More screams came from beyond the door. He heard a man cry, “Help me! Help me!”
Promise me, Raithe. He recalled his mother’s voice, shaking with the cold and coming out in puffs of frost. Promise me you’ll do something good, that you’ll make your life worth something.
He walked across the room to Suri. She was sitting on the floor in the same cross-legged manner she had in Dahl Rhen, only now her hair and skin were clean, and she wore a lavish asica after the fashion of the ranking Fhrey. She looked up at him as he held out the sword.
“I guess this means I’ll never learn to juggle.” He meant it as a joke, something to break the tension.
Suri started crying.
“Sorry,” he said and sighed. “So, how does this work? Will I remember who I am? Who I was? Will I have memories?”
“I don’t know,” Suri said, sniffling. “Minna…” She shook her head. “It really wasn’t Minna at all—and yet I felt that part of Minna was there.”
“And this sword.” He looked at it again. “This will be used to kill me after I get done fighting the Fhrey?”
“You’ll be killed in the making. I honestly don’t know how much of you may linger in the beast. Maybe none. It might just have been what I put into the conjuration that made it seem like Minna. The sword will break the weave. If any part of you is trapped, it will be set free by the sword.”
“So, what do I do now?”
She reached out and took the blade. “Just lie down,” she told him.
He did, and she placed the fabulous sword on his chest.
“Doesn’t it need my name on it?”
“Yes, but that…” Suri squeezed her lips together, turning the pink white, and her eyes tightened, squinting as if in agony. She took a deliberate breath. “When Minna died, I didn’t have a sword or anything, so her name was imprinted on my mind by her escaping spirit. When your spirit leaves your body, it will pass through the sword and leave your name there. It will be you who writes it, using the language of creation.”
Raithe nodded.
Something hit the door to the smithy again, something hard. The hinges rattled.
“We’re running out of time. They’re going to break in,” Flood burst out, his voice an octave higher than usual.
“No,” Suri said calmly, softly. “That door won’t open until I allow it.” She looked at Raithe. “And when it does…they’ll wish it hadn’t.” Suri ran her hands along the blade. “Such a beautiful thing to be created for such an awful purpose.” She shuddered and brought a hand to her face.
“I don’t know who this is going to hurt more,” Raithe said. “Me or you.”
Suri lifted her head to look at him, tears running down her face. “Me,” Suri told him without a hint of humor. “You—you won’t feel a thing. But I will.” A tear fell from her chin and splashed onto the shimmering blade. “I’ll feel it every day. Every. Single. Day. For the rest of my life, I’ll see your eyes as they are right now, the same way I still see Minna’s. She had blue eyes, bright blue eyes—so very, very bright.”
“Just so you know, I’m not leaving anything behind,” Raithe told her. “In many ways, you’re doing me a favor, if that makes this any easier.”
Suri placed her hand upon the black shimmering blade. “It doesn’t.”
* * *
—
Persephone sat up in her bed. Propped by a pillow against the carved headboard, she listened to the sounds of battle. Explosions rumbled the stone so hard that the canopy above the bed quivered. In Persephone’s right hand she held the little sword Roan had made; in her left, she squeezed the blanket. She held both so tightly her hands ached.
She was scared. It will be over soon. Everything will be over.
At any minute, a Fhrey would break in the chamber door, someone not unlike Nyphron. Her mind told her that. Her emotions imagined monsters: fangs, glowing eyes, claws, something similar to the raow—only bigger—much bigger.
Shouts, cries, the thunder of feet, then it finally happened. The door to the outer room of her suite burst in. Persephone flinched—almost screamed.
“They’ve crossed the corbel bridge,” Moya said, panting as she entered. Her face and arms were shiny from sweat, the longbow held in her left hand, the sack of arrows slung over her right shoulder. Brin and Padera followed her. The old woman shambled through the archway and around the end posts with her famous frown and squinty eyes. In contrast, Brin was terrified. She raced in, cheeks streaked with tears.
“Up on the bed!” Persephone shouted, waving for them. Brin leapt up and hugged her tight. The girl was shaking.
Padera sat herself on the other side of the bed, and, taking off one of her sandals, she rubbed her foot.
Moya stood in front of the door, her bow out, an arrow fitted to the string, four more in her draw hand in between her fingers, five bunched in her left along with the bow shaft.
“What’s going on?” Persephone asked them.