CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
C HAPTER F ORTY- S IX
The leader of the clan sneers at Dawsyn, any warmth there may have been now gone.
The other mages watch on. Some with morbid curiosity, as though she were a strange insect among them, speaking her strange language. But others have wide eyes that swivel back and forth between the two black-haired women, and their lips part at the mention of the pool.
“Oh?” Roznier says, her eyebrow quirking. “And you think yourself able?” A laugh bubbles past her lips. “I can see why Baltisse took a liking to you, Dawsyn Sabar. You have fire.”
“You said no mage could withstand the iskra for long.” Dawsyn ensures her voice reaches them all. The air before her fogs with each word. “And yet here I am. Alive.”
Roznier hesitates. She looks Dawsyn over warily. “What do you mean?”
“Dawsyn,” Ryon says, and she feels his hand curl over her wrist, an edge of panic in his voice. “What are you doing?”
“I have both mage and iskra magic within me,” she continues, ignoring the tightening grip of Ryon’s hand. “Iskra that I absorbed from the pool.”
Some of the mages back away. They speak rapidly to one another beneath their breath. It does not escape Dawsyn that any one of them could debilitate her in an instant.
Ryon stands beside her now, his wings extending to their full scale. Even weaponless, the sight is menacing. “Don’t,” he says to a mage who raises their hand and his voice curdles blood. It ignites flames down her spine.
“Yes. Let us hear the whole of it,” Roznier says, her predatory stare widening. “I thought I smelt something strange about you,” she says. “Iskra, you say?”
Dawsyn does not dare look away. “It coincides with the mage magic. Baltisse taught me to hold them both.”
“Prove it,” Roznier says.
Dawsyn does not lower her eyes as she calls the iskra to her fingertips and lets it coat her skin. It was already there, waiting, begging to be released. It mists over her hands and burns her knuckles, and she sees its glow reflected in Roznier’s eyes. She can only hold onto it for a moment before it recedes, too weakened to do any more than that.
Roznier lets loose a breath. “So, it is true,” she says on a whisper, and then she turns away. After a pause, she says, “You stole it from them? The Glacians?”
“I did.”
“And the mage magic did not reject it? Try to oust it?”
“It was a challenge to begin with,” Dawsyn admits, remembering the times she was struck down. “Now it is natural. I can use them both.”
More permeating silence. The only sound comes from Samskia, who hops from foot to foot, giggling quietly.
“Tell me, Roznier, creator of the pool–”
“One of four.”
“–has there ever been another like me?”
Ryon bristles. Dawsyn can feel his reproach pouring from him. He scolds her without speaking, wary of this pact she’s making. What will he say, once he knows it all?
“You believe you can hold the pool’s power?” Roznier asks, but this time it is without snide. Without derision. Her face is softer, unsure.
“I do not know,” Dawsyn says. “But if there is someone who might…”
“And you would willingly take the risk, knowing what failure could bring?”
Dawsyn’s eyes dart to Ryon’s once and then away. She braces. “I do not need to hold it for long.”
“The release of that much power will obliterate all within its circumference, Dawsyn, and you do not know how far the ripple travels.”
“There is a place it can be contained,” Dawsyn says, though the flatness of her voice has alerted Ryon once more and he comes closer.
“Dawsyn, wait–”
“If I cannot keep my grip on it, then I will fold myself into the Chasm. Into Yerdos’ pit.”
Dawsyn wishes the resulting shockwave did not ring so mightily, maybe then she wouldn’t feel the finality of it sink into her bones. But the mages gasp and grip each other’s shoulders. Yerdos’ name is whispered amongst them, and Roznier looks moments from ripping free of her skin. She swells where she stands, her hope too big for her body. “But how could you fold to a place you have not been?”
Hysterical laughter suddenly resounds through the forests, shaking the snow from the surrounding treetops. The mage called Samskia spins in a circle, her eyes gleeful. “Sur menska oi vesh! Yerdos ve nay dieski!”
Dawsyn looks to Ryon. “What did she say?”
“‘But they have been to the pit,’” Ryon translates. “‘And Yerdos set them free.’”
Roznier does not question Samskia further. She stares at the strange, dancing mage, and seems to take her words as they are. Then, she clasps her hands and the roots that hold Rivdan and Tasheem fall away, slithering back into the earth from whence they came. Neither move, too weak to react.
Roznier looks, for the first time, afraid. She closes her eyes and wrings her hands together, her face drawn. When she opens them, they pierce Dawsyn anew. “Very well,” she says. “Then it is a deal.”
“I will need time to prepare,” Dawsyn utters, already backing toward Rivdan and Tasheem. “I cannot go to Glacia this night.”
“I will not come to drag you back, Dawsyn Sabar,” Roznier shakes her head. “Nor you, ” she adds to Ryon. “Though I must bid you to stay just a while a longer. I told you before, this is a night for vengeance.”
“They cannot wait,” Dawsyn spits, gesturing to Tasheem and Rivdan. “Heal them.”
Roznier sighs, then nods to no one in particular.
Two mages step forward, one man and one woman, both adorned in layers of necklaces that rattle as they approach. They touch their hands to the foreheads of Rivdan and Tasheem, and Dawsyn squeezes her eyes shut as the blinding light erupts from their fingertips.
