Chapter Thirty-Two
I have extracted the desired assurances, and will immediately begin my work.
Some might call it folly to trust him, but I am not worried. I will have my reward before I help him reach his. Sorin cannot achieve his objective without my assistance, and that gives me power over him.
Soon, I will have power over them all.
From Klement’s personal diary
No one came to save Enzi.
Einar watched in horror as what was left of the man’s body crumpled beneath Inga’s fingers. Rotting ash drifted past her on the wind as the darkness faded from her eyes.
She swayed on her feet, so unsteady it seemed the breeze might take her as well, but before Einar could take more than a single step, Arktikos was there, his polar bear form towering over her with a menace that would have terrified most people.
Inga smiled as she buried one trembling hand in the fur at his neck and leaned against him, her head barely reaching his shoulder. “You are warm,” she whispered, her eyes fluttering shut.
Power flared, and Arktikos resumed his human form in a shower of sparks just in time to catch Inga as she collapsed.
Worry tightened Einar’s chest, but there was no time. “Gather the people,” he told Petya. “You and Agata can get them to the mountain pass.”
“Einar!”
Naia’s voice washed away every other concern.
He whirled in its direction, his heart pounding as he saw her running toward him across the uneven ground.
Gwynira and Isa followed, but Einar barely noticed them as he raced to meet Naia.
He swept her up in his arms and indulged himself in the luxury of one brief, blistering kiss before he set her on her feet.
Her dress was torn and stained with far too much blood. Einar smoothed his hands up her arms, examining each tear and the skin beneath it, fear making his heart race.
“Most of it isn’t mine,” she reassured him softly. She grasped his shoulders, then pulled him back into a fierce embrace. “Are you—?”
The memory of pain still lingered everywhere Enzi’s corruption had touched him, but Inga had taken the wounds. “I’m fine,” he promised her, running his fingers over her hair to soothe himself as much as her. “What about Aleksi? Can we reach him?”
Naia shook her head. “He’s locked himself away with Sorin. To protect the rest of us.”
It was probably hypocritical to be angry at him for that, but frustration still sizzled in Einar’s veins. The Dream must have a wicked sense of humor, to have bound him so tightly to two people determined to put their own bodies between danger and the people they loved.
“Maybe we can—”
An explosion a half dozen paces away cut off his words.
A cart loaded down with barrels of fish turned into shrapnel that shredded in the air in every direction.
Einar barely turned in time to take the brunt of it against his back, shielding Naia’s body with his as the dirt to their right exploded with another boom.
Whatever progress Petya and Agata had made toward restoring order vanished in a wave of startled screams and crashing detonations. Einar dragged Naia behind the stone wall that circled the village well, ducking down so they could peek over the edge and find the source of the newest attack.
It did not take long. A woman stood on the plains at the edge of the village, her arms outstretched as the power of the Dream sparked around her.
She gestured with one finger, as if beckoning, and a rock the size of Einar’s fist lifted into the air and began to tremble.
Another flick of her hand, and the rock shot forward as if fired from a cannon and crashed into the side of a nearby building, which exploded as if it had been struck with the nastiest incendiary round Einar had ever seen.
He bit off a curse and tightened his hand on the wall until the rocks cracked under his fingers. “How many more of these people does he have?”
“Einar.” When he looked back at Naia, she bit her lip. “You and the others get the villagers to safety.” She touched his face. “And I’ll see you after.”
Instant rejection rose up within him, so swift and sure that he’d already parted his lips to say no when his own voice echoed deep inside him.
Whatever it takes.
It had been easy to make that promise when he was standing on the deck of his ship, preparing to fight his way to Naia. It was harder to face keeping it when it meant turning his back on her and leaving her to fight—or fall—without him.
But if she had to worry about her people being caught in the crossfire, it was so much more likely that she would fall.
He would not repeat Theron’s mistakes.
Einar wove his fingers into her hair and pulled her in for a soft kiss, then whispered his promise against her lips. “I’ll get them to safety.”
She pulled back, and the look in her eyes was her promise. They would see each other again after this battle. She knew it in her bones, and so did he. No matter what happened today, he would find Naia and Aleksi again. He would chase them across millennia and worlds if he had to.
They were his. In this lifetime, and every lifetime to come.
Smiling as if she’d heard the thought, Naia stroked his cheek. Then her fingers fell away as she stood and stepped out into the open.
When Sorin’s war against the High Court had threatened Rahvekya, Naia had raised a wall of water to save the entire island from certain destruction.
Certain destruction threatened only a single village this time, and the wall of water Naia raised was considerably smaller.
It made it no less magical.
Waves from the coastline rose to towering heights, as if they might crash down on the village. But instead of breaking, they . . . arced. Water sparkled in the sunlight as it flowed over nothing only to crash down on the other side of the village.
Not a wall, but a tunnel. It cut across the land and up toward the cliffs, protecting the pass into the mountains from attack. One of the exploding rocks crashed into the water and was swept harmlessly away. A larger rock spun toward it and met the same fate.
For a frozen moment, the islanders seemed too stunned to move, their heads tilted back in awe as they stared into the glittering impossibility that swirled around them. It was Agata who broke the silence with a sharp clap of her hands. “Gather the children first. Make for the pass!”
Arktikos appeared from behind a building with Inga cradled against his chest. Her head lolled against his shoulder, her body still limp, and though the dark shadows were gone, dozens of jagged scars marred her pale skin.
Some were still livid and painful looking, healing far too sluggishly for Einar’s comfort.
There was nothing he could do for her now, except send her away from the battlefield and hope her body could heal on its own. “Keep her safe.”
