CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
C HAPTER E IGHTEEN
Dawsyn has been lying to herself for days. Lulling her doubts with the thought that the end to their struggles is just around the corner, or perhaps the next. She has told herself that every inch travelled brings them closer. She gave herself to the delusion that the end of the Chasm would bring the end of this affliction and all would be well.
Every time she has lain her hands on the sick, they have come away prickling. Whatever mediocre ministrations she had offered were not enough. They barely scratched the surface.
But now…
She can feel the eyes of her friends on her, and she pays them no mind. Instead, she turns her hands over and inspects her palms, admiring the rippling frost that comes and goes along the lines. The iskra courses just beneath the surface.
And then suddenly, as though it realises this might be its last chance, the whispers become shouts, bellows.
Seal your lips, cease your breath,
Rid the ache. TEAR IT OUT.
TEAR IT OUT!
But the words no longer have strings to pull her this way or that. It is only a hollow echo; it does not lull her.
She feels the burning cold of the iskra, the warm light of the mage magic, collecting to oust this thing that has made a home in her chest and heart and mind. A cursed plague, created by a seeker of light and warmth, can only be subdued with cold. With suffocating darkness. Even now, Dawsyn can feel how this entity shrinks away from the iskra.
Yerdos was defeated by Moroz. Dawsyn had always seen the latter as the enemy. How strange to see it as salvation.
Dawsyn closes her eyes. She finds the light in her mind, the one that burns resolutely with all the warmth she possesses, and she bids it to make way for the iskra. She fills her body with the strength of the cold, lets the burn flood through her. It travels the length of her limbs, makes claws of her blood. It burns away the grip on her chest and mind as furiously as fire.
“Moroz,” Dawsyn says aloud, and the magic within her rejoices.
Beyond her eyelids, the world turns into a brilliant spectrum of colour, and she is immediately reminded of Baltisse and the way her touch illuminated the world.
“Mother’s tits, give a man some warning next time, Dawsyn. My fucking eyes!”
“Yeh big baby!”
“Shut up!” comes Ryon’s voice, and then his hands are on her neck, her face. “Dawsyn?”
She opens her eyes.
It is the same damnable darkness. The same gaunt faces in this hopeless hole, and yet she smiles.
“It worked,” she pants, silently thanking the Mother.
Ryon mutters something beneath his breath, but then lowers his forehead to hers for a moment. She feels his trembling lips glance off the bridge of her nose.
Dawsyn breathes in and out, marvelling at how easily it comes. She hadn’t noticed the weight that had burdened her lungs, the grip on her throat, the fog clouding her mind. In its absence, she feels free. Hopeful.
“I can help the others,” she says to herself, her chest heaving with newfound levity. Then, she says it louder. “I can cure them. I know how.”
Rivdan smiles, his eyes glowing as though they’d caught the brilliance of Dawsyn’s light. Tasheem claps once, then bends to brace herself on her knees, laughing quietly. Salem has his hands pressed together, and he seems to be consulting some higher power, tears glistening in the corners of his eyes, and Ryon paces in a circle, gripping his hair with shaky hands. He hides his face from them all.
“Apologies,” Esra says. “But could someone explain to me what the fuck is happening?”
“Shh,” Salem says, patting Esra’s shoulder.
“Well then,” Tasheem calls, slapping Rivdan heartily on the back. “This changes things.”
And Dawsyn isn’t sure how or why, but she feels it too. The shiver of new hope. After days of compounding despair, this one victory feels like enough. Enough to see them through.
“I’ll find Yennes,” Dawsyn says hurriedly. “There are many we must see to.”
“I think I saw her by the stream, up ahead,” Esra says. “Poor woman looks exhausted herself. Spluttering and mumbling to herself. You ought to start with her, I say,” he tells Dawsyn pointedly. “I’m fairly certain her mind was somewhat addled before Yerdos decided to fuck her up.”
“Esra! Yeh cad. Mind yer manners. If anyone’s a marble short, its surely yeh .”
Dawsyn almost laughs. Almost.
“I’m strong enough to fly a while,” Rivdan says now, rolling his shoulders tenderly. “I’d like to fly ahead, see what I can find.”
Dawsyn eyes him dubiously. “Are you able?”
“I won’t get far, but yes. I can try, prishmyr.”
“Not alone,” Ryon says. “We do not know what lies in wait.”
“I’ll go with him,” Tash says, limping forward. “Mother knows, it will be better than dragging this fucking leg behind me all day.”
“Go easy,” Ryon warns, clearly agitated that he cannot accompany them. “And mark the time passing. We need to know the distance that remains.”
