by Carol A Park
White light whisked them away from Zily’s palace.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Teoton
Vaughn and Ivana reappeared in the far-too-familiar wasteland of the abyss, Tani at their side.
Tani glanced around, frowning. “This will be easier if I can quickly search on my own. Don’t go anywhere.”
Panic choked Vaughn’s throat. “Wait! Don’t leave us!”
But it was too late. Tani had flashed out of visibility, leaving them standing on a rocky cliff in the middle of the abyss, a yawning cavern behind them.
Vaughn swallowed and looked around. Wasteland it might have been, but it was not empty. Dark shapes moved on the plain below them, and the skittering of tiny feet echoed in the dark behind.
If they were torn to shreds by bloodbane at this stage in their journey…
But before he could contemplate further on what the skittering could be, Tani flashed back into existence and the skittering abruptly stopped.
Tani now carried a large bag—large to Vaughn, anyway. “I shouldn’t be doing this,” Tani said, “but your plight has me intrigued. I would see you succeed.” He withdrew a smaller bag and set it on the ground. “You lost anything you came with, and I understand that you may need supplies for your return trip. Food, water, and more suitable garments.” His eyes swept over the two of them, making Vaughn conscious that they were still wearing the flimsy sacrificial tunics they had been dressed in. “Change quickly.”
Tani made no pretense at giving them privacy—but he also ignored them, gazing out over the plains of the abyss with narrowed eyes, as if watching or waiting for something.
Vaughn rummaged in the smaller bag. There were two sets of identical clothing that consisted of a short-sleeved, thigh-length tunic that pulled on over the head, billowy pants, a belt, and boots. They were remarkably normal-looking for garments given to them by a god, though the cloth was strange—sturdy, supple, and soft—the belt was engraved with symbols he didn’t recognize, and the boots were light as air and absurdly comfortable.
He tossed Ivana the set of clothes that looked smaller. Then, he turned his back on her and changed.
When he turned back, she was tugging on her boots.
Tani craned his neck to look into the cavern behind them, as if the skittering feet might have eyes. “I have one more gift for you,” he said, and then withdrew an already-strung silvery bow and accompanying quiver and handed them to Vaughn, followed by a dagger and sheath for Ivana. “It’s all I could do in a pinch. A millennia ago, you would have left with much, much more.”
Vaughn slung the quiver over his shoulder and accepted the bow. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. Though it looked like silver, it didn’t feel like metal, and it was the lightest bow he’d ever held.
Ivana strapped the dagger in its sheath to her belt so that the sheath lay angled across the small of her back. Vaughn had almost never seen her wear her dagger this way—she seemed to prefer a thigh holster—but he doubted Tani had noticed such details. Then she picked up the bag.
“Now,” Tani said. “I’ve found a candidate close to where you entered, which I do believe you would prefer?”
That hadn’t even occurred to him. That they could return, for instance, on the other side of Setana.
“Yes,” Ivana said firmly before he could reply. “That would be necessary.”
Tani surrounded them in white light.
When they reappeared, it was in the middle of the plain again.
Vaughn took a step back. Two bloodwolves were fifteen, perhaps twenty feet away. But they appeared, at present, uninterested in Vaughn, Ivana, and Tani. They stalked toward the same spot from opposite directions and then began circling.
Nothing happened for a few minutes, other than Vaughn feeling more and more like he was going to vomit. Just follow them out. Right.
The air split. Rather than black flames licking out of the tear, blurry, colorful flames licked out—like the land racing by on the back of a horse.
“When I say so, start running and hurl yourselves through that tear. Don’t worry about Danathalt’s beasts—I’ll take care of them.”
Easy for you to say, Vaughn thought.
The bloodwolves snapped and snarled at the air, pacing back and forth, waiting for the tear to grow large enough.
“Now!”
Vaughn took a deep breath and sprinted toward the tear, Ivana only paces behind.
The bloodwolves, intent on the tear, didn’t see them until they were almost on the tear. One of them growled and lunged at Ivana.
Vaughn grabbed Ivana’s arm and together they jumped right past its snapping teeth. The distant sound of yelping was the last thing Vaughn heard—and then they burst through to the other side.
They crashed into the ground—and a moment later, one of the bloodwolves burst through after them.
Vaughn scrambled backward, bow already in his hand.
The bloodwolf leapt at Ivana.
Ivana barely had time to complete the roll she had fallen into after their inelegant entrance back to their world and raise one arm as a feeble shield against the teeth of the bloodwolf. Her new dagger was already in her other hand, but it was too late.
“No!” she shouted, and the chill of fear coursed through her veins. She cringed back, and—
…no teeth sank into her flesh.
She opened one eye, then immediately scrambled backward, both eyes wide.
The bloodwolf was suspended in midair, as if hanging by a puppeteer’s strings, its mouth open, razor-sharp teeth gleaming and ready to tear out her throat, its eyes burning with white fire.
She whirled around. Everything had just…stopped. A bird stood like a statue on a branch. The trees were unnaturally still. Even the tear had ceased mending itself, halfway there, though black flames still spouted forth, likewise frozen.
