Kole and I continue north, towards the Islands. I know this is what Mahg wants. Everything that’s happened – the Spectre, Silvana’s vision, the staging of Garrett’s death… All of this was designed to propel me towards him.
What I still don’t know is why. If he was following us all along, why wouldn’t he have just attacked us? Why use Ava?
Perhaps Mahg’s plan is just as he said – to lure out the second girl using the first. It’s just that we got them the wrong way around. Ava is the first. We walk beneath the midday sun, across ragged brown landscape until we reach a pass that leads through a cluster of rocky hills. The hills are blocking the sky and the air turns cool. I shiver. Kole does too, but I’m not sure it’s because he’s cold. Maya has placed her trunk on his shoulder and she nuzzles his ear gently when he touches her hide.
He closes his eyes, then takes a deep breath. “We need to be quick. No stopping once we’re in there. Just keep going until we’re out the other side of the ravine.” I try to ask why we shouldn’t stop, but Kole is already striding ahead of me.
We are only a few paces into the pass when the clatter of falling rocks shatters my thoughts. A boulder smashes onto the ground in front of us, sending up a billow of dust. If we’d been any further along… I shudder and Maya stomps her feet. Her eyes are fixed on a detail in the rock face, up ahead. Niri instinctively shrinks back behind his mother.
“What is it?” I ask Kole. We can glimpse the route out of the pass, so I start walking again but Kole catches my arm. Maya is still watching something. She makes a huffing sound. She moves a few paces back, her ears twitching. I squint against the sun. It looks as though the rocks up ahead are moving. Kole reaches for his belt and, as he draws his weapon, I remember Garrett’s stories about the Taman and how they fight, that Kole is the best of them…
Kole adopts a half-crouched position, holding his baton out in front, his other arm tensed. Maya is shaking her head. I want to ask Kole what’s happening but, before I can speak, the shifting rocks change colour and morph into something larger. It’s a creature, about half the size of Maya, with huge muscular shoulders and a jutting lower jaw, with teeth that protrude up towards its nose. Its eyes flash a brilliant shade of green and it dips its head in line with its neck, as it charges towards us
I want to inch towards Niri but I daren’t move. It is a changeling. I drew them for my posters, roaming the ruins of The Four Cities beyond Nhatu. I didn’t draw them like this, though. I didn’t capture their bulk or their salivating jaws.
It is nearly upon us when, suddenly, it freezes on the spot and tilts its head to one side, examining us. Maya breaks ranks. She charges forward and stops inches away from the changeling’s chomping mouth. Towering over it, Maya releases a cry so loud I think it will shake the entire hillside loose. The sound sends a shiver down my body but the changeling doesn’t flinch. It simply tilts its head the other way, snarls and pounces right over Maya’s head, hurling itself at Kole. Too late, Kole attempts to spring sideways and his baton flies from his hand.
The changeling claws at him, gnashing its teeth. The two of them are tumbling over one another and Kole tries to wrestle himself free – grabbing at its neck and chunks of its fur. Maya charges forwards but Kole and the changeling are tussling too fast and there’s nothing she can do. She turns to me, her eyes pleading.
I look down at my hands. I hear Tsam telling me I’m not even human and I shake it off. No. I’m not. I can do this!
Even without Ava. Especially without Ava.
I stare at the changeling. I fix my eyes on its face and don’t let go. Almost instantly, the fire shoots straight into my fingertips and the same tiny ball of energy that I conjured in the mountains springs into life. I don’t hesitate. I lift my hand, palm out, as though I’m opening a door – and then I push.
The ball hurtles forwards, spinning, sparks flying. It strikes the changeling square in the side of its face. It releases an anguished roar and leaps backwards. Then its eyes are on me. I hold a ball of light in each of my hands now and, when the creature coils itself, ready to attack, I don’t hesitate – I hurl them straight at its chest. It roars and keeps coming for me, so I hurl another. Now the changeling is on me, but it’s not fighting me.
Its muscles slump. It stops moving. It’s dead.
Its weight has knocked me to the ground, pressing on my chest and making it hard to breathe. I want to push it off but my arms are pinned at my sides.
