The snow fell thick, muffling the island and covering the roots in an ankle-deep layer of white. I could see no further than a few paces to either side and hear nothing beyond my companions’ breaths as we made our way back to Thray’s tomb. Around us, the tree and its roots glowed with foxfire runes, their illumination diffused by the snow.
Arune and Isik vanished to the wind along the way, Isik giving me a long, promising look before he disappeared.
Berin strode just ahead of me, his footsteps silent and his frame edged with the bruised amber aura of his magic, sword in hand. I strode after him through the snow, a knife at my belt once more, and relished the bite of the cold. It numbed the pain of my still-bleeding hand and I could almost pretend that he and I were home again, in a snowstorm outside Albor. But I did not indulge that fantasy, not with Berin’s sword bared and blood in the snow.
We approached a crouching figure with windblown hair, the bones at the end of his fine braids rattling in the wind. Arune looked up, blinking white flakes from his long, pale lashes. Beneath him lay the tomb of ice, its surface freshly cleaned of snow.
“She’s nearly healed, but hasn’t awoken,” Arune unfolded back to his feet. He glanced up as the wind turned—Isik, keeping watch—and fixed his eyes on me. “Hurry.”
I knelt at the Winterborn’s feet, hiding my face beneath the veil of my tangled, wind-ravaged hair. Briefly, I wondered what price I would pay for this healing, how much pain I would endure. How deadly it might be to my mortal frame.
But when I saw Thray, still lying beneath the ice with her eyelashes pale against freckled cheeks, that fear lost its potency.
I gathered my power around me, pulling the scent of winter, water, pine, and lavender into my lungs. Arune’s eyes remained pinned on his half-sister’s face. And for all that he was a Winterborn, a half-Miri and an immortal, I saw humanity in the longing in his eyes.
Compassion lent me strength. I drew bloody runes on the ice, gathered my magic into my lungs, and breathed out. Golden light ignited my runes in a brief pulse, then seeped into the ice like smoke into a frozen sky.
That golden light gathered around Thray, then flared and overflowed. It seeped into the ice, earth, and roots that protruded into the Winterborn’s frozen cairn. I felt it trace through the ground beneath my feet, even seeping back into my own wounded hand and knitting it closed with glimmer of sunset gold. My posture strengthened.
“Her eyes are opening,” Arune breathed.
Before I could see that for myself, a crack shattered the snowy stillness. I twisted, sure that a horde of Revenants were coming upon us, but we were still alone. Instead, foxfire runes blazed above us in a riot of blues, greens, and whites as power billowed from the Binding Tree. Snow swirled with unseen impact, curling in waves before it resumed its placid, drifting descent.
Berin looked slowly up at the tree, but Arune remained focused on the ice. No, no longer ice. It had begun to melt, turning to warm liquid beneath my hands. I drew back, daring to hope that Thray would sit up, that she’d reach for me. But all I saw was water and snow, and the shadowed blur that was my cousin’s motionless body.
The ground beneath our feet moaned. Foreboding coiled in my stomach and I followed Berin’s gaze up. Foxfire runes continued to strengthen on the Binding Tree, and now I saw the colors begin to change—blue being replaced by gold, and green by amber. The colors of the High Halls.
My question now is… Feen’s voice drifted back to me. Can you heal the Binding Tree, and restrengthen Imilidese’s bonds? Or will your power heal the doorway to the High Halls and release her instead?
Slowly, I stood and faced the tree. Berin shifted closer to my side, his watchful gaze now divided between the trunk and the snow. Behind us, Arune’s hovered at the edge of the former ice cairn, as if he held himself back from reaching in and physically pulling his sister out.
“What did Feen say about the Binding Tree?” Berin murmured. “And your power?”
“Creating it accidentally sealed the door to the High Halls.” I found it hard to breathe, my thoughts racing through possibilities too staggering to comprehend. “That reopening the rift between worlds would likely release Imilidese, and she’ll destroy creation. She… Feen thought I might be able to heal the tree instead and fix the binding. But I can’t have enough power for any of that.”
Blowing snowflakes caught in Berin’s beard and his eyes were darker than I’d ever seen before. “I seems you do, little sister.”
A gasp came from behind us, followed by a fit of coughing. I spun to find Arune beside the pit with a sodden Thray crumpled next to him, one arm around her half-brother’s shoulders as she wheezed, eyes glassy with shock.
A low, drawn-out creak of timber reverberated across the island. Foxfire runes sparked and flared and began a slow firefly pulse.
“Thray,” Arune whispered, his smile watery and his cheeks streaked with tears. He stroked her cheek and nodded to the glowing tree as the ground rumbled a third time. Far above our heads, I heard another ominous crack of splintering wood. “Welcome to the end of the world.”
Thray’s glossy eyes dragged from her brother to the snow and the tree. “How long?”
“Seven years. But we have to go now.”
Thray’s breaths began to come more quickly, her expression clearly overwhelmed. “The tree? What’s happening to the tree?”
Arune shrugged. “Can you stand?”
Thray nodded. As her brother helped her upright, her eyes slipped to Berin and me. She was focused, curious and wary, but clearly didn’t recognize us.
