Page 64 of While the Dark Remains
She doesn’t have to finish. “I know,” I say.
I let her decide what I mean by that.
Saga sleeps, and I slip out of bed. I don’t scramble up into the vent, despite the nearly overwhelming urge to go and find Ballast. I don’t trust myself, and as much as I hate to admit it, I’m not sure I trust Ballast, either. Instead, I wrap an extra blanket around my shoulders and curl up on the windowsill, staring out into darkness lit by cold, wheeling stars until another sunless morning comes.
Two Years Ago
Year4198, Month of the Black God
The Iljaria Tunnels
Ballast leads the way, torch in his left hand and sword in his right. Saga hobbles along after him, by degrees silent and cursing, and I bring up the rear, casting frequent, fearful glances behind us. The passageway reeks of the shadow monsters, tangled with a faint musk of bear.
No one speaks as we go; the silence is unbearable. I am on constant alert for the sound of wings and claws and tense at every slight noise, imagined or otherwise. Every time I glance at Ballast, the torchlight tracing him in shifting shadows, my heart seizes. I never thought I would see him again. Yet he’s here, a savior unlooked for, lighting our way through the dark.
He’s grown taller and broader since he left Tenebris. I wonder what he’s found to eat down here that sticks to his bones more than the rich food at his father’s table. Or maybe it’s simply that he eats now, when he didn’t before.
We come to a tunnel that’s wider than most, painted with murals in the Iljaria’s trademark vivid colors. I study the murals as we pass.
There’s the Violet God, tall and thin, his skin dark, his white hair cropped short around his ears. He wears purple robes and holds an orb of light in his hands. I tell myself his story: Once, the Violet God could manipulate time, change it according to his whims. But the other godsgrew angry at the disorder of things. They killed the woman he loved to punish him, and hid her soul where the Violet God could not find her. So he withdrew from the world, secluding himself on a high mountain, lonely and sorrowing until eternity’s end. And so time marches on as it was meant to.
I’ve always been drawn to the Violet God. His story is sad and hopeless and unfair. I can relate.
The Gray and Green Goddesses are here, too, shown standing together as sisters, one life and one death. The Black God is wreathed in shadow and the Red God in fire. The White Goddess stands in a garden, her mouth open in song while the Blue Goddess kneels near her, one arm around a lion. The Yellow God holds the sun high in his hands, illuminating the world. The Brown Goddess has her arms plunged deep into the earth. The Bronze God, god of minds, sits mutilated and alone, and above them all the Prism Goddess floats in the air, her hands outstretched, wielding the powers of all the other gods. I have to hunt to find the Ghost God, lurking in the Black God’s darkness, apart from the others, but always watching.
I wonder how long ago the Iljaria painted these murals, how long their beauty has been forgotten. And then I see that the paintings are marred with streaks of dark blood, and I look down and there are bones on the floor.
“Brynja!” Ballast cries, and I jerk aside in time to avoid the hurtling dark shadow of a cave demon.
He takes its head off with his sword, and I throw my knife into the heart of another, while Saga shrieks and brains a third with her walking stick.
We all stand panting, after that, bracing ourselves for another attack, but though the shadows hiss and writhe, it seems they have granted us a respite. I retrieve my knife, wipe the blood off on my filthy trousers once again. I’m sweaty and shaking. I don’t know how many more of these creatures I can face.
I’m relieved when Ballast brings us into another small cave off the main passage. He builds a fire with a mysteriously convenient bundle of wood and shrugs out of his pack. Saga looks ready to pass out from exhaustion, and her skin is worryingly gray again.
We eat more smoked fish, and Ballast settles in the opening of the cave, face to the passageway, sword on his knees.
I sit close to Saga, wanting to comfort her but not knowing how.
“The gods are testing me,” she says quietly, for my ears alone. “They ask me to trust my enemy, down here in the dark.”
“Is that why you didn’t kill him?” I ask her, equally as low. My stomach churns. I would have stopped her, if it came to it.
“He deserves to die.”
The lion leaping at Hilf’s throat, his strangled cry, the blood on the marble.
And yet.
“He saved us,” I say.
“That doesn’t make him guiltless.”
“None of us are guiltless.”
Her face creases. She makes no reply. She sleeps after that, breaths even and slow, and then it’s just Ballast and me. Dread and guilt and relief and longing knot up my insides.
I pace over to him, settling with my back against the stone near the cave entrance. Ballast gives me a single swift glance before looking out into the passageway again, fingers tracing the hilt of his sword.