Finally, Maya and Niri come to my rescue. Using their trunks, they roll the changeling off and help me to my feet.
Kole is covered in scratches. Brushing himself down, he tucks his weapon back into his belt and beckons for us to leave, quickly. I follow him but, inside, a whirlpool of emotion is gathering speed. At first, I feel giddy with pride – I conjured the sparks to save Kole’s life. But I also killed. I took away a life, and I meant it.
I wait until we have exited the pass before I let the whirlpool drag me under, then I lean against a tree and try to anchor myself. Kole doesn’t try to comfort me like Tsam would have, or ask if I’m alright. He just waits beside me until I’m able to look at him.
“I knew it was going to kill you. I had to…” I can’t finish the sentence. “But what I did – using magick to hurt. How am I any different from…?”
Kole’s eyes flicker across my face. He moves closer. “You are nothing like Mahg. Nothing.”
I try to believe him but I think of the changeling lying in the dust and it makes my head swim. Solemnly, Kole finds my eyes and brings me back to him. “The first life is the hardest, Émi. But as long as you keep feeling it here…” He takes my hand and clasps it against my chest, “you’ll be alright.”
I feel like I’ve forgotten how to breathe, but for an entirely new reason. I step back, looking up at the branches of the tree, at the sky, at anything but his eyes. I’m blushing and knowing that I’m blushing makes me blush more.
This is not the time, Émi. Not even nearly the time.
Thankfully, Maya comes to my rescue. She snuffles Kole’s cheek with her trunk and flaps her ears at him until he releases me from his stare.
Before I’ve really had chance to recover, we continue north. Kole is still having to bite through the pain from his avalanche injury, and we’re both covered in scratches, burns and bruises that seem to multiply of their own accord.
I don’t need to look at the map to know that if we kept on the same course we would come to Nhatu, but Kole says we should camp for the night. Eventually, we will start veering west, towards the Islands. It makes sense – the Islands are Mahg’s home, and isn’t that what he told Ava? That they were going home? But something in the back of my consciousness niggles at me. I’m not quite sure we’re making the right decision.
Together, we have managed to make a fire and we’re sitting side by side, too awake to sleep, when I ask Kole about his parents. It’s a question I wouldn’t have dared to ask before. But out here alone, in the dark, it feels easier somehow.
“Garrett told me they were killed when you were a boy,” I prompt, “by a changeling?”
I expect Kole to offer me a one-word answer, or perhaps even none, but he starts to speak.
“They were looking for livitt flowers,” he tells me. “There was a sick child. They were both Healers and they often took me with them when they went foraging. They felt it was important I learn healing as well as fighting. The changeling took us by surprise…” He pauses, looks at me then down at the blade of grass he’s been twirling between his fingers. “I didn’t try to help them. I hid.”
“You were a boy, you couldn’t have fought it,” I say softly.
Kole nods, as if he knows I’m right. But I’m sure that knowledge doesn’t make the memories any easier to live with.
“They weren’t dead,” he continues. “My father told me to take my mother back to Tarynne, so I carried her. I left her with the Healers and led a group of Taman and elephants to fetch my father. When we reached him, he was no longe
r alive. When we returned to Tarynne, my mother had joined him.”
I blink fast and try not to let Kole see that my eyes are glistening with tears, but the image of him as a small boy – trekking through the desert with his mother in his arms, too late to save his father – breaks my heart. And it’s how I feel; praying that I get back to my mother in time, that she won’t already be dead when I reach her.
Kole’s eyes meet mine, still dark but swimming with a rawness that grips my soul and shakes it loose. He slips an arm around my waist, pulling me into his warmth. I know I should break away. I know this isn’t the right time. But it is. So when he presses his lips against mine, I let myself forget where we are and why we’re here and I kiss him back.
Eventually, we pull apart. I trace the outline of his birthmark with the back of my fingers and Kole closes his eyes. Then he looks up at the stars and says we should try to sleep. I thought I would feel embarrassed, but I don’t. Without asking, he lays down behind me and wraps me in his arms.
I am asleep within minutes.