Why would she? Last time she’d seen us we were eleven years old and a world away, and my face had been swollen with tears as she left to battle her siblings on the coast of Eangen.
“I’m Yske.” My voice came out stronger than I thought it would. I rounded her former tomb, little more than a pool of water between the roots now, and stood behind Arune.
Berin came behind me, moving more slowly.
“Hessa’s Yske,” I clarified. “This is Berin.”
Thray stared, her expression slack. “This isn’t real,” she croaked, looking from us to Arune. “You’re not real.”
“Oh, I assure you, all of this is very real.” Arune glanced out at the snow, impatient now. “We need to go. I wasn’t lying to Feen—the Revenants were almost to shore.”
Another crack rang out and foxfire flared through the thinning snow, rays of light condensing into tangling, knotting threads. The threads looked like the ones I’d seen beneath the tree, but these lanced into the air over the island in a chaotic spiderweb of renewing, humming power. There were more cracks, followed by a moan and a crash that shook the ground.
“Branches are falling,” Isik’s voice warned on the wind. “The Revenants are almost upon you. Run. Run!”
We started to move, Arune supporting Thray until she steadied into a wolfish lope. She drew a bone-handled knife from her belt and flicked it into a long white spear.
The sight filled me with courage—then all was replaced with the chattering, nattering screech of Revenants on the hunt. A wind came with them, swirling with the scent of summer storms and a blast of freezing rain.
Isik materialized at my side in mid-sprint, dark hair tousled by the wind and a stolen Hask spear in hand. My staff was in the other, and he handed it to me without a word. I was so preoccupied by his face, his flash of a grim smile and his windblown hair, that it took me a moment to register the figures over his shoulder. Revenants, shambling, striding, and crawling out of the storm after us.
“The island is overrun,” Isik panted, keeping pace with me but following my gaze. “The mainland too. Winterborn! Can either of you freeze the lake?”
Thray didn’t ask who he was, but shook her head.
“We’re no Icecarvers,” Arune said. “Your only hope is the boat.”
“It’s not far,” I cut in. “Keep—”
I broke off into a startled shout as the first Revenant came into range—a leaping, snarling thing that might once have been a mountain cat. I spun my staff in two hands to fight it off, but Thray was already in motion. She charged in front of me and snapped out her spear, opening the construct’s throat with the first slash and stabbing into its belly with the second. The sound of its shrieking cut off into a whistling gargle and it dropped, pawing at the snow.
“Glad your nap didn’t slow you down,” Arune commented, ducking to his sister’s side and pulling the axe from his belt. He unfastened the hood with apparent nonchalance and tossed the boiled leather aside.
Another Revenant charged straight for me. I brought one end of my staff down on its head just as Isik turned and Arune vanished. The Winterborn reappeared just long enough to split the stunned creature’s skull and throw it to the ground, hacking its face and throat twice more before he looked up at Isik, who hadn’t had a chance to intervene.
“You’re not very helpful, are you?” Arune asked, lips peeled back in a vulpine smile.
Isik, to my surprise, laughed. It was bizarre in the tension of the moment, Isik’s limbs loosening and his grin broad, his eyes alight. “Do you know how many of these I’ve already killed?”
“No, but do tell me. We’ve plenty of time for bragging.”
A nearby Revenant howled, so close and so loud my bones trembled.
Instinct took over. I grabbed Berin’s sleeve and bolted for the shoreline. Isik shouted directions, but the Revenants were everywhere, circling in. I avoided them where I could and trusted my companions to cut them down where I couldn’t, all the while searching for a path through our enemies.
Steadily, though, we were driven east. I didn’t notice until I saw the snow fade into an emptiness—colorless, devoid of light or shape. As snowflakes struck its edges they disappeared, as if they had never been.
The Unmade. I shouted a warning and diverted along the precipice, gripped by a terror deeper than ever before—a terror of the unknown, of unmaking, and what might happen if I stumbled over that divide.
Multiple Revenants parted from the snow, mantled with white, river-stone eyes glistening with frozen moisture. I battered aside a reaching hand and stepped neatly out of Berin’s way. He smashed the back of his axe into the head of my attacker and Thray darted in, dispatching the next with quick, precise movements. Arune was a blur, further out in the snow, slicing and turning, obscured in the white. Isik brought up the rear, but I didn’t dare risk looking back at him.
The ground beneath my feet softened, mud eating up the snow and turning the shore into a patchwork of snow-topped rocks and stands of reeds with white-laden heads. The lake lay beyond.
A gust of wind cleared the snow from the shoreline as Berin plunged into the reeds, searching for the boat. The light of the tree swelled into the open air, now bright as dawn.
It also brought the black abyss of the Unmade into stark clarity. And there, in its unyielding blackness, I saw… foxfire. It moved the same way as the runes on the tree, pulsing and flaring, yet it had no light. It was the opposite of light, a deeper darkness in the shapes of ancient binding symbols.
A body hit me. Cold water punched the air from my lungs and poured into my open mouth. I struck out, eyes wide—but the water was thick and blurry. I saw nothing more than a distortion of wood and moss, then six rows of fine fish teeth snapped at my throat.
