She recalled the bell sigil, of course, but what moved Lain to fear was the sound of the swordbells, the tone bringing memories of Darrin’s sword at her throat, the cold snow against her cheek.
She hopped down from the cart to approach Morgan.
“Morgan,” she whispered. “There are too many.”
He didn’t look at her. His horse stepped forward, steady and calm. “Numbers count for nothing without faith,” he said.
The Brighthand captain raised a bare and oiled fist, signaling halt.
“Lord Balthir,” he called. His voice carried easily. “By the order of the Dagorlind, you are to disband your men and surrender the Bellborn heretic.”
Morgan’s reply was quiet, but every man behind him heard it. “You call her heretic because she has defied your fading power.”
“Silence, Veinwright,” the captain barked. “The Bellborn is to be delivered alive to the Spire, where she will be tried for the murder of eight Brighthand guards. Any who interfere will be struck down.”
Eight? Lain hadn’t counted the dead, but she knew the ones Mallow had dispatched must be among the number they’d deduced. That meant three had died at the river, at least. She choked down on nausea at the thought.
A murmur of fury ran through Morgan’s followers. The Kelthi among them bristled, ears flattening.
“You send your Bellborn to her death and cast judgement when she fights to live. We will not surrender her to such injustice.”
The captain’s order came like thunder. “Archers – ready!”
Lain’s breath hitched at the sight of the slow lift of a dozen bows, the shimmer of drawn steel. She could see them all, below them as they were, the road curving down toward the river. Her heart pounded against her ribs. “Morgan –”
He turned to her at last, his face carved and still as stone. “Stay behind me.”
The wind rose, a long, keening wail through the mountain pass. The first drops of rain fell heavy and cold.
With a note of immense care in his voice, Morgan said, “Sing.”
She frowned. “No. You don’t know what effect it will have downstream.”
His hand rose, palm outward, not a strike but a command. She felt the bond tighten around her like a silken cord. His voice threaded through it, low and irresistible. “You’re not afraid of them, Lain. You’re the storm that makes them kneel.”
Her chest seized. The pulse of the bond crackled in her marrow. She tried to resist – to hold him back – but the power welled in her all the same, ancient and trembling. The suffocating weight of the storm fell upon her like a promise.
Morgan’s hand moved through the air like a conductor’s. “Sing, Bellborn.”
Morgan moved into the channel of her body like a snake into a burrow. He drew her bell using her own hand, and rang it once.
Deep in the earth, some distance away but close enough to hear the bell, a jagged presence shook its head, spined like a porcupine, round and armored. It sensed Lain above, opened its jaws in a yawn that transformed into Lain’s singing voice.
Rise up, breath of hollow stone,
Circle blood and make it known.
Cut through cloud, let silence spin
Follow my voice, and come within.
The Brighthand archers loosed their volley.
The arrows never landed. A wall of wind rose before the company, scattering the arrows like straw. Lightning cracked through the clouds overhead.
“Now the river,” Morgan demanded.
The river song tore out of her in a rush. Her voice split the air, layered in harmonics older than words as the wyrm below their feet sent its force of will to the storm.
River sleeping, wake and rise
Break the chains of frost and stone.
Carry ruin, carry life
Take me where your heart has flown.
The river rose. The rain surged sideways, cutting the world in ribbons of water.
The Brighthand line staggered as the ground beneath them flooded. Being above the bridge meant Morgan and his people were safe, watching the river flood its banks below. Horses screamed. Steel clashed on stone.
A shape coalesced from the storm, vast and round, its form sculpted from the flood and the wind. The wyrm’s shadow.
It rose from the gorge, translucent and as furious as a buffalo. The Brighthand broke ranks, shouting, scrambling.
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Morgan’s power braided with hers, his command riding the current of her voice. He whispered across the bond: the far bank.
The wyrm obeyed.
It reared, then struck. Water exploded from the gorge, hammering the bridge’s far side. Men and horses tumbled into the river below, their shouts drowned in thunder. They emerged, gasping, and she knew many of them did not rise because their armor had been too heavy, and in the empathy trained by her Tuning she imagined their panic, their thoughtless struggling to overcome the weight of their breastplates and swords and boots only to find themselves borne down into rock and water and blackness.
For a heartbeat the sky burned white. Then everything fell still.
The wyrm dissolved into mist. The rain softened to a thin hiss against the stone.
Morgan loosed his grip on her body and Lain took in a ragged breath. The bridge before her was intact, but what Brighthand had remained on the shore had turned to carry the dire message of their arrival to Ivath.
How many men?
She knew even as she stood here that men were still drowning. How long could a person hold their breath? She held her own, and counted. Five seconds. Ten.
Morgan dismounted. The followers behind him stood in reverent silence, awed and terrified.
Twenty. Twenty-five. Pressure built in the upper half of her lungs.
Morgan dropped to one knee before her, and took Lain’s hand in both of his.
Everyone around them on foot knelt in response. The stillness was devastating.
Forty seconds. There was true pain there now.
“We owe you our lives, Bellborn,” he said. He kissed her hand.
