Page 56 of While the Dark Remains
The tunnel doesn’t run very straight, and Ballast turns down several branching passageways until at last he steps into a bright cave, a fire burning at the center of it. Smoke curls up through a crack in the stone, escaping out into the wider cavern. There are blankets spread out near the fire.
There are no monsters here.
Saga has gone limp and still in his arms. He lays her down on the blankets and crouches back on his heels. “What happened?” he asks me, without turning. “Where is she hurt?”
She’s hurt everywhere, thanks to the shadow monsters, but I know what he’s asking. “Her foot is broken,” I manage around my dry throat. “The wound is infected.”
He peels back the bandage and swears, with heat. “Violet Lord’s bleedingheart.”
Spots dance before my eyes. The air in the cave feels too warm, too close. Pain and poison rage under my skin, and I am torn between anger and relief, hurt and joy to have him here. “Will the monsters come back?” I whisper.
“Asvaldr bought us time. They will lick their wounds awhile yet.” He brushes his fingers lightly over Saga’s festering foot and begins to speak, strange tripping syllables that spark bright in the air as they leave his mouth. I feel the silver coolness of his magic, so opposite the oily darkness of the shadow monsters. It curls out of him and into Saga, making the redness fade, the pus evaporate, the bone withdraw behind her skin.
Tears pool in my eyes. I have never watched him work anything besides his animal magic. I blink and see the lion tearing out Hilf’s throat; I hear Saga’s ragged weeping from behind the glass bars of her cage. And yet Ballast has the hands of a healer.
He keeps up his singsong chant, letting go of Saga’s ankle and placing his hand on her forehead. He leans over her, his magic sparking so strong I can taste it, the barest whisper of ice and honeysuckle nectar on my tongue.
Beneath his touch, the wounds from the shadow monsters close and heal, the poison pulled out of her veins. Her skin resumes its normal color. She begins to breathe evenly.
Only then does Ballast withdraw his hand and finally look over at me. His eyes are guarded. “Hello, Brynja.”
“So you haven’t forgotten me.” This comes out rather more bitterly than I intended.
He winces. “I’d better see to your wounds, too.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
The poison is more stubborn than I am; I feel weak, sick. “Fine,” I grind out. I tug off my coat, my outer shirt, and kneel on the stone in only my shift.
He comes over to me, carefully examines my back. His nearness makes me shiver. “The wounds aren’t deep,” he says quietly. “But that doesn’t matter, when they’re poisoned.” He takes a breath. “I will have to touch you, to draw the poison out.”
My heart jerks. He has never touched me before. Not even when we were children. We always kept that careful distance between us, him on one end of the bed, me on the other. “All right,” I say.
He puts his hands on my shoulders, starting up his singsong magic again. I shut my eyes and revel in the sensation, drinking it in, parched, greedy. The poison pulls out of my veins and my skin knits itself back together, the pain fading to a dull ache. He withdraws his hands, and I want to snatch them back again.
Ballast won’t quite look at me. “You should rest now,” he says.
I mean to protest. I mean to ask him why he’s here and how he found us, if what he said to me all those years ago was true. I mean to shout at him and tell him I missed him and dig our deck of cards out of the pack and demand he explain all those evenings we spent together if he really didn’t count me as his friend. But the weariness overpowers me. I curl up on a blanket he lays out for me and I sleep, swift and dreamless.
When I wake, monsters are wheeling outside of the cave and Ballast guards the entrance, a torch in one hand and a sword in the other. The creatures shrink from the light, but they don’t fly away.
“There’s food by the fire,” says Ballast without turning his head. “And water.”
I drain almost a full waterskin without meaning to, then devour strips of something charred and soft. The flavor is salty and smoky, and it practically melts in my mouth. Fish, I realize. I haven’t had it in so long I forgot what it tasted like, and I’ve never had it prepared like this.
Saga still sleeps on beside the fire, her face relaxed, peaceful, though I know all hell will break loose when she wakes up and realizes who saved her.
I pad hesitantly up to where Ballast sits, keeping a wary eye on the monsters, watchful and tense.
“Will they attack?” I ask him.
“Not at present. They don’t like the light, and they sense Asvaldr lurking near. They know I won’t hesitate to call him.”
“Can’t you order them away?”
“They are creatures of foul magic. Speaking into their minds—their darkness corrupts me. Makes me little more than a beast.”
