Page 87

BOUND BY DUTY

SILAS

S he falls.

She just…falls.

Hovers for a moment, like a bird, like the goddess, white hair haloed around her head, eyes wide and frightened, and I swear, I swear that for a moment she sees me, that her blank eyes focus in on me and her mouth parts just slightly in horrified surprise, and then…

She falls.

“Rann!” My agonized scream rings out across the Keep.

Anyone else would think it for the horrors happening in our village, that I am calling for help from the Council, that my paralyzing fear is for my people.

But Rannoch hears it, his head jerking up from where he’s desperately helping people to their feet, shielding them from the rocks still raining from the heavens, pushing people away from the shaking walls.

He hears it and freezes, turning to me with dread on his face.

I can only point to the gaping maw that is open and undulating in front of the Council House.

“Wren…” and it’s not even a sound, just a mouthed word.

I am too far away, can’t get past the pillars and bones that block me, the duty that binds me.

Rannoch, though, is already at the edge, already peering down into the ragged abyss.

His entire body tenses, pulled ta ut like a bow, and then he looks up at me and meets my eyes with sorrow and regret beyond anything I’ve seen before.

Raising a single hand, he shrugs, half in apology, half in farewell, then, tearing a horrified noise from my throat, he steps forward and follows her.

“Father! Father!” The voices surround me, begging and pleading for help, guidance, direction, but my heart and throat were ripped from my body the second she disappeared into the pit.

“Father, please!” Their faces pulse in and out with my heartbeat, shimmering on the edges of my vision as I try to breathe through the suffocating terror and push it to the sides.

Around me is nothing but wailing and shrieking, bodies rushing by me, scraped and bloody, pulling at me, yanking at my clothing.

“Father! Please!” But I can’t speak until I hear someone close to me yelling over and over again, “Father! Where is she? Where is the BoneKeeper?”

Everything suddenly comes into sharp, painful focus.

He’s shouting, trying to get my attention.

“I saw her, for a moment she was there and then she just–” The man in front of me is panicked, beyond panicked, looking around him, eyes frantically sweeping the chaos.

He looks like he saw the Ender himself rise up from the Everfire, and I know him. Vaguely, I know him. Her friend .

“Miller?” I’m stupid, confused. “ Wren ?” My throat constricts on her name; it is impossible to make it sound like anything other than a prayer.

It’s enough to pull him from his mindlessness.

“Father?” He stiffens, raising his head, and turning to look at me with a sort of agonizing carefulness. “What did you just say?”

Even now, he’s cautious, respectful, a true son of the village in a way that I never will be.

Even with her having been swallowed by the Earth, even with mountain bursting open, he treats me as though I am a step above him.

And that is where we differ, because if I were him, and someone was standing between me and my friend with the answers trapped in his throat, I would tear them from his neck with my teeth.

Tahrik is trembling in my silence, almost vibrating, and something in him breaks free as he leans forward, eyes wide and wild. “ What. Did. You. Just. Say .”

Ah, I think. Perhaps we’re not so different after all then, and I point silently to the open pit on the far side of the keep.

“You can’t get there, though,” I mumble numbly, and he shoots me a disdainful look.

“ You can’t–” he begins, but then takes in the carnage around me, the weeping people screaming my name, the Renders and Reapers fleeing like scuttling rats fleeing to safety, not sparing a thought for the people we’re meant to be leading, and his tone changes.

“You can’t ,” he repeats, but quietly now, and with such sympathy it makes me want to scream.

He spares a second to lay a hand on my shoulder, then without another word, turns and nimbly climbs up and over the pillar, the bones, the bodies.

And though his hands are torn and bloody by the time he reaches the pit, and though his face is bruised and clothing ripped, he does make it.

For a long, long moment he stares down; his shoulders collapse, his lungs emptied of breath, and my heart seizes in my chest.

He is seeing her body, I think, her broken and battered body, with no one to Guide her home.

So when he starts climbing down, not leaping as Rannoch did, just descending over the sharp edge, hope strangles me in almost suffocating fingers.

His head hovers above the drop for long enough that I wonder what he’s doing, until I realize he’s staring at me, waiting to make sure I am watching him.

Once he is certain, he nods once, then gives me a quick, flat smile before disappearing.

It is nothing, but somehow enough.

If her feet walk anywhere on this earth, I will find her.

And Rannoch will keep her safe until I can.

I’ve learned not to trust anything in this cursed world, but I know his mind and I know his heart, and if he’s alive, then she’ll still be breathing.

If he isn’t, then the only family I have left is gone, and it all becomes meaningless anyway.

I just can’t look too deeply at what happens next.

Once I fix this. After she returns home to the village.

One thing at a time, Silas. There is no space in this moment for the next .

Straightening, feeling the weight of fifteen thousand people on my shoulders, I look around.

“Away from the walls!” I yell, voice echoing over the square, and thank the Gods they listen, lost sheep needing a shepherd.

“Go to the fields! Down the center roads on the high ground! The rain has stopped. Avoid standing water!” Barking out orders, I take control, directing the few Hunters left in the square, encouraging the wild and paralyzed people to move.

The Earth is still seething and surging, heaving beneath my feet as though it’s gasping for air, and I know we don’t have long before it will be impossible to leave.

Taking a few, frantic moments, I do everything I can to loose more boulders, freeing anyone with life left in them that I’m able to, trying desperately to avoid the rocks raining from the mountain.

It’s not enough, it will never be enough; there are still villagers screaming for help from the far sides of the square, squealing beneath stone like pigs at the slaughter, but I try, hands slippery with blood and ash, blinded by dirt and mud. I try .

And fight every instinct in my body to go back toward the Council House, to follow Rannoch and leap into the pit where my heart was eaten with a white haired girl.