Page 27

Two Years Ago

Daeros—Tenebris

I don’t believe in miracles, but I’m not sure how else Saga and I make it out of Tenebris undetected.

We can’t take my usual route through the vents.

Saga tells me through gritted teeth that her foot is broken—but even if it weren’t, I don’t think she could have managed the climb.

But there are no guards outside the doors to the great hall, and we meet no one as we creep slowly through the dark corridors.

We stop at a forgotten laundry, where I’ve been stockpiling supplies for years in preparation for my escape.

I planned it all carefully, slowly gathering things a little at a time so nothing would be missed.

I shrug into one of the two thick winter coats I stole and hand Saga the other, which she buttons with shaking fingers.

She’s in no state to carry anything, so I take both bulging packs, wearing one on my chest and one on my back.

I try not to think about why I have two sets of everything and fail miserably: I was going to convince Ballast to escape with me; I had plotted out every last detail. But then he went and left without me and I stayed, waiting for my moment. I didn’t imagine it like this.

Now, in the forgotten laundry, I break off the end of a broom and give Saga the handle to use as a crutch. I don’t like how much she’s sweating, or how much her wound is leaking through the rag tied tight around her ankle, but there’s no time to examine it right now.

“Let’s go,” I tell her.

She nods, her eyes glassy.

One more dark corridor, with a wooden door at the end of it, and we come out at the base of Tenebris, a few yards away from a sheer drop into the Sea of Bones.

Over our heads, stars peer through swiftly gathering clouds, and far, far north toward Aerona, I catch a glimmer of green, dancing and shifting in its strange quiet song.

“We’re on the wrong side,” Saga realizes as she hobbles forward, leaning heavily on the broomstick. “Skaanda’s that way.” She waves her free hand, pointing west past the mountain.

My eyes flick west, then east. Were it not for the Sea of Bones and the scant starlight, I don’t think either of us would have known where we’d emerged. “We must have taken a wrong turn in the dark,” I say.

Saga curses, shuddering in the frigid wind.

Over our heads, the clouds knit tight together, wholly obscuring the stars.

Darkness blankets us like a shroud, and it begins to snow, thick and wet.

“What do we do? We can’t go back into Tenebris, and we sure as hell aren’t going to try our luck with the Iljaria. ”

“No.” I set my jaw, digging in the pack for an Iljaria light globe that I stole once from the king’s council chamber, just to see if I could.

It pulses a pale, warm yellow, its magic warm and purring in my hand, and it casts a small glow, just enough to see a few steps into the darkness. “We’ll have to go around.”

Saga shields her eyes as she peers west again, toward the front gates and the watching guards. I know exactly what she’s thinking—we’ll never make it.

But we have to try, trusting that the dark and the snow will hide us.

There’s no other choice. We duck our heads into the wind and start west. I hold the light close to my chest, enough for us to see a few inches in front of us, but hopefully not for the guards to spot us from the gates.

Saga hisses in pain with every agonizingly slow step, the broomstick digging a furrow in the snow beside her.

The gates are both too far and too near, and already I feel the dark magic of the Black God’s gargoyles writhing through me.

Nausea churns in my gut, and it feels as if all the air squeezes out of my lungs.

I shift the second pack to my chest to join the first. “Get on my back,” I tell Saga. “I’ll carry you.”

She doesn’t protest, just climbs on as I kneel down, arms wrapped tight around my shoulders. She’s staggeringly heavier than I anticipated, and I nearly face-plant in the snow. But I find my balance and creep forward.

The snow falls thicker, faster; the cold has teeth. The gates loom close, and the gargoyles’ eyes flare red. I gasp at the pain of it, fire in my veins. And then a shout from the human guards—we’ve been seen!

I can’t run with Saga on my back. I let her slide off and we both crawl, bellies in the snow, fear and dark magic raging through me.

There comes the whine of an arrow over our heads, and the feathered shaft quivers in the ground a hairbreadth from my hand.

Saga curses as she crawls, as more arrows wing over us, gleaming and deadly in the halo of our light.

I shove the light into my pack and we crawl on blindly, fingers digging into the freezing ground.

Pain slices through me as an arrow grazes my shoulder, and I bite down hard on my lip to keep from crying out.

We crawl, crawl. Pain and magic gnaw at me. I try not to imagine the guards lurking behind us in the dark, swords drawn and ready.

But the arrows cease, and the gargoyles’ magic fades, and the pain in my shoulder diminishes to a dull ache.

“Are you all right, Saga?” I whisper.

She doesn’t answer, just squeezes my ankle.

We crawl on and on, numb in the dark and the snow, until at last I dare to pull out the light again. I look back—we’re not as far from the gates as I would like, but there doesn’t seem to be any pursuit. There might be, though, when the storm stops. We have to keep moving.

I pull Saga to her feet, trying not to see how gray she looks, sweat pouring from her brow, lips pinched together.

“We’ll shelter against the mountain,” I tell her. “We just have to go a little further first.”

