Chapter Twenty-One
Isplutter and give him my darkest glare. “Not fair.”
“You can punish me later. For now, help me keep Bern’s head out of the water.
He’s beyond helping himself.” Kaelen pulls the soldier closer to me, and I wrap one arm around Kaelen’s waist and the other around Bern’s shoulders, keeping his face out of the icy river.
When we move, I realize the prince was treading water to fight against the current, which now sweeps us up and carries us along with it toward the jagged opening in the rock.
The rock that we’re about to smash into.
“Are we going to fit?” I fight my instinct to try to get away, get back to the ledge, because that opening is too small for all three of us to fit into, and will there even be any air to breathe, and why, why did Artemisen have to decide that a nobody could touch the amulet, which is still glowing, at least, and then I shriek and swallow more water than I wanted to and the river carries us along, faster and faster, straight toward the rock wall, and we’re going to die horribly—
We fit.
Somehow, some way, we fit. Even better, the tunnel widens out past the pit, and there’s plenty of air to breathe above us. Even a shore of a kind, along one side of the river, but when I nod at it, Kaelen shakes his head.
“Have to get out of here,” he shouts, so I can hear him over the roar of water echoing off the walls and ceiling of the cavern. “Too cold to last much longer.”
He’s right, I know he’s right, but icy numbness is climbing up my body from my feet to my legs, now to my chest and shoulders.
Even my arms, tight around Bern and Kaelen, are losing feeling.
My head aches so much, and I can feel blood pulsing from a wound I’m glad I can’t see.
Will I be able to hang on? If I can’t, Bern will die, because he’s now completely unconscious.
The term dead weight takes on an immediate and horrible meaning, but I can feel his breath against my cheek. He’s still alive.
For now.
I just need to be strong enough to help keep him that way. I chant, my teeth chattering around the words.
“Storms pass.
“Pain ends.
“I will never quit.
“Storms pass.
“Pain ends.
“I will never quit.
“Storms pass.
“Pain ends—”
Kaelen chimes in on the last line.
“We will never quit.”
Our gazes meet, and the strength I see in his eyes bolsters my courage.
I nod. “We will never quit.”
Kaelen’s powerful kicks propel us along and save us from drowning, making me fiercely determined about one crucial fact: If we survive th is, I’m going to learn to swim.
We move through the icy water for so long I wonder if this river crosses all of Altarra, but just when I’m afraid I can’t hold on for one more minute, the tunnel brightens in front of us.
“Daylight,” Kaelen gasps. I have a feeling he would have shouted the word if he had the breath to do so.
Were we in the Barrows long enough for daylight to break? Maybe dawn, at least. I don’t have breath to reply, so I just nod and focus on holding on with hands that feel like blocks of solid ice.
The river carries us through another opening in the rock, this one giving out onto a wider channel where the water flows between two grassy banks.
Kaelen puts all his strength into turning us toward the closer one, dragging Bern and me with him.
When my feet touch the ground, I get my feet under me and help pull Bern, though I’m so tired I can barely move.
Trudging slowly, fighting the current, step by step, Kaelen and I pull Bern with us and climb out of the river and onto the bank, where we fall onto our backs and do nothing but gasp, sucking in all the air we can, for several minutes.
When I finally sit up, I see the lumpy hills of the Barrows behind us and a relatively flat landscape in front of us. We survived.
“We made it!” I turn to Kaelen, surprised he’s not sitting up yet.
“Well. Mostly,” he says, his voice so quiet I almost don’t hear him over the sound of the burbling river.
“What? Mostly?” I look at Bern, still unconscious. “I know, but surely once we start a fire and get him warm, bind his injury, and maybe find something to eat, he’ll be fine. I can—”
“Solitude,” he says, stopping my flow of words. “I’m in a little trouble.”
He moves his hand from where it rests against his side, and I see blood flowing out of the torn fabric. He tries to smile. “Might need some … help.”
And then his eyes roll back in his head.
I sit there—just sit there—for I don’t even know how long, just staring at the two injured men.
Then I force myself to think. Start planning.
What do I need to do first? Even as I’m running through options, I tear a strip off the bottom of my fancy new shirt and use it to press against Kaelen’s wound.
Bern’s injury seems to have closed over in the river or at least quit bleeding, but his shoulder is dislocated.
