Chapter 8
I ran after the firebird for as long as I could, tripping over half a dozen tree roots and nearly tumbling down into a few rocky creek beds along the way. The problem was that I couldn’t take my eyes off of the creature; the flickering train of its fiery feathers transfixed me, a burst of impossible color in the dark woods. I ran so hard my chest felt like it might split in two, but all my running was for nothing. I dashed through a dense copse of smaller pines, following the creature’s trail and reaching desperately through the trees as if that would somehow bring it right to me, and when I burst back out into the greater wood, it was gone. All that remained was a few dwindling embers scattered across the ground and a faint scent of smoke spicing the air.
Breathing hard, blinking away the black spots dancing in front of my eyes, I started to hear faint voices calling to each other and realized I’d run almost all the way back to the house. Its fearsome towers loomed, their windows glaring at me through the trees. I ran for it, my body screaming in protest, and when I reached the stone drive, panting and shaky-legged, unable to speak, everyone there turned to stare at me—house staff, stable hands, Father and Lord Alaster, Gemma and Lady Enid and Gareth, the Nashes and the Barthels.
Ryder strode forward and steadied one strong hand on each of my arms. “What is it? Did you find her? What did you see?”
I gripped his jacket in thanks and said breathlessly, “There was a creature, a fiery thing with wings and long legs. It found me in the woods and then ran, and I chased after it but couldn’t catch it.”
Gareth hurried over eagerly, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his hair an utter fright, as if he’d been running both his hands through it. “A fiery creature? Did it appear to be an animal or a human?”
“Both. First a bird, then a person—a woman, I think—then a bird again, and then nothing. Shapeless fire. Pure light.”
Ryder glanced over at Gareth, who shook his head. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” he said. “But there has to be a connection between it and the shadows.”
“Or maybe it is the shadow,” said Gemma, coming over to join us. “If it can shift from bird to woman, maybe it can shift from fire to darkness.”
Ryder looked back at me, his eyes bright and furious. I tried to imagine what it must feel like to have your sister torn from you like that, all at once and ruthlessly, by forces you didn’t understand, and realized with a blow as mean as a punch that I did know what that felt like. I’d felt it the day the Warden took Mara away from us.
I touched Ryder’s hand, which still gripped my arm hard, as if I were now the one keeping him on his feet. I noticed Gemma and Gareth exchange a glance and made a mental note. The next chance I got, I would robustly disabuse them of whatever ribald notions might be coming to life in those naughty heads of theirs. I merely knew what it meant to lose a sister, that was all, and Ryder had done me a kindness with his lessons over the past few days. Touching him meant nothing more than that.
“Where did you lose it?” Ryder said roughly.
I led them all to the spot, where a handful of embers still glowed in the dirt. Gareth measured each one, examined the singed bark of the nearby trees, and furiously scribbled his observations in a notebook he took from his jacket pocket. Everyone else fanned out through the forest, searching for any further trace of the creature but finding none. By the time we all tromped back to the house, it was evening; stars twinkled in the darkening sky. My cheeks burned with a sort of desperate embarrassment. I hadn’t imagined the creature, I knew I hadn’t, and yet we’d spent hours searching the forest and had found nothing. The silence in the house was sullen and afraid. We gathered around the dining hall table, and tearful servants brought out a cold dinner.
“I’m beginning to question my soundness of mind,” I mumbled over a sandwich I couldn’t bear to eat.
“We couldn’t all have imagined the embers and burnt trees,” Gemma said firmly.
“Unless that was all part of the same illusion,” Gareth pointed out, “designed to distract and confuse us further. Figment sightings are rare by their very nature, but they have happened.”
“And with the Middlemist weakening…” Father murmured, rubbing the bridge of his nose as if fending off a headache. I knew the feeling.
Lady Enid looked at Gareth curiously. “Figment sightings?”