Everything except her was frozen.
Including Vaughn.
He stood, caught in a single moment, his mouth open as if to shout, bow drawn, arrow already set to the string.
Even as she stared at him and his bow, she could trace the arrow’s future trajectory. Not through calculations or even a reasonable guess. She just knew. It would have been deadly accurate, as usual, but too late.
What in the abyss had just happened? Was she hallucinating again?
She became dimly aware of the ice still flowing through her veins—what she had written off as fear—because it felt so cold that it was hot, boiling even.
It didn’t precisely hurt, but it wasn’t comfortable, either. And she was starting to feel lightheaded.
Burning skies. This wasn’t a dream, a hallucination, or some new machination of the heretic gods.
She had done this.
She spun again. She was still doing this.
And if she knew anything about the way Banebringer powers worked—which she did—if she didn’t stop, she would kill herself.
Think, Ivana. She knew how to burn aether outside her body. She’d done it many, many times. It just required direction.
She backed a good distance away from the bloodwolf.
Stop, she thought. Stop this!
And just like that, everything began again.
The burning in her veins also stopped, and she fell to her hands and knees, gasping, as if someone had kicked her in the back.
Beyond her, Vaughn’s shout was given voice, and simultaneously, there was a hard thwack.
Silence. She sat back on her heels. Vaughn was staring at the dead bloodwolf, which, incredibly, now had an arrow-sized hole clean through its head, and then at his arrow, which had buried itself all the way to the fletching in a tree beyond the bloodwolf. An impossible feat.
“How in the abyss did you do that?” she asked.
At the same time, he turned to her and asked, “How in the abyss did you get over there?”
Vaughn and Ivana stared at one another for a moment.
He didn’t know how he had don
e that. He had done nothing out of the ordinary, felt nothing out of the ordinary other than that the bow had been easier to draw than normal. Had it been the bow, then, perhaps? If so…damn.
Ivana, likewise, didn’t answer him. She just shook her head. “Where are we?”
He glanced around to take note of their surroundings—a small clearing surrounded by forest. Nearby, a tiny hut sat nestled amongst the trees, and in front of an open door lay an old man.
Ivana walked over to him and nudged him with her foot. “Dead,” she said. “Banebringer?”
“I’m guessing,” Vaughn said. “Must have been hiding out here—wherever ‘here’ is—and died of old age or some other ailment.”
Ivana swiped a hand across her brow and made to wipe it on her new tunic, but instead, she stopped and stared down at her hand.
He didn’t look at her hand. He looked at her forehead.
She had a cut there, likely gained when they had crashed through the portal and onto the rocky ground, still oozing red blood.
But the trickle running down her forehead and into her eyes was hardening into silver.
Zily hadn’t been lying. Ivana was his new Banebringer.
Her throat constricted and she lowered her hand, then looked away from him and back down to the man lying at her feet.
Her hand clenched into a fist and her jaw jumped.
He took a few hesitant steps toward her. “I-I’m sorry,” he said. “I know how it feels to realize…that you’re one of them—us—now.”
She lifted her head and turned toward him. “You think I care about that?” she said through clenched teeth.
He blinked. “Uh—most people do?”
She snorted. “I don’t give a damn about what color my blood turns. What I give a damn about is that now I’ll be nothing more than a tool to your Ichtaca.” Her nostrils flared. “I didn’t ask for this. I went along with your little scheme out of some…misguided desire to know more about my parents.”
He hadn’t known that. He’d thought he’d just annoyed her enough that she’d given in.
“And now I’m embroiled in this, whether I wanted to be or not. And to be clear, I didn’t.”
Birds chirped in the trees overhead, filling a moment of silence, a moment during which his chest tightened, and his hands began to sweat. “You…are going to help us, aren’t you?”
“Do I have a choice?” she spat.
“I won’t stop you if you run,” he said softly.
Something flickered across her face other than anger. But it was gone before he could identify it. “Then you’re a fool,” she said. “Because given how important this could be, you ought to have already tied me up and be dragging me back, kicking and screaming.”
She was right. He would be a fool to just let her go. But he wouldn’t, couldn’t force her to do this. He knew what it was to be poked and prodded, interrogated, treated as if his only value, his only identity, was in that of being a Banebringer. How much more so, for her? “You’re fond of telling me how much of an idiot I am,” he said. “So does this surprise you?”
She rolled her eyes, and he moved to stand in front of her.
He touched her jaw and turned her head to face him. “I won’t force you to do this. But I would very much like it if you would.”
He held his breath at her moment of silence, but it didn’t last.
She pressed her lips together. “Of course I’m going to come back with you,” she said, sounding downright grumpy. “You dragged me this far. What in the abyss—or out of it—else would I do now?” She glanced back down at her silver-stained hands. “Do you know what I just did? I didn’t mean to—but somehow it happened anyway.”
He shook his head.
“I froze everything except myself. That’s how I moved. You, the bloodwolf—it was like you all turned into statues.”
He blinked. “That’s…different.”
