CHAPTER NINE
C HAPTER N INE
“An interesting conversation you were having,” Nevrak says, his nose not two inches from Dawsyn’s. “What was it the witch said? The part about the water?”
Dawsyn does not take her eyes from his, though her mind races. Her hand goes to her back reflexively, and it is only then that she remembers she discarded her ax on the ground, somewhere behind her. Never in her life has she been so complacent. The thought rattles her. “I’m not likely to impart the private conversations I have with my friends, Splitter,” she mutters with a confidence she does not feel. “Eavesdropping is for children.”
Nevrak does not speak for several moments, does not move. He simply appraises her, his eyes travelling the planes of her face. It is intrusive, and damning.
Then his lips part, having calculated the exact thing Dawsyn hoped he wouldn’t. “You’ll tell me,” he says lowly, carefully, “or I will sound a warning to this entire Chasm. What was it you said to the witch? ‘ It will not serve to spread panic. ’”
Defeated, Dawsyn exhales, closing her eyes briefly. When she opens them again, Nevrak is nodding to his side, gesturing her to follow him somewhere more secluded, though the people around them seem too weary to wake and overhear.
They clamber around people, their hands to the Chasm wall, letting it guide them. They leave everyone else behind, too far away to listen.
“Despite what you may think of me,” Nevrak begins, “I have the very same desires as you. We all do. We wish to find our way to safety. If you cannot do that, then you’ve deceived us all.”
If you knew the truth, Dawsyn thinks, you would split me where I stand.
“What is wrong with the water, Sabar?” he asks forcefully.
She sighs. How she longs to sleep. “I do not know that there is anything wrong with it.”
“I heard–”
“You heard conjecture,” Dawsyn interrupts. “We suspect the spread of infection among us. There are many who seem to be falling ill. It is there for anyone to see.”
Nevrak looks over Dawsyn’s shoulder, likely listening to the echoing coughs with new understanding.
“Yennes and I are aiding as many as we can, but we must know what the illness is if we are to fight it. We were simply deliberating the infection’s origin.”
“Lung sickness,” Nevrak says at once. “The cold has always slowly choked us.”
“It is not the cold. The illness spreads some kind of… contagion.”
“And you believe the water to be the origin?” Nevrak asks, his eyes widening.
“It is one theory,” Dawsyn allows. “Among many.”
“Tell the others. Warn them.”
“To what end? If they do not drink, dehydration will kill them faster than any infection. They are already weakened!”
Nevrak chews his tongue for a moment, deliberating. “How long until we reach the Chasm’s end?”
“A few days more,” Dawsyn lies, ensuring her eyes do not blink. She holds her chin strong and sure.
There is a sheer moment when she thinks he isn’t fooled by her bravado. His stare is penetrating, unforgiving. The lines around his eyes deepen and Dawsyn’s stomach falls away. But then, Nevrak is stepping back, shaking his head. “A few days more ain’t gonna kill the lot. The water will matter little.” He looks back into the Chasm. “I will not stir fear where I ought not to. But should the end of this fucking path not come soon, I will shout your secrets for all to hear and I very much doubt our neighbours are the understanding kind.” Nevrak’s shoulder knocks hers as he passes, and weak as Dawsyn is, she teeters off-balance. “You best find us that green valley,” Nevrak calls to her. “Soon.”
When Dawsyn wakes, she finds her hands bundled in Ryon’s. He remains asleep, his neck bent awkwardly atop a burlap sack. She knows it will be empty of any food. There is nothing left for them to carry but weapons.
His eyelids open to reveal slits of pupils. He blinks at her wearily. “Sleep well?”
With her head still against the black earth, she nods. Then she coughs.
“Liar,” Ryon mutters, pulling her closer. She rests her head against his forearm, and closes her eyes once more, wishing away the hours ahead. The days. The weeks.
No, there will not be weeks of this.
“There is sickness spreading,” she whispers to him. “Yennes thinks it could be the water.”
Ryon gives a world-weary sigh, then presses his lips to her forehead. “So what now?”
Dawsyn lifts herself onto her elbows and looks as far as there is to look in this pit. “Now, we pray.”
They rouse all that can be roused, but there are some too weary to do more than murmur and cough, their eyelids fluttering.
“I can carry this one,” Tasheem tells Dawsyn, pointing to a boy no younger than sixteen. His eyes roll in his head, detached from reality.
“You’re still injured,” Dawsyn says. “Better that you heal properly before we count on your heroics.”
But Tasheem only flashes her a tired smile and hefts the boy into her arms. His head lolls over Tash’s forearm. “I’m healed enough for this,” she says.
Dawsyn touches her arm, tensed muscles working beneath her fingers. “Thank you.”
