by Rachel Dunne
Joros closed the drawer of seekstones and stared out the small window. Beyond the warped glass, the moon was rising through the sky, the closest thing to daylight there was anymore. Joros drew his shortsword and laid it across the top of the desk, turning the blade to catch the moonlight. It was sharp and hungry, ready to fight, ready for war . . . he just had no idea which direction to swing it.
With a sigh, Joros went to lie on the bed, leaving the sword bare on the desk. That was the good thing about always-night: there was never a bad time to sleep. And there was little enough else to do.
Chapter Seventeen
It was a morbid kind of funny, Anddyr thought, the way all their individual madnesses seemed to synchronize, as though mania followed moontides. No, that wasn’t quite right—it was more like yawning, an innocuous little thing caught and passed around. One would start screaming, or singing to a child none of the rest of them could see, or weaving a spell to combat an assailant that didn’t exist. And once one of them had begun, it wouldn’t be long until another began muttering and scratching at invisible bugs beneath their skin, and then another would start clawing desperately at the stone floor. Once it had begun, it was only a matter of time before they were all trapped together, alone in whatever unique shape their madnesses took that day.
Anddyr sat in the space he’d carved for himself, his own private circle pressed against the cellar wall and the barrier keeping the mages contained—sat there, and tugged with both hands at his hair, just hard enough to keep himself focused. Four of the others were deep inside their madnesses, and Anddyr was using every tool he possessed to keep from joining them. His tools, though, were woefully few and manifestly inadequate.
He pressed his face against the barrier, staring out into the cellar beyond, trying to distract himself by watching the shapes moving beyond his reach. Usually it was a shape, singular—a very singular shape—but there were bodies now, plural, all massed halfway between the barrier and the ladder leading up from the cellar.
There would be the usual planned chaos going on above, and so the pack had sent down their pups, all the children too young or foolish to be useful. If the rest of the pack was killed, well, at least the children would survive longer by whatever number of minutes it took the pack killers to find the cellar door. It was a charmingly optimistic pessimism.
The first few times, the children had been hushed with fear and excitement, practically cowering. They stood as far as they could from the specters lurking at either end of the cellar: the mages taking up breath and space at one end, the shadow of treachery chained at the other. That was how they saw Rora, anyway. It felt like a long time since they’d been like that. Now the children were fearless and foolish, returning to whispers only when one of the older pups wisely hushed them. They were never forced into the cellar for long, but even a minute can feel like an age to a child, and these ones particularly were easily bored. They spent their time breaking things, throwing things, playing blind man’s wager, and—most frustratingly—pressing against the barrier of solid air and pulling faces at the mages.
That was their newest game, and they seemed tickled by how their silly faces could drive a mage into fits, if the mage was in the wrong state of mind. Anddyr had considered throwing fire at them the next time, to teach them a lesson—they’d be perfectly safe beyond the barrier, and it might put enough fear in them to leave the mages alone. He knew he wouldn’t, though.
They were playing a betting game, now, using chips of wood as coins. At least three of them were cheating, and that was only obvious enough for Anddyr to notice it; more likely they were all cheating, but some were better at hiding it than others.
And as Anddyr watched them, the children’s legs sank down like roots into the cellar floor, and they began to sprout mushrooms from their shoulders and backs.
Anddyr groaned, pulled harder at his hair. It cleared the mushrooms from some of the pups, but not all, not all. “My name is Anddyr,” he whispered to himself, “and I am a prisoner, and I am in a cellar.” A chant to ground himself, to keep his mind where it was meant to be. That had been Travin’s idea—the first mage who had been tossed through the barrier into Anddyr’s end of the cellar. Anddyr had been clawing his way steadily toward recovery—or as much recovery as he could ever hope for—and holding on to his sanity with a tight-fingered grip. He’d been able to maintain that grip even in the face of Travin’s deterioration, enough so that he could nurse Travin through the painful process of freeing himself from his skura addiction. Now Travin was showing immense improvement: his stretches of sanity were nearly as long as Anddyr’s, his hallucinations more mild, his whole demeanor calmer.