She nods; we both know it won’t be enough. We need to get out of the cold, and Saga needs medicine—Saga needs a physician.

But we can’t stop here. Not yet, not yet.

I have her lean on me and we stagger forward, the mountain on our right, the wind spitting snow in our faces.

Saga’s breathing is quick and shallow, and her foot leaks dark liquid onto the frozen ground. I make her get up on my back again, but that just slows our progress. The light wavers in her hand. I’m terrified she’ll pass out.

“Brynja,” she says, her voice a mere thread of sound in the storm. “We should pray.”

“The gods can’t help us out here,” I say tightly.

Saga laughs a little. “Have you lost all your faith? The gods saw us safely this far. They won’t abandon us now.” And she prays in a singsong voice, her words somehow bright against the darkness. I cling to her prayers without meaning to and find comfort in them.

The bulk of Tenebris melds into the massive mountain range that marches steadily west, nearly all the way to Skaanda.

The stories say that inside the mountains twist labyrinthine tunnels, carved by the Iljaria centuries ago.

But the Iljaria abandoned the tunnels long before they fled to the east, and the entrances are lost, or hidden.

Still, I keep the mountain on my right, dragging my hand across the stone, searching fruitlessly for a way in. The stone is rough and cuts my fingers, blood trickling down. I’m so cold I don’t feel the pain.

Saga has stopped her praying, and I shake her a little. “Tell me about him,” I say.

“Who?” she whispers.

“Hilf.”

She makes a choked sound and nearly drops the light.

I stumble on, searching desperately for any crack in the stone large enough for us to shelter in for a while, out of the bulk of the storm.

“He was my bodyguard,” she says at last, trembling against me. “It was my double, Njala, who they killed in the skirmish last year. Everyone thought she was me.”

Hence the reports of Saga’s death.

“Hilf was taken prisoner, along with a handful of us. It was my singing voice that saved me. I—I thought it would be better to live, to have a chance to get home again. But I didn’t know that—that—”

“That the king would lock you in a cage like an animal.”

She gnaws on her lip, visibly getting hold of herself. “Why don’t you use his name, Brynja? He’s not—he’s not some faceless king. He’s a murderer, our sadistic, cruel captor. He’s Kallias, and you should name him. Not show him deference. Not give him that power over you.”

“Names have power,” I say quietly, sick to my core.

“Yes. And you should take his away.”

I ponder this as I struggle onward, still scrabbling to find some scar in the mountain. My head is starting to wheel, and the cold numbs every part of me. “Hilf was more than your bodyguard,” I say.

Saga chokes back a sob. “We were in love. We were going to find a way to be together. I would have given everything for him, but instead I was forced to watch as—”

“I know.” I blink and see blood on the marble, hear her feral cries.

She doesn’t say anything more.

I trudge on in silence, exhaustion stealing through me, spots sparking before my eyes.

And then against all hope, my right hand falls away into emptiness. “Saga. The light!”

She hands it to me, and I raise it high.

There’s a rift in the stone, crowded with snow and dead scrub.

I ease Saga from my back and dig as fast as I can, dirt grinding into the cuts on my hands.

I dig until the crack is wide enough for both of us to squeeze through.

I go first, with Saga, gasping in pain, following after.

We come into a small cavern, shadows stretching long in the light of the Iljaria globe.

Saga slumps on the floor while I build a fire with the brush I dug from the crevice.

Flames roar to life, heat coiling through the cave.

Saga crawls near, and I wrap her in blankets, make her drink a little water, eat a little of the food from our packs.

She’s sweating so much , and I eye her foot uneasily, fresh blood seeping onto the stone.

I grit my teeth and finally examine her wound, cutting off the messy makeshift bandage. Bone shows white through her skin, and the oozing blood and yellow pus scream of infection.

Black lines crawl behind my eyes, and I fight the urge to be sick.

But I force myself to dig medical supplies from the packs, wash the wound as best as I can, and smother it with a bottle of foul-smelling ointment I filched from the infirmary.

Then I splint her foot with a piece of branch and bandage it with strips of clean cloth.

I can’t do anything about the infection, about the fever that’s beginning to rage behind Saga’s eyes.

“What are we going to do?” Saga says, tears dripping down her cheeks.

I shake my head. “Wait out the storm.” I don’t say what I really mean: Wait and see if your wound heals, or if the infection kills you.

My eyes rove about the little cave, and I’m startled to glimpse markings on the back wall: snatches of Iljaria writing, the colors still vibrant, though half the words have rubbed away with time. I jerk up, heart pounding, and go to examine the writing.

“Brynja?” says Saga from her place by the fire.

I brush my fingers over the words, feeling the echo of their power.

That’s when I see the outline of a door cut into the stone.

For a moment I just stare, reassessing my doubts about divine intervention.

There’s a carving in the center of the doorway, a medallion of twisted flowers and vines, painted a vivid green.

“Brynja?” Saga repeats.

But I only have eyes for the medallion. I put my palm against it. I press.

The door slides into the wall.