North Star Guide Me Home (57 page)

As Cam guided her out, Sierra belatedly took down her shields, and as the veil of flickering lightning fell, Ardamon’s men erupted in cheers at the sight of their king. Cam raised his sword in answer, but Sierra could tell he didn’t dare release his grip on her. She felt as shaky as a newborn foal, and she struggled to draw breath.

Sirri, are you clear?

Yes,
she replied,
we’re clear, but … but I need more power. Issey, I can’t breathe.

It seeped through her, not the vast flood of before, but a gentle trickle. Enough to ease the tightness of her lungs, though not the airless, dizzy pounding within her skull.
That’s the last of it. I tried to set some aside, but … well, let’s just deal with the matter at hand. Here, come with me.

He reached into her mind with an insubstantial hand, and drew her towards him. Sierra didn’t resist and, even if she’d wanted to, she lacked the strength.

She couldn’t feel the enemy mage, not at first. There was power everywhere, tendrils curling through the crumbling walls like a fungus. She couldn’t have found their source if she had days to search, but Isidro carried her straight to it, and to the mage huddled within the bowels of the subterranean fortress.

He was near the hidden entrance, where only a short time ago she’d sent Rasten into the damp, dark tunnels. He could still escape, she realised as she gritted her teeth. The passage had been spared the ruin consuming the rest of the fortress. Rasten was trapped in the midst of it, but this last, lingering enemy could simply slip away when his destruction was finished.

No,
she said to herself,
no, you son of a cur dog, you’ll never walk away from this. I’ll crush you!

Wait,
Isidro said, calm despite the sharp note of command.
Just wait …
She felt his power ripple as the shields the mage had placed to keep the destruction from spreading to his section of the passage winked out.

Now!
he told her.

Sierra struck. The rocks fell.

Power streamed briefly, then died away.

She snapped back to her body. The brief flush of power as the mage died gave her a small respite, but she knew it wouldn’t last long.
Rasten?
she said.
Rasten? Can you hear me?

He can hear you,
Isidro replied, his voice soft.
He’s just …
He trailed off, but Sierra needed no explanation. She knew what Rasten was like when pain had him in its claws.
Please, stay with him,
she said.
And Issey? Please tell him … tell him, thank you.

His broken leg throbbed, but Rasten didn’t dare shift his weight on the flimsy slab of stone. He was gripping the jagged edges of the fractured tread hard enough to make his knuckles ache.
Why?
he asked himself, and made his hands relax.

With an effort, he lifted his head, gazing down into the void below. It called to him with a siren song. There was nothing to be afraid of down there. In the darkness was stillness, and peace.

He slipped, a fraction of an inch. Instinct almost made him snatch at the stone again, but he’d spent long years mastering his instincts, and kept his hands free.

Something shifted inside his head. Isidro. Again.
Rasten,
he said, his voice measured and cool.
What are you doing?

His broken leg was hanging off the fractured slab. The rest of the spiral stair had fallen away. What remained were a few broken sections of tread anchored in the wall, jutting into the shaft like splintered teeth. Unsupported over the void, the weight of his leg was pulling on the break, and it blazed with pain. Rasten gritted his teeth against it. It was sapping his strength; building up in his mind. Sooner or later, it would overwhelm him and drive him to do anything to escape it … even let himself slip off this narrow platform and plummet into the pit.

Rasten,
Isidro said again.

I’m sorry,
Rasten said.
For what I did to you. I’m sorry.

There was a pause.
You don’t have to do this.

I … I used to think it was pointless. Insulting. What good are words after something like that? They’re worthless, it takes no effort to say them. Any man can speak a lie.

But you didn’t lie, did you? Not to Sierra. She always said that you only told her the truth.

Yes, I needed to. I knew what it would do to her … what
I’d
do to her, what I’d take from her. It was the only thing I could give her in return.

But I mean it, Rasten. You don’t have to do this.

