by JA Andrews
Separate. Bottle up. That was it. Sora shoved her emotions away until they didn’t affect her. She kept them so tightly controlled Will couldn’t even find them half the time.
He pulled himself away from the emotions for a moment, searching out their edges, feeling for the shape of them.
He pressed the apathy out his arms, shoved it back down toward the stone. Color crept into the room again.
Logically he knew he should put down the stone, but he couldn’t quite cut through the deadness inside him.
Beside him, Killien lay pale, his eyes closed and his breathing shallow. Lukas leaned out the window, looking not down at the Sweep, but up into the sky. He stayed there for a moment, before turning back to the room. His gaze fell on Killien, and he clenched his jaw.
“I used to think Keepers were some sort of magical beings that knew everything. They had everything under control. They protected us.” Lukas opened his hand and a faded red scar filled his palm. “Vahe triggered it. He sent that fire out over the heads of the crowd and everything inside of me…woke up.
“That’s when I knew I would be a Keeper. I just wanted to run home and tell my mother, begging her to take me to Queenstown. I tried to get my brothers to come with me, but they weren’t ready to leave, so I went myself.”
Lukas closed his fist. “Vahe found me before I’d gone far.”
He walked slowly back towards Will. “My mother wouldn’t find me, not tied up in Vahe’s wagon. But a Keeper…I knew a Keeper would come. I believed it until we crossed the Scales and everything disappeared except the grass.” His eyes dug into Will. “For years, I waited for you to come.”
A deep guilt writhed through the apathy inside Will.
“Then Sini came…And still no Keepers.” His face twisted in disgust. “Sini! If anyone deserves a life of happiness, it’s that girl. But they took her, too. At first, I thought you weren’t coming because you were angry, because we’d begun to learn a sort of magic that the Keepers wouldn’t like. But it was worse than that, wasn’t it?”
Lukas’s eyes searched Will’s face. “You didn’t even know we were gone.”
Something sank into Will’s gut, taking his breath away with it. He dropped his gaze to the floor.
“I believed all the lies about you,” Lukas said quietly.
A complicated twist of emotions tore through the apathy and Will yanked one hand off the stone, reaching for Lukas. “If we had known—”
Lukas batted his hand away. “Now that I’ve met a Keeper, I know I was foolish to think they were anything but arrogant, useless men.”
Will’s hand dropped to the floor.
Lukas leaned over Killien and unfastened the sheath from around his chest. He slid the seax out a handbreadth and touched it with his fingertips. A grim smile crossed his face and he shoved it back into the sheath and slung it across his back. “I don’t think I’ll soil the seax with your blood.” His gaze rested on Killien, and his jaw clenched. “This is not how I wanted things to go with Killien. I thought he could remember his anger at being controlled and make the decision to take what he needed. I had thought that together we might...” He blew out a breath and straightened. “His death is regrettable. But you, Will…I doubt I’ll ever think of you again.”
Will needed to move, but the part of him waking up was so small.
A voice rang in his ear. It reminded him of Sora.
Sora.
A wave of relief washed over him. She would come in and…do whatever needed to be done. Because something needed to be done, Will just couldn’t pinpoint exactly what.
Lukas unsheathed his knife, his face filled with pure hatred, and Will knew it was coming. In a moment he’d be next to Killien, dying. The Torch lay still, his face grey. Will’s mind recognized the wrongness of it, that he was going to be killed by a man who should have been like a brother. But there wasn’t room for actually feeling it.
He dragged his gaze to the door, waiting for Sora to come and fix things.
“Why couldn’t you be what you should have been?” Lukas asked in a ragged whisper.
Sora was too late. There was no one here to help. The truth flashed into his mind like a flare of light.
He was going about this all wrong. He wasn’t Sora. She stuffed emotions away. He let others’ emotions resonate within himself so that he could see them. Understand who they actually were. And recognize how much he was like them.
