by Hanna Howard
Apparently immune to the scene ahead, Yarrow faced us all, looking stern. “This path is the most treacherous in all of Terra-Volat. It saves us a week’s journey over the mountains, and will put us right in the middle of the Northern Wilds, but it’s largely disused because it’s so dangerous. My magic will help, but I want all of you alert and careful.”
He waited for a nod from each of us before turning back to lead us up the path. “Weedy,” he said over his shoulder. “Come walk with me.”
The winding path was flanked by evergreens—full, strong, healthy evergreens—and I took so many deep breaths of the sharp, fresh-smelling air that I soon became woozy. As we rose higher, the occasional gaps in the trees revealed sweeping mountain-laced landscapes, spread out on either side of us like works of art, snow-capped or clothed in green. I was giddy from looking around so much—from seeing so much. It was difficult to keep from spilling sun energy over everyone.
Not unexpectedly, Yarrow asked almost at once for my account of the last two weeks. He was very quiet at first, and I tried to soften some of the harsher details to make him feel less responsible. When I reached the part about Bronya and Roark, however, he missed a step on the rising path and nearly fell headlong into the gorse.
“They said they knew you,” I offered as I helped him up, hoping for his side of the story.
He was very pale. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, they did know me once. Though I’m not sure I knew them.”
I frowned. “Bronya wondered if you’d sent me to them on purpose.”
“I didn’t have . . . much control over what I did that day,” he said, looking agitated. “I wasn’t even sure it would work. But as you know, magic is often controlled by thought and emotion. In the chaos, perhaps I remembered that they farmed near the forest.”
“I tried to get them to come with me, but Roark thinks our cause is doomed.”
Yarrow grunted. I could see an angry flush creeping up his face beneath the scraggly white beard.
“Iyzabel killed their children, Yarrow. Don’t you think that gives them some excuse?”
But this only seemed to make him angrier. He glowered in silence until my story left Bronya and Roark well behind, though he was shocked to hear of the citrine dagger, and at the end of my account he asked to see it as well as my arrow wound. He frowned at the latter, and promised to teach me more about healing next.
Midmorning, I finally saw what he had meant when he said our path was the most treacherous one in the kingdom. So far, we had merely been climbing over rocks and shale, occasionally passing drop-offs we could easily avoid. Now, however, the path left the forest behind, and continued for an appallingly long stretch on a two-foot-wide strip of ledge that was carved into the side of the mountain like a thin belt, hugging the sheer face of the peak.
To the left of this path was a vertical wall of rock, climbing ever upward into clouds toward the pinnacle. To the right, a drop-off whose depths disappeared in shadowy fog.
It was wide enough to cross, but only if you walked carefully, as one would walk along a roof’s peak.
Yarrow tapped his Runepiece—a walking stick for the moment—on the rim of the ledge, and I saw a vivid teal light expand from the point it touched and shoot along the ledge. “That should keep anyone from missteps, at least, but I don’t know how much more it will do,” he said. “Be careful, all of you. Take your time.”
I edged out onto the lip of rock after Yarrow and reached behind me for Linden’s hand. Glancing back, I was grateful to see that he had offered his cloak for Elegy to hold. Merrall was grim-faced and lockjawed behind the banshee, both hands searching for nooks in the side of the mountain as we inched along.
When Merrall had progressed several paces over the open void, and the rest of us were far enough along that Yarrow was approaching the very middle of the ledge, I heard a sound that made me feel like my stomach was falling all the way down into the chasm of fog below us.
It was the unmistakable creak of a bowstring, though none of us was holding a bow.
My head snapped back toward the trees, and I saw something shift in the shadows. A man appeared through the branches, the iron tip of his arrow glinting as it caught the filtered light from the clouds. Behind him came a second man with a sword, and with a nauseating swoop of recognition I saw a third, this one holding a loaded crossbow. They were the men from the tavern last night, who had been whispering at a table together when Linden and I arrived.
I turned away to hide my face, cold terror rushing through me.
“Where’s the sunchild?” said one of the men, his voice deep and aggressive. “We know you’re her companions. Tell us where she is and we’ll spare your lives.”
It was small consolation he had not spotted me, and my mind began to fumble for ways I might use this to our advantage. Our advantages, however, stuck as we were like training yard dummies on the side of the mountain, seemed limited.
“She is dead,” said Merrall evenly. “Your people shot her.”
“Liar,” breathed the man. I heard the crunch of rocks and guessed he was stepping forward. My hands started to shake.
“She is—” began Elegy.
“Liars!” bellowed the man. “She was seen in the village of Polter, heading north not three days ago!”
The pickpocket.
There was a twang and a thunk from the crossbow, and I ducked reflexively, turning in spite of myself to see what had happened. Merrall had flung up a whirl of water to catch the arrow, but she staggered back, off balance, and bumped into Elegy.
I watched in frozen horror as the banshee teetered uncontrollably, still clinging to Linden’s cloak. The second soldier lunged forward and swung his sword at Merrall, who twisted her airborne water into a rippling aqua blade and parried the blow. But the wave of movement was too much for Elegy, who flailed her arms for balance even as Linden wildly grasped to catch one of them. They knocked into each other, Elegy gave a terrified scream, and a piece of the ledge crumbled away beneath her foot.
