Chapter 217: Benefactor [BONUS]

On the southern bank of the Riven, Gus could barely make out the small dark shape at the end of the bridge.

He saw it on its knees. Then he saw it tip forward, slowly, like a tree that has been cut through and has not yet realized it.

Then he could not see it at all. Only the stone.

"He’s fallen," Ysolde said.

She had not taken her eyes off the end of the bridge since the light. She saw farther than any of them.

"He’s face down on the stone." Her voice did not sound like her own. "He’s not moving."

Zuri was already running.

She went three steps toward the southern end of the Span before Sir Gareth caught her by the arm. She turned on him. For a moment, Gus thought she was going to strike him.

"Let go of me!"

"Commander, the bridge-"

"That’s my brother!"

"I know." Gareth did not let go. His face was grey. "And the bridge is going to fall. The old man said so. Anyone on it goes with it."

Zuri pulled against his grip. Gareth held on.

Beside them, Rael had taken a step toward the Span too. Hask’s hand closed on his shoulder, and stayed there.

Rael did not shake it off.

But he did not step back, either.

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Across the gorge, the horde woke.

The people on the other side heard it before they saw it. A roar, rising from tens of thousands of throats at once, rolling across the Riven like a wave. The Roamers that had been lying with their heads pressed to the ground were on their feet. They poured down the road toward the edge of the chasm, around the small wounded shape of the Dragon, and the ones at the front did not stop.

The Lopers jumped.

Gus watched them cross the gap in long, bounding leaps. Some of them fell into the gorge. Most of them did not. They landed on the cracked stone at the end of the bridge, and Reevers came behind them, leaping from their backs, and a Talljack reached across the gap with its impossibly long arms and hauled itself over.

All of them going toward the small dark shape lying on the stone.

At the southern end of the Span, the Grand Magus opened his eyes.

The low, heavy chant stopped.

And the old man screamed.

Gus had never heard a voice like it. It came out of that small, bent body and crossed half a mile of empty air as if the old man were standing at the far end of the bridge himself.

"Move! Brat! It’s done! It’s falling! Get off the bridge!"

The young master did not move.

Above them, the sky changed.

The clouds over the Riven, the ones the young master had cut in half, began to glow from inside. Dull red at first. Then orange. The air grew heavy and hot, and the people on the southern bank looked up, and many of them cried out.

Something was coming down.

"Brat!" the Grand Magus screamed. "Move!"

The young master did not move.

The first Loper reached him.

Gus saw it leap. He saw its shadow fall across the small dark shape on the stone. He saw its jaws open.

Zuri made a sound Gus would never forget.

And then, all at once, every Roamer on the end of the bridge fell down.

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Encrid could not see.

He did not know when his eyes had closed. He did not know if they had closed at all. There was only darkness, and the cold of the stone against his cheek, and a great heaviness pressing him down into it.

But he could still hear.

He heard the horde. He heard claws on rock, coming closer. He heard, very far away, someone screaming his name. A woman’s voice.

And beneath it, closer, an old man’s voice, cracked and desperate.

Move. Brat. It’s falling.

He understood the words. He told his legs to move. He told his arms to push. He told his body to roll, to crawl, to fall sideways off the edge of the Span if it had to.

Nothing happened.

His body was a stone lying on a stone. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

He felt breath on the back of his neck. Hot. Wet. He heard the click of teeth.

He thought, very clearly, ’I am going to die here.’

He thought, ’I hope Gus kept the lamp.’

Then he heard a sound he did not understand. A thin, high whisper, like a blade drawn very fast through silk. It came from his left. Then his right. Then everywhere at once.

And then many things fell.

He heard them hit the stone around him. Heavy, soft, one after another, like sacks of grain dropped from a wagon. Something warm splashed against his outstretched hand.

Then silence.

The breath on his neck was gone.

He lay in the dark and did not understand.

Someone was standing beside him.

He had not heard anyone come. Even now, with the whole of the bridge pressing against what was left of his senses, he had not felt a single footstep. But someone was there.

A hand came down on his shoulder. It was a gentle hand. The hand of a father checking on a child who has fallen asleep at the table.

"I hope," said a quiet voice above him, "that I am not too late, benefactor."

Encrid knew that voice.

He had heard it before. On a cold night behind the granary, a long time ago, when a forgettable man had stepped out of the dark. A quiet, even voice. The kind of voice a person might use when gently closing a door.

The Reaper of the Blue Moon.

Encrid tried to speak. Nothing came out.

"Don’t," the voice said. "You’ve done enough."

He felt himself lifted. Easily. As though he weighed nothing at all. He felt a shoulder under his ribs, and his arms hanging down, and the heat of the burning sky pressing on his back.

"You can sleep now," the voice said, very close to his ear. "We’ll take care of the rest."

And then there was nothing.

Not the dark. Not the cold. Not the voice.

Nothing at all.

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