I stood, and walked to the bow where Singael still stood. He had barely moved an inch in the hours’ sailing. He looked at me, but his face betrayed nothing.
“Where are the foulings and wretched beasts?” Nogoriel asked in the same tone. “We should have seen them by now.”
Malarin strung his bow and notched an arrow. “Everyone, keep an eye out.”
The rigging creaked, and I turned to see Aerik grasping it. I found my spyglass in my pack, and tossed it to him. “You were always good at spotting the pirates through the fog,” I said.
He climbed higher up the rigging, until he reached the top of the mast. He hung from the rigging with the ease of a lifetime’s work. Firien gave him a speculative glance, but stayed focused on the river ahead. Out of the heavy, lingering mist, shapes started to form. Trees grew thin and sparse, and the sounds of the insects faded to nothing.
“It’s hard to see through all of this,” Aerik said from above.
I went to the starboard side, where the shoreline was closer. The water had turned crisp and clear, and I could see the rocky bottom thirty feet below. But there were no fish or water plants, or any land animals approaching the waters’ edge.
“Something ahead,” Aerik warned, his voice as shushed as the others.
Slowly, out of the mist, a great shape took form.
A stone arch traversed the river. It rose stories above us, a great aging hulk of white. Its surface was etched with the old runes, which I could sense in the old magic more than I could see.
Then, as we passed underneath, the land itself felt different. Not a taint, but a strange kind of warmth. It was not as if the great arch was a portal, but I could feel the change in the air all the same.
Dalandaras approached me. “Do you feel that, Evalandriel?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied, my voice barely above a whisper. It felt like it would be sacrilege to break the silence of the place. “Is it the old magic?””
Firien nodded. “Old. And wild. Never think to master it, or you will end up as Singael or Adhannor.”
Singael gave no signal that he had overhead Firien.
I sat, and went back to looking at the water.
I leaned over the edge, letting my fingers skim the water’s surface. It was cool, gentle, pure – I lowered my whole hand into the water, and the lingering tiredness faded away. With each breath I took of the fresh, moist air, my strength restored itself. It seemed the perfect place to defend against Adhannor. Why were the elves so afraid of Tal Anor?
A thread of red ran through the water, tangling and diluting with the current. It thickened as we went, and the scent of copper filled the air.
“What is…?” I asked.
Zarah gasped.
I followed the trail of blood. It deepened and thickness until it reached the shore. And at the shore, twisted and mangled on the rocky beach, I saw my mother’s body.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I fell back into the boat. My heart nearly stopped in my chest. I could see her face as she was dragged under the water, her panic as the sea swallowed her up. Not again. I couldn’t see her body again. Not here.
“What is it?” Aerik demanded.
Dalandaras and Father both came to me at once, each taking an arm and helping me up. Carefully, my heart beating so hard that I could hear its thumping in my ears, I forced myself to look back towards the shore.
My mother’s body had disappeared. But another carcass had taken its place.
Zarah cried out.
I heard the tightening of bowstrings and the ringing of metal as swords were drawn.
Aerik dropped to the deck. “What is that…thing?”
It had been a creature, shaped much like a wolf. But it was huge, thrice the size of a proper wolf. It seemed to have patches of fur mixed with scales. Both fur and scales were black, yet the fur and scales of the beast that touched the snow were tinged with white. Even as I watched, the white slowly darkened into black. It was on its back, its neck twisted at a fatal angle, its sharp claws outstretched. Its dark eyes were open, and its jaws stretched wide, its fangs longer than my fingers. One bite from the creature would be enough to tear off a limb. Its belly had been torn open, its organs and intestines scattered around it, its blood seeping into the river.
“Is that a dread wolf?” I managed to ask. My voice shook.
“No,” Nogoriel replied. “It is a fouling.”
“What would dare do that to a fouling?” The once-confident Malarin now whispered in unease.
“Many things,” Singael spoke suddenly from the bow. “And none we want to encounter while we are so exposed.”
I kept my eye on the creature as we sailed passed. I had seen one in my vision, when I had worn the crown.
“If we encounter one,” Dalandaras said quietly. “Aim for the center of the chest, where the heart is, or for the spine. It has a thick skull; a blade is unlikely to cleave the head.”
My father unshouldered his rifle and loaded it, sliding the bolt home with a click.
The mist started to fade, though it still hung over the land. The river began to widen, until it opened into a larger body of water, and I could no longer see the shore on either side. Whether it was a lake or a bay or some other thing I could not tell, and didn’t dare ask, as I would disturb the watchful silence. The water deepened as well, though it remained clear, and at the bottom we could see old blocks of stone. Their scattered form started to take the shape of a path, then a road, and a fallen tower.
“Port side,” Aerik called, and I turned to look. Just off in the mist and the trees, barely discernible, was a half-fallen tower. It was short, wide, and made of the same white stone as the boundary arch and the other ruins.
“They’re under the water, too,” I said quietly.
Zarah leaned over the edge. “Look at that.”
“What is all of this?” I asked Firien and his elves.
