Page 76

Chapter Thirty

Daeros—Tenebris

I blink and lift my head from a frayed carpet covering cold stone. Brandr is here, too, of course, scrabbling to his feet and cursing at me. I stand more slowly, counting the beats of my heart.

We’re in a library, old and abandoned, a broken window somewhere letting a cold wind blow through, scattering leaves and dirt over the shelves. It reeks in here of mold, of decay.

Brandr wheels on me, grabs my wrists. “Let me out, damn you, Brynja! Let me out!”

“Do you know where we are?” I ask him carefully.

He pushes me away in disgust, stalks to one of the shelves, runs his hands over moldered spines. “In my mind, I suppose, though I didn’t know anyone else could come in.”

I shrug. “Neither did I.”

He’s hard, angry, cold. “Send me back.”

“No.”

“Brynja. When the sun crests the ridge—”

“You have broken our sacred laws,” I say quietly. “You have forsaken our people. Our beliefs. Our ideals.”

“I bring justice, Brynja! How many times do I have to tell you? I bring recompense. I follow our laws. I fulfill them.”

Wind whips strong through the decaying room, blowing my curls in my face.

“Do you, Brandr? You did not obey the queen’s latest command—how many other of her orders have you disregarded?

Was this mission sanctioned by her? Truly?

Or was there no more power for you to seize in Iljaria, so you came here seeking more? ”

He regards me with unfettered loathing. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I am here to enact the First Ones’ judgment—their law is above even our queen’s.”

I shake my head. “Murder isn’t judgment, Brandr. You’re talking about the eradication of two entire peoples.”

“They are worms ,” he spits, “insects. Blink, and they will be gone. They are not like us.”

“Yes, they are,” I say quietly. “They have hearts and minds and bodies. They deserve life and freedom. The only thing they lack is our power, and I can’t help but think they might wield it more faithfully than we do.

You have freed the Yellow Lord. Be content and go back to Iljaria and repent of the blood you have spilled.

You are not a First One. Don’t presume to claim their power. ”

“You are a fool . The greatest of all fools. Do you truly believe the nonsense you’re spouting? Do you truly believe Iljaria has never gone to war, never left destruction in their wake? Do you think our father would be more merciful?”

“You weren’t merciful to him,” I say roughly.

He drops his eyes, and for a moment I think he’s ashamed. But it’s rage he feels, and it sears me.

“Our father gave me nothing .” Brandr’s long white hair whips about his face in the cold wind, and he slams his fist into one of the bookcases. He hisses with pain, because it is not a real bookcase. He’s only hurting himself.

“He cared about Lilja,” Brandr goes on, a little quieter. “He cared, in his way, about you. But he didn’t care about me. He was ashamed of me, of my power. So I reinvented myself to please him. Made myself something he wanted, something I wasn’t.”

My gut twists. “That’s what I did, too.”

Brandr doesn’t acknowledge me, just traces one finger along a dusty shelf.

Sparks of silver float to the floor. “I hope he was sorry, by the end. I hope he was sorry that he didn’t nurture me from the beginning, that he didn’t search with me until he found an answer to the gift of the Ghost Lord’s power.

But he didn’t. I had to find the answer myself, in a rotting book whose pages crumbled as I turned them. ”

Pity sparks within me. I know what it is to be used. To be forgotten. But that still does not absolve him. “Then this is truly what is in your mind,” I say, glancing around the room. “Knowledge. Power. Misused and left to rot. Have you ever met him, Brandr? Have you ever met the Ghost Lord?”

He sneers at me. “Met him?”

I pace through the decaying room, glancing at the ruined books but not touching them. “He is your patron Lord. He would come if you asked him, you know.”

“I don’t want the Ghost Lord. I don’t need him. I made myself. I am myself. And soon all the world will bow to me.”

I shoot my brother a swift, hard glance. “Then you do mean to make yourself a god.”

“Power was always meant to be mine, little sister. It belongs to me. I mean to clothe myself in it.”

“And when you rule the world, what will you do? Bind the rest of the First Ones and make them do tricks for you, like Kallias did with all of us in his Collection?”

“I will bring justice. The people will weep at my feet and thank me for saving them.”

“When you are done with your justice, there will be no one left to kiss the hem of your garment.”

He hisses as he cuts his finger on some rough part of the shelf—a nail, perhaps. Red mottles his skin. “I’ve had enough of your little game, Brynja. You will die too, you know. When the sun fills the sky, when the Yellow Lord unleashes his power. Release me.”

I give him a thin smile. “You are the all-powerful Prism Master. Free yourself, if you can. But first, I think, there is someone you ought to meet.”

The Ghost Lord comes from between the shelves. He’s hard to look at—no, he’s hard to perceive. He’s wearing gray, I think. He’s about my brother’s height. But I cannot say if he’s old or young. I can’t tell the color of his eyes or even his hair.

Brandr turns to face him, and trembles before his patron Lord.

