45. Maren
45
Maren
A full rope's length ahead of Kye and the horses, I parted snow and ice over the Sylus Mountains.
The task was arduously slow. I sought soil for traction, doubling back sometimes three or four times to avoid leading us up loose rock. My moon-damned fur cloak hindered more than helped, weighing my arms down and falling in the way of my reach. I’d finally yanked it off and left it for Kye to pick up, the alpine chill sliding over me as soon as it abandoned my skin. I wound Kye’s scarf around my neck and pushed on.
Twice, I slipped and caught myself. Each time I glanced back at Kye, convinced he’d demand I trade places with him. But he simply met my eyes, his jaw hard and square, molten gaze betraying not a single thought in his head.
We pushed up the mountain until the drifts were taller than my head. Gloves stowed in the pocket of my borrowed pants, I opted for bare fingers to better feel grooves in the rock as I climbed, though my fingertips had long since gone numb. My arms shook with exertion and cold, though what truly stole my energy was the long process of plowing through the snow using my call as a spade.
Kye and the horses seemed to fare better than I did. They climbed short ledges at a time, chasing the slack of my rope, Kolibri hopping from shelf to shelf.
The mare could’ve been part mountain goat.
Deep enough I’d lost sight of the sun and touch of the wind, my sense of direction wavered. I stopped often, closing my eyes and focusing on what little details I could catch. The faint scent of smoke. The journey of clouds overhead. The shape of shadows against the snowy wall. It didn’t help that the passage I cut twisted and turned as I searched for the best footholds for the horses.
When the summit came into view, I could have cried with relief.
I glanced back at Kye with a grin. He’d followed with one hand on Sero’s rope, his knife ready to cut at any moment. As I sent my smile down at him, he finally relaxed, sending a small smile back.
The crest lay only thirty feet ahead. Calling to the water, I pushed snow off the other side, and clear blue skies shot into view.
Calder. It lay just over the ridge. Just beyond my feet.
I widened the divide. And a muffled clap answered.
Like powder compressing. Like ice fracturing. Like something massive hiding under the blanket lifting its head, dragging its knuckles toward me.
The mountain rumbled under my legs, and something gave within the wall of ice at my right. I craned my neck to see what damage I’d caused.
The entire mountainside shifted .
I turned as the snow began to roll past me. “RUN,” I shouted, pointing at the opposite wall of my dry pathway—Kye’s only hope of escape.
If he could climb it, he might be safe.
His eyes darted from me to the sheet of snow and ice barreling down the slope.
Rushing for him like a pack of hungry wolves.
Kye grabbed at the rope connecting me to Sero.
But he didn’t even have time to cut as the titanic wall reached him, tall and wide and burning with icy wrath.
In an instant, he vanished in a phantom plume, the mountain roaring as it ravaged him and Sero under a devastatingly bright blur.
Blind terror gripped me by the heart as I took a running step toward them. The rope at my hips lurched, yanking me off my feet.
It dragged me into the white cloud below, loose snow so thick in the air I couldn’t breathe.
I tumbled over rock and ice, a child’s plaything at the mercy of a screaming landslide. My fingers ripped along the surface of the snow, searching for purchase, but the avalanche tore me down the mountain, my body jouncing like it weighed nothing. The wall of snow had mauled Kye, but it dragged me behind him, and when I finally stopped, the rope sliced into my skin, angry my body remained on top of the snow while the other end lay buried deep below.
Air thickened with solid fog. As though the mountain had died, leaving a ghost to climb from its body.
Two of my fingers were broken at the joints. Tendons snapped rather than bone, they bent grotesquely in the wrong direction, though I already felt them weaving together, healing under my skin. A gash burned my shoulder. My lip had split.
But whatever pain should have followed, I never felt. I yanked one leg from the snow with a scream of fury. Hands on my rope, I shoved the compact snow aside, digging straight down with both bare hands and my water call.
Sero was somewhere on the other side, right below me. And Kye had been holding the rope when the avalanche hit him. Hopefully, they stayed together. Hopefully—I bit back a desperate wail, refusing to believe anything else. Hopefully, he was here.
A whinny came through the fog, and I halted for a moment, ears desperate as I strained for the sound. Black legs climbed over the snow toward me, and Kolibri’s nose arched toward my shoulder, ears tucked forward.
I didn’t have time for relief.
I plunged my hands into the snow, rending it apart with a violence that shook my arms. My vision blurred, and I shoved my cheek into my shoulder with a vicious swipe, banishing wet tracks from my face, angry at the waste of a moment’s breath.
The sound of snow separating grated on my ears as I dug deeper without success. No matter how much I uncovered, the rope was still there, stuck fast. Pointing down, down, down . Securing a hand on the rope, I plowed the snow left and right, desperate to feel something on the other side.
“KYE,” I screamed, not caring if the enemy camp heard me from below. But the blanket of crystal dust in the air gulped my voice without even an echo of reverberation. “KYE! KYE!”
The mountain silence was my only answer.
Chunk after chunk of cold snow came loose through my fingers. I shoved it aside, desperate for more.
Sunlight drifted through the floating powder as it slowly settled.
I was taking too long.
