Chapter 45 #2
There was time last night to talk about today, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t discuss what it would be like to say farewell. I’m not ready now, so I certainly wasn’t then.
But now I regret that, and all I can do is wait in the dwindling darkness as, one by one, the stars disappear.
It’s at the exact moment that the first full rays of sunlight clips the horizon that Magnus lowers his head and walks towards Ruben.
Benny is rigid in my grasp as the king places his hands on top of Ruben’s body, closes his eyes, and draws a long breath in.
Magnus lifts his hands.
Still not a single word is spoken, the whole circle’s attention directed inward, to the hero who lies in stillness.
A loud crack ricochets across the ice, but none react to its echo.
And then something happens to Ruben’s body… Colour leaches from his skin, becoming first pale, and then translucent.
Something splinters.
And then—
In a beat, nothing holds Ruben together anymore.
I cry out as he collapses in on himself – not flesh, not bone, but fragments. Shards.
Blue ice scatters across the white snow, glimmering where he lay.
Just like that … Ruben is gone.
‘No!’ Benny lurches forward, but Caz pulls him back into place.
‘It’s okay,’ she whispers. ‘I promise it’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. Just wait. Trust me.’
I can feel Benny straining against himself, his desire to rush to those fragments that were Ruben fighting against his trust in Caz.
Trust I have to place in her too as I struggle not to follow Benny’s example and run to the scattered ice, gather it in my arms, and never let it go. Yet as I watch on through blurred vision, men and women begin to step forward out of the circle.
Toren walks to Magnus’s side, as do Tove and the other women from the library, followed by Brida, Ylva, Nettie, and then more and more people I don’t recognise, their hands raised into the air.
Soon an entire crowd has stepped away from the main ring – it must be a hundred people, if not more – and they’re all looking at Magnus, waiting for something.
Finally, when all movement ceases, Magnus raises his hands, lifting several fragments of the blue ice and turning them slowly as they rise in a spiral above our heads.
A moment later, the other Issen join in, the fragments of ice dancing in the air.
This is what Tove meant when she said she would offer her magic.
The crystal shards spiral up and up, twisting higher and higher until they reach the point in the sky where those first morning rays cut through the air. One by one, the burgeoning sunbeams catch on the ice and splinter into a thousand rainbows.
It reminds me of the chandeliers the children make in the streets. But this is so much more than that.
It is the magic of so many, offered freely and with grace. The magic of the first light of day.
The way the ice moves, it’s as though it’s turned the air into water. I cannot imagine a more beautiful farewell.
The thought has barely entered my mind when the sun fully surmounts the horizon, and I’m proven wrong.
It’s no longer just a few rays that hit the ice, but the entire force of the sun, all of its power poured into the shards that used to be Ruben.
What follows borders on the divine, as Ruben creates the most beautiful sky any of us will ever see in our lives.
A gasp flies from my lungs as we are enveloped in Ruben’s light. We, and all of Isthyr, are bathed in his beauty.
‘It’s perfect,’ Kyor whispers next to me. And he’s right. It is.
Ruben’s goodness is now laid bare to all, his soul revealed in a million lights dancing over us.
Rather than diminishing, the magnificence of the spectacle only shifts and transforms with the ever-changing light, making it impossible to draw my eyes away. And though I could be wrong, I swear the rays that fall on our small group are just a little brighter than those over the rest of the city.
The sun is well on its ascent when, one by one, the Issen finally retreat.
Some offer us nods of respect as they leave.
Others sad smiles of sympathy. Some, like Brida, scurry off with their heads down, but I don’t take it personally.
Not after what she shared with me. Not after she stood forward and offered her magic to a man she barely knew. We do not have a corner on grief.
Behind me, I can feel Fen’s presence. A solid, unspoken comfort that does not leave, even when we’re the only people who remain.
‘It will melt and disappear when the sun is at its highest point,’ Caz says quietly. We must have been alone for several hours, yet my thoughts have barely wandered, captured entirely by the light show in front of us. If any passing could do honour to the friend I loved so dearly, it was this.
Ruben would have loved it.
‘We should leave before then,’ Caz murmurs. ‘It’s what is done.’
I know her comments are made for all of us, but there’s one person whose reply we need the most. One we cannot leave without.
‘He would have loved this,’ Benny says eventually, echoing my own thoughts.
‘He would’ve,’ I agree.