“Figments are Olden beings who can create illusions in the minds of their victims,” Gareth replied. “No one knows what they really look like, as they disguise their true appearances with what are essentially mirages, but I think they have no real appearance. They’re ancient entities of an indeterminate magical substance, who have no physical shape we can see other than whatever forms they assume to play tricks on their victims.”
I gave Gareth a warning glance; he was starting to sound a little too enthusiastic about Olden arcana, given the situation. He caught my eye and snapped his mouth shut with a sheepish nod.
“An illusion,” Lord Alaster said quietly. His gaze lifted to fix coldly on my father. “And is it possible that these figments have loyalties that could be bought, should their employer have enough wealth at his disposal?”
Father glared back at him. “What are you implying, Alaster?”
“Hang on,” said Gareth quickly, “we don’t know that figments were involved here. It could have been anything. A team of particularly talented human beguilers, or even a fae, if one got through the Mist—”
“Is this supposed to be comforting, Professor Fontaine?” Lady Kaetha remarked dryly.
“I don’t much care if what took my daughter was a figment or a beguiler or simply an ordinary human monster,” said Lord Alaster. He rose from his seat, his long face white and pinched beneath his stark beard, and approached my father’s chair. “What I want to know is if a guest in my own house has conspired with villainous forces to do the deed. Or hired someone to do it, which is far likelier. Can’t get your hands too dirty.”
At first, Father was just incredulous. He looked around at all of us, then back at Alaster. “You’re joking,” he said.
“You tried to have my son killed not so very long ago,” Alaster replied. “Why would it surprise anyone if you killed my daughter now instead?”
Shock rippled up the table. I felt eyes on me, looking automatically to me for confirmation, but I was too tired and too horrified to do anything but sit there and wait for disaster to come. To my left, Ryder, who’d been standing alone at the hearth, turned to glare at both scowling men.
“This is a waste of time,” he said shortly. “Lord Gideon didn’t abduct Alastrina, Father. What good would that do him?”
“Gideon Ashbourne,” said Lord Alaster very quietly, his eyes glittering, “won’t be happy until every last Bask is dead. Isn’t that right, Gideon?” He leaned down to look straight at my father. “I don’t blame you, really. We’re men of war, after all. I myself won’t be happy until all three of your daughters’ bodies are spread before me, lifeless and cold.”
Father lurched to his feet and slammed his whole body into Lord Alaster, his sentinel strength bursting across the room like a blast of heat. Alaster went flying back against the wall, but when he crashed to the ground, blood trickling down his forehead, he looked up with a mean grin on his face. My heart sank; he was an Anointed alchemist, and his specialty was converting elements into raw power. I’d never seen him work magic before; I’d only heard my parents tell of it in revolted tones when I was a child, stories at dinnertime that sent me to sleep with hatred of the Basks brewing in my heart.
But Alaster’s alchemical magic was a beautiful sight, or would have been if I hadn’t been so frantic. He cupped his palm and dragged it down as if scooping up the air itself, and with a quick murmured spell, it became a white-hot ball of light hovering over his fingers. Another spell, and then he flung it at my father, who dodged it easily; it went flying over his shoulder and crashed into the far wall. Splinters of light went sizzling up to the ceiling and across the floor, making all our hair stand on end.
They kept going, my father with his punches strong as ten men and Alaster grabbing anything he could find—fire from the hearth, the very air around us, the water from our goblets on the table—and turning it to sizzling energy that he threw like Lower Army grenades.
In seconds, the table was in ruins, and everyone was screaming at them to stop, or cowering behind chairs, or preparing to work their own magic. Gentar Barthel was a fair beguiler, Lord Sesar an elemental with an affinity for water, and Lady Leva a healer who could mop up the aftermath. But this was not their house, or their fight, and I sensed their hesitation.
Lady Enid held her head in her hands and sobbed. “Please stop,” she said, over and over. “Stop, stop, stop it !”
I didn’t think before I did it. I was too angry and disgusted with them to think. I stood and began to sing. “Willa’s Lullaby”—the folk song I’d been unable to sing in my music room at the Citadel—came to me almost at once. It was a simple melody, tender and lonesome. But in that moment, with all my anger behind it, the song became invective, each word bitten off with a snap.