“I will guard her,” Arktikos replied with the solemnity of a vow. “Until death discharges my duty.”
The precise words stirred some ancient memory—Theron’s memory, of a people who had made their home in the frozen seas he’d called home, whose hardiness was only outstripped by their unyielding sense of honor.
Inga had saved Arktikos’s life. Einar only hoped the Witch would wake up strong enough to be annoyed that a polar bear now owed her a life debt.
Arktikos joined the rush of people moving swiftly through the tunnel. The crew and elders helped the young and the injured, until only Petya and Einar stood in the abandoned village. “Go,” he told her. “I’ll be right behind you.”
She searched his face, then nodded and turned to obey. Einar allowed himself one last glimpse of Naia, her figure distorted by the moving water that she held so effortlessly.
He would see her. After.
Einar claimed a sword from one of the fallen soldiers and raced through the tunnel, feeling it collapse into a solid wall a step behind him.
When he reached the end, he climbed the narrow path that led to the jagged pass between the cliffs, duty and desire at war within him.
Only his promise kept him moving forward.
Was this what it had been like for Petya, the night she had strapped an infant Einar to her chest and disappeared into these mountains?
Had every step away from her wife felt like striding across broken glass?
Leaving Aleksi and Naia behind hurt, but Einar knew it was the right thing to do.
These were her people, and his. He would see them safe, and then—
Screams rose ahead of him, where the pass opened up into a sheltered valley. The villagers had already spilled out of it and were halfway across, with only Petya and Silvio serving as a rear guard. As Einar reached the mouth of the valley, he heard Brynjar’s booming shout. “Turn back!”
The formerly orderly retreat devolved into terrified chaos. Einar pushed through the jostling crowd until he saw Brynjar with his axe raised, facing down a sea of nightmares.
Horror rose in a sickening wave. Terrors were crawling out of the ground. Creatures formed from the nightmares fed into the Void, Terrors were one of the few things even the High Court feared.
They came together as bits of rock or rotting branches, formed of debris or ancient bones or sometimes even pieces of the dead. Nothing held them together but the power of the Void itself—and even a god would not heal easily from the wounds they inflicted.
Mortals had no chance at all.
They were all around the refugees, blocking all paths out of the valley and crawling out of the ground at the mouth of the pass back to the beach, cutting off retreat. But the Terrors weren’t what twisted horror in Einar’s guts.
It was who stood with them.
“Captain Einar.” It was Klement, and it was not.
He was larger, towering as tall as Einar in his demigod form, and his skin held dark scars that looked like those vines of corruption.
Gone were a scholar’s modest robes, replaced with armor that looked like the Terrors—broken branches and sharp fragments of stone and bones twisted together with darkness that seethed with the destructive power of the Void.
Klement spread his arms to the side, eyes alight with an unholy glee. “I asked the Emperor to make me a god, and he granted my wish.”
Had he? Einar felt no power within the Guildmaster, not as he would if the man had truly manifested.
The other Dreamers all had that weight, the glow you could see if you concentrated hard enough.
Even the new ones who had been born from the nightmares of the Void had a presence that marked them as something more than merely mortal.
Klement did not feel like a god. If anything, he felt as if Sorin had reached into him and brought nightmares to the surface.
Or maybe he had simply nurtured the darkness already there, the cruelty Klement had hidden behind scholarly fascination.
That entitlement that made him think Rahvekya’s stories were his to claim, his to judge.
His to define for the rest of the world, as if the people who lived here needed an outsider to speak for them.
Maybe Klement was Einar’s personal nightmare.
“The people will learn to love me, after they learn to fear me,” Klement bellowed, raising his arms higher. The Terrors lurched forward, as if he had them on strings. “I will be this island’s god.”
A still certainty washed through Einar, sweeping all else away. His fingertips tingled as the wind picked up. That distant rumble of thunder was no longer distant. Dark clouds boiled up, swallowing the sun.
Einar smiled, and when he spoke, his voice echoed off the surrounding cliffs. “Rahvekya already has a god.”
The wind rose, nudging those who felt like his back until they huddled in a tight circle, safe within the growing wall of air. Terrors lurched forward, but the wind caught parts of them, tearing away branches and battering at stone.
Thousands of years before the High Court had first walked the borders of the Sheltered Lands, primordial forces had ruled on Rahvekya. Einar opened himself to that distant memory and let Theron’s rage fill him.
A second wind rose, tight and contracted, lifting him from the earth. Lightning split the sky, lighting the sudden darkness, showing the villagers of Rahvekya falling one by one to their knees.
He was the howling wind that began to shred the Terrors. He was the roaring thunder that shook the ground beneath Klement’s feet. He was the brutal rain that pounded them all into the muddy, churning ground and the hungry lightning that crashed to earth, obliterating all in its path.
He was the storm god.
He was the storm.
But he was more. Because at the heart of the maelstrom, there was peace. The people of Rahvekya knelt on soft grass, guarded by a gentle wind that shunted the rain away from them.
Theron had been an ancient force of destruction.
The rain that fell from the storm clouds tasted like Naia. The wind that gentled when it touched someone who belonged to him felt like Aleksi’s caress. Loving them both had changed the monster he had been, and had focused the man he wanted to become.
Einar was an elemental force, but not of destruction.
He was a force of protection.
Beneath him, even his crew had fallen to their knees. Arktikos knelt, sheltering Inga’s body with his. Only Petya stood strong, gazing up at him with eyes alight with sudden understanding and awed realization and pride.
She had been the first one to shelter him, to care for him, to teach him of a family’s love—a grace Theron had never known.
It was for Petya that Einar called down the lightning that burned Klement from existence.