Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
OSKAREN BLINKED, THE ONLY SIGN OF HER SURPRISE BEFORE SHE schooled her face into a mask of calm. “Greetings, Ley,” she said, bowing deeply. Then she straightened, frowning at Dess. “There’s no need for that.” She motioned for the younger boy to lower the sword he had drawn.
The Losrohir were unarmed, but Thia had no doubt who would win if it came to a fight. Numbers aside, the power alone that radiated from them, like the very air was charged, frightened her without any knowledge of what they could actually do.
Dess still gripped his sword, hands trembling the barest fraction. Thia laid a gentle hand on his arm and guided it back to his side.
“My deepest apologies,” Oskaren said, bowing her head. “Thia Witch-Slayer claims no such title.”
The woman turned her strange gaze on Thia. “What you claim or fear cannot change the truth,” she said. “Do you not feel the ache of it in your bones?” She beckoned Thia with the sweep of a slender hand. “Come here.”
Thia didn’t budge. She wanted to, but her legs wouldn’t move.
The woman’s lip twitched as though she was annoyed, or maybe amused, but it was gone so quickly Thia thought she might have imagined it. “Your companion is correct,” she said solemnly. “We have not come to harm you. We have been waiting for you for some time.”
“Waiting for me?” Thia squeaked.
“Indeed,” the woman said. Her hand was still extended. “We have long felt the tremors of your coming in the threads of time, and yet more recently, whispers of you in our songs.” She motioned. “Take my hand, child.”
“W-why?” Thia asked, but managed to step forward. On her shoulder, Mavrel fixed a wary stare on the woman.
The woman closed her cold fingers around Thia’s without answering. A jolt went through her, and she felt like a thousand tiny threads were weaving their way through her skin, though strangely, it wasn’t painful.
“What you feel are the tremors of our songs in the earth,” the woman said. “You must let them wash over you, instead of pushing them away.”
If the others were confused by the exchange, Thia couldn’t tell.
She was transfixed by the woman’s eerie intensity, by the strange prickle crawling over her skin.
Focusing on the woman’s words, she turned her attention to her feet.
The pain built, reaching deep into her bones before spreading up into her thighs.
She cried out, nearly falling, but the woman held her up with an impossibly strong grip.
“Let it wash over you,” she commanded.
Thia bit her lip, concentrating on the pain. She pictured it covering her like a wave. It spread higher, into her torso, into her head, to the ends of her hair, and she screamed, and then—
She was fine. The tremor remained but it was…in the earth, in the air, all around her, instead of in her body. And it wasn’t a tremor at all. It was voices.
Voices singing in a dozen harmonies, just at the edge of her mind, leaving vibrations in the very fabric of the world.
The woman released her hand, and the prickling ceased, the voices also fading to a distant murmur. “There now,” she said.
“Thank you,” Thia replied, relieved both that it wasn’t all in her head and that the pain was gone.
The woman stepped back. “I am Lythia,” she told them.
“We are honored, Lythia-Ley,” Oskaren said. She made that same motion she had under the stone arch, drawing a hand from shoulder to hip. She waved, indicating the others to do the same, and Thia complied.
Lythia inclined her head at the gesture. Two streaks of silver glinted beside her neck as she moved, earrings so slender and sparkling that Thia wondered if they were falling stars. “You must come with us,” the woman said. “There is much to be discussed.”
Thia glanced at her companions. Thran’s face was blanched. Dess’s hand rested on the pommel of his sword. Even Oskaren was a little gray, and Thia heard her sharp words. Don’t leave the path. But she didn’t know how they could refuse.
When no one answered, Thia squared her shoulders. “Alright,” she agreed, praying that she was not leading them all to their deaths.
Lythia guided them away from the Vale. There was no established path, but one opened as the Losrohiri woman moved, tree roots curling away like snakes, trunks bending like grass in the wind, flower heads leaping from stems to float ahead and light the way.
It might have been beautiful under other circumstances, but, surrounded as they were by the Losrohir on all sides, Thia felt like a prisoner.
She lost track of how long they walked. The Losrohir stayed silent, discomfortingly so, but every so often she saw an expression shift, silver-green stares meeting, until she began to suspect they could speak into each other’s minds.
At some point, the ground began to slant upwards, and Thia’s legs ached for an entirely different reason.
It wasn’t quite a mountain hike, but the brisk pace Lythia set soon had Thia panting.
