Page 153 of While the Dark Remains
The Bronze Lord does not speak, but he bows his head and weeps along with the Yellow Lord.
The Prism Lady takes the Yellow Lord’s hand and raises him to his feet. He looks at her but cannot quite meet her eyes.
“We offer to you once more the choice that was previously so abhorrent to you,” says the Prism Lady. “You will be bound, you will never again be loosed, but we will bind you in light instead of darkness, if you will choose at last the dwelling we made for you.”
The Yellow Lord takes a breath. “And if I do not choose that, my lady?”
“Then you will be bound in ice and rock, encased in iron, swallowed up in the domain of the Black Lord, whom you so despise.”
“I choose what I should have chosen before,” says the Yellow Lord softly. “I choose to be bound in light.”
The Prism Lady nods, and the Ghost Lord locks fetters about the Yellow Lord’s wrists.
Then the city is no longer around us and we are soaring through the sky in a winged ship, the Prism Lady at the bow and the Yellow Lord in the center, flanked by the Blue Lady and the Ghost Lord, with the Bronze Lord at the stern. The winged ship flies up, up, toward the sun. And then we’re sailing into the light, and it welcomes us.
The sun is living, blazing, liquid fire, but it does not burn. The winged ship bears us into the heart of the old star, where waits a tall, fair house with white gates and a river of light running past it.
The Yellow Lord steps from the ship and bows his head to the Prism Lady.
“I did not know,” he says. “I did not know that you built for me such a dwelling.”
The Prism Lady smiles sadly. “I have never wanted any of my children to dwell in torment. Here your light will burn for all eternity, and harm no one.”
The Yellow Lord steps through the gates of his house. There is a flare of light, the searing feeling ofjoy, and then the ship turns around, and flies out of the sun.
I blink and there is no ship, no First Ones. There is only the sun, rising, and me, falling.
Down and down and down.
The Yellow Lord is gone.
And I will end as I always feared I would, falling, shattered, broken.
Fingers tangle suddenly in mine, hold tight, squeeze.
Here, Brynja,says Ballast.
Here, Bal,I say, and I am fiercely glad to not be alone in my nightmare.
I cling to him as we fall down and down.
Into the welcoming embrace of the Sea of Bones.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Year4201, Month of the Yellow Lord
Daeros—Tenebris
The owls catch us before we smash onto the ice. I could laugh. I had forgotten the owls.
We are too heavy for them to carry us both at once, back to the top of the cliff. I send Ballast first and wait for a little while by myself in the Sea of Bones.
It is quiet down here, the sun casting the glaciers in eerie shades of blue. I think of my sister, and I wonder what she thought of as she fell. I hope she thought of love and laughter. I hope she remembered light. I hope, when the world is reborn, that I will see her again, as she was meant to be. Happy. Inventing things.
Tears prick at my eyes.
The owls come for me, and I let them bear me up, into the wind, into the sky.
