Heaven's Needle (47 page)

Better for some to die than all of them. She chose the children because in the cold, hard part of her soul that could consider such things, she thought they might be too deep under Maol's sway to save. The graylings were already half monster, whereas Evenna and Asharre were still themselves … and if Kelland could clear their minds, and if the Thorn
did
plot some betrayal before they returned to the Dome of the Sun, the Illuminer and the
sigrir
would make better allies than unarmed children.

So Bitharn told herself, knowing that there was no right answer and that, in truth, she was trying to convince herself only because she had to believe
something
to endure the Thorn's choice. She hoped death would be a release rather than a torment for the empty-faced children, and she hoped Celestia would forgive her.

The Thorn took the nearest child's chin in one hand, turning the boy's face up to his gently. It looked like the prelude to a kiss … but as Malentir smiled, he raised the ivory dagger. Bitharn averted her eyes.

One of the children whimpered, but the rest succumbed in silence, and the others sat like statues around them as they died. Bitharn didn't look at Kelland until it was over. Instead she fixed her thoughts on Evenna and Asharre, and on the children who would survive because the others did not.
It had to be done
.

“Gather them,” Malentir said.

The children didn't resist as Bitharn shepherded them into the middle of the room. They shuffled along uncomprehendingly, stumbling to stops when she let go of their wrists. Some had to be lifted bodily, and she was shocked by how light they were; they felt like hollow husks. Kelland worked beside her, helping Asharre and Evenna toward the others, but Bitharn couldn't meet his eyes. It was a surprise, and a welcome one, when he clasped her shoulder in passing.

Malentir began his prayer as soon as the children were gathered. The shadows swelled and swayed to the rhythm of his words; frost sharpened in the air. An icy rime spread across her lantern, killing its light with a crystalline snap. At first the darkness held back from the white burn of Kelland's fingerflame, but at a gesture from the Thornlord, the knight closed his hand and let the flame die. Utter blackness engulfed them.

Bitharn felt the magic solidify around her in a cage cold as winter iron. It clamped around her, vise tight, so frigid that her skin would surely freeze and tear away if she moved. The sensation built to overwhelming pain, forcing a gasp from her in the blackness, but she never heard the sound. Tears trickled down her cheeks and froze to tinkling ice. The agony intensified, driving her to the edge of breaking—

—and yet the cage of pain was almost comforting compared to what she sensed beyond it. A chittering malevolence lurked there. Vast and manifold, it pressed against the weave of the Thornlord's spell, searching for a way in. She wasn't sure if it was many minds or a single one fragmented beyond recognition, but its hate for them was absolute.

With a sudden sense of alarm Bitharn realized that
something was clawing at the spell cage from the
inside
, trying to weaken its strands enough to admit the screeching madness. Unseen claws scratched around her, shrill as the scraping of steel on steel.

“No,” Bitharn whispered. The chill in the dark became a bone-cracking freeze. If she had plunged naked into the White Seas she could not have been colder. The claws stopped—were frozen, she knew somehow, were dead—and the madness outside receded as it was left in the distance, howling.

Bit by bit, the icy dark thawed. Land and air separated. The scents of earth and spring sap filtered in. Woodsmoke touched the air, which was warm enough to move once more. Wispy clouds limned the branches of an ancient oak and silhouetted the thatch of a low-roofed cottage. A forest spread around them.

Over the wood, the spire of Heaven's Needle shone gold. They were twenty leagues north and west of the Dome, Bitharn guessed. Perhaps a little more. That put them in Lord Gildorath's land. A wise choice for a Thorn: Gildorath's commonfolk were well accustomed to closing their eyes and ears to uncomfortable things.

The lonely cottage, however, seemed deserted. Brambles had begun to reclaim the path that threaded through the forest toward it. There was no one to see them arrive—or what might happen to them after. Bitharn bit her lip and turned as Kelland struck a spark to her lantern, shining it over their charges.

A third of the children were dead. Ice glittered on their eyes. Their heads were crushed like the shells of boiled eggs, fissured and dimpled but intact. Evenna and Asharre were still breathing, though the blood in Evenna's hair had frozen into tangled black icicles.