When she was contemplating just how humiliating it would be to ask to stop, and whether the Losrohir would even acquiesce, the trees suddenly broke, leaving them standing on a ledge above the most beautiful city Thia had ever seen.
Night had fallen, though the moon was still low in the sky.
Without trees to obscure it, silvery light shone down into a valley filled with what appeared to be hundreds of buildings made entirely from glass.
Some were twisting towers complete with arches carved much like those that guarded the bridge over the River of Oaths, a lattice-work of animals and flowers.
Others were smaller and domed. Delicate passageways bridged the gaps between, while everywhere those same glowing buds set the structures twinkling.
Directly in front of them, an enormous spiral staircase of the same translucent material marked their way down into the valley, one side resting rather precariously against the stone cliff. Thia eyed it warily as Lythia led the way to its entrance, pausing with one hand on the crystalline railing.
“Dew will not hold those who doubt it,” she warned, before making her descent.
The stairwell was only big enough for one to enter at a time. Oskaren was the first of the humans to brave it; she must have understood what Lythia meant, because it held.
Thia went next, letting her toe tentatively rest on the first step before her heel, then the rest of her body weight.
I believe you can hold me, she told the dew, hoping she sounded convincing.
It felt as sturdy as anything. Mavrel left her shoulder to drift above as she brought her other foot onto the step and began her own descent.
The staircase was steep, and of greater concern than the dew was whether the weight of her pack was going to send her stumbling into Oskaren, who was just a few steps below.
She clutched the rail for dear life, concentrating on moving one foot at a time, until she heard Dess yell from behind her.
She spun, her heart giving a painful thump that only repeated when she took in the scene above her.
Thran clutched Dess’s hand for dear life. The younger boy dangled over the ravine, the steps beneath him as flimsy as water. The older man’s face was a grimace, his fingers white as he slipped an inch, then another, pulled by Dess’s weight.
“Dess!” Thia yelled.
“Godsdamned dew,” he growled, free hand trying and failing to grasp the step where Thran knelt, his fingers to passing through.
“Pretend it’s glass,” Thia yelled. But no sooner had she said it, she felt her own stair sag, as if seeing it for its true form had convinced her of its liquidity.
She closed her eyes, releasing the rails and focused on her feet.
Don’t you fucking dare, she told the dew.
You’re glass. You’re solid, sparkling glass.
And I’m not going to die because of dew.
Her step reformed. She sagged, then opened her eyes.
Dess had managed to grip Thran’s step, but his feet were still scrambling for purchase. It seemed he had half convinced himself, because the dew around his legs had become an almost jelly-like consistency, not strong enough to hold him but no longer water.
“It’s glass,” Thia said again. “Close your eyes and picture it.”
Dess did as he was told. “It’s glass–it’s glass–it’s glass.” He said it so fast he ran out of breath. Heaving a gasp, his knee found purchase on the step above.
And it held.
“It’s glass–it’s glass–it’s glass–it’s glass.”
Then the other.
And he was safe.
Thran let him go, sagging back, fingers purple from clutching Dess so hard for so long. Thia sent him a look she hoped conveyed her gratitude; he had likely just saved the boy’s life.
Dess scrambled to his feet, his cheeks dark red, yellow hair plastered to his forehead and neck with sweat. “It’s bloody glass,” he said shakily, as his hands found the rails. “Who in Sothis came up with this?”
Oskaren, who seemingly had been watching the entire event with nonchalance, now deigned to comment. “Do not insult our gracious hosts,” she growled.
The Losrohir said nothing, which made Thia all the more suspicious that they must have had another method of communicating. Or maybe human lives were just that insignificant to them.
Finally, they reached the bottom. Thia nearly collapsed onto the earth, never before appreciating how wonderfully solid it was. She could have kissed the soil.
But Lythia’s attention was on her, as lovely as a moonrise, as hungry as a wolf’s.
So Thia only forced a slow breath and raised her chin. “It’s beautiful,” she commented, tilting her face toward the enormous glass spires now rising in front of them.
“To see it is an honor few humans have been granted,” Lythia said.
She was as pristine as she had been when she’d first appeared from the trees, not a drop of sweat or dirt on her, not a soil-brown hair out of place under her crown.
She swept her delicate arms out as though she might embrace the city itself.
“Welcome,” she said, voice soft as a breeze yet fearsome as thunder, “to Losrohiria, City of Stars.”