“You have learned well, young one,” says the Ghost Lord. His voice is a whisper on a snowy mountainside, sharp as ice and holding back a power strong enough to break the world.

“Go,” says Brandr. “Go, I do not want you here.”

The Ghost Lord shrugs. He resolves, a little, into the form of a young man. His skin is gray and white, marbled together. His hair is every color there is, and yet none of them. His eyes—his eyes are wholly white. The Ghost Lord is blind.

“You cannot take and take for eternity,” says the Ghost Lord.

“You cannot hold it all. It will destroy you. And when it does, there will be someone there to take your place, and all you fought for will come to naught. You will be an outcast to your own people. You will be what you always feared to be: nothing. No one.”

Brandr curses and lunges at the Ghost Lord, but he wisps out of the way like smoke, reappearing beside me. A coldness emanates from him, seeping down, down under my skin.

“ Let Me Out of Here !” Brandr cries, balling his hands into fists.

“No,” I say. “Not unless you swear to me you’ll call it all off. The Yellow Lord. Your army. Not unless you promise to go home.”

He throws back his head and laughs. “You’re out of your mind , Brynja, if you think I’d promise you that.”

I take a breath, eyes flicking sideways at the Ghost Lord. “I am out of my mind, in fact. I’m in yours. Thanks for reminding me.” From my coat I draw a chest that shimmers in my hands, all colors, and yet no color at all: a prison for Brandr’s magic.

“My Lord?” I say to the First One beside me.

He nods, grim and sightless, and two gleaming silver hooks appear in his hands. He takes a step toward Brandr.

My brother’s eyes go wild. “Brynja. Brynja, what are you doing? What is this? Stop. You have to stop. You can’t do anything to me. You can’t—”

I turn. I wrench myself sideways, out of Brandr’s mind and back onto the tundra, where the sun is just lipping above the Sea of Bones.

I kneel with my brother in the snow, pressing my hands against his temples, tears coursing down my cheeks, because I remember exactly how this felt when our father did it to me. When it’s done, I withdraw my hands, watch him open his eyes in a world where he once more holds no power.

He shoves me away from him with a hopelessness that guts me.

“When I learn how to unbind myself,” he says, very low, “I will kill you, Brynja. And for all your cleverness, you still can’t stop what I have put in motion.

I still command my army. I still command the Yellow Lord.

” He glances at the sun, eyes tearing at the light.

“And there isn’t much time left.” He sneers at me.

Turns his back to me. He runs to rejoin the Iljaria.

I let him go.

Mere moments have passed while we were in my brother’s mind, and the battle rages on.

The air reeks of blood and bile, and the Iljaria are closer to the mountain and the gargoyles’ protection than before.

They climb over the bodies of Daerosians and Skaandans as if they were mere mounds of earth, jewels flashing from their brows, magic clearing their path in swaths of red.

The remaining Daerosians and Skaandans fight doggedly, grimly, hacking at writhing vines and earth monsters, hurling spears and loosing arrows into the midst of the Iljaria forces, to little effect.

I glimpse Saga, fighting side by side with Vil, her helmet off and her face smeared with blood.

Gulla and Finnur are still fighting, too, though Gulla’s song has grown fainter and Finnur’s magic weaker, having spent so much of it already.

Ballast on Asvaldr comes swift across the tundra with his animal army behind him, a rush of hooves and paws, wings and horns.

Owls dive screeching at the Iljaria forces while wolves and leopards and foxes leap for throats and arctic bears slash with knife-edged claws.

For a moment the Iljaria falter, and the joined Skaandan and Daerosian armies press them back.

But then the Iljaria blessed by the Blue Lady give a great shout, the jewels flashing cerulean on their foreheads.

As one, they shift into beasts with dark leathery wings, and rising out of the army, they dive at the animals head-on.

I stare, horrified, because they are very like the cave demons in the tunnels, and I can’t help but wonder if the monsters that drove the Iljaria out were in fact the Iljaria themselves.

The Iljaria-beasts ram into the animals in a wheel of wings and claws and teeth, halting their advance and allowing the remainder of the Iljaria forces to redouble their efforts against the human armies.

Ballast slays one of the beasts that dives at him on Asvaldr, blood spraying all up his arm.

Asvaldr roars and swipes at another of them.

I glance behind me. The sun is half above the ridge now. The Yellow Lord stands on the edge of the Sea of Bones, contemplating its coming.

For a moment I shut my eyes, reach out to every mind I can sense. Stand down! I cry. All of you, stand down! Get into the mountain! The sun is rising!

But though I feel a pulse of uncertainty and confusion, I am not powerful enough to halt three armies with my will alone. They battle on.

I have to stop this. Or at least I have to try. And I can’t do it alone.

Ballast! I shout into his mind. Ballast!

He turns toward me, ducking the attack of another Iljaria-beast. Then he’s leaping from Asvaldr’s back and hurtling toward me over the snow. He reaches me, and his hand finds mine.

Then we’re running together toward the Yellow Lord, toward the Sea of Bones.

Toward the rising sun.