But each new mage stretched them thinner, and wore away at their tightly held grip on sanity. Anddyr would try any madcap idea to keep his sanity, and Travin’s chant worked well enough. Most times.
“My name is Anddyr,” he said again, flinching as one of the children turned entirely into a mushroom that stared at him with accusing eyes. “I’m a prisoner. I’m . . .”
The cellar door above swung open, and the mushroom-children scattered like spores, flying up the ladder to freedom. Anddyr breathed out a half-sigh, half-sob noise of relief, resting his forehead against the cool of the barrier, closing his aching eyes.
When he opened them, four new bodies had come down the ladder. They’d gotten another mage, another prisoner of the pack, another new tool for whatever precarious plan the cappo had planted in their brains. Anddyr growled. It was always hardest when a new mage joined their group. Within the madness they all shared, routine and regularity were more than simple comforts—they were vital to staying sane, and sanity was very close to life. A new addition threw off every routine, forced the ailing mages to adapt. The coming days would be unpleasant indeed, and Anddyr was not—
He noticed, then, the three people leading the new mage forward. He watched them come closer, and he tried so desperately to hold on to the knowledge that their names were Aro and Skit and Badden, because his eyes were telling him that they were all Etarro, and each iteration of the boy was weeping blood where his eyes had once been.
Anddyr groaned and pawed at his face, trying to shake the double vision loose. “I am in the cellar,” he told himself. “I am a prisoner. I am Anddyr, and I am trapped beneath the pressing earth . . .” When he looked up, his vision had mercifully cleared: Skit and Badden stood a handful of paces back, thick arms crossed over ale-barrel chests, glowering at the multitude of smells wreathing their faces. And the new mage stood before the barrier, young, likely not very long out of the Academy, and wasn’t that her poor luck to end up twice a prisoner in so short a time. If she ever had grandchildren to tell—she wouldn’t, though, none of the Fallen-touched mages ever would—maybe that would be enough time and distance for her to laugh about her misfortune.
And holding the new mage gently by the arm was Etarro, weeping blood.
“I’m sorry,” Anddyr moaned, “I’m so sorry.” He thumped his head against the wall, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to make white spots dance before his eyes. Etarro was staring at him in that eyeless way, mouth curved into a sad and unforgiving frown. “I was supposed to be stronger. I should have chosen you.”
Etarro reached out to press his hand against the barrier, looking away from Anddyr. He stood there, motionless, holding to the mage with one hand and the barrier with the other, and the blood coursed down his face. He swayed where he stood.
“Falcon?” Skit took a step forward, gently touched Etarro’s shoulder. “I mean, Aro? You okay?” Birds fluttered about Skit’s shoulders, roosted in his hair, plucked at the ties of his shirt like they were worms, and the birds screeched, No, no, no.
Etarro straightened with a jerk, fingers curling to claws, then smoothing again. “I’m fine,” he said, and his voice was deeper than Anddyr had ever heard it before, gruff with age and exhaustion, and that was Anddyr’s fault, he’d done that to the boy. “I’m fine.” He took his hand from the barri
er to wave Skit away, then pressed his palm flat once more and rested his forehead on the barrier beside it. His eyes closed, but the blood didn’t stop. Skit took a few steps back, frown tight across his face, the birds huffing annoyance, as Etarro began muttering spell-words, his fingers against the barrier tracing sigils. His shoulders were hunched, and the hand that held the mage’s arm held hard enough it would leave bruises, and Etarro still swayed in an unseen wind though most of his weight was leaned against the barrier.
The air frizzled, like a hundred simultaneous electric shocks, just the wrong side of pain to make Anddyr cry out. And Etarro stumbled forward, two jerking steps before he caught his balance, as the barrier that had been supporting him vanished.
As the barrier that had been containing Anddyr disappeared.
Anddyr stared openmouthed, and Etarro stared back, and the boy’s empty bleeding eyes begged, Help me.
