Chapter 52
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
AUDREY
“In private, it’s a fuck up. In public, it’s a death sentence.” ~ La’Angi saying
T he clearing was larger than I remembered it, and quieter.
Storm didn’t like it. She danced around, her ears back, her eyes rolling. I stroked her neck, murmuring to her as I looked at the mass in the center. To the side of me, Chay and Bliksem were doing a similar dance, though his beast’s stamps were quite a bit more threatening, and also much less regular.
“Give her to me,” Chay said impatiently. “I’ll walk them until they settle.”
“Do you think they remember?”
He looked around, his eyes lingering on the shadows between the trees. I’d already scoped it out and found no one. Still, his attention had me taking the quiver from where I’d looped it on my saddle.
“Could be the wind,” he told me. “Feels odd, doesn’t it?”
“Old magic,” I said, smug about that strange sensation in the bottom of my gut. I’d thought it was the fact I’d been grazed by an arrow last time. He caught my gaze for just a moment, and that shared excitement felt like the first kiss of sun after a long storm.
I turned my attention to the stone. I could see where I’d fallen against it. Some of the moss dangled off, dried and withered, whipped to a strange angle by the wind. I ran my hand up from that gap, knocking more loose.
It was blackened under there. Excitement rippled through me. I wanted to dance, move, or shout, but I did none of those things. Instead, I breathed the need in deep and channeled the energy into brushing more moss free until it formed a big, wide belt of clear stone at the height of my chin. My veins felt like they were full of a million tiny bubbles. I knew that feeling, and I knew the inevitable headache that would come. But for now, I rode the high, running to fetch wood and building a fire on the side furthest from the horses.
Chay appeared as I was almost ready to try to light it. “This wind is bitter. How are you feeling?”
I swallowed the polite answer and had to pause to assess exactly what it was that I felt. Pain. So much pain. I preferred the excited bubbles. “Like my bones are all broken, and my veins are full of old snow.”
“That’s not what we want.” He glanced up at the sky, and I couldn’t help but notice the impressive silhouette he made. “Will it take long, do you think?”
Obviously, I had no idea. I didn’t bother to remind him of that, assuming it was a rhetorical question. “Could you please stand behind me?” I asked, adjusting my angle.
He did as I asked, his cloak flapping around me.
I looked over my shoulder and had no idea what his expression was. “I’m worried the wind will prevent me from lighting this,” I explained, trying not to be annoyed. I hadn’t told him, after all. Mayhap he thought I wanted him to shade me from the sun, or watch my technique with flint, or something. “Could you help block it?”
He crouched behind me, his gear chiming softly, close enough that I could smell the scent of beeswax that clung to the leather I’d oiled for him just the other day, and the grass that was crushed beneath his boots. Hiding his tracks would be hard if I needed to. I didn’t mind, though.
Skimming through the options in my mind, I steadied my hand and struck the flint. A spark flew true into the small puffs of tinder that started to smolder.
The wind gusted, and I felt Chay shifting beside me, spreading his cloak to better guard against its intrusion.
I hadn’t realized quite how horrific the cold was until it eased just a little more, but I didn’t linger to thanking him. Focusing my hands on building the fire, my mind danced back over our blunt conversation. Wasn’t it odd that he responded so well to directness? Didn’t people prefer to talk around and slowly approach most topics, like a horse with a new piece of gear? And Chay was from Raider’s Ban. If anyone was horse-like, it ought to be him.
It didn’t make sense, and I couldn’t change that. So I built the fire until the moss low on the stone was curling and smoldering, falling away in messy, smoking chunks.
To the side, a bird erupted from a nearby tree, squawking. Chay’s shield came up in front of me, and I had my bow drawn. But nothing stirred. On the edge of the clearing, the horses hadn’t even looked up from the grass they were cropping.
Slowly, I lowered my bow. Slower still did Chay drop his shield. I was sad when he didn’t crouch behind me protectively again, which made no sense whatsoever.
“Should we feel something?”
I was confident we would, if it worked. “Fire cleanses,” I said.
Nothing.
“ Ceiyemmyah pbettra awaken,” I tried. “Fire cleanses.”
Before me, it cleansed the moss off the stone. No more or less.
“ Ceiyemmyah pbettra cleanse Mysctheras with this fire.”
“Mysctheras?” Chay asked from behind me.
“La’Angi before Barloc,” I replied, straightening. My body protested, and my joints stuck as I went. I ached, and my head had started to feel the buzz of bees.
He didn’t ask more questions, and I was grateful for that. I stood, wrapped tightly in my cloak, and stared at the fire that should’ve triggered the protective spell set deep into the monolith, but wasn’t.
Fire cleanses. Thomas had said it like a mantra. It wasn’t unfair to assume it would trigger the spell, was it?
Feeling it all slipping away, I started pulling moss off more aggressively. It was blackened. I was on the right path. I had to be. I took the arrow in my hand and, using the steel tip, scraped some of the char off. It flaked away, a thick layer. And there was more beneath it.
It had burned. Hot and long.
“Mayhap we need more fire,” I said, feeling sick. But I knew that couldn’t be right. There wouldn’t have been time to assemble a bonfire before a giant wave swallowed the city unless they’d kept it built and ready.
Chay set off to the nearby stand of trees, throwing his shield over his back. I kept working on the moss. If I were an old-time person in charge of a magical monolith, I would’ve engraved instructions on the thing itself.
Chay dragged over wood, and I built the fire slowly around the base of it until I reached where I’d rubbed up against it on the far side.
I’d bled. I’d bled on the stone. And those arrows had stopped.
I’d assumed it had just been the mage’s air magic. They’d called a halt, hadn’t they? It made sense, if they could control the air, they could control arrows.
My hand shaking, I took the arrowhead and pressed it to my palm. My blood came slowly, thick and black. Please, work. I squeezed my eyes closed and pressed my hand to the stone.
Nothing.
“Fire cleanses,” I said, but when I got no response, I wasn’t surprised.
I looked up to see Chay hauling a big branch in each hand. He was paler than he should’ve been, given how long he’d been at it and how much he was hauling.
What I could see of the surface was pockmarked and showed signs of flaking, as if some giant hand had shorn off slivers of it. It offered no solutions. I’d run through every single idea I’d had, and a few fresh ones.
Chay dropped the branches and came to stand beside me, hands on his hips, as we both stared at it.
“Wonder if time did what Barloc couldn’t,” he said softly.
“I think I hate him.”
Chay considered it. “That’s fair. We won’t make it back tonight, you know.”
I pushed away the ache in my bones, ignoring the hard stab of hopelessness that made tears prick at my eyes. “Then we’d better keep trying.”