Page 102 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

I wanted to protest, but had enough respect for him that I didn’t offer false comfort. “I will make her. Whatever it takes.” It was a gruesome promise. We both knew what was being said, what it meant for both Tahrik, and for Wren.

She is far from us, hovering in front of another set of tunnels, another series of unending twists in the fathomless blackness that has consumed us. Even at a distance I can see her reaching for the Guiding Knife. I tried three times with it before we gave up; my blood was not to its liking for some reason. On the third try, the knife stayed wet, would not drink any of my Offering; Wren silently tucked it back in her belt, though her fingers were gentle when she took it from my bloody hands. Tahrik never offered; I don’t know which was worse in her eyes – my rejection, or his reluctance.

Tahrik is corpse-pale, skin bruised under his dark eyes, cheeks hollow. This is a man who has given everything, and beyond everything, inside him to stay next to Wren. There is nothing left to go on. Even with the weight of my eyes on him, he stares at her for a long time, face naked with longing, as though it is the last time he will ever see her, and I feel sick to my stomach. When he sighs, dropping his head, it’s the sound of a key in a lock, a decision being made and accepted; despite everything, I have been dreading this moment. Finally, looking back at me, he holds out a shaking hand, and I take it solemnly in my own.

“For what it’s worth, you’re a better man than I thought, Rannoch.”

“For what it’s worth, so are you.”

He grins, a small spark of life dancing across his dying face. “What a pair we are. We would never have been friends outside of her, I think. You’re too arrogant.”

Smirking, I shrug. “Is it arrogance if it’s true? You’re too soft.”

Releasing my hand, he smiles over his shoulder, all of his happiness focused on one wraithlike girl. “Ah, well. When the people you care about are surrounded by nothing but the cold and hard, it’s a bit of an honor to provide a soft space. Something you should think about. Not for this one here, you know. But for someone else, somewhere in the future.” He coughs a little, a dry, rasp of sound that whips Wren’s head around.

“This one,” she calls, and he sighs.

“Mark the way for me, Wrenling. I’ll sit for a few and follow just behind.”

“This one,” she repeats, more insistently. Like it has for the past week or more, her voice pulls him to his feet. His shuffle forward is painful to see, and I slip an arm around him in faux comradery.

“Alright, Keeper. Lead on.” Tahrik looks at me accusingly through narrow eyes, and I shrug. “You can make it a little further, Miller. There’s life in you yet, and what I’d have to do to her to make her leave you behind would not sit well with me. So take the help, and know that I’ll keep my promise.”

Nodding, he leans against me, and we stagger forward together, deeper into the eternal night.

OUT OF THE CAVERNS

TAHRIK

It’s the sound more than anything that pulls me from my slumber. Something like music that isn’t music, a kind of burbling noise that is faintly familiar, but it’s hard to think through the piercing light, blinding even through my closed lids.

Am I…is this the Dreaming?

It’s impossible to force my eyes open; they feel like they are sewn shut, though the pain in my temples is enough to convince me that somehow I am awake, that somehow I am alive. The Gods wouldn’t create a life of struggle to follow it with this type of agony in the Dreaming. My lungs hurt, there’s a weight on my chest that feels like stone when I try to breathe, and for a brief, flickering moment, I wonder if it’s worth the effort, or if I should just let my ribs collapse into me and not force them out again.

Then I hear her voice, scratched raw and ragged, but there, and oxygen floods into me in painful, desperate waves.If she’s breathing, you are too, whether it feels like knives in your heart or not.But it takes everything in me just to exist; I have nothing left to move even a fingertip. All I can do is lay on what seems to be cool grass, head cushioned on some kind of strange fabric, and listen. Even that staggers inand out with uncertainty, words rising and falling away with a surprisingly warm wind. Wherever we are, it’s not in the caverns.

“...more than enough. Just eat. Stop protesting. You’re all walking skeletons.” I don’t recognize the man’s voice; his words have a strange lilt that tug at something in the back of my mind, but the fish slips the hook before I can catch it.

Rannoch, though, I know immediately, even if he sounds like he died days ago, and it’s just the memory of him speaking. “First to Wren. When she’s done, I’ll go back for seconds.”

“Wrenis fine.” If I could smile, I would, the bite in her voice more proof than anything that she is, if not thriving, well enough.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Wren is right. Believe I’d give her everything in my pack and then some, but I can tell how much it took from you to carry that one over there. I don’t know how you did it, to be honest. You look like you can barely support your own weight.” Admiration is clear in the man’s voice — it’s a freely given compliment with no strings.

Rannoch is more reluctant in his reply. “If I hadn’t, she would have. Or she would have stayed in the caverns when he collapsed. It’s the only way I could make her keep moving forward. I was close to leaving him behind.”

He broke his promise.The thought flashes through my head quick as the beat of blood moth wings, but then a memory of blood moths and Wren twists my stomach, waves of nausea rippling through me, and I push it away.

“Somehow I doubt that,” the unknown speaker says wryly. “I think you had choices. And you made the one you could live with. It does you credit.” Silence. “In any case, we have food enough for now. And some of this won’t carry. Eat. Just eat. What good would it be to waste it? Flame, put some more on your plate so your friend here will put some more in his belly. And the broth is almost ready for the other.”

“How will we get him to drink it?” Fear tightens her words, as though a hand is clasped around her throat, and it’s enough to pull a whisper of sound from me.

“I…”

A flurry of movement, and the press of bodies.

“Don’t try to speak, Tahrik!” Her hands are cool on my face, pushing back my hair, bringing a flask to my lips. “Just drink. A little, only a little at a time. Your stomach has been empty for too long.”

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