Starside novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Wish

Sorrel's POV

The water was warm, and I could breathe it.

That was the first thing that frightened me.

I hung in a silver dark with no floor under me.

The sixty-four voices were all around me, quiet now, waiting.

Then one voice came out of them, plain and cool, with nothing human in it.

"What do you want?"

It was the question the river had asked me at the ford.

It had drowned a liar that day.

I knew better than to lie.

"I want to know if she told me the truth," I said. "Can the dead come back?"

"No."

The word went all the way down through me.

I had known it, I think.

I had known it since the offer, and I had wanted her to be lying about everything but that.

"She lied," I said.

"Every fifty years."

"Then what can you give me?"

"The first to drink wins one wish. You are the first." The voice paused. "There is another way, if you want it."

"Tell me."

"Your fire is not hers. It has never been hers. Give all of it to me at once, freely, and I will burn the one who lit it."

I saw it then, plainly, the way the mirror had shown me the loft.

White light went out of me, through the water and up into the sky.

It struck Maelis, and the goddess burned to nothing in front of every living thing on the plain.

I would burn with her.

That was what the Pool was offering me.

It was a fair price for a murderer and I wanted to pay it.

I wanted it so much that my hands closed on the water.

Sixty-four people.

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