Page 37

Two Years Ago

The Iljaria Tunnels

Ballast leads the way, torch in his left hand and sword in his right. Saga hobbles along after him, by degrees silent and cursing, and I bring up the rear, casting frequent, fearful glances behind us. The passageway reeks of the shadow monsters, tangled with a faint musk of bear.

No one speaks as we go; the silence is unbearable.

I am on constant alert for the sound of wings and claws and tense at every slight noise, imagined or otherwise.

Every time I glance at Ballast, the torchlight tracing him in shifting shadows, my heart seizes.

I never thought I would see him again. Yet he’s here, a savior unlooked for, lighting our way through the dark.

He’s grown taller and broader since he left Tenebris. I wonder what he’s found to eat down here that sticks to his bones more than the rich food at his father’s table. Or maybe it’s simply that he eats now, when he didn’t before.

We come to a tunnel that’s wider than most, painted with murals in the Iljaria’s trademark vivid colors. I study the murals as we pass.

There’s the Violet God, tall and thin, his skin dark, his white hair cropped short around his ears.

He wears purple robes and holds an orb of light in his hands.

I tell myself his story: Once, the Violet God could manipulate time, change it according to his whims. But the other gods grew angry at the disorder of things.

They killed the woman he loved to punish him, and hid her soul where the Violet God could not find her.

So he withdrew from the world, secluding himself on a high mountain, lonely and sorrowing until eternity’s end.

And so time marches on as it was meant to.

I’ve always been drawn to the Violet God. His story is sad and hopeless and unfair. I can relate.

The Gray and Green Goddesses are here, too, shown standing together as sisters, one life and one death.

The Black God is wreathed in shadow and the Red God in fire.

The White Goddess stands in a garden, her mouth open in song while the Blue Goddess kneels near her, one arm around a lion.

The Yellow God holds the sun high in his hands, illuminating the world.

The Brown Goddess has her arms plunged deep into the earth.

The Bronze God, god of minds, sits mutilated and alone, and above them all the Prism Goddess floats in the air, her hands outstretched, wielding the powers of all the other gods.

I have to hunt to find the Ghost God, lurking in the Black God’s darkness, apart from the others, but always watching.

I wonder how long ago the Iljaria painted these murals, how long their beauty has been forgotten. And then I see that the paintings are marred with streaks of dark blood, and I look down and there are bones on the floor.

“Brynja!” Ballast cries, and I jerk aside in time to avoid the hurtling dark shadow of a cave demon.

He takes its head off with his sword, and I throw my knife into the heart of another, while Saga shrieks and brains a third with her walking stick.

We all stand panting, after that, bracing ourselves for another attack, but though the shadows hiss and writhe, it seems they have granted us a respite.

I retrieve my knife, wipe the blood off on my filthy trousers once again.

I’m sweaty and shaking. I don’t know how many more of these creatures I can face.

I’m relieved when Ballast brings us into another small cave off the main passage. He builds a fire with a mysteriously convenient bundle of wood and shrugs out of his pack. Saga looks ready to pass out from exhaustion, and her skin is worryingly gray again.

We eat more smoked fish, and Ballast settles in the opening of the cave, face to the passageway, sword on his knees.

I sit close to Saga, wanting to comfort her but not knowing how.

“The gods are testing me,” she says quietly, for my ears alone. “They ask me to trust my enemy, down here in the dark.”

“Is that why you didn’t kill him?” I ask her, equally as low. My stomach churns. I would have stopped her, if it came to it.

“He deserves to die.”

The lion leaping at Hilf’s throat, his strangled cry, the blood on the marble.

And yet.

“He saved us,” I say.

“That doesn’t make him guiltless.”

“None of us are guiltless.”

Her face creases. She makes no reply. She sleeps after that, breaths even and slow, and then it’s just Ballast and me. Dread and guilt and relief and longing knot up my insides.

I pace over to him, settling with my back against the stone near the cave entrance. Ballast gives me a single swift glance before looking out into the passageway again, fingers tracing the hilt of his sword.

“Who guards you when you sleep? Or don’t you need to?” It’s not at all the question I want to ask and comes out sharper than I intended.

Ballast shrugs. “Asvaldr, when I ask him to. But sometimes his family needs him.”

“And then?”

“Then I sleep lightly, with a sword in my hand.”

I ponder this, picking at a stray thread on my shirt. “How are you here, Ballast?”

His jaw tenses. “I stumbled into the tunnels by accident, through a forgotten door in the palace cellar. I was ... lost, when I left Tenebris. I was ... feral. Raging. Despairing. And then I tried to control the cave demons, and my magic turned on me.

