Ignite the Sun

by Hanna Howard

  Could I get to it somehow? My mind spun like a stormy whirlpool.

  Apart from the obsidian band, I had been left unbound, presumably because Iyzabel thought I would be helpless on a pair of freshly broken legs. I was inclined to agree, but perhaps she would bring the urn closer. I closed my eyes and lay limp, hoping they would think I had fainted, but my thoughts galloped at a breakneck pace. The obsidian band blocked my connection to the sun so thoroughly that I could no longer detect how close it was to its peak, which meant I would have to rely on Iyzabel’s countdown to know when the moment came.

  But why was she counting down at all?

  She clearly hoped to use the equinox for something too . . .

  Could I beat her to it?

  “Five minutes, Majesty.”

  “I just need to link them,” said Iyzabel from near my head. “Remember, we have only one minute when it starts, so work quickly.”

  Someone came with a rope and tied it around my middle, pinning my arms to my sides. Then, nearly shocking me out of my feigned swoon, Iyzabel drew a long, icy-cold line below my collarbone—with that familiar tingle of magic—and something jolted my insides from head to foot—sharp, tingling, and slightly painful. It was like a splinter that went through my whole body, as if something huge and new had been added to the very fabric of my being.

  Beside me, Eamon twitched and gave an almost inaudible gasp, and I realized what had changed . . . what Iyzabel had done. I just need to link them, she’d said. I couldn’t fathom why, but I was sure that if I opened my eyes, I would see a thread of magic binding our two bodies together.

  It was as if my brother’s body, soul, and mind had been shoved in like an extra layer on top of mine. I was aware of every part of him—every bruise, wound, thought, heartbeat, and fear—just as I was aware of mine.

  But that wasn’t the most shocking thing.

  I was also now aware that Eamon was very much awake.

  Don’t look at me, I felt him think, urgently. She cannot know . . .

  I knew exactly what he meant, and as I thought it, I felt him feel me think it—and the bizarreness of it all nearly threw off my focus.

  Eamon, I’m going to try and use the equinox.

  He knew already. Of course.

  The urn, he or I thought.

  I’ll smash it, said Eamon.

  “One minute!” Iyzabel’s voice was ragged and hungry.

  By tiny degrees, I inched my hand into the slit in my dress.

  “Forty seconds!”

  Eamon was tensed like a cat ready to spring.

  “Twenty-five . . . Twenty . . . Ten . . .”

  I tried to keep my breathing slow and level, my eyes softly closed. In the folds of my skirt, I found the hilt of my dagger and wrapped my fingers around it.

  “Five!” Her voice was very near now, and I suspected I would find her knife raised over Eamon or myself if I opened my eyes.

  “Two!”

  “ONE!” I bellowed, and ripped the citrine dagger free of its sheath, pouring all my thought, strength, and hope into that yellow jewel in the hilt as I twisted my wrist up and pointed the blade toward the sun.

  57

  CHAPTER

  The sun answered.

  Light exploded through me in a roar of sound and brilliant gold, and I hauled myself to sitting as the obsidian band clattered to the floor and my ropes fell away in smoking ruins. My connection with Eamon broke.

  Without pausing to think, I raised my hand and sent a torrent of sunlight smashing into Iyzabel’s chest. She shrieked and fell back, but I did not wait to see how she fared. I flung up a sunshield in front of Eamon and myself with the dagger, and put my free hand to one leg, where I poured healing energy as fast and thick as I could. The power of the equinox surged through me like fire, and my legs were healed almost as soon as I touched them. Next moment, I swung sideways to slice through Eamon’s bonds, and with a movement like a wildcat, he leapt off his slab and crossed the crypt at a run, scattering sages and glass bottles alike as he lurched for the urn. In one swift movement, he lifted it above his head and hurled it at the stone wall.

  I watched, transfixed, as it soared through the dark crypt, its gleaming surface flashing in the light of the green-flamed torches, and then—

  The urn exploded with a sound like lightning striking, and fine white powder shot up the wall and across the floor in a dusty cloud. Iyzabel, who had only just managed to overcome my attack, whirled around to stare at the wreckage, and for a moment the crypt went entirely, eerily still. Then she turned toward Eamon, and the sound she made was anguished, furious, and hopeless at once. She seemed for a moment to forget even about her magic as she lunged for him, apparently thinking to tear him apart with her bare hands. I blasted her back with a burst from my palm, and she fell with another shriek of agony, face contorted, and fingernails raking at the stone floor like a wild animal.