Redemption flared through Anddyr like wildfire. He’d been consumed by regret since that day in the Plains when he’d sentenced Etarro to oblivion, had been wallowing in self-flagellation, wondering if he’d made the right choice, and tormented by the growing notion that he hadn’t. And here, finally, was what he hadn’t dared to hope for: a second chance. He could save Etarro this time.
Anddyr lunged forward and threw an arm around Etarro’s waist, lifted the boy over one shoulder, and began to run. That was what he intended to do, at least. But Anddyr had been in the cellar for long weeks, years, aeons—he was weak, and newborn-calf clumsy. He stumbled heavily into Etarro, bore them both down to the ground screeching like cats, and Anddyr’s forehead bounced against damp stone. He reeled back and up, tasting blood but desperate to keep moving, to not waste the chance he had been given, to not—
When he looked down, Etarro had faded away into smoke, and in his place sprawled Aro.
There was another surge of redemption, and flaring alongside it was raw fury. “I chose you,” Anddyr screamed, and his fists fell like a hailstorm, beating and battering, and Aro bucked beneath him but could not escape. “You’ve wasted the chance you were given.” Anddyr chanted low, words of power, words of destruction, and between strikes his fingers traced sigils upon the air. Aro’s hands raised, but only to guard his face, not to cast any spell—he didn’t have the instinct. “You don’t deserve to be here.” There were shouts and pounding feet—irrelevant. They could not reach him. “I shouldn’t have chosen you.” There was a spell he had sworn he would never cast again, one that had destroyed a town and all the lives in it. His fingers wove the structure and scripture of that spell. “You must learn.” This was a second chance, but Anddyr could not undo the choice he had made. He could only seek retribution for that choice. He could destroy the fruits of his choice, and all that it had touched. “You must learn.” The air grew warm, burning hot, and—
“Anddyr! Stop.”
He almost toppled backward. Much of it was the ready-to-burst spell leaking away, exploding out and quickly retracting, jolting through his arms and chest and leaving his hair crackling. But it was also that she had spoken to him, directly to him, for the first time in a very long time.
Hang-jawed again, he stared at Rora where she knelt in her corner, stretched to the limit of the chain at her wrist. She stared back, horror in her eyes. But she didn’t look away. Anddyr reached a hand out toward her, and that was when Skit tackled him.
Anddyr screamed into the floor of the cellar as both shoulders were wrenched so hard he was sure they would pop from their sockets. He could hear Skit yelling for Aro to get the barrier back up, could hear Badden threatening death to the other mages, could hear the mages all wailing in confusion, could hear Aro coughing blood between the muttered words of a spell. Anddyr lay perfectly still as Skit continued to twist his arms, keeping his fingers from moving though Anddyr wasn’t trying to move them. All the fight had gone out of him along with the spell. He’d failed, again.
The barrier rose once more, sealing off the end of the cellar, sealing off the six mages who huddled behind its subjective safety. Skit pushed Anddyr through to join them, and he collapsed into his usual spot, pressing his face to the corner made by the barrier and the wall. He cradled his arms against his stomach, his shoulders aching.
Badden was half dragging Aro to the ladder, muttering, “What in all the fecking hells happened?”
And Aro’s soft wail of a reply: “I—only for a second, I only lost it for a second . . .”
“You have to learn,” Anddyr shouted to his back. And then he added a whispered, “I’m sorry,” because when Aro turned to face him one last time, he was Etarro again, and the blood pooled from his eyes. “I couldn’t help you . . .”
The cellar door slammed shut with a resounding, final sort of noise. Intermittent sobbing broke out through the mages, particularly the new one, who Anddyr would hazard was having a rather horrible day altogether. Travin had taken it upon himself to dole out soothing words and pats. Anddyr left him to it. Sat there, nursing his varied wounds.
From Rora’s corner came a mutter so low Anddyr was likely the only one who heard it: “Fecking witches.”
