Fire - Kristin Cashore [147]
In the bedlam everything finally became clear, focused on a single pinprick of purpose. Fire dropped and crawled across rock to the place where Nash lay on his side, dying, it seemed, for the arrow was lodged deep and true. She lay next to him. She touched his face with her broken hand. Nash. You will not die. I won’t allow it. Do you hear me? Do you see me?
His black eyes stared, conscious, but barely, and only barely did he see her. Brigan tumbled down beside them, clutching Nash’s hair, kissing Nash’s forehead, gasping with tears. Healers in green appeared and knelt at Nash’s back.
Fire grasped Brigan’s shoulder and looked into his face, his eyes blank with shock and grief. She shook him, until he saw her. Go now and fight this battle. Brigan. Go now. We need to win the war.
He surged up wildly. She heard him yelling for Big. Horses thundered on all sides of the sad little tableau, parting around Fire, Nash, and the healers like a river around a rise of rock. The sound was deafening and Fire was soaked, drowning in hoofbeats and water and blood, gripping Nash’s face and clinging harder to his mind than she had ever clung to anything before. Look at me, Nash. Look at me. Nash, I love you. I love you so much.
He blinked, staring into her face, a string of blood growing at the corner of his mouth. His shoulders and neck convulsed in pain.
Living is too hard right now, he whispered into her mind. Dying is easy. Let me die.
She felt the very moment when the two armies met, an explosion taking place within her own being. So much fear and pain, and so many minds fading away.
No, Nash. I won’t let you. My brother, don’t die. Hold on. My brother, hold onto me.
PART FOUR
The Dells
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
THE RIVER HAD risen so high with the spring melt that finally one of the bridges, with great shrieks and moans, had broken loose and plunged down into the sea. Hanna said she saw it happen from the palace roof. Tess had watched it with her. Tess had said that the river was liable to wash the palace and the city and the whole kingdom off the rocks, and then there would finally be peace in the world.
‘Peace in the world,’ Brigan repeated musingly when Fire told him. ‘I suppose she’s right. That would bring peace to the world. But it’s not likely to happen, so I suppose we’ll have to keep blundering on and making a mess of it.’
‘Oh,’ Fire said, ‘well put. We’ll have to pass that on to the governor so he can use it in his speech when they dedicate the new bridge.’
He smiled quietly at her teasing. They stood side by side on the palace roof, a full moon and a sky of stars illuminating the city’s expanse of wood, stone, and water. ‘I suppose I’m a bit frightened by this new beginning we’re supposed to be having,’ he said. ‘Everyone in the palace is so fresh and bright and confident, but it’s only weeks since we were hacking each other to death. Thousands of my soldiers will never see this new world.’
Fire thought of the raptor monster that had taken her by surprise this very morning, diving upon her and her guard as she exercised Small on the road, coming so close and fast that Small had panicked and kicked at the creature, almost losing his rider. Musa had been furious with herself, furious even with Fire, or at least with Fire’s headscarf, which had loosened and released part of its property and been the reason for the attack in the first place. ‘It’s true we’ve a great deal more to do than erect a new bridge,’ Fire said now, ‘and rebuild the parts of the palace that went up in the fire. But, Brigan, I do believe the worst is behind us.’
‘Nash was sitting up when I went to the infirmary to see him today,’ Brigan said, ‘and shaving himself. Mila was there, laughing at his mistakes.’
Fire reached a hand to the roughness of Brigan’s jaw, because he had reminded her of one of her favourite places to touch. They