by K.M. Weiland
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chris rejoined his men in pursuit of the Koraudians. He lofted his sword at their front and threw himself into the blind fury of the final moments of his war. Mactalde was dead, the Koraudians were dying, and the war was nearer its end than any of them had dared hope.
And yet storms gathered on every horizon. Only this morning, the first stars had fallen as far away as Lake Thyra. Now they lit up the Northern Mistgloam River, just outside the city. Beneath the feet of his rearing charger, the earth shivered.
As his men chased the Koraudians into the hills above Ori Réon, he glimpsed a flicker of fire in the water. He reached into his coat to touch the Orimere, and from the other side of the worlds, images of destruction mirrored those in Lael.
Above, a winged shadow cut across the light, and the men cheered. The Garowai, full-sized, circled overhead. Chris reined to a stop and waited at the top of the hill. His body ached, but deep inside, he felt numb. Empty.
With a great back-flapping of wings, the Garowai settled beside Chris. “Well, then.” He cocked his head. His eyes were rheumy and streaks of wetness lined the bridge of his muzzle. He hobbled a few arthritic steps, then sat on his haunches and wheezed. “Won a war, have you?”
Chris’s horse reared, and he dragged it back to its feet. “Have I?”
The Garowai’s massive shoulders rippled. “Mactalde’s dead. The Koraudians are retreating en masse. Everything looks rather victorious.” One brow ridge lifted. “Don’t you think?”
“What about that?” He pointed to the lightshow of falling stars.
“Looks like a storm.”
He made himself speak the words he hadn’t even been allowing himself to think. “It looks like the worlds are still breaking.”
The brow rose higher.
“I thought you said if Mactalde died, the balance would be restored?”
“I believe what was said was the imbalance was created when you brought Mactalde across. And that is true.”
His hand clenched his saddlebow. “Mactalde’s dead. The balance has been restored. Why are the worlds still breaking?”
The Garowai shuddered, as if chilled. He drew a labored breath that ended in a cough, then offered a smile. “Perhaps it’s too late.” The brilliant green of his watering eyes held steady. “Or perhaps Mactalde’s death wasn’t enough.”
“Something’s wrong. Just tell me what it is.” He had to hear someone else say it.
The Garowai spoke patiently. “You were brought to Lael for one purpose only.”
“To kill Mactalde.”
“To do whatever needs to be done. Isn’t that what you said you were willing to do?”
Fire crept through his innards and chased away the numbness. “It’s me, isn’t it? I’m the one causing the imbalance.” The words tore from him at last and left him breathless. Something Pitch had said the first day slithered through his memory. “The Gifted are forbidden to use the Orimere to bring any living thing across the worlds.” He looked at the Garowai. “I’m one who did this. I’m the one causing the imbalance.”
The Garowai smiled. “Goodbye, Master Gifted. I am pleased the God of all chose me to know you.”
“Wait. I don’t understand.” He kneed the horse forward. “If I caused all this, if it was me from the beginning, why was I brought here at all?”
“Perhaps because you will leave Lael a better place than you found her.” The smile whispered again.
His every breath wrenched his chest. “How am I supposed to go?”
“The same way any of us do. Indeed, the same way I will.” The smile took on a sad twist. “My time here comes to an end as well. Soon I will pass and a new Garowai will rise from my body to serve a world that will still be here because you will save it.”
His throat clamped. “How can you be sure? How do you know I can do what you’re asking?”
“I’m sure because your gift is that of a leader, and sometimes leading means going where others cannot follow.” The Garowai reared back on his hind legs. “Farewell, my friend.” With one mighty pump of his wings, he lifted himself from the ground and surged away from the hill.
A Guardsman galloped over. Smile lines gleamed through the grime on his face. “My lord Gifted, we’ve captured their ranking officer! He wants to talk terms.”
The Garowai flew across the lake, then wheeled to soar up past the waterfall. He topped the palace and didn’t look back.
“Congratulations, sir.” The Guardsman beamed. “For the victory.”
Chris laid his rein to his horse’s neck. “Yes. The victory.”
_________
By the time Chris galloped through the palace gates, the storm had blown darkness into the sky. Women and children and old men swarmed the courtyard to greet their victorious soldiers. Their shouts and their laughter rose above even the gale. They mobbed Chris’s horse and would have carried him upon their shoulders had he not waved them aside. He left them to their celebrating and entered the explosion-shattered castle.
