by K.M. Weiland
Chapter Fifty-Eight
For the next thirty minutes, Chris waited for a friend to die, because maybe, just maybe, that death would give him life. He sat in front of the fire in Orias’s room, the Rievers seated to either side of him. He leaned his chin into his hands, his elbows propped against his knees, and tried to shut out the whistle of Orias’s last breaths and the howl of the storm. Behind the closed door, people crowded the hallway, rustling and whispering.
He shouldn’t have listened to Allara’s panic. But life was a precious thing, and second chances even more so. He could not throw them away while hope remained. Was it only a few months ago he had fought tooth and nail to escape this place? He had wanted the dreams to just stop. That’s what he had said over and over. He buried his face in his hands.
Somebody should have clocked him every time he’d opened his mouth that first day. He had been such a fool. He had tried to blow this world away like dust off his hands. Of course it would turn out to be gold dust.
And now he would give his right arm, his right eye for Quinnon to use as a spare, even ten years off his lifespan, just to make this world his reality. Let him live the other one in dreams as he had this one most of his life. Let him stay here forever. Oh God, just let him stay.
Beside him, Pitch flinched and stood up on the bench. Chris looked up.
The doctor laid Orias’s arm at his side and turned to nod, his mouth a compressed line. He knew by now what hinged on Orias’s death. Everyone knew.
Allara, standing at the window, cast the curtains aside, and the pewter light of the storm flooded the room. In silence, they waited. They held their breaths, listening, straining to see a streak of sunlight.
He counted the time in his head. He had agreed to wait five minutes after Orias’s death. That was as much time as they could afford.
“Is it stopping?” Pitch whispered.
Stone and ice rattled against the parapet. Falling stars burned across the sky. The wind crashed against the glass.
Allara looked back at Chris. Her skin clung to her face in a death’s mask.
He held himself very still. Nod. That’s all he had to do. Nod at her and agree to stay and forget the consequences. And if the worlds broke apart, at least they could die together—and he would die only once. Walk away from his mistakes. Walk away from his responsibilities. Just walk away. But that was the one thing he couldn’t do.
He swallowed, and he turned away from her. He forced the stiff muscles in his neck to nod at Quinnon, where he stood guard at the door. “It’s time. Tell them.”
Allara choked on a breath and hurried past Quinnon. The door opened upon the noisy hush of a hundred waiting people and clicked shut once more to mute Quinnon’s voice.
As the doctor and his aide closed the curtains on either side of the bed, Chris walked to the end of the bedstead. Shadows covered Orias’s face. The hard angle of his mouth remained unsoftened.
“It wasn’t you,” Chris whispered, and he laid his fist to his heart.
The Rievers padded over to stand on either side of him. Raz clutched a fistful of Chris’s trouser leg. “What happens now?”
He steeled his voice. “Now we have to say goodbye.”
“Had enough goodbyes.” Raz stared straight ahead.
Pitch gripped Chris’s hand in both of his. “You can’t go away unless I give you permission.”
Chris lifted Pitch’s skinny body. “Today I’ve got to answer a higher call than Riever law.”
“I know.” Pitch wrapped his arms around Chris’s neck. “And that is why I am setting you free.”
_________
Only Parry remained in the hallway when Chris emerged from Orias’s room. The boy stared at the floor. “I’m supposed to tell you they’re ready.” He tilted his head toward the stairs.
At the bottom, Chris’s family waited, their faces tight and afraid.
Chris gave Parry’s shoulder a shake, just enough to make him look up, then offered him his hand. “You were the finest manservant I ever had.”
Parry shrugged and looked down once more.
Chris scanned the landing below. “Where’s Allara?”
“She ran off soon as the Cherazim died.”
“I need you to find out where she went.” He waited until Parry nodded, then he turned and walked down the long, long stairs to where his family waited.
“My son.” Lauria took his face in her hands. “My only son. I won’t even be able to dream of you.” Her voice crumpled.
He kissed her fingers. “I got to see you once more, and that’s more than I ever thought I’d get.”
Tielle’s cheek churned. “What about me? Will I dream about you?”
“I promise.” He looked to where Worick stood, strong and steadfast. “And so will you. Especially you.” For a long moment, they stood facing each other, until finally Chris leaned forward to wrap his father in his arms. “Goodbye, Dad.”
“What can a man say?” Worick crushed him with his strength, then backed away. The tears ran down his face. “I’m proud you were my son, Talan Malchor Bowen.”
Sirra locked her arms around his body and refused to let go. She hiccupped. “How will I live without you?”
“You have to,” he murmured.
“I knew.” She pushed away, her face damp. “From the moment I saw you that day when the Searcher brought you home, I knew you would do something great, but not this. Not this.”
Parry reappeared in a doorway at the far end of the chamber, and Chris backed away from his family. He tore himself, one step at a time, from the second chance he was never going to have.
“I love you,” he said. “All of you.”
In the doorway, he met Parry, and the youngster pointed at the floor. “I found her. Down there in the armory. Want me to show you the way?”
“I remember.”
He followed the passageways, one after the other, down into the heart of the fortress. The wind against his face led him to the open-ended gymnasium, where he and Allara had sparred so many times. She stood at the far end, where only the columns separated her from the waterfall. Hailstones smashed to the marble at her feet, but her face remained tilted to the wild water.
