Quick as breathing and quiet as hope, they moved to the mountain.
Scal led. It did not seem fair, to ask others to go where he would not lead. And though there were some hunger-pained faces of the pack, these people were Scal’s. They had chosen to follow the Nightbreaker.
The blind preacher Neira walked at his side, though he did not need her direction. The mountain was a hard thing to miss, dark shadow against dark sky, calling. He would need her when they got closer, need her to get inside the mountain, but for now she was a distraction. Scal wished to be alone. He was preparing to die.
There was a thing he had said to Rora. You sound like a person who is waiting to die. Always they had understood each other. Always he had seen a piece of himself in her, and of her in him. They could fight, and they could survive, and they could bear a great deal. There was an understanding, among those whose lives were shaped by the blood of others. Things that were true of Rora could be true of Scal as well.
In the village of the dead, where they had rested before marching on the mountain, Scal had chosen a small house to sleep in. He had looked at all the trinkets, all the collected pieces of a life lost, and he had started a fire in the cold hearth. In the North that had birthed him and shaped him, a dead man should be burned, and his most treasured belongings beside him. Scal could not burn the man who had lived in the borrowed house, but he could burn the man’s belongings.
Later, when he was alone in the empty room, in the sinking light of the well-fed fire, the door to the house had opened. Scal had been praying prayers without words, soundless hope and silent fear, and so he had not turned to see who entered. Yellow-clad legs had knelt at his side, and after a moment a hand had covered his own. Heavy with old scars, fire-seamed.
In the night before the end of it all, Vatri had sought out Scal, not Edro.
“There is so much danger here,” Vatri had said, and in Scal’s mind a different voice had whispered, There is danger in being alone . . .
“There is always danger,” he had said.
“If we fail in this,” and her fingers had tightened around his, desperate, “then we will all die.”
“We will all die anyway.”
She had whispered, “I’m not ready to die yet.” It was easy to forget that she was so young, still, hardly older than Scal himself. She had never seemed young, not before.
“Then we will not, yet.” Scal had turned his hand so that she could twine her fingers through his, gripping his hand as though he were the tether holding her to life. Together they had prayed, before the flickering fire that had eaten the remains of a dead man’s life.
And Scal had seen the flames move. Scal had seen his own death, rolling toward him like a quiet storm.
Vatri had told him anyone could see their future in the flames, if only they believed.
He had always thought his death—his true death, the end of his last life—would be waiting for him among the snows of the North. That the snow and the ice would swallow him, and would not spit him out once more. Perhaps, when the Parents had given him their fire, they had changed the shape of his death.
Scal had prayed—not for himself, knowing what the fires had shown him. He had prayed for Vatri, and for those who followed the Nightbreaker. For those who had lived in the village and thought death a better chance than the Long Night. For those who still huddled in their homes, doors sealed to the darkness. He had never, in all his life, asked the Parents for anything. But there, kneeling beside Vatri, he had asked them, Let me do this one thing.
The fire had not answered. After a time, Vatri’s fingers had slipped from his. She had said, “The gods ask so much of us, but they never ask more than what we can bear. They want us to succeed. We can’t ever forget that.” She had smiled at him, a tight and brittle thing, a crack in a mask. “I’ll see you after it’s over. Once more, in the light of the sun.” The door had closed behind her.
In the night before the end of it all, she had sought out Scal, and then she had left him to his empty silence.
The mountain rushed closer. The end raced with it. All things ended, and Scal had faced his death often enough that he was not afraid. The ground would split, and mountains would fall, and the sun would rise once more. Scal would not see it—I’ll see you after it’s over—but that did not matter. There was only one thing he had left to do.
To the left, a quiet clash of weapons, quickly silenced. “They have scouts,” Neira murmured, teeth flashing in a grin. “Yours are better.”
It was colder, in the deep shadow of the mountain. Scal had not yet drawn his sword. The fire or the ice that lined its edge would respond to his will. His will was, Not yet.
Neira moved forward, pressed both hands to the side of the mountain. For a long while she was silent and unmoving, as though listening for something very quiet. Or looking for something, with her eyes that somehow saw.
A door into the mountain slid open, and Neira stepped aside. “They’re ahead,” she said softly. “They’re not alone.” She smiled, that way she had of smiling when she should not. “Good luck.”
Scal stepped inside the mountain, and his army followed.
It was a hallway, and it was empty, but sound called Scal deeper. Voices. Footsteps. Screaming. The faintest light, but in the Long Night, any bit of light was not to be ignored. Scal drew his sword finally, holding it before him in both hands as he willed, Not yet. He did not need its light—it would give him away, and the way the distant screams bounced off the walls around him was as good as a map. He wondered if this was how Neira and all the other blind preachers saw with their missing eyes: by simply paying attention.
The light spread, and the screams echoed louder, and the hallway opened, and Scal saw them.
A wide room, and nearby a writhing cluster of people, one of them screaming endlessly. At the far end, a dais, and on it a girl—only she was not a girl. Scal knew it without knowing her, for the way looking at her made the blade want to burn in his hands. There was a boy below her who shared her face. There were swordsmen and witches and black-robed preachers scattered, but they did not matter. Scal fixed his eyes on the Twins, and willed, Now.
Let me do this one thing.
Fire licked along the blade, twisting around the spines of ice that lined its edge, and both the fire and the ice seemed to strain across the cavern, toward the Twins. Scal’s army streamed into the room behind him, ready to fight for their homes and their families, ready to die for the sun. They wasted no time, and the one screaming man was soon not the only one. Scal began to walk across the cavern.
The witches in the room shuddered and stuttered as Neira’s voice called out a single, meaningless word. Every witch as one turned to face Neira where she stood at the entrance to the cavern. They faced her with open mouths and fingers splayed wide, unmoving. They faced her as she began to laugh. They faced her as black smoke began to boil from her hands and mouth and missing eyes.
The Twins both watched Scal’s approach with wide eyes. Sororra with fury, the deep-burning anger that flared within her, so like the fire that Patharro loved in the humans he had shaped. And Fratarro’s eyes were wide with horror and, deeper, with relief.