Allara, clad in a soft almond-colored gown, met him at the top of the stairs. Her left arm was already bound and cradled against her stomach. Her hair hung loose over her shoulders, and the shadows pitting her cheeks only amplified the brilliance of her eyes.
She smiled at him and held out her hand. “Chris.”
He pressed her fingers, then let go. He wanted no part of these victory celebrations. He stepped up to join her at the top of the stairs. “Orias?”
Her head tilted to the nearby door, but her eyes held fast to his. “What’s wrong?”
He shouldered past. “Nothing.”
“Chris.” Her hand brushed his sleeve. “You’ve won.”
He pushed through the heavy door into Orias’s room. He had won. He’d done what they wanted him to. He’d given everything he had to win their war. And against all the odds, Mactalde was dead. By Chris’s sword, he was dead. That should have been enough. The worlds should be saved. To ask him to give more—to ask him to leave this place and everyone in it—was a price too great.
“Chris.” Pitch scrambled off his chair at the foot of the bed and ran over to take his hand. In the fluttering candlelight, his face gleamed with tears. “Orias is hurt. There was blood all over—”
“I know.” He held Pitch’s hot little palm, and they crept across the room to the bed.
Quinnon stood behind the doctor with his arms crossed and his chin tucked against his chest. He watched Chris approach.
The doctor stepped back from the bed. “My lord Gifted. I’ve done all I can.”
Orias lay stretched beneath the bed’s canopy, his body almost too long for the bed. The green silk coverlet covered his chest, unstirred by any visible breath. On the pillow next to him, Raz sat cross-legged and shook his head gravely. Pitch clenched Chris’s fingers. He peered up with tear-slick eyes, as if he believed Chris could somehow make this right.
And why not? Chris’s throat tightened. He was the Gifted, wasn’t he? The only reason he had been allowed to cross over at all was to make things right. Thunder cracked outside, and Pitch flinched.
The Garowai wanted Chris to leave Lael. If he left, the worlds would theoretically be safe. But what if they weren’t? Maybe the breaking had already stopped. How did he know this storm wouldn’t pass and the sun wouldn’t return in the end? How could he leave this place forever, while there was the slightest hope of an alternative?
Pitch leaned across the bed to touch Orias’s forearm. “Orias, he’s come. Chris has come.”
Slowly, as though his neck had rusted, Orias turned his head until his cheek lay flat on the pillow. His eyes opened, and his pupils drifted up.
Chris sank to his knees. “You saved my life.”
“My—honor.” Orias labored for breath enough to carry his words. “Thank the God of all.” His eyelids slid shut. “I am set free. I have lived to see the evil gone from Lael.”
Chris’s stomach churned. “Orias—” The impossible, a
gonizing truth clogged his throat. “Orias, I’m sorry.”
“It is as it should be.”
“Everything that’s happened was my fault. You’re not accountable.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’ve both made it right. It is over now, and I die in peace.” Orias’s chest sagged.
Pitch threw a wild look at Chris.
The doctor moved forward to check Orias’s pulse. He shook his head. “Not yet. But soon.”
Chris reached across the bed to touch Orias’s bandaged palm. Through the windows on the far side of the room, the lake thrashed all the way to the edge of sight.
It made sense now why Mactalde had spent his life plotting to return to this place. It made sense he would have preferred to die again rather than surrender to the emptiness of leaving it behind forever. This morning, Chris had asked Mactalde if coming home had been worth the deaths and the destruction. Maybe he had known the answer before he had asked the question.
He looked back at Orias’s head lolling against the pillow, and he filled his nostrils with the metallic stench of blood and the sour bite of oronborne. Orias had died to keep him alive. Orias had bought him the time he needed to see this to the end. And the end was coming.
“Soon,” Chris said. The word was a promise. He rose and turned to where Allara waited in the doorway. Quinnon stood several steps in front of her. “Get together Denegar, Eroll, and Cabahr Laith. And my father.”
Quinnon’s eye narrowed. “What for?”
He started toward the door. “You’ll see.”
__________
Mactalde was dead, but the storm raged on. Why? Why did it not stop?
Allara stood before the chapel’s door as Chris faced what few of his captains remained. Rain rattled the stained-glass windows, and she shivered. The day had been won. Chris had corrected the imbalance. The storm should be slackening, not worsening.
