Fate of the Drowned (The Broken Lands Book 3)

by Carrie Summers

  He struggled to rise for a moment, failed, and then laughed.

  “I never saw that,” he said. “It seems we’ve finally advanced beyond the predictions of the Bracer of Sight.”

  My father rose from the hard earth. He rubbed his shoulder and bent and straightened his elbow. With a twist of his head to clear stiffness from his neck, he bent down and retrieved his sword. He stalked over and placed the tip of his blade against Parveld’s throat.

  “Let’s say you kill me and manage to seal the rift,” Parveld said. “What then?”

  “We rebuild our homes,” my father said. He looked to me for the command. Should he kill the man?

  Parveld struggled feebly against my restraints. Now that he and his powers were confined, I inspected him. The poor man. His cheeks were hollow, his clothing filthy. Madness shone in his eyes.

  I sighed. “Just keep him under guard.”

  Assured that he was no threat, I stretched my aura wide, searching for more power. It hurt to spread myself so thin, like my skin was stretched over far too many bones. But with the strength of my family nearby, I went farther than I’d ever managed. At the very edge of my awareness, I skimmed the auras of a few, intrepid Guralaner families who lived and farmed on the coast of the Maelstrom. But the distances were too great. I couldn’t gather their energy.

  I hesitated before I asked the question. No matter that she’d admitted the truth and apologized for her actions, I still wasn’t certain I trusted Lilik. But I didn’t see a better option.

  Lilik, I said, can you help me like you did in Jaliss?

  Tides, it’s so hard to see him like this, Lilik said. Sorrow radiated from the bracelet, but rather than penetrating my spirit, it washed over me and away. I held too much light for her grief to ruin my aura-manipulation. But still, my heart ached for her. And for Parveld.

  I know. I’m sorry. If we close the rift… Do you think there’s a chance we can bring the real Parveld back?

  A faint trickle of hope bled from the bracelet, and within a heartbeat, it became a flood. Yes! It might work!

  Lilik’s energy burst from the bracelet, swelled inside my aura, and stretched my sight farther. I wrapped my awareness around the Guralaner farmers. They were scared, living in shanties, wondering how long it would be until the Riftspawn returned. Despair tinged their spirits. I probed deeper, searching for the hidden hopes they feared to acknowledge. Down inside, mothers still wished for their children to grow up beside the sea. Fathers glanced at their huddled families and marveled at their bravery. Love bound the groups together, and I gathered it to me.

  My father twisted the tip of his sword but didn’t allow it to bite into Parveld’s throat. “I trust you, Savra, though I admit it’s difficult to show restraint.”

  Mercy. It was one of the many qualities that raised us above the Hunger. When the blade touched the man and didn’t taste blood, my power surged higher. I pressed more energy against the thinning in the barrier.

  Parveld laughed, a low and tortured sound. “There’s something you haven’t considered. What do you think holds back the sea, Savra?”

  I glanced at Nevyn. The woman had been nodding as I worked over the rift. Her eyes were closed, and she offered no answer.

  “It’s the Hunger, of course,” Parveld said. “When the rift tore wide, it swallowed part of the sea. The ancient people stopped the process. Now we have stasis. If you seal out the Hunger’s influence, though, the world returns to normal.”

  I glanced at the slopes of seawater that climbed up and up to reach the level of the thrashing waves. All of it would come crashing in.

  “Is that true, Nevyn?” I asked.

  The woman shrugged. “My magic brought me here to face the gash between worlds. The sea was already gone.”

  Avill stalked over and stared down at Parveld. Her lip curled in disgust. “This guy is the big evil mage? He doesn’t look very scary. Anyway, I have a knack for carrying people out of trouble. If you dispel the corruption, I’ll be able to use it again.”

  My mother laughed quietly. “He can’t stop you with magic or force, Savra, so he’s trying to defeat you with words. Regardless of what happens, Avill is right. She can whisk us away.”

  Reassured, I bowed my head and closed my eyes. My concentration narrowed. My spirit and the energy of those who joined with me were all that mattered. Even if death came, we would light the halls of the dead with our love and laughter. I gathered more power and massaged it over the breach.

