Chapter 458: Fire on the River

The river screamed.

That is the only way I can describe it. The sound of a thousand years of cold water meeting something that had been burning since before the world had a name. Steam exploded up from the ford in a white wall so thick and so high that the far bank vanished behind it.

And through the steam, walking, came Surtr.

He was not dark iron anymore. Not cooled. Not dim.

He was burning.

All of him. Every inch. Molten and white-hot and blinding, the fire pouring off him in sheets, the river boiling away from his legs as he walked. Where his feet came down, the riverbed turned to glass.

He did not stop at the near bank.

He climbed out of the water and onto the frozen grass, and the grass did not burn. It flashed to steam. The black frost spreading out from Varrick's shadows hissed and cracked and retreated before him like a tide going out.

He walked toward the river wall.

Toward the ring of shadows.

Toward Julian.

The shadows turned.

They had been circling Julian. Swirling around his feet, reaching for him and not quite touching. Now they stopped. All at once. Every black column along the riverbank went still.

Then they turned toward the fire.

And from the middle of them, rising out of the ground like a man climbing out of a grave, came Varrick.

Not all of him. I understood that later. Not his whole self. Only as much as he could push through the shadows from wherever he truly was. A shape. Tall. Gray-coated. Pale-eyed. Darker at the edges than a man should be, as though he were made of the same black frost spreading out across the grass.

He looked at Surtr.

“Hello, old friend,” he said.

Surtr did not slow.

He walked straight at Varrick through the ring of shadows, and where the fire touched them, they burned. Not the way paper burns. The way ice burns when you drop it on a forge. With a hiss and a crack and a scream that was not quite a sound.

Varrick did not move.

He watched Surtr come.

“A thousand years,” Varrick said. “You burned me. In the south, in the place where fire is born. I couldn't come near you for a thousand years.” His pale eyes glittered. “Do you know how much I've grown since then?”

Surtr reached him.

He did not speak.

He brought both burning hands down on Varrick's shoulders.

The light was so bright I could not see.

I threw my arm across my eyes. Beside me, Thor shouted something. Brannoc. Kaedra. I could not hear what. The roar of the fire and the scream of the shadows and the boiling of the river drowned everything.

When I could see again, Varrick was still standing.

Surtr's hands were still on his shoulders.

The fire was pouring into him. Into the gray coat. Into the pale face. Into the darkness at his edges.

And the darkness was drinking it.

Not all of it. Not easily. Varrick's face was twisted with effort. Smoke was rising from his coat. The frost around his feet had melted into black water.

But he was standing.

“A thousand years,” Varrick said through his teeth. “A thousand years of souls. A thousand years of gods.” He reached up and closed his pale hands over Surtr's burning wrists. “You can't burn me anymore, old friend. There's too much of me.”

The shadows that had been holding Skarn let go.

All of them at once. They peeled away from the giant's chest and flowed across the ground toward Varrick, toward Surtr, wrapping around the fire giant's legs, his waist, his arms.

Surtr roared.

The fire flared.

The shadows burned.

More came.

From the ground. From the frozen grass. From the giants lying on the riverbank, wrapped in darkness, not moving. Every shadow along the river wall pulled loose and poured toward Surtr.

The fire began to dim.

“Julian,” Adriana said.

She had stopped beside me at the edge of the black frost. The silver light was blazing around her hands so bright that it lit the steam rising off the river.

Julian had not moved.

He stood exactly where he had been standing, in the middle of what had been the ring of shadows, with his father's helmet on his head. The shadows had left him to go to Surtr.

He was staring at the fire giant.

At Varrick.

At the darkness pouring over Surtr's burning body.

“He came,” Julian said. His voice was very quiet. “He said he'd know. And he came.”

“Julian, come here,” Adriana said. “Now. While they're—”

“He came because of me,” Julian said.

He did not move toward his sister.

He moved toward Surtr.

Adriana screamed his name.

Julian did not stop.

He walked across the frozen grass toward the burning giant and the god of death, with his father's helmet on his head and his hands at his sides.

The shadows did not touch him.

They were too busy with Surtr.

Julian stopped three paces from them.

He reached up.

He took off the helmet.

He held it in both hands, the way he had held it in the river the morning he first saw Surtr, and looked down at it.