“Our battle isn’t over.” Chris stood on the dais at the end of the room. He propped one arm against the altar, probably to keep from swaying with exhaustion. “The worlds are still breaking.”
Arrayed across the room were his men. Quinnon. Denegar. Laith. His father sat in the back where Eroll lay on a pew. They had come because their victorious leader had summoned them. But the heaviness in Chris’s face and the words falling from his tongue like so much lead did not speak of victory.
The men stared at him, uncomprehending.
Allara pushed away from the door. “The storm will stop. Now that Mactalde’s dead, it has to stop.”
“The war’s won.” Denegar’s nose shone red with the cold that filtered through dusty rents in the walls. “We should all be celebrating.”
“The war may be won,” Chris said. “But the imbalance hasn’t healed.”
Like frozen water in a flask, the cold in her bones ruptured. She could almost hear them crack. She started up the aisle. “No. Mactalde’s dead. You killed him. I saw you kill him.”
His features were perfectly still. He was bracing himself, preparing himself for her reaction to the truth.
She began to shake—because she knew the truth without being told. She reached the chancel.
“I did kill Mactalde,” he said. “But that isn’t all I have to do.”
A murmur chased through the room behind her.
“If Mactalde was not to blame, then who?” asked Laith.
The patter of rain against the windows became the click of ice pebbles. Her blood thundered in her head.
Chris exhaled. “Me. I’m responsible. I caused the imbalance when I brought Mactalde across. And I’m the only one who can fix it.”
“Fix it how?” Worick asked.
“I have to leave this world.” He spoke as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
She breathed out. “No . . .”
“Leave?” Worick’s voice turned strident. “How do you think you’re going to do that? How can anyone leave a world?”
“No—” She crossed the few spans to the dais and clutched Chris’s coat lapel. “No! This isn’t right. It can’t be you!”
He stepped down from the dais to face her, and his voice dropped, low and intent and determined. “This has to be.”
He had already made up his mind.
“No.” She tightened her grip in his coat. “No, it doesn’t!”
“What has to be?” Worick demanded. “What are you talking about?”
Tears sheeted her vision. She clung to him, every muscle screaming. She would hold him here whatever it took. Hold him by sheer force of will if she could not hold him by logic. “I will not let this happen!”
From behind, a hand warmed her shoulder, and when Chris held the man’s gaze for a long moment, she knew it was Quinnon. She looked back at him, pleading, even though he had never believed in the Gifted.
Like all the rest of them, he waited for Chris to speak again. But the way his good eye opened so much wider than the bad one said he waited for something different. Or perhaps, for the first time, he was seeing something different.
“Quinnon,” she begged.
“Life gives every man only one opportunity.” He watched Chris, and a glimmer of respect eased the hard lines of his face. “To do his duty and to do it well.”
She spun to the men. “You can’t believe what he’s saying? You can’t be willing to let him throw his life away like this?”
Chris’s hand against her back pushed her forward, and he limped down the aisle beside her. “The worlds are coming apart at the seams. And I caused it. I used the Orimere to bring a living thing across the worlds.”
“This is madness!” Denegar said. “Why were we told nothing of this imbalance? We should have been told. This should have been addressed long ago.”
Eroll dragged himself up on one elbow. He looked from Allara to Chris. “What do we do?”
“Nothing,” Allara said. “We have no reason to believe any of this! It’s a whim. A suspicion because the storm hasn’t stopped!”
“We have to send me home,” Chris said.
“The Orimere will take you back?” Worick asked. Like her, he sounded unwilling to let himself believe what he knew was the truth.
“No . . .” Chris slowly shook his head. “Not the Orimere.”
Her throat caved in.
Eroll stared at her. “There must be another way. There has to be.”
“There isn’t.” Chris straightened his shoulders. “I’ve already talked to the Garowai.”
Denegar pushed past Laith to grip Chris’s arm. “Lael will never stand by and see you executed after such a victory.”
“This isn’t anyone’s choice to make but mine.” His hand pressed against Allara’s back, but he looked at his father. “You understand that?”
Worick’s face was gaunt. “No.”
Streaks of falling gold lit the stained glass. Stars landed somewhere in the nearby hills, and their hollow thud, like an underground detonation, joined with the thunder.
“It must be done.” Laith inclined his head to Chris, almost respectfully. “The Cherazii will bear your blood, if such be the Gifted’s will.”
“Nay,” Quinnon said. “I will do it. It would be my honor to so serve him.”
