by Katie Cross
“Where to?” he asked. Isadora peered into the passages, chewing her bottom lip. Lucey’s birdsong had been faint.
“Ah … to the right, I think.”
“You think?” he hissed.
“I’m almost positive.”
He pressed his lips together as if suppressing a thought, then growled and stalked into the darkness. Her steps were quick as wingbeats, mimicking her terrified heart, as she followed. Knowing they were finally closing in on Lucey sent a thrill through her.
Within steps, their pace slowed. Torchlight flickered off damp walls hung with irons, manacles, and ropes. Moldering benches lined the hallway. The foul air seemed to fill her throat, making it difficult to breathe. She put a hand over her nose.
“Disgusting,” she murmured.
Maximillion grimaced, as if he’d sucked on a sacran coin, but said nothing as he continued on. Every now and then, cells popped up. All of them empty. Everything was silent. What if they’d moved Lucey? Or perhaps she’d heard wrong?
When the passage began to twist and turn, branching like blackened arteries, Isadora stopped. Empty prison cells populated around her. She’d certainly had underestimated the powerful magic of Carcere. The space here expanded far beyond La Torra, encompassing entire meadows in places, it seemed.
“An illusion?” she asked Maximillion, reaching to touch a damp wall. In the distance, a rat squeaked. There had been no rats in Ernesto’s kichen in La Torra.
“It’s …” He trailed away.
“Otherworldly,” she whispered.
The sensation of someone walking past her sent a chill over her skin. A vague outline of Maximillion’s shoulders and body breezed by—even the torchlight seemed to dim in the bleakness.
“It’s meant to be confusing,” he said. “Security reasons, no doubt.”
“How will we find Lucey?”
“With a prodigious amount of luck.”
Maybe at the cost of our lives. Could they wander forever and never find the end? Surely, it had to end somewhere.
She hoped.
Isadora lifted the torch a little higher. Light glowed off the shimmering walls. Oro. Her eyes darted over the wet stone. Oro ran thick here, like trickling, golden rivers. Must and decay thickened the air.
Several moments of silence passed. Maximillion’s attempts to renew an invisibility spell met with failure. Isadora reached out and ran her fingertips along the oro.
Something shuffled behind them. Isadora whirled around, wielding the torch, but Maximillion rolled his eyes.
“A rat,” he muttered.
Rats on an island that had never seen them before? Or was Carcere that strange? Feeling marginally better when she saw Maximillion in front of her, Isadora followed, waving the torch from side to side. Very little changed, but she had the sense that their direction had. They didn’t branch into the smaller hallways but seemed to move toward the farthest reaches of Carcere.
If there was such a thing.
A faint sound caught her ear. “What is that?” she whispered.
He shook his head. Their pace flagged. The sound grew in strength as they stood at a small intersection from which three thin hallways branched. Maximillion hesitated, then turned into the one on the right. Isadora held the torch out, past the empty cells and dank stone walls, to see a strange sight.
Dozens of eyes.
Isadora leapt back, stifling a scream.
“Light!” a voice cried.
“Redemption!”
“We’re saved!”
“Another prisoner,” whispered another.
“Haven’t had one in a while.”
The words—spoken in the quiet, garbled tones of the common and Ilese languages—assaulted Isadora all at once. Maximillion threw out an arm, halting her. They stood at the top of a stretch of prison cells. Waste and mold overpowered the air. Isadora fought back the urge to vomit at the fetid, toe-curling stench.
The eyes that peered back at her recoiled from the light but continued to stare at it from behind raised arms. Men. Women. One teenager, it appeared. Long, anemic faces, gaunt with years hidden from the sun, stared at them.
“Maximillion, what—”
A second cacophany of voices followed.
“They aren’t Guards!”
“It’s the Advocacy!”
“Praise be to the goddess mother Prana!”
A cold wash pulsed through Isadora’s body, starting at the top of her spine. “No,” Isadora whispered.