“Oh, little star, so bright in the sky,
oh, big moon, shining up so high,
can you see the bird’s wing?
Can you hear the bells ring?
Can you feel my heart sing?
Oh yes, come down,
come down, come down.
There’s a world to be seen, oh,
precious little grimlings.
There’s a life to be lived, oh,
precious little grimlings.
Don’t you cry for the stars in the sky.
Don’t you cry for the moon so high.
They can see the bird’s wing,
they can hear the bells ring,
they can feel our hearts sing.
Oh yes, come down,
come down, come down,
come down, come down.”
Brilliant magic coursed through me as I sang, brighter and stronger with each word. When I stopped at last, the silence was deafening, almost physical.
I looked around, blinking back the glittering haze of magic, and saw that my father and Alaster had stopped fighting and now lay prone on the floor, not unconscious but near enough. They stared at the ceiling, their eyes open wide and their mouths moving in an echo of the words I’d sung. Everyone else in the room was either crying, tears streaming down their faces, or smiling insipidly at me—except for Gemma, who was helping Lady Enid back to her seat, and Ryder, who was corralling the servants. They’d gathered at the doors to gawk and weep. Even Gareth dashed a hand across his face, and he’d heard me sing more often than anyone else present.
The sight of their awe exhausted me, and the idea that my power had grown in might and beauty since our journey to the Old Country to save Talan made me feel sick. Now the sound of my music could leave Gareth undone? What would be expected of me in the days to come? If there were evils to be fought, would I be forced to sing again and again, even when I didn’t want to, reducing everyone I met to a blubbering heap on the floor? And what if, someday, my music rendered its hearers comatose, or even killed them?
I looked at my father and Lord Alaster, glared down at them as coldly as I could manage with so much burning, angry fear roaring through me. “You both disgust me,” I said to them, my voice coming out choked and hard. “Grown men acting in such a way, with no sense in your heads and certainly no shame.” I took a deep breath; I could feel Gemma watching me, and Ryder too, and suddenly felt so blisteringly sad for us that my throat ached around a sudden fist of tears.
“None of your children asked to be born into your war,” I said quietly, “and yet we’re the ones doing all the work to end it.”
I turned around to leave, afraid to look back at the men on the floor lest I discover that my words had done nothing but fall inert at their feet. Let them clean up their mess on their own, I decided; my bed was calling me, and the smell of the firebird’s smoke lingered in my nose. I wanted nothing more than to sleep. But just as I started walking toward the doors, a sudden cry made me turn.
Gentar Barthel was rushing at me, his arms outstretched, a look of anger and desperate need on his face. I knew that look; my music had its hooks in him. I’d seen it before on dozens of faces, hundreds, as the audience swarmed the stage to claim me and my music as their own. I froze at the memory, my body gone cold and stiff, helpless. Run , my mind commanded me, but I couldn’t obey. I was fourteen years old again, and the world was tearing itself apart right before my eyes.
Then, before Gentar could reach me, Ryder darted between us and launched his fist right at Gentar’s face. The man fell back, caught by Gareth before his head could smack the floor.
Ryder stood over him, fists clenched, ready to strike again if need be. His whole body vibrated with anger, his eyes were bright with tears, and when he looked back at me, I saw the telltale signs of wonder on his face. He couldn’t quite disguise it quickly enough, though he’d certainly tried.
My song had gotten to him, just as my music did to everyone, everywhere. Ryder Bask was no different than all the rest. I shouldn’t have expected anything else; after all, my performance at the Bathyn tournament earlier that summer had propelled him toward the stage like a madman. It wasn’t his fault; it was unfair to be disappointed in him.
I swallowed a tired sigh and felt myself pulling inward, my shoulders tensing. Knots burned at every stiff joint.
