Splendor and Spark

by Mary Taranta

  To his credit, Chadwick doesn’t even gloat. Instead he shoulders his role as captain and takes the first step forward, to join me in the Burn. There’s no dramatic parting of the ash, no sudden clearing of a path. There is only ground to cover, which is also what makes the mission such a deadly risk: We have no way of knowing if the spells are working.

  So we’d better move fast.

  Thirteen

  WE BEGIN TENTATIVELY, TESTING THE ground and learning the contours of the dunes that spill around us. But then we become bolder, striding forth like a roiling thundercloud, kicking up ash that burns our eyes and makes us cough. Yet beneath the discomfort lies an undercurrent of satisfaction. We are among the first humans to cross this landscape in years, and in this instant I think we all believe we will save Avinea.

  The feeling doesn’t last long.

  Elin hears it first. She stops, head twisted toward the darkness behind us. “What is that?”

  “It’s the ash,” Terik says, waggling his eyebrows. “It whispers, if you listen long enough.”

  “Just don’t listen too long,” Gideon chimes, elbowing Elin as he passes her, “or it’ll bury you ten feet deep.”

  The others laugh nervously, but Chadwick silences them with a scowl. “It’s the sea hitting the cliffs,” he says. “The sound carries.”

  Jarrett holds out an unlit lantern. “Do we need a light?”

  “Absolutely not,” Chadwick says. “The whole purpose of traveling at night is to remain unnoticed.”

  But then something cries in the night, a hair-raising screech that stops us all dead in our tracks, and we tip our faces to the dark sky, searching for the source.

  “What was that?” Jarrett demands, bracing his legs as he reaches for one of his two swords.

  Gideon simply rolls his eyes. “Does it matter? It’s the Burn.”

  “The shadowbred,” North says tightly, resuming the pace. Then, more loudly, “We knew to expect opposition.”

  Rialdo twitches as the others fall in line behind North. Like me, he was raised to believe in only one villain in Avinea—the plague. The more nuanced legends are surprises. “And what are the shadowbred?”

  “A myth,” Chadwick says irritably, “intended to keep idiot fortune hunters from entering the Burn and getting eaten alive.”

  “They say the earth wasn’t the only thing Merlock poisoned,” North argues. “The shadows themselves began to feed on the poison, to breathe, and they began to grow hungry. And now they hunt. Supposedly,” he adds drily, on seeing Chadwick’s withering look.

  “That is ridiculous,” Elin says, but without any conviction.

  “Is it?” Gideon arches an eyebrow, walking backward to better see our expressions. “The hellborne have given in to their darkest vices. They’re all cowards, deep down, and the dark is just another fear they don’t want to face.”

  “You are completely full of shit,” Cohl says, not unkindly.

  Gideon laughs, bright and startling in the darkness. “Why do you think so many of the hellborne wander out of the Burn at night?”

  “Because they’re hungry,” I say. “They want slaves and clean blood—”

  “Because they’re afraid of the dark,” he interrupts. “And if we’re the best Avinea has to offer, maybe you should listen to Prince Corbin before we become the last Avinea has to offer.”

  “Enough,” Chadwick warns.

  The others continue to joke in hushed whispers, to stave off our growing unease. I envy them their shared camaraderie. My fingers close around the shell in my pocket to remind me that I’m not alone either, even if my sister is hundreds of miles away.

  But jokes only last so long. Within the hour, we’ve returned to somber silence. Every unaccounted sound becomes a threat that we turn toward in unison; we strain to see into the darkness around us. When Chadwick calls for a rest two hours later, we drink from our canteens in a tight circle, as if to shut out the growing shadows.

  “How much farther is this watchtower?” Elin asks, mopping sweat off her face. Despite the wintry air, the Burn is warm beneath our feet, and our packs feel heavier because of the ash we have to kick through—as thick and unyielding as snow. While Chadwick has attempted to lead us through the narrow gulches of thinner ash, dunes of it still rise around us, blotting out the sky in some instances, carved into monstrous shapes by the wind.

  “We would save time if we just . . . magicked ourselves there,” Jarrett says. His glasses are pushed up to his forehead, filmed with grime. The skin around his eyes is lighter than the rest of his face, giving him an owlish look. “That’ll cut time off our need for these protection spells. It’ll even out.”