“Yes. Thanks for that observation. Pretty sure I also could have easily killed myself since I had no idea what I was doing.”
He exhaled and glanced around, his eyes lingering once again on the arrow that had drilled straight through the bloodwolf’s head and into the tree beyond. “All right. Well. We’ll figure that out when we get back to Marakyn. Let’s find a place where we can see the lay of the land and figure out where exactly we are.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ethically Nebulous
Driskell closed his eyes and imagined a giant bubble expanding from himself. The effort was costing him; he had already become familiar with the feel of the aether “burning” in his blood—that peculiar boiling ice sensation—and he was burning more than he should have been at once.
Still, he continued to push at the bubble until it enveloped Danton and Thrax, both just a few feet away from him, and then stopped expanding it.
He slowly backed off on the amount of aether he was burning, bringing the boil down to a simmer, and then the lazy trickle of the tiny, pre-simmer bubbles.
He held that for a moment until he felt as though it were stable, and then he opened his eyes.
Danton and Thrax were doing their best to ignore him while playing a game of tapolli on Danton’s little table.
“I’m thirsty,” he said. “Anyone want to go get me a drink?”
Danton moved one of his stones forward, and neither of them responded to his plea.
Driskell sighed, and the bubble popped.
He slumped forward and put his forehead in his hands. “I’m never going to get this.”
Thrax pushed his chair back from the table and put his hands behind his head. “I might have felt a tingle in my fingers that time.”
Driskell lifted his head to glare at Thrax.
Danton swept the red and black stones into a pile, disrupting the imaginary game. “I told you, this isn’t going to work on us. We know what you’re doing. All the information, anecdotal or otherwise, we’ve managed to find on charmblood powers—”
“I know,” Driskell said. He ticked points off on his fingers. “They don’t work well on people who know what you’re doing. They don’t work as well if the person even knows you could be using your powers. Subtle suggestion works better than direct commands. And it’s at its best when you’re working with assumptions, beliefs, or desires the person already has and just nudging them along a little.”
“Yes. In other words, you need to practice on someone else,” Danton said.
Driskell was already shaking his head, but Thrax broke in before he could protest.
“Look, head to one of the shops where you’ve been meaning to buy something. Use your mind powers to get a better deal. They won’t be the wiser, and it’d be the perfect situation to practice on.”
“That’s like…cheating!” Driskell said.
Thrax groaned and slapped his palm over his entire face.
Driskell gave Danton a plaintive look. He hated this. He couldn’t practice on Danton and Thrax because they knew he was doing it, and so it wouldn’t work. He didn’t want to practice on anyone else because it felt unethical. Aside from that first suggestion he had made to Linette, he had yet to influence anyone to do anything.
Danton sighed. “Do you at least feel you’re making progress with controlling the flow of aether?”
Driskell shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe? I think I went a little too fast at the beginning, but once I had it stabilized, it felt more in control.”
“I mean, that’s definitely better than passing out every time you try to do this…”
Driskell winced. “I don’t think I’m cut out for this. I can’t think of a scenario in which I would feel comfortable using these powers on people.”
“So don’t use them on people,” Danton said. “Do that thing where you supposedly enhance yourself instead.”
“That’s still—”
“There you go,” Thrax said. “Perfect. Next time you’re with that girl of yours, throw a few love-beams her way and…” He wiggled his eyebro
ws.
Danton snorted. “Love-beams?”
“I will not!” Driskell said.
“I’m not suggesting you get her to do something she wouldn’t already want to do,” Thrax said. “I’m just saying, you could make it a little more fun if—are you blushing?”
“I don’t—we don’t—that’s not—” Driskell stammered.
Danton elbowed Thrax hard enough that he made a small oof. “Shut it, idiot. They’re, you know, not there yet.”
“Rhianah help us,” Thrax said. “Of all the people to get stuck with these powers, and we get straight arrow here.”
Driskell bit his lip. “Look, I’d rather not have these powers at all. And if I had to be destined for something, I don’t know myself why it couldn’t have been fire or ice or—or anything less ethically nebulous.”
“‘Ethically nebulous,’” Thrax repeated. “That’s a phrase you don’t hear every day.”
Danton tried again. “Driskell…I know you don’t like this. But think of it this way: that Conclave representative who’s always skulking around, trying to find some evidence that we’re doing something underhanded? If you could learn to control this, you could use it to mislead him, persuade him, or otherwise buy us more time here and there. Is that any more unethical than using more conventional means of doing those things?”
Driskell chewed on his lip. “I mean…I don’t know. I guess not.”
“We’re overthrowing the entire established order,” Thrax grumbled, as if he hadn’t heard any of that, “and he’s worried about being ethically nebulous.”
That was it, though, wasn’t it? Everything around Driskell was shifting sand. What had been unthinkable a few months ago was now happening, what had been wrong, right—how far did it go? He had no control over anything else, but whether or how to use his powers, he did. He needed some anchor in his life.
Even so. Danton had a point. He could be useful. Helpful, even. But he would have to practice.
