Chapter 8 #3
“Well done, recruit,” Ilara said from somewhere to her right. “This one is mine. Repeat after me.”
This one is mine?
Ilara stated the same oath, and a deep, cautious voice repeated it back to her, the words carrying the slight grit of the Ironglade accent. The man from Ironglade’s footsteps shuffled away a minute later, uneven with an exhausted stumble.
Two of them had succeeded, one of them was a half-consumed corpse slapped carelessly back into their formation, his blood making the stone beneath their boots extra slippery, and eight of them were still rooted to the cliff.
The heat from the already-forgotten sunset bled out of the stone first, chilling her calves as the wind turned cruel and wet. Salt spray coated her cheeks and hair and lashes, and yet her throat was so painfully dry. She was desperate for water. For food. For sleep.
Rion swayed, her breath hitching into something dangerously close to a groan before she strangled it back down.
Vana made another small, pained sound what felt like hours later, though Eiko had no way of telling. It was just a hiss of breath or a bitten-off word. Eiko braced for the blow, but instead, she felt the air twist.
This monster came with a whisper instead of a roar. A soft, papery rustle that might have been a grumble of some kind. The hairs on Eiko’s arms rose as the sound slid across the line of recruits, winding around their ankles and creeping up their spines.
“Congratulations, recruit.” Ilara again. She directed Vana to repeat the oath.
“I was born in fear.” Vana’s voice shook with weakness. “I will rise in silence. My name is nothing until the banners call me.”
There was a pause. “Go,” Ilara said. “Before you fall and shame us.”
Vana’s footsteps scuffed away, and the cliff settled into painful, brittle stillness again.
Eiko had never been so aware of her own heartbeat in all her life.
Each thud felt too loud, too risky, like one of the section leaders would hear it and step forward to punish her for it.
She tried again to manifest Hymn, but the little monster only circled her wrist fretfully, unable to obey her command or assist her in any way.
At some point, her thoughts drifted to Stonesigh.
To the tapestry in the living room, which hadn’t hinted in the slightest that there was a torturous clifftop tucked behind the castle, where monsters manifested and fought so ferociously that the rock rattled and cracked, producing sky-shaking thunder.
There was no hint of the people who had died in this dangerous endeavour.
There was only the glittering gold city, so full of light and prosperity, and no signs of those who suffered to keep it like that.
And then she was thinking of her grandmother—of what the old woman would say if she could see Eiko now.
My stubborn child. She could almost feel the brush of those knobbed, wrinkled fingers through her hair. Look what trouble you’ve gotten into now.
She thought of Ky laughing in the mountain snow and Rion’s soft voice reading her favourite books out loud as they huddled up by the fire, the taste of spiced biscuits on her tongue.
Kaito’s steady hands as he tossed her over his broad back whenever she was moving too slowly.
Ren’s mouth at her throat, and those groans he used to make whenever she gripped his biceps with urgency, pulling him down on top of her.
Would it ever be like that between them again? Or had the Kingsweep changed everything?
Hymn flicked his long tail against the inside of her wrist, trying to comfort her.
Manifest, she thought again. Please.
I’m trying, he said miserably.
You did fine getting in, she grumbled.
I was running for my life.
Before she could reply, a hum pulsed beneath the silence.
The air prickled with a strange, analytical sharpness, like being watched by a pair of giant eyes looming eerily in the sky.
Eiko felt the sensation of something circling them at a measured, stalking pace, claws dragging across stone with such an unnerving screech, it had her flinching.
It was the only sound this monster made, and it chilled Eiko to her core.
Hymn shrank deep into the recesses of her chest.
“Well done, recruit,” Ilara said. Eiko heard movement down the line—so it wasn’t any of her friends, which left the man who had been taking notes on them as they walked from Blackreach, and the remaining man from Oakensnare. Lenny.
“I was born in fear,” the man recited huskily. A Suntide accent. The note-taker. “I will rise in silence. My name is nothing until the banners call me.”
Ilara said simply, “Dismissed.”
Only a few moments later, another monster manifested, and another ragged-at-the-edges voice recited the oath, directed by Ilara. Eiko had only heard Lenny speak very briefly when he announced that everyone should call him Kaelen, and not Lenny, but it was definitely him.
And then it was just them. The stubborn idiots from Stonesigh.
Like attracts like, she commented to Hymn. Looks like we bonded with the most stubborn monsters.
The stronger monsters take longer, Hymn told her, still hiding inside her chest like a complete wimp.
How do you know that?
I watched this ceremony a few times. The stronger, older monsters always took longer.
How long? she asked.
Well … sometimes … when they break the bond instead of manifesting, they come out faster, he hedged. And if they’re hungry, they’ll break out even faster still.
Comforting. I’m glad we went down this line of enquiry.
Sorry, he groaned. I can’t lie to my master.
I can’t even master a set of stairs; you have got to stop calling me that.