Chapter Thirty Five
EINAR
After all the exertion and terror of such a climb, Einar’s heart quickened into an unsteady beat that lengthened oddly, even for an emotional response. He paused, waiting for another heartbeat that eventually came. The reverberative and pronounced thud rocked his chest.
Strange, but not unwarranted. Because never, in all his time as a soldat, had he been that close to death. His heartbeat resumed as usual, and he ignored it in favor of the obvious puzzle ahead.
They approached the door to the Hall of the Sky.
Not the exact door they sought that would guide them into Onskar’s hallways, but the one before it. Certainly, closer than they’d been before, and that gave him another shot of hope. Somewhere in Onskar’s potential myriad of hallways, Agnes awaited.
A prickling certainty swept him, a knowing that this was the right place. He’d find Agnes’s soul within that door.
Yet, even that made no sense.
Much like the hunch that told him where to jump onto the rocks and find Himmel’s ledge below.
He just . . . knew. Was it the same way he calculated a goal, options, sifted through possibilities where it could go wrong, and released what wouldn’t work?
No. It wasn’t the same at all. A blooming, heavy weight told him all he desired lay inside, and it had nothing to do with facts.
More like an instinct.
Besides, the excitement of a mission, and the hope of Agnes, meant he hadn’t thought this quickly in months. Perhaps desperation lent incredible reserves. Like the strength it required to haul Mila up the final cliff wall, not to mention himself. That had been a feat he’d never thought possible.
High stakes set aside, it felt good to be on a mission again.
As they closed the gap between the cliff edge and the door, his thoughts skipped ahead, to what he’d expect inside.
What did Draven call the soul vessels? Reliquaries?
Months ago, an onded threw an arcane-infused ax and split Agnes’s sternum in half.
The sharp tip cleaved her fleshy heart, likely killing her as she fell off the ship.
If she died in the air, would her reliquary go to the Hall of the Sky?
Understanding that Agnes might be within—her soul, something of her—compelled him not to waste time.
He’d find out soon enough.
Mila breathed, “Can we enter?”
I cannot come any closer than this, Himmel said. The arcane protections will not allow me inside.
“Me first,” Einar insisted, but he stalled in front of the door.
Hesitation and a deep wariness stopped him.
He cast a critical eye on the curling wind etchings along the door edges, where whittled wood gave way to bleached sunshine in the corners.
The grains flowed, swirling from khaki to umber and variant reddish hues.
He drew in a breath, summoned an image of Agnes, and reached a hand out.
He grasped the metal door handle and turned it. The latch gave way, swinging into open air.
Mila gasped.
A room of clouds and sky awaited, not unlike the ragged cliff. What do you see? Himmel asked. I cannot view within. Only darkness.
“I can’t describe it,” Mila murmured.
Go. Don’t waste time.
Einar lifted his leg, braced his foot, and elevated off the ground.
He shoved the door open with one hand and paused.
As first glance revealed, the room was a clear circle with no other stories, simply vaulted sky.
All appeared to be unsupported air, vapor.
Only a firm, invisible floor reassured him.
He stopped, turned, and offered Mila a hand.
She bit her bottom lip, accepted the offer, and joined him.
Sacredness permeated the still air. The Hall of the Sky carried a penetrating calm. Einar hesitated to venture within and break the fragility. The door slammed shut with a thump that sent his heart into a wild frenzy.
Mila sucked in a breath, elbows tucked into her sides like wings, and squeezed her eyes shut. After a moment, she opened them again and pointed. “Einar, look!”
Shelves filled the interior, stacked in rows and filling every visible space.
Jars lined the wide shelves, glowing with cobalt-and-emerald lights.
The lights roved and danced with equal fervor.
While one jar flared, another faded. Each jar, though shaped from spherical to oblong, had no lid.
Every edge was rounded and sealed, negating an entry point.
“Reliquaries,” she whispered.
He nodded.
Wind whistled through the cracks in the shelves as he approached the closest one. His fingers tingled as he reached out, drawn to the swirling lights. He closed his hand into a fist before touching the glass. A repellent feeling swept him.
No. It wasn’t right to touch one.
The Hall of the Sky had no apparent walls.
