by Morgan Rice
They made it to the oasis, and it was only as they reached it that Lucas’s heart sank again. The oasis was dry.
It looked like a vibrant, living place. There were date trees and palms arching up over the space where a pool of water would have stood. There was a low stone building that looked as though it had once been a permanent shelter, perhaps a waystation in the desert. The pool sat empty, though, the ground around it looking hard and mostly dry.
“There’s no water,” Kate said, and Lucas could hear the disappointment in her voice.
Sophia sat down in the shadow of one of the trees. “There’s a bit of shade, at least.”
They all knew that wasn’t going to be enough though. Lucas slumped to his knees, feeling defeated. There were some foes that couldn’t be fought just by swinging a sword.
Then you must find another way. The way of virtue is acceptance, but it is also adaptation. Water flows around obstacles, down into any crack, pooling in any space.
That thought sounded far too much like the memory of Official Ko’s voice for comfort. It had been the kind of lesson that seemed to make perfect sense in a comfortable room, but which seemed far too abstract to be of any use in the middle of a desert. What use was philosophy in the face of dehydration? Already, Lucas could see Sienne lying down on her side, panting in the heat.
Except… what if the reason he was remembering this particular lesson was because it wasn’t just abstract?
“We need to dig!” Lucas said, as soon as he realized the truth of it.
“Dig? In this heat?” Kate replied. “We’ll die of heat exhaustion, Lucas.”
“The trees are still green, there are still patches of soft ground,” Lucas said. “There is water here, but it has gone under the ground. I’m sure of it.”
He took out the broadest and flattest of his knives, using it to start digging in one of the places that seemed softest. It was hard going, because the tool wasn’t designed for the job, but Kate and Sophia quickly joined him.
Lucas looked over to Sophia. “You’ve controlled the weather before, back home. Do you think you could pull water closer to the surface here?”
“I think that’s because we have a connection to the land back home,” Sophia said. “But… I guess I can try.”
She went quiet, her eyes half closed. Lucas could feel the power that she was working with, tapping into the vibrancy of the land around them. For his part, Lucas kept digging, setting aside his knife and working with his hands once the ground was soft enough to do it.
The effort of it was enough to bring more sweat beading on his skin. The heat made Lucas feel dizzy with the effort, and he suspected that if this went on much longer, he would pass out.
Then, there at the bottom of the hole he was digging, he saw truly damp earth.
“We’re almost there,” he said, working as furiously as he could. He kept expanding the hole, digging his way down…
…Water pushed around the sides of his hands, springing up and there for the taking. Lucas opened up the hole a little more so that it could fill properly, then dipped his hands in it, lifting it to his lips. After all that effort, it was the best thing he had ever tasted.
There was more to it, though. Lucas could see the stone now around which water was barely trickling, and from his lessons he knew that an oasis like this would form through a connection to an underground pool. If that connection had shifted, even slightly, it might be enough to close it off.
Maybe that could be undone.
With his hands and his knife, he worked at the rock, trying to move it. He was stronger than most people, but even so, he had to strain at the rock, feeling the solidity of the earth beneath him as it refused to give way.
Then it did.
The movement was so sudden that it sent Lucas sprawling. When he looked up, the pool in the middle of the oasis was already starting to refill. In a matter of moments, he’d managed to bring it back to life.
They filled their water skins and drank as much as they could. Sophia’s forest cat lapped at the pool of water until it seemed that she might burst. Kate splashed water on her face, then flicked some in Lucas’s direction. He laughed.
Sophia put a hand on his shoulder. “You can do plenty more than fight, Lucas.”
That was one good thing about siblings who could reach into his thoughts: they knew exactly what to say. It was the truth, though, and that made it even better.
If they could have stayed there, perhaps things would have been perfect. Perhaps they would have stayed out of sight of the world for days or longer, eating dates and drinking cool water. Even as he thought it, Lucas knew that they couldn’t. The path that Sophia had seen still lay ahead, and their parents were somewhere at the end of it.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Kate followed the others, having to trust that they knew where they were going, and their visions were guiding them in the right direction. Even following them was getting harder, because sand and dust were swirling up now in the wind, making it harder and harder to see ahead.
Is there any sign of where we’re going? she asked.
Not yet, Sophia sent back.
You’d think that an entire city wouldn’t be so hard to find, Kate sent.
Lucas joined in. There must be a reason that it is the Forgotten City.
Kate had to admit that he had a point. It was strange to think that a city could become lost, forgotten about, and abandoned. Would that happen to Ashton at some point in the far future? There was no desert to swallow it, but Kate could imagine the sea rising up over it, or the greenery around it stretching out to—
“Wait!” Lucas said, stretching out an arm to stop Kate.
She looked down and saw the reason why. Her feet stood on the edge of a precipice, a gouge in the landscape reaching down so far she couldn’t see the bottom. One more step, and Kate would have tumbled out into it. Lucas, Sophia, and Sienne all stood by the edge, staring out over it as if hoping it would go away if they waited long enough.
“Is there a way around it?” Kate asked.