In a flash of silvery-gray hair, she fell backward, over the edge into the abyss, and her shriek tore through my bones.
I was more afraid than I had ever been in my life. Still, I hesitated only long enough to glance at Linden, who was staring in whey-faced shock at the place Elegy had fallen.
Then I threw myself off the side of the mountain, into the fog after her.
PART FOUR
“For a while they stood there, like men on the edge of a sleep where nightmare lurks, holding it off, though they know that they can only come to morning through the shadows.”
J.R.R. TOLKIEN, THE TWO TOWERS
39
CHAPTER
I plummeted like a boulder, but Elegy had fallen first. There was no time to be afraid, no time to do anything but what I must do if we were to survive.
I had flown once since my transformation, and then only by accident. Now, somehow, I had to do it on purpose.
Turning my mind to the clouds, reaching through the thin Darkness, I yanked sunlight into my body until it burned in my limbs. Terror made it easy. Then, like a falcon diving for prey, I pressed my arms to my sides and propelled myself faster, ever downward, into the terrible, thickening fog that masked the bottom from view.
“Elegy!” I screamed, and heard her shriek back, a little to my right, slightly above me.
I had gone too far.
Focusing hard on the sun energy coursing through me, I remembered what Yarrow had said about flight: I could manipulate it like a water current as long as I was connected to my source. Thinking of swimming, I swerved right through the mist, grateful for the blazing light of my skin, and saw the blur of gray that was Elegy just in time to throw out my arms and catch her against my chest.
I felt my sternum crack as she hit. I tried to gasp, but could not draw breath, and the pain was sucking my sun energy away, making it impossible to focus on summoning more. And then Elegy and I were plunging together, and there was nothing I could do
to save us.
“Siria!” Elegy screeched.
And then air filled my lungs again—blessed, wonderful air—and I sucked life back into my chest. Pain tore through my sternum, but if I could breathe, I could cope with pain. I seized the sunlight again and pulled it through my body in a rage of determination—and it coursed from my hair to my feet. With the last vestiges of my control, I held it back from the edge of my skin, protecting Elegy from burning.
How to stop us?
Fear was all I could feel, blinding and clawing as we shot downward.
We were going to die.
I gritted my teeth and seized the terror I felt. I imagined Elegy and I stopping—heaved us upward—with every ounce of energy I had. The air began to slow around us, and as if we were grinding to a halt on some unseen surface, we finally, finally stopped falling altogether. My limbs felt like water, but the task was only half finished. Thankful someone bigger had not fallen, I adjusted my grip on the banshee and turned all my energy toward raising us upward again. At first nothing happened, though I could feel the fire burning in my veins. Then we began, very gradually, to climb again. Elegy’s dead weight dragged at us, and I shook with exertion as we drifted higher with agonizing slowness.
But we were rising.
I was flying.
When at last we broke through the fog, Elegy gave a shriek, and I looked up just in time to veer out of the way of another falling body.
My stomach flipped over, but it was only the soldier with the sword—and he was already dead. Up, I commanded myself, jaw clenched, and we continued to rise. A second body toppled over the ledge just as we reached it, and this time it was the crossbow-wielding man who screamed, quite alive, as he fell.
Yarrow nearly collapsed against the cliff face as Elegy and I drifted into view, and Linden put his head in his hands, looking as if he might throw up. Then they were reaching to pull us up as Merrall followed the last man—the first soldier, with the longbow—flinging shards of ice at him as he ran back through the trees in the direction of the tavern.
When at last Elegy and I stood on the ledge, both of us trembling so badly we had to be supported, there was a long moment of stunned silence. Elegy, who still seemed too shocked for tears or speech, clung to me like a child to its mother, and Yarrow seemed capable only of staring at me with his chest heaving. Linden was grayer than a corpse, and still looked in danger of vomiting, but he stepped close enough to take hold of my hand and squeezed it with shaking fingers. Then, when everyone seemed in better command of themselves, Yarrow led us on as quickly as we could safely go. Solid ground, when we finally reached it, had never been so welcome.
We stopped in the shelter of the trees to wait for Merrall, and Yarrow turned to me at once, his face twisted with emotion. “What were you thinking, Siria?” he demanded, and though his voice was weak, he looked furious. “You told me yourself you hadn’t figured out how to fly. You could both have been killed!”
“If I hadn’t . . . Elegy definitely . . . would have,” I wheezed, sinking down to sit on the ground while I covered my sternum with my hands. “And speaking . . . of powers . . . now might be a good time . . . to teach me . . . healing.”
Yarrow’s anger melted immediately—either at the truth of what I said, or at my obvious pain—and crouched beside me to talk through the process of mending my bones with sun energy: a continual and focused effort to pull sunlight down and imagine it knitting the injuries together. It could take weeks, he said, but if I was determined enough, I might manage it more quickly. And though I grimaced and gasped, exhausted by so much effort to use my power, a few broken or aching bones seemed light compared to the price Elegy and I had nearly paid.