“We should go to Rosewarren in the morning,” I said quietly, to Ryder and Gemma and Gareth. I ignored everyone else. They were the only ones who deserved my attention. “We’ll meet with the Warden, tell her what we saw. If anyone knows what a firebird is, it’ll be her. And we can meet with her in person about Alastrina, and Dornen, and…” And anyone else who’s been taken , I thought, not daring to say it. I swallowed hard. “And I think…”
I paused. I hated the words I was about to say, hated what heartache they might awaken in Gemma, but it seemed irresponsible to delay this moment any longer. Guilt flared up inside me; at least three of Ryder’s letters had mentioned this very thing, but I’d thrown them away without replying, too frightened by my own memories of that awful night in the Old Country to do what needed to be done.
“I think it’s time to examine the Three-Eyed Crown,” I said. “It’s been hidden at Rosewarren for weeks, but it should be at the university. It should be studied. It may hold the key to”—I waved my hand—“whatever all of this is.”
Another word I refused to say: Kilraith . But it hung between us nevertheless, giving a dread weight to the air. Were these machinations his doing? Anointed humans vanishing from their homes, the queen’s palace compromised…
I met each of their eyes—Ryder, Gemma, Gareth. Ryder nodded curtly at me, his profile largely in shadow. I ached with too many things to name. I hurried upstairs, my boots crunching on shattered plates and ruined supper. That night, I dreamed of fire, but I didn’t know if it was Ivyhill that burned, or a bird-woman dashing through a dark wood.
***
The Basks had at least one greenway on their property, which led not directly to Rosewarren but rather to Devenmere, one of the little villages dotting the Mist’s northern border. From there, we would travel to the nearby Order fortress of Thorngrove, and their greenway would take us to Rosewarren, and to the Warden, and—I hoped—to Mara.
But when we arrived in Devenmere the next morning, we emerged into utter chaos. Fires burned everywhere I looked; the air was thick with smoke, and the sky above us teemed with flocks of birds wheeling about in confusion. There were terrible noises, great piercing shrieks, coming from somewhere, everywhere —I couldn’t make sense of them.
Ryder took one quick look at it all and then raced toward the biggest fire, maybe one hundred yards away. We followed—Gemma, Gareth, Father, Lord Alaster, Gentar Barthel, Lady Leva, and I. Thank the gods our healer had come; Lady Leva found someone moaning on the ground in a bundle of singed clothes and immediately set to work on them, drawing stoppered vials from the belt she wore around her waist and murmuring spells of healing.
Ryder was talking to a fierce-eyed old woman, her wrinkled face covered in soot and sweat. I walked toward them in a daze, shivering, and loathing the roar and heat of the fire. I searched the inferno for a bird of blue flame. Past the fire loomed a silver wall, seething and shining.
The Middlemist.
“They came all at once, three of them bursting out of the Mist,” the old woman shouted. “They killed seven of us before we could even start to fight back. We lit a fire as quick as we could along the Mistline to keep any more from coming out. But our Anointed, our Lords Wynn and Moris, they’re gone, Lord Ryder. They disappeared right out of their garden. My own Hari saw them vanish right after a strange shadow swept through the village. And the Order, they haven’t come.”
Those last words turned me cold, even though the air shimmered with heat. I looked to Gemma just as wood and glass exploded behind us. We whirled to see a huge beast standing in the mess of a ruined cottage: the bulbous head of a lizard, huge muscular shoulders crested with black fur, deadly curling claws on its feet, a bear’s hulking furry body, a lion’s whipping tail.
A chimaera.
It glared at us with clever yellow eyes, then shook its head viciously from side to side, and I saw with a wrench of absolute horror in my gut that there was a child in the creature’s jaws, bloody and limp, quite obviously dead.
Arrows flew from three different places: from a man and woman perched on rooftops, using the chimneys as shields, and from Ryder, who’d brought his crossbow and quiver of arrows. Earlier that morning, I’d thought it strange for him to arrive at Rosewarren with an arsenal strapped to his back, but now I understood. He’d suspected something like this might happen, even if he’d hoped it wouldn’t.
