Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
Alek
The flat, mottled yellow-and-orange tops of the mushrooms catch my eye in the early morning light. With a smile prompted by a flicker of happiness, however brief, I hustle over to the base of the tree where they’ve sprouted.
I may not have conceived of any brilliant battle strategies, but I did manage to pick up a little useful information from my reading. If one of the books I perused while in Pima is correct, these should be edible and decent-tasting if baked.
The country may be doomed, but at least we’ll have breakfast.
I break the tops off the mushrooms’ stems, gathering the whole cluster on my arm cradled against my chest. The snap of a twig brings my head up with a hitch of my pulse, but all I see is a sparrow taking off through the branches overhead.
Stavros and Rheave went out to patrol the area around the abandoned outpost, to watch for any members of the Order of the Wild venturing into this area… and to deal with them if they do find any, I suppose.
That job is definitely not one I could handle.
I walk back to the mossy stone walls as quickly as I can while being reasonably quiet. Casimir spots me from the uneven doorway and dips his head in acknowledgment.
“I’m going to check the snares Stavros set up last night,” he murmurs when I reach him. “I don’t think Ivy should be left alone right now.”
I nod in return, my gut twisting.
When I step past him into the partly roofed room beyond, I find Ivy crouched by our fire, which is smoldering beneath a heap of collected rubble and a layer of dirt to diminish the smoke. Her face, a sallower shade of pale than I’m used to, looks as weary as if she didn’t sleep at all.
She glances up at my entrance, and I offer her a small smile. “Hey. I found something for us to eat—they just need a little baking.”
Without a word, Ivy takes a stick and pries out one of the larger chunks of rock at the edge of the pile. Last night, we used that spot to roast a ground hen Rheave managed to shoot.
I nudge the mushrooms into the hot space one by one. A delicate, rather pleasant herbal scent starts to waft into the air.
The despondence in Ivy’s expression hasn’t shifted. I hesitate and then sit down next to her, not sure if the physical closeness will comfort her, not knowing if there’s anything else I can do for her.
“We’ll find other ways,” I say. “We got an awful lot done without you needing to use your powers before.”
Ivy lets out a faint scoffing sound. “Even when I was mostly suppressing my magic, the most important things I pulled off relied on it. Stopping Wendos. Proving myself against Benedikt. Turning the tables on Ster. Torstem. Saving King Konram’s life.”
“You got us out of Florian under lockdown using nothing but your cunning and connections,” I point out. “You’ve done plenty of fighting with just your knives.”
“Not enough to go up against an army of scourge sorcerers.”
I don’t know how to argue against that statement. All I can say is, “There’s the rest of us too. You’re not in this alone.”
For the first time, Ivy turns her head to meet my gaze. Her normally bright blue eyes look dulled, like the midday sky on an overcast day. “Do you really think the five of us can stop the march without me calling on my magic? Even with the cleverest plan you can imagine?”
I open my mouth and close it again. She’s jabbed at the guilty uncertainty that’s been coiled in the middle of my chest ever since my trick with the fire failed—ever since I first fumbled in Stavros’s weapons training, really.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But we didn’t know when we first set off from the Haven either, did we? We simply knew we had to try.”
My attempt at striking a hopeful note obviously falls flat. Ivy pulls her legs up in front of her, her head drooping until her chin rests on her knees.
She trails her finger idly through the grit that coats the worn stone floor. “You started shouting out names at the march yesterday while I was trying to tear down their magic. Scourge sorcerers who died. What was that about?”
I recall that impulse with a twinge of unfulfilled pride. “I was thinking about what the old letter said about the scourge sorcerers fearing death. It occurred to me that they might struggle more if I reminded them of those among them who have already died. I’m not sure it had much effect.”
“It did throw them off a little,” Ivy says. “They were pushing back, and their magic faltered right then. But I still wasn’t strong enough.”
My heart squeezes at the pain in her voice.
I loop my arm right around her. “It had nothing to do with strength. I’ve never met anyone stronger than you in my entire life.”
Ivy doesn’t answer, only stares down at her hands and the random lines she’s sketched in the dirt.
What else can I tell her? It’s not as if I know what I can do to stop the scourge sorcerers at this point either.
How can I encourage her when my own hopes have deflated?
What does any of this mission matter if the woman I love falls apart in the middle of it?
I take her nearer hand in mine. “How are you feeling after you’ve gotten some rest and half a day without needing to use any magic?”
“Am I still mad, you mean?”
I grimace. “I don’t think you’re outright insane. And I know the effects of your magic aren’t going to vanish immediately. But have you noticed any change? Or whether anything other than using your magic makes you feel better or worse?”
She gives a soft chuckle. “Always the scholar. You can write a book about me—the first treatise on what it’s really like living as a riven sorcerer.”
At my wince, Ivy leans her head toward me, sinking into my embrace. “I’m sorry. That was meant to be a joke, not a criticism. I know you’re trying to help.”
I stroke my thumb over her knuckles. “Don’t worry about me. If there is anything I can do to make your healing easier, I’d want to know—that’s all.”
Ivy exhales in a long, shaky stream. “It’s hard to tell whether specific things scatter my mind more or just set off the madness that’s already taken hold. I mostly notice the effects when I’m keyed up, aware of danger around me…”
“What kind of effects, exactly?”
“My thoughts get… jumpier. Like they’re leaping straight to more extreme conclusions, assuming I’m in grave danger from everyone around me. And I think I see or hear things—things that scare me. Attackers approaching, weapons aimed at us, threatening voices.”
My throat constricts. “That must be awfully disturbing.”