When it dissipates, Ryon bends to take Riv’s shoulders in his hands and shakes them. Gone are the patterns of blue and purple that had blossomed beneath the male’s skin. His jaw no longer hangs like a corpse. The male blinks his familiar blue eyes and finds Ryon’s. “Mesrich?”
“Can you stand?” Ryon asks, but Rivdan’s eyes are darting around the clan of mages and the pyre before him, and his hand goes to his shoulder, to reach a sword no longer there.
“ No, ” Ryon tells him sharply. “Go easy. You’re safe.”
“What the fuck is happening?” comes Tasheem’s voice.
Dawsyn tries to put herself in the female’s line of sight. “A mage clan,” Dawsyn mutters. “No sudden movements.”
Tasheem’s eyes widen, and she begins to check over her body, now whole and well.
“Stand, Glacians!” Roznier calls to them. A frenetic drumbeat has begun, though Dawsyn cannot tell where it comes from. The fire licks at the night sky, reaching impossible heights once more, and the mages surrounding it begin to sing disjointed verses, not together, but not apart from each other either. Choruses interweave and break free, and Dawsyn and Ryon tear their eyes away from the sight to look to one another. Ryon’s fingers find her wrist again and he pulls her slowly away.
“You cannot walk through the wards or fly out of them,” Roznier says, her voice reaching them despite the crescendo of noise. “Stay. Watch what the blood moon brings, Glacians. Watch what happens to those who wander too far from their nest.”
Dawsyn watches as Samskia skips to where a Glacian lays crumpled beside Rivdan. The roots that bind him fall away, and Samskia whispers something in the male’s ear.
When he fails to move, Samskia buries her long nails into the clothes on his back, and he wails pitifully. She pulls him across the ground, closer to the raging fire, and is joined by other mages, who shriek and claw like animals.
They lift his considerable mass from the snow as one and haul him into the flames. The sounds of the Glacian’s cries are quickly vanquished.
Dawsyn, Ryon, Rivdan and Tasheem watch on, frozen, as the Glacian within blackens, all to the sound of exultant cheering.
Over and over, the mages repeat the ritual, dragging hapless Glacians in various forms of enervation to the pyre, and throwing them in. Some never open their eyes or utter a noise, making Dawsyn think them already dead. Some scream so long, that even Dawsyn grimaces. But she finds she cannot bring herself to pity them. She cannot claim there is no satisfaction to be gained from watching their unnatural skin bubble and meld into their flesh. It brings her some measure of despicable pleasure to see the white wings that stalked her childhood skies burnt to ash.
“And the finest of our offerings,” Roznier suddenly calls, her voice enacting a hush over the raucous celebrations. “The very first Glacian himself!”
Dawsyn’s head snaps up. She looks at Ryon, but his expression is steely, set determinedly ahead on the orange flames.
Surely, not…
Samskia brings him forward, and he walks on two feet. His knees buckle some as he staggers; his wings are torn, his hair hangs in ropes. His face is skeletal, all traces of superiority now erased.
But it is him. Vasteel. And despite herself, Dawsyn’s breaths come sharper. She clenches her fists. “Mother above,” she mutters.
Vasteel, held prisoner this entire time. By a mage clan, no less.
He turns his head toward them as he reaches the edges of the pyre, his burning nobles heaped in its middle. He sees Dawsyn, and then Ryon, and he smiles serenely. “I will see you in that circle, Mesrich,” he says. “The one saved for us.”
Ryon takes three measured steps toward him, and Dawsyn watches the muscles of his shoulders ripple as he shoves Vasteel, lifting him off his feet. He falls atop the pyre, and his cries last longer than any other before him. Dawsyn watches his face within the blaze contorting into something unrecognisable, something that does not resemble any creature that Dawsyn has encountered. He screams until his voice chokes off, unable to draw breath, his body blackening.
It is many minutes before Dawsyn looks away. She needs to ensure that only cinders remain. Only ash, quickly swallowed by the passing breeze. She ignores the shaking in her hands and keeps her eyes trained on the form that was once the King of Glacia, and thinks, one less to find. One less to kill.
Eventually, some of the mages begin singing and dancing again. They eat and drink and circle the fire. The hum in Dawsyn’s blood rings soundly.
Roznier approaches Dawsyn and her friends, standing stunned in the snow. Despite the festivities, Roznier’s expression is grave. She touches Dawsyn’s hand with her own and presses her ax into her palm. “Go now. And blessings, Dawsyn,” Roznier says, squeezing her fingers. “You will surely need them.”
“And if I should fail?” Dawsyn queries.
“Then it shan’t be the greatest failure at the hands of a mage,” she says, her lips quirking sadly. “And when you meet Baltisse across that bridge, please tell her that I… I am sorry,” she says pleadingly. “And tell her thank you.”
“Thank you for what?”
“For finding you,” Roznier says. “And seeing what you were.”
Before Dawsyn can take apart the words, she feels a warm touch upon her forehead. The last thing she sees is Samskia’s benign smile over her shoulder.
And then everything folds inward.