Chris looked at Quinnon for a long moment. “If you want to call it an honor, then the honor’s yours.”
Allara stared at Quinnon. He might as well have shot her. “How can you do this?”
“Because it has to be done.” He spoke as if he didn’t know he were breaking her heart, but she caught a glimmer of anguish that was as much his own as a reflection of hers.
She whirled back to Chris and dragged him toward the door and away from these men and their words of honor and duty.
His weight yielded in her hands. “Let the people know,” he told Quinnon. “This time when a Gifted dies, they need to know why. No one is to blame but me.” He nodded at Laith and the other Cherazii, then turned back to his father. “Get the family together—” finally, his voice did waver,
“—so I can say goodbye.”
She flung the door open and spun around to wait for him in the deep shadows of the corridor. He followed her and pulled the door shut behind him.
“Chris—”
“Not yet.” He took her elbow and walked her down the passage.
“No, now.” She yanked free. “We have no time for not yet. You’re not giving me time!”
His own pain and frustration twisted his face. “Allara, I don’t have any time to give you! Look outside. Everything’s going to fall down on our heads any minute. We’ve got maybe an hour before the heart of that storm reaches us.”
“It’s a storm. It’s just a storm. It’s not a part of the breaking. The breaking is over. It ended with Mactalde!” A sob caught in her throat. He blurred in front of her, like a painting left in the rain.
“Alla.” He pulled her against him. “I’ve done this to you. I’ve betrayed you in more ways than one. To leave Lael, to leave you—it’s unthinkable.” His arms tightened around her, as if he could pull her into himself and take her with him. “But you know I’m right. There’s no other answer.”
“There has to be.” Her fingers cramped in the back of his coat.
“I caused the breaking. It was my fault, and I’m the only one who can fix it.” Resolution steadied his voice.
“No—” She wouldn’t listen to this, and she wouldn’t believe it. She pushed away. “It wasn’t you. You didn’t cause this. You didn’t know! How could you? It was Orias!”
He shook his head.
“Orias lied to you. He baited you, he gave you no other choice than to bring Mactalde across!” If someone had to be the sacrifice here, then let it be Orias. He was dying already. He maybe even wanted to die. Death would bring him peace. But if Chris left her—if he disappeared back into the world of her dreams—how would she ever find peace for herself?
His face was still. “Maybe I didn’t know exactly what would happen if I brought him across, but in my gut I knew it was wrong. I knew Mactalde was dangerous. This is my fault, there’s no way around that. You and I both accepted that from the beginning. We can’t hide from it now.”
She pulled in breath after breath. She had to be calm, she had to think. “You want to die? You want to leave Lael?” The tears came anyway. “Do you want to leave me?”
“No.” A look, like fractured glass, filled his face. “But I don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice!”
He turned to the window and braced his arms against the sill. “All right, yes. And what I have to choose is to take responsibility for what’s happened. What I choose is to save this place. What we talked about the other day is true. We are part of a bigger plan. And, even if I didn’t believe that, I still have to do this if for no other reason than because all of this means too much to me now to let it die.”
Her body shook. “Nobody ever said anything about slaughtering a Gifted!”
He shoved away from the windowsill. “I am going to die anyway! When that storm gets here, we’re all going to die. You are going to die. You think I’m going to stand by and do nothing when there’s a chance I can do everything?”
Tears burnt her face. “Please. Please don’t leave me all alone.”
He approached her; he took her shoulders in his hands. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the Garowai lied to me. Maybe my death won’t make a cent of difference. But I have to try. We have to try. You’ve worked and prayed for this all your life. You can’t give up now just because the final step isn’t the way you want it to be.”
She leaned into his chest, and her injured arm throbbed between them. At last, the sobs tore free. “I cannot bear it.”
“You can.” His breath warmed the air above her ear. “You can because you’re strong. Because you gave your life to fulfill a destiny you didn’t even want. You’ve worked for twenty years for this victory. Don’t surrender now.” He pulled her closer and whispered almost too low for her to hear, “Don’t make this harder than it is.”
“Please, wait.” She pressed her forehead against his chest. “Wait until Orias dies.”
“I can’t.”
“He can’t live much longer. He may even be dead now. Just in case, just in case it isn’t you . . . please wait.”
His chest rose and fell against her.
“Please.”
“All right.” The stubble on his cheek scratched her temple. “But we both know it won’t matter.”
