A boot.
She picked it up, instantly recognizing its scuffs and tattered laces: it was one of Marsh’s. “Oh, no.…” She sank to her knees. The thought of Marsh meeting her end down here, with the goats and cattle …
Noodle nuzzled her face. Bones. Wrong size. Look around.
Jemma looked. “You’re right. They’re all too big or too small. A shoe doesn’t prove anything.” She dropped it, and with heavy determination stood, then hauled herself up the sticky gut-crafted rope onto the rock. Below her, Marsh’s shoe lay among the bones. “It doesn’t prove anything,” she said again, wiping her hands on her dress. “Nor does the hand.” But her heart weighed like lead in her stomach as she wedged her back into one side of the shaft and her heels into the other, and began shuffling herself upward.
From up on the crag, the twelve tolls of midnight started booming into the night. Two sets of claws dug deeper into her shoulders as the dim circle of light at the top got closer. And closer. Finally, on the eleventh toll, Jemma heaved herself out and lay facedown on the damp grass, taking deep sobs of breath as Noodle and Pie panted into her neck.
Clang!
The last strike of midnight shuddered through her. Wednesday. Four days left to escape the forest and find her parents in time to be Initiated by them. Four days … but what would become of her and of her Powers if she failed? I can’t let that happen, she thought. I have to succeed. I have to. And at least she’d be safer now: with the hand that the thugs had taken as proof of her death, the Agromonds would surely call off the search.
Jemma pushed herself to her feet. Then she felt it: the low growl reverberating through her, the hot gust of breath at her back. Whatever was there, she could sense, was enormous. Without so much as a glance behind her, she grabbed the rats and ran.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Aukron
Wednesday, early hours
Branches crashed behind her, low grunts belching out in time with her pursuer’s pounding feet. Jemma felt as though she was flying down the crag, her feet barely touching ground, her cloak trailing in her wake. The forest seemed to open before her like a clear tunnel, showing her the way as she hurtled over rocks and ferns, until she came to the middle of a clearing.
The racket behind her stopped. Jemma stopped too. Trees shivered. The air was still, as if holding its breath. She stepped forward. To her right, a branch cracked. She halted, scalp tingling. Silence. Another step, another crack, this one closer, coming from behind; then another, to her left. Down the slope, a shadow hulked between the trees. Dropping Noodle and Pie into her free pocket, she changed direction. The shadow was there, ahead of her. Each way she turned, it anticipated her, hemming her in.
She was trapped.
A low rumble vibrated from the earth and up through Jemma’s bones. It seemed to come from all directions at once. She spun around, terrified, as a huge black form leapt in front of her. Sinewy and muscular, its hind knees bent forward like a human’s. Its forelegs were long and triple-jointed, its fingers tapering into thick, curled talons. Raw flesh hung from its belly. Hatred blazed from its narrow, orange eyes.
The Aukron. And here, in the clearing, Jemma was at its mercy.
It circled around her, once, twice, its gaze fixed on her. Then it reared onto its hind legs and stomped toward her, talons raised to strike. She turned and ran for the trees, but a swipe to her back slammed her to the ground. Hot breath blasted her as she scrambled to her feet; her hair sizzled and singed. A gigantic hand caught her left leg, and she was dragged along the forest floor, rocks and twigs slashing into her skin. Her cloak was torn from her, and Pie and the book were jolted from her pockets. Noodle squealed, and she felt his claws dig into her hip as the Aukron hoisted her upside down into the air. It held her level with its giant jaws, then opened its mouth and flipped its black tongue from side to side, drawing her closer, its fangs ready to impale her with one fatal chomp. A scream froze in her throat. The world beyond the forest flashed through her head. She would never see it now. Never know what life was like beyond the Mist—
Noodle let out a rat screech of terror. Like a mother fox protecting its kits, Jemma felt ferocity surge through her and forgot all else.
“Leave him alone, you Agromond monstrosity!” She snatched the knife from her boot top and struck out, slicing the Aukron’s top lip. Bile-green liquid spurted out, and the monster drew its free hand to the wound, snarling with pain. But still its huge leathery fist was clamped around her, its talons digging into her skin. She jabbed and slashed at the gnarled fingers, which only clamped tighter until she could barely breathe. Its mouth widened in what looked like a cruel smirk, full of the delight of an imminent meal.
