“Hri Sora!” he cried.
But she stood with her back to him, her torched arms upraised and blackened, her mouth open as she let the furnace inside her billow out. She could not hear him; her agony was far too great. She gave herself over to it and to the desolation of this world she had created.
Fire fell even to the deep places, illuminating the blackness of the Diggings. Stone melted and roiled bloodred, then flowed like rivers of fire into all the crevices of the Netherworld. The phantom ghosts fled screaming, the shadows chased from hiding by flames.
The Chronicler stood in the broken chamber of Halisa, the sword in his hands. The subterranean air heated until his skin felt as though it melted with sweat, and his palms were so slippery he feared he would drop the sword. But he struggled to the center of the chamber where the black stone stood, and even above the cacophony of the Dragonwitch’s suffering, he heard the roar of water below.
Clutching the sword in both hands, he placed his shoulder against the rock and pushed. It was like trying to move the world. He was too small! He was too weak!
He ground his teeth. “No man,” he growled, “no matter his size, could move this stone.”
In that moment of extreme humiliation, this thought encouraged him. His stunted growth and graceless limbs did not matter, not now. Not even the greatest hero could accomplish this impossible task in his own strength. No muscle or might would move this rock.
“Let me be weak, then,” the Chronicler whispered, resting against the stone. The ceiling above him boiled with heat, but he did not look. “Let me be weak so that you may be strong.”
Even as the screams of the Dragonwitch shattered his eardrums, the Chronicler braced himself and pushed again, crying out as he did so: “Lumil Eliasul!”
A voice he knew responded:
“I am the one who chose you.”
The Chronicler, his forehead pressed against the stone, one hand clutching the heavy sword, the other a fist resting beside his head, closed his eyes as the words washed over him.
Then he opened his eyes and uncurled his clenched fingers. He saw still lying in his palm the little pool of water, unspilled, unevaporated. For an instant, it flashed through his mind that he held whole rivers.
He lifted his hand to his mouth and drank the water down.
He felt it rushing through him: the power of rivers, the power of eternities and the great, pounding Songs of the Spheres. It was enough to bring him to his knees. And yet, as it swelled in his breast, pouring tumultuously into every vein, he felt the rising strength of living water.
“I am the one who chose you.”
This time, when he put his shoulder to the stone and pushed, it gave. First the shift, then the crack of rock on rock. Groaning with the effort, the Chronicler pushed again, the mighty rush of torrents pounding his temples. The stone shifted, unbalanced, and then rolled. The Chronicler staggered and would have fallen had not his grip on the heavy sword held him anchored. Well for him that it did, for as the stone crashed away and broke into pieces, it revealed a hole in the floor.
Flowing below was the black current of many joined rivers.
The Final Water.
The Chronicler stared, and he felt the heat of Halisa, different from the heat of the reddening stones around him or the heat of the Dragonwitch’s shrieks above. The sword pulsed with might, with the truth of purpose, and the Chronicler felt that pulse flow up his arm and into his spirit.
“Call up the rivers, Smallman King!”
The Chronicler heaved the sword, and suddenly he was able to lift it, to stand with the blade upraised before the churning rivers below.
“Wait!”
The Chronicler braced himself and looked around. Someone stood in the chamber doorway. “Wait,” she said and stumbled in, fell to her knees, rose, and fell again. She raised her hands in desperate supplication. Burns covered her bald scalp, extending down her neck and arms, showing between the shredded remnants of her once-fine robes.
The Chronicler recognized her. “High priestess,” he said.
“Please,” said she, crawling across the chamber. Her eyes were wide with the shattering terror of her deity’s tortured voice. Her blistered, raw skin looked red in the light of the heated stones. “Please, don’t do this thing. Don’t kill my goddess.”
The Chronicler swallowed. Sweat poured down his face into his eyes, and he blinked it away as best he could. The weight of Halisa was tremendous in his small hands. “I must,” he said.
“Please,” said the Speaker, no longer the powerful figure she had been, drawing her feet back from the deformed prisoner cast at her feet. She was a picture of self mutilation, of womanhood denied, of humanity broken. “Everything I’ve worked for all my life. You would bring it to an end?”
“Everything about you is a lie,” the Chronicler said.