he lunges at DeRopa with the Sword of Wrath. The captain slides backward, but I think Tavik nicked him, because he’s able to maneuver into the opening and get the tower’s wall against his back.
For a breath, I think this gives him an advantage, until Brother Miklos, drenched in his own blood, climbs up Tavik’s left side, brandishing a dagger just like the one he threw into Zofia’s heart. Tavik jerks away, but not before the dying knight rams the blade into Tavik’s back, just behind his shoulder.
I can feel his cry of agony in my bones as the Hand of the Father drops from his grasp and clatters to the ground in front of Goodson Anskar, who snatches it up. I cry out, a guttural sound without words, but it’s drowned by Brother Miklos’s last scream as Tavik buries the Sword of Wrath into the man’s chest. He pulls the blade free and turns to face the Goodson, standing crookedly, his left shoulder leaning toward the earth. He’s going to kill himself trying to get that stupid sword.
“Tavik! Get out of there!” I scream up at him. The Goodson peers over the wall, but I don’t return his gaze. I’m not here for him.
“Tavik!” I shout again, though I know he has nowhere to go and no way to get down to me.
Before either man can act, he sheathes his one remaining sword and staggers to the bridge. His assailants give chase, and DeRopa reaches him first, lashing out with one of his blades. Tavik rolls on the ground, heading straight for the gap. He clambers down the ragged slope cut into the bridge by the bomb, but he slips about ten feet above the water, barely catching himself on a brick with his right hand. I can’t look away as he dangles over the Fev River below. Then his hand slips, and he drops like a rock.
I throw my head back and howl from my soul at the Father in heaven.
And I feel it, that same tug I felt when the Goodson placed the seedpod in my hand.
The air explodes with a sound that is both a cracking and a screech as the Fev’s current turns to ice directly beneath Tavik, who lands on its surface with a dull thud. The ice slowly stretches out beneath him, forming an island around his body.
Elath pulses inside me, but Her fire could never turn water into ice. The song I feel now is coming from outside myself, not from within. I have no idea what’s happening or why or how, and I could not possibly care less as long as Tavik moves.
“Get up, Tavik!”
He lifts his head and turns his bloodied face toward my voice. Then he heaves himself onto his hands and knees and begins to crawl toward me.
The ice grows, taking over more and more of the river—ten yards, fifteen yards, twenty yards.
Tavik gets to his feet and limps toward me as DeRopa lands on the ice behind him.
“Come on!”
He starts to trot, close enough now that I can see how his face twists with pain and determination, as the slippery solidity beneath his feet gets closer and closer to me.
DeRopa slides, unsteady on his feet, but he keeps moving, getting closer and closer to Tavik, as the Goodson climbs down onto the ice, too.
“Cover your ears!” I shout, but Tavik, knowing what I’m about to do, shakes his head and propels himself forward, gritting his teeth. I can’t help him if he won’t let me.
The ice has nearly reached the shore, and I back up to take a running lead so I can leap onto the ice with him.
“Stay there!” he cries, his voice pierced with a pain that’s nearly as unendurable for me to hea
r as it is for him to feel.
DeRopa is only five yards behind him, but Tavik is still ten yards from shore as the ice finally meets the eastern bank. I slide onto the ice and reach out. “Come on!”
“Get back!”
“You can make it!”
He reaches out with his right hand, and I grab hold of him just as DeRopa thrusts one of his swords at Tavik. I yank back for all I’m worth. Tavik loses his footing and slides into the shoreline, leaving me face-to-face with a livid, panting DeRopa. He sneers at me with a hatred so profound I lose my breath.
The ice groans. Tavik wraps his arm around my waist and throws both of us to shore as the ice pops and splits beneath DeRopa’s feet. The man doesn’t even have time to register surprise or terror before the frigid waters of the Fev swallow him whole.
