But it was Bryndine Errynson who sought the truth when no one else would. It was she who refused to surrender the fight when the Army, and the Scribers, and the people themselves deserted her. It was she who led her women to the First Forest when all other options failed.
In the end, it was Bryndine Errynson who saved the Kingsland.
— From Dennon Lark’s
Life of Bryndine Errynson
“Dennon?”
Deanyn’s voice ushered me back into the world, aching and disoriented. But alive.
I was lying with my back against the First Tree, and the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was green. The boughs of the First Tree were laden with foliage, so thick that the entire clearing was cast into shade. Where there had once been little more than a hundred leaves, now there were hundreds of thousands. The spirits of the Burnt.
There were no voices in my head. The Wyd was silent. It was over.
The second thing I saw was Deanyn’s face, leaning over me. “Thank the Mother and the Father,” she breathed, and pressed her lips hard against mine. For a moment, I let my muddled mind stop working and lost myself in the feel of her, pulling her close, twining my fingers in her hair. Finally, she drew back, and laid her hand against my chest, as though to check that my heart was still beating. “I… thought I’d lost you. Are you hurt?”
Confusion came rushing back. “I don’t know.” I remembered the voice of the Eldest, and then nothing. I blinked to clear my eyes, and looked around.
Though it felt like I had slept for years, I could not have been unconscious for more than a moment. The clearing was still littered with bodies; none had been moved from where they had fallen. Men of the King’s Army sprawled beside the creatures of the forest. Debra and Ivyla had fallen beside one another, their weapons still in hand. Elene held her sister’s still form in her arms, sobbing. I was shocked to see Orya getting shakily to her feet—I had believed her dead.
And just beyond me, mere feet away, lay the great heap of fur and scars that had been the Beast. Its head had been severed from its neck in a single clean stroke.
I could not see Bryndine.
“Where is she?”
Deanyn knew what I meant instantly. “Dennon, she… I don’t know if…” She glanced over her shoulder, and I saw the pain on her face.
“No.” I forced myself to my feet. My legs trembled beneath me.
There, beyond Deanyn, I saw her. She lay on her back in the grass, her head cradled in Sylla’s lap. Leste stood beside them, a helpless look on her face.
“No.” I stumbled towards her and fell to my knees in the grass at her side. The others gathered around us—all save Elene, who would not leave Selvi’s body.
She was still alive. Her skin was pale, nearly white; her breathing was shallow and ragged. Her chest was soaked with blood. There was something innately
wrong
about the sight of her so prone and still; it was like seeing the First Tree itself toppled to the ground. Though I had seen what the Beast had done to her, I had believed, somehow, that she would endure. That she was as invincible as she had always seemed to be.
Sylla’s eyes were wet, but she fought to control her voice. “Help her, Scriber.”
But Bryndine’s wounds were too great. The Beast’s claws had shredded skin and bone and organs. That she still lived at all was a miracle. She had given me so much, saved me so many times, and now, when she needed me, I was useless.
“There is nothing he can do.” Bryndine’s voice was a hoarse whisper, but there was still steel in her eyes; even in the face of death, she was braver than she had any right to be.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Bryndine, I’m so sorry.”
“Do not be, Scriber Dennon. You did as you promised. You did not fail.” Her fingers flexed, and she tilted her head to search the grass beside her. I knew immediately what she was looking for—she wanted her sword in her hand, at the end. It lay just out of her reach, and I dragged it closer and pressed the hilt into her palm. Her fingers closed around it. She smiled weakly.
“Don’t,” I begged, as though she could stay through sheer strength of will. “Please don’t.”
“Tell them… that I kept my oath.” And then Bryndine Errynson closed her eyes, and breathed her last.
I could not even cry. I was too empty. It was too much.
Tell them that I kept my oath.
In her last moments, despite all of her strength, after all she had done, she had still been the girl in the ill-fitting dress, out of her element at her aunt’s table, looking for approval from the people who had denied it to her all her life. They had never deserved her. And right then, if I could have, I would have traded all of their lives to bring her back.
