No. You can sleep after you have seen the sky again. Up, Fitz. Up and walk. You cannot rest yet.
It was not my human will but the wolf in me that made me struggle to rise. My feet were distant and painful things. There were deep bruises across my legs. The flesh had been compacted and crushed. I could feel that with my fingers, as well as the ragged edge of the sword slash. I was glad I could not see my legs save as warm shapes. My initial progress was a series of stagger, fall, crawl, rest, stand, stagger, fall. The steps went down forever, and every lurch down was a torment. The fall took me into shallow, briny water. I moved through utter darkness. When my groping hands found a section of wall that seemed less damaged by Spark’s blast, I followed along it. Barnacles on the wall and floor cut my flesh. I stupidly realized I was barefoot. When had I lost my boots? The blast had torn my clothes, but my boots? I pushed that aside. It was only pain and it did not last long. The steps down seemed endless. I was grateful that the water was gradually receding. I do not think I could have forced my way past its resistance. When the steps finally ended and I sloshed through standing water to my knees, I became aware of a different sort of pain.
It was not just the Skill forcing the healing of my legs. When I touched the sword slash, silver fingers to Silver-splashed wound, I felt as if I had been patched, like a leather jerkin mended with canvas. It did not feel like my own flesh, but there was no stopping it. I might be able to persuade stone to move and free me, but my own body had a peculiar will of its own.
Onward. I had to catch up with the others. The Fool would believe I was dead. That was what he would tell them! My poor little girl! I could not blame him. I had thought myself dead.
You would have been, if I had not held back some life for us. For me. For you. Mostly for the cub. You must stop taking foolish risks. We need to survive.
How long had I been trapped underground? A tide had been rising when the others fled. It had fallen, risen again, and now was ebbing I judged. A day gone, at least. Possibly two. I wondered where Bee and the others might be right now. Had they escaped? Were they even now at sea on Paragon, sailing away from this horrid place, toward home and family?
I tried to Skill to Bee. I had as little success as I always did when I reached for her. Trying to Skill through the pain and the peculiar Silver sensations was like trying to shout when one is breathless and running. I gave it up and trudged on. Catch up with them.
Had they encountered the Servants’ guardsmen? Had the fleeing Whites we freed betrayed them? Had they fought and won, or fallen? Had they been taken prisoner? Whenever I wanted to stop and rest I flogged myself with those thoughts and pushed on. I came to steps. I climbed them.
Blackness became dark grey and then a paler grey. I pushed on toward a paler shape of light interrupted by lines and … It was a partly open door, overgrown by vegetation. I could barely push past the tangled greenery. Brambles tore at my frayed clothing and skin as I thrust thorny vines aside until I emerged from the hillside thicket and stood under a clear blue sky. The grass was taller than my knees and mixed with twiggy brush.
I collapsed and sat where I was, heedless of the protest of the sword-slash across my thigh. I dared myself to look at it. It was sealed with Silver as if I’d patched myself with tar. I prodded it and winced. Under the patch, my body toiled on with its repairs. My vision was marginally clearer. My palms were silver. I stared at them. My hands were skeletal, bones and bulging veins and tendons. All gleaming as if cast in Silver. I’d eaten myself to make repairs. My clothing hung on me.
I rose and tried to walk on. The ground was uneven and tufts of grass caught at my dragging feet. I stepped on a flattened thistle and fell over. It was hard to see the tiny pale thorns I picked out of the sole of my bony foot with my silver fingers. I could feel what I could not see, the Silver giving me a sensitivity that my hands had never possessed. I looked at my hands in the sunlight. They glittered, gleaming and bright. It was either more Silver than Verity had ever possessed or a much finer quality than he had used. The coating on Verity’s hands had reminded me of thick mud; mine looked as if I wore elegant silver gloves that clung to every line and fold of my hands. I reinspected the places where the Silver had struck. Had the blast so shredded my clothing or had the Silver splashed and eaten it? Silver gleamed on part of my chest, in splotches on my legs. I knew it coated more than half my face. I wondered what it looked like. My eyes? I pushed the thought away.
Straggling among the grass were long, crawling threads of clover, both leaves and purple blossoms. Molly had used the flowers to flavour warmed honey and teas. I gathered a handful and put them in my mouth. A faint trace of sweetness and moisture. They helped but not enough.
I managed to stagger upright and stood unsteady on my feet, trying to decide where I was. I was on one of the rolling hills behind the town, I thought. Below me were the ruins of Clerres Castle. I stared. It was castle no longer, but only mounded rubble scattered across the end of the peninsula. Bee’s fire had not done that. A slow recognition worked into me. The dragons had come. Heeby and Tintaglia. This was the vengeance they had said they would take. Men would have needed months to topple this stronghold so thoroughly, and men tended to keep and exploit what they conquered. Dragon-acid had eaten the walls, melting stone and dissolving wood. It looked like a dropped cake. I saw two figures moving over the rubble and spotted another man along the shore, pushing a barrow down what had been the road. It was littered with the wreckage of the buildings that had lined it. So few people. I wondered how many were buried under the falling rubble. Were my people among them? Where was Paragon?
Not in the harbour, nor anchored outside it. Paragon was gone. There were no large ships there. Not one. No barrows full of goods moved on the docks, no one strolled the streets of the markets and warehouse areas. All the structures lacked roofs and the walls leaned drunkenly against each other. There was, however, plenty of wreckage sloshing around the pilings of the docks, and many masts of smaller vessels sticking up above the retreating waves.
In the distant sky, something sparkled. Wings of red and blue. Tintaglia and Heeby, finished with their destruction and winging home. And beneath them, a sailing ship. Paragon? I dared to hope. But it was leaving. Leaving me here.