The Crown of Embers

by Rae Carson

  And finally we can go no farther. We stand on a slight lip between the cliff and the lake, the waterfall before us. There are not enough handholds. No way to climb. Storm yells something, but his voice is whisked away by the merciless water.

  Think, Elisa.

  I gaze at the cliff face, blinking through water. It’s black with wetness, save for a few mossy outcroppings. Stubborn ferns curl out of rocky grooves, straining for sunshine. Vines, choking in parasitic night bloomers, drip down the side and swish back and forth in the water-churned wind, brushing the surface of the lake.

  The vines. I peer closer. A darkness lies behind them—something darker than wet rock. I push the vines aside.

  It’s a cave, or maybe a tunnel, curving behind the waterfall into utter blackness. The tugging at my Godstone leaves no doubt that we must go inside.

  I curse myself for not bringing my tinderbox, but then I realize that in this wetness, nothing would catch fire anyway. We’ll have to feel our way along in the dark and trust my stone to guide us. It’s a test, after all. It’s supposed to be difficult.

  But no, we do have a source of light. I grab a handful of vines and yank hard until they pull free. I wrap them several times around my forearm. Storm understands instantly and does the same. Then we step into the cave.

  The noise of the waterfall becomes echoing and hollow and so, so much louder. A few more steps take us behind a wall of white water. Soft daylight barely penetrates, giving the fall a crystal sheen, and I’m suddenly thinking of Hector, wishing he was here to see something so beautiful.

  I clench my jaw and turn away from the waterfall, into the tunnel. The light grows dimmer as we walk. The tunnel is just high enough for me to stand upright, which means Storm has to stoop. Gradually, though, the night bloomers wrapped around my arms unfurl and begin to glow, faintly at first but with increasing determination, until we can see several paces in every direction.

  The tunnel is obviously unnatural. The walls are too perfect, too polished, the floor too even. It slopes slightly upward, and rivulets of water trickle past us to empty into the lake.

  Our path curves to the left. We round the corner, and the light from our vines catches on a bit of unevenness in the wall. My heart hammers with a sense of familiarity.

  Lichen grows over the unevenness, fanning out in rings of yellow and brown. I reach up with my fingers and scrape it away to reveal script carved into the wall. The Lengua Classica. An ancient style of writing. The gate that leads to life is narrow and small so that few find it.

  “It’s the same,” I say to Storm, and my voice echoes. “The same as the tunnel leading to your cavern in the Wallows.”

  “Yes,” he says. “That holy passage has long been associated with the zafira. I used to climb up to the tunnel and look at it. I would sit there for hours, hoping God would reveal something to me.”

  I look at him sharply. He just admitted that he climbed up into the tunnel.

  He returns my gaze, his eyes wide with wonder, and I notice, unaccountably, how the roots of his falsely dark hair shimmer gold in the soft light. “Yes, I know the tunnel leads up to the catacombs,” he says. “But no, I’m not the one who tried to kill you that day. Truly, I am Your Majesty’s loyal subject.”

  “Do you know who did?”

  “No.”

  “But you’ve been pursuing the zafira for a long time. Even in your exile, you thought about it.”

  “Yes.”

  Something clicks into place. “Is this your redemption, Storm? Do you hope that by finding the zafira, you can be reconciled to your people? Hailed as a hero? Your death sentence commuted?”

  He turns away. “I don’t know,” he whispers. “Maybe.”

  “And would you betray me for the same purpose? If you handed over the only living Godstone, would you receive a hero’s welcome?”

  He shoves me aside and continues down the tunnel. But I understand him a little now, and I’ve observed he avoids answering to keep from telling a lie.

  Chilled—and maybe a little relieved to finally know for sure—I hurry after him.

  Our path grows steep, steep, steeper. The smooth floor gives way to perfectly sculpted steps and sudden switchbacks. My thighs burn, my heart pounds, and my breath comes fast as we climb ever upward. It’s drier now, and creatures scuttle away at irregular intervals as we approach. I imagine crabs. Or cave scorpions. Or maybe rats with nails long enough to scrape the stone. Whatever they are, they disappear before the arc of our fading light can reach them.

