As She Ascends
Page 37
As Hush continued her assault on the roof, dropping huge chunks of stone into the arena, I moved from dragon to dragon and pushed noorestone fire into them, burning away the last traces of illness.
With wind and sky and morning sun pouring through the widening hole in the roof, the other dragons drew themselves to all fours and tested their strength against the remaining columns and walls. Structures cracked apart, and noorestones scattered across the fragmented floor like dying stars.
More and more dragons found their feet and wings, and even as the earthquake eased and ended, the building was lost.
::Run?:: Aaru tapped against his own hand.
I lifted my face. Chunks of the dome rained in, shattering where they hit what was left of the floor. The ruins crumbled around us as dragons took flight, breaking off jagged pieces of walls and towers. Flame spun from Hush’s open jaws as she roared in triumph, then pushed off into the sky.
The remaining dragons followed, spreading their wings to take flight through the open ceiling.
It was too late to run, but I could protect us.
As the ruins screamed and cracked, and immense slabs plummeted toward us, I reached for Aaru.
His eyes flickered to the noorestone glow shimmering between my arms.
Under the roar of the dome crumbling in, I whispered, “Do you trust me?”
His jaw tightened.
He stepped into my arms.
I ducked his head to my chest, letting my fire wings spread wide around us as the ruins collapsed in plumes of pale stone and dust. An incredible crash sounded as a broken arch dropped, and noorestone after noorestone winked out—finally darkened after all this time.
As tunnels buckled, and walls sloughed apart, and towers crumbled inward, I drew the last remnants of fire from the ruin noorestones before they, too, were gone.
One thousand noorestones.
Four hundred.
Twenty.
One.
The noorestone fire died. My wings disappeared. I was just a girl again, my arms wrapped tight around Aaru as the last of the stones fell, and dust whispered away in the morning breeze.
The ruins were completely destroyed, this once-glorious arena reduced to chunks of rock and darkened noorestones that glittered dimly in the rising light. I stepped back from Aaru, coughing against the swirling dust, but when my heel kicked a drift of shattered stone, I noticed a perfect circle cut around us.
Aaru lifted his eyes and smiled. His hands stayed clasped with mine. ::You changed the prayer for the dragons. You said hope instead of love.::
I squeezed his hands and ducked my face, hardly able to contain the relieved smile blooming out of me. ::It seemed to me they needed hope more than anything. I could heal them; they needed to believe it.::
He stepped close to kiss me, just a soft brush of his mouth on mine. ::You are a true Hopebearer.::
“Mira!” Across a white field of shattered stone, Ilina stood with the rest of our friends, her mother, and Altan. The warrior was back in cuffs, held in place between Hristo and Gerel. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t escaped once he’d distracted the guards, but maybe his honor wouldn’t have allowed it. He still owed me Tirta, Elbena, and Kelsine.
We couldn’t stay here. Anaheran authorities would arrive any minute. But before I could lead everyone back down the trail—to the rowboat and the Chance Encounter—Ilina waved and pointed up. “Look!”
Aaru and I both obeyed.
Dozens of dragons wove through the dawn, their wings outstretched to create a brilliant tapestry that glittered in the hot morning sun. They circled into a tower of color—ruby and topaz and emerald and sapphire—spiraling around one another, shooting fire as they climbed higher into the sky. They roared and stretched, finally—finally—free to go where they wanted.
There was Lex, her red scales shining. And Tower and Astrid, the other two I’d known from the Crescent Prominence sanctuary. The emerald dragon I’d first healed thrashed his head around, twisting his body through the blue sky. And ahead of all the dragons flew Hush.
She didn’t land to say good-bye. She didn’t even turn to look at me. But my heart pounded with a joy like fire, and I knew it was hers.
::Where are they going?:: Aaru asked.
“Somewhere far away.” A piece of my soul ached to go with them. “Somewhere humans can’t hurt them anymore.”
Wingbeats faded. The pull in my chest eased. The dragons disappeared into the sky. Gone, but safe.
Ilina picked her way through the rubble, coming toward me. Both raptuses were perched on her shoulders, hunched low where Ilina rested her fingertips over them to keep them still. “I don’t think we’ll ever see anything like that again. All those dragons together.”
“It’s hard to imagine.” I turned to my best friend. “I can’t believe we did it. At last.”
She grinned and released LaLa, who dived into my arms, clicking and humming.
“And you, little dragon weasel, were very brave.” I bumped my nose against hers. “The bravest gold dragon I’ve ever met.”
“She wanted to fly back in when the building started to fall.” Ilina pulled Crystal into her arms and hugged her close. “Seven gods, I wanted to fly back in after you, but—”
Next to me, Aaru gasped. No voice, just a sharp, indrawn breath filled with alarm. Ilina and I followed his gaze to where a new shape snagged my sight.
