Chapter 106. She Was Not Stronger Than the Others, She Was Simply Spoken Fo

Chapter 106: 106. She Was Not Stronger Than the Others, She Was Simply Spoken Fo

The second panel was dark.

I took an involuntary step back. There was fire in it, in streaks of orange and black, and broken chains.

There were small, bent shapes in the foreground, half-human, half-beast, kneeling in the dirt. And above them, tall and pale, with a face that was blank and smooth like an unlit lamp, stood a figure in a robe.

He held a long golden chain in both hands. The chain was wound around the throats of the kneeling figures, and he was smiling.

"The Hollow Man," Elysandra said. "The Culling."

A cold crawl went up my spine. It wasn’t Cassian’s face.

But it was his smile that brought life. It was the smile of a man who has found something beautiful and decided to keep it.

The third panel was lit with a soft, clear radiance.

Ten beasts stood tall again, unbroken, their heads raised. And in the very center of them, standing on a patch of bare earth, stood a single human figure.

He was drawn simply, almost roughly, as if the painter had wanted to leave room. He had no armor and no weapon.

He had one hand raised, in front of him, with the palm turned up.

Open.

Above him, in a deep blue sky, hung two moons. One was bright, and one was dim.

I stared at the open hand.

’Hold on,’ I thought. ’Wait... it can’t be... No.’

"The fourth panel," Elysandra said, "is unfinished."

I looked. And she was right.

At the far right of the mural, past the third scene, there was an empty space, a wall of plain pale stone, perhaps ten feet wide, with only a faint dusting of the pearly paint across it, as if the artist had set down the brush mid-stroke.

"Fate has not yet painted it," she said.

I stepped up to the third panel.

I couldn’t help it. I walked right up to the wall, as near as I could get, and stared at the painted hand.

It was a plain, ordinary hand.

Square palm.

Four fingers and a thumb.

The fingers were just slightly different lengths, the middle one a little longer than the others, and the last one crooked, just a bit, at the top.

I held up my own hand, and I looked at it.

Middle finger, a little longer. Little finger, slightly crooked.

I’d broken it in second grade, falling off a bike.

My mouth was dry. I could feel six pairs of eyes on my back.

And nobody said a word.

I counted the beasts again. There were ten in the third panel, all of them standing, all with their faces turned toward the open hand.

I could make out six clearly: the wolf, the panther, the bull, the deer, the unicorn, and the rabbit.

The other four were blurred and indistinct, as if the painter had only sketched them or had painted them in a mist.

A fox, I thought, with a long, bushy tail.

Something large and golden, maybe a cat.

And... Something with wings? Probably.

And a fourth, which I couldn’t identify at all. It was only a shadow, a darkness at the edge of the light.

"In the old tongue," said Elysandra, "he is called the Open Hand."

"In ours, we have come to call him the Beastmate."

She gave me a chair. It was a small one, an ordinary wooden chair with a rush seat, and I think she’d put it there for that purpose long before we arrived.

I sat on it. She stood in front of me, with her hands folded in front of her gown and her pearly horn catching the light, and she told me the story.

She didn’t hurry. She spoke slowly, calmly, in a voice that made me think of a teacher at the end of a very long school year, finally ready to give the lesson she’d been saving.

The others stood around us in a loose half circle, silent, listening.

"In the beginning," she said, "there were ten great spirits, who were neither beast nor woman, but something older than either."

"They were the gods of the wild places..."

"The wolf of the winter."

"The panther of the night."

"The bull of the high plains."

"They lived alone, and they were strong, but... they were lonely."

I thought about a silver wolf with a crown of ice.

"Humans came... They were small and frightened, and they had no claws."

"But they had hands." She turned her own over, slowly. "Hands that could build and plant and even hold."

"The spirits saw them, and they wanted what they had..."

"The humans saw the spirits, and they wanted their strength..."

"So they made a deal," I said.

"They made a bargain... The spirits would share their forms."

"They would walk upon two legs and speak and love... And in return, the humans would swear to protect them." She closed her eyes briefly. "That was the First Bargain, and every beastwoman alive is the child of it."

"Half of her is the spirit... Half is the woman... She carries the two of them within her, and she is neither, and she is both."

"And the humans broke it," Velora said, flatly.

"Not all at once." Elysandra opened her eyes. "It took a few generations."

"First the oaths were forgotten... Then the kindnesses, and then the chains." She looked at me. "I need not tell you what came after."

I didn’t answer. I remembered a row of women in iron collars, shuffling through a gate. I remembered a barred wagon with nine villagers curled up on the floor.

"Hollow Elves," Elysandra said quietly, "and the Drowned Court have taken their share, as well."

"There are older enemies than man... But that is a tale for another day." She raised a hand before anyone could speak. "One horror at a time."

Magnara’s jaw tightened. I decided not to ask.

"Which brings me to the Beastmate..."

"He is not a king," Elysandra said. "He is not a master, or an owner, or a lord."

"If you hear any of the old stories tell it so, they are wrong." She met my eyes. "He is a redeemer."

"A man from beyond this world, born in another place, who is called to mend the bargain in the one way it can be mended..."

"Freely, and as an equal... with an open hand."

My throat had gone dry.

"Ma’am," I said. My voice cracked. "I don’t want to be rude... But I think you’ve got the wrong guy."

She tilted her head.

"I mean, I’m not a good person... I really, really wasn’t."

"I was a bully and a cheat and a liar... I used people." I rubbed the back of my neck. "I don’t think that’s the right résumé for a redeemer."

For a moment, she looked at me without expression.

Then, very slightly, her mouth curved.

"Yes," she said gently. "My daughter said so."

’What...? Daughter...? ’ I was confused with what she just said.

She told me the rules.

I’d expected a long speech. And she was brief.

She stood with her hands clasped and spoke in short, plain sentences, in the clear, soft voice of someone reading from a book she knew by heart.

A mate bond, she said, was only valid if it was freely chosen and freely given and could be freely withdrawn.

Anything forced, bought, or tricked, however sweetly it was dressed, was void... It would not hold.

I sat very still. I thought about a certain cold voice that had told me, on my first day in this world, that I could not force anyone.

I thought about it a lot.

"There is a second rule," Elysandra said, "that follows from the first..."

"A bond freely given cannot be overruled by one that was stolen."

She looked at Elsbeth.

"The Oathglass... The Moonshards... Every collar, every chain, and every crystal that the Chain has made."

"They are all, at their root, a yes... that was taken."

"A stolen word, forced into the mouth of someone who did not wish to say it... And a stolen yes has no power against a freely given one."

Elsbeth had gone very still.

"That is why you resisted," Elysandra said, to her, very gently. "In the courtyard of Hearthfang..."

"When he called you home... You were not stronger than the others, my dear."

"You were spoken for."

Elsbeth’s hand drifted to her throat. She didn’t look at me.

But I saw something move across her face, a wave of light, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.

I remembered a flicker of text at the edge of my vision, in the middle of a ruined courtyard.

’External coercion: rejected.’

I hadn’t known what it meant, but... I did now.