I scrambled into the slowly growing hole, aware of the danger I faced if it suddenly decided to close on me, and performed every feat I could think of to dig. Water calling, scooping, stabbing, punching. Ice crystals flew into my eyes and down my lungs, soaking the legs of my pants.
My hands drove in and hit ice. A sheet of ice, through which the rope had split a crack, held the line between Sero and me.
Thrusting my fingers into the crack, I wrenched it apart, feeling skin separate from my nail beds. When it refused to budge, I screamed into the sky, bright blue penetrating the haze over my head.
Kye hadn’t even wanted to take the mountains. I’d made him. I’d forced him to come this way when ships waited in the harbor, so close I could smell the salt. The snow imprisoned him somewhere under my feet, and I as good as buried him there.
I tried again from all angles, fitting my hands around the slab, searching for a weak corner to pry apart. But it didn’t matter how hard I pulled; the ice was too heavy to lift. Frozen water ignored my summons, and I didn’t have time to melt it. The rope shifted over my thighs as I sank back onto my heels, ferociously thinking of what to do.
The rope.
“Kolibri,” I snapped breathlessly. The black mare raised her head and stepped closer, hooves soft over the snow.
I turned myself onto my knees, wriggling out of the harness. Pulling the knife from my boot, I chopped notches into the ice, fitting Kye’s loops in with trembling fingers and vaulting to my feet to saw at the base of the rope. It ripped loose in seconds under my knife, but every second felt too long. I tied it to her, and ten feet of slack connected Kolibri to the patch of ice.
“Pull, Kolibri!” I ordered, grabbing her reins and stumbling over trembling legs and deep snow as I led her away.
Air crackled around me. A sharpness bit my chest. As though my heart had frozen with the world around me, threatening to shatter any moment.
I ignored it, guiding Kolibri through the berm of snow, the mare’s head and shoulders bent forward as the slack of rope snapped taut. Her iron shoes slid before they found enough traction to move, and she took a heavy step forward.
“Pull, Kolibri, pull!”
The ice chunk lifted at the corners.
“PULL, KOLIbrI.”
With an audible grind, the ice chunk flipped forward. Once it gave, momentum was all Kolibri needed to surge slowly up the mountain. Wet friction scraped behind us as the slab came free, and I abandoned Kolibri, rushing back to the frayed rope which lay flattened over the surface of snow.
I plunged my hands under. And felt something solid.
A black rider’s hat. Smooshed and crusted with snow. I flung it aside, reaching back in, fingertips grazing soft fur.
A dappled gray shoulder.
It lay completely still.
Dread twisted in my gut. I slid my fingers down the curve of Sero’s leg and latched onto the edge of fabric.
A sleeve.
Like the hat, it was covered in a fine layer of dust, inflexible as though frozen in the minutes since being buried.
How long had he been under? Five minutes? Ten?
I wrapped my hands around the sleeve and tugged, leveraging my weight on my heels.
Kye’s arm broke free, snapping into the air as it cleared its barrier of hardened snow. The curve of Kye’s hip lay visible underneath. Motionless.
But extracting his hand gave me a clear idea of where his head might be, and I shifted to dig a few inches away.
Skin met with my fingers—damp hair and the shell of an ear.
I pulled him up from the drift, blue and lifeless. A purple knot protruded from his forehead, his nose and mouth packed with snow.
“No, no, no,” I breathed, wiping snow from his face. My fingers wrapped around the fur collar of his coat, and I hauled him up with a desperate groan, unearthing his body from the shroud of ice.
No heartbeat echoed in his chest, nor wind from his lungs. His eyes hung open, the white edge of his teeth visible through his slack mouth.
But I knew he was here. He hadn’t left me yet. He was here, he was here, he was here .
I knew it, because I refused to believe anything else. Because something in me would recognize if he wasn’t.
It had been months since the first time I’d breathed life into him. I knew more now than I did then. How potent my Naiad oxygen was. How to listen for sound within a body. How to command the fluid inside.
I fit my hands over his chest and straightened my elbows, forcing my weight down in a sudden jolt through my arms. Terror spilled over, my arms shaking with panic. Sweat dripped from my forehead, though every inch of my body burned with the numb bite of cold. Terror sealed my throat.
A crack came through my fingertips as his sternum broke.
I pumped a few times; certain I was doing it wrong. There were no instructions to follow except the whisper of instinct, and I blindly let it guide me as I leaned forward and fit my lips over his frozen mouth.
I’d forgotten how hard it was to force air into another body. His lungs protested at the expansion, pushing back, and I drove my Naiadic oxygen into him with all the force my ribs could contain, then rose up on my knees to push once more against his chest.
Come on, Kye.
I didn’t have the time or breath to say the words out loud.
But they were there in my head.
Come on, Kye. Come on, Kye.
Promises to the stars fluttered chaotically through my mind. To the moon. To the sun. To anything that might listen.
Please. Please, bring him back.
I’ll never blame anyone for my vows.
I’ll never complain.
I’ll never argue.
I’ll resolve myself to my oath and never want otherwise.
I’ll do what I’m told. When I’m told. How I’m told.
Please, give him back.