If they knew the Advocacy, that meant …
Maximillion murmured, “Watchers.”
An excited murmur rippled through the hall and all the way back, into unknown cells. Voices lifted. Some shouted, screeched. A sob rang through the air.
Isadora’s heart seized. She grabbed Maximillion’s arm—for the first time, he didn’t pull away.
“Max,” she whispered, “we can’t possibly—”
“Silence,” he barked in the common tongue. The room quieted. “Who are you?”
A man to their right moved out of the shadows and into the circle of torchlight. He had the cell closest to them. Knobby fingers—the knuckles swollen—clung to the metal bars of the door. Strings of hair hung from the side of his head. His eyes, bloodshot and rheumy, had a spark of fire.
No, rage.
“We are the ones she fears the most,” he said in Ilese. “The ones she considers to be most dangerous.”
Maximillion’s gaze sharpened. “Watchers?”
The man nodded. Something in him, perhaps a glimmer of insanity, kept Isadora’s attention. Desperation swelled through the air here, but this witch was different. The magic stirred in Isadora’s chest, then faded away. She attempted to open it but failed. The witch’s eyes snapped to hers. She didn’t waver.
He frowned and looked away first.
Maximillion glanced around, eyes darting all over the place, no doubt trying to calculate how many were there. Within the ring of light, Isadora counted ten. The thin stalls were barely long enough to lay down in. There could be any number of witches here.
“How long?” Maximillion asked.
The man shrugged. “Does time still exist?” He jabbed a thumb at the wall behind him. “Made a notch for each dinner they brought.”
Isadora swallowed hard and lifted the torch higher. Thousands of marks covered the wall. “The good gods,” she whispered. She bit her bottom lip, banishing the urge to call out for Lucey.
Maximillion swore under his breath. “And how many of you?”
“Thirty-four.”
“Impossible. I’ve watched Cecelia for years now. There haven’t been that many …”
His words trailed away, and his expression darkened. Isadora bit back her horror. At least some of these witches had been imprisoned since before Maximillion had started the Advocacy. Cecelia had found more Watchers than Maximillion had known. Had she been playing this game all along? Staging certain raids to be caught?
A long stretch of silence passed. The man shifted forward, leaning into the bars. “Are you the Advocate?”
“No,” Maximillion said, “but I work for the Advocacy.”
She glanced at him but saw no lie in his eyes.
Isadora ventured farther down the hall. Eyes peered out from everywhere, drawn to the light like desperate moths. Hands gripped the metal bars. A girl who appeared to be a teenager stepped out of the shadows nearest Isadora. Isadora reached out and put a hand on her face. The girl flinched, then leaned into it. Her cheeks were cold, her eyes soulful.
The man’s voice carried down the hall. “Are you here to save us?” he asked Isadora, pressing his face to the bars. His eyes bulged out of a too-thin face.
Silence fell. For the first time, Maximillion had nothing to say. He gazed at them, eyes as calculating—perhaps as afraid—as ever.
Isadora whirled around, faced Maximillion, and said, “Yes. We’re here to set you free.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sanna fl
ailed hundreds of paces above the ground.
The craggy, rocky mountains of the Northern Network passed below her, swift as eagles. She tried to spin around, pummel the claws of whatever had her, but to no avail. A deep chuckle froze her blood.
Not so feisty when you’re not the one in control.
She scowled. Pemba.
A familiar scream came from not far back. She ducked her head to see mountain dragons surrounding Luteis in the air. He sprayed sheets of fire, some of it his secundum, to drive them back as he flew. Fire as hot as his burned in her hands—again—but soon faded. Sanna watched as dragons appeared on top of Luteis, as if from nowhere, weighing him down. He flipped on his back, scoring them with his talons and flame.
I’m well, she said to him. Save yourself.