Sophia shook her head. “The footprints lead across it, but I don’t see… wait, there, what’s that?”
The dust briefly cleared enough for Kate to see what looked like a rope bridge across the ravine. The remains of one, anyway. Most of the ropes had fallen away, either cut or just rotted to the point where they fell.
The three of them went over to it, examining the remains of a structure that looked far older than they were. There were stone posts set there, with rings that were obviously there to tie the bridge’s ropes to. Only the one line remained: a thick bight of hempen rope that might have seemed far more secure if it hadn’t been so old and dry.
“How are we supposed to cross if there’s only one rope?” Kate asked. She pulled at the rope, trying to test its strength. “Sophia, I’m pretty sure you’ve never practiced tightrope walking.”
“It never came up at court,” Sophia agreed.
“I have learned,” Lucas said. “Official Ko thought that it would be good for my balance to practice with staffs while balanced on a wire. I fell off a lot.”
Of course Lucas would have learned, and he still had the kind of magic running through him that made this kind of thing an easy physical feat. Kate just had her own balance, and the knack of reading minds as she went.
Kate looked out again, and through a gap in the dust, she thought she could see piles of ropes on the far side, probably spares so that the bridge could be built and rebuilt as many times as people needed.
“If one of us can get over there, I think we might be able to reconnect the bridge,” Kate said.
“I’ll go,” Lucas offered.
Kate shook her head. “You’re too heavy. This rope might hold me, but it will snap under your weight before you make it halfway. I’ll do it.”
“Are you sure?” Sophia asked. Kate could hear the worry there. The worry for a sister who wasn’t as strong as she had been, and who didn’t have
the skills she’d once possessed.
“I’m the smallest,” Kate said with a grin she didn’t feel. “It will be easy.”
To forestall any further discussion, Kate took off her shoes and hopped up onto the rope, using her hands to steady herself as she stood, feeling the rope beneath her feet. Since this wasn’t some circus display, there was no reason to do this with any grace, but a part of her wanted to prove to herself that she could do this.
She started to step along the rope, feeling it stretch under her weight, sensing the sway of the hemp in the wind. A gust caught Kate and she grabbed for the rope with her hands as well as her feet, hanging upside down now as she tried to keep from tumbling into the depths. This far out, there was no sign of Sophia or Lucas through the dust.
“They’ll miss you when you fall, of course.”
Siobhan’s voice came to Kate so clearly that she might have been standing next to her.
“Go away,” Kate muttered. “You’re not real.”
“Aren’t I? Well, perhaps you know more than me, Apprentice.”
“We got you out of my head,” Kate whispered. “We killed you.”
“And now here you are, killing yourself,” Siobhan’s voice whispered back. “You could have let Lucas do this, but here you are, trying to prove that you’re still something without my fountain’s gifts.”
Kate ignored her, starting to inch along the rope in the direction of the ravine’s far side.
“You’re not anything without what I gave you, of course,” Siobhan kept going. “Without the extra strength and speed, what are you? Just a scared little girl. You can’t fight like your brother, you can’t control the world around you like your sister. You’re nothing.”
“At least I’m real,” Kate muttered. She ignored the tears in her eyes. They were falling to the sand.
“You know they’re not,” Siobhan said, answering her thoughts. “They’re because you know your siblings would be better off without you. Why not just let go? You can have a nice, heroic death, and they’ll be free to reach their potential without having to carry you.”
The tears were coming harder now, but still, Kate inched along the rope. Then it snapped.
She cried out, but she clung to it as it swung her toward the far side of the ravine. The rock slammed into Kate, knocking the breath from her. Still she clung to the rope.
“You might as well let go,” Siobhan’s voice said. “You don’t have the strength to pull yourself up without what I gave you.”
“For an all-knowing witch, you don’t know much,” Kate snapped. She didn’t bother trying to do the work with her arms. Instead, her feet sought out the cracks in the rocks, her toes finding spaces that would hold her. The combination was enough, barely, to let her start heading upward. “I might not have the strength or the speed anymore, but I remember everything I learned.”
There was no answer to that, but that made sense. Of course, even a version of Siobhan, who was no more than a figment of her imagination, would find the most annoying moments to appear and disappear.
At least it meant that Kate could concentrate on trying to clamber up the rock wall. Her hands found purchase on the rope, but Kate didn’t want to trust her whole weight to it given how easily it had snapped before. Instead, her feet found foothold after foothold, pushing her up the ravine’s far wall while she pulled with her arms.
It was tiring work. The effort of moving herself up when the whole world seemed to want to pull her down was exhausting. A part of Kate wondered if it wouldn’t just be easier to let go…
Then she thought of Will, waiting for her back home.
“I’ll see him again,” Kate said, gritting her teeth. “And I’ll climb all the walls I have to in order to do it.”
She pulled herself up the next few steps, and her hands felt the lip of the ravine. Kate pulled herself up over that lip, lying flat on her back while she remembered how to breathe normally.
Kate? Are you there? Sophia asked. Can you hear me?
