Ballast waits at the top of the cliff. The edges of his white-and-black hair are singed. He smells of smoke.
“Brynja,” he breathes. He crushes me tight against him, and I muffle a sob into his chest.
I look up at him, and he smooths my hair away from my brow, and we stare at each other, caught in the dizzying awe of what we witnessed together, having walked for a little while in the realm of the First Ones themselves.
I want to melt into him. But there is work yet to be done.
Ballast takes my hand, and we turn together toward the armies. They’ve ceased their fighting, staring every one at the sun, and I wonder what it must have looked like to them, at the precise moment when the Yellow Lord was bound there.
The snow is dark with blood and gore, and hundreds of bodies—human and animal—are strewn about the ground. Thorny roots lie broken and twisted, and the earth is shattered in the places where the rock monsters rose. The Iljaria-beasts who still live have shifted back into their original forms, though remnants of their wings and claws seem still to whisper about them.
Less than half of the Skaandan and Daerosian armies remain, and the Iljaria forces have dwindled to a few hundred. The air reeks of death, and the cries of the wounded hang brittle on the wind.
Tears bite at my eyes. None of this had to happen, such reckless waste of life. And yet it did.
They wait for us, watch us come: Saga and Vil, Gulla and Aelia, Gróa and Drengur—Brandr’s scribe and steward—holding Brandr between them. There is blood on my brother’s temple, blood caught in the shock of his white hair. Ballast’s brothers, Zopyros, Theron, and Alcaeus, are there, too.
The armies wait, tense and uncertain, hands still gripping tight to sword hilts and spear shafts. The animals have drawn back but not dispersed, held in check by Ballast’s will. Again, his power stuns me—there are hundreds of beasts, and all of them obey him.
We stop a few paces away from the waiting armies. Saga’s eyes go to my hand, still caught fast in Ballast’s, and her whole being hardens. There is blood on her face, and more leaks through a rag tied tight around her left forearm. My throat hurts. I let go of Ballast’s hand.
The sun burns warm at my back. It bathes the battlefield with a stark brightness that sickens me. I don’t want to look at the bodies, don’t want to see the blood staining my boots.
“Lady Eldingar.”
I snap my eyes to Gróa, my brother’s steward.
“Command us,” she says.
I blink at her. “I command no one.”
“The Prism Master is powerless. We have no leader.”
Brandr doesn’t lift his head. His chest rises and falls. His blood drips into the snow.
“We have ceased our fighting upon the sign of the Yellow Lord’s binding,” Gróa goes on, “but give the word and we will annihilate these barbarians.”
“No,” I say, voice tight. “No. There will be no more fighting today.”
Gróa inclines her head to me. “As you wish, my lady.”
“What of the mountain?” says Vil.
I force myself to look at him. His side is leaking blood, his hand pressed hard into the wound, red running through his fingers.
“Skaanda claims the mountain,” he says through gritted teeth.
Zopyros wheels on him, sword high. “Get what’s left of your army the hell out of my country!”
“You are not a king,” Vil sneers at him. “You do not command me.”
“And it ismyarmy,” says Saga fiercely. “Not his.”
Vil glances at her and ducks his chin in deference, though his body tenses, and the anger is still in him.
“Tenebris is claimed forSkaanda,” Saga says, raising her sword so it catches the light of the sun. Behind her, the Skaandans shout a note of their war song and lift their own blades. She is fey and bright, a goddess on a hill. “Daeros will stand down.”
“Daeros willnot!” snaps Zopyros. He lifts his sword, and the Daerosians crouch into a fighting stance.