The frozen river continues to break into heaving shards like broken glass. From his position halfway between the bridge and the shore, the Goodson meets my gaze, his face stark with fear, before he goes scrabbling back across the ice the way he came. He skids into the rubble of the bridge’s support and jumps as high as any Two-Swords to grab the same brick Tavik caught on the way down just before the ice breaks apart beneath him. He pulls himself up the jagged brickwork, collapsing when he makes it to the top. I watch the whole thing with a sick heart, worried for this man I should hate but don’t.
Tavik sits on his heels, breathing hard, and I drop to my knees beside him. He touches my face with his right hand as he cradles his left arm to his stomach. “Are you all right?” he breathes, stroking my cheek with his thumb, examining me.
“Am I all right?” I repeat, my voice shrill. “I’m not the one who was stabbed!”
His fingers are freezing against my skin as he keeps studying my face, bewildered. “Your nose isn’t bleeding.”
“It wasn’t me. Or Her. The ice didn’t come from inside me.”
We both turn our eyes to the river as it sends huge chunks of ice hurtling south.
“Father of death,” Tavik utters.
“Literally,” I whisper.
I prayed to the Father.
And, for once, I got an answer.
Forty-Two
Autumn shrouds the Dead Forest, lingering on the cusp of winter, never sleeping, never waking, always dying. But it’s not the bare trees or the chilly bite of the air that makes me uneasy. It’s the feeling that we’ve stepped out of reality into a world without time or care. There’s a heartlessness here that freezes me to the bone more than any winter wind could.
Tavik shivers in front of the small, smoking fire I’ve managed to light, staring into the thin tendrils of flames as he pokes at it with a rotted tree branch. Dark smudges curve beneath his eyes, and his lips are chapped and ashy. He looks half dead, and that has me so worried I can barely hold myself together.
“We’re screwed,” he says.
“Don’t talk like that.” I don’t know the meaning of the word screwed. I just know it’s bad, very bad.
He unclasps his coat with his right hand as I kneel behind him and pull back the layers of clothing beneath to get a look at his wound.
“‘Only the Vessel and the Sword may set Her free,’” he quotes. “Hey, you know what we don’t have?”
“Let’s just—”
“The telleg-licking Sword. Because I lost it. To the Goodson. I had it, and I lost it.” He slams the heel of his boot into the branch, breaking it in half. The violence of the movement must make his shoulder wound hurt, because he grunts in pain before he draws his knees up and sets his forehead on top of them in defeat.
“One thing at a time,” I tell him, the words that have become our mantra. “Right now, we need to focus on getting through the Dead Forest.”
“Yeah. Need the Sword for that.” His face is still hidden by his knees, his voice muffled.
“You have a sword.”
“I have a sword, not the Sword.”
By now, I’m staring at the raw puncture at the back of his left shoulder. There’s blood everywhere, and the wound is still seeping. I put a hand over my mouth so I won’t gasp out loud.
“How bad is it?” he asks, his voice throaty with pain.
Tears spring to my eyes, but I keep my voice steady as I dig through my pack for a bandage. “I’m sure it could be worse.”
“Oh, good. I should live long enough to get myself ripped apart by a telleg.”
I hold the bandage in my hand, but the world blurs as the angry red wound gapes at me. The forest around us goes translucent, transforming into a different time and place. I stand at the edge of a well.
I’m sorry! a child’s voice calls to me from the dark water below. Please!
“Gelya?” Tavik sounds equally far away, as if I were suspended inside the well shaft with Tavik above and the child below.
Raran! Barri! His brothers’ names echo up the shaft.
My spirit drifts into the well while my body stays beside Tavik. A will that is not mine takes my hand and covers the wound with my palm. Light flares inside me, a flash of lightning across a cloud, a firefly caught in a jar.
I fall, plunging toward the child at the bottom of the well, bringing the light with me, blinding, breaking apart the darkness. Then I slam back into a world of sight and sound and freezing air as if I fell from a great height.
“What just happened?” Tavik’s voice is a thunderclap in my ears. He cranes his neck, tugging frantically at his clothes to stare at the smooth skin where his wound used to be.
“What did you do?” he demands, but I can’t answer him, because my body goes boneless, and I slump onto the forest floor.
