Page 149 of While the Dark Remains
I bow to him, though I’m not sure he can see me through his light.
Then I bolt through the snow after Brandr.
Behind me, the sun is rising, and the Yellow Lord burns ever hotter and more luminous than that ancient star.
Ahead of me, Saga and Vil have joined the Skaandans, spare swords thrust into their hands, helms shoved onto their heads. I think I see Rute with them, but there’s no sign of Gulla. Theron and Alcaeus, Kallias’s twin sons, have run the other way, toward the Daerosian army, with Nicanor and Eirenaios at their heels.
Screams shatter the burgeoning dawn as the first ranks of the Skaandan army collide with the Iljaria. Pockets of fire and light, darkness and whirling ice burst from the Iljaria, their magic bitter and deadly against the flash of mortal blades. Roots push from the ground; stone monsters ascend from the cold earth. The Iljaria who are blessed by the White Lady raise a song of death, shrill on the frigid air. The Skaandans scream at the noise, dropping their weapons and clapping their hands over their ears, only for thorny vines or stony hands or living, writhing darkness to rip them into pieces.
Magic bursts in all its colors before my eyes, blue and green, white and yellow, black and gray. And yet everywhere I look, it’s red, red.
I scream as I run, desperate to catch up to my brother and stop him the only way I know how. But his Prism magic speeds his steps, and I can’t quite seem to reach him.
To my right, Theron, Alcaeus, and Eirenaios reach the Daerosian army just as it clashes with the Iljaria, half of which has turned to face them, while the remainder continues to mow through the Skaandan army like so much wheat. Nicanor has fallen behind the others and is caught by a stray flame of Iljaria fire. In an instant he burns, screaming, into ash. My stomach heaves and tears bite at my eyes and I don’t understand how I can feel sick over the death of Kallias’s steward, my tormentor, even for a moment.
I run on, aware of Finnur, somewhere in the dark, fighting the Iljaria with magic of his own. Fire turns to butterflies with red-and-orange wings; the monsters made of earth and stone become smoke and blow away. The death song becomes a flock of chirruping canaries. But he is only one, against hundreds, and the canaries fall and are trodden underfoot, and the song of death is sung anew.
A new music rises to combat it. I glimpse Gulla within the fray, her whole body shimmering with power. She stands with her head tilted back, eyes shut and mouth open, a song of life spilling from her ruined tongue. She is stronger than I could have ever imagined, nullifying the music of the other Iljaria. But even Gulla’s magic is not enough to turn the tide. The snow is thick with bodies, and only a very, very few of them are Iljaria.
I reach out with my mind and sense Saga and Vil, Pala and Leifur and Rute, still alive, still fighting. Tears slide down my cheeks. They are not yet among the dead.
I reach for Ballast, too.Where are you, Bal? Where are you?
The sky grows a little lighter, and the heat of the Yellow Lord pulses stronger and stronger away behind me.
I try to breathe, and barrel on toward my brother. I tell the earth to speed me along, and suddenly I’m within reach of him. I grab Brandr’s shoulder, wheel him around, and press my hands, hard, against his temples.
“Get off of me!” he shrieks. “You can’t do anything to me! You only have mind magic, and I am the Prism Master. Get off of me!”
Behind me, the roar of an arctic bear shatters the sky.Here,says Ballast’s voice in my head.I’m here.A knot within me loosens.
“No, Brandr,” I tell him. “Come with me.”
And I wrench both of us sideways, into his mind.
Chapter Thirty
Year4201, Month of the Yellow Lord
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,damnyou, 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—”