“When we reach this utopia,” Tash tells her, “I want a statue erected in my honour.”
They stumble onward, Dawsyn at the spearhead. The hours pass with nothing but sameness before them. The path meanders on and on, narrowing and widening. The utter darkness does not lift, giving Dawsyn no cause to believe that the end is any nearer than it was the day before. Behind her, the coughing grows louder.
She wrestles with the idea of sending Ryon or one of the other mixed above, or ahead. None are healed enough to fly with humans in tow. This journey certainly hasn’t allowed for rest. It seems dangerous to stretch their limitations, not to mention there are Glacians they may encounter up there.
Mother above, her chest hurts. Her feet hurt. She feels every jostle, every ounce of weight from the weapons she carries. She coughs and it makes her eyes water.
The hurt, the ache… tear it out.
Dawsyn startles. The voice in her ear, in her head. She cannot be sure if it is hers.
Why suffer when you can belie your fate?
Not hers. That other entity of the Chasm comes to whisper torments once more. Only this time… this time the voice sounds less threatening. It… comforts. Calms.
Take up the reigns and belie your fate.
Climb the walls of Mother’s gate.
Like a balm, the words come. Smothering out any other noise, tampering the sights and smells around her. Mother’s gate, Dawsyn thinks, or perhaps it slips past her lips. Her grandmother told her of Mother’s gate. The realm of spirits in the afterlife. A place of eternal peace.
Rid the ache. Tear it out.
How her throat burns. She wishes she could rip the sickness from it.
Tear it out.
“How?” Dawsyn asks, the word slurred. She can barely see. Her torchlight is a haze of orange in her periphery, not real at all.
Cut it from the skin, that silky voice says, and though something deep within quails at the thought, this voice makes violence sound gentle, welcoming. She imagines how simple it would be, to part ways with all that makes her hurt and ache and suffer. She could surrender to Mother’s gate. She could…
All at once, the iskra within her awakens. It meets in her chest with the mage magic and combines – light and dark.
She hears a keen screaming. It fills every crevice of her mind, so loud that it pains her, and then it is stifled all together. The magic suffocates it, flooding her mind with light and darkness both.
“Dawsyn?”
A hand comes down on her wrist. Squeezes it so tightly that her fingers are forced to open, forced to drop the knife she holds. She hears the sound of its clatter as it hits the rock beneath her feet.
Her vision swims. She coughs in a great hacking stream. Something dark comes loose from her throat and she spits it onto the ground.
“Prishmyr?” comes Rivdan’s voice. His hands are on her sides, preventing her from falling forward.
Dawsyn retches. Loose hair falls from her hood into her face.
“Breathe,” Rivdan says calmly. “Just breathe.”
She gasps at the air, taking in great lungfuls of it, and with each breath, the urge to heave lessens. She feels a stinging at her arm and sees that her sleeve has been rolled to her elbow. There is a shallow cut on her wrist.
“That’s it,” Rivdan is telling her, pulling her upright. “Steady.”
She blinks up to where his face should be, struggling to make it out.
“Shall I help you walk?” Rivdan asks quietly, urgently. His head turns to peer over his shoulder. Dawsyn realises that others must be close behind, waiting for them.
But Dawsyn’s wits are scattered. She cannot completely rid herself of the fog that clouds her mind. Instead of answering, she simply stares stupidly up at Rivdan. “I –” she stammers.
“Do you need to rest?” he presses, eyes skirting over her face.
Dawsyn shakes her head, and just this small movement dizzies her. Iskra retreats deep into her core. The glow of her mind is dulling. She looks once more to the small slice along her arm, then to the knife on the ground. Her knife. “The voices,” she says. “There are voices here.”
Rivdan’s eyes, full of alarm, widen. “Voices?”
Dawsyn closes her eyes. Nausea brews in her stomach and the Chasm tips on its side. She tries to shake it back into place. They cannot stop. There is no time for rest. There is only the end of this unending path, or the surrender to it.
That is all it wants, Dawsyn thinks to herself, hearing again the echo of that slippery voice. It only wishes to see us all fail.
“I – I forgot myself,” she tells Rivdan, finally meeting his eye. He has never looked more disturbed. “Lost my senses for a moment, I think.”
“You haven’t eaten,” Rivdan allows, though his expression tells her that he is not the least bit mollified. “And barely rested. All this healing, it has addled you.”
Dawsyn nods, hardly vindicated.
“The others are waiting. Can you continue?” Rivdan asks.
Dawsyn nods, allowing Rivdan to gently pull down her rolled-up sleeve. He takes the pack from her back and slings it across his own shoulder. “You walk with me now, prishmyr,” he says gently, taking the back of her forearm in his hold.
Dawsyn merely nods her assent.
In truth, she does not wish to walk alone.