The arrows flew true, each one slamming into the creature’s side with a grotesque thunk, but that only made it angrier. It dropped the poor child into the splintered wood and glass, and then it rounded on us and dragged its claws through the dirt. A flick of its yellow eyes, and I spun around to see another chimaera in the trees, this one slender and wily, feline save for its sharp-toothed goat’s head and rattling serpent’s tail. It crouched on a branch that sagged under its weight; it would pounce, and so would the other one, the lizard-bear, from the other side. We were trapped. The old woman gave an anguished moan; she expected to die.
Desperation awoke something in me. I found Gemma, and then Ryder, and a strange awareness passed between us, some shared instinct from that night in the Old Country reawakening. We’d fought necromancers and revenants and specters, we’d fought Kilraith in Talan’s body, in that evil house by the sea, and we’d won. Even if that victory wouldn’t last forever, it had indeed been a victory. We’d fought, and we’d triumphed.
Gemma nodded at me, her sweet blue eyes now grim and hard. Ryder grinned a little and glanced up at the sky full of bewildered birds. And I…
I began to sing.
“Willa’s Lullaby” was fresh in my mind. I spat out every word with crystalline precision as Gemma and Ryder flanked me, their backs to me and their magic spilling out of them in ferocious waves.
Gemma flung her arms at the ground, and when she yanked her hands back toward her, a thick web of tree roots sprang up out of the earth, hissing and writhing. The chimaera pounced, both at once, from the cottage and the tree. With an angry cry, Gemma hurled the roots at the shrieking chimaera with the lizard’s face, its jaws red from the child’s blood. The roots slammed into the beast, knocking it back into the dirt. Gemma stalked toward it, her fingers moving quickly, as if weaving unseen threads through the air. The roots answered her, whipping around and around the monster into a tight net, but even as the roots engulfed it, the chimaera still fought, thrashing. As Gemma’s net crushed its body and cracked its bones, its tireless ursine claws slashed through root after root.
With a furious yowl, the other chimaera leaped toward us. The thing was ghastly, unthinkable. A rasping feline roar burst from its mouth; its eyes were mad and white, slitted like those of a goat. The horror of it nearly made me lose my voice. But Ryder didn’t hesitate even for a moment. He murmured words in what I thought was Ekkari—the arcane bestial language he and Alastrina had used, weeks ago, to wild the chimaera in the Citadel—and as he spoke, the confused birds wheeling about in the sky fell into formation, suddenly deadly and focused, hundreds moving as one—starlings, crows, sparrows, jays. They flew at the chimaera and swarmed around it, pecking and tearing at it with beaks and claws. The creature roared in fury and swiped at them, batting them away, but more kept coming, a whole sea of birds rising from the distant trees to join their brethren. I glanced at Ryder, wondering if wilding so many animals at once was exhausting him, but though his face was slick with sweat, his expression was ferocious, utterly unafraid. He held his crossbow at the ready, loaded with a thick black arrow.
The chaos gave the villagers time to run away from the fire, the beasts, the Mist, and into the forest to the north. I heard Gentar Barthel shouting at them to hurry, saw Gareth helping children flee a burning cottage right before it collapsed. Father fought a smaller chimaera all on his own, a hissing serpentine beast with a shell of bone protecting its head and chest. He ran at the thing with a roar to match its own and slammed into it with a horrible crack. The blow dazed both of them; the creature writhed on the ground, stuck on its back. Father spat blood and surged to his feet, unsteady. Then a ball of white light zipped past him and hit the stunned chimaera right on its exposed belly. Lord Alaster had thrown it, half hidden behind a collapsed roof, his hand crackling with residual alchemical magic and a triumphant grin on his face.