They entered a chamber that levitated over the earth, hanging like a forgotten scarf.
The ocean was a speck beneath a great expanse of stars, shimmering and gentle as velvet overhead.
A dichotomy of darkness and light existed between the two spheres that wasn’t present when they left the mountain top.
Daylight had reigned; they stepped into twilight here.
Beyond the soul stacks separating them from the Hall’s middle came a strange glow hanging from much higher, riddled with a rainbow-like hue. Einar studied it. It was the only thing that didn’t make sense.
“So few souls?” Mila’s query sounded like a cannon in the quiet.
He almost scoffed.
Few?
There had to be hundreds.
“What are the rules for a soul entering here?” he whispered.
“I don’t know. Dying in the air? How often does that happen? Do they have to die in only air? What if they’re touching sky and land?”
“Good questions.”
“I’d wager only Onskar knows the answers.”
Squaring his shoulders, he turned to study the Hall’s edge.
The stacks looped around in semicircles.
He assumed a wall lingered behind them, but the breezy air made him doubt himself.
Could he walk off the end? Would anything catch him?
Aside from the obvious plummet into nothingness, he observed no threats, nor sign of life.
Onskar didn’t lurk in the shadows, that Einar could observe.
“It’s simple,” he said.
Nodding, Mila asked, “What is that rainbow light, do you think?” She motioned overhead. “It comes from there.”
“We need to figure it out before we go through the door.”
“You mean that one?” She gestured across the Hall.
A door hovered in the air off to the side. Wooden, thin, nondescript, and a little lopsided. Aside from the rotating, rainbow form at the ceiling, it was the only thing to grab his attention. Wordless, they closed in together, slowly.
Shite.
They’d found the door. Part of him didn’t think it existed.
That Draven’s antiquated information had gone stale, or changed, or never been real.
But the door was here, with little to identify it as special except for a terrible, dark, and ancient power radiating from the entryway.
This door was wrong in ways he couldn’t describe.
Foreboding crept all the way to his bones.
Einar stared it down, unable to put a finger on his uneasiness.
Or was it familiarity?
It called to him.
He couldn’t fathom walking through it, nor what they’d find on the other side.
“It smells like . . . death,” Mila murmured. Reticence laced her voice. The Hall of the Sky shivered, the glass reliquaries shuddering from their perches like birds in a nest. Did he imagine it, or did everything shift?
He whispered, “Where do you think it goes?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t go any closer yet.” Until he searched this Hall for Agnes’s reliquary on the off chance it was there, he wasn’t going anywhere else. He withheld the urge to grip the diasvard by sheer willpower. Unlike last time, he couldn’t act like he had it, just in case Onskar could sense them here.
Nose wrinkled, she recoiled. “I won’t.” Her gaze darted around. “Let’s do one lap around, just to gain more information. Maybe it’ll help prepare us for the Hall of the Sea.” She cast another wary glance at the door and gulped. “For when . . . for when we walk through there and find it, anyway.”
Relieved for the opportunity to search for Agnes without having to state it outright, he tilted his head to the side.
“I’ll go right.”
“I’ll go left.”
“Shout if anything happens.”
She nodded.
Parting gave Einar a shot of anxiety on her behalf. He couldn’t protect her from a distance. Then again, she was, for all intents and purposes, Onskar’s equal. She could probably protect herself. He held the disadvantage by being human.
Mila disappeared with a fast clip down one row, nearly entirely empty.
He slipped along the edges, skimming cluttered shelves with a careful study.
He turned his attention to the jars. Reliquaries of different form, composure, and color greeted him.
No name plate existed near them, nor hint of expression, face, emotion.
Only rotating, changing colors that morphed between light aquamarine to blackest sapphire.
His elation slid into paranoia and fear.
What if he couldn’t find Agnes? What if she was trapped here, and he had no way of knowing?
The idea of her soul bound into a tiny, glass space repulsed him.
He resisted the urge to shatter every reliquary.
The unexpected, violent pulse ripped through his chest like a spear, and it took all his control to school the urge.
His arm trembled as he gripped his fingers in a fist and kept striding.
What was wrong with him?
The otherworldly sensation ended. His chest filled with breath again, and his spinning head calmed.