They will not have you! he growled, then disappeared under another horde of dragons. Fire burst from between them. One mountain dragon plummeted downward, tongues of flame consuming his wings as he attempted to recover. Haggard mountain dragons streamed toward the fray in the sky.
Sanna slammed into the ground.
She landed hard on her left shoulder and rolled across a dusty rock. Breath escaped her; her lungs froze. Bits of rock skidded across her skin, bringing blood to the surface. She moved with the momentum—just like when she rolled off a tree—and eventually slowed when she hit a rock wall inside a cave.
The moment she stopped, Sanna leapt to her feet, crouching low. She bared her teeth, growling when she saw Pemba glaring at her from the entrance of the sprawling cave. Her shoulder and face pounded.
You have come to see us, he drawled. What a delightful turn of events.
She studied him. So he could speak into her mind without touching her? Was it part of their magic? She straightened up, scowling.
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
Why are you here? Bringing a message from your goddess? She is a hard one to communicate with.
“I agree.”
He blinked.
“I haven’t even delivered the first message, if you want to know.”
Odd.
His eyes closed. She fought the urge to grimace. His acidic breath made fire dance across her eyes, blurring her vision until she blinked to clear it. She forced her mind to clear, fighting the distraction of the pain. As if he sensed her distress, he snorted her direction.
She turned away, grimacing.
His laugh filled the cave, rolling like peals of thunder. He slipped back into the air like a ghost, giving her a glimpse of his profile. His thin profile. The edges of his body had begun to turn slate, the color of the rocks.
Sanna scrambled for the edge and skidded to a stop. A ledge only two paces wide jutted out … leading down a steep precipice and nowhere else.
The world seemed to turn to ribbons below. Her heart slammed in her chest. A flying knot of dragons soared in the distance. She felt as if she hovered in the air, rocks and rills flowing away from her in all directions. Letum Wood was nowhere in sight—they had flown farther inland than she’d thought. No sign of Pemba remained in the sky.
I’m fine, she said to Luteis. I’m fine. It was Pemba.
I cannot land. I am only able to evade, and only barely. They are tracking me. The lower I attempt to go, the more come.
Get away. Find some water. Get some rest. I’m in a cave and can’t get out. There’s no reason for both of us to be captured.
I will not leave you.
Of course you won’t. You’re preparing to help me when it’s advantageous. I don’t think they’re going to kill me.
A long hesitation filled her mind as she studied the sky, identifying where he was by the sight of fire. Pemba had flown much faster than she’d expected. After a silence so long that she feared the mountain dragons had overcome him, Luteis said, Very well. I will be close.
Thank you for trusting me.
Do nothing foolish.
When do I ever?
Precisely.
Sanna glanced up hours later, pulled from her reverie by the thunk of a rock tumbling down the mountainside, skidding past her. It fell, plummeting into the air and disappearing without a sound.
She observed the mountain life teeming in the fading moonlight below, revealed only by the bleakest slants of sunlight from the horizon. She shivered, cooled by the chilly mountain air. Dragons flew like armies in the sky. Perhaps Selsay had ordered them to congregate to give Sanna a false belief of just how powerful she was.
Or maybe there were just that many in the area.
But where were the hatchlings? The females? All of these seemed to be the same—slender, masculine dragons half mad and too thin. A few larger mountain dragons drifted into sight every now and then, mere glimmers against the slate clouds. She never saw them long—their camouflage seemed more powerful than that of the smaller ones flitting around, snapping at each other. They all seemed so uniform. So perfectly, strangely similar. No variation in face, wing structure, or size. Few of them flew close, but those that did were thin.
Sanna blinked, startled out of her thoughts again. Pemba appeared. He hovered in front of her, shattering her contemplation. His broad wings kept him impressively steady in the air.
Climb.
She stood.
“To where?”
He motioned to the left with a jerk of his head. Sanna peered around the edge of the cave. There was a small enough space along the rocks for her to shuffle sideways. It disappeared into the smooth, slate wall.
“To my death?” she asked.
