Page 147

A pause, one that draws out. “It is,” Dawsyn answers. “Go on.”

“I’d imagined my own Selection many times. I thought about the talons that would dig into my shoulders, and I reasoned away the likelihood of pain. I’d once cracked my cheekbone on the ice and split it open. Misha Lochmore had once jammed a pick through my foot when I tried to steal her cabbage harvest. Talons couldn’t be worse than that. Being devoured would be, if nothing else, quick; at least, that is how I comforted myself.” Yennes shrugs awkwardly.

“At the start of the season, my father took ill and was confined to his bed. He tried to rise to his place before our family but collapsed instead. Lung sickness already had hold of him, and I couldn’t bear to bring him outside. It had already taken my mother. I stood outside the cabin, at the head of my family for the very first time, and gritted my teeth. I reassured myself that it wouldn’t be me. I wouldn’t be taken. And then I was.

“It was… unimaginably painful, the journey over the Chasm. And when it was over, they didn’t even have the decency to kill us. They chained us, beat us, imprisoned us, and made us wait. If there is something worse than slaughter, it is waiting for its arrival.”

Ryon feels sick at her words. He remembers all the people, lying cold and broken on the floor of the Glacian dungeons.

“But death did not come. That King – Vasteel. He said his piece. I am sure you don’t need me to reiterate. We saw those ghost people. The ones who were selected and reduced to their shells. I resolved myself to become the same.” Yennes pauses. Her eyes turn filmy and far away. Some internal battle wages within. Something haunting.

“You went into the pool?” Dawsyn asks when it seems Yennes may not speak again.

Yennes blinks. Twists her hands. “I did. It… spoke to me. As I’m sure it did you both. It was difficult to ignore. Despite it, my wits somehow held. I listened to the pool’s magic, warning me not to breathe. And I breathed anyway. As I said, I was more oppositional back then.

“When they fished me from the pool, my soul was intact. I was filled with foreign iskra, that sentient substance of the pool. I made my stare as dead as those poor fools who had been pulled out before me. I was taken to the Chasm, led right to its edge, and my… my arrogance left me. I shook. Frost coated my hands. I whimpered like a child.” Yennes shakes her head as she remembers. Clenching her hands together to stay their incessant turning. “It was a Glacian who saved me,” she says, looking to Ryon. Their eyes hold for a moment, before she looks away, as though the memory is one she’d rather not revisit. “I still don’t know why he did it.”

“A Glacian?” Ryon asks, taken aback. “Who?”

“I do not know the name.”

“And this Glacian, he flew you to the bottom of the Chasm?” Dawsyn asks. “He told you to find its end?”

Yennes nods slowly, her teeth grinding. “Only two paths. Both are filled,” she mutters, spoken with her tongue but with the echo of someone else’s. Her sight is elsewhere again. Ryon wonders if she meant to utter the words at all. It seems the woman is often in conversation with herself.

“Two paths?” Dawsyn repeats, her voice slipping into thought.

But Ryon has already put it together. He can see the ends of those paths, the opportunity in them. “The one that leads to Terrsaw,” he says. “And the one that leads away.”

Dawsyn gasps. Frost begins to creep over her fingers.

“You took the path that led you back to Terrsaw,” Ryon says. “To this cove. But had you walked in the other direction…?”

“I do not know what I would have found,” Yennes says gently, apologetically.

“Ryon,” Dawsyn says. “Did any Glacian ever speak of it? What lies on the other side of the mountain?”

But Ryon is already shaking his head, his mind keeping pace with hers. “The mixed could not leave the Colony, malishka.”

“But the Chasm must end somewhere,” Dawsyn answers. “It must lead to a place on the other side.”

“Or, it could just end,” Yennes offers. “I’m sorry, Dawsyn. I cannot promise another side. I do not know if one exists.”

“Someone must know,” Dawsyn presses. “A species of winged creatures surely can’t exist withoutoneof them exploring the other side of this fucking mountain.”

“Dyavnon,” Ryon says, the name slipping free without his consent.

Dawsyn turns to him. Waits. “Dyavnon?” she repeats. “What does it mean?”

Ryon shrugs. “It’s a Glacian myth. I hadn’t remembered before now. You said you don’t believe Glacians would have neglected to explore the other side of this mountain, but they had a reason to avoid it.” At the look of painful impatience on Dawsyn’s face he gives her a stiff grin, holds up his hands. “I could explain, but I’ll let Rivdan tell you instead.”

“Why Rivdan?” Dawsyn asks.

Ryon’s grin widens as he goes for the door. “In Glacia, Rivdan went by two names,” he says. “Rivdan and the Storyteller.”

CHAPTERFIFTY-SIX

Dawsyn stands as Ryon leads Rivdan into the cabin, the latter with arms laden with cut wood. He nods to Yennes. “For you, miss,” he says, and adds it to her existing pile beside the hearth.