Page 118 of While the Dark Remains
There is no fear in Brandr. He is all strength, power, certainty. The sickly brother I left behind is no more, and I wonder, as I have since we met him on the road to Tenebris, what became of him.
Brandr puts his hands on the chains, and I shudder because they are made of iron, and how is he not burned?
“Is Father really dead?”
His eyes flick to mine, and I read his irritation that I ask him this question here, now. “Yes.”
My throat hurts. “When?”
“About two years ago.”
This doesn’t surprise me. It’s when my hair started turning white again. I kept it wrapped up when I could, in the caves, in the dark. I rubbed charcoal into it when Ballast and Saga were sleeping. And when we finally made it to Skaanda, Indridi helped me dye it, showed me how to hide the roots, how to trace my brows and lashes with stainingkohl that Saga wouldn’t perceive. My stomach twists, and I see Indridi as she died in the dust, wreathed in fire.
“Hush now, sister. Let me concentrate.”
I nod, lacing my fingers together and clenching them in front of me.
Brandr returns his concentration to the iron chain. He closes his eyes and magic coils out of him, his face tight with power, with pain. The iron pulses with his Prism magic, blue and bronze and every color between. My eyes sting and my skin sears and I try not to scream at the pain of it, my breath hissing through tight lips.
One by one, the chain links burst in a spray of yellow sparks and fall away from the block, which I can see now is made of ice. All around me the mountain is screaming, grinding out its terror in rock and dust.
Then all the links are broken. Brandr steps back as a crack appears in the ice block.
It shimmers silver white, then indigo, then a deep, fathomless black. The block bursts apart all at once, fragments exploding outward as an impossible, all-consuming light floods the chamber.
My eyes burn with pain, and I screw them shut. But even still I can see the magic, feel it on my skin, taste it on my tongue. It sears through me, consuming every piece.
I sense Brandr’s Prism magic, slipping silver into my mind, a balm against the power that consumes me from the inside, and I am grateful that he does not let me perish in the light.
I open blurry eyes, and the light has shrunk to a sphere of crackling, pulsing power that hovers in the air where the ice block used to be. My brother faces the sphere head-on, sweat running down his face, steam coiling off his skin. He holds his hands out, every sinew straining, and shouts the words of his Prism magic, keeping the sphere of light contained. Fragments of the iron chain rise spinning into the air, binding together to form an iron collar, marked with whorls of obsidian and gray.
With a word, Brandr flings the collar into the light sphere, and suddenly there is a boy sitting on a stone. A young boy with pale hair and warm brown skin. His eyes are the color of mountain ice. His clothes are tattered; his feet are bare. Chains hang from his ankles, and the iron collar is locked tight around his throat, pulsing in every color of my brother’s Prism magic.
I think of Ballast, of the burns on his neck from his own collar, and I’m gutted that he’s suffering, that I wasn’t able to get it off him before he was dragged away. I swear to myself I will, as soon as I can.
The boy looks from me to Brandr and back again. He snaps his fingers, and little sparks of light dance across his hands.
Brandr takes two steps toward the boy and falls on his knees, bowing his head low to the ground. “My Lord.” Brandr’s voice is thick with emotion.
I don’t have the presence of mind to bow as well. All I can do is stare: at my brother on the floor, at the boy on the stone who I know to be the Yellow Lord, the entity the Skaandans worship as the god of light.
I knew that my ancestors bound him in the mountain centuries ago. His power was reckless, boundless, destructive. They couldn’t control it. All they could do was contain him. And so they locked him in iron and wove him with spells and buried him in the ice. But he couldn’t survive indefinitely in the darkness. So they bound him to the sun. Allowed him to draw from its energy and its light three months out of every year. During Soul’s Rest, the sun ishere, burning in the heart of the mountain, sustaining the Yellow Lord. It is here now.
I knew all that. I’ve known all that for years. I just—I just hadn’t expected him to be achild.
Brandr rises to his feet again. “My Lord,” he repeats, “I am humbled to stand in your presence. The Iljaria call upon you once more.”
The Yellow Lord blinks at Brandr, the sparks of light still dancing between his fingers. “Remove my bonds, and I will serve you.” His voice is thin and strange, hollow and shifting, like he is born and made of flame.
“In due time, My Lord. For now, I have awakened you. Is that not enough?”
“I have not been sleeping.” The Yellow Lord weaves light like yarn on his fingers. “I have felt every moment of my imprisonment, crushed under the weight of your cursed mountain.”
His words are so like my own thoughts they take the breath out of me.
Brandr isn’t cowed. “You will soon have much to do. I am the Prism Master of the Iljaria. I have unburied you, awakened you, and now I bind you to me.”
He speaks a word in the Old Tongue, and I watch it appear in the air, a rune that shifts from cerulean to green to bronze to yellow, and every other color of the First Ones’ magic. The Yellow Lord’s collar pulses in answer as Brandr grasps the rune with his hand and, wincing, presses it into his own forehead. I have heard of these kinds of ancient bindings but have never seen one before; I feel the staggering weight of it, strong enough to call a god to heel.