You are not so lucky. Go. The path will appear.
She scowled. “And if I don’t?”
Acid filled the air, thickening it. She recoiled, feeling as if flames were consuming her face. “All right!” she snapped. “I’ll go.”
A chuckle rumbled deep in his chest. As if he could hear her distress, Luteis’s voice filtered through her mind.
You are well?
Pemba is back. We’re climbing.
I have found sustenance and water. Whenever you need me—
I’ll let you know.
I shall have to trust you.
You stall, Pemba hissed. Climb!
“I’m not a fan of heights,” she muttered.
You lie. You are the High Dragonmaster. We have seen you in the high trees, nearly tall as mountains, fearless.
“It’s different.” She stepped carefully onto the ledge and reached a hand out, pressing her palm against the cool surface of the rocks to shuffle forward. Pemba was right—the way did seem to appear. At first she thought it was magic, but then she realized it was little more than the twists and turns of the rock. The ledge remained thin, precariously so, but she clung to the side and made her way along it.
Eventually, the path opened onto a different trail that meandered amongst boulders twice her height. No moss or lichen grew up here—this world seemed deserted in every way possible. Dragons seemed to be the only life in this vast, barren expanse. She half-turned, pausing to catch her breath, which was strained and ragged. The thin air brushed past her in a brittle wind.
Keep moving, Pemba snapped.
Sanna ignored him, attempting to stuff as much air as possible deep into the crevices of her lungs. She pointed down the hill.
“What is that?”
A caravan of what appeared to be witches trekked up the far mountainside, mere specks against the rock. They were so far away they looked like ants, but Sanna could just make out bright swaths of fabric, wagons, and what appeared to be piles of dead creatures. The growing sunlight, though weak, continued to build. She preferred the dark. Heights this barren and exposed rattled her bones.
Tributes, he hissed with pleasure. They were almost late. It is not wise to be late. Continue.
Tributes. Some form of offering. Even though the witches brought quite a few dead creatures, there was no possible way these bleak mountaintops could feed all these dragons. She kept walking.
Where are you? she asked Luteis.
Close enough to see you.
You’re safe?
Safer than you.
Sanna suppressed the urge to look at the sky. Moments later, the rock wall she had been ascending gave way to air. She stood on top of what appeared to be the tallest mountain in the area—though purplish peaks in the distance jutted so far into the sky that they pierced the clouds and disappeared. She struggled to catch her breath for more than one reason.
It’s a strange kind of beauty up here, isn’t it? she asked Luteis as Pemba alighted on a rock nearby. She turned her back to him.
Bleak, he said. But powerful. Mountains cannot move.
Sanna let out a long breath. A rumbling voice entered her mind, shaking her like an earthquake. It was deep and thick, oddly feminine in a husky way, as if just woken from a long slumber.
You are the only witch to have spoken with two of us.
She whipped around. No one stood anywhere near her—not even Pemba, who had fallen to the rocks, his face pressed to the dust in prostration. Even though Sanna had been sitting at the mouth of that cave for what felt like hours, memorizing the layout of the land, watching the habits of the mountain dragons, she saw nothing that could belong to the rumbling voice.
An odd thing to happen, the voice continued, for a witch with so much animosity to the goddesses.
Sanna crouched and pressed her palm to the cold stone. The voice seemed to reverberate into her bones, all the way through her skeleton, as if it originated from the very mountains themselves.
Selsay.
“Forgive me if I feel less than honored,” Sanna said. She thought she felt a quiver of movement beneath her palm.
You do not fear me?
“I didn’t say that.”
I appreciate your honesty.
“I appreciate my freedom.”
A long pause. Sanna held her breath. The wind whipped by, dragging strands of hair out of her braids and across her face. Had she imagined such a thing? No. Why would the goddess of the mountains speak to her?
The voice returned.
My dragons are ill. I require the healing properties of the forest dragons to heal them, so I can continue mounting my defense.