The Light Game, Jem! Marsh’s voice wove into her head. Remember …
Jemma imagined gold Light filling her, surrounding her, expanding outward. The Aukron hesitated, its eyes narrowing. She intensified the Light, vaguely aware of Noodle clawing his way to her neck. He tugged her Stone from inside her dress, and she grasped it with her free hand and thrust it toward the Aukron’s face.
Bright aqua light saturated its eyes. For a split second, they turned icy white, and she felt the purest evil looking at her. Then, with a roar, its grip released and she plummeted, crumpling to the ground. Noodle landed on top of her and dashed to Pie. Jemma stood and grabbed her Stone, then held it out in front of her as she limped toward the beast. It lumbered backward, howling, clamping its fingers over its eyes. She kept advancing, Stone in hand, the Aukron cowering from its light. Near the edge of the clearing, it sank onto its haunches and groaned. She turned and ran.
But the Aukron was not done with her yet. It struck out and slammed her facedown on top of the book, knocking the knife from her hand. Four massive limbs surrounded her. Its hot diaphragm pressed forcefully into her back, squeezing the air from her. Its roar rattled through her; its huge heart hammered against her back. The book pressed painfully into her hip; her Stone was crushing her sternum. She thought she would break. From beyond the beast’s belly, she could hear Noodle’s and Pie’s frantic squeals. Desperate, she reached for the knife, and felt a tiny muzzle nudging its handle into her hand. But the Aukron had her arm pinned, and she couldn’t move a muscle.
A name sprang into her head, and she called out to it.
“Majem! Help me, please! I don’t want to die.…”
The earth beneath her shivered, and she felt as though she was melting into it. Then the book and her Stone seemed to dissolve and float up through her, as if the molecules of her body were dissolving too, flooding her with heat. She heard a hissing sound where her back met the Aukron’s stomach. With a loud bellow, the Aukron recoiled, its flesh burning.
Jemma and her cloak were unscathed.
Her focus pulled together. Every fiber in her body fired into action. She flipped over and stabbed the Aukron’s thick hide. The beast pulled back, the knife’s hilt sticking from its gut. Jemma grabbed the weapon with both hands and sliced upward. Black flesh ripped open, and there, beating right in front of her and webbed with dark veins, was its monstrous heart. She glimpsed her face reflected in its glistening surface, hair flame-red, teeth bared, aqua eyes fired with determination. With one final thrust, she punctured the beating balloon.
Jemma scrambled clear as the Aukron fell to its side, wheezing and groaning. Green liquid spurted from the gash, searing the grass and spattering her hands. The spurts slowed, and lessened, and slowed more, until finally, the Aukron lay still.
“Oh, my—oh, my—” Jemma dropped the knife. Her hands stung from the creature’s blood and she wiped them on the grass, looking around for the rats. They were huddled next to her cloak several feet away, shaking, but unharmed. They teetered toward her. She picked them up and hugged them fiercely. The horror of having almost lost her life—and theirs—flooded through her, washing away the force that had infused her moments ago. She had killed the beast, saving herself, and Noodle and Pie. She should be triumphant, but all she felt w
as weak, and sick to her stomach.
Pie nudged Jemma’s hand. Us, or it …
“I know, Pie, I know. But even so …” She buried her face in the rats’ fur. She craved rest, but couldn’t stop here—not with that Mord monster lying mere feet away. She would have to find shelter, just until she could catch her breath.
“Let’s move on, Rattusses.” Jemma picked up the knife and tucked it into her boot top, then crawled over to the crumpled cloak and wrapped it around her.
Crystals. We must get them.
She groaned. Of course, she couldn’t go without the crystals. Stuffing the book back into her left pocket, she and the rats began the long trudge uphill toward the Aukron’s lair.
Noodle and Pie perched on Jemma’s shoulders as she stumbled down the hill again. One o’clock had passed, and now a second single toll marked the passing night. One-thirty. She had soon found the place where the hound had caught her. The remains of her shawl had gone—part of the men’s proof of her death, she supposed—but after a mercifully short search, she had found the crystals. She checked them again now, one in each pocket.