The apathy from the stone still filled him until he thought he might burst with the emptiness of it. He looked past it to his own emotions that had been shoved aside. The bright fear of the knife, the murky shame of what Lukas had been through, the hollow grief that Killien was lying so still on the floor next to him.
He latched onto the grief, and it was for so much more than Killien. It was still there for things long ago. His father. How his mother grieved for her husband and her daughter. The grief he’d carried so long for Ilsa. Even now, there was still a mourning for the years lost to knowing her.
It was his own grief and for the space of a heartbeat, focusing on it rolled the apathy back, making just enough room to open up to Lukas.
The little room left in him filled with bitterness and loss and guilt, a sharp ribbon of fear, and a fresh wound of loneliness.
And Will recognized every bit of it deep in himself.
“Lukas.” He barely managed a whisper. “I see you, what you’ve been through. It shouldn’t have happened. Any of it. But you can come back from all these things that are trying to consume you.”
“You know nothing,” Lukas hissed.
“I know about being alone.” So much churned within Will, that he wanted nothing more than to shove it all out. But he sorted through it, gathering his own emotions bit by bit. Disappointment with himself over the sort of Keeper he was, the ever present loneliness he felt, the old, worn in anger at his father’s death and Ilsa’s abduction. “I know that something can happen that we don’t deserve, and it can break everything.” He gathered all the emotions and pushed them toward Lukas, letting him feel all of it.
Lukas’s eyes widened, then he shrank back. “Get out of me!”
“You’re not alone,” Will whispered. He pulled everything back from Lukas. “It’s not too late, Lukas.”
“It is too late.” Lukas's face was set in a dark look. “You don’t know me.”
Will felt a pang of sadness for how often he’d seen him that way. “What about Sini?”
Lukas flinched.
“She told me you’re like an older brother who’s always taken care of her.”
For a fraction of a breath something gentle crossed Lukas's face. But then he shoved it away.
“The best thing that could happen to Sini,” Lukas answered, “is that she grows up far away from me.” He raised the knife and plunged the knife toward Will’s chest.
Will twisted away and the knife bit deep into his shoulder.
Pain exploded in Will’s arm, ripping through the apathy of the stone. Will’s fingers spasmed open and the aquamarine clattered across the floor.
“Will!”
This time it really was Sora, standing in the doorway, her arms clamped around a thrashing frost goblin. Behind her Alaric and Evangeline ran into the room.
Douglon pushed past them, puffing. “Our way out is not an option any longer.”
“The goblins are pouring into the cave—” Alaric stopped, taking in Killien, Lukas, and Will.
Lukas yanked the knife out. Pain shot down Will’s arm and snaked across his chest. He grabbed his shoulder.
Lukas rose. The room stood still for a moment before the dwarves let out a yell and thundered across the room. Lukas fixed them with a look of pure fury, then turned and ran for the window.
“Stop him!” Sora yelled.
Douglon lunged after him and Will heaved himself up. But Lukas reached the wall, scrambled up into the window and threw himself out.
Will reached the window just as a flash of glittering red r
aced by. With the whip of his tail, Anguine rose into the sky, the grey form of Lukas clinging to his back.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Douglon barreled up next to Will, scrambling toward the window and watching Lukas and Anguine fly southeast across the Sweep
“Dragons,” he grumbled.
Will sank against the wall, his shoulder throbbing. The room erupted in chaos. Ilsa yanked a door open and ran across the room, falling to her knees next to Killien crying out for someone to help. Patlon and Sora wrestled with the frost goblin, trying to get ropes around its limbs. Evangeline slammed the door to the hall closed, calling for something to barricade it with.
Alaric ran toward Will shouting question after question.
Will disregarded them all. “Help Killien, if you can.”
He sank down next to the Torch and cast out towards him. Killien’s body lay still. The little vitalle left in him sluggishly seeping out of the wound on his back. Will tried to gather some energy when Alaric knelt down next to him.
“You’re in no condition. Move over.”
