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“If only I was,” she says ruefully, but offers the woman no more.

Saints martyr themselves, lead their people to safety. What will this woman call her, should Dawsyn lead them to their demise instead?

Spent, she can no longer expend her magic to relieve the sick or heal even the smallest wounds. She is a stranger to this craft. An amateur. These people do not need a saint, they need a true healer, someone of far more power than what Dawsyn is capable of. Someone like Baltisse.

How it would comfort her, to be beside the mage once more. Her teacher. Her friend.

There was too much to learn and she is not half the mage that Baltisse was. It suddenly seems unbearably cruel of fate to have taken someone so strong and leave Dawsyn as consolation. A sorry substitution.

Dawsyn finds Ryon in the dark. They always sleep ahead of the group, finding spaces tucked away against the wall. He waits for her there, his eyelids falling as soon as she descends into his arms.

Dawsyn watches his chest rise and fall for a long time before she submits to the drag of her heavy eyes. He coughs every so often, just small expulsions that do not rouse him, and yet it spills a pool of dread into Dawsyn’s belly. She puts her palm to his chest.

“Ishveet,”she whispers, and feels the magic intertwine in her palm, escaping through her fingertips and into Ryon’s chest.

His breathing eases, becoming quiet and even, though Dawsyn knows it will not hold. It never does.

She drifts into unconsciousness, her mind full of a great unravelling. She can no longer picture the Chasm’s end and all it may behold. It occurs to her, not for the first time, that it might be more painless to simply lie here and let the Chasm claim…

Jarring sounds rouse her. Voices grow louder and more fervent. Then suddenly, the air explodes with a chorus of screaming, shouting.

Ryon is torn from his sleep at the same time as Dawsyn, though her own reactions seem slower, more sluggish. As he hurls himself into the middle of the Chasm, she hurries to follow behind, trying to pull her ax in front of her. She is not even aware of the direction of the noise, only that it tears through them all, glancing off the walls.

She thinks –no more. Please, no more.

They run back through the rousing mass of humans, stumbling over rocks, retracing their steps from the day before. They splash through the shallow stream to better avoid colliding with bodies and keep running down its length. Ahead of them is a brilliant glowing, though Dawsyn cannot think of its source.

They run until they are clear of the Ledge people, following the cracks and bursts of light and the screams accompany it.

Ryon stops, and Dawsyn follows suit. Before them is a raging fire.

There have been no campfires along their venture; the torches and oil have been saved for travel. There is nothing to burn here at the bottom, so it bewilders Dawsyn at first, to see tall, licking flames, and the stricken faces of a dozen people basked in its glow, staring into its centre in horror.

“Mother help him,” Ryon mutters, aghast, hastening forward.

Him?Dawsyn thinks, peering at the scene, blinking wildly until it comes into clearer focus.

A man lies ablaze on the ground. A blanket, thrown over him in an apparent attempt to smother the flames, is quickly disintegrating. Some are trying to beat the flames with their coats, scooping armfuls of dirt onto the blaze to no avail. Two men run toward the fire to throw buckets of water onto the poor soul within, but it only sizzles when it meets the flames.

“WES!” Nevrak is screaming, his hands reaching into the flames only to be hauled back by the others. He beats his hands into the earth by his sides, his breaths ragged, full of anguish. “MY SON!” he bellows. “Help him!”

But Dawsyn knows no spells to extinguish flame. She only knows of the way fire consumes. The way it destroys. It is too late to save Wes. He is nothing but blackening flesh. The smell of meat fills the Chasm, assaulting them all.

Dawsyn goes to Nevrak, who wails incessantly, staring into the pyre as though he might lay himself atop this last child. She finds nothing to say. What words could mend this?

“Gone,” Nevrak whimpers. A stream of tears running into his dirtied beard. “They’re allgone!”

And Dawsyn sees again his girls, their bodies wrapped and waiting in the snow. She knows what he feels now is the terrible, yawning understanding of utter aloneness. She lays a hand upon Nevrak’s quaking shoulder.

The fire crackles and spits as it devours, an insatiable beast.

“Who did this?” Ryon demands, the timbre of his voice not to be ignored.

At first there is no answer. Just the appalled silence of the bystanders, watching the flames lash at Wes’s flesh.

And then comes the young voice of someone to Dawsyn’s left. Someone Dawsyn hadn’t noticed. “He… he did it to himself,” the girl says. “I saw him. He – hedousedhimself in oil.”

“Abertha?” Dawsyn asks.