I suppose it’s no wonder most riven end up becoming as destructive as they do if this is the main consequence of using their magic.
I can picture the sequence so easily. They discover their power and start using it to enhance their lives. The more things they want and get, the more addictive the power becomes.
But at the same time, it’s eating away at their mind, convincing them that people mean them harm and that enemies lurk around every corner…
Without the self-control and awareness that Ivy’s cultivated her whole life, how long would it take before a person with a riven soul found themselves drawing away into isolation, comforting themselves with luxuries without caring what damage their magic did in exchange?
Lashing out at anyone who got close, imagining they were a threat?
Seeing the things they’re most afraid of everywhere they turn…
Something clicks in my head with a jolt of inspiration. I hug Ivy tighter, but my mind is already racing with the thought that’s struck me.
After pressing a kiss to her forehead, I ease back a little so I can rifle through my cloak’s pockets. I still have the stolen letters I’ve kept tucked away in the temple’s book.
Did I misconstrue the phrasing in my initial translation? Bryfesh is a complicated language with odd nuances.
“What?” Ivy asks as I unfold the letters.
“I’m not sure yet.”
I scan the brittle page to the spot that prompted my idea to send fire at the scourge sorcerers. The devastation of the Great Retribution—making them fear the death they could imagine meeting from the flames...
Staring at the words again, a startled laugh slips out of me. The phrasing could be read that way, if I assume the writer was talking in metaphors. But most literally, they mean that the scourge sorcerers of old literally saw pictures of death projected in the flames.
Images of themselves succumbing to wounds? Or of their already-dead corpses?
The letter writer isn’t specific about it. They might not have known the details. But I could have gone about our initial attempt in too vague a way.
If simply hearing the names of the dead could make the scourge sorcerers falter, then what would happen if they saw the actual deaths—or their own—right in front of them?
My expression must give away the exhilaration that’s swept through me, because Ivy twists toward me. “You’ve figured something out.”
As I look up at her, my excitement wavers.
I let her down before. I sent her to carry out a strategy that wore her down without accomplishing anything significant in our favor.
I can’t be certain that my new interpretation is any more correct than the last one. Or that even if it is, it’ll make all that much difference with the current group of scourge sorcerers.
My entire body balks. I should keep the idea to myself until I find some way to be sure.
But even as I make that decision, I see how the light that’s come into Ivy’s eyes is dwindling quickly in my silence.
For just a second, seeing me uncover reason to hope helped her find her own.
She shakes her head with a twist of her mouth, obviously taking my lack of answer as a refusal. “It’s all right. Probably better not to put more ideas in my head.”
My rejection of her remark wrenches through me with more force than my initial reluctance. “It’s not that. I just—I don’t want—”
What can I say that would make anything better?
Gods help me, how can I ask her to believe she can recover from the trouble she’s found herself in if I won’t push past my own mistakes? If she can come back from riven madness, don’t I need to give myself another chance to do something right too?
I square my shoulders and look down at the letter again.
“I think I might have misunderstood what the writer was saying when I read this before. The fire didn’t frighten the scourge sorcerers into giving up because they were worried it’d burn them to death, but because the gods showed them images of their deaths like pictures on the flames. ”
Ivy’s eyebrows leap up. “We definitely didn’t try that the last time. And it did unsettle them just having you talk about the dead…”
She pauses, the glow that’d lit in her face snuffing out again. “But we can’t paint pictures on fire with a brush and palette. The only way we could use the same tactic is with magic.”
And she’s the only one of us with a “gift” that could accomplish anything close.
I slide the letters back into their hiding spot and brush my fingers over her cheek. “Perhaps we’ll find another way to use the concept. It’s always better to know more so we have more possibilities to draw on.”
“Spoken like a true Estera dedicate,” she says with fond amusement, and leans in to kiss me. But the despondent air hasn’t left her.
I’ve given her something, but what can I really say about her magic? I have none at all of my own, chaotic or not.
At the tread of footsteps beyond the doorway, we both tense, but it’s Rheave who appears at the entrance a moment later.
“We didn’t come across anyone nearby,” he says to both of us. “Stavros is taking one of the horses to see what the royal soldiers might be doing now.”
The daimon fixes his gaze directly on Ivy. “He thought you might come out with me again in the direction we think the march went. You’d be able to sense when their magic is nearby without using your own, wouldn’t you?”
Ivy pushes to her feet but then stalls there. “I would. But…”
Seeing her so uncertain sends a stabbing sensation through my chest.
I get up beside her, touching her arm. “You should go. It’ll do you some good to have a task to carry out. Here, you can bring some of the mushrooms to eat on the way.”
As I remove them from the fire, Ivy still hesitates. “If we run into any Order members… I’m not sure it’d be safe for me to even conceal us…”
“You know how to be stealthy,” I say, putting all the confidence I have in her into my voice. “And Rheave can protect you both better than anyone if it comes to that.”
The daimon grins at my compliment and flicks his fingers together with a brief spark.
A different sort of confidence fills my chest.
I did what I could for Ivy, but she needs Rheave too. He can talk to her from a perspective none of the rest of us have—as a being dealing with unpredictable magic that’s sometimes worked in ways he’d rather it didn’t.
Our woman is something extraordinary. She could use someone who’s more than human in her life, now and in the future as well.
“See what you can find,” I say, giving her a handful of roasted mushrooms and a nudge, and this time she goes. The smile that crosses her face as she joins Rheave tells me I was right to insist.
May she find her way back to the woman she’s meant to be before the looming war finds us all.