It is not yet morning when I wake with Søyen’s message to me ringing in my mind.
Just a piece of it… as long as they remain connected.
As long as the pieces of the Fire Stone remain connected… Why? Why this bit of the message and nothing else? Shifting gently in Kole’s arms so that I don’t wake him, I pull the map from my pocket and spread it out in front of me. The embers of the fire and the beginnings of a sunrise give me just enough light to see by. I place my index finger on the lake in Abilene, where the Fire Stone began, where Ava and I began. I stare at it, my eyes darting between the four cities, playing the words over and over.
As long as they remain connected…
I sit up, straight and quick. Behind me, Kole stirs, suddenly alert. When he sees that we’re still alone, he relaxes and looks down at the map. I am looking at it too. I can’t take my eyes away from it.
“I need something to draw with,” I whisper.
Kole doesn’t ask why, just reaches into the embers and finds me a charred piece of wood. When he hands it to me I lean over the map and start sketching – a dotted line between Abilene and Esyllt and one between Nhatu and Tarynne. They form an off-beat cross, like the arms of a crooked compass.
I look up at Kole. “The pieces of the Fire Stone had to remain connected, so it didn’t lose its power,” I say.
Kole nods. “If the connection is broken, everything the stone feeds – air, water, fire, life… They’ll all start to fade. It’s why each city had to have a piece of it.”
I direct his eyes to the map and trace the lines I’ve drawn. “Right. And these are the connections, see?”
Kole nods again, still unsure what I’m trying to tell him. “They’re called fire lines, Émi. Lines of magickal energy…”
“It doesn’t matter what they’re called. Just look at where we are – where we’re heading.”
Kole shifts closer, his shoulder leaning against mine. His eyes widen.
“We’re heading right for the middle,” I tell him. “The spot where the lines meet. That can’t be a coincidence, can it?”
Kole looks at me, then the map, then me again.
“What if this was Mahg’s plan from the beginning? To lead Ava and I to this place,” I put my finger on the spot right in the middle of the map, “to where the fire lines converge. Think about it – the Spectre told us Mahg was searching for an orphan from the Islands, the attack on the Fledgling Ceremony made us leave without the Elders and, after the fire, Silvana’s death led us away from Abilene because we thought we could save the orphans. Then, finally, Garrett’s death in the woods was supposed make us believe that Ava had been kidnapped, to ensure we’d stay on track.” I point once more at the centre of the fire lines. “Heading here.”
Kole spins me around so he’s facing me but before he can speak we’re interrupted by Maya. She is holding her trunk up to the sky, pointing at something blurry and white. Two somethings: Tsam and Alyssa. They land in front of us. Tsam’s eyes immediately graze over Kole and I, closer than normal, too close, and then down to his feet. I stand, awkwardly.
“What are you doing here?”
Alyssa looks at Tsam but he doesn’t speak so she says, “Émi, we think you’re walking into a trap.”
“You’re right,” I say, gesturing to the map.
Alyssa looks down, sees my workings and frowns at me.
“Everything that’s happened has to have been leading to this,” I tell her. “Getting Ava and I to the place where the fire lines meet. The question is why?”
Alyssa shakes her head, crouching over the map and biting her lip. “The fire lines… Abilene used to be the heart of the stone’s energy. That’s why the Watchers were there, to guard it. When it was divided, they gave a piece to each city so that it would remain connected, so the energy could still flow.” She looks up at Kole and Tsam. “Maybe Abilene’s no longer the place where the stone’s energy is strongest. Maybe it’s here.” She points to the centre of my hand-drawn cross. “All this time we thought Mahg would want to attack Abilene again, but perhaps he’s got something bigger in mind.”
My head is spinning. “Like another spell? More dark magick?”
Alyssa shrugs. “I don’t know, but I don’t think we have a choice now.”
I frown at her, expecting her to say that this means we have to return to Abilene.
“Mahg has Ava. Whatever he’s planning, he can still use her, even if he doesn’t have you. We don’t have time to fetch the Elders. We have to try and stop him.”
Tsam sighs and I feel like they’ve already disagreed over this.