Approaching the Aukron’s corpse, Jemma noticed that it had become smaller, not much bigger than a cow—and it was shrinking with every step she took toward it, disintegrating before her eyes. She stopped and stared as the monstrous head deflated, then separated into thousands of black maggots that slithered away beneath the leaves. The last shadow of its legs slowly disappeared, then its arms, and finally its torso. All that remained were the burst shreds of its heart, like a large black bowl containing the last pool of the monster’s green blood.
In the middle of it, something moved.
Jemma leaned in closer. There, in the liquid, she saw a tiny but unmistakable image, which expanded to meet her gaze. Two people—Nocturna and Nox—were running; then they were standing before Mordrake and Mordana’s statues, arms raised in a gesture of worship. The image expanded again. From beneath his night robes, Nox pulled out a bundle and unwrapped it: the remains of Jemma’s shawl, with the skeletal hand—the hand that the thugs had given them as evidence of her death. He placed it on the altar, then he and Nocturna waved their arms above it. Jemma remembered Nox teaching her that this was a way to track who, or what, a limb or fragment of clothing had belonged to. “A piece of their essence remains,” he had explained, “and we can see who they are, or were.” Jemma held her breath as she watched a shadow form rising up.
Marsh. So it had been her hand.
Grief jolted through Jemma. It still doesn’t prove she’s dead, she told herself, but a tear rolled down her cheek and into the Aukron’s blood. The image rippled, obscured for a moment. When it cleared, Nox and Nocturna were looking over their shoulders, appearing puzzled, then angry. Nox snatched something from the end of the mantel: the black globe. He placed it in the middle of the altar, and waved his arms again. A dark shape appeared: a small version of the Aukron, which then shriveled and collapsed. Nocturna’s mouth formed an enraged O, sending the soundless scream of her fury jarring into Jemma’s bones.
They knew. They knew that she had killed the Aukron. That she was still alive. The hand in their possession was Marsh’s, not hers. And from the look on Nocturna’s face, Jemma had a feeling that the Wrath of Mord was about to be unleashed on her again.
The night darkened. A violent wind tore through the trees from the top of the crag. Thunder roared. The forest seemed to expand around her, dwarfing her. Grabbing the rats, she took off into blinding rain, which turned to needle-sharp sleet, then eyeball-sized hailstones that rolled beneath her feet, crashing her to the ground. She slid downhill under the heaving canopy of the forest, past firs bent almost horizontal by the wind, over ferns that cowered close to the earth, battered by the elements. Her cloak snagged on roots and rocks, jerking her every which way as she was blown down and down and sideways, and she realized with horror that the wind was propelling her straight toward the sheer edge of Mordwin’s Crag. She thrust out her arms in an attempt to hold onto passing trees, brambles, anything—but she was falling too fast, in a cascade of leaves, stones, and branches.
Her head cracked against something hard. She felt a brief sensation of flying, of being caught by the wind. Then blackness closed around her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Bryn
Friday morning
Pain shot through Jemma’s limbs. Her hands felt as though they were on fire, but she was holding something in each palm, cool, cylindrical, and soothing. Her Stone was hot on her chest, and some kind of hide covered her, yet shivers racked her body.
“Rattusses,” she managed to whisper. “Are you there?” She couldn’t turn her head to look, could only see rock several feet above her, dark and jagged. A cave, she must be in a cave. She was lying on something soft, and could smell leather and straw and smoke, as well as something pungent. She remembered vaguely her head being lifted, and hot, bitter liquid being poured down her throat. Above and to her left, orange tinged the ceiling; her left side was warm. Fire, crackling gently. Where were Noodle and Pie? Were they all right?
“Rattusses,” she wheezed, a little louder.
No answer. A bead of sweat dribbled into her hair. Jemma closed her eyes and sank into blankness again.
Garbled words began swimming through her mind: Leth gith bal celde … Leth gith bal celde … Were they anagrams? She was too confused to tell, too lost in the fog of fever.
“Miss. Miss.” A mournful whisper. Echoey, distant, yet right in her head. She opened her eyes. A gray figure hovered over her, small, ragged. A girl. Was she dreaming, or was one of the phantom children here in the cave with her?