  It seems that hours pass, or days. I find myself stepping in time to my heartbeat, which is huge in my chest and throat. My lungs burn, and the tug on my Godstone has become a fire in my belly. Surely we are near the top of the spire by now. Surely we are at the top of the world.

  We round another switchback to find the vaguest hint of light. As one, we hurry forward, desperate to lose these walls. The light strengthens. One more corner, and light explodes full in our faces. I blink and raise my forearm against it.

  The night bloomers snap closed. Gradually my eyes adjust, and I lower my arm.

  We look out over a high mountain valley, green and gently rolling, hemmed in by summits that catch the clouds. They are the same mountains I saw from the ship, I’m sure of it. But now I view them from the other side, and from so much higher up.

  Exactly five narrow peaks jut into the sky—the holy number of perfection. One is a little shorter and squatter than the others, like a thumb, and with a start I realize that from a certain angle, I could almost imagine I’m staring at God’s righteous right hand, and the streams cutting through the valley are the creases of his cupped palm.

  It’s a huger, greener version of Lutián’s Hand of God sculpture in Brisadulce.

  Storm clutches at his chest, and his breathing comes hard, but not, I think, from exertion. The astonishment in his face is stunning to see; it shifts his angled lines into something a little wilder and nearly beautiful.

  “You’re sensing it very strongly now,” I observe.

  “Oh, yes. It’s almost painful. We’re supposed to go down into that valley.”

  I peer down at the incline in dismay. It’s too steep to descend safely. Maybe by using the vines and ferns that hug the slope, we can lower ourselves gradually.

  “There,” Storm says. “Steps cut into the rock.”

  I look in the direction he’s pointing and decide that calling them “steps” is generous. They are more like handholds, overgrown with moss. After scraping the dying night-bloomer vines from my forearms, I scoot down, lodging my heels into the indentions, clutching plants for support.

  Sharp pain pierces my finger, and I yank my hand back. A drop of blood wells on my forefinger. With my other hand, I push aside a fern frond to see what pricked me.

  A rose vine, not quite blooming. Deepest red peeks from budding green tips. Thorns wrap around the stems, much longer and harder than those of common roses.

  Tears spring to my eyes, for I feel like God has given me a gift.

  I have no priest to guide my prayer, no sizzling altar to accept my blood, no acolyte to bathe my wound with witch hazel. But I can’t help but feel that this moment was meant to be, somehow, and so I decide to do what I always do when I am pricked by a sacrament rose: pray and ask a blessing.

  In the past, I have asked for courage. Or wisdom. This time, I close my eyes and mutter, “Please, God. Give me power.”

  I open my eyes, turn my finger over, and let the drop of blood fall to the earth.

  Something rumbles—whether it is the world around me or the prayer inside me I cannot tell—and the earth tilts. The air shifts, like a desert mirage, and for the briefest instance, I see lines of shimmering light, Godstone blue and thin as threads. They race from all directions through the mountain peaks, across the valley, to meet at a central point where they are sucked into the ground.

  I blink, and the vision is gone, leaving me breathless and puzzled and frightened.

&
nbsp; “What just happened?” Storm demands. “You fed the earth a bit of your blood. I felt it move.”

  “I’m not sure. I saw something strange. Lines of power. But they’re gone now.”

  He stares at me suspiciously. “Let’s go. I become impatient.”

  It doesn’t take long to reach the valley floor, which is a good thing given how my legs are shaking from exertion. There are no palm trees here, just sprawling cypress and towering eucalyptus and a tree I’ve never seen before, with such huge broad leaves that a single leaf would cover my whole body. Birds flit among the branches; dappled light catches on them and shoots away in prismatic facets. It’s so startlingly odd that I peer closer.

  No, not birds. They’re giant insects, as large as ospreys, with downy white abdomens and gossamer wings.

  Misgiving thumps in my chest. This valley has a wrongness to it. It is alien. Other.

  And there is something about it that inspires silence. We move quietly, as if in expectation, or perhaps reverence. Piles of stone like crumbling altars litter the forest floor, some as tall as I am, covered in green lichen and dust. A cypress tree clings stubbornly to the side of one, its roots prying open cracks in stone.

