Chapter 13 : EIRA - The Prince's Proposition80Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCH3xE0x7if
Vail came to her at dawn.
She was in the small room off the infirmary where Liska had put Aren, sitting on the edge of his cot with his head in her lap. He'd fallen asleep again after the nightmare—an exhausted, twitching sleep, his small hands gripping her coat even in unconsciousness—and she hadn't moved. Her back ached. Her hand throbbed under the fresh bandages Liska had applied. Her mind was a storm of dead gods and dying god-speakers and the word Aren had spoken in the dark. Yska. The name that meant the plague was a consciousness. The name that meant she hadn't wounded the Lament at all. She'd just woken it up more.
The door opened without a knock. Vail stood in the frame, his dark hair dishevelled, his grey eyes shadowed with exhaustion. He hadn't slept. She could see it in the pallor of his skin, the hollows of his cheeks, the faint tremor in his hands that he was trying very hard to control. He looked like a man who'd been running for days and had just realised he was running toward something, not away from it.
"We need to talk," he said.
"About?"
"Everything."
She eased Aren's head off her lap, pressing a kiss to his forehead. He stirred but didn't wake. His face was pale and pinched, and his lips were moving—dreaming again, she thought. Dreaming of the Lament, or the cold, or the voice that spoke in words that made his teeth ache. She pulled the blanket up around his shoulders and stood.
"Not here," she said. "I don't want him to hear."
"My study. Your father's already there."
She followed him through the cold stone corridors, past the guards in their grey wolfskin cloaks, past the flickering torches that still burned with that faint blue tinge. The Citadel was waking up around them—servants moving through the halls, priests chanting morning prayers to gods that might already be dead, the distant clang of a blacksmith's hammer. Normal sounds. Everyday sounds. They felt obscene, somehow. The world was ending, and people were still shoeing horses.
The study was warm. Someone had built up the fire, and the flames were leaping high, throwing orange light across the shelves of books and scrolls. Her father was standing by the hearth, his arms crossed, his face carved from the same cold stone as the Frostwood mountains. Liska was there too, slumped in a chair with a flask in her hand and her eyes red-rimmed from lack of sleep. Rennic stood by the door, his scarred face unreadable.
Vail closed the door behind them. "What I'm about to tell you is going to sound like madness. I need you to listen to all of it before you decide anything."
"I've already decided," Eira said. "I'm going north. The Lament spoke to my brother. It told him about the prison. It told him about Yska. It told him I was the key." She met Vail's eyes. "Is that true? Am I the key?"
"Yes."
"Then I'm going north. I'm going to find the prison. I'm going to open it. And I'm going to kill whatever's inside."
The silence in the room was absolute. Even the fire seemed to hold its breath.
"It's not that simple," Vail said.
"Then make it simple."
He walked to his desk and picked up a scroll—old and brittle, bound in pale leather that might have been human skin. He unrolled it carefully, his steady hands flattening the edges. "This is a fragment from the sealed archives. It predates the covenant by at least two centuries. It describes the First Dreamer—Yska—and the prison the other gods built to contain it."
"I can't read that. It's not in any language I know."
"I'll translate." He traced the text with his finger. "'And the gods did imprison the Dreamer in a prison of ice and silence, deep beneath the mountain where the cold has no end. And they appointed guardians to watch over it—the great gods, the old ones—and they made a covenant with the mortal races to feed the guardians with memory, that the guardians might remain strong and the prison remain sealed.'" He looked up. "The tithes were never about protection. They were about containment. Every memory we've given to the gods for five hundred years has been feeding the things that keep Yska locked away."
"But the memories fed Yska too," Eira said. "You told me that. The thing inside the Lament—it's been growing stronger."
"Yes. The prison was never perfect. The guardians were supposed to consume the memories and use the power to maintain the seal. But some of that power leaked. Seeped down into the prison. Fed the thing they were trying to starve." Vail set down the scroll. "The plague is Yska waking up. It's been growing inside the gods for five centuries, eating them from the inside, using the memories we gave them as fuel. And now it's strong enough to reach out. To speak through the god-speakers. To whisper in dreams. To make the mountains walk."
"And what I did—when I fed the Lament my mother's death—"
"You woke it up more. You gave it a taste of something it hadn't had before. A memory of pure, personal pain. A memory tied to love and loss. The tithes were always willing—people giving up pieces of themselves in exchange for protection. What you did was different. You gave it your worst moment, and you didn't ask for anything in return. You just wanted to hurt it."
"And it worked," Eira said. "The Lament fled."
"It worked because Yska recoiled. Not because you hurt it—because you surprised it. You gave it something it couldn't digest. Something that burned." Vail met her eyes. "You're not a God-Wounder, Eira. You're a God-Awakener. Every time you use that knife, every time you feed a memory to a sick god, you're opening the door a little wider."
Eira's hand moved to her belt, to the obsidian knife. The blade her mother had used for her last tithe. The blade she'd used to cut her palm and feed the Lament her worst memory. The blade she'd used on the crow-warden in the laboratory. The blade that was supposed to be a weapon but was really just another key.
"Then what do I do?" she asked. Her voice was steady. Everything else was falling apart, but her voice was steady. "If I can't hurt it, if every time I use the knife I make it stronger—what do I do?"
"I don't know yet. But I know the prison is in the Frostwood. I know Sigrid—the god-speaker—carved a map into her own flesh that points straight to it. I know the Lament is already there, waiting. I know Yska wants you to come. It called you the key. It said you would open the door."
"And if I don't go?"
"Then the plague keeps spreading. The gods keep dying. The tithes keep feeding Yska until it's strong enough to break out on its own. Weeks, maybe. Months at most. And when it breaks out, it won't just consume the gods. It'll consume everyone who's ever tithed. Every man, woman, and child who's ever given a memory to the covenant. That's most of the human race."