  “There’s not nearly enough magic for that kind of spell,” Sofreya says quickly, stricken. “Not to mention—”

  “It’s beyond your ability,” North finishes for her. Sofreya flinches at the assessment, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Rialdo does, however, eyebrow inching higher with interest.

  “Then just send Locke ahead,” Jarrett presses. “Whatever that spell was, it got her to Dorrent in seconds.”

  “Right. And then what? Locke holds Merlock hostage for us until we all arrive? Or better yet, she kills him single-handedly?” Chadwick snorts and shakes his head, dismissing the thought as ludicrous, despite having suggested the very same idea only two nights ago. It stings when the others laugh at my inexperience, and whether Chadwick meant it as such or not, his comment feels like an accusation. I turn and take a step away from the circle, sufficiently wounded.

  “Locke,” Chadwick warns. “Stay close.”

  I ignore his reproach. I’m not used to relying on planning by committee, and it’s frustrating, to be standing still when all I want is to move.

  “Locke!”

  “I’m right here,” I snap, spinning back toward him, only to freeze. A hellborne woman stands in front of me, grinning widely, showcasing a mouth of poison and rotted teeth. Even more have circled the others, an entire tribe. Some carry torches, the flickering light casting deep shadows across their pitted, cracking faces. Others carry weapons built from scraps found in the ruins of the Burn: twisted metal and petrified wood fashioned into pole arms and axes.

  I don’t even hear Chadwick give the command; his soldiers react without prompting. As one, swords are unsheathed and the defense begins. I scramble for one of my daggers as the woman advances, her axe weighted in both hands. She leans back for the swing just as I free the dagger, only to drop it into the ash at my feet. I bend for the blade, and her strike narrowly misses me.

  To hell with the dagger, I think. I tackle the woman at the knees, and we sink into the ash, choking on it as I pin her to the scorching ground. In her surprise, she drops her axe and begins to grapple with me, yellowed fingernails clawing uselessly against my iron breastplate. I reach for my second dagger as a man grabs me by my shortened hair and yanks me back. My feet fumble for traction but find none, and I end up on my knees with my back to him as he twists my hair around his forearm, exposing my throat. Ash settles in my eyes, blurring my vision.

  “Where is it?” he demands. “I smell it on you.”

  The protection spell. Cast on my forearms, it is not muted by the iron armor I wear. Even beneath our uniforms, the magic calls to the hellbornes’ addiction.

  By now the woman has regained her feet—and her axe. After unsheathing my second dagger, I slam it behind me, feeling the blade sink into something soft, possibly fleshy. Heat pours across my hand, but I know the value of a weapon and refuse to relinquish it, wrenching it free as the man releases my hair with a curse. Ignoring the pain in my scalp, I lunge forward, swinging for the woman’s throat. She backs out of the way and I stumble, plunging back into ash.

  “Faris!”

  A bright, crackling light illuminates everything in perfect clarity . . . and then the hellborne begin screaming in agony. I back away as fast as I can. I know this spell, and I know how it ends. As expected, the hellborne clutch at their cracking chest
s, where poison steams into the colder air before their hearts evaporate and they fall back, dead.

  An eerie silence follows the spell. North still stands, hand outstretched, shoulders heaving with the force of what he has done. His eyes meet mine, and my lips part to—what? Thank him for saving me? Chastise him for using magic? There’s no need for either. Horror fills his face, remorse as he realizes the repercussions of his choice. Beside him Chadwick stands back, stunned.

  The ground around us begins to shiver, and then buckles with a bone-knocking boom. I struggle to my feet, only to stagger to keep balance.

  Cohl is the nearest to me, arms thrown out. “What—” she begins, just as the dunes of ash that surround us collapse in an avalanche, swallowing everyone in its path.

  Fourteen

  AVALANCHES WERE COMMON IN BRINDAIGEL, but often harmless. Shelves of snow would collapse into the gorge that surrounded the kingdom, rarely reaching us on the other side. At most, the farming terraces would need to be shoveled clear—an opportunity for people like me, when jobs were scarcer to come by in the cold.

  This is so much worse.