  We round a bend and find another pile, but this one is as tall as a tree and square shaped, with arched openings for windows. A ruined building. I look around in awe at the other piles. Ruins, all of them. This was once a city of stone, its shape now worn down by sun and wind and tree roots and time.

  “This must be centuries old,” I breathe.

  “Several millennia,” Storm says, and there is a quiet sadness in his voice I’ve never heard before.

  I regard him sharply. “That’s impossible. God brought people to this world—”

  “Yes, yes, he rescued you from the dying world with his righteous right hand less than two thousand years ago. I’ve heard you tell it.” The anger in his voice is palpable. “Little queen, don’t you realize? We Inviernos have always been here.”

  I stare at him agape, even as the rightness of his words spark inside me. Behind him, one of the insect birds flits through the branches of a eucalyptus, alights atop the ruined building, and begins to groom its rainbow wing with a spindly black leg.

  “Your people came, bearing magic we’d never seen,” he continues. “They changed us, made us less than we were. Changed themselves too, the legend goes, though I don’t know how or why. They scattered across the land now called Joya d’Arena, and we fled before them into the mountains. After that, they changed the whole world. Your country wasn’t always a desert, you know.”

  I’m shaking my head, with uneasiness rather than denial. If what he says is true, then my ancestors were interlopers. No, thieves. But surely one cannot be considered a thief when one is taking only what God gives? God offered us this world. All the scriptures say so.

  My old tutor did tell me our great desert was an inland sea before a mysterious cataclysm forced the water deep below ground. So maybe what Storm says is partly true. Maybe we created the desert somehow. But how? “That makes no sense,” I say aloud. “God wouldn’t—”

  My Godstone leaps, and the tugging on my navel becomes a dagger in my gut.

  Storms gasps. “I don’t like pain.”

  I bend over, clutching at my stomach with one hand, even as I grab Storm’s shoulder with the other and push him forward down our path. “Just . . . keep . . . moving.” I can hardly put one foot in front of the other. All I want to do is drop to the ground and curl up, knees to chest. Maybe this is what Father Nicandro meant when he said my determination would be tested.

  I have a lot of determination.

  But a few steps farther and the vise on my abdomen twists suddenly, and I tumble to my knees, panting. I will crawl if I have to. I will—

  “It’s worse for you, isn’t it?” Storm says, looking down at me with irritation.

  I nod, unable to speak.

  He stares at me a moment. Then he sighs, squats down, grabs one of my arms, and loops it over his shoulder. He stands, pulling me to my feet. “Just a bit farther, Your Majesty.”

  I swallow my surprise and concentrate on moving my feet as he drags me down the path.

  Just when I think the pain can’t get any worse, when my body wavers between vomiting and passing out, we break into a small clearing. In the center is another ruined building, as perfectly round as a tower. But its summit has long since crumbled, leaving it merely the height of a man.

  Chains rattle.

  A pale face with eyes the color of a hazy sky peeks out from behind the tower. White hair streams from a middle part on his sunburned scalp, all the way to the ground. It’s the gatekeeper.

  Chapter 28

  HE has the flawless face of an animagus, but his stooped shoulders and rheumy eyes make him seem as old as the mountains themselves.

  “Two!” he squeals. “Two apprentices!” His Lengua Classica is thick and muddled, like he has a mouthful of pebbles. “I must be one of God’s favorites,” he says, “to be so blessed.” He steps from behind the tower to reveal tattered clothes of indeterminate color and filthy bare feet in rusty manacles. The skin of his ankles bulges up around the manacles so that it is impossible to see where iron ends and flesh begins. I have to look away.

  “Who are you?” he asks. “I’ve felt you coming for hours now. Or years?”

  I try to speak, but I can’t. I am nothing but pain and that awful tugging.

  “Oh, yes, that,” he says. He flicks his fingers, and the pain disappears.

  Relief floods me, and desperate gratitude starts to bubble on my lips, but I bite it back. I straighten cautiously.

  “Are you the gatekeeper?” I ask.

