Chapter 52
The cries coming from the burg are muffled but still chilling, making my heart bleed for them. I’m locked in place as Varrik and Frid trek forward, while Garren stays with me.
“People are screaming,” I shudder out, my eyes burning at the sound.
Garren keeps quiet, and we both watch Frid as he reaches the iron gate and uses his strength to pull it open. It groans as he shoves aside tons of Ash to get it to move.
“How are they going to help with this?” I ask with a shake of my head. “Their magic can’t be used against Ash.”
“Don’t need it to stop the Ash,” Garren says, his tone impatient. “Just need to get the people out of it.”
Understanding sinks into me then. “But . . . Plagued burgs and cities are supposed to stay sealed. People aren’t supposed to leave . . . right?”
Garren gives me a derisive look. “And let everyone inside die? No, fiend. We’re not following that rule today.”
My eyes lock on to Varrik’s back as he stops and pulls out his pipe. I brace myself just as he starts blasting out a song. Urgent this time. A melody of rush.
It’s so loud that I have to cover my ears, and Garren too winces at the pitch. Varrik is playing forcefully, competing with the noise of the wind and the wails, so that his song can carry down feet of Ash to anyone who might be buried beneath.
I’m tensed and waiting, watching with a strained expression. “What if they can’t get out?”
Garren doesn’t reply, but his eyes are grim.
Fates, please let the people get out.
Frid goes over with a stone in his hand, leaving a gaping hole in the wall where he pulled it from. He uses it as a shovel, digging some of the Ash away from the gateway to clear a path.
Garren looks down at me. “Stay here,” he orders with a tone full of barbs. “You think you can actually do that this time?”
My lips press tight at his biting words, but I nod, and then he trudges toward Frid to help. I let out a breath that stays trapped against the fabric at my mouth as I try to shake off his dislike. I know it’s his nature, and I can see how loyal he is to Varrik, so I shouldn’t take it to heart.
I look up at the harrowing sky, wishing the Ash would stop, praying that for once, the Fates would step in.
But they don’t. They never do come down to right the wrongs they’ve caused.
Except . . .
I watch Varrik, Frid, and Garren work, and I know that’s not completely true. The Fates did do one thing to help rebalance our broken world.
They gave us Core fae.
With his soiled cloak blowing behind him, Varrik stands in front of the ruined gate. He looks like a man who carries the burden of an entire Plague on his back—and he does. Because right now, Varrik isn’t a Govern, or a friend, or a kidnapper.
He’s the Pied Piper.
And he plays.
When I first met him, I could only think of his music in shades of horror and control. But now, I’m right here, experiencing what it’s like for him to use his magic for the good of others.
Varrik’s pipe blasts out louder and louder, the magic of it coating the wind.
And then, just past the burg’s gates, an Ash-covered body suddenly flails out from a mound. A man, thin and tall, bursts from the ground and screams out a breath, a plume of Ash exploding from his mouth like a puff of fog.
He looks like the dead who just burst from the grave.
His movements are jerky and stilted beneath the command of the tune. Then another hand flings up from the Ash behind him, and he turns and reaches down to grasp it, pulling another person out.
My heart pounds with renewed hope as more and more people get lured out of the Ash. They come crawling up from the heaps that’ve dumped down, gasping for air. Tears streak their faces, leaving trails of stark skin to accompany their wide-eyed fear.
Every time another person is freed from the smothering piles, my heart fills a little bit more.
Garren and Frid are right there, pulling one after another out.
Some of the people start to help digging, or reach for more flailing limbs.
Others who are in a worse state collapse onto the flat-laid stone where Frid dismantled more of the wall to give them something substantial to rest on.
Varrik keeps playing, luring more from the stifling death.
I see one mother clutching a baby, scooping Ash from its eyes.
See a dog who bounds out of a pile, hair covered, its panting tongue thick with gray.
I count over two hundred people that answer the pipe’s call, as they drag themselves out in grueling endeavor.
But in true punishing horror, the Ash flurrying down from the sky starts to pick up in density. My eyes strain, my mouth coated in the fetid taste, as it gets so bad that it’s hard to see more than a few feet in front of me.
I heave closer, arm raised against the onslaught that blasts into my face. Varrik continues to cast out his cadence . . . but no other people are wrenching up from the depths.
My stomach twists, tightening in knots. I start counting the seconds. Watching the burg that’s entombed as I blink away thick flakes and watery sorrow.
Varrik’s entire body is tense, and a strain settles in my bones. Even though I have no experience with this, and even though he said Latches don’t get affected, I somehow just know that the sensation is coming from him. That this subtle siphoning is the magical drain from his body to mine.
Like a rope bound around me, I’m tugged closer. I don’t stop until I’m standing right beside him, and I take in more than just his stiff back. Sweat is pouring down his face, streaking through Ash, his heart beating loud enough that I can hear it. He looks tired. Drained. Determined.
Still, he plays.
And still, no one else rises from the Ashes.
“Varrik.”
He doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t even seem to notice I’m here.
I grip his arm gently. “Piper.”
Nothing.
He sways on his feet slightly, and some might mistake it for the push of the wind, but I know better.
I step in front of him, gripping both of his biceps, my worry multiplying tenfold. “Varrik.”