“Asvaldr is the one who found me, saved me, brought me back into my right mind. He asked me to help his cub, who’d gotten himself trapped in a rockslide and sliced his gut open.

So I did. I lived with them for a while, Asvaldr and his family.

He showed me underground streams where I could fish, showed me the passages in and out of the mountain, taught me how to fight the monsters. ”

“You’ve been down here this whole time? It’s been nearly a year, since—”

“I know how long it’s been,” he snaps.

I bite my lip to keep from snarling at him. “What about the wood and the blankets and the rest of your supplies? Where did it all come from?”

“The wood was down here already. I spent weeks collecting it, leaving it at various points in the labyrinth so I’d always have it on hand.

Some of the caves are filled with things the Iljaria left behind.

I’ve found kettles and dishes, books that go to dust when you touch them, dried-up paint and ancient jars of food long since turned to mush.

The Iljaria built a whole civilization here, before the monsters came. ”

“I know that,” I tell him pointedly. “I read it in your book when we were children. Before you decided we were no longer friends.”

He recoils like I slapped him, and I grind my jaw.

“Surely the Iljaria were powerful enough to destroy the cave demons,” I say, when he offers nothing further.

“Perhaps. But the Iljaria do not like to kill, and they were the Black Lord’s children, after all.”

I glance out into the passageway, where winged shadows scrape against the rock. I try not to shudder.

“Are you going to hide down here forever?” I ask him quietly.

His shoulders go taut. “Where else am I supposed to go? To the Iljaria? They turn up their noses at half bloods like me. Skaanda, then? They would cut me into a thousand pieces and scatter me about the plains. What about my father? Do you think I should go back to him? Do you know what he did to me, Brynja?”

I jerk upright, filled with a wild, vicious anger. “I don’t know, Your Highness .”

He flinches.

“Has he starved you?” I demand. “Whipped you? Kept you dangling in a cage over his head and made you risk your life every damn time he snaps his fingers? Don’t think that just because he ordered you to make your pets do tricks for him, you’re the same as me.

As Saga. As all the rest of us. You had a choice , every time, and you always chose to mind him.

Even when it meant murdering an innocent man.

He was Saga’s bodyguard. They loved each other. And now he’s dead because of you .”

He hunches in on himself in the entrance to the cave. I’m shaking with rage, spots dancing in front of my eyes. But the next moment I’m sliding down to the stone floor again, crying so violently I can’t breathe. I sag against the rock, wrapping my head in my arms, sobs choking me.

A hesitant touch on my shoulder breaks me from my hysteria enough that I stop crying, manage to catch my breath again. I look at him through bleary eyes.

“There is nothing I can do,” he says quietly, “to atone for the things I did then, and the things I didn’t.

To atone for my father’s cruelty. But this is me, now, making the other choice.

I won’t be his any longer. I will not bow to him, I will not obey him.

I’ve been lost here, slaying monsters in the dark instead of facing my own.

But I was going back, Brynja. To save my mother.

To save ... everyone else. To stop him.

That’s why I was near enough to help when you and Saga stumbled in. ”

He watches me, face tight with grief and regret. He knows exactly what his father did to me—to all of us. Because he was there, enduring it, too. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I know it doesn’t mean anything. But I’m so sorry.” His voice breaks.

“Why did you send me away?” The air catches hard in my chest. “Was it your father?”

“My mother was there that night, outside my door. She—” He swallows. “She was afraid of what he would do if he found us out. To you. To me. And he very nearly did. She had come to warn me that he was on his way. It could just as easily have been him who heard us that night.”

The tears are pressing hard again. “You could have told me that.”

He shakes his head. “The fear of discovery would have lessened, bit by bit. You would have come to see me again eventually. I couldn’t risk it. But I caused you pain, Brynja. And I’m sorry. You can’t know how much.”

I gnaw on my lip, not quite able to meet his eyes. “It meant everything to me. My visits to your room. Our friendship.”

“It meant everything to me, too,” he says softly.

The knot in my heart loosens, but there is only anguish in Ballast’s face.

“Go and sleep some,” I tell him. “I will guard the door.”

He considers this, eyes heavy with exhaustion. “All right. Just for a little while. Promise you will wake me if the demons come.” His eyes snag on mine, and I forget, for a moment, how to breathe. Then he lays his sword in my lap, and I turn to watch the passageway in his stead.

There are too many noises out there in the dark, too much empty space writhing with monsters.

I think of the Iljaria, centuries ago, carving tunnels through the mountains, making them beautiful, never fearing the dark, because they carried light with them, always: the light of magic, power, strength.

At least until the shadows came. And I think of Ballast as a boy, doing his very best to protect me from the monster who tormented us both.