An enormous mountain rose in the distance, gleaming like molten gold in the morning light. Though it was too far to notice details, the fact that we could see it from this great distance meant it had to be huge.
Immense. Bigger than anything I’d ever seen before. “It’s incredible,” I breathed. “What do you think it is?”
Aaru’s hand trembled as he touched my arm and tapped in his quiet code. ::Idris.::
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
IDRIS. THE GOD OF SILENCE.
The mountain was shaped like a giant man. He was kneeling, his head hung so his chin pointed at his chest. Not in shame or humiliation, but in deep, contemplative thought. He glistened in the hot sunlight, though whether the glow came from his skin or the water rushing down his form, I couldn’t be sure. Distance obscured detail.
And Idris was so far away. That we could see him from here, on the opposite end of the Fallen Isles, spoke to his immense size.
I couldn’t stop staring.
Or my heart from tumbling over itself.
Or the way horror clawed up my throat and got stuck.
This was it. This was the Great Abandonment.
A Fallen God had risen.
FOUR THINGS:
1.He was magnetic, drawing everyone’s eyes. None could look away from the titanic god on the horizon.
2.Did anything matter now? We’d come all this way and freed over two dozen dragons, but still, Idris had pulled himself from the ocean floor to abandon his people. We had been too late.
3.The Mira Treaty. The inevitable war between every Fallen Isle. The location of spies. All paled beneath the shadow of the risen god. Except . . .
4.Aaru’s family was dead. His friends. His community. No one could have survived the violence of a god rising up from the sea.
There was nothing for Aaru to return to.
SOUND VANISHED AS Aaru dropped to his knees, hopelessness washed across his face like a shroud.
I heard nothing—no gulls, no waves, no screams, no wind, no breathing. Aaru’s sorrow smothered everything with silence.
The silence spilled beyond our sphere, rolling down the cliff and hill and running into the city, where it crashed like a wave. Streetlights went out. Buildings went dark. And the hum of civilization vanished.
Silence. Darkness. A risen god.
Anyone in the path of Aaru’s silence must have tried to scream, but they wouldn’t have been able to hear it. It must have been chaos down there in the city, but I couldn’t feel anything for them now. In this moment, everything went to one person.
At my feet, Aar
u was an aching mirror of his god.
I knelt before him and took his shoulders, but he wouldn’t look at me. He didn’t seem to be present at all, as though the grief had ripped the essence of Aaru right out of his body. He just stayed there, not moving, not even blinking.
Then his eyes focused, first on me, then the great mountain of his god behind me. His mouth opened in a silent cry of anguish. Despair. At once, he bent over and sobbed, his chest heaving with each soundless howl.
Our world was collapsing. His world was already gone.
I shifted around and sat on my feet so that he could rest his forehead on my knees, and it was there, as I stroked his back—as if there was any way to smooth away the horror—that sound began to return.
Wind whispered through the grass.
Noorestones flickered and resumed their normal glow.
Murmuring voices came from the far side of the hill.
“Oh, Aaru,” I breathed, and when I bent over him, LaLa slipped from my arms and curled up with my silent friend. She gave a faint, sorrowful purr, and licked his cheek. “Aaru, I’m sorry.” The word felt too weak for what I wanted to show. Too little against the magnitude of what he’d lost.
Everything.
AARU
First Day in the Pit
WATER DRIPPED FROM THE CEILING.
Slowly.
Evenly.
Maddeningly.
A wooden cup under the leak captured the water; it had been full when I’d arrived, so I’d drunk it all, not thinking I needed to save it. Not thinking the guards would be so cruel as to give us food and water only once a day.
But water continued its unrelenting drip, and the quality of the drops hitting the wood shifted from flat to full. Other sounds skittered throughout the cellblock: voices, groans, and muted movements. Across the hall and over, a young woman with shorn hair exercised; I listened to the hitch of her breath as she pulled herself up on the door, stood on her hands and pushed up, did a thousand other things.
Darkness came.
Screams came.
I retreated beneath the bench meant to double as a bed. There, I wrapped my thin blanket around my head to muffle the cacophony, but there was no blocking out the echoes in my mind.
The riot. The expressions my family wore as I was taken. The question of their survival.
I tried tapping The Book of Silence against my chest, but each letter stabbed me in the heart. Nowhere did the god of silence instruct that families should starve rather than allow a mother to work. Nowhere did the Most Silent say that girls could never possess the Voice of Idris. Nowhere did The Book of Silence insist that it was forbidden to speak against injustice.