  “Yes,” Nevyn whispered. “It’s working. But we need more.”

  More… I already felt stretched to breaking. “Azar,” I said, “you sensed what I did with Avill. Can you lend me strength?”

  “I can try.” The ferro mage hurried over. She pressed a hand against my shoulder, her touch so light she might have been a bird. Closing her eyes, she exhaled slowly. “I don’t…wait…” she said before trailing off. In defiance of her words, a wave of cool energy flowed into my spirit and boosted my awareness further. My aura reached all the way to Bellows. The despair in the town ran deep. Deeper than in the coastal families. But at the far edge of the city, a strange mass of shimmering light crept through the streets. The glow spread from the north, and the area it had already consumed stretched up and away, beyond the limits of my awareness.

  Tides, it’s amazing, Lilik said. Savra, you did this.

  What… what is it?

  It’s the spirit of the Empire. You didn’t have time to speak to the citizens of Bellows, but in the settlements further north, your words spawned hope. This is the shape of it, and it’s spreading.

  Focusing every trace of my ability on reaching that curtain of light, I extended just a thread of my spirit. When I brushed against the mass, my aura buzzed with potential. Joy flooded every corner of my awareness.

  “I killed Kostan, you know,” Parveld said.

  His words sliced me like a cold steel blade. Abruptly, I was cartwheeling through emotions, lost.

  “Don’t listen to him, Savra,” Azar whispered. “You were almost there.”

  My aura’s tumble slowed and stopped. I struggled to find an anchor, a rope to climb free of the aching darkness in my heart.

  “I really did,” Parveld said. “He was brave. He defended the final Heartstone with his life. But I slipped the dagger between his ribs and watched his life fade.”

  Memories of Kostan flew through my thoughts. I saw him laughing, agonizing over decisions, working side by side with the Provs. He couldn’t be gone.

  Listen to me, Savra, Lilik snapped. Whether it’s true or not, your work here is the only thing that matters. The last piece of defiance in the world.

  I gritted my teeth. Only the rift mattered. Sorrow could follow. I tried to refocus on the bounds of my aura, but my control was slippery. My sudden grief had coated my mind with oil. I wasn’t meant to mix such sadness with the overwhelming courage of the Empire’s people. Still, I lurched forward, reaching clumsily for Bellows and that shimmering wall.

  I glimpsed it. But when I tried to brush against it, nothing happened.

  Nevyn glanced up. “It hurts to lose someone,” she said quietly as she ran her eyes over my family. “She needs to know you’re here.”

  First Mother then Avill stood and approached, sidestepping carefully around the void. After a long hesitation, my father jerked his blade from Parveld’s throat and trotted to join us. Arms wrapped me from behind. We were together, no matter what.

  It was enough. Filled with the love of those around me, my spirit surged forward and plunged into the lake of shimmering hope. I cried out as I spread my hands wide and let the energy flow over the breach. Nevyn leaned in to help me guide it.

  “Good. Almost there.” She glanced at my family. “Best to get back now. Just in case.”

  The others moved away as the barrier between worlds thickened. Our physical realm closed over the void. The wrongness faded, warm air replacing the unclean s
himmer. With a final snap no louder than a spark of static, the rift was gone.

  “Oh rotting tides!” Parveld’s hoarse cry echoed over the barren land as the corruption fled and the madness abandoned him. “I never wanted… How could I?”

  The banishment rolled outward. Azar gasped, and I knew the tainted magic had left her rings.

  “Avill! Hurry!” I called, waving her forward. “Everyone huddle tight.”

  The cluster of people condensed around me. Azar grabbed Parveld on her way forward, dragging the grieving man. Avill sprinted across the dirt and collided with the group, slapping her hand over her pendant and screwing her eyes shut.

  Nothing happened.

  “Avill?”

  “It’s not working! It’s… dead.”

  Oh, storms. Of course.

  The Wind’s Gift was a Maelstrom-relic. Its magic had come from the void, and now it was gone.

  I swallowed as the sea roared to life. The wave sluiced forward, a wall of death.