It wasn’t until Linden sat down beside me and gathered me gently into his arms, tripping my calming heartbeat into a stutter again, that I realized what else had happened. “It’s good to have you back to normal again, Weedy,” he said, pulling a lock of hair over my shoulder. I stared at it in amazement. The burst of sun energy I’d summoned had burned away the black dye completely, returning my hair to its usual vivid spectrum of coppers that flickered and glowed like living flames with the power still running through me.
“Also,” he muttered, putting his forehead against my temple and closing his eyes as if he, too, were recovering from an internal injury, “please never do that to me again.”
I could only manage a nod, but I took hold of his hand and held it tight.
Merrall soon joined us with the unwelcome news she had lost the third scout in the woods. Though she was willing to return and search further, Yarrow shook his head.
“He’ll be back to the tavern before you can catch up, and then heading south on horseback. We’d better go on. Linden, I need your best work covering our tracks. When he returns with more men, we can’t give them so much as a bent twig to follow.”
To my surprise, Merrall came to help me up, looking down at me with unmistakable approval. “Most people would have let the banshee die,” she said baldly, offering me her hand. “But you did not. You are a worthy leader, sunchild.”
Finally, Elegy burst into tears.
We pursued a downward slope for several hours—slowly, for my benefit—and then veered directly west into the trees. They were even fuller here, and the myriad green hues within their needles and new spring leaves were varied and deep. I thought that if I had been magically transported from Gildenbrook to this forest without having watched the slow progression through the Forest of Eli, I might not believe that these belonged to the same family as the skeletal, withering trees on the moor.
“Is this the Northern Wilds?” I asked.
“Officially everything beyond the pass is the Northern Wilds,” said Yarrow, just ahead of me. “But we’re still several hours from the resistance camp.”
I thought of my brother—a mere several hours away—and had to reach out for a passing branch to steady myself.
Before long the underbrush grew denser, and we fought our way through brambles and tangled vines. My ribs and chest smarted with every step, though I worked constantly to heal them. I could feel the sunlight inside me like a billowing cloud, but either I was doing it wrong, or it would take even longer than Yarrow guessed.
Linden worked too, always half a dozen steps behind the rest of us, his eyes glowing green and his skin swirling with lines and whorls as he meticulously regrew every leaf and stalk we flattened along the way. It was difficult to keep from watching him. He was beautiful even at his most bedraggled, but clean and rested as he was now, with the uncanny changes his magic made to his appearance, he was hard to ignore. I found myself wanting time alone with him more than I even wanted to heal my chest.
As the day wore on, I could tell we were drawing near to that final tapering away of the Darkness. The enchantment above the trees felt more like a screen than a barrier, and I could sense something farther north that was like a cliff, only it dropped upward instead of down. It pulled at me, as if a tapestry hook had caught the center of my being and drew me inexorably on, toward that bright gulf.
Near evening, Yarrow held up a hand to indicate that we should stop. I stretched my arms cautiously—skin warm from using so much internal sunlight on my cracked bones—and gazed around. Yarrow looked as if he was expecting something, but the forest appeared no different here than it had all day; we were not even in a clearing.
But then—out of thin air, it seemed—two men appeared, hooded and clad in earthy greens and browns. Before any of us could speak, they raised loaded crossbows, and pointed them straight into Yarrow’s face.
And he smiled, as if this were exactly what he had been hoping for.
40
CHAPTER
Name your business, strangers,” one of the men said.
“We are not strangers,” Yarrow said. “I am Yarrow Ash, Mage of Caritas, and these are my companions. We are your allies.”
The men considered him doubtfully for a moment before they noticed me. They exchan
ged looks. Then one of them nodded curtly to the other, who said, “Follow me,” before turning to walk in the opposite direction.
Unlike us, the rebel men passed over the leaves and bracken in complete silence, leading us farther into the thick trees like soft-footed foxes. We came to a clearing, and I could just make out the violet-tinged clouds above the treetops, growing darker as the sun set, unseen, behind them. Even hidden, the sun was so close now I could genuinely smell it; a fragrance on the rich air that was new, and yet more familiar than any scent I knew.
My heart beat hard against my temples. Soon I would see it.
And soon I would meet my brother.
I was utterly terrified.
One of the rebel men gave a sharp, birdlike whistle that echoed around the clearing, and three more men appeared between gaps in the trees, raising their own crossbows.
“Allies,” said the man who had whistled. “Look, Sedge.”
The man he addressed was short and middle-aged, with sandy-brown hair and a tan face disfigured by scars. He frowned skeptically, but when his eyes fell on me, his mouth sagged open. “Incredible,” he breathed. “The whole forsaken country out looking for you, and somehow you outwit them all. How did you find us?” He looked at Yarrow. “Who are you?”
“Yarrow Ash,” he said. “I was trained and apprenticed in the city once known as Caritas. This is Merrall of the Elder Bay, who has spent the last fourteen years as a spy in Umbraz for our cause, and Elegy, a banshee from Myrial Lake who was banished from her clan.”
