I try reaching up to grab the stone, but my weight is hanging by my neck, and I’m close to strangling. I don’t even have enough breath left to answer him. My head is still bleeding, and I’m so dizzy, and I hurt everywhere, and … and …
I suddenly realize I may be dying.
“Soli! Take the key!”
Ilook up, clutching folds of my cloak to relieve the pressure on my neck, to find Trick above me at the edge of the pit. I try to say no, to tell him to stop, but I can’t get a word out.
He tosses the key, and I dazedly watch a flash of gold drop down to me.
And past me.
And below me.
Until it’s gone.
“Soli, I got it,” Kaelen yells, and I want to be glad, but I’m still choking and bleeding and hurting, my interest in keys and even goddesses waning by the second.
“I’m on my way down! Hold on!” But before he can climb into the pit, Trick whips his head to the side, probably because of the draugrs. A lovely rose-colored haze fills my mind, and I smile.
This is so much better. So much better to die with this lovely rose fog instead of the bleak gray that ruined my life. A dim part of my mind recognizes the warning signs of anoxia, but I don’t really mind. Better this than being eaten by a draugr.
“Trick! Now!” Kaelen shouts. “Jump down and rescue her now, or she’ll die.”
Trick swings one leg into the pit, but then he flies up and away, his eyes wide with horror. He’s shouting at me, but I can’t make out anything but my name.
And then he disappears.
I try to say goodbye, but I can’t speak, so I close my eyes and wait to die.
At least I was free for a day.
Part of a day.
Whatever. I’m claiming the day.
“Lady Soli!” The shouting tickles something in my mind, and I blink my eyes open to see Bern crouching on the rock ledge above me, his head bloody and one arm hanging at a bad angle. “Hang on! I’ve got you!”
But no. He can’t. The draugrs! They got Trick. They’ll get him, too.
I need to sing again. Or tell Bern to be careful.
Ican’t sing, though, because I’m choking.Stop, I try to say, but then someone yells—the monster, or Bern, or Kaelen, I don’t know who—and the lovely pink fog sweeps up and through and over me, and I fall into it, so far down into it.
My vision tunnels, but then I’m falling for real. Seconds later, icy water closes over my head, shocking me awake. I splutter and thrash around, arms and legs flailing, until I break the surface and can inhale gulp after gulp of beautiful, wonderful air. I can almost feel my lungs expand in my chest, but then I start coughing and can’t stop, still floundering, trying to stay afloat. It takes a moment to realize I’m alive, since I was so resigned to dying. The rosy haze is gone from my mind, but crisp clarity eludes me. I must have been very close to strangling to death.
Okay. Take stock, Soli.
The water is moving, so it’s not a pond or well. Not only that, but it’s moving fast, so I must be in an underground river beneath the Barrows.
A cough behind me snaps me out of my mental inventory, and I splash and thrash until I can turn around enough to see Bern, also flailing, sinking, and fighting his way back to the surface.
“Soli.” He spits out my name with a mouthful of water. “I can’t swim!”
“Me, neither,” I tell him. “It’s not something you can learn from a book, I guess.”
Suddenly, a draugr swims up behind me and wraps me into his icy embrace with one arm … cloaked in embroidered fabric.
Not a draugr.