He crossed the gymnasium, his footsteps silenced by the howl of the wind and the thunder. He stopped behind her, so close he could smell her hair. And suddenly, he found himself empty of words. He’d said them already, a dozen times in the last ten minutes.
“I’ve always loved storms,” she said. “Ever since I was a child. Why, I wonder? Why should I, of all people, love the storms?”
He touched her shoulder. “I have to go now.”
She bowed her head, and her hair curtained her face.
“Are you going to let me go?” he whispered.
She turned. Tears glittered against her face. “In my heart, I always knew it couldn’t end well.”
“It is ending well.” He touched her cheek. “Just not the way we wanted.”
“I wanted . . . I wanted so much. I thought everything would be made right. I thought I wouldn’t be alone any longer. But I’m still hanging to the cliff, fighting for even a shred of peace.” Her tears welled over. “You told me it would end. You said, when it did, you wanted me to be there. It’s at an end, and I need you to be here.”
“I can’t. I want to, but I can’t.” He bowed his head and tilted her forward until their foreheads touched. “That cliff you’re trying to hang onto is crumbling, Allara. It’s time to let go.”
She shook her head. “There’s no one left at the bottom to catch me.”
“Maybe it’s time to let go and find out.” He took the Orimere from his coat’s inner pocket. It shone its golden light against their faces. “I know I wasn’t the Gifted you wanted. If I could have stayed away somehow, like you asked me to, I would have.”
“No.” Tears clotted her lashes. “You did save Lael. Mactalde is gone, Nateros is gone, the Koraudians have been forced back.” The tears spilled over. “
You’ve made it possible for peace to come again.” She turned his hand so the Orimere lay against his chest. It pulsed in time with his heart and surged impossible energy through his veins. “But what if you die too late to make a difference? What if it’s all in vain?”
“I was meant to do this. And so were you.”
Her mouth trembled. “I shall never see you again.”
“Maybe you’ll see me in the lake. Maybe you’ll dream about me.”
A laugh choked her. “How can I? I will never find you in your world. My other self will not even know to look for you.”
He closed her in his arms and pulled her to him. “Somewhere far away, in my world, you’re asleep. You think all of this is a dream. But it’s a dream you’re going to remember.” He rested the side of his head against hers. “You’re going to remember when I tell you a phone number.”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“Part of you does, and you’re going to remember this number, and you’re going to call it as soon as you wake up, understand?”
“Chris—” Her head started to shake. “I can’t. It won’t work.”
“Ssh.” As the storm crashed down all around them, he whispered Mike’s phone number in her ear, over and over again.
Outside, fire and ice rained from the sky.
“It’s time,” he said.
“Yes,” she whispered. Her hand behind his neck pulled him down to her. She lifted herself onto her toes, and her face hesitated in front of his, her eyes closed, her breath warm against his skin. She kissed him: a kiss for everything that would never be.
Then she backed away, the Orimere clamped against her chest.
He looked at her one last time: the whirlwind of her hair and her gown, the shocking blue of her eyes, the impossible straightness of her body even after all she had endured these months.
And then he looked beyond her at the storm-torn world, and he filled his lungs with the cold, wet air. “Goodbye.”
He left, and his strides lengthened into a run as he crossed the cracked tile of the armory floor. He ran up the stairs two at a time, and pain throbbed through a dozen wounds he would never feel after this day. Life ticked away, every second standing in for the years he would never live and the dreams he would never again see. He ran because he had no more time to waste, and he ran because if he could not stay, he had to leave before he lost the courage to go.
His people waited for him in the chapel. They parted before him, and women and men alike reached to brush a hand against his clothing. The Cherazii, ranged along the walls, laid their fists to their chests.
Eroll lay on a bench in the front.
Chris stopped beside him and gripped his hand. “You’ll take care of her.”
His face twisted into disbelief and grief. “You know I will.”
At the front of the church, Quinnon waited with a two-handed sword. “You’ll have to kneel. It will be over in a minute.”
Chris shook his head. “Not here. Let me see Lael before I die.”
Quinnon glanced at the Guardsmen standing beside the double doors in the northeast corner. “Let him out.”
The doors swung open upon the second-story parapet, and Chris walked into the storm. He shucked his coat and his jerkin and tugged loose the drawstrings at his throat so he could pull the collar away and leave the back of his neck unobstructed.
Quinnon stood beside him, just outside the door. “Let’s get this over with, laddie.” He gripped Chris’s arm. “And may the God of all be with you.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in the God of all.”
Quinnon hefted the sword in both hands. “So I did.”
Chris dropped to his knees. The stone jarred against his kneecaps and shot cold up his skin. The muscles in his back clenched. His blood pounded, aching in his shoulder and his side.
Behind him, the grit on the parapet scraped beneath Quinnon’s boots. The sword multiplied into a dozen shadows and rose overhead.
One long breath whispered past Chris’s mouth. The blurred glitter of Ori Réon’s wind-torn waters swept out before him. This was his lake, his city. This was his home. It would always be his home.
The sword’s shadows descended, coalesced, and vanished. He filled his lungs. The blade bit into the back of his neck, and for one blinding second, the sun’s warmth burst against his face.