Rasten laid his cheek again on the cold, rough stone. He couldn’t explain why the words needed to be said now, when before he’d always shied away from them. Perhaps it was because he’d never get another chance.
It’s the truth,
he said.

No, I mean, you don’t have to let yourself die.

A sob rose in his throat. Rasten tried to swallow it, but it burst through all the same, echoing down the hollow shaft.

Then, as though triggered by the sound, there came a low groan through the ruin of the fortress, and the ledge shuddered. It seemed to Rasten as though the cylinder of the ruined staircase was tipping slowly to one side. Once again, his hands twitched, aching to grip the edges of the rough stone and hold on for dear life. Once again, he fought the instinct and won.

Isidro was still inside his head, quiet and watchful. Perhaps it would be better to drive him out, but in his current state Rasten wasn’t sure he could best him.
I’m so weary,
he said at last.
I just want to go home.

It had come back to him in snatches. A scarred and ancient table laid out with wooden bowls and spoons that were carved by his fathers during the dark days of winter. They’d given him a little whittling knife and begun teaching him how. He’d forgotten, over the years, why holding a knife gave him such comfort. He remembered fresh bannock, rich with butter. Smoked bacon, fried to crispness in the pan. Syrup, boiled for hours until it became thick and unctuous. They cooked it in the spring while the snow was still thick on the ground, and threw long strands down onto the ice to turn stiff and chewy. He remembered making sure the youngest of his siblings got their fair share, and that the older ones or the dogs didn’t steal their sweets away.

Rasten squeezed his eyes shut against stinging tears, and pressed his cheek harder into the stone.
I don’t want to remember. It hurts too much.
Every snatched recollection led to the same memory, the one he’d spent years trying to bury and forget. The night of blood and smoke and screaming, the night of slaughter and pain.

Rasten. You don’t have to do this.

Rasten said nothing. Isidro was riding, Rasten could feel the horse beneath him, stretching out in long strides.

It’s the only way I’ll ever find peace.

Frustration was starting to seep through Isidro’s surface calm.
That’s not true. You found it before. At Lathayan, even after Sierra was wounded —

It didn’t last. Nothing good ever does. They killed the dogs! I can still hear them crying!
They’d whimpered like children after the bolts struck, blood seeping into their white fur.

They did. I’m sorry. But we avenged them.

What good is vengeance? It doesn’t take back what was done.
Rasten swallowed hard, and felt the stone shift beneath him once more.
I’d take it back if I could. All of it.

He remembered the way Mira had looked at him, when he’d thrown her down in Delphine’s chambers. The sudden fear in her eyes. No one had ever treated her that way before. He’d struck that fear into her, and now it would never leave. He’d seen shadows of it afterwards, the way she shied from his gaze.

He’d not truly slept since that night. Every time he closed his eyes, it played through his mind again. The dogs, dying on the floor. Cam, with a knife to his eye. Isidro, bound and restrained. Sierra, hooded for execution, strung up and helpless while they left her in the dark to die.

Rasten shifted again, and felt something wet against his arm. Blood, seeping through from the wound on his side. There was more of it on his hands and stiffening the cuffs of his sleeves. So much blood.

He remembered how Sierra had lain twisted on the floor at his feet, gasping for breath through lungs choked with smoke. He remembered a night in the desert half a year ago, when he’d wrapped his arms around her as she’d slept, and sworn a solemn vow to leave the Blood Path behind him, to cast off the shackles Kell had bound him with and turn his back on the old man’s poisonous teachings.

And how long did that vow last?
he asked himself.
Days?

He’d lost count of the number of times he’d broken it. The girl Greska was the first. But he could see to it that the night Sierra gasped and wheezed at his feet would be the last.

