CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
C HAPTER F ORTY- F OUR
The blood moon rises quickly and Dawsyn watches on as the clan prepares their celebration.
There are dozens of them. The mages greet each other with nods and small touches of palms but rarely speak. They work and weave amongst one another like a current, harmonious and synchronised. Dawsyn wonders how many centuries in each other’s company it took to achieve such peace.
There are children too. They play in the snow and disappear into the trees, leaves dancing at their heels. The other mages pay them little mind, at ease with the sight of them disappearing into the woods. Their wards will protect their young, after all.
Roznier seems something of a leader to Dawsyn. The others confer with her quietly on occasion, approaching with a light touch of a palm and then speaking with deference. Whatever she says in return, it is spoken in the old language; Dawsyn does not understand a word.
The mages stare curiously at Dawsyn, and it makes her wary, but none approach. None seem to question Roznier bringing her here and so Dawsyn only watches this community, hewn from the mountain like her, living so conversely from that of the Ledge people.
“How easy you make it seem,” she says to Roznier late in the afternoon, as the light begins to ebb. “To live amongst one another, with the cold.” They are seated on a log bench before a large campfire. It burns brighter and hotter than any Dawsyn has seen. She almost forgets she is on the mountain, that the cold exists at all.
Roznier accepts a plate of food from a passing mage and offers it to Dawsyn. “It is easy to be peaceful when one is abundant,” she says simply. “I imagine it was not so on the Ledge where those Glacians caged you.”
“No,” Dawsyn replies flatly.
“I’ve had many years to think on the matters of peace and abundance,” Roznier says conversationally. “Greed is what impedes peace, invokes war. Greed is what led Baltisse and I to create the Pool of Iskra. Greed is what led Vasteel to drink from it. The Glacians were born from greed. They are made of it,” she says. “In that, we can take some solace. They will never know peace.”
Dawsyn agrees. But it is not Vasteel or even Adrik she thinks of. It is those in the Colony of Glacia. It is Rivdan, Tasheem… Ryon. They may never know peace either. All for the greed of another. “Not all of them deserve it,” Dawsyn says in reply. “Not all of them drink from the pool.”
“Ah. You sound just like Baltisse,” Roznier says. “She often tried to convince me of the same. But whether they drink from the pool or not, they remain unnatural beings.”
Dawsyn cannot agree this time. She thinks that nothing seems more natural than Ryon in flight. How can something so beautiful be an abomination? Heat prickles beneath her skin.
Roznier chuckles darkly. “Even the mutts among them have the pool running through their veins, Dawsyn, if not by their own choice.”
“Then surely you are to blame, Roznier,” Dawsyn says. “Were it not for you creating the magic that transformed Vasteel, no Glacian would walk these slopes.”
“Indeed,” Roznier agrees easily. “Though as I’ve said, I have had much time to consider my actions, and whilst there are parts of my past I cannot forgive, I at least know I did not act with ill intent. None of us did. Not in the beginning, anyway.” Her stare becomes far-reaching. Dawsyn wonders what she sees. “If I had the foresight to know what would become of the pool, I would have thwarted its creation. I would destroy it now, if I could.”
Dawsyn becomes still. “Destroy it?” she says slowly, watching the mage’s narrow eyes for any hint of jest. “Can such a thing be done?”
“Everything made can be unmade.”
“I grow tired of poetry,” Dawsyn says evenly, though her mind runs rampant. “Speak plainly, mage. Can the Pool of Iskra truly be destroyed?”
Roznier eyes her warily. “How odd you are, Dawsyn Sabar. A woman of the Ledge who sympathises with Glacians. I see the blood-thirst in your eyes. You champion the Glacians and yet still want their life source destroyed?”
“I champion those who do not live freely,” Dawsyn says. “And I wish their oppressors a merciless death.”
“Hm. Just like Baltisse,” Roznier mutters to herself shaking her head. “Well, Dawsyn Sabar. I am sorry to say that the Pool of Iskra will remain until there is someone willing to draw all of its magic into their being and play host to it.”
Dawsyn recalls Baltisse speaking of similar acts, as though magic could simply be carried from place to place. “We carried it inside us and brought it to a place of Vasteel’s choosing; high up on the mountain where no one would dare go.”
“And you are not willing?” Dawsyn asks.
“Ah, but there is no mage alone who can play host to magic so dark and so large. Not for long, anyway. Mage magic and iskra were not meant to combine. Absorbing so much magic would only bring destruction. The detonation would be… cataclysmic, I believe.”
Dawsyn well knows how combustible mage magic and iskra are when they compete. “What of a human, then? Or a Glacian? Someone without the hindrance of mage blood.”
“But what human has the power to say the incantation? To invoke the energy needed to complete the task? It is a complicated spell, Dawsyn. That is the great trap of the magic we created. Magic that can only be undone by itself, but destroys itself. If self-sacrifice were the only price, I’d have paid it long ago. But absorbing that magic turns us into a weapon only the Mother should wield. The cost outweighs the reward, I’m afraid.”
Dawsyn shakes her head. “There must be an answer.”
“Not without risking the annihilation of all , ” Roznier says.
But has Dawsyn not lived with both dark and light inside her and learned to combine the two? Has there ever been another in existence who has held both in balance?
Dawsyn very much doubts there will ever be another like herself.
