Unbound (The Griever's Mark series Book 3) (14 page)

Chapter 19

I’M TWITCHY WITH impatience. Heborian is taking too long. I slip into the Drift every few minutes, looking for him, making sure no one is sneaking up on me. I massage and slap my numb hand. A little feeling is beginning to return. I keep at it until my flesh is red and I feel a tingling in my fingers. Relief makes me light-headed. Despite my assurances to Logan, I’ve been terrified of not regaining the use of my hand.

I shape my Drift-spear in my left, which feels horribly awkward. I work through some forms, forcing my left hand to lead the movements. My right is still too numb to grip, so I use it as a pivot point. I am slow, careful, teaching my body this new movement. I manage a swipe and turn before the spear slides off my numb wrist to skitter and screech across stone. Annoyed, I rebalance the spear and try again.

When Heborian appears from the Drift a few feet away, I whip my spear toward him automatically. I’m already slowing the weapon when he blocks me with his Drift-sword, a blade covered in Runish symbols. He raises a dark eyebrow as I lift my spear away. He holds the harpoon in his other hand, the chain coiled around his arm. That thing is far too much like a Shackle. What purpose can a chain have but to bind and control?

“Did you find them?”

“They’re coming.”

“And they agreed to help?”

Heborian makes a sound of confirmation.

I narrow my eyes with suspicion. “How did you convince them? And do they understand exactly what we need them to do?”

Before he can answer, the Ancorites come whispering toward us. They are as insubstantial as smoke. My skin tightens, and the fine hairs on the back of my neck lift.

Bind, seize, hold.

Their voices are dry leaves blown across stone.

There are three of them, ghostly, their bodies semi-transparent, their colors subdued. They flitter across the mountainside, whispering,
Find them, bind them.

A rocky hand and arm, larger than my whole body, grows out of the mountain. Kronos snatches at the Ancorites, but they dart away like flies. And, like flies, they return, whispering. Kronos emerges further: shoulder, collarbone, head. He leans out of the mountain, both part of it and not. It is an eerie sight, not unlike the sword Logan drew from the earth. Starting at his face, stone begins to soften into skin. This is my first good look at him. Though he does not look old, age radiates from him. He is handsome in a rough way, his features blunt, carved from stone. He grabs again for the Ancorites, but they dart out of reach.

I slip into the wind and swirl toward him. “Kronos!”

His eyes, swirling with color, lock on me. His expression hardens. He begins to withdraw, stone closing over his shoulder and neck.

“I can help you!”

The Ancorites sweep near.
Bind, bind, hold.

Kronos swats at them angrily.

I extend my hand from the wind to touch his rocky shoulder. Time slows, plays tricks. We are somewhere else, on another mountainside. Snow drifts through the air and lies thick between the protruding rocks. Kronos looks at me and says, in a rocky grumble, “Child.”

I jerk my hand away, shake my head to clear it. I cannot afford distraction.

“Please,” I beg him. “Trust me.”

Little by little, Kronos emerges from the mountain, simultaneously growing from it and shrinking to a more human size. I withdraw from the wind, and we stand on the mountainside together. The last of the stone fades from his body. He looks almost human now, though this is only a form he is choosing for a moment. He is still the mountain.

And the sky and all the world.

But none of that matters because there is no power in the world, no amount of strength that cannot be overcome. Kronos has spent ages learning that lesson, and I see the pain of it in his ancient eyes when he says, “Child. Help me.”

Chapter 20

LOGAN

WITHOUT WARNING, I am yanked into the Drift. The vastness spreads out in all directions. I am instantly exposed, everything I can hide in my physical body laid bare. In the moment it takes to orient myself, to overcome the instinctive fear of exposure, Belos betrays the deal, as I knew he would.

The Shackle glows brilliant white, vibrating against my wrist. I wheel on Straton, lunging for his throat, but it’s not him anymore. Belos’s black will floods through him and down into the chain. I make a useless, automatic attempt to scrape off the cuff; my fingers swipe through it.

The black stain seeps through the cuff into my hand. I recoil at the familiar, sickening slide of Belos’s will. For a moment, I am back in the Dry Land, Leashed, possessed, clinging to a fragile thread of sanity.

No.

No.

This time is different. I am not Leashed.

And I have beaten him before.

Rage burns through me, sparking my energies to blazing life. How could I have let him take me back into that fear even for a moment? I will never,
ever
be overpowered by him again.

Weapons slash at me. Straton, Theron, Ludos, and Rood circle and jab, all moving in synchronicity, each of them an extension of Belos. I wheel, roaring, and my energy explodes outward in a gust of wind.

Their energies fray under the force of it, and all of them are briefly stunned. I thrash at them, with wind, with my fists. Part of me realizes I am losing control, but I don’t know how else to fight him.

His energy surges through the Shackle and with it his voice, paralyzing me.
You want this. Relax, give in. You want this.

The others leap on me, slashing and punching, ripping at my energies. Astarti says you can die here. I must make him kill before I let him take me. I don’t know how to get out of the Drift on my own. This isn’t how this was supposed to go.

