The Elves here lived in burrows under the main mound Linarra had been dragged in. All of the burrows were connected by twisting, dark tunnels. It hummed with magic and strange scents and sights. Linarra had little time to appreciate any of it or be curious. The soldiers that had taken her pushed her along, rough, with their spears at her back.
She tried to understand. Tried to fit it in with the story Sahimul had told her. He didn't seem to be talking about -these- Elves. They weren't like Liriel. The High Priestess rarely spoke of her people. She would mention their art and seemed wistful when she spoke of other pleasant things, like gardens or palaces, but she was never specific. The High Priestess didn't have gilded skin or pointed teeth. Linarra doubted she'd be caught dead in rawhide crudely stitched together.
The men shoved her into a crude cell made by digging out a hollow in one of the tunnels. The bars were wooden and tied together with strips of leather. The moment she heard their footsteps retreat, and she was swallowed by pitch darkness, she tried the bars, tried to pull at them, break them. They held fast despite looking rickety and fragile. All alone in the dark, Linarra sat and pulled her knees up to her chest. She didn't cry. There weren't tears left.
She felt Sahimul. He was close. He didn't seem...sad or bothered or afraid. Maybe he was glad to be rid of her. Sure, he'd feel pain when they burned her alive, but it wouldn't kill him. At least, he didn't seem to think he could die. Her feelings for him sat and spoiled inside her like bad fruit. He just let them take her. He'd let them kill her to.
Wherever she was in the Elves' burrows, it was nearly silent. No shuffling footsteps or muffled voices. It was like she was dead and buried already. Forgotten. Her mind strayed to Veshier. Would he think of her? Miss her? Was he relieved? Was he even alive? She couldn't imagine the treck back to the Temple would have gotten any easier. Linarra didn't mean to worry. Sahimul was right. She didn't really love him. That she would die untouched, unloved and unmourned finally made her cry. It wasn't hysterical sobbing, just a slow slide of tears down her face.
Suddenly, she felt arms around her, pulling her in. It didn't startle her. She knew it was the Usurper. He shushed her, kissed her forehead, smoothed his hands through her hair. He was the only light in all the world. The faint glow of his strange, fiery gaze was a little beacon, just for her.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
She grasped the sides of his face gently in her hands. It wasn't just relief. What she felt was beyond that. Adoration. Gratitude. They weren't so different. Her most private fantasies were just being loved, accepted. Isn't that what he wanted to? Linarra found she no longer cared if he really was the Usurper. Let him destroy it all. The world was too cruel for her tender heart.
"I didn't think you'd come," she said. It's not what she wanted to say. She wanted to say she was glad he did. That he hadn't forgotten her. Everything she said to him sounded like an accusation.
Sahimul's expression looked so desperately sad. The bond drowned in sadness. "If you'd stop hating yourself so much, you would have -known- I'd come."
"But how?" Linarra didn't understand how he'd even gotten there. "Did you get in here? How?"
He gave her a crooked smile. "Ah. Easily," he said. "I just wished to be where you are."
The smile faded and he looked at her strangely. His gaze intense, his brow low. His lip curled into an almost sneer as his hand slid through her hair. His fingers tangled in it and he kissed her. Roughly. He pushed her to the ground and rocked his hips into her, pinning her wrists about her head with one hand.
Linarra felt engulfed in a whirlwind of desire. Not just her own, but his, the bond's, it was overwhelming. She cried out softly into the kiss, surprised. For a moment, she forgot where she was. Linarra forgot everything.
"You will tire of me," he told her, against her mouth. Under the want and desire was desperation. As though this was the last kiss he'd ever give her.
She shook her head. "I won't."
"I believe in destiny. In the gentle push of fate. Every choice and every decision...led you to me," he told her. "I know it. I know it, but it doesn't matter. I'm being punished," he told her, pressing his forehead to hers. "I don't want redemption," he told her. "I'm not sorry for the things I've done."
She held her breath, listening in the dark, looking into his eyes, like flaming stars. "What do you want?" she wondered, voice barely above a whisper.
"I want to believe you freed me because it was written in the stars before my creation," he told her. "Before you were born. And the Mother isn't cruel after all. That in her grand design...she wove us together."
In that moment, Linarra wanted that too. It would mean that every bit of suffering and loneliness and tribulation had a reason and it wasn't just the way things had happened, it wasn't just cold and callous chance.
"That I was made for you and you were made for me," he said.
There was suddenly the shuffle of feet, voices coming down the tunnel. It sounded like it was right above them. They both went silent. Sahimul looked upwards and held a finger to his lips as he got to his feet and helped her get to hers.
"The Elves," he told her, voice hushed, "Have changed since I slept. They've returned to the wilds and the magic there. But they've not forgotten me."
He took her by the upper arms and gave them a tight squeeze. "You are going to have to trust me," he told her. "Really trust me. You are going to see...things that will make you doubt me."
Linarra nodded. "I trust you," she said.
He gave her a thin smile. "Then I will see you soon."
Without warning, he was gone. Not like he slowly vanished, but like he was never there at all. Linarra was just plunged into empty, lonely darkness again and the clatter and clamor only increased. She thought she heard screams.