Malentir looked over them with weary annoyance. He staggered away from the huddled group, dusted pine needles and loam from a boulder on the other side of the cottage's clearing, and sat. “They tried to bring the Mad God with them. Had they succeeded, we would be dead, or worse. It was necessary to stop them.”

“I know,” Bitharn said. “I felt it.”

“Are we safe?” Kelland asked.

The Thornlord shrugged. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back tiredly. In the moonlight his face was very white, with an unhealthy bloom of blue at his lips and temples. “More than we were, less than we should be. These children are Maol's creatures, and they carry his taint. As do I, and as does Aurandane. Sooner or later, if it is not burned out, he will be able to reach through the creatures he has corrupted. I will wait to see whether you can restore them. If not, I will destroy them before returning to my mistress' side.”

“You're leaving us?” For some reason the thought startled Bitharn. It shouldn't have been a surprise, and she should have been glad to see him go … but she wasn't.

He isn't even an ally
. Not truly. The soldiers of Cailan had a saying for that: “The enemy of my enemy makes good arrow bait.” Accurate, if unsavory; a shared enmity could be useful, but only a fool put any trust in it.

But the Thorn had saved them. He hadn't betrayed them.

Malentir cocked his head at her. She was uncomfortably sure he could read her thoughts. “For a time. It is possible, even probable, that I will return. Corban is here, or was, and he poses a greater threat than Gethel did. Gethel was a deluded fool who had no idea what he invited, and he was isolated. Corban knows, or knew, and chose to tamper
with it anyway. And he is in Cailan. Where there are enough people—enough
victims
—to infect all Ithelas with the Mad God's plague.”

“We will be glad to have your aid,” Kelland said. Bitharn's eyebrows went up; she agreed with him, but she hadn't expected the knight to accept so quickly. Malentir saw her surprise and smiled, though he said nothing until Kelland left to pray over the rescued children. As the Sun Knight began an invocation to Celestia, Bitharn took a seat on a mushroom-spotted log near the Thorn. She didn't especially want his company, but there was nowhere else to sit except in the dirt.

“You were hoping he'd refuse?” Malentir asked.

“No. Just surprised he accepted so quickly. It's the right choice.”

“Is it?”

“Of course it is.” She tossed her braid behind a shoulder impatiently. “You saved our lives in Shadefell. You could have killed us or left us to die after taking the Sword of the Dawn, but you didn't.”

“Ah. That convinces you of my good nature?”

“No. But we'd be stupid to ignore it.”

“Good.” The corners of his mouth twitched up in a cadaverous smile. In the few moments since their arrival in the clearing, the hollows of Malentir's cheeks had sunk visibly. The bones rose above them sharp as knife blades. “It was need that drove me, not kindness. Need is … stronger.”

“Aurandane's taint?”

“That is a part of it.” His hand crept toward the sword, which leaned against the boulder near his foot, the tiny jewel on its pommel twinkling. “I knew there was … some trap to it … but I thought it might have been drained like the other slaves and snares. I was wrong.”

“It's killing you.”

“Perhaps.” The Thornlord's eyes were glassy with fever, but he laughed raspily. “I hope so. The alternative would be worse. But if I am only dying … your knight owes me a life.”

“The Spider held him in Ang'arta for a full winter. He doesn't owe you anything.”

“That is her debt, not mine. Your knight understands that. He is an honorable man … and a sensible one.” Malentir lapsed into silence for a time, watching the radiance of Kelland's prayer wash over the undersides of the budding branches and turn the clearing's grass into a white-capped sea. Malentir's face looked like a
ghaole
's, all dead white skin stretched over bone. “And you need me,” he added, his voice soft as the whisper of wind over ashes, “and need is stronger than kindness.”

Bitharn didn't answer. She looked away through the trees, where the light of Celestian magic was bright enough to sting her eyes. The children moaned and squirmed in the rotting leaves, trying to escape its embrace, but none of them had the strength to get up and run. Evenna thrashed wildly in the white light; Asharre sat stolid as stone, pink-tinged tears trickling down her chin. Blackfire dust whirled around them, pulled from their bodies into the light, where it burned in shimmers of colorless flame. The grayness receded from their bodies, and the emptiness cleared from their eyes as the dust blazed away.