  “I don’t Want this!” Parveld cried. “I Want to fix it.”

  Abruptly, my chest ached. My lungs and heart were being yanked from my throat. The ground beneath us glowed bright white.

  A thunderclap. Sea, sky, and earth vanished.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Lilik

  Heartstone chamber

  LILIK PRESSED HER spirit against the hard-edged confines of the bracelet. Every wrinkle and divot in the metal was carved in her mind, as familiar as the touch of Raav’s spirit, but so brutally unbending. Her prison resisted her in uncaring solidity. Forever.

  “Let me hold you,” Raav said.

  Lilik didn’t answer. Instead, she threw herself at the walls again. And again. And again, until finally, her spirit was bruised and aching and she sank into a twist of the metal. Her husband settled in beside her, wrapping an ethereal arm around her shoulders.

  “Savra needs us now,” he said.

  “I know. It’s just… Parveld didn’t come. Why? Why did he send the others? We won, but he chose to sacrifice himself to the sea.”

  “Guilt, I imagine. He never could forgive himself for causing harm. Or maybe there wasn’t enough power in his weaving. He sent only those he could.”

  The woman, Nevyn, hadn’t arrived either. Maybe Raav’s theory was right. “Either way… there’s really no hope now, is there? We’re trapped.”

  “We have each other. We can be happy here.” Raav’s voice hummed through her spirit. “Like I said, though, Savra needs us.”

  Lilik cast her perception outward again, gathering from the woman’s senses. Savra and her family had appeared in a wide chamber carved from stone. Warm, damp air flowed into Savra’s nostrils. Beneath her feet, shards of red agate crunched as she ran toward the center of a shattered Heartstone to Kostan’s body. Dark blood covered the man’s chest, surrounding a dagger that jutted from his armor.

  Time flowed differently in the bracelet when compared to the world of the living. Moments stretched out when Lilik’s and Raav’s emotions were high and compressed into a snapshot when the pair drifted in quiet companionship. Just a few heartbeats had passed since Savra’s family had appeared in the chamber, arriving in another ear-shattering thunderclap. In the first instants, Lilik had watched through Savra’s eyes. At the edges of the chamber, soldiers had stood with blades raised, staring in horror and shock. Other bodies lay bleeding and dead on the floor, torn apart as if by Riftspawn. But there’d been no sight of the monsters. Had they vanished when the rift closed?

  Savra had whirled, taking in the chamber before her eyes arrowed to Kostan’s lifeless form.

  Now, as Savra fell to her knees beside her beloved’s body, Lilik packed away her grief. Raav was right. She couldn’t change her destiny, but she could help Savra now.

  Kostan’s cheeks were still warm beneath Savra’s hands. Tears splattered on the blood-stained leather of his armor as she leaned over him and sobbed. At the edges of the room, cries of grief rose to the stone ceiling. The soldiers and citizens had loved their Emperor, and now he was gone.

  Savra’s spirit was a bottomless well of sorrow. Fortifying herself with Raav’s closeness, Lilik extended sympathy and comfort across her shadowbond with the woman. It was like trying to warm a northern ocean by pouring water from a teakettle.

  “Kostan,” Savra cried, voice cracking. She wrapped her hand around the dagger’s hilt and yanked. Blood oozed from the slash in the armor, and the woman sobbed harder.

  She leaned down and pressed a kiss to his still lips, tears spilling over his face. Her chin trembled. Loss filled her body, aching so fiercely that Lilik had to soften the connection to endure it. The chamber seemed too small to hold such anguish. A city’s worth of rooms would have overflowed with her grief.

  As Savra sat up, her sister shuffled up from behind. Avill crouched down and wrapped thin arms around Savra’s body. They sat in bereaved silence until a low hum vibrated the air.

  The sound grew louder for a breath, and then Parveld’s voice rose from nothingness, echoing off the walls.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t fix everything, no matter how badly I Want it. But I can fix this.”

  As soldiers shouted in shock, raising their weapons against the phantom voice, white glow bloomed over Kostan’s chest. Brighter and brighter until even Savra had to look away. The moment endured, and then Kostan drew a rattly breath.

