Eight Will Fall, page 20
Larkin dropped her hand, her eyes focusing on a fiery orb in the darkness. Kyran’s doing?
“Casseem?” she called. She couldn’t remember if he had a torch with him. Larkin slipped between the statues and walked deeper into the offshoot passage, the ground hardening to solid rock beneath her feet. The orb grew brighter and larger.
She halted at the sight of a figure, her heart stuttering.
A mirrored wall sliced through the width of the tunnel, preventing her from walking any farther.
Larkin reached out and touched it, her fingers leaving greasy stains along the glass. Iridescence swirled along the mirror’s surface. She stared at her reflection. How long had she been down here? Her cheeks sharpened outward at an unnatural angle, the skin under her eyes bruised. She looked chewed up and spit out. Her reflection told her weeks, but it hadn’t seemed that long. They must have gone for days at a time without sleeping.
This mirror was here for a reason. Her stomach clenched. What do you want? She searched the surrounding space for rage but only caught hints of Tamsyn’s intrigue behind her. He was still reading the glyphs.
Larkin followed her bloody, worn reflection down to her untied laces. “Hells.” She bent down to tie her boot. When she stood up, she saw Amias in the mirror behind her.
No, not Amias. The man had Amias’s complexion and his dark eyes. But the similarities ended there.
She didn’t know this man.
As Larkin tried to spin around, the man lashed out and caught her shoulder, forcing her to stare straight ahead at her reflection. He clapped a hand over her mouth, impossibly strong, holding her as she thrashed. Larkin wrenched at his hand, scouring the air for any emotions to siphon. Gods, Tamsyn! Come on!
The man waited until she ceased to struggle. His robes were like those of the statues, and there was something frightening about his ethereal beauty. Just like Bianca’s.
He slowly released his hand from her mouth. “Scream and I will crush your heart.”
“Disciple,” she coughed.
His dark eyes met hers in the mirror, the corners of his smooth lips perking up, though Larkin sensed no delight.
She sensed nothing at all.
“Do I resemble a statue, Larkin?” His voice was satin. “You should have listened to Casseem. You chose to stay with Bianca. You chose to seek her help, and because of that, she made a mistake that cost her the life of everyone she cared about, including her own.”
Gods, no. It couldn’t be him.
Larkin watched, paralyzed, as his hand glided to her belt, fingers wrapping around the hilt of her remaining knife and pulling it from its sheath. She knew she should scream, even if he did crush her heart.
At least she’d be able to warn the others that Kyran was here.
They could kill him if she gave them enough warning.
“Choice.” His eyes didn’t leave hers. “People only look up to decision makers, isn’t that right? You’ve been challenging Casseem because you want to make the choices.”
“I don’t,” she said.
“All you have is your family. Your brother.” Kyran clucked his tongue at her. “If you don’t make the right choices to save him, no one will. He is why you fight to lead.”
“You don’t know what I want.” Her voice trembled.
His eyes smoldered with rage, yet she couldn’t sense it now. She could only see it. A warm, solid body, but an apparition.
This man wasn’t really Kyran. He was a messenger.
“I control elements, command armies. I am everywhere within this world, and I live forever. I know what you want, Larkin.”
A howl sounded in the distance. “Tamsyn,” she cried, thrashing once more. “Don’t hurt him!”
“Leading means making choices. You won’t survive without making one.”
Tamsyn’s fear erupted inside her. Larkin threw her arm and siphoned, her palm connecting with the man’s face.
In the mirror, she watched his flesh melt away as she projected. He did not scream; he only smiled. His lips curled like burning parchment. His teeth gnashed at her.
Larkin threw the man off her. He slumped to the ground, dead, and Larkin took off into the darkness.
She burst from between the statues and stumbled into the shallow riverbed. Monstrous shrieks and scraping talons reverberated in her ears. Shadows swarmed along the walls, dropping into the channel.
She had to warn the rest of the party.
