Chapter 46. The Hand That Cracked a Prison Made of Moonglass

Chapter 46: 46. The Hand That Cracked a Prison Made of Moonglass

Velora looked at her.

There was a strange respect in her gold eyes, the look one sword gives another across a crowded room.

She didn’t say anything, but she tightened her grip on Sylvara’s arm, and Sylvara leaned into it just a little.

We took stock. Three Nightclaw riders were badly hurt, one with an arrow through the shoulder and one with a crushed leg.

A horse had died. And... Not a single Wolfkin had been killed.

Not one. That was something, especially knowing that they are ’beast’ women; they can control themselves to this extent is just insane.

Elsbeth walked among the kneeling Wolfkin with her sword sheathed, speaking to each of them in a low, steady voice.

"Halla... Halla, it is me!"

"Evrin... Can you hear me?"

No response.

Their glowing eyes stared at nothing.

Their breath rose in slow clouds of frost. Elsbeth knelt in front of a tall, gray-haired woman with a scar across her chin and pressed her palm to her cheek, and I saw her hand tremble.

"They are trapped inside," Sylvara said quietly. "The crystals hold their minds..."

"I do not know how to free them without killing the host."

"Then we have two choices," Velora said, in a voice like a drawn blade. "We kill them, or we leave them like this."

"No! We do not kill them," Elsbeth said.

"I am not suggesting it... I am saying the alternatives are just poor."

I wasn’t listening. I’d drifted a few steps away, toward a young Wolfkin woman kneeling at the edge of the group.

She was small for her kind, with short silver hair and a narrow, freckled face. Her eyes were glowing that same cold blue, but there was something else on her cheeks.

Tears... Frozen streaks of them, running down her skin and catching the light, even though her expression didn’t change at all.

She was crying, and she couldn’t make a sound.

I crouched down in front of her... I don’t know exactly why.

Maybe it was just curiosity, or maybe it was the same stupid habit that had gotten me into trouble with Millie in the first place.

I did the only thing I knew how to do.

I held out my hand, palm up... I didn’t touch her.

I just held it there with palms open, in the empty space between us.

"No pressure," I said softly. "If you want to... you can."

For a long moment, nothing happened.

Her eyes stayed fixed and glowing. Then her fingers twitched.

It was a tiny movement, hardly anything at all...

A slow, painful curl of her fingers against the pull of the threads that held her. Her whole arm shook with the effort.

Her jaw clenched, and a thin line of frost ran down her cheek.

Then, inch by inch, she reached out and put her hand in mine.

Her fingers closed around my palm, and the crystal at her throat cracked.

CRACK!

What...?

It made a sound like thin glass breaking. A web of white lines raced across its surface, and the cold blue light inside it flickered, guttered, and went out.

The glow drained from her eyes. They went back to gray, wide and wet and human, and she let out a ragged, choking gasp like a drowning woman breaking the surface.

"Gagghhhh...!"

She collapsed into my arms and started to sob.

Ding.

[Coercive binding detected.]

[Rule: Free will is not negotiable.]

I stared at the message, floating in the corner of my vision, for about a second.

I had no idea what it meant... I didn’t have time to think about it, either.

I had a crying Wolfkin soaking the front of my shirt and half a dozen people staring at me like I’d just walked on water.

"What did you do?!" Velora demanded.

"Nothing! I... uh... I held out my hand just to calm her down."

"That is not an answer that I wanted from you!"

"It’s the only one I’ve got... and it’s harmless anyway."

Elsbeth had dropped to her knees beside us. Her face was white.

"Bryn," she whispered. "Brynhild...?"

The silver-haired woman lifted her head and stared at her.

"Els... beth...?" she croaked. "Elsbeth... is that really you...?"

"It is me...!"

They fell into each other’s arms, and I let go and sat back on my heels, feeling oddly empty.

The others stared.

Velora’s eyes were narrowed with suspicion. Bonette had both hands pressed over her mouth.

Sylvara hadn’t said a word. She was standing perfectly still, staring at me, then at the cracked crystal, then at Millie, and I could see the gears turning behind her eyes as she put something together.

She knew something... I could tell by the way her gaze went distant and sharp, like a woman staring at a puzzle that had suddenly begun to assemble itself.

I tried to catch her eye, and she looked away.