With renewed vigor, Linarra tried to break the bars of her cell. They didn't bend or even creak. She'd heard fairy stories about iron wood, how it was stronger than steel and had existed long ago when the Elves lived in the forests, before they built their grand cities. That had to be what this was.
Sahimul had said they returned to the wilds and the magic there. The rest of the world felt empty of magic, of life. But here, there was something. It was like a soft heartbeat under her feet, as though the earth breathed softly in and out.
I have power, she said to herself. She'd spent most her life denying it, and as a result didn't understand it. It moved through her in no way she could control. She could raise the dead. Why couldn't she do other things too?
She'd just never tried. She'd been too afraid. And though she should be afraid, in that moment, she only felt resolute. Linarra took in a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Veshier had said her energy was blue. She tried to see it in her mind's eye, that she was this bright, electric blue, and she sent her light outside of herself. Linarra felt warm, tingling. She felt something. It didn't come from the Mother, at least, not in anyway that she could tell, but it felt as though it came from -herself-.
Slowly, she opened her eyes, and she could see. The chamber she was in lit up with a soft, blue glow. It came from her, from her skin, from her entire being. They'd put her in their catacombs, where they buried their dead. They'd dug little alcoves in the earth, one on top of another and placed their dead there, wrapped in linen and hide. The dry, cool environment had preserved them. Maybe magic had too.
Before she could look around more and decide what to do (if there even was anything she could do), she felt immense and terrible pain. It started in her chest, above her heart. Like a hot knife had been rammed into her. Linarra screamed, unable to help it, the pain tore it from her before she could do anything else. It dropped her to her knees, head spinning, stomach clenching. Her entire body slick with perspiration, trembled. The pain didn't lessen. It burned, spread. Something hot and wet splashed against her chest.
Blood. She could smell it. Her own. Sahimul must have been injured. Badly. He said he couldn't die, but she could, trapped down here, while something or someone hurt him in ways she couldn't recover from.
And what if he could die?
She couldn't bear to think of it. The pain made thinking at all difficult. She ground her teeth so hard they squeaked, tears and sweat dripping off her face. Grasping the ironwood bars with a white knuckled grip, she hauled herself to her feet. The pain continued to spread, all through her chest, her arm.
She'd not had the strength to break the bars before, she certainly didn't now. Linarra screamed in pain and desperation. She had to help him, find him. She still glowed with a faint blue light. Looking around the crypt, she tried to think of something. Anything.
The bodies.
With wide eyes, breathing so hard her nostrils flared, Linarra fought through the pain, trying to make it a distant and far away thing, if only for a moment. She'd done it before. Once, with her little brother Emory. Then with the girl in the village. Why couldn't she do it now? When she truly needed to.
Something pierced her side. Blood washed down her waist and leg, spattered to the floor. She used it. Instead of ignoring it, she used it and channeled every hurt. All the pain, all her blood, all her heartache. She screamed like a wild, dying animal, spittle slicking her chin.
"Rise," she commanded, her voice breaking, barely audible.
Stop being so weak, she told herself with vitriol. DO something, she begged her spirit. Not the Mother. Not Sahimul. She would do this. And she would do it with her own power. It had to mean something. It had to do some good.
Linarra began to feel woozy. Sparks danced in her tunneled vision. More blood than was healthy spilled from her side. She knew she didn't have long before she passed out. And if she passed out, then it would be over. She would die. Maybe Sahimul too.
Linarra gripped the bars and shut her eyes so tight it hurt. She took in a deep, ragged breath, cut with sobs of pain. "I said rise," she said, her voice louder this time, stronger. "I command it!" she shouted, sinking to her knees.
Now on her knees, torso pressed against the bars, holding her hand to her side trying to stop the bleeding, Linarra watched as her light flickered and nearly died. She wouldn't let herself lose hope. He needs me, she thought. Everyone else discards him, lies about him, but I won't. He came back for me, she told herself, willing her light to be brighter, willing those bodies to move.
She saw Emory in her mind's eye, pale and limp, dead. His eyes milky and sightless, open and staring, his little face twisted in pain and horror forever. She saw the girl, her body destroyed and ruined twitching, moving even though it shouldn't have been.
Her light flared brightly as her entire body sang in burning, searing agony. She'd thought she'd felt the worst of it, but no. She felt as though she were on fire, her skin had to be melting from her bones. Linarra was so convinced this were true, she dared not look. She just screamed until she couldn't anymore, until she tasted blood from her raw throat.
"Rise!" she screamed with what she had left. It came out as barely a rasp, but it took.
She saw two of the linen wrapped corpses, twitch and shake, convulse. They moved. She made them move. If she could make the dead move again, there wasn't anything she couldn't do. She knew. Felt it.
Through gritted teeth, Linarra pressed both hands -hard- into her side, willing the wound to seal. To stop bleeding. For the pain to stop. And through the bond that had inflicted this agony, she'd heal Sahimul too.
"Ishahn!" she cried out with sudden, renewed vigor. She didn't know why she called on the Prophet. Only that it seemed right. For a brief moment, in the haze of her light, she thought she saw a robed figure, her back to Linarra.
The pain stopped and she could breathe and think again. All of the bodies in the crypt were moving, tugging off their burial shrouds, their groaning sounding like the wind through dead branches.
"I'm coming," she whispered, praying Sahimul could hear it, feel it. "I will save you," she said.