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It’s dark in this part of the Deep Roads, but they are too tired to press onward to the better lit regions after that last battle. Dis Brosca shudders. Broodmother. She feels ill in a way she never has before.
Alistair and Wynne tend the little fire they’ve made from scraps of cloth and leather they’ve picked up in the tunnels. Oghren stares into the flames; his green eyes glitter as he hunches over himself. Dis doesn’t know what to say to him. Doesn’t know what she’s going to do when they find Branka, not after what she’s done.
Her own people!
Dis’ hands curl and clench on her axe hafts. She mutters to Alistair that she is going to get some air. She sees the way he almost tries to joke – yes, she knows it’s all the same air down here – but he catches the look in her eyes, and lets her go with a nod instead. She’s grateful that he does not ask her anything.
Her footsteps are heavy on the ground, but no deepstalkers erupt beneath her feet; the ground here is too tainted even for them. There’s an awful flash in her head, bloated body sagging, engorged breasts spilling forth, tentacles around her ankles, that mouth. She shudders, tries to shake it away, and then she hears it.
“First day, they come, and catch everyone…”
She is frightened, for a moment – hadn’t Hespith fallen, throwing herself from that high ledge behind the broodmother? The voice is faint, broken, almost bubbling.
Dis runs toward it, not thinking, simply needing to know. She rounds a bend, dim wall lights casting black shadows on the small crumpled shape on the ground.
“Hespith?” she whispers.
“Second day, they come, and –” A cough, the breath trapped and rattling in the throat.
Dis kneels down beside the other woman, her eyes burning. She dashes at them with the back of her hand. Hespith is broken, no better word for it, limbs at wrong angles, black blood sticky on her tattered clothes. But she is still alive. The taint will not let her go. She looks up at Dis with dull, dark eyes.
“You tried, didn’t you,” Dis asks. “You did jump.” She reaches out, hand trembling, and gently brushes the hair out of the other woman’s face. Hespith flinches at her touch, though it is as soft as Dis can make it.
“Branka,” she whimpers. “I loved her. I couldn’t – I couldn’t bear it –” Her face looks paler than before, the circles ringed beneath her eyes like soot smudges.
“Shhh,” says Dis. “It wasn’t your fault.”
Hespith shudders, her fingers trying to grasp something that is not there. “I am dying,” she breathes, “dying but I cannot die, not with this… filth. I hear the singing… Laryn, Laryn, I am sorry.”
“If you don’t die, you’ll become one of them, won’t you? Like Laryn?” Dis is cold, shivering even though there is no breeze. She lays her axes down on the ground. She reaches for the small dagger at her belt, cradles it in her left hand.
Hespith only nods, blood congealing at the corner of her mouth. Her teeth are black with it.
Dis lays one hand on Hespith’s, calms the fingers that are struggling to hold onto something gone. It is hard to breathe right now, but she is filled with certainty. “I am sorry, Hespith.”
For a moment Hespith’s eyes widen with recognition, with fear, with gratitude. Then there’s only sticky liquid warmth rushing down from her throat to coat Dis’ arm. Hespith’s hand stills beneath Dis’, and Dis bows her head, waiting until the flow ebbs and her arm is cold and wet. She slumps hard against the floor, pulling her hands back, dropping the dagger beside her so it clatters. The sound is unnaturally loud before it dies away.
“Go now to the Stone,” Dis says, and the air around her is cold and silent. It does not answer her, and she does not return to the camp for a long, long time.