“And if we can’t find the end?” Tash asks. “What then?”
“There’s an end,” Dawsyn says, pulse thrumming. In her mind she sees the Chasm winding to its last corner, the path tinged in light. Each step eases with the promise of open land. Uninhabited territory, waiting for their claim.
Her body burns with that certainty. Her skin turns feverish. Even the forgotten necklace beneath her furs grows warm.
Yennes is indeed by the stream when Dawsyn finds her. She stoops to its edge, cupping her hands in the flowing water. She startles when Dawsyn touches her shoulder, despite her having called to the woman several times already.
“Sorry,” Dawsyn offers, frowning. She waits for the woman’s nerves to settle. “I called to you.”
“It’s hard to hear beyond the Chasm’s screams,” Yennes says.
She holds her hands in the icy water, apparently oblivious to the cold. A lit torch stands waiting, its end buried in the silt by the woman’s side.
“Come,” Dawsyn says, wariness marring her voice now. She places her hands on the woman’s upper arms. “Your feet are slipping into the water.”
She helps the older woman stand, pulls her back an inch from the stream’s edge. “You’ll catch your death.”
Yennes stumbles, limbs shaking, and when her hand reaches to grasp Dawsyn’s wrist, she notices how weak her grip is. Yennes’ trembling fingers are slick with something far warmer than the stream. “Alas,” she whispers. “Death caught me first.”
She slumps, falling to the ground, limbs splayed.
“Yennes!” Dawsyn calls, squinting in the dark. In the faint glow of the torch light, Dawsyn can see her closed eyes, her parted lips.
“Igniss!” Dawsyn gasps desperately, using the conjured flame in her hand to better see. She bends over the woman, pressing her hand to Yennes’ chest, and then to her neck, feeling along her jawline for the fading pulse beneath. “ Shit .”
Dawsyn’s light passes over one of Yennes’ hands, and it reflects back to her coated in brilliant, dripping blood. It flows freely from beneath the cuff of her cloak and collects in her palm.
Dawsyn rips back the sleeve. There. Two long gashes, cut precisely down the arm. Even in this dim light, Dawsyn knows they are deep. Deliberate.
“Baltisse!” Dawsyn shouts in a moment of sheer panic. Help, her mind screams. Get help. But Baltisse is long gone from here. The only mage power left in this Chasm resides in herself.
She presses her palms to the wounds and feels the blood seeping over the webbing of her fingers. She finds the spark in her mind and urges its expansion. “Lussia,” she tries, remembering the way Baltisse had used the spell to bind things back together. She imagines the skin stitching itself into clean lines, but looks to find the skin is barely rejoining, fighting against the tide of the blood. “Ishveet!” Dawsyn says, begging the wounds repair, to heal. “Ishveet… Lussia!” She says the words over and over, but it seems, for long moments, that they do nothing, that the wounds are too deep, the blood too fast. “ Lussia! ” Dawsyn cries, and finally, slowly the bleeding subsides. The gashes start to close, giving in to the will of mage light shining from Dawsyn’s palms.
She refuses to close her eyes as she works, despite the way the light stings them. She lets the tears course down her cheeks and her eyelids tremble, battling to remain open. Even as her magic wanes, she keeps her hands pressed to the wounds, until two, angry pink scars are all that remain of them, trapping life source beneath.
But the ground is wet with blood. So much of it. Dawsyn moves her stained fingers to Yennes’ neck to find the weakest of pulses still thudding intermittently, a slow prelude to its final beat.
“Shit,” Dawsyn heaves again. She looks at the woman’s face, scared, even in sleep.
Anyone that dies here in this hole, dies by your hand, Sabar, comes Nevrak’s voice once more, warning her from the darkest recesses of herself. It seems particularly true of Yennes.
If death has found her here, then Dawsyn will push it back. Yerdos has collected enough of their number, blanketed her burrow with enough of their remains.
Yennes will not be hers as well.
Dawsyn shouts into the air, something inhuman and unintelligible but most certainly a call to battle. She presses both hands to Yennes’ chest, feels the remnants of light coil tightly inside her, and shouts, “ISHVEET!”
She hears her name called, feels hands on her shoulders. But her focus remains on Yennes, whose chest rises from its middle, lifted by some invisible force.
The stretched magic reaches its limit and snaps.
The recoil throws Dawsyn back and she feels the impact push the breath from her lungs as she slams into something solid.
And everything around her disappears, but for Baltisse, who smirks at her quietly over the rim of a full glass, perfectly at home in the shadows.