Wasn’t all that just as important as what the book did say?
Who, then, had decided my mother was not as strong or as wise as my father? Who, then, had decided that cruel little boys could possess the Voice of Idris, but not sweet Safa? And who, then, had decided that people should endure injustice in silence?
The few who benefited from our suffering.
The few who had turned silence into a weapon.
The few who had twisted Idris’s holy words to benefit themselves.
SOMETIME AFTER THE noorestones illuminated again and food was distributed, guards came through the hall a second time.
They had a girl my age.
She was tall, clad in a long dress that flowed around her legs like water, but her hands were bound and dirt smudged her warm brown skin. Another prisoner.
I stayed under my bed, watching as her sad eyes scanned my cell for signs of life, and then she was gone—waiting while the guards opened the cell next to mine.
When they left, her breath tightened and squeezed, and soon she began to cry. I listened, but there was nothing I could do for her. Not when my own heart was still shattering.
Later, I listened to her tell herself to stop crying, and attempt to introduce herself to the other prisoners. It seemed she was even more unsuited to prison than I.
Then darkness came.
Screams came.
And when quiet followed later, I could hear her on the other side, breaths rasping and catching in fitful sleep. Like me, she’d retreated to the quietest place she could find. She wasn’t Idrisi, not with all those unnecessary words and the extravagant way she dressed, but perhaps we weren’t all that different: her grief and fear matched my own.
I found my wooden cup, full now, and took it to a hole between my cell and hers.
::Strength through silence,:: I prayed, because even if my leaders had betrayed me, my god had not. Then, I found my voice and spoke the name she’d given.
“MIRA.”
CHAPTER FORTY
LATER, I DREAMED OF FLYING.
Of great wings and burning stars.
Of fire and screams.
Of power untold.
And when I opened my eyes, I wasn’t dreaming.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sequels are tricky creatures, and it seemed impossible that I would ever finish this one. But I was never alone on this journey. As always, many people helped me through the endless drafts to make this book the best it could be.
First, I must thank Lauren MacLeod, my fearless agent. Every time I complained I’d never finish this book, she reminded me of the last fifty times I said the same thing but made it through alive.
Maria Barbo and Stephanie Guerdan, my incredible editors who worked hard to make sure this book has sparkles . . . and more dragons.
The entire team at Katherine Tegen Books, including Bess Braswell, Sabrina Abballe, Rosanne Romanello, Joel Tippie, Emily Rader, and Katherine Tegen.
As with Before She Ignites, I must acknowledge and thank an incredible group of critique partners, sensitivity readers, brainstormers, and cheerleaders: Brodi Ashton, Martina Boone, Erin Bowman, Valerie Cole, Julie Daly, Cynthia Hand, Deborah Hawkins, Suna Jung, Sarah Kershaw, Stacey Lee, Sarah Glenn Marsh, Myra McEntire, Mary E. Pearson, Kathryn Purdie, C. J. Redwine, Aminah Mae Safi, Alexa Santiago, Francina Simone, Erin Summerill, Laurel Symonds, Christina Termini, Tiffie van Bordeveld, Alana Whitman, Fran Wilde, the entire OQ Support Group, and anyone I’ve shamefully forgotten in my eleventh-hour acknowledgment writing.
Thanks to the teams at OwlCrate and the Bookie Box, for including Before She Ignites in such wonderful boxes, and to all the readers who subscribe to them.
Of course, thanks to my mom, sister, and husband, who put up with more book talk than anyone should have to endure.
And, as always, thank you, readers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Courtesy of Jodi Meadows and Brian Perry
JODI MEADOWS wants to be a ferret when she grows up and she has no self-control when it comes to yarn, ink, or outer space. Still, she manages to write books. She is the author of the Incarnate trilogy, the Orphan Queen duology, and the Fallen Isles trilogy and coauthor of the New York Times bestseller My Lady Jane. Visit her at www.jodimeadows.com.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
BOOKS BY JODI MEADOWS
The Fallen Isles Trilogy
Before She Ignites
As She Ascends
When She Reigns
The Orphan Queen Duology
The Orphan Queen
The Mirror King
The Hidden Prince
The Glowing Knight
The Burning Hand
The Black Knife
The Incarnate Trilogy
Incarnate
Asunder
Infinite
Phoenix Overture
The Lady Janies Series
Coauthored with Cynthia Hand and Brodi Ashton
My Lady Jane
My Plain Jane
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COPYRIGHT
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
AS SHE ASCENDS. Copyright © 2018 by Jodi Meadows. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Cover photography by Michael Frost
Cover art and design by Joel Tippie
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018939882
Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-246945-8
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-246943-4
1819202122PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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