I shoved the end of my staff into the mouth, and reached for the beast’s neck. I was distantly aware of claws tearing at my arms, my face and torso. But I let them. I accepted them, a sacrifice I made as sinew and flesh tore beneath my grasp. Brackish blood bloomed in the water. Claws wrapped around my ribs and shook me like a child’s toy.
This was the pool in Aegr’s cave all over again. This was Ovir dying. This was the edge of life, the edge of the creation itself.
I grabbed the creature’s shuddering jaw as it tried to clamp onto my shoulder. My fingers shredded on razor teeth but I barely felt it, my awareness of the Unmade growing. We’d drifted toward it, the creature and I, until it was no farther than a few accidental kicks away. Water rippled at its edges and disappeared with each wave and churn.
The Revenant followed my gaze and stilled. Lungs burning, blood drumming against the inside of my skull, I tore the creature’s claws from my flesh, twisted in the water, and thrust myself off the lakebed with my staff.
The Revenant drifted the other way, blurred by water and the mingling of our blood—mine pink, its rotted and discolored. Light from the blazing Binding Tree cut through the waves above us in a swaying placid blur.
Then the monster reached the barrier between Made and Unmade, its jaw open in a silent, stunned shriek. I saw something human in its face then, something haunted and forgotten, the echo of the true life that had once inhabited its bones. Then it vanished as if it had never been.
I floated, suspended in the bloodied, rune-lit lake. Between two heartbeats, I thought of the spark of humanity in the Revenant’s eyes. I thought of the Hask Guardian I’d stabbed. I thought of the man I’d butchered as a child, while my mother lay helpless. I thought of healing and peace, and how badly I wanted to vanish into the solitude of my home on the mountainside.
Then my head broke the surface. Blinking, I looked back toward the shore. I saw Thray running, partially silhouetted against a backdrop of rune-lit snow. Arune, materializing at her side. Berin, beheading a Revenant and turning, searching for me as four more monsters peeled from the snow and charged him.
I stalked from the water with my staff in hand and a deep, inevitable peace in my chest. I felt no hesitation at the violence I was about to wreak, nor did I feel rage. There was only need and action, a cleanliness and an unyielding justice. My power burned—I knew that distantly, felt my wounds knitting, but I had no conscious control.
In this moment, to save, I had to destroy. To heal, I had to bleed.
So I would.
I began to run. One heartbeat, I raised my staff. Two, and I clubbed a Revenant off my brother’s back. I pinned it to the mud on its belly and tore out the sinews of its throat like weeds from a garden. Again when its claws tore into me, I allowed them—let my flesh part and golden-scarlet blood fall. I needed no runes to corral it anymore. The magic sang. The worst of my wounds healed while others bled on and my power swelled once more.
Aita’s power was completely leaving my control. I knew that even as I welcomed its healing and lunged back to my feet.
Berin threw the last Revenant off. Small and knotted with vines, it slammed into the blackness of the Unmade and vanished, just as the Revenant in the water had. There was no impact, no ripple or change. Just a cessation of being.
Berin staggered, chest heaving. Then he met my eyes, I clasped his hand, and we ran again.
The next moments were a haze of action and movement. More claws came, more blood fell, and more power moved through me. Berin’s injuries healed. Our companions came and went, fighting back the dozens of Revenants that harried us, and their wounds, too, stitched back together.
Finally, I saw the boat. It remained wedged in the reeds, but a dozen figures were in the shallows between us and it. They were not Revenants—at least not all of them. They were Fith warriors, many armed with bows.
The five of us regrouped just out of bowshot, blood-splattered, bleeding and gasping. Around us Revenants screeched and circled, cautious and bloodthirsty—we had a moment of reprieve, no more.
No one had the breath for words, but Thray’s gaze was a question and a prompt. Berin nodded, Arune drew a breath and vanished, and Isik looked at me, a hundred warnings in his eyes.
“I’m a fool,” he said. “I followed you because I love you, Yske.”
I smiled at him, sharp-edged and fragile and heady with the constant flow of magic. “Then I’m a fool, too.”
Thray charged our enemies, loosing an Eangen war-cry as she went. Six of the Fith toppled, blood mist bursting around them and falling like snow. The horror of it passed over me, one ineffectual terror in the midst of a thousand.
The rest fled and our way was clear. Berin leapt to a reedy island and dragged the boat close. I tumbled inside. Thray followed, taking the tiller as Berin pushed us off and joined us in a sloshing leap.
I used my staff to shove us out onto the lake, then traded it for an oar and scanned the shoreline for Isik. He and Arune remained covering our retreat, cutting down Revenants and human worshipers on every side. Then a gust of wind and freezing rain swept the two Miri-blooded men away, leaving our remaining enemies to scream and shriek alone on the shore.
When we reached the open lake, I looked back at the tree. The snow around its base was mottled with fallen branches and foxfire light steadily pulsed, transforming into a lattice of golden threads that encased the island.
The trunk of the Binding Tree remained intact, but I sensed a straining, a captive against bonds. And through the water itself, undergirded by roots and lorded over by branches, a presence hummed.