Horik, Jarl, and Lief, realizing that something has gone wrong, flash into the Drift. Theron, Ludos, and Rood spin away to meet their attack.

I gasp relief, but a moment later Straton—Belos, really—plunges a hand into my chest. My mind shatters at the crippling pain, the sickening violation. I can’t get my bearings, can’t focus.

You are weak. You are broken. Give in. It will be easier.

I am crumbling under the weight of that truth.

He is beating me. This time, he is winning.

An axe flashes in front of me, and the hand is ripped from my chest. I stagger back, stunned by pain and sudden lightness.

Someone grabs my arm, and I am wrenched through my mooring.

The physical world explodes around me, battering me with the return of my senses. The sharp ache in my chest is the center of my awareness until the cuff jerks my wrist. I frantically scrape it off, barely feeling the tearing of skin.

An axe whizzes past my ear.

Straton shapes a shield of energy, and Horik’s axe dissolves against it.

The others appear from the Drift, scrambling, fighting.

I can barely breathe around the pain in my chest. I forcefully drag air into my lungs. Horik shouts at me, but I can’t make sense of the words.

Something slams into my thigh. It takes a moment for the pain to register, then it blazes white-hot.

Rood wrenches his sword free, his eyes dead and black. He swings again, but I dive inside his guard. I barely feel the blade slicing my arm as I tackle him.

He’s just a boy, with a boy’s strength, and even with my chest burning and my lungs not quite working, I easily pin his arms to the blackened ground. He tries to bring his knee up into my crotch. I jerk away only to catch the blow against the wound in my thigh. Pain explodes, but I hang on.

Somewhere up the slope there is a scream of rage, and Rood goes limp under my hands.

“Wh-wh—” he mumbles, his eyes starting to clear.

I catch movement from the corner of my eye, someone diving down the slope toward us. I look up just as Horik, face and neck bloodied, slams into me and Rood. The bone knife is in his hand. We tumble down the slope, banging over stones. I don’t have the presence of mind to let go. I’m still clinging to the boy when Horik rips him into the Drift.

Chapter 21

I AM TURNING to call Heborian, to have him bring the harpoon, when Kronos growls. It is an animal sound, terrifyingly primitive. Hair rises all over my body. I don’t dare move as I shift my eyes to Kronos’s face. His are pools of black, and they startle me into movement. I scramble away from him, sloppy and useless in my fear.

But he’s not coming for me. He rises into the air, his body fading and dissolving.

Something whizzes past me in a streak of white, propelled by faintly glowing Drift-energy. Kronos vanishes as the harpoon pierces the air where he just was. He tears up the mountainside, raising a column of dust.

The harpoon clatters and skitters across the hardened black crust. I trace the chain, which expands strangely with Drift energy, back to Heborian. He braces, clinging to the last link. The Ancorites are threading along the chain, swirling around and through it. And through Heborian.

I don’t have time to confront him. I let myself dissolve, and I leap into Kronos’s wake.

I blow over the blackened, craterous peak of the mountain.  The currents swirl in the depression, and I have to struggle against the downward pull. Kronos draws ahead of me, far faster and more powerful than I am.

A fight rages on the slope below, but the combatants are shielding themselves against the whipping dust as much as against their opponents’ weapons. I can’t spot Logan. I identify Belos and angle toward him, but the windstorm is too much. I am blown off course, tumbling away through the wild currents. By the time I balance myself against the wind and get back to the slope, Belos is gone.

Dust clouds the air.

I touch down beside Jarl, who is bent double, coughing. I bury my face in the crook of my arm, breathing through my linen sleeve. I blink through tears to see Lief thump down onto a boulder, waving tiredly at the dust. A body lies crumpled beside him.

“Where’s—”

Logan, Horik, and Rood appear from the Drift ten feet from me. Horik drags the back of his sleeve across his bloody mouth. The knife is clenched in his fist. Rood collapses at his feet, gasping. Logan staggers away, sucking hard for air, then coughing on the dust. His head whips one way then the other, hunting.

“Logan!”

His heads snaps in my direction.

I run to him, and he grabs me into his arms. I pull back, desperate to look him over, to know whose blood soaks his pant leg and sleeve. He winces at each sharp breath as though his chest hurts. His eyes rage with color.

He tears away from me, staring from Lief to Jarl. “Where is he? What happened?”

“The wind,” Lief says. “It took him. All of them.”

Heborian appears from the Drift, harpoon in hand.

“Father!” Rood cries, and Heborian rushes to him.

Heborian drops the harpoon and takes Rood’s face in his hands. “Is it you? Is it you?”

“He’s free,” Horik assures him. “We have the knife.”

Heborian sags with relief and gathers Rood into his arms in the warmest gesture I have ever seen from him.

Horik suggests, “We should rest, make a new plan.”

Logan shouts, “What plan can there be but to go after him? He’s weakened!”

“So are we.”

“Logan,” I say. “Let’s just figure this out.” He’s going to do something rash; I can feel it.