Tamsyn cried out for her, his terror starkly familiar. Like what she had sensed in Bianca’s village. Brielle. Devon.
He was dying.
The black curtain subsided as light shone from behind her. As if pouring from a hive, creatures swarmed around the scholar—blistered skin, mouths veiled by flesh. Talons tore him apart.
A creature detached from the ceiling and landed in front of her. Larkin siphoned and projected, carnage showering her, before someone shoved her out of the way.
“RUN!” Casseem barreled forward with a torch, swiping the air as he siphoned. The creatures surrounding him burst.
“Run, Larkin!” As he swung his torch, the light caught on beasts skittering downward from cracks in the ceiling.
“Casseem!” Larkin screamed.
He looked up as a beast descended on him, knocking him into the water. Larkin siphoned and projected, blood spurting from the creature’s neck as her magic devoured its flesh.
“Get up!” she sobbed.
Casseem pushed the dead beast off him, flipping over and crawling toward her. Larkin ran to him, one of the creatures launching itself at her. She rolled through the water, landing on her back.
Casseem.
Larkin reached up toward him, grasping his fingers. For a bright moment, she sensed his cool relief before his hand was ripped from hers.
She watched as he was dragged away, talons threading his hair and yanking his head back.
Fingers of sharpened bone ripped across his throat.
Every breath was a scream.
Larkin dragged herself to her feet, racing down the tunnel and away from the swarm, the wet noise of ripped flesh, grating bones, clicking talons. She cried for help until her lungs were spent, falling to her knees even when she knew the creatures were still close.
The roar of water answered her.
I control elements.
The river. Kyran had destroyed the river, disintegrated it into the mist that hung in the air, and now he was reconjuring it.
Water barreled toward her, the current scooping up the sides of the tunnel as it flooded the passageway.
Tamsyn’s agony stole her breath. Gods, he was still alive.
Hold on, Tamsyn. Larkin siphoned his horror as it weakened to a trickle.
The river crashed on top of her. Larkin projected, and while the current whipped around her, she knelt, safe in an eye of vapor.
Then the roiling of Tamsyn’s terror died with him, and the river tore Larkin from her knees.
TWENTY-FIVE
She let the river take her.
Larkin’s father had insisted on teaching her how to swim, but the capital canals had never been so fierce. He would have jumped in to save Larkin if her head had gone beneath the water. He would have saved her now, when her lungs threatened to burst.
By fortune, Larkin’s boots scraped against the riverbed. She launched herself upward and broke through the surface, barreling into a boulder that knocked the breath from her lungs. She scrambled to gain purchase on the slippery rock and failed. Blinking the water from her eyes, Larkin spotted glowing patches of crystal above. She could see.
She could see!
In front of her, water cascaded in a sheet of silver, broken only by a crag near the bank. Larkin took a deep breath, and then another, kicking her legs in front of her when her body was buoyant. Her boots slammed into the crag, toes wedging into a crack in the stone. The current whipped her toward the bank, and she grasped the ledge.
Her cuirass was pulling her under. With one hand, she somehow managed to unbuckle it, shifting her body and grip until the current pulled the armor from her torso. She watched it float away.
The roar of water swallowed her cry for help. She tried imagining where the others had been when the hoard had attacked. Amias, Jacque, and Elf had gone off in search of lichen. Had they searched beyond the statues, or back the way they’d come?
It didn’t matter, she realized. Not if the current had sucked them under. Not if they didn’t know how to swim.
Larkin clawed at the gritty bank, mustering the strength to pull herself from the current’s grasp. She rolled to her stomach and spit up water. Her eyes darted to the corpses bobbing along the glittering silk. Monsters.
Tamsyn. Casseem.
A sob ripped through her. She couldn’t succumb to grief, though, not yet.
The current was the same as the direction they’d been walking, which meant the others were downstream. Larkin picked herself up and began to run.
She’d never been alone before, not in her entire life. Alone meant no comfort, no solidarity.
It meant no magic. She would be defenseless.
