… they plan something…
… touched too deep, too deep… he won’t survive…
… no… we can save him…
… how?…
… the Lifeblood… the Well…
Through squinted eyes, Colin saw the lights retreat slightly. Their voices receded, but their light flared, brighter and brighter. Others gathered as the lights argued, until one of the lights flared so brightly that Colin winced, even with his eyes mostly closed.
… enough!… there is no time to argue… he will die. ..
… we can’t… he is the one who will pay, not us…
… he is our responsibility… we allowed this to happen.. .
… we must save him if we can…
The lights returned to hover above him.
… it won’t matter… he’ll never make it to the Well…
One of the lights flared in irritation, in warning, and the rest backed off slightly.
The light that remained drifted closer.
… stand… you must stand and walk…
Colin sighed, felt the weight of Karen’s body against him, so heavy, heavier than he thought possible, holding him down. He felt the vow cutting painfully into his skin. His throat closed shut, and he shook his head in denial, tried to say, “No,” but no sound came out.
… you must…
“No,” he managed, his voice rough. He looked down at Karen’s body, her face still hidden in his shoulder.
The light flared brighter in annoyance.
… you’ll die…
He shot a glare at the light. “Let me die!”
The light considered this in silence. Then it dipped lower, so close that Colin could feel its light against his face, tingling in his skin, the fine hairs on his arms standing on end. A shiver coursed through him, and he drew in an involuntary gasp of air. He smelled earth, damp and moist. And leaves.
… would she have wanted you to die?…
Colin stilled, the indrawn breath caught in his throat, lodged there. He stared past the light, past the bodies, into the distance.
He heard his father screaming into his face, Run, goddamn you!
A fresh wave of grief sliced through him, and he swallowed it down, biting back a sob with a choked gasp. He glanced down at Karen’s body, squeezed it tight again as he fought back more tears, and then let her roll away, so he could see her face.
It hurt more than he thought he could bear. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, tasted her dried sweat, ignored the unnatural chill of her skin. He struggled for something to say, but nothing came, and so he whispered hoarsely, “I’m sorry.”
And then he struggled out from beneath her body, the arm touched by the Shadows completely dead and useless, a limp weight at his side. Fresh tears started, refused to be held back, and he cried out as circulation returned to his legs. With a broken sob, he managed to shove Karen’s body off of him completely, something in his chest tearing as he crawled away on his knees. He collapsed into the grass, uncertain he’d be able to move any farther, but the light grew insistent, a whisper of sound in the background, urging him forward, and so he shoved himself up with his good arm, pulled himself upright, staggered to his feet.
He didn’t look back. Tears blurred his eyes as the lights led him beneath the cover of the trees, into the shadow of the forest, into its cool heart. He stumbled along behind them, listened to their encouragement, and the farther he walked-brushing against the bark of tree trunks, catching in limbs, tripping over fallen branches, his dead arm a hindrance-the deeper the Shadow’s coldness seeped into his chest. His breath grew ragged and sharp as that coldness crept into his throat and down across his breastbone. Fingers of ice dug deep into his other lung, began to close about his heart. It became harder and harder to breathe, and he panicked. He’d thought the coldness would seep over him completely, as if he were going to sleep, but the deeper it clawed, the more he realized that he’d suffocate first, and so he lurched forward, moved faster, the lights themselves becoming frenzied, speeding ahead and then dancing impatiently.
… not far now, not far…
Colin began to wheeze, his breaths coming in strained whistles, and his heart began to stutter, to shudder, as the ice sank deeper. He gasped, collapsed to his knees, and saw the light that had spoken to him earlier flare before him, saw that the trees had given way to the amorphous shapes of white buildings, hidden in the gloom, that the ground beneath was patched with stone, like cobblestones. But all of that was peripheral.
… get up!… almost there!…
He clawed at his throat, sucked in another thin breath of air, and flung himself forward, tripping at the top of a set of stairs, then falling and rolling down their length before coming up hard against a lip of stone. Not white stone, like the buildings, but rough stone, rounded like river stone, with all the colors of the earth.
… drink!… drink now or the Shadows will take you!…
Colin reached for the edge of the stone, pulled himself up, his breath lost completely, his lungs no longer working, his entire chest a pit of numbness, of bitter cold, all except for his heart. He could no longer feel the base of his throat. He dragged himself up the stone wall, hung over its edge and realized that it held a wide pool of utterly clear water; but he didn’t pause to reflect on its clarity, on its stillness. He dipped his good hand into it and cupped it to his mouth, swallowed it greedily, felt it spilling down his neck, staining his shirt, burning against the harshness of the vow. He drank as much of it as he could before the frigid claw at his heart squeezed tight, before the struggle to breathe sapped his strength, and then he sank onto his back on the edge of the well.
He stared up into the sunlight above, into the blue sky that seemed so distant. He strained for another breath, but his chest would not work.
The claw around his chest squeezed hard, and he felt his heart stop.
Darkness closed in at the edges of his vision, crept in slowly. He gazed into the deep sky as it began to recede, growing brighter, the gold deeper, its edges fine and brittle. As the darkness closed in tighter, as the muscles in his good arm and his legs relaxed and he sagged down against the river stone beneath him, two of the lights drifted into his sight.
… were we in time?… will he live?…
And then the sky, the lights, and the golden sun went black.
Part II Shaeveran
11
Colin woke with a start, eyes flaring wide, a moan escaping his lips, the sound torn with grief. He choked it off, coughed into the darkness of his room, then raised an aged hand to rub at his face. He wiped away the tears that wet his skin and sighed-a tired sigh, a weary sigh-and his hand closed over the crescent-shaped pendant on his chest.
He’d been dreaming again. The same dream he’d had these last long years, since he’d drunk from the Well, since he’d choked down the cold, sweet waters of the Lifeblood.
How many years now? He couldn’t remember. Too many. And yet apparently not enough. Not if he could still wake with the feel of tears drying on his skin. Although he knew why the dreams had returned recently, knew why they seemed so fresh.
He grimaced and sat up on his cot, moving slowly, letting the pendant go. His feet touched the cool white marble of the floor, and he shivered, the sensation running down into his arms, tingling in his fingers. He shrugged, stretched the muscles in his back, wriggled his toes, and then stood, leaning on the cot for support as