  “You first!” he says, clapping. “Tell me who you are. And come here, come here. Let me get a better look at you.”

  I edge forward. He lunges toward me, and I recoil, but his manacles have caught him. He is chained, I see now, to the tower. He cries out in frustration, stomping on the ground like a child throwing a tantrum. Then he collects himself, and the frustration melts from his face as quickly as it came. “I believe you were about to tell me who you are?” he says with preternatural calm.

  I’m careful to stay just beyond the reach of his chains when I say, “I am the bearer.” And after a moment of silence: “And a queen.”

  He taps his lip with a crooked, dirty finger. “Not very good at either, are you? Your heart screams your inadequacy.” He turns to Storm. “And you?”

  Storm draws himself up to full height. “A prince of the realm,” he says.

  I gape at him.

  He shrugs. “You never asked.”

  The strange man leans toward us conspiratorially. “But not much of a prince anymore, yes? A shadow of what you were.” He grins, like it is all a great game, and I shudder to see his teeth, pointed like canines and brown with rot. “Would you like to see the zafira? I can show it to you, yes, I can. It will have a bit of your blood, and then it will decide whether you live or die.”

  Storm and I exchange an alarmed look.

  I say, “So you are the gatekeeper? What’s your name?”

  His teeth snap in the air. “I’ve told you a thousand times and you never listen! I am Heed the Fallen Leaf That Grows Dank with Rot, for It Shall Feed Spring Tulips.”

  “Of course. Apologies.” He is insane. Totally and completely insane. “I think I’ll just call you . . .” Rot. “Er, Leaf.”

  “Leaf! Yes, I’ll be Leaf. Let me see your stones.” When I hesitate, he barks, “Now! I must see them to let you inside.”

  Reluctantly I lift the edge of my blouse to reveal my stomach and its resident jewel.

  And then Storm reaches beneath his shirt and pulls out a leather cord that dangles a Godstone of his very own, in a tiny iron cage.

  I gape at him. “How did you . . . When did you . . . ?”

  “I’ve always had it. Since birth.”

  Too many possibilities compete for attention in my head. Was it given
to him? Was he born with it? “My Godstone never warmed to it,” I protest. “Never reacted. It always senses another Godstone nearby. Always.”

  Storm wilts a little. “It’s quite dead. It fell out at the age of four. I trained to be an animagus, to learn to eke some power out of it. But I never could. I failed.”

  Understanding hits like a rock in the gut. “The Inviernos are born with Godstones.”

  Storm shakes his head. “Only a few of us. They fall out very early. And we’ve been separated from the source of their power for so long that they are mostly useless.”

  “The animagi burned my city, burned my husband. That’s hardly useless.”

  Storm shrugs. “That’s destruction magic. Easy, for an animagus. It’s creation magic, like barrier shields or growing plants or healing, that’s difficult.”

  “I can heal.” The words are out of my mouth before I think to censor them.

  “What? You can?” His green eyes narrow. “You never said.”

  I stick a finger in his chest. “You. Never. Asked.”

  His brief moment of startlement dissolves into desperate laughter. “And yet you can’t even call your stone’s fire, which is the easiest, most basic power. You might be a worse failure than even me.”

  Leaf has been looking back and forth between us, grinning all the while. “You are enemies!” he says, clapping with delight. “So much fun. Look, here’s mine.” He parts the rags hanging from his shoulders to reveal petal-white skin and protruding ribs.

  A Godstone is sewn into his navel. Threads of hemp or dried grass crisscross over the top, holding it in place. The skin around the edges is puckered and scarred from so many piercings. One thread dangles, wisping back and forth in the breeze. I avert my gaze, sickened.

  “Will you take us now?” Storm asks. He leans forward and his face twitches, as if he’s about to crawl out of his own skin in anticipation.

  “This way,” Leaf says, and disappears behind the tower, his chains clattering with each step. After exchanging a troubled look, Storm and I follow.

  An archway on the opposite side leads into darkness. Leaf reaches down and grabs his chain, which seems to have a little slack now, and hoists it over his shoulder. “Ready?” And he steps inside.