At the dents. At the scorch marks. At the black line across the crown.

Two lines.

I could see them now, in the light of Surtr's fire. Two black lines, crossing each other. One older. Fainter. Surtr's beacon. One newer. Darker.

Ansel's mark. From the serpent's road.

Varrick's now.

“Surtr,” Julian said.

He did not shout. His voice was very quiet. But the fire giant heard him.

Surtr's burning head turned.

His molten eyes found the boy standing three paces away, holding the helmet.

“It's got both of you in it,” Julian said. “Your beacon. And his mark.” He held the helmet up. “That's how he found us. That's how he found the giants.”

Surtr did not answer.

He was straining. His whole burning body locked in a struggle with the shadows wrapped around him, and the god of death holding his wrists.

“Burn it out,” Julian said.

Surtr stared at him.

“His mark,” Julian said. “Burn it out. Leave yours.” His hands were shaking on the helmet. “So you can still find us. And he can't.”

Varrick turned his head.

He looked at Julian.

For the first time, his pale face showed something that was not patience. Not mildness.

Fear.

“Don't,” he said.

Julian looked at him.

“That's my father's helmet,” Julian said. “You don't get to keep it.”

He threw it.

Not hard. Not far. Three paces. Underhand. The way you toss something to someone you trust to catch it.

Surtr let go of Varrick's shoulders.

He caught the helmet.

The fire did not dim when he touched it.

It concentrated.

All of it. Every flame pouring off Surtr's body drew inward, into his hands, into the dented steel helmet he was holding.

The helmet glowed red. Then orange. Then white.

The two black lines across its crown blazed.

One of them screamed.

I heard it. Everyone heard it. A thin high shriek like a nail dragged across glass, coming out of the steel.

Then it went silent.

Surtr lowered the helmet.

It was still glowing. Still too hot to touch. The steel had softened slightly. The dents had smoothed. The scorch marks were gone.

Across its crown, one black line.

Old. Faint.

His.

Varrick staggered.

He let go of Surtr's wrists. He stepped back. The shadows wrapped around the fire giant's legs loosened, wavered, began to fall away.

“Clever boy,” Varrick said.

His voice was thin. Brittle.

He looked at Julian.

“Clever,” he said again. “Just like your father. He held a bridge. You threw a helmet.”

Julian did not answer.

“I'll remember you,” Varrick said softly. “When your time comes. When you walk the last road. I'll be waiting at the door.”

Adriana stepped forward.

The silver light around her hands had gone white. It was not a glow anymore. It was a blaze. A wall. A refusal so bright that the black frost around her feet hissed and cracked and retreated.

She did not stop until she was standing beside her brother.

She took his hand.

She looked at Varrick.

“No,” she said.

Varrick looked at her.

“No,” Adriana said again. “You won't.”

“You can't stop death, little queen.”

“I'm not stopping death,” Adriana said. “I'm stopping you.” The light around her blazed. “Every time. Every door. Every road.” Her voice did not waver. “When my brother dies, a hundred years from now, in a bed, with his children around him. I'll be there. Or my children will. Or theirs.” She lifted her chin. “And someone will be singing. And he'll look to his left. And he'll see the lamp.”

Varrick stared at her.

The shadows around him were thinning. Falling away. Sinking back into the frozen ground.

Behind him, Surtr had straightened. The fire was coming back to him. Pouring off his body again, white-hot and blinding.

Thor had come up on Adriana's other side with Mjölnir raised, lightning crawling up her arms.

Brannoc on Julian's other side, his bandaged hands open, ready to grip.

Kaedra behind them with her bow drawn.

And me.

I had my hand on the ground.

Not lightning. Not frost.

The thaw.

I felt the black frost beneath my palm. Cold. Endless. The cold at the bottom of a well.

I pushed against it.

The way you push against ice in spring. Not breaking it. Warming it. Reminding it what it was before it froze.

The black frost cracked.

Green came up through it.

Grass. Thin and pale and new. In the middle of winter. On the riverbank where Varrick's shadows had been.

Varrick looked down at it.

At the grass coming up around his feet.

At the fire burning on one side of him and the storm on the other. At the silver wall between him and the boy he wanted.

At the castle on the hill behind us, with lamps in every window.