  Epilogue

  Kostan

  Bellows, Guralan Province

  THE CANDLES WAVERED in the swirl of air that entered the room when Savra opened the wood-plank door and slipped into our chambers. I set aside the stack of ledgers Vaness had forced on me and stared at her. Flame-colored hair wreathed a face still puzzling over some intricacy of magic she’d been investigating. One of her eyebrows lowered while she sucked on the inside corner of her mouth.

  “If it isn’t the Empress of Atal,” I said.

  She pulled herself from her thoughts and rolled her eyes. “I wish everyone would stop calling me that.”

  “Then perhaps I should have said, ‘If it isn’t my beautiful wife.’”

  A smile touched her lips and warmed me from the inside out. She tugged a strand of hair and pulled up a seat at the table. In the hearth, a massive log smoldered, sap hissing and perfuming the air. Freshly-stripped of their bark, the logs that formed the walls of our makeshift palace added to the cozy scent. I suspected we’d grow tired of the smells of woodsmoke and sap soon enough. Once we’d weathered the remaining months of Chilltide and the long, seven hundred days of Deepwinter, we might reconsider the choice to move the Empire’s capital to Bellows. But for now, the location provided timber for rebuilding and warmth, and it erased the notion that old Atal was the seat of power. Guralan’s largest settlement stood almost dead-center in the Empire. By governing from here, we shortened distances for communication and supply lines.

  Not to mention, without the wind, it was much warmer than the frosty grasslands and mountains of the north.

  “You look like you’re having fun,” Savra commented with a smirk and a gesture toward my stack of papers.

  I groaned and flopped a hand onto the table. “Sometimes I wish Vaness weren’t so diligent. I have reports on bridge building and fishery output and missives from the emissaries sent to the Wildsends. Oh, and a very detailed ledger listing each and every citizen arrived from the north.”

  “Will we have space for them?” Savra asked.

  I sighed. “I hope so. We’re working hard to establish the shelters. Vaness believes that just over half of the survivors will come south. The others think their stores will last until Warmingtide.”

  A wrinkle of concern formed between her eyebrows. “I hope they’re right.”

  “You don’t think it’s a sign of resistance, do you?”

  She slipped her fingers into my hand and squeezed. Savra knew I didn’t care to maintain central control. The Breaking was over, and the Hunger had been
banished. No dark visions demanded that I hold the Empire together. But the earthquakes and war had destroyed much of our food, obliterated our roads, toppled more than half the homes. With the advancing season, my advisers insisted I should remain in place. Apparently, thanks to a letter Savra had written about me and distributed among the settlements, the Provs now believed in my leadership.

  “I regret to inform you that you’re as popular as ever,” she said with a smirk.

  I glanced again at the papers. “I hope I can live up to their faith in me.”

  “Says the man who fought thousands of monsters single-handedly.”

  “Only to die and be rescued by the kiss of a woman who achieved something that a thousand mages couldn’t. “

  “I told you, it wasn’t the kiss that—

  “I know, it was Parveld’s last dawnweaving. But would you rather come back to life to the sound of a strange old man’s voice or the kiss of the woman you loved?”

  “I suppose I’ll leave you to your fantasies,” she said.

  “Speaking of strange ancient people who came from the past to save us…” I glanced at her bracelet.

  She laid a protective hand on it. “I worked more with Hoareld and Azar today. I think we’re getting close.”

  When Savra had finally sealed the rift, the power had drained from the Maelstrom-metals. The former ferro mages had now become a simple group of scholars and sages. But even without magic, they recalled their former capabilities. Before giving the black-iron objects over to be reforged as blades, the senior ferro mages had removed their previous enchantments from the objects. Those enchantments had been powered by binding the spirits of the dead to the black iron. The process was similar enough to the magic that tied Lilik and Raav to the bracelet that Savra believed she could unlock the secret of freeing them. Apparently, even Parveld believed she could succeed—after a few months of silence, he’d finally stopped avoiding her when she entered the halls of the dead to speak with him.