Page 130 of While the Dark Remains
That doesn’t matter now.
I clench my jaw. “How did you come here?”
She sighs.My sister and I wanted to see Tenebris. We left our home by the sea, traveled by ourselves for some weeks. Daerosian soldiers found us within sight of the mountain. My sister used her magic—growing magic, from the Green Lady—to get away. I was brought to Kallias. No one ever came for me. You know the rest.
I fight back a fresh wave of tears. “I’m so sorry, Gulla.”
She gives me a sad smile.It was not of your design, Brynja Eldingar.
“What aboutyourmagic?” I ask her.
It is harder to reach than it was. But it is not wholly gone.And then she does something I have never heard her do—she makes a sound deep in her throat, a guttural note of rich, powerful magic.
The lamp on the table winks out, smoke curling up. Another note from her and it’s lit again, flaring brighter than before.
I stare at her, mouth hanging open, and she gives a soundless laugh.
“What am I supposed to do?” I say. “About my brother and the Yellow Lord? About our people?”
Her brow creases as she studies me, and I’m seized with a sudden wild grief that I will never know what her voice sounded like before Kallias cut out her tongue.
I think you need to figure out where your loyalties truly lie,she signs. I think you need to figure out what is buried within your own heart.
I take a deep breath.
I am worried for my son,she says then.How is he?
I shake my head. “He’s locked up with the rest of them.”
Will you save him? Whatever it is he’s been up to since he came back, I do not truly believe he is like his father. I know he is not. Will you save him?Her eyes go wet and shiny, and my gut clenches.
“I will try,” I promise. “But, Gulla.Pleasetell me what to do.”
I can’t tell you what to do, Brynja.She blinks at me.I think you already know.
The Yellow Lord is sitting on his block, playing with a little ball of light that I can’t look at directly because its intensity makes my eyes tear. The chains on his ankles clink faintly with his movement, and the collar that Brandr bound him with pulses with prismatic runes. He tosses the ball of light back and forth between his hands, unaffected by its brilliance. The patch Brandr magically regrew over the wall is gone, and I get the idea that, if he really wanted to, the Yellow Lord could leave his prison, bound though he is.
I stand just within the low doorway and wait for him to notice me.
After a while, he puts the ball of light beside him on the block, folds his hands behind his neck, and yawns. “So the impotent one has decided to visit me.” He sounds and looks so young, but the heat of his magic sears my skin even from a few paces away. “What do you want?”
Gulla’s words repeat themselves endlessly in my mind:You need to figure out what is buried within your own heart.“My father locked my magic away. Can you unlock it?”
The Yellow Lord looks at me with passivity or boredom or both. He flops down on his side, propping his head up with one hand, bare feet dangling. “What kind of magic did you call your own, Brynja Eldingar?”
“Mind magic.”
The Yellow Lord makes a face. “Horrid fellow, the Bronze Lord. I don’t even like to think about him.” He realizes he accidentally made a joke. “Ha!” He snaps his fingers and the light globe whirls in his palm, a blur of yellow-orange-white.
“Then you can’t help me.”
“If your father locked your magic, your father will have tounlock it.”
“But he’s dead.”
The light winks out. “He is, isn’t he. That does make things difficult.” The Yellow Lord sits up again. “Come here, Eldingar. Let me look into you.”
This seems like a very bad idea, but I’m angry and wrung out and reckless, so I pace over to him. Somehow his magic doesn’t burn as terribly this close.