Will nodded and sank back.
“Please help him,” Ilsa whispered.
Alaric glanced up and his attention caught on her face, but he only nodded and then set his hands on Killien’s shoulder and bowed his head. After a long moment he met Will’s gaze and shook his head.
“He needs to live, Alaric,” Will said. “He’d be an ally on the Sweep.”
“The man who rode a dragon and sucked the life out of his enemy?”
Will paused. “You met him on a bad day.”
Alaric’s eyebrows rose. “What do his good days look like?”
“On those, he might be able to get the Roven to quit fighting. Maybe even reconcile the Sweep and Queensland.”
Alaric looked skeptically down at Killien. The Torch’s shoulder barely moved with shallow breaths, the ground behind him soaked with blood. Ilsa knelt behind him, tears on her face, pressing a rag to the wound.
“He’s lost too much vitalle,” Alaric said quietly.
“Give him some of mine,” Will offered, holding out his hand.
Alaric waved his hand at Will’s blood-soaked arm. “You don’t have enough. None of us has enough—” He stopped.
“Whatever you’re thinking,” Will whispered, “do it.”
Alaric shook his head, his face stricken.
“Alaric, please.”
Alaric let out a long breath. He swung his bag off his shoulder and pulled out the swirling orange stone Killien had used to kill the Torch of the Panos.
“Is that still Ohan?”
Alaric shook his head. “Who we are isn’t held in our vitalle. It’s something more…intrinsic to us. What was Ohan is gone. This is just some of the energy that animated him. There isn’t enough here to bring back Ohan, but there may be enough to save Killien.”
Alaric rolled Killien onto his back and set the stone on his chest. Then, closing his eyes, he set his hands on Killien and tendrils of orange light snaked out of the stone. Ilsa gasped and pulled her hands back. Douglon stood behind her, watching Alaric with an unreadable face.
Evangeline called for help and the dwarf blinked. She stood with her back pressed to the door. “They’re coming!”
Douglon ran to one of the tables along the back of the room and pushed it toward the door.
“Goblins are swarming into the caves,” he said to Will. “The dragon flew off.” He nodded towards the window. “Now we know why. And goblins poured into the tunnels from somewhere down below. We thought it might be time to gather you up and go. Which is when we found Sora fighting three of them, hollering about not killing one.” He shoved the table against the wall and stomped back for another. “I assume this means you have some sort of plan.”
Will glanced over to where Sora and Patlon had succeeded in tying up the goblin. The creature lay squirming on the floor, making a hoarse screeching sound. “We did.”
Patlon went to help Douglon and Evangeline barricade the door. Will left Alaric to heal Killien and walked over to Sora. She grabbed a cloth from a nearby shelf, wrapped it around Will’s shoulder.
“Do we have the stone we need to control the goblin?” she asked.
Will shook his head.
Sora pressed her eyes for a moment. With a tired sigh, she drew the knife out of her pocket and turned toward the goblin.
“Wait.”
She glanced back at him. “They’re pouring into the caves. This one will only draw more to us.”
The goblin lay on the floor, pounding its bare, bony feet against the stone, eyes wide and feral. Its thin, wiry arms strained against the ropes, its leathery greyish-green skin scraped and raw from rubbing against it.
Will sank down next to the creature and the goblin twisted toward him. Sharp yellow teeth gnashing near his arm. Sora knelt down, pinning it with a knee to its chest.
Will opened up toward it. A howling mass of hunger and anger rushed into him. Nothing defined, nothing nuanced. It was an animal, less complex than even Talen. It was consumed with a driving hunger and…something else.
Above it he felt Sora’s tightly controlled fear.
Will reached out to touch the goblin’s arm. The creature hissed and squealed, but Will wrapped his hand around the loose, leathery skin.
He needed to send them back into the mountains. He’d sent Talen places by imagining a picture. But it felt more complicated than that with the goblins. Talen’s mind was calm and focused. The goblin before him was savage, and Will had no idea what the mountains looked like where the goblins were from.