“Gelya!”
Tavik’s distraught face hovers above me. His hands are warm once more, cupping my cheeks with a tenderness that makes me happier than I have any right to be at the moment. I can’t move or speak, and blood is streaming out of my nose yet again, and Tavik is out of his mind with worry for me, and we are in the Dead Forest—the Dead Forest, for the love of the Father—and all I can think about is how much I love Tavik and how glad I am that he’s still alive and how badly I want to kiss that infuriating, glorious, beautiful face of his, even though I have no idea how to kiss anyone.
“Blink twice if you can hear me,” he says.
I can do that. I blink twice, and he’s so relieved he keels over on top of me, pressing his forehead to mine. I must be truly unhinged to find this romantic, but at this point, I’ll take my joy wherever I can get it.
I love Tavik.
I sing the Sanctus words in my mind—I love Tavik—and the Mother’s life billows through me, not a lid to be ripped off but a buoy to cling to. I press against Her anyway, burying Her as deep as I can within me. She doesn’t get any part of this. This belongs to me.
The first thing I do when my body returns to me is laugh.
Tavik is not amused. “You think this is funny?” he says as he helps me sit up.
How am I supposed to answer that? A Daughter of the Convent of Saint Vinnica and a Vessel of the One True God fell in love with you on the floor of the Dead Forest, and it’s hilarious, because who on earth does that? It only makes me cackle harder.
He takes me by the shoulders and forces me to look into his eyes. Good Father, how I love those eyes.
“We had an agreement: You need to keep that lid pressed down.”
“Or what? How could it get any worse?” My laughter transforms into something else, bordering on hysteria. I hold out both hands now, looking first to one and then the other, wondering what else they will do without my consent, terrified by the possibility that I’m losing control of them. Of me. “She’s taking me body and soul, and I don’t know where She ends and I begin anymore.”
“Look at me.”
But I can’t tear my eyes from my hands. “Get Her out of me! I want Her out!”
The lid vibrates, clanking against the metaphorical pot.
“Look at me!” Tavik holds my face in his callused hands. “You are Gelya. You are you, an
d no one, not even Elath, can make you something other than you are. All right? So for the love of the Mother, don’t let it happen again.”
“For the love of the Mother? We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for your precious Mother.” Resentment fills my mouth like blood pooling from a bitten tongue. Fury boils inside me, feeding Elath, who devours it like a baby at her mother’s breast. “Look around you, Tavik. Is this the reward for your faith? Or for mine? Elath, the Father—they don’t care about us. We are their instruments. That’s all. We owe them nothing.”
“You shouldn’t say that.” His words ooze not with love of the divine but with fear. Well, I may fear the telleg, but I am not afraid of gods anymore. My anger expands, feeds me, refills the marrow the Mother keeps sucking from my bones.
“Why not? Why should I worship something that cares so little for me, or for you? It’s their loss, Tavik. They don’t deserve you.”
I skate right up to the edge of a feeling too big to speak aloud. Tavik doesn’t answer right away. His hands are still on my face, and his thumbs brush my cheeks before he speaks again. “I’m not going to argue this with you. Just promise you’ll try to keep that power contained, because it’s not worth the price you’re paying for it. If I get hurt again, you let my own body heal me.”
Even now, Elath expands within me, as if She wants to crack my ribs and break through my skin. “I’ll try,” I tell him weakly.
“No. You promise me.” His hands are warm and firm, and I remember the dream when I ran my fingers along the planes of the familiar face just inches from my own. The words I want to say to him are ready, heavy on my tongue.
Water of my thirst
Blood of my body
Instead, I tell him what he wants to hear: “I promise.”
I wish we could stay like this, his hands pressed to my cheeks, his skin against my skin, as if simply touching each other could erase gods and monsters and leave us this one, tangible thing in the world. But we’re still too close to the Great Wall of Saint Balzos, and I have no doubt the Goodson will follow us as soon as he’s able.
“We should move,” I say even as I lean my face into his left hand, wishing I could melt into him.