Relieved to regain control, he trained his eyes beyond the reliquaries, seeking anything.
A break in the view. Dark lines, a waver.
Hints of movement, or a whisper. He found only crystal jars, barren shelves, and doubt.
How would he know her reliquary from others? That must be the point.
At the end of the row, near a jar standing alone, a hint of an indefinably different color caught his eye. Wild green, almost the same as Agnes’s eyes. His head tilted, studying the glass vessel, long and willowy, with warmth in the curves and subtleness in the mellow coloring.
Just like Agnes.
Within the swirling storm inside the reliquary, he thought he caught a hint of a familiar perfume. Flowery. Fresh.
Just like Agnes.
No.
It couldn’t be her. And yet . . .
His entire body flushed cold when an image appeared within the reliquary’s curve. Agnes’s smile, eyes crinkled, lips wide. Einar pinched his thigh—he didn’t dream it. He willed the image to arise again. He had to stop himself from tearing across the Hall and throwing himself at her glass vessel.
Agnes’s smile appeared again in the swirling crystal, and his heart dropped.
Shite.
He’d found her.
“Einar,” Mila hissed. Her voice catapulted around the room. “Einar, I found—” She cut off unexpectedly, then queried, “Einar?”
The hair on the back of Einar’s neck stood up when he tried to rip his eyes away from the reliquary, but failed. His neck tightened, body stiffened. He lost command of his limbs as he stared into the jar.
Agnes stared back.
Her lips canted in a smile, her eyes thinned, creasing at the edges. Reddish strands of hair flowed around her cheeks, and her smell wafted closer. He could have touched her, except he was locked in position, unable to look away.
Without a thought, his arm lifted. The movement wasn’t his own. He resisted, but it didn’t matter.
“Agnes,” he breathed.
A force inside of him tussled with better reason, fighting to touch the jar.
The desire to reach for Agnes and receive her again overpowered sound judgment.
Surely, if he had her soul, he’d control her life.
He’d bring her back from this hellish emptiness and into his arms, where she belonged. No reliquaries. No sadness.
Agnes’s voice filled his mind.
I knew you’d come.
He resisted, and the power responded. What forced his arm to touch the glass? What prevented him from turning away? A war ignited between the unseen enemy holding him and his instinctual resistance. Sweat dotted his brow.
Grunting, he managed to bend his elbow to avoid touching her reliquary. He must not. That’s all he understood, and with no idea how he understood it.
Einar, please. Set me free.
His heart wrenched. Agnes. His Agnes. That was her voice, her intonation. He couldn’t handle the pain. “I will,” he whispered, his breath hot. “I will, but not like this. This . . . isn’t . . . right.”
A deep throated laugh overrode her plea.
You forget yourself, human.
Einar jerked at the sound, and his resistance was lost. The tip of his finger grazed the reliquary, and a farrago of colors ripped through his mind.
Wind knocked him over, away from the shelf as the vessel toppled.
Glass shattered, and a gray smoke swirled into the air.
A piercing, female scream accompanied it.
“Agnes!” he shouted.
The diabolical laugh gained ballast.
Einar fell through the sky.
Einar tumbled through raw air, head over feet. Instinct compelled him to panic. He wrenched his eyes open, flailing.
Cliffs and rocks hurtled by. He whirled, side over side, seconds away from slamming into the ocean. For a moment, his heart leaped. A desire to soar, expand, hurtle across the horizon and merge into the expanse swept him. As if he could combine with the sky arcane and remain forever.
He jolted free with a horrifying realization. He had moments to live.
Good.
Finally, finally, he’d join Agnes.
Or would he?
Had her soul left the reliquary? Had it been Agnes, or a trick? His heart climbed into his throat as the sea approached. Tears whipped out of his eyes from the sheer force. He barely had the time to whisper, “I’m sorry,” before a wave of water raced up to meet him.
The liquid embraced him in an arcane kiss. A welcome. A gentle ending to what should have been a violent death. Breath held, he opened his eyes to sea water. Peace, too. Shite, he’d never felt so safe.
The sea arcane lowered Einar the rest of the way in a watery cradle, and he settled in with hardly a jostle. His lungs didn’t burn, nor his eyes.
Kicking to the surface, he broke free and breathed deep.