Larkin hurdled over plumes of glowing lichen in her path. If she didn’t save them, Jacque wouldn’t get home to her fiancée. What if she never saw Elf again? And Amias …
Casseem. Tamsyn.
Larkin tripped, grit from the bank skinning her hands as she fell. She curled her knees to her chest and held on to them.
A heavy weight crushed her. She fumbled in an attempt to find the buckles on her cuirass, to strip them open so she could breathe, and then remembered she wasn’t even wearing it. Larkin gasped, coaxing air into her lungs.
She’d felt this way before.
It was soon after her mother’s accident. Her family hadn’t eaten in days. Vania wouldn’t stop crying. Her mother’s and father’s misery and guilt bled into Larkin from downstairs as they tried to pacify the toddler with warm water.
She lay curled beneath the quilt atop her bed, clutching her stomach. If death came for her, her family would lose her as a worker.
But she’d be one less mouth to feed.
Larkin felt the weight of the hay mattress shift. Garran took her frozen hands in his, warming them.
“What are we going to do, Larkin? When the morning comes, and we’re too miserable to leave our beds. What are we going to do?”
She began to cry.
“Tell me. Promise me.”
“We’re going to get up,” she promised. “And we’re going to work.”
* * *
Get up.
Off in the distance, she heard her name, just like the skeleton had spoken to her in the tunnel of corpses. Luring her, the promise of seeing her mother held between its rotting teeth.
This was another trick, a world of nightmares crafted just for her, taunting her around every corner. But this time, Casseem was not here to pull her back.
Larkin tore at the ground. She squinted, blinking until she saw a shadow against the glow of lichen in the distance.
She remembered the cave-in, when Casseem had used destruction magic to sever the passageway. The darkness had been tangible, and she barely recognized the voices of her party.
She knew better now. She knew the sound of her name on Amias’s tongue, the way he held onto the r just a moment too long. How his voice rang sharp when he was desperately worried.
Pulling herself to her feet, Larkin began to run.
She ran until she could no longer feel the ground, hurdling over a cluster of crystals along the bank. She could barely make out the shape of his body, but the relief he emitted—the way he called her name like it was the only word he knew—was a beacon in the darkness.
He gathered her into his arms, bright, warm, weightless. She’d been certain she’d never sense comfort or relief again.
Amias wound his fingers through her curls and pressed his lips to her cheek. He held her up when her knees gave out, his emotions flooding her like a tonic. He was without armor, and she felt the rapid beat of his heart through his tunic.
“I was alone.” The thought of it haunted her. “Casseem…”
“We’re here,” he said.
We.
A bright and airy voice echoed against the channel walls, followed by the clamor of footsteps. Larkin regained her strength and broke from Amias, spotting two figures easing toward them, limping and haggard.
The crystal glow illuminated Elf’s blood-slicked forehead. Jacque’s hair fell in strings over her face, her skin drained of color. But they were all right.
“We were at a bend in the channel when the water came,” said Amias. “We clung to the rock and avoided the worst of the water.”
“I can’t believe it! I thought…” Jacque fell silent when she sensed Larkin.
“Larkin,” Elf said softly, the light leaving her eyes. “Both of them?”
Larkin heard Casseem scream at her to run. She felt the ghost of his fingers rip away from hers. She sank to the ground in her own despair. Jacque held on to her, and Larkin melted into the soldier’s armor.
Their grief seized her, corroding her bones like swords in the rain. Her blood rusted. A patina bloomed across her flesh. She couldn’t breathe, but she could scream—welcoming grief—because it was theirs, and she wasn’t alone.
Elf rested her head against Larkin’s arm. Amias held her hand. And Larkin cried until her body couldn’t bear another sob.
* * *
When Larkin told them of the ambush, she left out the visit from Kyran’s messenger.
Larkin had no evidence other than her memory, and she wasn’t foolish enough to believe Kyran himself dead. No magic could have given him the power to present himself to her like he had, and Bianca had confirmed that he wasn’t a god.