I wad up another strip of my shirt and press it against my head laceration and focus on breathing, because I don’t have time to panic.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
I need help. I need Elianna. I need herbs. I need a healer or a pot of boiling water and a fire or really, just one single piece of good luck for a ravens-begotten change.
Throwing my head back, I scream, long and loud, letting out all my frustration and fear and fury.
Then I square my shoulders and get to work.
First, I take stock.
Bad idea. I have nothing to work with, and we’re alone. I don’t know what happened to our companions, to my best and maybe only friend in the world, and I’m afraid to think about that too hard right now. I’m terrified that either the draugrs or the Fell will find us any minute.
I’ll have to worry about that later.
Okay. No taking stock. Got it.
I should regroup.
I drag Kaelen and then Bern, step by arduous step, farther away from the river. Then I have to sit down and rest. I’m still freezing in my wet clothes.
My brain skips through useless ideas like making a travois, or going for help, or trying to find a way back up into the Barrows to look for the rest of our company.
If I can find any wood on the ground beneath the few trees I see nearby, I’ll use it to start a fire, not in some futile attempt to build a travois.
My first goal has to be to get them warm.
Get all of us warm, I amend as I shiver so hard my teeth chatter.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Kaelen and Bern, though neither are conscious to hear me. The sound of my voice is comforting, though, so I decide to narrate my futile—no, valiant—efforts to save us from dying.
“Valiant is a much better word.” I trudge over to the trees, wondering when simply walking started to demand so much effort.
My head injury and the various cuts, scrapes, and soon-to-be bruises from the draugrs’ attack, the fall, and the escape down the river are all burning now that the icy water isn’t numbing my skin.
The bleeding slowed down, though. I have to believe that’s a good thing.
“Oh, thank Artemisen,” I say when I see branches on the ground beneath two of the trees. Then I grit my teeth at the irony almost before the phrase finishes leaving my lips. Maybe Artemisen should thank us. We’re certainly racking up the hardships on this rescue mission.
If goddesses didn’t act like children, maybe we’d all be safe and sound at home, and … I’d never have met Kaelen. He’d be home doing princely things in Valourian—a Valourian that was never overrun by the Zhagarn and Fell.
I’d still be scrubbing floors and bookcases in the library, though, because nothing a goddess did caused my mother’s accident.
No. I don’t want to think about what-ifs that lead me back to that version of my life.
As much as I hate to admit it, freezing and terrified on a journey to save a goddess might actually be preferable to the life I was living before all this started.
I make the conscious choice not to examine that reality too closely.
Slowly, too slowly, I gather the materials to make a fire, then realize I don’t have any steel. When the draugr knocked me down, the dagger Chitai gave me flew out of my hand. But then I shove my hands into the deep pockets of my pants and smile, because I’m not completely out of luck.
First, the tube carrying my freedom from indenture is still in there.
I hurriedly untie it and laugh out loud when I see the oilcloth protected the precious parchment, my pages, my snow leopard, and—less important, maybe—my small pouch of words.
I manage a wry grin when I think of the Fortitude I braided in my hair, now lost to the river.
A streak of reckless determination shoots through me, and I reach in the pouch for a handful of paper scraps, searching through them until I find Defiance.
I quickly re-braid my hair with the word, then carefully replace everything, secure it, and put the tube on a flat rock near me in the sun to dry the outside.
Briefly, I consider adding the key to the tube, but I’m uneasy about the idea of letting it get even that far from me, so I keep it in the smaller pocket at my waist for now.
For a second bit of luck, I find the stone Neville gave me in my other pocket.
I take a long time, fumbling with icy fingers and Kaelen’s sword, to start the fire.
I think back to poor Sergeant Neville trying to talk to me about what to do if I got separated from the group, and how I cut him off.
How sure I was when I told him I wouldn’t survive.
The Soli who said those things feels like someone I only vaguely knew, long in my past. The Soli I am today is going to do everything in her power to save my injured companions and myself.
“I will definitely survive,” I tell the armload of branches I’m carrying back to the fire.
“We will survive,” I tell Kaelen and Bern while I try to make them as comfortable as I can next to the fire. “We have the first key. We can’t quit now, when we’re halfway there.”