  “Lomac!” she screamed. “Lomac!”

  Lomac?

  “This is your fault!” she shrieked at me, pointing a shaking finger and scrabbling at the floor for her dagger. “Your fault, and my wretched sister’s! No one should have magic except me! No one else can be trusted with it!”

  The unbounded current of the sun’s power ebbed away, and I was left with just my full sunspot once again. The equinox’s moment had gone, and now I was disconnected from the sun. Iyzabel, however, still had full access to the Darkness.

  I darted forward to try and snatch her dagger off the floor, but she got there first, and her streak of black lightning hit me so hard I crashed into the table Eamon had just vacated. But the blast did more—and it seemed to be more than even Iyzabel anticipated. The binding thread of magic she had used to connect me to Eamon still clung to my chest like a glittering purple cobweb, and it rose to answer the blade that had made it. Before I knew what was happening, the purple thread uncoiled and shot toward Iyzabel—and then for a moment we were joined just as Eamon and I had been.

  Raw, desperate fury coursed through me—through us—but just as strong was the surge of agonizing grief that throbbed like a wound that wouldn’t heal. Flashes of memory beat into my mind, each crashing and breaking like a wave against a cliff, there and gone with relentless speed; Serving beer to rowdy men in a dark, crowded pub, and across the room, a tall young man appeared with fathomless black eyes and pale skin that flushed occasionally deepest, stormy blue. He glanced at me, and a delicious shiver ran down my spine. Sitting in a bright cottage parlor filled with laughter and chattering female voices. My head splitting with pain at the presence of so much light. A woman shouting at me to make myself useful and start cleaning fish for the supper, while a rosy-cheeked, freckled girl with orange hair smirked at me from her chaise lounge by the window. My beloved fisherman father, glassy-eyed and dead in a casket, and me, alone. A night of blessed, true darkness, skin against skin and exquisite sensation with the tall young man from the pub. Standing tall and furious on the banks of the Elderwind River, obsidian dagger in hand while Darkness churned overhead and Lomac took water from the river and made it seethe with hurricane vengeance. Then a man, middle-aged, grim-faced and silver-eyed, who walked ahead of the advancing army to meet us, a Runepiece raised in his hand. Lomac, dead in a pool of his own cold water while the mage stood over him. Storing ashes in an urn while tears burned hot streaks down my cheeks. Months turning into years of searching books for ways I might bring him back, lessen this desperate, empty loneliness.

  Iyzabel burned with cold, raging urgency, as did I, trapped alongside her, and I felt her awareness of me triple her wrath. And then, even as she tried to keep it hidden from me, I became aware that her idea had been to use my raw magic and Eamon’s body to resurrect this Lomac, this witch she had loved, in an effort to alleviate the terrible loneliness that haunted her. Then to take vengeance on Yarrow, to eliminate the last threats to her Darkness, and finally to live secure in her kingdom of Darkness. Happily ever after, worshiped, indulged, like she deserved.


  Iyzabel screamed and shoved me out of her head with another bolt of black lightning, disintegrating the linking thread. I staggered, but before she could do anything more, I flung out a hand and sent a sunburst at the pile of ashes across the crypt.

  There was a crack as it hit, and the dusty pile burst into flame.

  58

  CHAPTER

  Iyzabel’s scream was inhuman. A blast of green light sent me sprawling backward again with a cold burning in my shoulder, and I landed hard. I blinked, and for the first time since I had arrived in the crypt, I found my gaze directed toward the vaulted ceilings.

  For a split second, I froze.

  High on the damp stone walls, a collection of mounted heads gleamed in the torchlight—but they were not animal heads, like I had sometimes seen in pubs and inns. Everywhere I looked, the blank, dead eyes of some magical being gazed back at me: satyrs and she-fauns, naiads, elves, pixies, dwarves . . .