  As a wall of ash hits me, I somersault head over heels and backward again, flattening against the earth, before being swept back up toward the sky. Without my mother’s spell to help me, ash clogs my nose and my ears and begins seeping through my flattened lips, filling my lungs. But then my feet find ground, and a body collides against mine. I reach out, clutching for purchase, finding an arm and grabbing it tightly. The two of us emerge from the first undulating wave of ash, coughing and sputtering, too blinded to see each other until we’ve wiped our faces clear. Jarrett has lost his glasses, and he squints at me, eyes red-rimmed and watery. “Locke?”

  A second wave hits, smaller than the first, strong enough to knock us off our feet. We lose hold of each other, but moments later, I’m able to brace my weight against a third, smaller wave, then slog my way toward Jarrett.

  Straight ahead, North and Chadwick stand back-to-back, guarded from the ash by a spell. North’s hands glow silver as he launches himself forward and grabs at a flash of skin. Cohl is yanked to her feet and handed off to Chadwick, who pushes her onto a shelf of rock that’s been exposed, where Rialdo and Elin already stand. Rialdo silently watches North, but Elin screams the others’ names, shielding her eyes to search around her.

  “North!” I yell.

  His eyes meet mine. Relief wars with something else, but before he can do anything, the ground shifts once more, and Jarrett plummets from view. I dive for him and grab a fistful of his uniform tunic, holding so tightly, I feel the fabric start to tear.

  Another flash of light. Ash swells out of our way, forming towering walls on either side of us. North stands at the opposite end, straining to contain the ash—fighting against his father’s corrupted magic with more of his own. His body shakes as his hands glow silver in the dark, casting erratic shadows around him. Chadwick finds Sofreya and Terik, and I haul Jarrett after them, bypassing North as he closes his hand into a fist. The ash drops like wet sand around all of us. A moment later the moon reappears, no more than a wink of welcome overhead.

  “Gideon,” Elin says. “Where’s Gideon?”

  We all stare at the ash behind us, as still as the harbor on a windless day. Elin takes a step forward, to the edge of the rock, but Chadwick holds her back, expression grim. “It’s too deep,” he says. “We’ll lose you, too—your majesty!”

  North launches himself off the rock, lands chest-deep in ash, and begins fighting his way through. Chadwick calls him back, but North ignores him until, several feet out, he nearly slips. Only then does he return, avoiding our eyes. He accepts Jarrett’s offer of an arm up and scrambles back atop the rock, looking haunted.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says, spreading his hands and staring at them in dismay. “I didn’t consider how hungry the Burn would be.”

  Like the rotting manor home I saw Merlock in, collapsing with the weight of whatever spell he used to summon North’s childhood image. After so long with nothing new to feed on, North’s spells were like firewood to the acres of ash around us. Even now, the ground hums.

  “We have to keep moving,” Chadwick says grimly. “Magic like that will be felt for miles.”

  Elin shakes her head, still searching the ash. “Gideon—”

  “Knew the risks,” Chadwick says, rubbing his mouth, his voice hoarse. “We all did.”

  The shock of it leaves us all silent, before Cohl voices the question on everyone’s faces: “Why did you use magic against them? Those hellborne had no spells to protect them. I thought we were here to fight for you, not the other way around.”

  The accusation makes North flinch, his eyes straying toward me in silent confession. “I reacted the way I know how,” he says, voice hollow. “I’ve spent too long on my own.”

  “You panicked,” Rialdo says flatly. “You saw Locke go down and risked the rest of us to save her.”

  Chadwick shoots North a warning look not to answer, a hand pressed to North’s arm. “What’s done is done,” he says. “We move on. Gideon will be greatly missed, but he would not want us to sacrifice ourselves or this mission on his behalf.”

  Nobody argues, but something changes as we resume our journey; a shiver of resentment against North begins to emerge, as narrow as a thread, linking Chadwick’s soldiers.

  We don’t stop all night, and in the light from the first edge of pink in the sky, a watchtower rises on the horizon. North beckons us to stop, and the soldiers crouch low to hide their positions, surveying the scene. There is no smoke, no footsteps, nothing to indicate that anyone is here, nor do we see any rising ash in the distance to hint at someone nearby.