He hadn’t even hesitated. Didn’t question it for a moment, not as he tracked down the nearest enemy, not as he dragged him back to where Sierra lay, unconscious and sinking fast. The others, perhaps, could be excused, the folk he’d freed from slavery, those desperate souls who’d give anything to be freed from their chains and go home, to gather up the shards of their shattered lives. But that Akharian … he’d thought nothing of pinning his hands to a post and carving the flesh from his bones.
Every time I think I’ve put it behind me, I stumble and find myself back there again. I’ll never be free of him. Sirri … it’s bad enough for her, and she wasn’t in his grasp for long. I know what we did to her, first Kell and then me. It’s right there in her face, in her voice. It’s there in her power. We took the girl she was and made her hard and cold and brutal. Don’t lie to me, Isidro, I know you see it, too. She’ll never be the same as she was. And as for me … I’ll always be a Blood-Mage. The taint runs bone-deep, too deep to carve it out.

Rasten. You were Kell’s slave for more than a decade, and he’s been dead less than a year. You’re expecting too much, too soon.

It’s been a lifetime. I just want it to be over. I’m so tired, Isidro. I played the part you needed of me, I did it right. I know what I’m good for. You have Sirri, you have your brother — you don’t need me anymore! Just let me go, please. I’m so weary of the pain — you know what it’s like. I just want it to stop.

I know we used you to get Cam back,
Isidro said.
I’m sorry for that. I wish there had been another way.

Used me? Of course you did, but what of it? That’s the way things have always been between us. I used Sirri to destroy Kell, I used you to keep her on track when she could have turned aside from the chase to lick her wounds. Using me now is only fair. I don’t begrudge you that.

Then what … no, wait. I see. You’ve been planning this for days, haven’t you? Ever since the night the Akharians attacked. You just didn’t show it.

Rasten said nothing. He couldn’t imagine what Isidro wanted from him. Of course he hadn’t shown it. You didn’t show things like that.

Ever since that night, I’ve been wondering if I should have let you work that ritual,
Isidro went on.

Let me? You couldn’t have stopped me. She was dying.

I know. In your place, I’d have done the same. You used the weapons you had, I don’t blame you for that. I know there’s little I wouldn’t sacrifice for her.

Rasten shifted his head to stare down into the well of darkness. More than anything, he was grateful he’d had one last chance to hold her in his arms.
I know I’m a broken man,
he said,
but I do love her. I loved her the best I could. I hope she knows that.

She does. Rasten, move away from the edge.

He gritted his teeth, and leant towards it, letting one arm dangle over the lip along with his wounded leg. The void was calling to him, full of soft, warm darkness. Perhaps he’d see his family again. Perhaps he would have a chance to ask their forgiveness for what had happened. Perhaps, at last, he’d be able to remember them without pain.

Rasten!

Don’t try to stop me,
he said.
I may be wounded and weak, but I’m still stronger than you.

Isidro ignored the threat.
Do you remember that night in the Akharian camp, just after I was made a slave? When I tried to tear my throat out with a shard of broken pot?

Rasten remembered. He blinked in the darkness and said nothing.

I couldn’t take it anymore. The pain, the torture, a future without hope. It would never get better, I knew it, right down in my bones. Sirri and Cam were lost to me, and there was no way out of the snare I’d been caught in. I just wanted it to stop.

Rasten gritted his teeth, and heaved himself up. The stone ledge beneath him shifted with an ominous crack.

You wouldn’t let me do it. I hated you then. I cursed your name to the Black Sun, that night and every night for months afterwards.

Rasten growled under his breath. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He didn’t want to throw himself off the ledge. He was supposed to slip into a doze, worn down by exhaustion and pain. It was meant to be peaceful, not another struggle, another fight. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that it would be over. He clenched his teeth and leant into the vacant darkness. As he shifted his weight, the stone gave another sharp, percussive
crack
that echoed down the shaft of the ruined stairs and broke away beneath him.

He fell, but all he could think of were birds, swooping and diving in the wind outside the window of his tower room.

You saved my life and I hated you for it,
Isidro whispered into his head. Rasten didn’t care. The darkness was warm and soft, comforting, like Sierra’s skin against his, like her hair spread across his chest.