Father would be furious. Aided in a fight by none other than Alaster Bask? The memory would be a perpetual provocation, and Alaster would never let him forget it. But I refused to succumb to that particular worry. The important thing was that all three chimaera were either dead or nearing it. Gemma was tireless, drawing root after root from the ground and weaving a tight ball of wood around her chimaera attacker. Villagers who had stayed to help kept throwing her branches, even began hacking down trees and tearing up roots themselves to offer to her. The chimaera Father and Alaster had bombarded wasn’t moving; brave villagers with cloths tied over their mouths to ward off the smoke were dragging the beast toward the fire. Once Father regained his balance, he waved them off and did it himself, lifting the beast onto his shoulders and single-handedly hurling it into the flames. As its body burned, a horrible stench wafted across Devenmere, rotten and green-smelling, like food left out to spoil.
And Ryder’s birds gave him the chance to shoot. He advanced on the confused, mutilated chimaera, which still fought with claws and teeth, dragging down every bird it could. He loosed arrow after arrow into its sleek feline hide until at last the beast lay unmoving in the feather-strewn dirt, seven arrows sticking out of it.
I stopped singing then, feeling a bit foolish for having continued this long. Clearly, none of them had needed my help to fell the chimaera; the villagers had been more of a help than I.
But then from behind me came a skittering sound and a hard, quick clacking as of rattling teeth. I turned and looked up, and up, and my knees wobbled, my legs giving out. I knelt in the dirt before this chimaera, a fourth one that must have somehow gotten through the flames, or gone around them, and now crouched over me, ready to strike. It was a clever thing, its green reptilian eyes focused right on me; it had eight legs like a spider, all of them covered in hard bone and tufts of dark hair, each one ending in a pointed hoof sharp enough to gut me. And its face was indescribable, neither wolf nor snake but something hideously in between. It opened its mouth in utter silence, yellow fangs dripping.
I shook on the ground before it. I couldn’t move, couldn’t call for the others to help me. All I could do was sing—softly, brokenly, my voice a mere rasp.
“Oh, little star, so bright in the sky,
oh, big moon, shining up so high…”
The creature raised one of its front legs to strike; something viscous and black dripped from its hoof. Desperate, hot and cold all over, I dug deep inside myself and found my voice.
“Can you see the bird’s wing?
Can you hear the bells ring?
Can you feel my heart sing?
Oh yes, come down,
come down, come down…”
The familiar lyrics poured out of me on sweet rivers of sound. With the beast’s enormous shadow stretching over me, it suddenly felt wrong, even futile, to sing with violence in my voice. “Willa’s Lullaby” was a tender song, so I would sing it tenderly. I would sing it with love, as I would have done for one of my sisters, as I had done for Gemma in those dark days after Mother left.
“There’s a world to be seen, oh,
precious little grimlings.
There’s a life to be lived, oh,
precious little grimlings.
Don’t you cry for the stars in the sky.
Don’t you cry for the moon so high…”
Tears of terror ran unchecked down my cheeks. The creature had frozen and now blinked at me in bewilderment, and I kept going, kept singing even though everything inside me screamed at me to run, to shout for Ryder, for my father. I sang until the chimaera began to sink toward the ground; I sang until its mean glowing eyes started drifting closed.
“They can see the bird’s wing,
they can hear the bells ring,
they can feel our hearts sing.
Oh yes, come down,
come down, come down,
come down, come down.”
I was running out of both breath and courage, and I began to panic. What would happen if I stopped singing? Would I have to sing for the rest of my life? I began to inch backward, sweat dripping down my body, the flames roaring somewhere in the hazy distance. I kept singing and kept singing, wanting to stop, knowing I couldn’t , and then my hand landed on a boot, and I nearly cried out with relief. I held on to Ryder’s legs as he launched his arrows—four of them in a row, striking right between the creature’s closed eyes. The chimaera collapsed, its eight legs splaying out clumsily to all sides; it let out a last putrid breath that made my eyes burn. Blood trickled down its hairy, scaly face. It was still. It was dead.
Faint with relief, I shook there on the ground and listened to the others coming to help. Father couldn’t lift the thing by himself and had to shout for Gentar and Alaster, and two other men from the village, and together they staggered to the fire and dumped the beast into the flames. It was only then that I realized how truly gigantic it was, how close I’d come to a gruesome death.