I’m here, Kate sent back. I’m fine. I’ll get the ropes over to you now.
She stood up, looking around for the ropes she’d glimpsed. They were there, and to her surprise, they looked newer than the one that had given way beneath her. Maybe someone had been planning on replacing the bridge. Kate tied them at her end, then tossed them over to the far side, flinging them as hard as she could.
The others started to make their way across the bridge, Sienne padding across with effortless grace then curling up next to Kate while she waited for the others.
“Oh, sure, you make it look easy,” Kate said, and sat there, stroking the forest cat’s fur. The dust was thinning now, and she could see Sophia and Lucas walking across, the new rope bridge more than enough to hold their weight.
Siobhan’s voice came in to fill the gap while she waited.
“You’re right, you do remember what you learned. Just make sure that you remember all of it. I have a feeling that you’ll need some parts before too long.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Cora had never sneaked into a war zone before, and she wasn’t sure that she ever wanted to have to again. She, Aidan, and Emeline slipped in along the line of the river, watching the skies for crows, hiding whenever they saw them.
“I hope we’re in time,” Cora said as they ran down toward the city. She couldn’t bear the thought that they might have come all the way from Stonehome to help Sophia’s child, only to be too late.
“We’ll make it,” Aidan said, holding her hand. “We have to.”
Emeline didn’t say anything, her expression set. Cora could guess the source of her discomfort: the city looked as though it was already in the process of falling, ochre-uniformed soldiers pouring in through a breach on one side, heading straight for the palace.
“At least it means they won’t be defending the rest of the city,” Cora suggested.
Emeline snorted at that. “Just bunching up right at the spot we need to get to.”
They didn’t turn around, though, didn’t even discuss it. Sophia’s child was in danger, and none of them was about to stand by to let her die.
Slipping into the city was easier than it should have been. They just waited for people to start pouring out through one of the gates and hurried in while they did so.
“You don’t want to go in there,” a woman called out to them. “They’re killing people on sight, and worse!”
Fear rose in Cora at that thought. She could remember what it had been like having to fight her way into Ashton last time. But she didn’t let the thought stop her; none of them did. The three ran on through Ashton’s streets, following the same path to the palace that they had during the invasion, keeping to the shadows as much as they could.
They drew their swords, because there were too many soldiers in the streets to rely just upon hiding. Cora could hear the sounds of screams in the distance, and the clash of blades from within the city. The only advantage they had seemed to be that the soldiers were so focused on the palace and not on them.
The trouble was, that just meant more of them would be in the way when they got there.
“Do we actually have a plan for this?” Cora asked.
“We get to the palace, we grab Sophia’s baby and whoever else we can, then we get out of here,” Emeline replied.
“I feel as though there might be one or two details missing from this plan,” Cora said, but what else were they going to do? Go back to Stonehome? They’d covered half the country to try to save Sophia’s little girl, and they weren’t going to stop now.
Cora pointed to a spot on one of the palace walls. “There, we’ll be able to get in through a servants’ gate.”
They hurried over and although the gate was locked, it only took a couple of blows from Aidan’s foot to smash it open. The gardens lay on the far side, and Cora instantly saw the spot where they needed to be. The Master of Crows stood by one of the ballroom’s garden entrances, blocking the way. A glance throug
h the windows showed Sebastian, a nursemaid, and a baby who could only be Sophia’s.
“Any ideas for how we get them away from something like that?” Aidan asked.
Cora shrugged. “Only this.”
She charged at the Master of Crows, her sword raised, as she yelled a battle cry that was more of a straightforward yell of anger. She could feel her blood boiling the way it had when she’d hit Prince Rupert over the head with a vase, or when she’d found herself in the middle of the battle for Ashton. She charged at the New Army’s general, aiming to end his evil with one blow…
He sidestepped, and Cora tumbled into the ballroom, Aidan and Emeline bursting in through one of the other doors.
“Ah,” the Master of Crows said, “I see you have reinforcements, King Sebastian. Tell me, if I make you watch them die first, will you give me the child then?”
“No one’s going to die,” Emeline said, although to Cora, she didn’t look confident.
“And how do you plan to stop me?” the Master of Crows asked.
“Like this…”
Something shifted in the room. Now it seemed that they weren’t standing surrounded by flat images of themselves contained in the ballroom’s mirrors. Now it seemed that those images were standing beside them, dozens of versions of them standing beside them, moving as they moved, making it impossible to pick out which was the real version and which was a fake. A dozen versions of Cora leapt forward as she did, striking out with her sword, so that the Master of Crows had to leap back to avoid them all.
“Run!” Emeline called out. “I don’t know how long I can hold it!”
Cora saw Sebastian and the nursemaid run with the child, and then she, Aidan, and Emeline sprinted after them, running out into the gardens with the Master of Crows walking calmly after them.
“You can’t escape me,” he called after them, advancing smoothly. Soldiers fell into line with him, although when one raised a musket, the general stabbed him, cutting down his own soldier as if it were nothing. “The child must not be harmed.”
