Imraldera smiled softly, perhaps because she thought he could not see it; though of course he saw much better in the dark than she could. When she spoke again, however, her voice hardened and all trace of softness fled. “We must prevent the Dragonwitch from gaining Halisa.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much,” Eanrin said cheerily, though he frowned as she took her hands from his. “There are great prophecies at work, you know; mighty deeds to be done as foretold by the stars.”
“Don’t be daft,” Imraldera said, and it was so good to feel the world falling back into its normal patterns. “Prophecies don’t come true on their own. We must do our part!”
She started up the dungeon passage, and he quickly fell into place behind her. “Wait, old girl,” he said, reaching out but missing her shoulder in the shadows. “Don’t get ahead of me; I don’t want to lose you so soon after I’ve found you! You have a habit of doing stupid things, you know. Drinking from Faerie rivers, making bargains with monsters—”
“In that case, you’d better keep up!” said she.
The Diggings went on forever.
Sometimes the Chronicler believed he still walked in mortal-dug tunnels on rough paths hewn by mortal tools. But if he dared look too closely, the tunnels disappeared, leaving him wandering a flat plain, half lit by no visible light.
Always behind him, he heard the howls of the Black Dogs.
His feet fell into a never-ending rhythm of flight—one, two, one, two—on and on through the byways of the Netherworld.
“Find the sword,” he muttered. “Find Halisa.”
If he looked over his shoulder, he saw the blackness of Midnight approaching. The Dogs would catch him eventually. They must! If all these other Faerie tales were proving themselves true, why should he now doubt the tale of the Black Dogs, who always caught their prey. And he knew beyond doubt that this was his role now. A rabbit on the run, pursued through the tunnels of its warren without hope.
One, two, one, two. The steady slap of his feet upon stone was as unreal a sound in his ears as the baying of the hunt.
“Find Halisa,” he whispered, but he knew that he never could.
“Fear not, small man. You will see your people free.”
The Chronicler’s pace slowed as the voice of memory filled his head. A promise, a prophecy. But how could it be true? How could anything be true in the dark? It didn’t matter what he believed, because nothing he believed was real! No heroics, no chosen destinies, and no final moments of truth, because the only final moments could be revelations of falsehood. And that was—
The Chronicler screamed, his arms making circles in the air to catch his balance. He reeled on the edge of a precipice, a drop into nothingness that not even the half-light could penetrate. By some miracle, he caught himself and stepped back, unable to tear his gaze away from that line where the plunge began. An overwhelming sweep of coldness rose up from the depths, replaced a moment later with a blast of heat.
The howls increased. They were close behind him now.
Choose my darkness, spoke a voice from below. A voice like ever-consuming fire.
The Chronicler felt the lure of it more keenly than he had felt the barb of his father’s rejection, the pain of Leta’s expression when she first saw his ungainly limbs, the agony of disrespect and usurpation under which he had always lived and moved and breathed. Here was the end, the choice to leave all that behind and, in so doing, to clasp it more firmly than ever to his heart.
The Black Dogs drew near.
The Chronicler took a step. It was either that plunge of his own choosing, or the jaws of those monsters clamping down upon him. Whether they dragged him to death or back to life and the Dragonwitch’s will, what did it matter? What did he matter?
Choose my darkness, said the voice from the pit.
It seemed the right choice. The only choice.
“Florien!”
At first hearing, the Chronicler did not recognize the sound of his own name. But it froze him in place, immobilizing his limbs. He could not take the next step to the edge.
“Florien!”
Don’t listen to that, said the voice from the pit. You have no name.
Yet the Chronicler stood like stone. With an effort of superhuman will, he managed to turn his head to one side. He saw, coming toward him with great speed, a light. A pure, white light filled with colors within the whiteness. It was the light of nursery rhymes. The light of Faerie tales.
It was the light of Asha. And Alistair’s voice called to him.
“Florien!”
“Alistair!”
Once upon a time, blood called to blood on the edge of darkness. Once upon a time, a choice was made and brother died for brother, and the light from beyond the Final Water shone its brightest in the realm of Death.
Both the Chronicler and Alistair knew the story. They turned to each other now, and the voice from the pit was stilled as the light filled the gap between them. The Chronicler saw the face of the one who had taken his inheritance; Alistair saw the face of the one who would take that inheritance back again.
But the light revealed more, and each saw the face of his cousin. His brother. His kin by blood.