Someone was helping me to my feet, and when I realized it was Ryder, I let out a sob of frantic relief, because I knew then that the danger was gone. Ryder wouldn’t let anything happen to me. The beast was dead. I was safe. I clung to him and hid my face in his coat. His hand cradled the back of my head, and I thought I felt his lips in my hair. I closed my eyes for a moment and savored the feeling of him all around me: his strong arms, his head bowing over mine. He was the enemy, and I’d hated him from the moment I’d learned what hate was, and yet in that moment his solid strength was a balm to my wildly beating heart, and I held on to him fiercely as I struggled to catch my breath.
“You’re all right, Farrin,” he whispered, a note of reverence in his voice. “You did well.”
Then I heard a ruckus and glanced past Ryder’s arm to see Father and the others rolling the great wooden ball that held Gemma’s chimaera toward the fire. Gemma herself was on the ground, her skin gray from the tremendous working of magic, but when I tore away from Ryder to go to her, and drew her into my arms, she shook her head against my chest.
“I’m fine,” she whispered, her eyes bright and fierce. “I’ll be fine.” She gave me a brave smile, and I held her to me as tight as I could.
Gareth came up to us, a dirty child in his arms. The girl was alive but silent, her face hidden in Gareth’s collar. Her fingers were like talons in his shoulders.
“I don’t understand,” he said, clearly shaken. His eyeglasses were fogged over from the heat and smoke. With his free hand, he ripped them off his nose in annoyance and rubbed his face hard. “Why is there a village here, so close to the Mist? Clearly it isn’t safe. Living here, with everything that’s happening? It’s a death sentence. I thought the Senate had long ago passed legislation forbidding any settlement within twenty miles of the Mistline, the only exception being Fenwood, for the sake of the Order.”
The old woman Ryder had spoken to came over, her expression flinty.
“You’ve now seen for yourself what so many have tried to keep secret,” she said quietly. “We have relocated our village twice, and now we shall have to do it again. The Mist is moving . It’s growing.” She paused, looking suddenly ashen, and then turned and retched into the dirt. “So far we’ve managed to outrun it,” she said, still turned away from us, her voice strained, “but we can’t run forever. And now, with our Anointed lords gone, vanished right out from under us? We’re defenseless. The only reason I can say even this much to you is, I assume, because the chimaera have disrupted the magic in this area. But soon it will repair itself.”
We all stared at her, except for Ryder, who glared stonily at the ground.
“Why wouldn’t you be able to say this to us?” Gemma asked the woman, her voice tired and thin. “ What will repair itself?”
“The Mist is moving ?” Gareth shook his head. “Dislocating entire villages? Not possible. We would have heard about such a thing. The queen would’ve sent reinforcements, the Order—”
“The Order? The queen?” The old woman’s mouth twisted. “The queen doesn’t care about us up here, us poor villages along the Mistline. What do we have to offer her? We’re not impressive. We don’t throw parties or send tributes. We don’t have the coin for long trips south around the Mist, or for greenways—save for the one in our lords’ garden, which belongs to the Order and won’t let anyone through unless the Order commands it. We’re stuck here, running for our lives.”
I couldn’t stay silent after that. I rose to my feet. “The queen doesn’t know about this, I can promise you that. She would have told me if she did.”
The old woman looked me over—not cruel, just assessing. “Would she have, my lady?”
I couldn’t answer her, unease trickling all through me. An even worse question came to mind: Could Yvaine have told me? Could she have sent reinforcements? Or was the knowledge of the Mist’s moving northern border stuck somewhere inside her mind, trapped by stress or illness, and forgotten?
Father spoke next, his voice solemn, his clothes ruined, blood-splattered. “Why has the Order not come? This is precisely why the Order exists—to protect the people of Edyn from the Mist and from anything that might crawl through it from the Olden realm.”