  With a sick jolt, I recognized one of them: Beq, the dwarf woman who had sheltered us in her home before betraying us for the sake of her son. Her eyes looked sad, even as empty, marble orbs.

  I barely saw Iyzabel move—perhaps she could become shadow herself—before she knocked me onto the floor yet again, and I just got my hands up in time to save my throat from her dagger. I lay beneath her, the blade cutting into my palms as I held it back, while an acrid, cloying smoke curled from the silver where it touched my flesh. Iyzabel looked like she had transcended fury and landed in some distant realm where mere anger was a charitable virtue. Somewhere, I could hear Eamon bellowing as he fought her men, and beyond that, the shouts of my friends in the catacombs.

  “Do you like my collection?” Iyzabel hissed. Her knife moved a fraction of an inch closer to my neck. “It’s taken me years to assemble them all. I have one of every species.”

  I gritted my teeth, knowing she meant people, not animals. My arms trembled, and the light burning inside my skin made it look like thin, speckled paper. With yet another plunge in my stomach, I understood how Iyzabel learned we were heading north for the equinox. Hadn’t Beq’s house been the first place Yarrow attempted to explain our plan?

  “Did you hear me, sunchild? I said I have one of every species.”

  My eyes were locked on hers, and I refused to move them an inch. I didn’t want to see what she was gesturing at, because I already knew what it would be. The knife edge grazed my neck, cool and sharp, and dug still farther into the flesh of my palms. I could feel hot blood beginning to run in rivulets down the sides of my arms.

  “Siria, look,” said Iyzabel, and I was so startled by her use of my name that I did look.

  The real thing was even worse than I had imagined. I didn’t know whether it was Yarrow’s wife or some other poor sunchild Iyzabel had killed during the overthrow, but she was waxy and pale on the wall, in spite of her deep-russet skin, freckles, and vivid curls. Unlike the coppery red that dominated my own hair, this sunchild had shocking yellow hair, like gold caught in bright firelight.

  In another moment, I knew, my head would be well suited to join hers on the wall.

  I looked back into Iyzabel’s eyes, dark blue with a nebulous black shadow drifting over the irises, and knew that whatever motives she still had for keeping us all here, my desire to get us out was stronger.

  “What have you got, you mad old witch?” I gasped. “Manipulation? Power?” I did my best to sneer. “Darkness?” I heaved sunlight into my arms and felt the blade lift slightly. “Those things may be enough to take a kingdom, Your Majesty, but they aren’t enough to keep it.”

  “What do you know about it?” she hissed, redoubling her efforts on the dagger even as it sparked and smoked, a churning cloud veined with gold. “You’re just a child.”

  “Maybe,” I said, my voice growing stronger as the light around us swelled. I pushed her farther back. “But I’ve lit enough candles in my short life to have learned the most important thing.”

  “Oh really?” Iyzabel tried to look scornful, but I saw her eyes dart from the growing light around me to the roiling smoke coming off her knife as I gripped it. “And what’s that?”

  I smiled at her. “Light beats darkness. Every time.”

  With a tremendous, bone-rending effort, I sent all the sunlight I could into my hands. There was a deafening crack, and the blade of the obsidian dagger poured through my fingers in a fine, silver powder. Iyzabel toppled sideways off me, eyes huge, mouth open in silent horror as she gripped the useless hilt.

  “Soldiers, to me!” she shrieked, scrambling to her feet.

  But I drew my own dagger and flung a blast of sunlight straight at her chest, where it collided with a blinding flash. Smoke poured thick and fast from the spot, enshrouding her as she fell to the stone floor.

  “Eamon,” I shouted. “Get the others out!”

  I had counted almost thirty of Iyzabel’s soldiers, and all of them were now running toward either their queen or me. With all the sun energy I had left, I raised a shield to split the embalming chamber, trapping the soldiers on Iyzabel’s side in front of the stairs.

  I heard the clang of metal behind me and glanced over my shoulder. Eamon had found a hammer and was swinging it at the catacombs’ padlock. Yet even as I stood, pouring strength into the sunshield, I could feel it weakening.

  “Hurry!” I shouted.

  Eamon grunted, and I heard the padlock break.

