Chapter 59
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Autumn prayed to the Highest, to the void, to the Elder, that she wasn’t about to do something profoundly idiotic.
She shook her head minutely. Of course it was; it was beyond idiotic, but she’d seen how the thing looked at her, and if it would save Skirion, she was going to turn her brain off and do what she needed to do.
She manifested her glaive, holding the silver haft, the symbols embedding themselves into her palms, and nodded at Auster. “Let it go.”
Auster hesitated, but lifted the Prism Blade from the thing’s neck. It stopped, looking between Auster and Autumn, clearly confused about what was happening.
“You want me, remember.” Autumn grated out, positioning her weapon slightly better. “I know what you want, and if you think you can get it from me, you’d best try before I change my mind and impale you where you stand.”
The thing laughed, high and tearing the air they stood in, the laugh dying suddenly as Skirion’s eyes changed as they looked at her. He was still in there, Autumn had known that. But she had to get the thing out of him, and it was more than a remnant.
More than a miasma, this was an entire piece of an insane god’s creation that had somehow infected Skirion. “It’s me you’re after.” She said firmly, moving her glaive to the side. “Leave him, let him go and I will give you what you seek.”
The thing used Skirion’s face to look skeptical. “You?—”
“A bargain,” she said, waving at Boreus when he moved to protest. “Leave him; come to me.”
“What will you bargain for ?” The thing asked, sibilant and strange, and Autumn could see it beginning to separate from Skirion.
“I will bargain what I have,” Autumn dropped a tiny fall of silver notes. “In return for his life.”
“You offer that?” The thing was over halfway separated from Skirion now.
“I do,” Autumn’s hand tightened on the glaive. “Leave him, let him alone, and I will grant you the thing you want more than anything.”
The thing separated from Skirion, leaving his body to fall with a thud into the dust of the floor, screaming towards Autumn, claws extended.
Autumn closed her eyes. “Shield!” She cried to the men that she loved and released the full brunt of the Song of the Mountain directly into the thing’s face.
It tried valiantly to cling to existence, but Autumn was flame and chill and life and death and a million voices from a single throat.
The power in that sound, the pain and rage and joy and celebration, all the shades of everything that had ever been and will be.
The sheer strength of it obliterated the thing hanging in the air.
It faded from a ghastly monster to a piece of gold hanging in the air. Until even that shredded away under the torrent of sound.
Autumn kept the Song going until she was certain that there was nothing left of the madness or the golden thing, and then let the sound die.
She knelt at Skirion’s side, pressing shaking fingers into the artery at his neck. The pulse there was faint, but his heart beat. He was still alive, and Autumn felt herself fade away.
* * *
She woke to Boreus tapping her cheek. “Close it, Autumn.” He urged her. “You have to close Charan again.”
Autumn nodded, looking up at the sky. “Close it, Weavers.” Her voice was shredded, shaky, but the stones fell, the entrance hidden again, and Boreus held her close.
The last thing she saw was his worried smile.
When she managed to drag her eyes open again, it was to the bright eyes of Light, and the ceiling in their bedroom in their home. “Highest?”
“You shook the Mountain again.” Light said gently. “What did you do?”
“I refused to let the song be caged.” Autumn said, coughing against the pain of her dry throat. “That’s what the thing wanted. It took Skirion’s body to try to kill us, but it wasn’t intelligent enough to question the bargain I was trying to make.”
“I brought you some soup, love.” Auster appeared at the doorway with a steaming bowl in his hands. “Can she eat, Highest?”
Light rose from the bed with a nod. “Yes, and tomorrow she can rise. Some sun would do the lot of you good.”
“Skirion?” Autumn turned her attention to Auster.
“He’s not awake yet,” Auster said calmly. “But the Highest has seen to him and says that it is only a matter of time before he wakes.”
Autumn felt her chest loosen. “Alright, that’s good.”
Auster sat next to her and placed the bowl of soup on a tray over her legs. “Eat and I’ll tell you what’s been happening in the last three weeks.”
“Three weeks?” She gave him a startled look. “How has it been three weeks?”
“You used the Song,” he said calmly. “Light said that it was nearly impossible for even Magic to sing properly, and you are many things, beloved, but Highest is not among them.”
“True,” Autumn spooned up some soup, and then more as how hungry she was hit her brain. “This is yummy,” she said in between mouthfuls. “Thank you, Auster.”
“My pleasure, love.” He looked pleased. “After you finish that, I have more if you’re still hungry.”
She managed that bowl and another after that before she was satisfied and sleepy again.
She felt it when Auster tucked her up in the blankets and came over to cuddle with her. Half woke when the mattress dipped and Boreus joined them.
But it wasn’t until the stone-gray light of false dawn that Autumn heard something. She wiggled out of their arms, slowly, and padded out of the room to follow the soft sound to the other bedroom, the one they kept for guests.
The one where Auster had said they were keeping Skirion.
Autumn pressed a hand to the door, trying to decide what to do. She should leave him to rest, but she also desperately wanted to know that he was alright. Even if he wasn’t awake yet, he would still be breathing, and then she might be able to sleep again.
Autumn dropped her hand from the door and turned away. Once he woke, she would talk to him, but until then, she would stay out of his spaces. At least until he could look at her and invite her in.
She was halfway across the room when she heard the door creak open.
“Autumn?” A dark shape in the doorway said her name.
“Skirion,” she whispered, “it’s good to see you awake.
“It really is you,” he sounded gobsmacked. “You’re beautiful.”