“This lake was not here when I was a child,” Singael replied instead. “But this city was. It was a place of rumors and monsters. There were many towers here, and great roads and—”
“—and old magic,” Firien interrupted. “So concentrated that you could see it flickering in the air. But you used it for your own ends, and the flickers are gone now.”
Singael nodded, but offered no apology. “And now it is gone, and we split the land and flooded the place, and destroyed what once was here.”
Old magic so concentrated that it floated in the air; strength to split a land and flood a city. But why was I so surprised? I had seen it collapse a mountain and raise an army out of rock and ice. Part of me wanted to touch that old magic, to take it out of the air. What couldn’t be done with it? Destruction, certainly. But other things too. Good things. But then part of me recoiled from it. Surely Singael and his friends had not meant to destroy their world. I did not want to inherit their destruction.
We sailed on, past the tower. Other half-fallen buildings haunted us with their shadows from deep in the mist. A dark shape seemed to swim under the boat, but it had come and gone so fast that I could not tell whether it was an illusion caused by the blinking of my eyes. Firien and his people seemed to get irritated, pacing and twitching with a frequency uncommon to the elves. Even Eliawen and Lorandal, who had remained silent this whole way, took to making an uncommonly close watch of the land and water around them. Dalandaras seemed to keep a firm watch on his grandfather; I didn’t know whether to feel relieved that someone was watching him, or worried that I felt he needed watching.
I let the elves do the watching, and turned by gaze to the water in front of us. I could feel something more now. Not a taint, but an edge. It was a stifling unease that seemed to block out the cold sting of the air.
And then the mist parted. We were no longer on a river, but in a lake in the center of a wide valley. It was bordered by sharp, snow-covered peaks, forming fortress wall of their own that seemed as if it could keep the world out of this place—or keep everything from
leaving. Wedged on the strip of land between the sharp rise of the mountains and overflowing into the water of the lake was a city. It was built of that now-familiar white stone, the buildings still orderly along roads and squares despite their destroyed state.
“Tal Anor,” Firien said.
It was another dead city. I was sure of it.
What would I find in there? Would there be more altars, more still-alive but already-doomed men? What exactly did Singael expect me to do in order to become whatever I was supposed to be in order to defeat Adhannor?
The elves set to work slackening the sails, and we slowed down. Chunks of ice had broken away from the shore and drifted towards the center of the lake, and they scraped against the hull of the boat as we steered closer to the dead city. Then we weren’t scraping past ice, but submerged ruins, and Malarin and Lorias took up station at the bow of the ship, their eyes focused on the depths below.
Someone had built a dock atop the ruins out of the fallen stones, and we eased up next to it. Before Diriel and Kirin, ready with ropes, could secure the boat, Singael bounded off of it. Dalandaras hurried after, but Singael had renewed his energy and outpaced his grandson. I did my best to follow, but the stones were iced over. The urge to turn back was almost a physical force.
Singael reached land and halted. He breathed deeply, and I could just barely feel—and nearly see—the faint swelling of power as it entered him. None of the elves gave any indication that they saw that Singael was rejuvenated by the old magic. “Adhanel,” he murmured.
Chill touched my heart again. Was this Singael’s ultimate goal, then? To find Adhanel? Or was Firien’s doubt and suspicion wearing off on me?
“Did Adhanel keep secrets?” I asked as I caught up to him and Dalandaras. I wanted to add, “like you?”” or “from you?” but could not decide which was more important.
Singael stiffened. “Many.”
“Did you love her?”
“We all did, such was her power.”
“Power, as in magic, or power as in woman?”
“Can it not be both?” he asked angrily, and turned away from me, towards the center of the city. “We have much to do today.”
Father stepped up next to me, rifle in hand. “What of the foulings and those other beasts?”
“They are not here,” Singael said. “Not yet.”
We did have much to do today. And precious little time to do it, if Adhannor was on our trail.
I stepped past Singael, and kept going. The old magic reached out to me, and gave me a path to follow. I did not know the destination; I only knew that I had to go.
“Eva, wait—” my father called.
“Let her,” Singael said sharply.
I ignored them both. I passed the empty doorways and dark windows and stepped over fallen stones. There were rifts to cross, places where the land had split and severed, creating walls or crevasses. I didn’t wait for the help of the others to keep up as I found my way around them. I didn’t want to find bodies, I dreaded finding bodies. The fear of them grew the closer I came to the end of the ruined city and the start of the mountains.
And then the mountains were there, and the doorway carved into the gray rock, and the stairs leading downward. I kicked at the snowfall that blocked my way, and made my way downward without a torch.
“Wait—” I heard my father call again. He had followed me.
“No,” Singael replied harshly. “We will wait. Out here.”
As it became darker, my eyesight became clearer. It was a step descent, and the wind rushed up from below. There were alcoves in the walls, and holes for torches that weren’t there. And runes, hundreds of them, hurriedly scratched into the stone. But they stopped too, and I was left with the long stairwell and the whistle of the wind. Just as my legs began to ache, the stairs ended and a hallway continued on. I walked for an hour, then two, and then I lost track of time. When the hallway opened up into a cathedral nave, the same as it had in the ruins at Winter’s Crown, I waited for the revelation of the altars, of the half-dead rotting men.