  A moment later a hand squeezed my shoulder, and I looked back to see Linden, grubby and bruised, giving me a proud, bracing look. Yarrow appeared at my other side, face set. I nodded at him. Robbed of his Runepiece, he lifted a discarded sword, and Linden raised a pair of mace-like clubs that had been lying on the table with the urn. Behind us I could hear the others arming themselves too.

  “This is the last of it,” I muttered to Yarrow, nodding at my sunshield.

  “Then you move to the back with Elegy and focus on getting more. We’ll guard you until you do.”

  I nodded. “On my signal, then.”

  But another hand forestalled me.

  “Siria,” said Merrall’s voice from behind me, and I turned to find her at my shoulder, a look of fierce approval on her cut and bruised face. “It is an honor to fight beside you.”

  A lump grew in my throat. “The honor’s mine, Merrall.”

  Something collided with my sunshield before I could turn, and I felt it blink out.

  “Now!” I screamed, and stumbled backward as my friends rushed into the wall of soldiers.

  59

  CHAPTER

  Elegy slipped her hand inside mine, but I could not spare her any attention as we pounded after the others—all but Phipps and Milla, who trotted along behind us in mute terror. Harder than I had ever done before, I concentrated on pushing my mind upward, through the Darkness, toward the sun. In the farmlands, it had felt like slipping my hand through the holes of a shifting net, but here it was like trying to push my fingers into a brick wall.

  I would never reach the sun without my dagger. I fumbled for it, but Elegy’s hand slid out of mine, and I looked back to find that she had stopped where she stood, strangely rigid. The next moment I collided with someone in front of me, and made a wild grab for my knife—only to find that it was Merrall.

  I seized her shoulders to steady us both, but she barely seemed to notice. She was staring up at a high wall with a frozen expression. I followed her gaze, to where the countless mounted heads encircled the room like ghastly spectators, and felt as if cold fingers were closing around my heart.

  I knew right away which one had caught her attention. He was a young man with a rugged, kind face: handsome, pleasant-looking. Even from a distance, I thought I could detect laugh lines around his eyes and mouth. A fishing net had been draped artfully around his plaque, and his deadened marble eyes stared down into the crypt, blind to the aqua eyes now staring back.

  I remembered what Merrall had told me that day at the stream: how she had lost the young fisherman she l
oved and had been looking for him—waiting for him—for so many years. How despite everything, she had never lost hope of finding him.

  My fingers tightened on her shoulders. “The obsidian band!” I hissed, but it was no use. She twisted out of my grip and flung herself forward with a tearing scream, right into a pack of soldiers standing guard around the Witch Queen.

  Unlikely though I knew it was, I had dared to hope Iyzabel might die from the last wound I dealt her. Now, however, I saw her standing erect and furious behind her soldiers, black smoke swirling about her fists in currents of raw, undirected power. She had also acquired a sword. With helpless dread, I watched the naiad duck between two surprised-looking soldiers and throw herself on the witch.

  “Weedy!”

  Linden had come back and was trying to pull me on, but I could not leave Merrall. I tried to tell him this—but as I caught sight of Elegy, just a few paces behind me, the words died on my tongue.

  The banshee was bent double, jerking and convulsing as if she were having some kind of seizure, fingers gripping her throat. Her eyes were like violet coins, huge and round, and her mouth opened and closed as if she might be sick.

  “No,” I whispered.

  Elegy gave one last shudder, then released her throat and straightened up again. She no longer looked like herself as she drifted a few inches off the floor: Her eyes were misty white, her face cold and expressionless as marble, her posture stiff. As on the day we had met her, she was glowing with silvery light. And when she opened her mouth, the sound that poured forth to fill the crypt was nothing like the music I had heard her sing before.

  It was cold and terrible, like the chill that creeps into your heart when you think too much about the long dark of death, and it sent shivers running down my spine and over the skin of my legs. Despair crowded the hope burning in my heart and extinguished it.

  I spun around, but three soldiers were already running across the crypt toward their queen, who bore a long gash across her cheek from the surgical knife Merrall was wielding. Before I could so much as lift my hands, one of the soldiers lunged forward—and Merrall buckled with his blade in her back.