“In all likelihood, we’re walking straight into a trap,” he says, “doing exactly what he wants us to do. How can we possibly stop him?”
“Because he doesn’t know that we’ve figured it out,” I say. “That’s the one advantage we have. Mahg doesn’t know that I saw him…” I pause, but Alyssa blinks at me to continue. “He doesn’t know I saw him kill Garrett. He doesn’t know we’ve found the fire lines. He thinks we’re running blindly towards the Islands, trying to save Ava.”
“But instead we’re running blindly towards Mahg, trying to stop him from what exactly?” Even though Tsam is arguing the case, I can see he knows he’s not going to win.
“Tsam,” I say, trying to reach him, remind him of how things used to be. “I know you want to protect me. But Alyssa’s right. There’s no time to fetch the Elders. Whatever he’s planning, we’re the only chance of stopping it.” Even as the words leave my mouth, I know how this sounds. Two Watchers, a Taman and a girl made of stone.
What chance is that?
Twenty-Four
We are agreed. We keep going. Into the centre of the storm. We are two days’ walk away. On the map, Kole indicates a village where he thinks we may be able to gather supplies and persuade someone to send word back to Abilene. It is the middle of the afternoon when the sky up ahead darkens. The clouds are thick and grey but I don’t feel as though it’s going to rain.
“Storm?” Kole asks Tsam, who is walking with us while Alyssa scouts ahead in the sky. Tsam squints at the distance then stops dead.
“I think it’s smoke,” he says. I’m about to dismiss him, assuming he is seeing smoke instead of clouds because of what happened back in Tarynne, but as I look at the horizon, I begin to think he’s right. Without speaking, he takes flight and disappears above the clouds.
Kole and I wait with the elephants and, a few minutes later, Tsam returns with Alyssa. Their faces are ashen.
“It’s a village,” Alyssa says, forcing the words out as though they are scalding her throat. “I don’t think anyone’s alive.”
We walk together to the village. Where once there were houses, there are now only simmering piles of ash. Not one structure has been spared. There are bodies everywhere. For a moment, no one speaks. I cough from smoke that scours the back of my throat.
“We should check,” I splutte
r. “Someone might still be alive.”
I have checked the pulse of four women and two men when I finally find someone who has a heartbeat. It’s a boy the same age as Bael, his face blackened with smoke. I hold my cheek close to his mouth, bracing myself for the sting of feeling nothing but, as I lean closer, he groans and his breath tickles my skin.
“Here!” I shout, waving my arms at the others. “He’s alive!”
Kole is the first by my side. He kneels beside the boy and hesitates for a second. Then he pulls the boy’s head gently onto his lap.
“It’s alright,” he whispers. “You’ll be alright.” He turns to me, tells me to find some water and he takes a handful of dark orange leaves from his pocket. “This was all I could carry. I should have brought more…”
I find an ash-coated trough and use a nearby bucket to scoop out some water. I take it to Kole and he dips in the leaves, wetting them so he can squeeze them into mulch and smear them on the boy’s skin. Maya and Niri are watching him. When Niri steps forward, Maya puts her trunk in front of him but he wriggles away from her grip and picks his way over to Kole. He looks at the boy as if he knows him. He sniffs at him and I put my hand on his flank.
“It’s not Bael,” I say gently.
Niri looks at me, then back at the boy, and waves his trunk at Kole’s hand.
“You want to help?” Kole asks. Niri blinks. Kole nudges over the bucket. “His arms and legs are the worst. I’ll do those. You wash his face. Alright?” Then he rips a square of fabric from his shirt and holds it up to the elephant’s trunk, so he can take it.
Determined to be able this time, Niri dips the fabric into the bucket and starts to pat at the boy’s cheeks. I want to stay and help, but Tsam and Alyssa have stopped searching and are standing in the centre of what would have been the village square, speaking in solemn whispers. When I walk over to them, Alyssa says, “There’s no one else. Just the boy.”
I sigh and scrunch my face into my hands. “Why would Mahg do this? These people were harmless. They have no weapons, nothing he could possibly want.”
Fire Lines Page 23
