She caught him in her arms. Caught his face in her hands as his head sought the cradle of arms and breasts.
His screaming was terrible.
But hers was louder, longer, as insistent as his own.
He whimpered, but the sound was a real sound, a thing of throat and breath and lips.
His eyes, glassy, brown, deep, shifted and jerked, upward now, seeking her face.
'The darkness,' he whispered. 'The darkness. The emptiness. I've lost them. I've failed them all.' For a large man, his voice was small, tiny. She should have been terrified, then.
But as he spoke, she felt what he felt, and she knew, knew, that she had passed through it herself.
* * *
Her own children were gone.
And she was young enough that the visiting merchants never realized that she had had a husband-gone, too-and a family; that she had had everything she had desired in her youth.
And what was the point of that desire, but pain? In the end, what was the point? Her children had not disappeared in the mining accidents that killed the men, when the men did die; they had not gone missing in the terrible snows that could strand a person feet away from the doors of the hold, and bury them there, as a taunt, a winter cruelty.
No. She had held them.
She had held them, just as she had held this man, in this dark, cramped room, in this empty place that had no words of comfort to offer her.
The cabin in which she had lived was hallowed by the terrible silence of their absence; she might walk from room to room-for there were only three-and listen furtively to catch their ghostly voices. This was the way she evoked memory, and memory, in this dark place, this gloom of log and burning wood and little light-for light let in cold-was unkind. It led her into darkness.
And that darkness might have devoured her, if her mother had not held her, held on to her, filled the emptiness with her words and the blessed sound of her voice. Mother's pain, always.
She spoke to this stranger.
She spoke to this man who understood, who was somehow-at this instant-a part of all the losses she had faced.
And as she did, she opened her eyes to a dream. Heard the voice of the devourer, all his voices, the cries of terror and emptiness.
She forgot the cathedral, then. Forgot the lines of this stranger's face. She held him, as if a storm raged just beyond her bent shoulders, her bowed back. She found voice; she sang. She sang to him.
And the singing did what the words she had spoken-for she was aware that words had left her lips, aware that they were a failure before she had finished speaking them-could not.
Dark eyes turned to her; dark eyes saw her; the agony written and etched in terrible lines across a gray face shifted as eyes she would have sworn couldn't grow any wider, did.
He clung to her, his face made her breasts ache, her spine curved in until it was almost painful just to sit, but she sat. She sat.
And the priest came.
She heard his voice at a distance. She heard his words as if they were spoken from within her. He was praying. After a moment, she joined him, although she didn't know the words that he spoke. Hers were as heartfelt, and they were all she had to offer.
'Come home,' she whispered, kissing the sweaty, damp strands of this stranger's hair, stroking his face as if it were the fevered face of her eldest. 'Come home.'
* * *
Darius was waiting for her. Companions, it seemed, were not considered beasts of burden in even the grandest of venues; he stood in the light of the windows as if he were a dream. He walked forward slowly as the priest helped the man to his feet.
'What did I do?' she whispered softly.
The priest was staring at her. She turned to him and bowed. 'I-I'm sorry,' she stammered. 'But-I-I-'
He shook his head. 'He came to this place seeking help. And you came to this place offering aid that we could not offer. Do not apologize, child. But-'
She shook her head. 'I don't know. I don't know what-what I did.'
'You saved him,' the priest whispered. 'I was so certain-' He closed his eyes a moment; she thought he might retreat into prayer again. But he shook himself free of the words, and when he stood, she saw that he was over six feet tall, his shoulders wide and broad. As her father's had once been, before the mines.
'There are others,' he said after a moment. He turned and bowed to her Companion.
'She is your Chosen?'
The Companion nickered softly.
'But she wears no white, no gray. Child, can it be that you have not yet made your journey to the Collegium?'
'I-no. I think we're on the way there.'
'Might I ask-if it's not too much-that you come to the infirmary?'
She looked at Darius. Darius was absolutely silent, as if he were adornment to the statues, the windows, the altar of this place.
Her decision, then. She nodded.
* * *
He led her through the cloisters; she realized later that this was a courtesy to Darius.
Darius was comfortable in the apse, but once the halls narrowed, movement would be restricted, and it was clear what the Companion-no, her Companion-thought of that.
She even smiled, felt a moment of almost gentle amusement, until she glanced at the older man's face. Care had worn lines from his eyes to his lips, and she thought that no matter what happened in future, they were there to stay.
They grew deeper as he left the cloister; deeper still as he walked down a hall and stopped in front of a door that was slightly ajar. 'Here,' he said quietly.
She nodded and opened the door.
And stopped there, beneath the lintel, staring.
There was more than one room; she could see that clearly in the streaming light of day.
And there were beds, bedrolls, makeshift cots, with only barely enough room between them to allow a man passage. Each of the beds was occupied.
Darius.
She was afraid.
'I can't-I can't go in there,' she whispered. :Kayla.: But the door was no protection; it was open. She could hear weeping, whimpering, screaming. Her hand caught the frame of the door and her fingers grew white as she held it.
She drew a deep breath, squaring her shoulders. See, she thought, with your eyes.
She could do that. She could look.