He startles suddenly, blinking down at me. He pulls the pipe away from his lips. “I told you to stay back there,” he growls. “It isn’t safe.”
“You’ve got to stop. You’re exhausted.” I put a hand to my chest, right where it’s leaking. “I can feel it.”
“Not yet.” His tone is edged and rough, and then he dismisses me entirely as he starts to play again.
Stubborn man.
Another dog manages to make it out. A few cats. He even somehow lures a horse to the gate, the poor thing frothing at the mouth.
I turn and lug myself toward the people gathered on the stone.
“Are you okay?” I ask them, doing my best to check them over, to ask their names, to get them to talk.
But shock has set in for most, and as I give them water, they shake beneath the grime, huddling together with sobs and heartache as they curse their forsaken Fates.
I blink with burning eyes as Frid and Garren still dig through the burg, farther in past the gate now. But instead of getting people out, they’re unburying dead bodies.
I make my way back to Varrik with my heart in my throat. “You have to stop,” I plead.
The barest hint of red glows along his dirtied pipe.
“Varrik.” I reach up and cup his face.
His eyes are haunted. Harrowed. His breath stops at my touch, the song drifting out with a shuddering stop.
“You saved who you could,” I tell him gently, aching at the look on his face. “You got a lot out. But now, we have to get them back, okay? We have to get the survivors to safety.”
We have to get him to safety too, though I don’t say that out loud.
Much to my relief, he finally pulls away his pipe.
The blazing embellishments fade as his hands hang at his sides, head dropping in defeat as he lets out a breath.
My heart feels like it’s beating through a vat of sludge, and I watch as the vapor twists from his pipe.
Barely there, either because the wind is carrying it away or because his magic has waned.
“Are you okay?” I ask, hating how exhausted he looks. I’m afraid he’s about to fall right over. He’s pushed himself too much.
“Nearly a thousand people lived here,” he says in a devastated tone. “I only got out two hundred.”
“Two hundred and forty-two,” I correct.
I counted.
His eyes meet mine. He looks so wretched, it hurts my heart.
“If it weren’t for you, all of them would be buried beneath that Ash. You saved many lives,” I tell him, my tone full of grateful pride.
The way he watches me speak is almost trancelike. Attention flicking from my mouth to my eyes, back and forth between the two.
I squeeze his hand. “You did good, Piper,” I murmur.
He lets out a ragged breath and then staggers slightly.
My arm goes around his waist to help keep him upright, while alarm bells go off in my head.
What if because I’m a fiend, the latching isn’t working right?
What if he just used too much magic, and instead of helping him, I’m making things worse?
Frid stops in front of us with slogging steps.
His skin and hair are completely covered and his eyes tearing up, from either the toxic Ash or his own battle of emotion.
“We need to go,” he says thickly. “These people need water and healers. Most of them aren’t breathing right, and the Plague is dumping down now.
We could all be stuck here if we don’t hurry out of the worst of it. ”
Varrik nods and his shoulders stiffen. He draws in a breath, like he’s shoring himself up. Then he says, “I’ll lead them.”
My eyes flare. “No, you can’t keep using your magic!”
“Estinya, look at them,” he says quietly, and my stinging eyes cast over their struggling bodies. “I have to. They can’t make the journey on their own.”
I swallow hard, realizing he’s right, but knowing that he’s at risk too.
“Can you?” I whisper, hoping he’ll tell me the truth. Hoping he’d let me know if it’s too much.
For a moment, his gaze softens on me. “I’ll be fine, blight.”
My chest squeezes. “But what if our latch isn’t working? You weren’t like this in Hamelyn.”
“Our latch is working just fine,” he assures me.
“People are infinitely harder to lure than Rats. Especially when they’re on the cusp of death and their bodies have no strength.
It’s like dragging hundreds of pounds of dead weight all at once.
Far more arduous than what I did in Hamelyn.
” He brushes his finger against mine in a soft, subtle stroke. “I can do this, because you’re here.”
I chew on my lip as I reluctantly let go. When he turns and lifts his pipe again, his hands shake.
I try not to cry at the sight.
The people wail and curse at him when their exhausted bodies are forced to move.
My heart bleeds as they stagger and cough, but they follow.
And the ones who can’t, Frid and Garren help carry.
I grab hold of a whimpering little girl and tie my cloths around her face, holding her to my chest as we walk, counting her rasping breaths as I clutch her and urge her to drink water every time she coughs.
We labor through the heaps in a heavy shroud of despair. When a woman stumbles, I grab on to her hand, and her fingers thread through mine, holding on for dear life.
And it’s with the grip of these two shaking strangers that something in me hardens with anger. Because how can we go on like this? How can we keep surviving this?
The Plagues are getting worse. And every day, more and more people in Brekon are dying, just like the people in this burg. Just like the people in Hamelyn.
I am sick to death of the Plagues.
I am sick to death of death.
If Varrik’s way can work, if his short-term wrongs can set the world to long-term rights, then how can I not support it? If he can stop this senseless dying and find a better way to combat it, then I have to trust him.
It’s here in the gray-flaked hellscape that the last of my reservations shatter.
Because this man who can lure us to destruction might be the only one in the world who can actually lead us to deliverance.
And so, I follow.