  “We’ll send a scout ahead while the rest of us fan out and approach from all sides,” Chadwick starts, surveying his soldiers.

  “Or we throw the plan out the window and charge in with swords raised,” Elin mutters, as North ignores Chadwick and launches himself to his feet, striding toward the tower.

  Chadwick sighs, shoulders slumping in defeat as he pushes himself after North. The rest of us exchange glances and follow. Jarrett and Cohl maintain some sense of the original plan, splitting off to approach the tower from opposite sides, but the rest of us keep straight, jogging to catch up.

  An eerie silence clings to the tower; the nearby settlement is still haloed with smoke. Not the hazy, diluted veil of the Burn but the curling tendrils of a campfire recently extinguished. Bones, dirty syringes, and heavy footprints mar the ground, and there’s an epithet scrawled in the dirt: Long live the withered king.

  Baedan. She hurled those same words at North less than a month ago, after nearly breaking him in her effort to obtain his blood.

  North ducks into the tower, only to emerge moments later, expression as dark as thunder. He approaches the smoldering fire, kicking at its embers with a barrage of profanity that shocks the rest of us to silence.

  “Run the perimeter,” Chadwick orders after a moment. “Spread out and ensure no one is still here.”

  Terik, Jarrett, and Elin dutifully break apart as Chadwick approaches North, directing him into the tower. I follow discreetly, keeping to the shadows.

  “How did she know?” North asks, pacing the tiled floor of the tower. “How could she possibly get here before us? What source does she have that’s better than ours?”

  “Perhaps it was coincidence.” Chadwick notices me. “Wait outside, Locke.”

  “She’s mocking me,” North says. “She knew we’d be here.”

  “He can’t be far,” I say, ignoring Chadwick, fumbling the latches at my waist. “It was his campfire I saw from the beach, and that was barely eight hours ago. Get me out of this armor, and I can pinpoint his location again—”

  Crossing the floor, I stumble over a clutch of stones, and they scatter beneath my feet. We stare at them in silence as North crouches, hand hovering over one of them with an unreadable expression.

  “He was here,” he says,
and his voice sends chills down my back.

  A shout outside draws our attention, and we hurry toward the noise. Cohl stands, one gloved hand hooked around the throat of a man struggling to stay on his feet. His clothes hang off him in tatters; his hair is matted and thick with grime, skin blistered and cracked. Poison seeps from open wounds, spreading along his collar, in his hair. His face is familiar, thinner than before but still filled with unwarranted arrogance. Kellig. Baedan’s more talented spellcaster and a man who tried—and failed—to kill me several times.

  “I found him skulking through the buildings there,” Cohl explains.

  North sees Kellig and tenses, but Kellig only grins, exposing the missing tooth taken from him by the opium dealer a month ago.

  “Your majesty,” he says, in a voice worn thin from the ash-cloaked air of the Burn. “An honor to be in your presence again.” He tries to bow, but Cohl only tightens her stranglehold, and he chokes, shooting her a furious scowl.

  North exhales, annoyed. “Kill him,” he says, and turns away.

  “Wait! You did this to me!”

  North pauses but doesn’t turn. “No,” he says, “I killed you. You chose to become hellborne.”

  Kellig’s features twist into a sardonic expression. “Oops,” he says.

  Cohl applies pressure, and he buckles to his knees as Elin selects a blade from several strapped to her thigh. At Elin’s nod, Cohl tips Kellig back against her propped knee to expose his chest. “Wait!” Kellig cries out again. “North, you stupid bastard, listen to me. I can help you out there. I know the Burn and all its tricks. And I know you’re running out of time.”

  North doesn’t stop walking. Kellig becomes frantic, his voice inching higher. “North! Baedan’s two steps ahead of you. You’ll never catch up to her, not without me!”

  That, at last, elicits a response. Chadwick raises a hand to stop North, but North returns in a flash. He grabs Kellig by the chin, holding his face steady. “I’m not chasing her. I know where I’m going.”

  Kellig grins, savoring the temporary foothold he’s gained. “You’re going to follow her, aren’t you?” He nods at me, hazel eyes flashing once as they meet mine. Like Tobek, Kellig blames me for a great deal of what happened a month ago. “Bad idea, old friend. How do you think I found you?”