Chapter Eighteen
It must have been cold. Scal could see his breath frosting in the air. Thousands of little crystals forming and dancing and disappearing. At his side was Vatri, shivering. Chattering teeth loud in the still air. Gloved hands scraping against rough wool as she chafed her arms.
It must have been cold, but the cold did not touch Scal. He stood among the trees, and his hands were still at his sides. Waiting, patient. If his heart or his soul was uneasy, it did not show in the scar-marked stretch of his face, still as cut stone.
He heard footfalls, on the road that wound between the trees. They were expected. Six travelers, and they would not pass unnoticed through this wood. The forest was Scal’s, and he knew every breath that stirred its air, every arm that brushed its hanging branches, every foot that marred the lingering snow. They had been seen, and they had been marked.
Hands hanging still at his sides, Scal stepped from the trees. The moon made silver lines of the scars that scored his bare arms. His sword lived over his shoulder, its hilt reaching for the moon, but he did not draw it. He walked to the center of the road, and he turned to face the travelers. They had stopped, and though most of their faces had no eyes, he knew they saw him still. “You will leave this place,” Scal said. He would give them the chance, but only the one. “You are not welcome here.” He had argued long for it. They deserved the chance to leave. Everyone deserved one chance.
They never took it.
“Stand aside,” said the one man with eyes, pulling his sword free. He walked toward Scal, the sword held across his body, and there was a fight gleaming in his eyes. “We’ll not be commanded by anyone but the Twins themselves.”
Scal had given them their chance, and so the time for talking was done. There was only one way to end now. All that was left was the blood.
Scal raised his hand to his shoulder and drew his sword. His right hand, and so when the sword came free of its scabbard, it trailed fire along the line of the blade. Bright and burning, and he saw the fear in the other swordsman’s eyes. Too late. Scal had given him his chance, and there would not be another.
Feet steady upon the ground. Not fast. He did not need speed. There was fear in the swordsman’s eyes but he would not run. There was a way a man held himself, to show he would not run. Steady steps forward. Scal, closing the distance between them, the fire-sword lighting the air, lighting the fear in the swordsman’s eyes. Scal swung his sword and their blades met, and again, and again, and a feint put the fire into the soft unarmored place beneath the swordsman’s arm. The blade bit deep, but the fire bit deeper. For a moment the man’s eyes showed pain. Regret. And then the light left them, and he slid heavily off the blade and to the ground.
It seemed a painless enough thing, as deaths went.
The preachers reacted in different ways. One screamed, fell to his knees, howling. One tu
rned and ran. One solemnly drew a dagger shorter than Scal’s hand. The other two simply stared with the puckered skin over their eyes, shocked or sad or scared. It was hard to tell, without the eyes.
Scal stepped forward again, toward the preachers. From the trees came an arrow, chasing after the running priest. It missed, but the second did not. Scal’s sword, trailing flame, took off the dagger-holding arm. Twisted back to take that preacher’s head. A step to the right and one of the silent staring preachers fell to the biting flame. The other staring one backed away, hands raised, mouth making useless movements. Scal stalked after him, and put the sword into his heart.
And then there was only the howling man. On his hands and knees, he had crawled to the swordsman’s side. Clutched his shoulder, empty sockets weeping. Scal walked to him slowly, steady as a falling storm, and he passed the sword to his left hand. The flames died. Ice in their place, shards of it along the fullers, crystals on the edge of the blade. Darkness fell, in the absence of flame, but the half-moon watched like a disapproving eye.
Scal set the ice-blade against the side of the man’s neck, breath-light. His sobs changed, but he did not lift his head where it was bent over the swordsman. It was a small thing, but brave.
They came from the trees. Yellow-wrapped Vatri, straight-backed and head high. A slim woman with a longbow as tall as she was, and a face sharp as an arrowhead. A young man wrapped heavy in armor that shone in the moonlight, his dark hair braided so that its tip brushed against the backs of his knees. Together they came to Scal and the preacher, and as they walked Deslan drew an arrow from the quiver at her back. Set it to the string, but did not draw it. Waited, patient, muscles ready.