The old woman opened her mouth to reply, then closed it. Her jaw worked as if she were chewing on a word she couldn’t say. She threw a furious glance at Ryder. “You were stopping here before going to Rosewarren, my lord?”
He nodded once.
“Then I would make haste and get there before the memory of this day fades from your minds and you no longer have the strength to face her.”
“Her?” I asked, though I thought I knew who she meant.
“The Warden,” Ryder bit out. “She has—”
He stopped then, exchanged a glance with his father. For once, Alaster didn’t look smug or superior, angry or cruel. He simply looked tired, and that terrified me. He tried to speak but seemed to be fighting against something unseen, just as the old woman had, and could only manage a choked sort of sound.
An awful idea began to form in my mind, one so appalling I couldn’t look at it straight on.
Ryder broke the silence. “Saska’s right.” He jerked his head at the old woman. “We should leave now, with the fight still all over us. And…” His mouth twisted; he looked furiously sad. “We should bring the child’s body, if the parents will allow it. We should bring every body we can. They might give us the strength to…”
He fell silent then, as if whatever he’d been pushing against to speak had suddenly overwhelmed him.
We began gathering the dead as the flames at the Mistline crackled on. Sobs from the villagers floated through the air like ashes. Ryder led us to the empty house of the missing Lords Wynn and Moris, where the Order’s greenway awaited us in a small garden of autumn flowers. A trowel and pail full of weeds sat abandoned among the blooms; a pitcher of cider and two half-empty glasses stood on a nearby table. I turned quickly away from the sight of them; each step I took felt loud and invasive, as though I were treading on bones.
The greenway thrummed quietly in the garden’s corner, a dark mouth of ferns and tangled vines. The old woman, Saska, had told us that the greenway permitted passage only when the Order allowed it. I glanced at Ryder, a morbid question on my lips.. “It should allow the dead to pass through unhindered,” he answered flatly, his eyes burning with quiet anger.
My stomach turned, the awful idea in my mind solidifying. Was it even possible for the Warden to keep such a secret? To bind people with magic so they couldn’t speak about the true state of the Middlemist? The idea seemed ludicrous—I’d never heard of such spellcraft—and yet everything I’d seen made me think it was true. I thought of the tapestry in the Ravenswood dining hall, all those northerners racing toward the Mist to fight monsters, and felt a fresh wave of nausea. How old was that tapestry? How long had this been happening? The unopened letters from Ryder that I’d tossed away so angrily—had he spoken of this in those notes, at least as much as he could? And the northern chants his soldiers had shouted as the royal guard took them from the midsummer ball down to the palace prison— Ariinya voshte, ariinya voshte! Had that been a message, some cryptic way to circumvent the Warden’s magic and tell everyone present what was happening? And there we had all stood, understanding nothing. And there I’d been at home, throwing Ryder’s letters into the fire.
I couldn’t look at him as we gathered at the greenway; I burned with shame, and with a desperate hope that the scenario painting itself in my mind was merely a deranged fantasy brought on by the stress of fighting chimaera.
But then an even more horrible question lodged in me, one I couldn’t shake. If this was truly the state of things, what did Mara know? What had she kept from us? Or worse, did she know nothing? Had the Warden managed to keep this a secret from her own shieldmaidens, and that was why they hadn’t come to help? I glanced at Gemma, at my father, and saw the same questions in their eyes. Gemma looked bleak; my father’s face was a mask of angry stone.
Saska and two other women from the village had to peel the quiet, dead-eyed girl from Gareth’s arms. She said nothing, but she fought them mightily, kicking with her bloody legs, reaching for Gareth with a desolate look on her face. Wordless protests burbled up from her throat; he had saved her from gods knew what during that battle, and now he was leaving her. How could he leave her? Gareth had to turn away, cover his mouth with his hand.
Once the villagers were gone, it was only us and the dead. I followed my father into the swirl of greening magic, looking back once to see Saska staring after us from the ruin of Devenmere. Beside her, Gareth’s girl sobbed, one arm stretched toward us. I turned away with eyes full of tears and let the magic take me.