Page 104 of Skysong

The sun had crested the distant horizon now. Its first rays tipped the cliff’s edge with gold, spilling blessed light over the sea, catching in a vicious gleam on the blade the seneschal still held.

No. She would not let that happen. She would not die here, not now she knew Oriane—

‘Terault!’ a voice bellowed.365

Other voices rose too. There was some commotion, back in the shadow of the trees, but she couldn’t see what.

At the ringing of blade against blade, Terault looked up. Andala’s heart punched against her ribs. She didn’t know what was happening, but she had to make the most of the distraction. She struggled against her bonds with renewed vigour, twisting her wrists, heedless of the rope’s chafe and burn. If she could just get the bindings there to give—

Terault took a step away from her, towards the disturbance. The torch-bearing follower had disappeared, but as more dawn light blushed through the world, Andala stole a glance towards the trees once more, and saw it.

King Tomas had escaped his captors.

In the rising daylight, his face shone wild with rage. He had captured a sword. He was using it to fend back Terault’s men. Vengeance burned in his eyes, clear even from a distance.

The king spun to cut Kitt free, dashed a blade from a woman’s hand and tossed it to him. And as the two men began to fight, Andala saw two of Terault’s followers turn their coats once more, and join them.

The sight struck hope back into her, sudden and bright as a meteor. Tomas, who had made just as many mistakes as she, who had just as much responsibility on his shoulders, who was just as afraid of letting people down – he was still fighting, and his people, like hers, still stepped up to help him.

Terault did not move to halt the fray or join it. Instead, he turned to Andala, and dropped his dagger back to her heart.

Her world narrowed once more to the press of cold steel at her chest. The blade pierced her shirt’s thin fabric like a sharpened spear of ice.366

It was a feeling familiar to her.

She needed the cold now. She needed the dark. She closed her eyes and embraced it.

And as she did so, she heard the skylark’s song.

There was no way it could have reached her. The island was too far away for the sound to carry here. Perhaps, as she had that first time, she was feeling rather than hearing it. The song lit a flame inside her heart, right next to the ever-present shard of ice. The two sat in harmony, in balance, neither melting nor smothering the other but forming two halves of a whole, two sides of a coin that spun and kept the world spinning with it.

The dawnsong was so different to Andala’s song of night. The call of the darkness was sorrow and suffering, sins and secrets. But it was also beauty. It was the canvas upon which the stars were painted, over which shimmering galaxies were stretched. It was a void, but not a vacuum, a space that existed to be filled. And in the end, it was the only thing that allowed light to shine.

Andala came back to herself; the world sped back into motion around her. Sound and vision rushed back in, and in an instant she saw Tomas breaking away from the others and surging towards her. She felt the tip of Terault’s blade sinking into her flesh. But as the king launched himself at his seneschal, as the knife bit deep enough to draw blood, Andala did not fear.

She understood her song better now, she thought. And alongside the ice in her heart, there was warmth, which was not just Oriane, but Kitt, Girard, Amie.

With that understanding, Andala transformed.

367She slipped through the bonds, through Terault’s flailing hands. She spread her wings. She flew.

The sun kept rising steadily, bathing the clifftop in a warm golden glow. Andala’s wings carried her effortlessly above the mayhem unfolding beneath her; above the king and the seneschal, grappling with one another near the promontory’s edge.

She could fly across the sea now, to find her skylark. All she had to do was turn towards the light.

But there was something she had to do first.

Wheeling on a wing, she dove towards the skirmish on the clifftop. Terault and Tomas were still locked in a furious struggle on the bluff.

As Andala watched from above, both king and seneschal careened towards the edge, teetered there, and tumbled over.

She soared past the end of the headland, over the sheer drop beneath it. She expected to see them plummeting towards the water, soon to be lost to the depths far below. But there was an overhang tucked away beneath the cliff’s edge – a ledge, with two bodies upon it.

Andala flew down to them. She hoped Tomas had survived the fall. Despite everything he’d done, he didn’t deserve to die here. And thank the skies – movement. The king was moving, stirring slightly, trying to haul himself up. He was alive.

Terault was moving too. Though his body looked fragile, broken, he had survived like Tomas.

But unlike Tomas, perhaps Teraultdiddeserve to die here.

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