Chapter 20
Twenty
Ivy
This time, I don’t have to remind Stavros to head to his bedroom and turn off the lights. After Casimir finishes touching up the false godlen brand I haven’t needed to show off yet, the former general simply casts his gaze toward me and says, “Be careful.”
From his tone, it’s obvious what he’s actually saying is, “Don’t you dare burn the school to the ground with your crazy riven magic.”
“Good night to you too,” I call after him, and flop onto the sofa to wait until it seems like a reasonable time to head out.
Julita gives a resigned sigh. I didn’t think it’d take him this long to come around. It’s not as if you’re a different person from who you were before he found out.
I grimace. “In his mind, I am.”
He’s got to see that you have a handle on your magic eventually… I suppose being stubborn was an ideal quality in a general.
I chuckle under my breath. “Good thing I’m awfully stubborn too.”
I pause for a moment, debating how much of a conversation I want to get into even with my voice low when Stavros is in the next room. But what I want to ask Julita about isn’t anything I’d dare saying out loud anywhere else on campus.
“Is there anything else you can remember from your brother and Wendos’s rituals that I should be prepared for? There’s the blood-letting and the appeals for power, but we’ve already covered those.”
Julita is silent for a moment before she answers—long enough that I wish my current mission didn’t require that she dredge up those awful childhood memories.
That was most of it, she says. There were things like drawing symbols with different materials like the dartling eggshell powder, and odd chants similar to the things Wendos was saying in the tower—but not quite the same.
I don’t think they had the full picture.
Which doesn’t mean this bunch of scourge sorcerers does either, but they seem to know more.
“And they want more. Your brother never said anything about undermining the royal family, did he?”
I have the impression of Julita shaking her head.
Nothing on that large a scale. I mean, they were barely teenagers while I was involved.
Stupid boys, dabbling with magic they didn’t understand, hoping they’d get some extra power that’d make them feel special.
I never got the impression they even thought all that much about politics or religious ideals.
“Nothing along those lines came up around the family dinner table?” I can’t help asking.
Julita snorts. My parents didn’t—don’t—care much about what goes on beyond our county either.
Frankly, I wouldn’t have if I could have gone back to Nikodi and simply focused on running things smoothly there.
You know, all the territory we managed from our estate only contained about a quarter of the people who live just in this city.
When you spend all your time in a place like that, the world feels… smaller.
“That makes sense.” I doubt many intrepid merchants or travelers bothered to linger within Nikodi’s far-flung borders either.
I might have spent most of my life struggling to keep food in my belly and find any sense of home, but my world was far larger than Julita’s until she came to the college.
“Is there anything you’d like to see?” I say abruptly. “I mean, when we’re done here—you’ve missed out on a lot of things—and I wouldn’t mind taking in more of Silana or even farther abroad. The king’s got to offer a good enough reward that we could do a little traveling with plenty left over.”
Before she moves on for good, that is. My stomach knots when I consider saying that part.
Julita’s voice goes quiet. That’s very kind of you to offer. I’ll have to think about it. Mostly I wanted to be such a good countess my parents couldn’t possibly wish Borys had stuck around instead. She lets out a dry laugh.
The apprehension about the unknown tasks ahead is starting to get to me. I pace the room a little, taking in the twelve rings of the midnight bell, and wander out to the stable again.
I’m tempted to take Toast out for a ride into the woods—the conspirators never said the fifty paces had to be human—but I’m not sure I want to find out what might happen to him if they object.
I rub his neck and call him a good boy, and drink in the comforting stable scents until my restlessness drives me onward.
I can’t stay out in the open in the outer courtyard without the patrolling guards noticing me, so I duck into the shadows at the edge of the hunting woods. Setting my feet carefully so I don’t make any noise, I slink between the trees off the path.
I don’t come across any trace of the scourge sorcerers’ presence. How far ahead of me do they come into the woods themselves?
Or do they have some magical means of arriving here, the way we can use the enchanted cords to jump between the college and the palace?
A niggling tug of my own magic reminds me that it could expose any figures lurking in the shadows if I let it. I grimace at the sensation.
At the single peal marking the first hour of the morning, I square my shoulders and set off toward the fifty-pace meeting spot.
Like before, I’m met with silence. I stand still and calm, taking in the breeze and the warble of swaying leaves, on the alert for any sign of supernatural power.
The conspirators can’t know about my sensitivity to other people’s magic any more than Benedikt does. I do have a few aspects of my unwanted abilities that I can draw on without doing any harm.
Abruptly, the voice—which may or may not be the same voice as last time—wavers around me again. “Ivy of Nikodi, you fulfilled your first task. All of us who are committed to a better world thank you.”
“I thank you for the opportunity to work toward that better world too,” I say, the false gratitude sour on my tongue. “Is there more that I can help with?”
If they could get on with the part where they fill me in on their plans, I’d be truly grateful.
But we wouldn’t be in this predicament if the scourge sorcerers were that carefree.
“There will be more opportunities,” the voice says. “Tonight, we want to see how much restoring the All-Giver to these realms means to you.”
So they aren’t delusional enough to believe the All-Giver never left. They just think they can bring the Great God back?
I guess that’s some kind of delusion too.
I give a slight bow. “I can’t think of much I wouldn’t do.” As long as the All-Giver dispatches all the sorcerers and their sick tactics without harming the rest of us. Which, granted, isn’t a sure thing, so we’d better be able to take these psychopaths down ourselves first.