Roznier suddenly looks up to the sky. “Ah,” she says. “The blood moon is here.”
Dawsyn follows her gaze, looking to the pink hue of the moon’s surface. “What happens on a blood moon?” she asks. She has watched the mages prepare the fire and cook food enough for all, but there has been no mention of what comes next.
The mages converge around the flames – flames that grow inexplicably higher as daylight recedes.
Roznier chuckles. “We vanquish the unnatural, Dawsyn Sabar. Are you feeling vengeful?”
Dawsyn raises her eyebrows. “I am rarely not.”
“Then the blood moon brought you to us by design. Samskia!” Roznier calls, and a woman with wide eyes and bare feet emerges from the back of the circle. “Ve verdina oi Glacians,” Roznier tells her, and the woman named Samskia smiles wickedly. Her eyes dart to Dawsyn’s, and they turn molten, churning with anticipation. She quickly disappears. There one moment and gone in the next.
“Where did she go?” Dawsyn asks, frowning at the place where the mage had been.
“To fetch our offerings,” Roznier answers. “We’ve collected many this past season. Much more than is ordinary.”
Dawsyn’s feels a sudden thrill of fear. It begins at her scalp and travels down her neck, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. “Offerings?”
But Roznier does not answer. She stands suddenly and the mages surrounding fall quiet.
The hum in Dawsyn’s blood suddenly rings loudly and she shivers. It fills her completely as it had before, and she feels all powerful. Every inch of her suddenly strengthened, made new. She smiles at the warmth of it, the sureness of it. She sees that intangible light in every pair of eyes she encounters. They are all made of the same.
The mages begin to sing.
Their voices build and build, reaching ratcheting heights that give Dawsyn the sensation that the noise might burst within her, split her apart. She closes her eyes as it grows, letting it imbue her. It is heady, this music. It quickens her blood. It reaches into her chest and grips her heart, forcing it to beat in time with its tempo. And by the time their song finally dissolves, she opens her eyes to a setting she barely recognises, to a body she does not know. Her own skin feels blissfully unfamiliar.
But there is movement beyond the flames of the campfire, and she blinks to bring them to focus.
A line of bound bodies kneels. Bodies that had not been there before. Bodies tangled in roots that break skin. Bodies so broken that the heads sag upon necks, some slumping to the snow.
But there are three she recognises, three bodies her eyes stick to. Her heart defies her chest and becomes lodged in her throat, trying to escape her body altogether.
Her knees almost buckle. “Ryon,” she says, and it is only a breath. It barely passes her lips.
But he hears it.
He is a shadow. His bare chest and arms hold bruises that make her stomach turn over. Every breath seems laborious. He trembles with each pull, moments from collapse.
Tasheem and Rivdan are worse. Rivdan lies sideways in the snow, and Dawsyn is not certain he is alive at all. Tasheem sways, blood dripping from her mouth.
The ecstasy that had filled Dawsyn is gone instantly. In its place, she is filled only with cold certainty.
She tears her eyes from Ryon and looks at Roznier beside her, who smiles radiantly down at her clan and has the righteousness to speak of peace. Dawsyn’s ax is within her hand in a moment. It is at Roznier’s throat in the next.
Silence falls. Quickly and terribly.
There is only one who breaks it, and it comes in the form of gentle melodic laughter. The mage named Samskia runs her finger down Ryon’s cheek and watches Dawsyn with glee.
Roznier turns slowly toward Dawsyn. Her eyes flit down to the ax blade, as though it were a curiosity and not the thing piercing the skin of her throat. “Interesting,” she murmurs, then looks at Dawsyn anew, her eyes filled with flames. “Though, not intelligent.”
Pain grips Dawsyn then, curling her insides upon themselves and reducing her to a squirming, screeching ball on the ground. The ax falls beside her head.
“Do not pick it up, Dawsyn Sabar,” Roznier says from above. “Baltisse may have taught you tricks, but she has not taught you enough for this.”
Dawsyn pants, struggling to raise herself from the ground. “Let him go,” she grunts, then again, louder. “Let him go !”
Roznier looks at the Glacians, ten of them at least, in various states of decline before the fire. She raises her eyebrows, clearly at a loss in understanding her pleads.
“ Dawsyn, ” Ryon says, his voice reed thin. She can barely hear it. But she gets to her feet and staggers toward him. There is no thought connected to the action. She simply knows she must go to him. Fix him. Now. She stumbles, crawls, falls.
She rounds the fire in moments and crashes to her knees in front of him, shuddering at the extent of his injuries and the deep, dark circles around his eyes. She presses her hands to his face; ignores the way they shake.
He leans into her touch, closing his eyes.
“I’ve been looking for you,” she tells him, the words breaking as she releases them.
He smiles weakly. “I’ve been waiting.”
Dawsyn presses her forehead to his and closes her eyes. She finds the light is already there waiting. Already joined by the iskra that will seep out of her and into him, repairing everything that threatens to tear him away from her.
“Ishveet,” Dawsyn says, and the magic gives way. It floods into him, as though it knows how interlaced their existences are. As though his healed parts are hers as well. The magic pours and somewhere outside of herself she can feel white light encasing them. Blocking out all else.
When it fades, Dawsyn opens her eyes, and they find his – bottomless and familiar. Saturated in adoration. “Hello, malishka,” he whispers.