From the castle, very faint, carried on the wind, a song.

Badly. Out of tune. A soldier's song, slow and sad, with the Keeper's verse at the end.

They were still singing.

In the lower corridor. In front of his door. Lethan and Teren and the daughters and Callan and Liora.

The bell was still ringing.

Varrick closed his eyes.

“They're still walking,” he said quietly.

Nobody answered.

“Soldiers,” Varrick said. “Old ones. A few at a time.” He opened his eyes. “Do you know what it's like? To feel them leave? After a thousand years?”

“No,” Adriana said.

“It's like bleeding,” Varrick said.

He looked at Surtr.

“The way Ansel bled,” he said softly. “For a thousand years. From the old woman's light.”

Then he was gone.

Not dramatically. Not with a scream or a flash. The shape that was Varrick simply sank back into the ground the way it had risen. Into the shadows. Into the frost.

And the shadows sank with him.

The black frost melted. The darkness along the river wall drained away into the earth like water into sand.

The giants lying on the riverbank stirred.

Skarn was on his knees, gasping, his huge gray hands pressed against his chest where the shadows had been.

Two of his companions sat up.

The third did not.

He was called Hrafn.

Skarn told us later. He had been the youngest of the four who carried Corra across the ford. He had been with Surtr's army for two years. He had stood in the river for three nights before he found the courage to cross.

He had been working on the river wall with Julian when the shadows came. Showing him how to set a foundation stone so it would hold against the spring floods.

The shadows had taken him first.

He lay on the riverbank with his eyes open, staring up at the sky, and he was not breathing.

Skarn knelt beside him.

He did not make a sound.

He only put his enormous gray hand on the young giant's chest, and held it there.

Adriana let go of Julian's hand.

She walked across the frozen grass to where Hrafn lay.

She knelt beside Skarn.

She put her hand on the young giant's arm.

Silver light rose around her fingers.

“He's on the road,” she whispered.

I felt it. Through the ground. Through the thin dark line on my palm.

Something walking.

Slowly. Uncertainly. Down a long dark road toward a wall.

“Varrick's at the door,” Adriana said. Her voice was very tight. “He's waiting.” The silver light flared. “He's angry. He's—”

She stopped.

“No,” she said.

From the castle, carried on the wind, the song.

Lethan's ruined whisper. Teren's broken hum. The daughters. Callan. Liora.

The Keeper's verse.

The answer.

Adriana closed her eyes.

“Hrafn,” she said. “Look to your left.”

Skarn had gone very still beside her.

“There's a lamp,” Adriana said softly. “Past the wall. Someone's holding it up. Someone's singing.” Her voice cracked. “You don't have to go through his door. You don't have to be kept.”

The silver light blazed.

Then, slowly, faded.

Adriana opened her eyes.

She looked at Skarn.

“He turned,” she said. “He's walking. Toward the light.”

Skarn stared at her.

He did not understand her words. He did not speak our language.

But he understood her face.

He bowed his great head over Hrafn's body, and put both his enormous hands over his eyes, and wept.

Surtr had not moved.

He stood on the riverbank with the cooling helmet in his hands, the fire pouring off him dimming slowly back to the dark iron glow I had seen in the ford.

He was looking at Hrafn.

Then at Adriana, kneeling beside the dead giant with her hand on his arm.

Then at Julian.

The boy was standing where he had thrown the helmet. He had not moved either. His face was very pale, and his hands were shaking at his sides, and he was looking at Surtr.

Surtr walked to him.

Slowly. Every step leaving a print of glass in the frozen ground.

He stopped in front of Julian.

He held out the helmet.

It was still warm. I could feel the heat of it from where I stood. But not too hot to touch now.

Julian took it.

He looked down at it.

At the smoothed dents. At the scorch marks, gone. At the single faint black line across the crown.

“You saved it,” Julian said.

“You saved it,” Surtr said. “You threw it.”

Julian looked up at him.

“He'd have taken me,” he said. “Wouldn't he? If you hadn't come.”

Surtr was quiet for a long time.

“Yes,” he said.

Adriana stood up.

She walked across the grass and stopped beside her brother.

She looked at Surtr.

Surtr looked back.

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

Then Adriana said, “You came.”

“I said I would.”

