Page 10

Dawsyn summons every ounce of her magic, though she feels how thin the threads are, how frayed.

“Brace yourself,” Dawsyn murmurs to Tasheem, and then places her palms to the female’s battered leg.

Tasheem gasps at the contact.

“Ishveet,”Dawsyn intones, directing the cold and the warmth in her palms, showing it the path to Tasheem. She feels it radiate outward, searingly bright, seeking a destination. Something broken to mend.

Tasheem bites out a curse, but it soon turns to a groan of relief. The back of her head hits the earth, her body slackening.

Still, it isn’t enough. Dawsyn feels the magic retreating before it can complete its work.

“Thank you,” Tasheem says, smiling tiredly at her. She seems to breathe a little easier.

“I fear it did not do much at all,” Dawsyn says.

“Well, I no longer wish to tear the fucking thing off, so you’ve at least spared me the dismemberment.”

“Can you fly?”

But Tasheem shakes her head. “Not well,” she says. “Not while I’m weakened.”

“Riv?” Dawsyn asks. “What of you?”

Yennes’ hands leave the male’s shoulder, and he rotates it experimentally, his eyes scrunched in determination. “I might try to, if you wish, prishmyr.”

But Rivdan’s voice still hitches with the force of his pain as he moves his arm, and Dawsyn cannot ask it of him. Not yet. She shakes her head. “Find your rest,” she says to them. “And heal. Lame Glacians are no help to me at all.”

Tasheem smirks as she closes her eyes. “I was going to say the same of lame mages.”

Rivdan chuckles, lying back.

Yennes and Dawsyn make their way through the rest, calling for those injured to make themselves known. A surprising amount have already fallen to sleep without eating. Ryon, Salem and Esra can be heard passing out rations of food in the dark. Perhaps Tasheem was right, and they were already conflicted with hunger before arriving in the Chasm. It worries Dawsyn that they should be spent so quickly, so early into the journey. What will become of them if this trek were to last another week? Or will they all be thwarted before fatigue sets in?

Dawsyn tries to heal twisted ankles and shallow gashes among them, but many are still left only mildly relieved from their pains. “How did you run through the Chasm, that first time?” Dawsyn asks Yennes, baffled. “How could you see?”

She feels Yennes shudder delicately beside her. “I could not see,” she says. “But I could hear them.”

Dawsyn frowns. “Hear who?”

“Have you not been listening? Do you not hear it?”

She means to say “no.” She means to say, “I hear nothing”’ But curling into her ears are the unrecognisable whispers, the taunts, singing to her once more.

We dealers call…’til you heed the fall… Strangled pleas and sweet release… Lie where sorrow dares not be… Cease your breath…

Cease your breath.

Amid our walls.

Inside our breast.

“One must run,” Yennes says now, her voice breaking the illusion of others. “When being chased.”

With that, Yennes leaves Dawsyn in the darkness, taking her torch with her. Moments later, the light is snuffed.

Dawsyn makes her way toward the sound of the stream, stopping when the toe of her boot splashes into the shallow water. Everything creeps up on her here, never quite as close, or far, as she judges. She cups her hands to the brook, letting them slowly fill, then brings them to her lips. The water is gritty with sediment, and as she swallows, Dawsyn thinks she detects something metallic, but it is better than nothing.

She finds her way back to a wall she can slide down, finally. She sighs as her backside finds the ground and lifts her chin to an approximation of the sky, but now sees nothing at all. Night has fallen on the surface.