Page 148 of While the Dark Remains
I tremble. Drengur and Gróa step back, sudden fear in them.
The Yellow Lord blinks mildly. He turns to Saga and the others. He raises both hands.
“Wait,” says Brandr, all the harshness gone from his tone. “You don’t need to kill them. Brynja is right. There’s another way to do this. A more peaceful way. A more Iljaria way.” He turns his face to mine, takes one step toward me, two. Then he stops in his tracks, hardened with rage. “Damn you,” he spits at me.
I shrug. “It’s funny how easy it is, to slip into a mind that has forgotten to build any defenses against you. It was worth a try.”
He curses at me vehemently and colorfully, which seems bold of him with the Yellow Lordright there. The Yellow Lord, for his part, glances mildly between us, his lips curled up in amusement. Drengur and Gróa stand tense, the jewels on their foreheads trembling.
Brandr realizes all at once that he’s let the facade of the impervious Prism Master fall, and grinds his mouth shut. I watch him gain control of himself again. Fear boils through me.
“What’s your plan, Brynja? Do you really think you can defeat me with nothing but your reacquired magic?”
A flicker of movement in the corner of my eye makes my knees wobble with relief. “No,” I say. “I don’t.”
The Skaandan army pours from the mountain, three hundred strong, with Leifur and Pala at their head. They sing as they come, brash and chilling Skaandan war songs that shatter the stillness, their feet like drums pounding the earth. They shine in the burgeoning dawn, swords brandished high. A thrill sears through me.
Saga gives a shriek of triumph, and both she and Vil jerk to their feet.
Brandr curses and shouts a word into the sky, sending a flare of light bursting up above his head.
Out of the shadows comes the Iljaria army, white hair unbound, jewels shining from their brows. They are on foot as well, wearing thin, light breastplates of tooled leather dyed the colors of their magic. Some carry weapons but most do not, magic blazing in them so bright it’s hard for me to look at them. The owl was wrong. There are at least six hundred, maybe more. Gróa smiles and Drengur begins to sing, a quiet melody threaded with power that makes the snow swirl up around his feet.
And then three hundred Daerosian soldiers come marching up from Garran City, with Aelia and Zopyros, Kallias’s oldest son, leading them, gleaming in gold-plated scale armor and steel helms. My trepidation eases, just a little—the combined Skaandan and Daerosian forces equal the number of Iljaria, with Ballast and his animals still to come.
Saga meets my eyes, and with a single focused thought, I loose her bonds. The ropes fall silently to the snow. Between one heartbeat and the next, I do the same for Vil and Gulla and the others.
Run,I say into their minds, and they all jerk their gazes to me, startled.Now.
I fling up a wall of snow between them and Gróa and Drengur. Saga, Vil, Gulla, and all the rest bolt across the tundra.
Brandr utters a vicious oath as Drengur’s song shakes the ground and thorny vines burst out of the earth at Gróa’s command, too late to keep Saga and the others from escaping.
“You really think you can stop this?” Brandr demands of me. “You really think two human armies is enough tostop this?” He turns to the Yellow Lord. “Kill them,” he snaps. “Killall of them. Wipe out every soul in Daeros and Skaanda, save me and my army alone. Thus I command you, and thus I unbind your power.”
“My Lord,” I beg the First One. “Please spare us.”
The Yellow Lord yawns, twiddling his thumbs and watching sparks of light weave in and around them. “I must do as I am commanded,” he says without looking at me. The light curls up his arms, winding through him, making his skin pulse yellow. Pain creases the lines of his immortal face. He spares Brandr a single, fleeting glance, before refocusing on the light dancing between his fingers. “You will have to take shelter in the mountain. I cannot control the light when it reaches its fullest power, and the Black Lord’s guardians will protect you.”
He must mean the gargoyles at the front gates. I shudder at the mere thought of trusting in their dark defense.
“Fine,” Brandr grinds out. He glances east. “Give me and my people until the sun crests the ridge. We’ll be safe in the mountain by then.”
“As you wish,” says the Yellow Lord, fixated on the light in his hands.
“Brandr.” My heart drums in my ears, frantic, quick. “Command him to stop. Save us. Save our land.”
My brother sneers at me. “I have nothing more to say to you, Brynja. You are no sister of mine. You should have died in your cage. No.” His eyes are fierce and hard, the prismatic gem on his forehead glistering with power. “You should have died here, all those years ago, instead of Lilja. She would not have forsaken our cause. Our faith. Our people.”
“Brandr—”
He shrieks a curse and flings out his hand, thrusting me backward with the force of his magic. Pain sears through my chest and I land hard in the snow, breathless for the moment it takes him to turn on his heel and stride away from the Sea of Bones, Gróa and Drengur at his back. “To the mountain!” he shouts to his army, which comes like the tide over the tundra. “For Iljaria!”
“For Iljaria!” the army echoes, and the clamor of their unified voices rumbles in the earth.
I drag myself up again, my own power hot in my veins. “My Lord?” I say quietly as the First One grows brighter and brighter before me.
“Little one,” he says. “I cannot stop it.” His voice crackles with heat, with light. “Whatever it is you mean to do, you had better do it now.”