“We can’t track him through the air,” Heborian adds, but Logan counters, “
You
can’t.”

I say sharply, “Don’t even think about it.”

Logan turns, limps a few paces away from me. I follow cautiously, unsure of what’s happened here, unsure what he’ll do.

He says in a low voice meant only for me, “He almost had me. How can I have let him get to me again?”

My blood chills. “What happened?”

He doesn’t seem to hear, and when he speaks again, he seems to be speaking more to himself than to me. “He
cannot
have power over me.”

“Logan—”

Already his body is fading. “He says I want it, but I don’t. I
don’t
.”

“Logan!”

I snatch at him, but my hand passes through his dissolving form. He rises up and streaks away, raising a new cloud of ash and dust.

I wheel on Horik. “What happened?”

Horik gives a brief account. I close my eyes when he reports on Logan wearing the Shackle. I know what that feels like. When Horik describes the fight in the Drift, I demand, “Belos tried to Leash him again, didn’t he?”

“I was a little busy at the time,” Horik says dryly, “so I can’t say for sure, but, yes, I’m sure that’s what was happening.”

“It’s horrible,” mutters Rood. He’s sitting on the ground, limp, rubbing at his chest.

I crouch beside him. When someone has been Leashed, especially possessed, you don’t ask if they’re all right. They’re not.

Rood meets my eyes. I’m glad that he’s able to. I want to touch his shoulder, to tell him with my fingers that I understand, but I don’t feel comfortable. He gives me a grimace that I think is meant to communicate that he’s all right. I nod, wishing I had the courage to do more.

I have to get to Logan. He’s injured, exhausted, not thinking clearly. He can’t possibly win against Belos, Kronos, and whatever remains of the Seven, especially if—

“Does Belos still have the Shackle?”

Horik confirms with a grim, “Yes.”

I curse. “And the Seven?”

“Just two of them left,” Lief says. This one”—he nudges the body at his feet, and it groans. Lief bolts up, scrambling away.

Drift-weapons flash into everyone’s hands, and I’m sure we look ridiculous stalking so cautiously toward someone barely conscious.

“Thought he was dead,” Lief mutters.

Horik uses his boot to shove the man onto his back. Theron moans. A huge gash runs from his belly into his ribs. White fragments of bone are mixed with the bloody mess of skin and muscle. He should be dead, but the unnatural energy within him seeks even now to repair the fatal damage.

Horik lifts his axe.

“Wait!”

“Astarti, he’s—”

“Linked to Belos. He can tell us where Belos is.”

Heborian scoffs, “He won’t. He’s dead, and he knows it.”

“Of all the Seven, he might. I know them, Heborian. You don’t. You can at least let me try.”

Heborian makes an impatient, get-on-with-it-then gesture. Horik lowers his axe, and I crouch beside Theron. I start to reach for his face, but I’m too conscious of everyone looming over me.

“Do you think I could get some space?”

“Be careful,” Heborian warns, and everyone moves back a short distance. They’re still watching me, but I can almost pretend they’re not.

I touch Theron’s cheek, and his eyes flutter open. He stares at me, trying to focus, then wheezes, “Astar...”

He would know the lie in my smile, so I don’t try to pretend. Theron has done terrible things. It’s hard to deny that he is terrible person, but, of all of them, he is the only one I can imagine might have been something better in another life. He is the only one I don’t hate.

“I need your help,” I say quietly. “I need to know where he is.”

Theron can’t move his head, but his eyes shift away. His breath rattles, sucking and bubbling through punctured lungs.

“You will die today, Theron. How would you live your last moment?”

His eyes come back to my face. “As...traitor? Is that”—he breaks off, wheezing—“what you want?”

“I want you to help me. To do something for a friend of your own volition. To choose to help me, as you wanted to so many times.”

“Friend,” he rasps.

“We could have been. We were sometimes.”

“I...loved you.” Even through the pained wheezing, I hear the bitterness.

“I know.”

I could lie to him, pretend that I loved him, too, but I won’t lie to a dying man, not even this one. Besides, he would know.

“How?” he asks, and I hear the unspoken remainder of the question. How did I do it? How did I free myself?

“Someone told me I could remake myself, and I believed him.”

“And—have you?” There is no sneer in it. He genuinely wants to know. He hopes I have. That, more than anything, makes me mourn him. Not his impending death, which he deserves, which is necessary, but the loss of what he might have been had he not succumbed to Belos.

I tell him, “I’m still working on it. But I think it’s possible.”

He rasps, “I was...glad. When you got away. You are...more. Than me.”

Honesty at the moment of death is terrible to witness. It is too late to remake yourself. All the lost opportunities string out into the past. In the end, we all die—every choice leads ultimately to this moment. How awful it would be to face it with regret, with sudden, useless realization.

Because I am merciless—because I am, in a way, still what I have always been—I press him toward that even more.

“Do one good thing, Theron. Help me.”

He looks at me for a long time, the pain of his choices in his eyes, the understanding that if he helps me now, he will be admitting that all he has done is wrong. I don’t know if he has the courage to face that, but in the end he says, “All right.”