Who are you?
“I’m Cora,” the figure said. “Me and my bruvver was taken when we was six. They killed ’im. Left me to die in the dungeons, wiv ’is body tossed in beside me.”
No, no! I don’t want to hear this—not now.…
“Help us, please, help!” Cora’s hand passed like a breeze through Jemma’s shoulder. “Please, you got to free my bruvver. ’E’s my twin. Like my uvver half. I can’t move on wivout ’im. ’S the same for all of us out ’ere. You’s our only hope.”
Me? Why? How can I help? Your brother’s dead—you’re dead! Maybe I am too.…
“Please! They’s all trapped in the castle.… You can help. You’s the One.…”
The One? I don’t know who I am. I’m just me. Just Jemma.
Clang!
One lone toll, from far, far away. Leave me alone, Cora, please.…
Cora dissolved into the granite ceiling, and disappeared with a long drawn-out sigh as the strange words began circling Jemma’s head again: Leth gith bal celde …
Two cold dots nudged Jemma’s chin. She opened her eyes.
“Noodle, Pie!” The rats were lying on her chest. They blinked, and hopped to the ground. Without thinking, Jemma sat up. “Ouch!”
Her back was sore, her head ached, but otherwise most of her earlier pain had subsided. The Stone felt warm on her chest, and energy seemed to be snapping between it and her hands, in which she was clutching the crystals. Who had placed them there? The same person who had lit the fire, no doubt, and had recently piled wood onto it. Evidently, this was their home. Three pots sat by the fire, and a shelf of rock held several roughly hewn wooden bowls and cups. Next to them, a tall cup held a bunch of yellow and white flowers. Dried herbs hung by ribbons of sacking from the cave’s roof. On the earthen floor beside her, Jemma now noticed her cloak, neatly folded by whoever lived here, with the book, the wineskin, and her knife stacked on top of it. Her boots sat side by side on the floor. She stretched, grateful for the fire’s warmth, then placed the crystals beside the knife. They were completely clear, no trace of cloudiness remaining.
Outside the cave was a mass of swirling white.
“Where are we, Rattusses? Where have you been?”
Pie scuttled to the fire and nosed a pile of round white objects next to a smaller pile of pale creamy-colored ones
, and finally, clusters of small purple berries.
Food. For you.
“Mushrooms and nuts!” Jemma grabbed them. The mushrooms were cool and plump, and the nuts—hazel and pine—crunchy and fresh. “Mmmm, thank you! And what are these berries—not nightshade, surely?”
No, silly.
The rats’ feast was surprisingly filling. Her hunger satisfied, memories of the past few days filtered back into her head, and as they did, her spirits sank. She remembered the strange words she’d heard when she’d woken earlier; but more vividly, she remembered the girl ghost, Cora, with her plea for help. For her, and her twin, and all the others in the forest. Their earnestness and sorrow felt like a mission Jemma had been handed—a mission she was not sure she wanted.
She sighed, pulling back the long, red-haired hide covering her, then saw her legs.
“Mother of Majem!” she said. Her stockings were torn to shreds, and her thighs were streaked with scabs and bruises that glistened with a greenish ointment. Her right ankle was bound between two rough splints of wood, her bare foot sticking out of the end. “What on earth happened?”
Noodle hopped into Jemma’s lap and lay there, stock-still. A picture flickered in her mind, a memory of falling, of intense pain as she whomped onto white-covered treetops, branches giving way beneath her one after another, until she crashed onto the ground in a shower of cold wetness. Then her vision shifted, and she seemed to be outside herself, watching from ground level as she was lifted by sturdy arms attached to a thickset form that was roughly clad in animal skins, with sacking bundled around the feet and ankles for shoes. Dark hair flowed over broad shoulders, on one of which perched a tiny bird. It wasn’t her own eyes she was seeing through, Jemma realized, but ones close to the snow-covered earth, darting this way and that, following behind and watching as she was carried across a white, powdery landscape and through the Misty forest as though she were the most fragile china. Then she saw what she guessed was the bottom of Mordwin’s Crag, and several feet up it, the mouth of a cave.
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