Both of them were used to trekking across ice, and they traversed the glacier with swift efficiency, the mountain drawing closer with each step. They passed one crevasse after another, and Reyker peered over the edge of each, thinking to see the boy and girl lying at the bottom. How had two Glasnithians made it here, with no knowledge of the island? He wanted to meet these brave souls who’d traveled across his land faster than he’d expected and gotten farther than he’d thought possible in their state. Before he turned them over to Solvei and her Renegades to use as bait for the Dragon.
“Skrim, you bastard! Wait for us.”
Reyker’s head snapped up in time to see hooves disappear over a snowy ledge far ahead of them, just below the mountain. He scrambled after the skrikflak, as fast as he could with Brokk still tied to him, fearing what the beast might do if he reached the Glasnithians first. It was too much ground to cover. They’d never get to Skrim before—
The skrikflak howled in the distance.
The glacier crackled like glass.
Reyker dug his axe in and jerked the rope, pulling Brokk back from the hole that yawned over the ice shelf, widening until it was as big as a house.
Brokk stared at the spot where he’d just been standing, which was now an empty space above a blue chasm. “Don’t expect me to be grateful, Lagorsson. You just saved your own ass from being dragged in after me.”
Another sound was carried to them on the wind—a scream, unmistakable even though it was far enough away to be no louder than a whisper.
“We have to move,” Reyker said.
Quick as they dared, they crossed the fragile ice in silence, concentrating. They made it up to where the skrikflak had been and found it struggling to escape a massive trench of its own making, claws and hooves scrabbling up the ice, finding no purchase. There were holes and cracks all over the ice shelf here.
“Damn you, Skrim. I told you to wait.”
“There.” Reyker pointed at an indentation marring the edge of a crevasse. The mark of an ice axe, deeper than the ones they’d been following. The cry they’d heard had come a full minute after the skrikflak’s roar. “The ice gave. The axe held.” It had been pulled out from above, not ripped free from below. “One of them fell here.”
“How do you know?”
It wasn’t a question he could answer. The bottom of the crevasse was cloaked in darkness, so there was no telling how deep it went. He couldn’t see a body. But his hunter-instincts were screaming at him, and he needed to listen. “I just do. I’m going down.”
“What? Have you lost your gods-damned mind?”
Reyker pulled an extra coil of rope from his pack, untying himself from Brokk and knotting the two lengths of rope together. “Whoever is down there is either hurt or dead. We need to know which.”
The girl—it was the girl that screamed, wasn’t it? He didn’t want to see her, a Daughter of Aillira, lying broken at the bottom of this hole. But if he didn’t see, he would always wonder.
“The rope isn’t long enough,” Brokk said.
“It will get me close. I’ll use the axes the rest of the way.” He took Brokk’s axe and his own, strapping both to his back before taking hold of the rope. “If I don’t make it out, help the three magiskas get home to Glasnith. And look after my phantom-eyed horse.”
With Brokk’s weight anchoring him, Reyker eased over the cracked edge of ice, into the crevasse. Hand over hand, he descended.
The white walls of the crevasse were glassy and rippled, as if they were made of streams that had frozen as they purled, and the ice seemed to glow with bluish light. It felt like being underwater. He went deeper, passing into shadow. The walls disappeared from view first. Then the rope. Then he could see nothing at all. He heard his own labored breaths, and all around him, the crackle of ice, shrinking, expanding, and the trickle of water feeding it. The chill in the air sank its teeth deep into his muscles, making them tremble as much from cold as exertion.
The rope ended. He pulled one of the axes off his back and slammed it into a wall he couldn’t see, then did the same with the other. Above him the light was a distant dream and Brokk was nothing more than a smear of color against a patch of gray sky.
One axe, then the next, dangling one-handed above a bottom he wasn’t certain was there. He went lower, doubting himself. What if the crevasse was endless? What if he didn’t have the strength left to climb back up? What if he’d cheated death over and over just to die in the belly of the soul-eater’s glacier?
The sound of running water echoed up the walls. His boots touched ice, solid beneath the shallow stream flowing over it. He reached into his tunic for the cloth and flint he’d tucked there, wrapping the cloth around an axe head, lighting it to make a torch. The flash of fire was a trespasser here, just as Reyker was. He almost dropped it when he saw what the dark concealed.
The crumpled warrior lying at the bottom of the crevasse.
It was impossible.
“Quinlan?” Reyker stabbed the axe’s shaft into the ice and knelt beside the warrior, checking his injuries, the numerous fractured bones. Blood danced in the stream as it flowed away from him. His chest still rose and fell, but the sound was wet and rough. He was too broken to be moved.
The warrior’s lashes fluttered. Quinlan opened his eyes and stared at Reyker. Blinking in confusion. Then alarm. His lips parted, trying to speak, but only blood spilled from his mouth.
“It’s all right,” Reyker said, clasping the warrior’s hand. But Quinlan knew better. Reyker could see it in his eyes.
Death could come for him in the next minute, or it might creep up slowly, pouncing only after untold pain-filled hours.
“I can end it now.” The offer tasted like rotten meat on Reyker’s tongue.
Quinlan squeezed his hand with what little strength he had left.
Reyker bent over the warrior, one hand on the top of his head, the other beneath his chin. Quinlan kept his eyes open, focused on him. Reyker spoke the words Lira had taught him. “The god of death has claimed you. May Gwylor accept you into his palace.”
His hands thrust up and to the side, until he heard the snap.
The light drained from Quinlan’s eyes.
Reyker bowed his head, whispering prayers to the Ice Gods and the Green Gods. He put his face in his hands, breathing hard, trying to make sense of this—how he’d found himself on his knees inside Ildja’s glacier, killing Lira’s dearest friend.
In the flickering torchlight, he noticed an opening in the wall of ice behind him.
He should go. Brokk was waiting for him. But his instincts, his blood, pressed him toward the ice tunnel, telling him to see where it led, and his mind was too muddled to think better of it.