She’d imagined him. Casseem and Tamsyn were dead, and she wouldn’t burden the others with her delusions.
As they sat around the fire on the bank of the river, Tamsyn’s scream rang cacophonous against the clicking talons. She couldn’t shake the echo of it away.
If she and Casseem hadn’t fought so often, would she have stayed by his side? Would he and Tamsyn still be alive?
If she was truly Bianca’s, would she have been able to save them? The creatures had spilled Bianca’s blood just like Casseem’s and Tamsyn’s. Still, her hope that she was the disciple’s descendant was fading.
She would have felt Bianca’s power inside her by now. She would have known.
Their acrid fire smoked, and Larkin lacked the will to rekindle it. Her face was stiff and swollen from crying.
Across the embers, Jacque took a honing stone to her blade. The soldier had managed to hold on to her weapon this whole time.
They’d lost all but one bag, and Amias sliced up their two remaining smoked fish. Larkin wasn’t hungry, but he made her take some anyway, avoiding her eyes when he pushed the portion into her hands. He carried grief in the lines of his face.
Elf sat at the far edge of the bank, dipping her toes in the water that pooled into a glowing inlet. She destroyed tufts of lichen, gathering the splinters near her in a luminescent pile.
Larkin stood and walked to her as Elf began to conjure, the splinters drifting through her hands. Elf molded them to a wide plank floating in the pool. Her creation began to lengthen and take form, the edges curling up.
A boat.
The growths protruding from Elf’s shoulders had stopped bleeding, but the skin surrounding them was still raw and tender.
“What is this for?” asked Larkin.
Elf frowned. “I thought it would be obvious.”
“I don’t mean the boat.” Larkin reached out and ran a finger along Elf’s shoulder.
The girl flinched away, glaring. “They aren’t finished.”
Larkin opened her mouth, then sensed the embarrassment that Elf fought to bury deep.
“I’m not mad,” Elf said.
“What are you using to conjure?” Jacque joined them, interrupting the conversation. The soldier’s sword had returned to its sheath, pressing to her thigh as she knelt between Larkin and Elf.
Elf massaged the splinters into the boat’s stern. “Our memories and dreams find new life this deep down. Love hides within them, sometimes—often—buried beneath sadness. I find it.”
“You mine it out.” Larkin’s throat tightened.
“You don’t have to mine.” Jacque took a handful of splinters and pressed them into Elf’s waiting palm. “The last time I saw Risa, we spent one night on the farm before I was assigned to the docks for watch. You know the Demuran wedding ceremony?”
“Yes,” said Larkin. “Empaths aren’t allowed—”
“Risa didn’t care.” Jacque grinned, lost in the memory. “Rings forged by fire in front of our guests. The ritual would take place near the stables.” Pain flashed across Jacque’s face, but as Larkin sensed the layers of warmth beneath it, she understood.
“She’d planned the flower crowns for the autumn bloom.” Jacque released Elf’s hand. “I have relived that night over and over again since the moment we lost the sun.”
Elf smoothed the splinters along the boat’s edge. “That’s a beautiful memory.”
Jacque winced, rubbing her stomach.
“What’s wrong?” Larkin asked.
“It’s nothing,” Jacque said, then grunted. With a swift motion, Larkin yanked up Jacque’s tunic, hissing as she caught sight of her abdomen. A mottled knot bulged from Jacque’s stomach.
“That doesn’t look like nothing, Jacque!” Larkin said.
Jacque smacked the back of Larkin’s hand away. “Piss off!” she yelled, unable to suppress her tingling worry. “I slammed up against a rock during the flood.” Jacque pressed a hand against the bottom of her rib cage. “You have much larger things to concern yourself with.” She nodded toward the conjured boat. “Like not drowning.”
* * *
The boat didn’t sink.
They floated down the river with nothing but a deflated bag and two torches, the wood of Elf’s craft glittering subtly from the luminescent lichen.