Will closed his eyes against the goblin’s thrashing. Almost everything was hunger. Gnawing, consuming hunger. He tasted the tang of metal on his tongue and it drove an insatiable need to possess it. Will tried to swallow the taste away and dove deeper into the hunger, searching for the anger he’d felt. Maybe he could redirect it.
He found the thread of the anger and focused on it. This wasn’t one goblin’s anger at being bound. This was a communal anger at…being controlled.
The goblins knew what Killien had done. They knew they were here not because they’d chosen to be, but because someone had forced them. And it was unraveling them.
Dimly he heard crashing and shouts from the door.
“Will.” Sora pressed the goblin down. “Could you commune a little faster?”
“Shh.”
Will focused on the anger. How could he change it? The goblin in front of him felt angry and desperate.
And hot.
Will caught the one emotion he’d missed.
The goblin didn’t want to be here. The feeling was so familiar he’d passed over it as his own. The frost goblin was in a place it didn’t want to be.
A loud crack came from the door and the mass of tables in front of it shifted. Long green fingers rooted through a gap in the door, scrabbling against the wood.
“Whatever you are doing,” Sora hissed at him, “you are out of time.”
Her words scattered the idea growing in his mind. “Stop talking!”
“Me stop talking?” Her voice was indignant. “I only talk when there’s something important to—”
The door split with a long, tearing crack and a goblin wriggled through, clambering over tables. Patlon’s axe swung down and the goblin collapsed on the table, but another took its place.
“I have to let go.” Sora shifted her weight. “Don’t let it bite you.”
Will clamped his hand down on the goblin’s arm just as Sora lunged off it and ran for the door. Pain ripped across the knife wound in his shoulder. The creature went mad, spinning and biting. Its teeth caught at the side of Will’s pants and he shoved its head away. He grabbed the sides of the goblin’s head, trying to still it enough that he could focus, but it was like trying to hold a thrashing fish—if the fish had thin pointed teeth and a great desire to eat him. Pain lanced through his shoulder and his hand loosened on the goblin’s head. It twisted and bit into his arm.
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A heavy weight fell onto the goblin’s chest, pinning it down. It snapped its head toward the new foe, its teeth tearing across Will’s arm. Hands pinned its chest down onto the floor and Will pulled back.
He looked up into Ilsa’s face. She knelt on the creature, her face pale. Her terror echoed in his chest and he tried to shut her emotions out while still feeling the goblin’s.
It took him a breath to find his voice. “Thank you.”
Her eyes were wide with fear. “Whatever you’re doing, hurry!”
Will dragged his attention back to the goblin. It wasn’t the anger or the hunger he needed to work with.
He gripped the creature’s arm and pulled out his own emotions. It was right there, the one he’d been living with for a year. The aching longing to go home. He thought of Queensland, trees, hills, farmland. The Stronghold, the library, the other Keepers. His mother’s face that first moment when he showed up after being gone for too long.
He had found Ilsa. He could go home.
The yearning rolled through him like a wave, flattening everything else.
He let it grow until it filled him entirely, then he opened up toward the goblin and pushed the emotion toward him. Freedom to go home.
The goblin froze, its eyes wide and glazed. For a moment the longing warred with the hunger and the anger. Will pushed more of it in, letting it develop into its own sort of hunger for the familiar, the comfortable.
Will looked into Ilsa’s terrified face. “Do you miss home?”
A flash of shock crossed her face and he let her longing pour into him, raw and frenzied. Will shoved her emotions toward the goblin, too.
The creature’s anger dissolved, a wild freedom taking its place. In moments the craving for home was the only thing filling the creature.
It stopped straining to reach Will and stretched itself toward the window.
The door snapped and a wide gap opened. Greenish corpses were piling up inside the door, but more came every moment. Will cast out toward them feeling their hunger. But then one paused on its way through the door, a surge of homesickness filling it.