Sixty. She couldn’t hold it any longer. How dare he say such a thing to her? There was no life saved, only traded, theirs for hers.
She gasped, oxygen flooding her lungs, desperately ashamed of the sweetness of relief, wondering what it would have felt like if her gasp had met water instead, wondering what sort of pain it would be to be flooded so.
Her voice broke. “I killed them.”
He met her gaze steadily, rain sliding down his face, grip tightening on her hands. “You delivered us.”
She tore her hand away, intensely aware of the gasps of those around them at this small act of defiance, terrified of the consequences but unable to stop. “You made me.”
“I reminded you what you are,” he said, soft enough that no one else could hear, his eyes dark with warning. He rolled his fingers in a movement that was almost seductive and her blood bent to his will, her hand folding back into his as her eyes defied him. This affront was almost worse than the river, because at least that could be argued as an act of necessity in the face of danger.
“You must behave, Sister,” he said, his voice so low now she almost couldn’t make out the words. “The world is cruel enough without your mercy holding it up.” Then, louder: “We owe you a debt, Bellborn.”
He loosed her chains and she gasped as her body was freed. He kissed her hand once more, his eyes locked with hers as if daring her to pull away again.
She didn’t.
Satisfied, he stood, and mounted his horse. The others bowed as they passed. He rode away at the head of the column, crossing the bridge.
All around her, the crowd began to hum, and then that song came again, this time a brutal mockery.
Now fields break their shackles, the cold rivers rise,
The wyrm stirs beneath us, remembering skies.
We’ll march on the Spire till the heavens are torn,
For the Singer is coming, the world to be born.
She watched Morgan’s back, his shoulders straight, his head held high. Lain turned from the river. The water below boiled with ghosts. Morgan didn’t look back as he led the caravan across the bridge, but she could feel Morgan’s Veinwritten power in her: steady, possessive. Unyielding.
Eventually Lain’s hooves brought her to the cart where Sena sat waiting.
The road sloped down from the bridge toward the vale, winding into the shelter of the southern hills. The rain had eased to mist, but it clung to everything – the air, the horses, the faces of the men who marched.
Lain’s fingers trembled. Her cloak was soaked through, heavy with water. Every time she blinked, she saw the Brighthand captain’s helm vanish beneath the wave.
Sena’s hair was plastered in golden curls to her temples. She was quiet at first, watching Lain out of the corner of her eye. When she finally spoke, it was in a low, practical tone, as if she’d been rehearsing the words.
“You’re shaking,” she said. “You should have water.”
Lain swallowed against the ache in her throat. “How many did we kill?”
Sena hesitated, then answered softly, “Enough to keep us alive.”
“That’s not –” Lain’s voice broke. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” Sena wrapped her hand around Lain’s wrist. “But it’s true. They would have slaughtered us. You saw it. They’d already launched their arrows.”
Lain stared at her lap. Her reflection shivered in the rain pooling on the wood. “I didn’t want to hurt them.”
“No one does. But you didn’t hurt them alone. Lord Balthir asked for your song to defend his people. You answered. Sometimes that’s what loyalty means.”
Loyalty. The word should have comforted her. Instead she felt hollowed out.
The sound of hooves filled the silence. Somewhere behind them, a voice began humming that dreadful march again, the Singer who would bring the new dawn. Others picked it up.
Lain’s stomach ached. “They think I wanted this.”
“They think you saved them,” Sena said. “Because you did.”
Ahead, the first outlying walls of Ivath rose through the fog, towers of white stone streaked gray with age, just peeking over the rise. The sight of it, the home of the Underserpent's prison, made Lain’s guts twist.
Unbidden came the image of herself, writhing on the stone floor of the Underserpent’s chamber, while Seli demanded that she sing. The pain of that day had never left her. She realized suddenly that, in some ways, she had succeeded, after all; a part of her had died there on that cold stone floor. The part of her that believed in the mercy of the Dagorlind.
The part of her that believed in Elder Tanel’s love.
“I don’t want him to take me over like that again,” Lain whispered.
Sena nodded. “He’s powerful, but he’s human enough. He can only focus on one thing at a time. You’ll have to take the lead before he asks. Decide before he commands.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Of course you can.” Sena leaned closer, her hand finding Lain’s knee, firm and warm. “You’ve already done harder things. You survived the Brighthand. You survived the Spire.”
Lain recalled Mallow, killing for her.
But that was different. Wasn’t it? She considered. He’d killed the Brighthand that had captured her. Could he have done differently? Disarmed them, let them go, led them off and grabbed her?
But then there would have come a hotter pursuit, trading the lives of the Dagorlind in exchange for another engagement in the future. They never would have let her go.
Then there was her own killing of the Brighthand at this same river, further north.
Mallow did what he had to do. So did Lain. Like Mallow, she’d killed to protect herself, and to defend someone she loved.
She was bonded to Morgan now. She reached into that bond, feeling the dim sense of his calculating hope, some sort of watchful pride.
But there seemed to still be space inside her, an ache where Mallow’s love for her had lived, a place that Morgan’s Veinwright blood had not filled.