But there were no altars, or dead men. There was simply the great height of the room, the tall pillars, and a skylight that bored upward until it met the orange glow of the dusk. The scrape of my footsteps echoed for what seemed like eternity into the dark corners that stretched far ahead of me without end.
I wasn’t alone down here.
Just out of the reach of the skylight was a shape on the floor near a pillar. I stepped cautiously closer, but I wasn’t afraid.
It was a skeleton. Time may have claimed the skin, but it had hardly disturbed the silver gown or its long golden hair. The long draping sleeves and locks of hair shifted in the breeze that swept through this place, but otherwise it had remained undisturbed. I knelt next to it. The bones were not chipped or damaged, the gown not torn or punctured. There was a ring on one of the finger bones, a silver ring.
And on the floor by the pillar rested a five-pronged crown.
I jerked back. Footsteps echoed behind me. I spun, and a ghostly figure halted in what remained of the day’s light. It was the ghost of the figure lying on the floor, clothed as she had been in life, the crown on her head. She was as beautiful as a ghost as she had been in life, with a heart-shaped face and clear eyes.
“Adhanel,” I guessed.
She inclined her head. “Granddaughter.” Her voice was deep, melodious, and yet…
“…Granddaughter?” I asked.
“Many times distant,” she clarified.
“I had guessed as much,” I replied. And Singael had known it was Adhanel, not Adhannor, who my ancestor, even if he had not wanted to admit to it.
She tilted her head, and my eyes were drawn to the ethereal crown on her head. “Have you come alone?”
“No,” I replied. “I have my father, and human friends. Elf companions. And Singael.”
“Singael!” she recoiled. “Do not speak of him to me! He is no friend of mine!”
Well that was not quite the answer I was expecting. “The relationship ended badly, I take it.”
“There was never a relationship!” she spat.
Lovely. Not only was a tangling with a murderous apparition and suddenly inheriting old magic powers, I was now in the middle of a three-thousand-year-old lovers’ tiff. “Then what was there?”
“Lust. Desire. Jealousy. Murder.”
“Who murdered whom?”
“Singael murdered my love,” she murmured, turning away and clutching the ghostly ring on her finger. “My poor Daradhor.”
“Was he one of the ones who started all of this trouble along with you and Singael and Adhannor?”
She scoffed. “No. He was human. And Singael killed him because I loved him.”
Great. “Singael still mourns over you.”
“I still want him dead.”
“You are free to kill him, if you can,” I replied, eying her corporeal form. “After we destroy Adhannor.”
“Adhannor?” she asked. “Adhannor is loosed?”
I nodded. “And now we need to end him.”
“What do you want of me?”
“I don’t even know. Singael said that I had to come to Tal Anor in order to fulfill my potential as an inheritor.”
“He sent you here because I have made this my prison, and my penance. And no one may enter save for someone of my own blood.”
I rubbed my face in frustration. That was it, then? There was no little trick to gaining control over my new powers? Frustration became tinged with fear. How could we possibly destroy Adhannor, when there was nothing here but Singael’s desire for Adhanel?
“Singael’s madness has blinded him to your goal. I am sorry for that.”
I nodded.
“Although…” she said slowly, and I felt the press of gathering power in the room. “He may still yet aid your journey.”
“Why is that?” I took a step back. I didn’t like the glint in her eyes. “What are you doing?” Grandmother or n
o, I knew better than to trust her.
“Do not worry,” she smiled a rather bloodthirsty smile. “I will guide you. I think my penance is at an end. It was a joy to encounter you, granddaughter of mine.”
And then she rushed at me. I tried to ward off the blow, but then there was darkness.
When I could finally open my eyes again, I was on the floor. A bright sky shown down through the skylight.
Gingerly I sat up, and looked myself over. Everything seemed to be intact. Although there seemed to be two of me. One of flesh and blood, and one of spirit that seemed to fade in and out only a hair’s breadth above my skin. No…I blinked a few more times. No, there was just one of me.
I found my footing and staggered upright. I waited for the head spinning to subside before I dared to look around.
Adhanel was gone, but her body remained.
After a moment’s hesitation, I approached her body and took the ring off the bone. I pulled off my glove and slipped it onto my finger. It fit perfectly. It belonged there.
And then I remembered with sudden fury: Singael.
I ran down the long hallway. It didn’t tire me. Nor did the stairs; the light that grew brighter and brighter only spurred me on.
When I emerged, the sun was high overhead. Everyone had disappeared from the entrance. All except Father and Aerik.
“Eva!” Father said as he and Aerik stood from where they sat on crumbled ruins. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I replied, brushing away his concerned hand “How long has it been?”
“Near a full day,” Aerik replied. “It is noon.”
“What happened?” Father asked.
“Where is he?”
Father didn’t ask who I meant. “At the boat.”
I strode past them and down to the shore. After a moment I spotted tents near the boat, and Firien’s crew patrolling the beach. Lorandal and Eliawen sat near a campfire with Zarah, whose cheeks had reddened in the new flush of cold.
“Singael,” I demanded.
All three of them seemed to pull away from me. “Down there,” Eliawen said, and gestured to my left.
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