I do not watch his drop. Perhaps I should. Perhaps it would honor him. But I do not.
He does not scream. His death makes no difference at all.
I drag myself to my feet, my steps slowed by pain and exhaustion. My hand finds my side and comes back slick with blood. I look at it, step into the doorway, and look at the ruins behind me falling away into nothing.
A terrible sense of futility seizes me.
Eleven of us walked into this place. Eight are left in it forever. What madness. What terrible, clawing madness.
I don’t think I’m thinking straight. I’m not sure why, but I feel almost like laughing as I turn my back on the yawning space behind me and fling myself into the icy grey water of the sea.
I taste the brine when I enter, and it’s life, oh, it’s life to me.
Chapter Forty
Vagabond Paladin
I swam on my back, still clinging to Brindle. My heart was in my throat. I wasn’t sure if I should be swimming to shore or trying to wait for Adalbrand to join me.
I kept my eyes fixed on the doorway I’d leapt from. There was no sign of Adalbrand — hadn’t been for as long as I was in the water. I blinked hard against tears that would not stop welling up.
Was he stuck? Had he fallen into a hole in the monastery? I should have stayed. I should have stayed and helped him and not taken the dog with me. I was a fool for making Brindle’s remains a priority when he was already gone.
A sob rose up and choked me.
And it felt strange not to have two more opinions in my mind. Where was the voice urging me to drown and die? Where was the voice assuring me all would be well?
Gone. Lost to me forever.
A sudden crack split the air and I gasped as I finally caught a glimpse of Adalbrand. He flung himself into the sea at the same moment that the monastery collapsed, caving in with powerful force and sucking water in after it.
The pull of the sudden void dragged the sea backward toward the collapsing city. Adalbrand swam — frantically — but he was being dragged backward despite his efforts.
And that was too much for me. With a cry, I dropped Brindle, turned around, and began to swim with all my might.
I nearly screamed when something huge in the water streaked by me. I sucked down a lungful of water before I realized it was Hefertus.
“I’ve got him,” he roared, and then returned to slicing through the water as if he were a gleaming fish and this was his bay.
Reluctant, I turned back to Brindle, finding his body and dragging him to my chest once more so that I could swim backward toward the shore. He deserved a respectful resting place. He deserved to be honored.
Perhaps it was best I had not been the only hope for Adalbrand, because before I reached the shore I grew so tired that I was bobbing under the waves, losing hold of Brindle only to grab at him again. I hit the rocky beach breathless and exhausted, clawed us out of the inky depths, and collapsed on a shore that smelled of fecund seaweed and lashed at me with bitter winds.
I was alive.
That alone was the God’s own miracle.
I had cast the demons out.
I was free.
And yet I was not.
I clung to my doggy friend — to what was left of him — and sobbed into his fur, stroking the head that would never lift again.
No apology from me could ever be enough. I’d betrayed the great bond between man and beast — the bargain where we promised to protect them if they would follow us.
I gasped in another shuddering sob, but I could not stay here mourning. Not now.