But I could not. “I will tell them,” I said softly, clasping her hand.
“Take your hands off her.” Sylla’s voice was flat, but when I looked up, her face was twisted with barely contained fury.
“Sylla, I…”
“
Do not touch her
.” Sylla’s hand darted out, and grasped the hilt of Bryndine’s sword. She was on her feet in an instant, holding the point of the blade against my neck. The sword was too big for her; it took both of her hands to hold it steady, and the tip shook dangerously, a quarter-inch from my skin. “I told you what would happen, Scriber. I told you what would happen if you let her die.”
“Sylla!” Deanyn put her hand on the other woman’s shoulder, but Sylla jerked away. “Don’t do this. This isn’t what Bryndine would want.”
“What she would
want
? She is dead, she doesn’t
want
anything!” She glared down at me with red-rimmed eyes. “Why should you live if she doesn’t, Scriber?”
Strangely, I was not afraid. Not because I didn’t think Sylla would harm me, but because at that moment, it didn’t seem to matter much if she did. “I don’t know,” I said. “It isn’t fair.” A world where I was dead and Bryndine lived would be a far better world than this.
Elene still cradled Selvi in her arms, but she looked up from her sister’s face, and in a quavering voice, she asked, “Haven’t enough people died already, Sylla?”
“They died because of him!” Sylla shouted. She was not wrong.
How many would still live if I had found the Wyd sooner?
“You’re forgettin’ that the rest of us lived because of him,” Orya said. Her sword was in her hand. “We ain’t just going to let you kill him.”
The last thing I wanted was more bloodshed. “Don’t,” I said. “Don’t hurt her. She’s right. I… should have been better. Faster.”
“And you should die because of that?” Deanyn shook her head. “No. You did as much as anyone could have asked.” She stepped towards Sylla again. “Please, give me the sword. It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“No further!” Sylla warned, her hands trembling. The tip of the sword touched my neck, and I felt a sharp pain as it drew blood. Deanyn held up her hands and backed away.
“This is not the way, Sylla,” said Leste. “Tenille waits in Three Rivers. There is a place for you still. But if you are doing this, you cannot go back.”
“Do you think I am just looking for someone else to
follow
? Bryndine was more than just… She saved me, when she had no reason to. She trusted me when no one else would.” Tears fell down Sylla’s cheeks, tracing lines through the blood and dirt there. “I
loved
her.”
And hearing her say that, I realized something so simple I couldn’t believe I had not known it until now. Looking up at Sylla along the length of that massive blade, I said, “So did I.”
For a moment, Sylla stared back at me, her eyes dark pools of despair. And then, with a wordless scream of anguish, she swung Bryndine’s sword.
But not at me.
With all of her rage and all of her sorrow, Sylla drove the huge blade into the First Tree, and it sank into the ancient trunk as though cleaving through air.
She had expected that no more than I had; she had done it, I think, only because she needed to strike
something
. She stared in disbelief as the wood parted to accept the sword and knit together again as it passed. No wound was left behind. Only a foot of blade still jutted from the tree, and a plain steel hilt, too long in Sylla’s hands. As big as it was, the sword should have looked tiny buried in that vast trunk, but somehow it did not. It looked like something from a story—a hero’s weapon, waiting to be pulled free.
A sudden wind stirred the boughs of the First Tree, and a voice that only I could hear, calm and strong and sad, whispered, “
We will not forget her
.” The sun reached a single golden finger through the parted leaves, and for a moment, Bryndine Errynson was bathed in light.
And then I understood. It was a memorial. The Wyddin were honoring her sacrifice.
And though she could not hear the voices, I think Sylla understood as well. She stood in silence for a long time, her hand lingering on the hilt of the sword, and then she sank to her knees, and wept.
Chapter Thirty-eight
I didn’t know how much Bryndine meant to me until she was gone. I will remember her for the rest of my life.