“You said you'd know. If Varrick came for the giants.” Her voice was very steady. “You didn't say you'd come.”

Surtr did not answer.

“He'd have taken Julian,” Adriana said. “My brother. My father's son.” She looked up at him. “You burned my father. And then you walked through a river to save his son.”

Surtr was silent.

“I still don't forgive you,” Adriana said.

“I know.”

“I'm never going to forgive you.”

“I know.”

Adriana drew a breath.

“Thank you,” she said.

Surtr did not move.

He stood very still on the riverbank, with the dark iron glow fading into him, and looked down at Roderic's daughter.

“You don't have to thank me,” he said.

“I know,” Adriana said. “I'm doing it anyway.”

Surtr looked at her for a long time.

Then he bowed his head.

Not much. A slight inclination. The way he had bowed to Julian in the ford.

But to her.

He was hurt.

I saw it when he turned. Along his left side, where Varrick's shadows had wrapped around him most tightly, the dark iron of his body was cracked. Not glowing red in the cracks the way the rest of him did. Black. The black of frost. Of the bottom of a well.

He swayed slightly.

Thor saw it too.

“Surtr,” she said.

He did not turn.

“You're hurt,” Thor said.

“It'll heal,” Surtr said.

“Will it?”

Surtr did not answer.

Thor looked at the black cracks along his side. At the frost spreading slowly through them, the way Varrick's shadows had spread through Ishkar.

“Evelyn could—” Thor began.

“No,” Surtr said.

He said it very quietly.

He looked at Adriana.

“Not from her,” he said. “Not from Roderic's daughter's sister-wife. Not after what I did.” His voice was very low. “I'll go back across the river. I'll burn it out. It may take a while.”

Adriana stepped forward.

She looked at the black cracks in Surtr's side.

At the frost spreading through them.

At the fire giant swaying slightly on the riverbank, refusing to be healed by her family because he had killed her father.

“Evelyn's coming,” she said.

Surtr looked at her.

“She's been on her way since the alarm,” Adriana said. “She'll be here in a few minutes.” She held his gaze. “She'll look at your side. She'll put her hands on the cracks. She'll heal what she can.”

“I said—”

“I heard what you said,” Adriana said. “And I'm saying this.” The silver light rose faintly around her hands. “You don't get to refuse it. Not because of me. I won't let my father's death be a reason someone stays hurt.”

Surtr stared at her.

“That's not your decision,” he said.

“No,” Adriana agreed. “It's Evelyn's. And she'll make it the same way she makes every decision.” She almost smiled. “She'll put her hands on you and tell you to hold still.”

Evelyn came over the rise a few minutes later.

She was running. Liora and Mireth behind her. Aurelia behind them.

She saw Hrafn first, lying on the riverbank with Skarn kneeling over him, and her face went very still. She went to him first. Put her hand on his chest. Closed her eyes.

Then she opened them.

She looked at Adriana.

Adriana nodded.

Evelyn bowed her head for a moment.

Then she stood up and turned and saw Surtr.

She saw the black cracks along his side.

She walked straight to him.

She did not ask. She did not hesitate. She put both hands flat against the cracked dark iron of his body, and the gold and blue light rose around her fingers.

Surtr went rigid.

“Hold still,” Evelyn said. “This will take a while.”

It did take a while.

Evelyn knelt on the frozen riverbank with her hands on Surtr's side for nearly an hour. The gold and blue light rose and faded and rose again. The black frost in the cracks melted, slowly, the way ice melts in spring.

Surtr did not move.

He stood very still on the riverbank and let the saint of Greykeep heal him.

He did not look at her.

He looked at Adriana.

Adriana was sitting on the frozen grass beside Julian, with her arm around her brother's shoulders and the helmet in his lap. She was not looking at Surtr.

She was looking at the river.

At the steam still rising from the ford. At the glass where Surtr's feet had walked. At the far bank, where the burned forest stood, and the pale green buds on every blackened stump.

When it was done, Evelyn sat back on her heels.

She was gray with exhaustion. Her hands were shaking.

Surtr looked down at her.

“Why?” he asked.

Evelyn looked up at him.

“Because you were hurt,” she said.

“I killed her father.”

“I know.”

“Your sister-wife's father. Your son's grandfather.”