Eira's father spoke for the first time. His voice was rough, but steady. "You're saying my daughter has to go north. You're saying she has to walk into the prison and face this thing. And you're saying you don't know how she's supposed to kill it."
"Yes," Vail said.
"And you're going with her."
"I'm going with her. Liska, Rennic, Sersha—anyone who volunteers. We'll take supplies, weapons, the portable siphon. We'll follow Sigrid's map. We'll find the prison. And we'll figure out the rest when we get there."
"That's not a plan," Eirik said. "That's a suicide."
"It's a hypothesis. And it's the only one we have." Vail turned to Eira. "You don't have to do this. You can stay here. Protect your brother. Let someone else carry the burden. But if you stay, the plague will still come. And when it does, there won't be anywhere left to run."
Eira looked at her father. His face was grey, the lines around his eyes deeper than she'd ever seen them. He'd lost his wife, his brother, his niece. He'd nearly lost his village. Now he was facing the possibility of losing his daughter too—not to death, but to something worse. Something that might use her as a door.
"I have to go," she said. "You know I have to go."
"I know." His voice cracked on the word. "But I'm coming with you."
"Someone needs to stay with Aren. He can't come with us—he's six, he's already been through too much. He needs someone to protect him. Someone he trusts."
"Liska can—"
"Liska's coming with us. She's the only one who understands the machines. The siphon. The memory-transfer devices. If we're going to fight Yska, we need her."
Eirik's jaw tightened. He looked at Vail, then at Liska, then back at Eira. "Then who stays with Aren?"
"I will," Rennic said. Everyone turned to look at him. He was still standing by the door, his scarred face unreadable, his hand resting on his sword. "I'm too old for a long march into the Frostwood. My knees are shot, and my shoulder hasn't been right since the last skirmish with Aldric's hunters. I'll stay. I'll protect the boy. If anyone tries to take him, they'll have to go through me."
Eira stared at him. "Why? You don't know us. You don't owe us anything."
"I owe the Prince a life. He's going north. The least I can do is protect what he's leaving behind." Rennic's mouth twitched. "Besides, I like the boy. He's tough. Reminds me of myself at that age."
Aren was still asleep in the infirmary, his small face pale, his lips still moving with words he couldn't speak aloud. The cold was the first word, and the cold will be the last. He'd dreamed of the Lament. He'd spoken its message. He was six years old, and he'd already done more than most adults to fight the plague.
"All right," Eira said. "Rennic stays with Aren. Father comes with us." She looked at Vail. "When do we leave?"
"Tonight. Aldric is calling a Council session this afternoon. He's going to push for increased tithes. I'll attend, make my objections known, buy us a few hours of confusion. By the time he realises we've gone, we'll be halfway to the north road."
"And Sigrid? The god-speaker?"
"She's still in the temple ward. Still writing Yska's name on the walls. Still speaking with Yska's voice. She's too far gone to travel. And I don't think Yska would let her leave anyway. It needs her here, in the capital, spreading the name."
"Then we leave her."
"Yes."
Eira thought about Sigrid—the girl who'd been bound to a river-spirit, who'd lost her god and been hollowed out and filled with something else. The girl who'd carved a map into her own thighs and spoken a name that hadn't been uttered in five hundred years. The girl who was still in there somewhere, buried under Yska's voice, fighting to get out.
She deserved better. She deserved to be saved. But the world didn't give people what they deserved. The world took and took, and the only choice was what you were willing to give back.
"We leave tonight," Eira said. "North. To the Frostwood. To the prison." She looked around the room—at Vail, with his steady hands and his exhausted eyes; at Liska, with her flask and her red-rimmed stare; at her father, with his grief and his fury and his love. "And when we get there, we find a way to kill a god."
Vail almost smiled. "That's the first time you've called it a god instead of a thing."
"Yska's not a thing. It's a consciousness. It's been waiting for five hundred years. It's hungry, and it's patient, and it's been planning this for longer than any of us have been alive." She met his eyes. "But it's never met us before."
The fire crackled. The wind moaned against the stone walls. Somewhere deep in the Citadel, a god-speaker was writing a name on the walls, over and over, and the torches were burning blue.
"Tonight, then," Vail said. "Prepare your things. Travel light. We'll meet at the eastern gate two hours after sunset."
Eira nodded. She turned to leave, but stopped at the door. "One more thing. The memory I used on the Lament—my mother's death. You asked what memory you would give, if you had to. You said you'd give your mother's death."
"Yes."
"Would it work? Would it hurt Yska?"
Vail was quiet for a moment. His hand, steady for so long, trembled once before he stilled it. "I don't know. My mother died of the wasting sickness. Her tongue turned black, and her eyes went hollow, and she forgot who I was before the end. I watched it happen. I was eighteen. I didn't cry. I didn't feel anything. I just... watched." He paused. "I don't know if that memory would hurt Yska. But I know it wouldn't hurt me. And that's the problem. You have to care about the memory. You have to love the person you're giving up. Otherwise it's just another tithe. Just another piece of yourself you're throwing into the dark."
Eira thought about her mother. The blood on the birthing bed. The midwife's hands, red to the elbow. The weight of Aren in her six-year-old arms. The way her father had screamed. She'd given that memory to the Lament, and it had burned. It had burned because she loved her mother. It had burned because she'd spent eleven years carrying that grief, and it was the worst thing she had, and she'd offered it freely.
"Then we'll need memories that hurt," she said. "Memories tied to love and loss. Memories we don't want to give." She looked at her father. "Can you do that?"
Eirik's face was old and tired, but his eyes were steady. "I've got plenty of those."
"Good." She opened the door. "Then we've got a god to kill."80Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4mp3wVR1ag
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