— From the personal journals of Dennon Lark
We commended Bryndine Errynson to the Father that night, before the First Tree, with the women who had died beside her. And as the pyre burned, we stood vigil, just as Bryndine had done so many times before for so many others.
Standing with the few survivors of Bryndine’s company, I watched as the flames consumed the bodies. Deanyn leaned against me to keep the weight off her injured leg, and I held her hand tightly in my own. Elene and Leste and Orya clustered beside us. Sylla stood alone a short distance away, solemn and quiet.
Bryndine had always given a short farewell to her fallen women, but we stood in silence. No one wanted to take her place. But she deserved some words—they all did. Some words that might honor what they had done. After a long while, I swallowed nervously, and I said, “People will know their story. They… won’t be forgotten.”
Sylla laughed bitterly. “Do you really believe that, Scriber? No one will remember them. No one will remember
her
. Look where we are. No one saw what she did, no one but us. Do you think they will listen when you tell them what happened here?”
“Her father will be King. He…”
“The King doesn’t write history. People remember what they want to remember, and they have never loved Bryndine. They will say Lord Elarryd saved them, or Ralsten, or Korus, someone who was
there
, in the capital. Even Tenille, if they must.” She looked at me, and her mouth rose into a cynical smirk that couldn’t quite mask the anguish in her eyes. “Or perhaps they will hear your story, and call you their hero, Scriber. They have done it before, after Waymark. But whoever it is, it will not be her.”
Silence fell again. I could not find the words to counter Sylla’s argument; she was very likely right. The people of the Kingsland had always been blind when it came to Bryndine. I could see the outline of her body in the flames, and I gazed at her, and wondered. Would it be like Waymark again, citizens insisting they owed their lives to anyone but her? Was that Bryndine’s legacy, to be remembered only by the spirits of the forest, reviled and then forgotten by her own people? It would have been all too easy to accept. So much of the Kingsland’s past was already lies, why not this? It would have been easy to blame myself for her death, and retreat into the guilt, and let Bryndine fade from history.
But I could still hear her words from the night before:
we owe it to those who died to do more with our lives
. She was gone, and I owed it to her to stop running away. I could not ride a horse, or shoot a bow, or wield a sword; I had not been fast enough or strong enough to save her when she needed me. But I could do this. I could do this for her, if nothing else. She would not be another Fyrril. While I lived, she would not be forgotten.
“No,” I said. There had been enough lies already; it was time for the Kingsland to know the truth. “She died for them. They
will
remember her.”
"I wish that were true, Scriber. I truly do." There was only hoplessness left in Sylla's voice. “But whatever you say, they will ignore it.”
“They won’t. Because you were right before: the King doesn’t write history. But neither do the people.
I do
.” Something burned inside me, a determination like nothing that I had ever felt before—the determination I had learned from Bryndine. “If Erryn and Aliana could turn the past into a lie with their stories, I can turn it into truth with mine. I will write of what she did here today until my fingers cannot hold a quill. I will speak of her courage until my voice is gone. And
they will remember
.”
I swept my eyes over the faces of the women around me, and when I spoke again my voice was so strong that I could hardly believe it was mine. “You do not have to stand by while the people forget. Help me. Tell them of what happened here, and of the women who died to save them. Tell them of Bryndine, and of Selvi, and Genna, and Wynne. Tell them of the Wyddin and the Burning, so that it can never happen again. Tell them the
truth
.
Make
them remember.”
Deanyn smiled at me, pride shining in her eyes, and she said, “I am with you, Dennon.”
“And I,” said Leste. Beside her, Elene nodded without speaking, never looking away from Selvi’s body.
Orya flashed her wild grin. “Never could keep my mouth shut anyway.”
Only Sylla gave no reply, staring at Bryndine through the flames of the pyre. And then she turned, and met my eyes, and nodded, just once. “We will not let them forget,” she said softly.
We stayed there for a long time after that, until the last of the flames died. Until all that was left of Bryndine Errynson burned away.
You will be remembered
, I promised, as the last embers smouldered into ash.
A Scriber never forgets.
Epilogue