I turned toward the next kneeling Wolfkin and held out my hand, but before I could reach... Bryn lunged and grabbed my wrist in a surprisingly strong grip.

"No time," she rasped. "There is no time...!"

"Listen to me, human...! Please!"

And that’s when Bryn told us everything.

...

She sat on the frozen ground with Elsbeth’s arm around her shoulders and a Nightclaw blanket draped over her back, and she spoke in a hoarse, cracked voice that never rose above a whisper.

I’d have given a lot for it to sound like a lecture. But it didn’t... It sounded like a woman reading out the names of the dead.

The attack had begun six days ago.

The Gilded Chain hadn’t charged the gates.

They’d done something far smarter and far crueler, picking off the outlying villages one at a time, drawing the wolves out in small groups with false alarms and traps.

They were led by a chain-mage in a mask and a man named Maldric Thorne, whom the others called the Second Link.

"The Warmother still holds the inner stronghold," Bryn said.

Elsbeth went rigid at the word.

"Your mother, Elsbeth... She has less than a hundred fighters, but I know that... she will not surrender."

"And Astrid...?" Elsbeth asked with the voice that was perfectly steady, which was how I knew it wasn’t.

Bryn hesitated. "Your sister was last seen in the lower village... She has not been found."

"She may have been taken, and... She may have..." She stopped.

Elsbeth didn’t say a word. She only closed her eyes for a moment, and a single, tiny crack ran through her composure before she sealed it up again.

"The crystals," she said. "Tell us about the crystals..."

Bryn reached up and touched the broken stone at her throat. "They call it the Moonshard..."

"A little shard of blue glass, about the size of a thumbnail..."

"They put it into you with a binding chain, here, or here." She touched her collarbone and her chest. "It does not hurt... and that is the horrible part."

"It feels like falling asleep... and deep in the dreams of nothingness."

Bonette made a sound and knelt by Bryn.

"May I?" she whispered.

Bryn nodded, and Bonette took the largest piece of the fallen crystal and turned it in her fingers. I saw her go gray.

"N-no way... This is moonglass," she said, in a voice that barely carried. "From the palace of Lunhare..."

"This is what the throne room windows were made of! It was destroyed on the Night of the Broken Moon!" She swallowed. "They are using the ruins...!"

"They are using the remains of my home as a weapon!!!"

Nobody said anything. The wind whispered along the walls.

"There are two stages," Bryn continued, when she could speak again. "The first is the Hollowing... It takes your will."

"Your eyes glow... You move as one with the others, in time with whatever holds the master stone."

"You do not feel pain... and you do not feel cold. It is just like when you do not feel anything."

"But you are still you... somewhere underneath. If the chain is cut, you can come back..." Bryn held her chest. "As I did."

She looked at me, and her eyes were full of something I couldn’t name.

"The second stage is the... breaking."

"What happens in the Breaking?" Velora asked, very quietly.

Bryn shuddered. "It wakes the beast-soul."

I didn’t understand what that meant, and I said so.

It was Sylvara who answered, in the same soft, grave tone she’d used in the garden. "The old stories say that the first beastkin were not born as they are now..."

"In the beginning... there were spirits of beasts, wolves and foxes and deer, who bound themselves to human women in a sacred agreement to share their strength and their lives."

"They called it the First Bargain... The spirit gave its power, and the woman gave it a home, and the two became one... and that is where we come from."

Elsbeth had gone completely still.

"The Breaking," Sylvara said, "reverses the Bargain."

"It forces the beast to rise and consume the woman instead of living with her... The body twists and swells."

"The mind is eaten... What is left is not a person any longer, only a beast wearing the shape of a memory."

What the fuck...? That’s... horrible!

"Can they... come back?" I asked.

Sylvara looked at me, and her purple eyes were very sad. "No."

Fucking hell... I thought of the Wolfkin kneeling in the gorge, all those blank faces, and a cold, heavy lump settled in my stomach.

"The first one was taken five days ago," Bryn whispered. "She has been a beast ever since..."

"Why are you here?" Elsbeth asked. "In the pass?"

"We were sent to intercept anyone coming from Elarune." Bryn’s voice dropped. "Maldric said that the Chain knew help would come."

"He said the stones had been singing... two nights ago, toward the south," Bryn growled. "He laughed... He said, ’The moon is awake.’"