The voice shifts as if changing direction in its rippling path around me. “We must return to the old ways from when the Great God watched over us. We’ve distanced ourselves too much from where we came from. Can you tap into the roots of humanity, Ivy?”
A shiver travels up my spine. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“We’re all animals at heart. We’re born wild, meant to revel in sky, sea, and earth by immersing ourselves in them, not holding ourselves apart. Too many have forgotten the essence of our nature.”
Born wild. What was it Wendos talked about? He mentioned “the Order of the Wild” as if that was the name of the group he was allied with.
Julita hums. This does remind me a little of some of the things Borys used to say. Mingling blood with the earth because it all comes from the same place and things along that line.
I nod as if I agree with what the speaker said. “We’ve cut ourselves off from our origins. I can see what you mean. Everyone’s so concerned with making rules and keeping peace.”
“Good. Then you understand. Now embrace that thought. Get down on your hands and knees.”
My muscles tense against the command, but I force myself to kneel, my skirt fanned beneath me. As I set my hands on the hard-packed dirt of the riding path, I wish I’d changed into my combat training clothes for this secret rendezvous.
The scent of the earth fills my nose, pungent and loamy. There is something a little exhilarating about getting down in the dirt, shedding expectations of proper posture and noble elegance.
“Now run,” the voice says.
My head jerks around—aimlessly, since I have no idea where the speaker is. “What?”
“Run. Like the animal you are. Follow the wildness within.”
I feel more uncomfortable than wild in that moment, but I can’t let the evaluating sorcerers notice me hesitate.
With a jerk, I untie the cloak from my neck to let it fall on the path so it won’t tangle with my limbs. Then I push myself forward, scuttling in my crouched position along the packed dirt.
After a short distance, I decide it’ll feel better if my legs are squatting rather than kneeling, my feet propelling me instead of my knees.
As I adjust my stance, the voice hollers after me. “Deeper into the woods. Away from all the restrictions they’ve tried to place on us!”
I spring between the trees, wincing as broken twigs and sharp pebbles bite at my palms. The toe of my boot snags on a jutting root, and I sprawl forward, scraping my chin before I’m scrambling back up again.
Pain stings along my jaw as I hurtle onward, but I tune it out. I focus on the brush of the vegetation against my skin, on the hiss of my skirts against the ground.
The silk catches on a broken branch and tears. A strange sense of satisfaction passes through me at the rasp of sound, followed by a swell of horror.
I can’t be buying into this madness. I shouldn’t be enjoying anything about this moment.
But the conspiracy wouldn’t be growing if their ideals didn’t have a certain appeal. Maybe in some ways I am the sort of person they’d have wanted to recruit.
I scramble on through the darkness, my torn gown flapping around my legs, my fingernails digging into the dirt. I don’t know how long they expect me to keep this up.
Should I throw back my head and howl at the moon like a wolf, or would that be too much?
The idea kind of amuses me, which makes me uneasy all over again.
As I swerve around a tree trunk, fern fronds swiping across my cheek, my magic unfurls through my chest again. If I don’t want to be here, I can wipe out every other person in this forest, just like that.
I can force them to leave me alone. I can end this wretched madness.
I grit my teeth against it.
No. I’m fine. No one’s hurting me.
No one except my own wretched power. When I clamp down on it, it thrashes against my hold harder than before. Claws of pain rake across my ribs and down to my gut.
I swallow a gasp and dash onward, hoping whoever’s watching will attribute my stumbles to the uneven ground. As the pain digs in deeper, tears burn behind my eyes.
Even my broken soul knows that this bizarre display is wrong. But I can’t lash out the way it wants when I still know so little about our enemy.
With every thump of my feet, I will my roiling power to calm down. I can keep up this act for as long as I need. There’s no real threat here.
Then I stumble into a glade, and a pale gray rabbit leaps in front of me.
“Kill it!” the voice says, bouncing between the trees. “Tear it apart with your hands and offer up its life to the one who made us all!”
My heart lurches, and I lunge forward. My panic that I might fail the trial cuts through my nausea at the task.
I catch the softly furred body in my arms. My hands grope toward its neck.
I’ve killed rodents before—when I was desperate, when both my stomach and my power were gnawing at me to act.
Normally I’d have used a knife, but I know how to feel for the knobs of the spine—
Crack.
The body goes limp in my grasp. As I hold up its body to the thin beams of moonlight, the voice calls out again.
“Spill its blood. Dedicate it to the All-Giver!”
My stomach churns with another wave of queasiness as I squeeze my hands. My magic reverberates through my limbs, offering its service—I can’t give in. I have to do this myself too.
I wrench and heave, and flesh tears. Fur and skin part; blood spurts onto the ground.
“For the All-Giver!” I rasp. “I run wild and show the animal I am for the All-Giver.”
The scourge sorcerers aren’t done yet. The voice echoes through the woods around me—or is it multiple voices now—in an emphatic chant?
“The right rulers should rise, and the wrong should fall!”
“The right rulers should rise, and the wrong should fall!” I repeat, restraining a shiver of horror. How exactly do they mean to see the “wrong” rulers removed?
And who do they think the right ones are? Does Ster. Torstem expect to take the throne?
I don’t know. I’m smeared with dirt and blood, and all I can do is play along.
Play along until I’ve tumbled far enough into this rabbit hole to see my way out again.