Page 55 of While the Dark Remains
I count the beats of my heart. “No,” I say.
“You promise?”
“I swear it on the gods.”
“All right.” She turns her head toward me. “Have you visited the children yet?”
My gut twists. “No.”
“Why not?”
I gnaw on my lip. “I’m a coward.”
“They deserve hope, Brynja. You have to go.”
She falls asleep before I can reply, but I am awake a long while. When at last I sleep, I dream I’m once more in my cage, dangling from the peak of the great hall. But the cage has no door and the room is filling up with blood and I can’t get free. I drown, choking, in crimson.
Two Years Ago
Year4198, Month of the Black God
The Iljaria Tunnels
Bronze God, I’m hallucinating.
Pain radiates down my spine, the shadow creatures’ poison crawling through my veins. I squint, but Ballast doesn’t vanish. He’s wearing tan trousers tied about the ankle and knee with strips of leather, a deep-blue shirt that’s ragged around the hem, and a heavy white fur cloak clasped about his shoulders. His light and dark hair gleams in the torchlight, contrasting sharply with his brown skin, his blue eyes. He mesmerizes me. I can’t stop staring.
The arctic bear lumbers over to him, bowing its head.
“Thank you, Asvaldr,” says Ballast, and bows back.
Asvaldr strides past him, disappearing into the tunnels, while Ballast comes toward us. The torch flares bright.
Saga is tense and frantic beside me, slick with blood, fever and pain and poison raging behind her eyes. I don’t think she really sees Ballast. I don’t think she knows it’s him.
But she screams as he comes near, scrabbles backward among the ancient bones and the bodies of the shadow creatures. She grabs the sword and brandishes it at him, cursing and crying.
He stays just out of reach. “Gray Lady,” he swears softly. “You’re hurt. Let me help you.”
She shrieks at him, her blood leaking onto the stone.
“They’ll come back,” he says. “The monsters will come back. We can’t stay here.”
“Saga,” I say.
She stops screaming.
Ballast flicks his eyes to me and my heart jolts. “Can you walk?”
I nod uncertainly and push to my feet, trying not to fall over.
He hands me the torch and scoops Saga up into his arms so quickly she doesn’t have time to protest. She’s not fully aware of herself, her surroundings. The fever is taking her, or the monsters’ poison, or both. Her eyes are glassy and dull. In any other circumstance she would never allow Ballast to touch her.
“Come,” Ballast tells me.
He walks swiftly, like Saga weighs nothing, and I stumble along after him, fighting delirium. We pass through the cavern and into a stone passage beyond, leaving both Saga’s sword and the Iljaria light I stole from Tenebris to molder with the forgotten bones. I still have my pack, at least, though it’s ripped and dark with the cave demons’ blood.
Shadows stir and simmer above our heads, but they let us pass unhindered. They are wary, I think, of Ballast’s light, and the arctic bear lurking yet somewhere in the darkness.