“I know,” Evelyn said. She looked at him steadily. “And tonight you walked through a river to save her brother. And got hurt doing it.”

Surtr did not answer.

Evelyn stood up slowly. Liora caught her arm.

“That doesn't make us even,” Evelyn said. “Nothing ever will.” She looked at the healed iron of his side. “But it means you were hurt, and I could help. So I did.” She paused. “That's all it ever means.”

Surtr did not go back across the river that night.

He sat down on the riverbank instead, beside the river wall, with his back to the half-repaired foundation stones.

Skarn sat beside him.

Neither of them spoke.

After a while, the two surviving giants who had been working with Skarn came and sat down too. Then three more, from the farms along the river road, who had heard the alarm and come running.

They sat in a line along the riverbank with Surtr at the end, and they looked at Hrafn's body, lying on the frozen grass under a cloak Skarn had laid over him.

Julian sat with them.

He had not left. Adriana had tried to bring him back to the castle. He had looked at her and said, very quietly, “He was teaching me to set foundation stones.” And Adriana had looked at Hrafn's body, and then at her brother, and let go of his hand.

So Julian sat on the riverbank with the giants, with his father's helmet in his lap, and did not say anything.

Surtr looked at him.

Julian looked back.

“He was good at stones,” Julian said.

Surtr was quiet for a long time.

“Yes,” he said. “He was.”

I went back to the castle near midnight.

The singing had stopped.

I found them in the lower corridor. All of them. Lethan was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and his eyes closed, breathing very carefully. Teren sat beside him with his arm around his shoulders. The daughters were curled together on the floor beside them, asleep.

Callan was back on his stool beside the lamp.

Liora was kneeling beside Lethan, checking his pulse.

The bell lay silent at the base of Varrick's door.

Liora looked up when I came down the stairs.

“They sang for three hours,” she said quietly. “He wouldn't stop. Neither would Teren. I tried to make them.” She looked down at Lethan. “The bell rang the whole time. Every few minutes. Sometimes faster.”

“How many?” I asked.

Liora shook her head.

“I don't know,” she said. “Callan counted.”

I looked at Callan.

He was sitting very still on his stool, staring at the door. His face was gray.

“Two hundred and eleven,” he said.

Two hundred and eleven.

Out of a thousand years.

I stood in the lower corridor and looked at the door.

At the mark. A closed door, with no line through it.

At the bell lying silent at its base.

At Lethan, asleep against the wall, his ruined voice used up.

Two hundred and eleven souls who had walked the last road and found the wall and heard a soldiers' song sung badly through the stone, and looked to their left, and seen a lamp.

And walked.

“It's not enough,” Callan said quietly.

“No,” I agreed.

“There's so many more.”

“Yes.”

Callan looked up at me.

“But it's two hundred and eleven,” he said. “Who aren't kept anymore.”

I did not say anything.

I put my hand on his shoulder.

He did not move.

But after a moment, he reached up and put his own hand over mine.

Saelis came in at dawn.

He came through the smoke on the eastern battlements the way he had come the first time, a black shape tumbling out of the gray sky. But he was not injured this time. He landed on his feet and changed and stood there breathing hard with feathers in his hair.

Castellan woke me.

I went up to the battlements.

Saelis was standing at the northern parapet, looking out at the road.

He turned when I came up the stairs.

His face was very strange.

“The island,” he said.

I stopped.

“In the north,” Saelis said. “The first house on Cael's list. Beyond the coast road. Reached only by a causeway at low tide.” He swallowed. “I've been feeling for it for weeks. Since the lighthouse. Since Ysolde reached Cael.”

“And?”

“And there's someone in it,” Saelis said. “Sending a message. Every night. Like Anwen. Like Corra. Like Cael.”

“What's the message?”

Saelis did not answer at once.

He looked past me.

Down the stairs. Toward the castle. Toward the garden, where a pear tree was blossoming in winter, and a woman with silver hair was sitting on a bench beneath it, as she had sat every night since the basin.

“It's only one word,” Saelis said quietly. “It's been the same word every night for as long as I've been able to feel it.” He looked back at me. “I never knew who it was for. Until tonight. Until I saw her sitting under that tree.”

“What word?”

Saelis was quiet for a long moment.

“Mother,” he said.