The power of faith allowed Kelland to purify them. The price of faith meant he had to. Despite his exhaustion he could no more refuse the children's need than he could stop breathing. Bitharn was privately, grimly glad that not all of them had survived the passage. It might have killed him to heal more.

Would it kill him to heal the Thorn? Now, or later? If Kelland waited until after sunrise, his magic would be stronger, but he would also risk the possibility that the Mad God might kill his victims rather than let the knight reclaim them. It wasn't a chance worth taking for the innocents. Was it worth taking for the Thorn?
Need is stronger than kindness
. Did they need Malentir so badly?

That choice was not hers to make. She'd spared him from sin in the bowels of Shadefell; she couldn't do it again here. Brooding, she watched the prayer go on, and kept the Thorn in the corner of her eye.

Finally the last of the blackfire dust burned off. Bitharn was surprised that the sky was still dark; it seemed that it should be dawn, if not the next day's dusk. The children's moans died out as the light receded, leaving them in the cool spring night.

Kelland emerged from the tree shadows, his white surcoat stained with filth yet aglow with starlight. His eyes met Malentir's, then Bitharn's. Weariness weighted his shoulders and made every step a stumble. Nevertheless, the knight knelt wordlessly beside the Thorn, and the light of holy prayer sprang up around him again. The jewel on Aurandane's hilt winked in the colorless flame. Bitharn thought she saw a glimmer of shadow in its dawn blue depths, and the reflection of a face that was not there. Burning eyes, a burning soul.

It lasted just an instant, but she stared at the stone until the magic died.

“C
lose enough?” the wagon driver asked. His donkey brayed at an approaching oxcart on the road that circled the Dome of the Sun. Ahead the luminous glass of Heaven's Needle was a spear of brighter fire against the sunset.

“Yes, thank you,” Bitharn said. Yellow-robed Illuminers were hurrying toward them while acolytes ran to fetch healers' bags and tell others of their arrival. Carts hauling the sick and injured were a common sight at the Dome of the Sun, and the temple's servants were well versed in their response.

They were home. Home, and as safe as they could be anywhere in this world. The relief of it was overwhelming.

Bitharn climbed down from the wagon bench, balancing Aurandane awkwardly in one hand. She'd thought it best to disguise the Sword of the Dawn by carrying it in Kelland's scabbard rather than its own, but it was too long for that sheath. A scarf wrapped loosely around the hilt concealed the poor fit, but it made the sword clumsy to
handle. She'd be glad to get rid of it, for that small reason as well as the large ones.

Once on the ground, she tried to offer the driver a coin, but the gnarled old farmer pushed her silver shield away.

“No need for that. It's honor enough to serve.” The farmer cleared his throat and straightened his battered hat, trying to look more respectable as the Illuminers approached. He'd been terrified when he first saw the burden he was asked to carry—all those children lying amid the frozen graylings, Evenna with her torn face, Kelland delirious and covered in black blood—but the long ride had calmed him enough to recognize, and take some pride in, the importance of his part. “I can't guess what you went through, but I'm glad to have been able to help. The Burnt Knight, cursed children … You keep your shield. The story's payment enough for me.” He chuckled in disbelief, shaking his head at the strangeness of the world. “Glad just to serve.”

The Illuminers had arrived. Bitharn helped them move the children and Celestians from the farmer's wagon bed onto the canvas-covered boards that the acolytes brought out from the temple. The carrying boards had restraints for patients at risk of hurting themselves or others, and Bitharn made sure every one was fastened before she let the Illuminers haul them back to the healing rooms. Malentir had said the corruption was cleansed from them, and she knew he couldn't lie … but he could have been mistaken. Even if he wasn't, there was no telling how the children would react when they came back to their senses. If they did. Passage through the
perethil
had nearly been enough to derange
her
, and she had only walked through it twice. Being mired in the Mad God's power for days might have destroyed their minds altogether.