‘I think it’s time we leave,’ Kyor says, more firm in his tone than Caz. ‘We’ll freeze if we stay out here much longer.’
He’s right. That cold that hadn’t afflicted us before, when surrounded by the Issen, is creeping in through my furs.
Benny’s eyes remain on the patterns in the sky above us.
‘I just need a little longer. On my own.’
The rest of the group and I exchange uncertain glances, and Loch is the one who finally speaks. ‘I will remain. It’s the least I can do.’
I appreciate the gesture, though a hint of worry flickers within me. Loch has only recently recovered himself.
He reads my expression with a slight smile of his own. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I know what I can handle. He will be safe with me, I promise.’
I believe him.
Loch probably owes more to Benny than all of us. He won’t let anything happen to him.
‘Thank you.’
As Thessa and Caz leave, I lean deeper into Kyor, whose arm is already around my waist, and with the wolves padding alongside us, we walk back to the city.
It’s only when we reach the bridges that we speak.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask, his silence feeling particularly heavy.
‘I was thinking about the wall,’ he replies cryptically, but I know instantly which wall he speaks of and more importantly the etchings upon it – the ones that mark the deaths of all the men he feels responsible for.
A tally of the guilt he wears. ‘It was only ever my men I recorded. And it feels wrong now. All the Issen deaths I’ve seen – caused – and I never knew the gentle people that they are.
It makes it worse, somehow, to see how they honour their heroes. ’
‘They probably don’t do it on the battlefield. They likely wait to return to their land.’
‘I know. But maybe if I’d seen that, it would’ve made me see who they are sooner, you know? I wouldn’t have been convinced they were these inhumane barbarians for so long.’
My mind goes back to that wall. He has more etches to add from our trip here. More lives lost. But perhaps this will be the last trip where his tally grows.
It’s a foolish thought, especially if he joins the rebellion, yet I cling to it all the same.
‘You know now,’ I tell him. ‘You know who they are now.’
He nods. ‘I do. Last night, Magnus mentioned that they normally fast after a funeral.’ As he speaks, a slight chuckle rattles in his throat. ‘It’s part of the tradition. But he figured it was probably not what Ruben and Benny would have gone for, so he’s arranged for there to be food for us.’
‘That’s kind,’ I respond, struck again by the thoughtfulness of this man who is my grandfather.
An unexpected memory of my little brother surges to the surface.
Before I left, he asked me whether he looked like our father.
He does, but even though I know less of my brother than I wish, something tells me he also has a great deal of his grandfather in him, and I’m struck by a desperate longing for the pair to meet.
‘Magnus is a great king,’ Kyor says slowly, breaking my thoughts. ‘An incredible king. More, he’s a good person.’
Silence pierces our steps as the absence of what he’s saying fills the air more than the words themselves.
Magnus is a good king, unlike Korvane.
‘He is,’ I say slowly. ‘What we’ve seen of him, anyway.’
‘We both know the parts we’ve not seen are just as generous.
As magnanimous,’ Kyor replies with a strange mixture of awe and bitterness in his voice.
Jealousy, perhaps. Some emotions are too tangled to make sense of, even to the person to whom they belong, and so I leave him in silence to wrangle his thoughts and keep a hold of his hand as we walk.
When we reach the palace and the smell of freshly cooked riverweed fills the air, I realise that despite being up before dawn, I’m not hungry at all.
But Magnus has been so generous, and the last thing I want is to be rude.
Plus, too many people starve daily for me to let a meal go to waste.
The slum rat inside me won’t let that happen, not ever.
The riverweed is steamed today, rather than boiled.
When Benny and Loch join us later, none of us speak.
I pass Benny the steamed riverweed, and he puts a token amount on his plate, no more than a mouthful.
As I watch him there, eyes glazed, I fight off the urge to ask him if he’s okay. Because I know he’s not. Of course he’s not.
‘What’s your plan for the rest of the day?’ Kyor asks me into the quiet.
‘I don’t know. Train, perhaps.’
‘Who will you ask to help you?’
Now that Stefan is stripped. That’s the part of the sentence he doesn’t say. He doesn’t need to.
Though my mind can’t help but wander to the Issen. Did the healers fix his broken leg before he was banished? The worst part of me hopes not, but then, healed bones won’t change the agony that fills him now that he’s without his magic. I know that.
‘So maybe I won’t train. I didn’t get much sleep last night. Perhaps I’ll try to catch a couple of hours now, then head to the Veil.’