Chapter 23
Terror stole my breath. If I hadn’t stopped us, we might have skipped right on into the city, ripe for the taking.
Immediately I looked behind us for the moonlight road but saw only a quiet forest where there had clearly been some kind of revel. Plates and cups lay scattered across the ground amid discarded clothes and empty shoes. Strings of lights were draped between the branches overhead, magicked to glow pink and violet in their paper cups. The road was gone, and the sky was clear, each twinkling star crystalline. My stomach sank. How were we supposed to find the road home if there were no storms here to guide us toward it? Talan had found it, but he might not have without the help of those beasts and birds, wilded by his mysterious benefactor.
No, by Alastrina. I told myself that three times, saying her name clearly in my mind. Alastrina had helped him. Even if it wasn’t true, the thought was a comfort.
“Farrin…” Ryder’s voice was low and awed, tense with warning. “It’s happened again. You look…”
When I met his gaze, I could see that he wanted to avert his eyes, to shield them as if from a bright light. But he made himself look at me, even gave me a small smile. It’s all right , his expression seemed to say. His gaze was soft. We’ll figure this out.
A laughable sentiment—there was no guarantee of anything here except danger—but I clung to it nevertheless and looked down at myself, holding my breath. Ryder was right. I had changed. My skin glowed from within as if I’d swallowed a star. I touched my hair, which I’d tied back in a hasty braid, eager to get the greasy strands out of my face; I sorely needed a bath. But here, my hair was clean and thick, still bound in its braid but now soft and silken. I pulled the braid around to look at it, and my breath caught to see its lustrous sheen. Kerrish, Gemma’s stylist, would have demanded to know whom I’d hired to achieve such an impressive effect. It was as though candlelight had been combed through the strands, leaving each tress shimmering and golden.
In Edyn, I’d felt tired, worn out, full of heartache and uncertainty. But here—in the city of Mhorghast, hidden somewhere in the Old Country—I felt reborn. All the pain in my heart remained, but my body felt renewed and rested. I could have run ten miles. I could have outrun Ryder.
I smiled a little to think of it, but then a jubilant whoop from somewhere not too distant sent me crashing back to myself. Ryder grabbed his crossbow, nocked an arrow. I whirled, a song in my throat. But we were safe. Whoever or whatever had yelled was elsewhere. We hadn’t yet been spotted.
“What do we do?” Ryder muttered, his crossbow still held at the ready. “The road is gone. Are we stuck here?”
I shook my head, refusing to entertain such a terrible thought. “Talan wasn’t. He found the road back. We can too.”
“Preferably without being spotted by demons and chimaera first,” he said drily. “But we don’t have Talan’s power of disguise.”
“No,” I agreed, “but we have mine.”
The thought had dropped into my mind with perfect clarity. I could sing a firebird quiet, sing a demon down from his pain, sing an audience into a lustful frenzy. So I could do this; I could weave a disguise around us using only the power of my voice. Farrin of the gods.
The memory of Ankaret’s voice gave me courage, and I began to sing quietly, a mere thread of sound under my breath. The tune was new to me, and yet it poured out as if I’d been practicing it for years. It was as swift and relentless as a swollen river. I fought hard to keep my voice low and not let myself be carried away on my power’s eager current. I felt the danger of it keenly, as if I were dragging my finger along the edge of a knife. Any sudden movement might cut me open. For a moment, Philippa’s face came to me on a thin undertow of fear. You should have stayed with me , she said. What you carry is dangerous, and only I can help you understand it.
Ryder shifted uneasily beside me. “You’ll draw someone to us. They’ll come after such a song, desperate to know who it belongs to.”
I saw the tears in his eyes before he could wipe them away. My heart ached for both of us. Yesterday, I might have reached out to comfort him. Today, I kept a wary distance. I envied the old Farrin, the one who didn’t know what I now did.
I looked out at the glittering city, trying to shove that ache down as deep as I could and think only of the task before me. “As long as I think of discretion,” I explained, “distraction, deception, the song will provide for us what I command it to.”
I didn’t tell him that this was a hopeful guess, that I was only just beginning to learn how to direct my music with such singular purpose and didn’t know the full reach of it—or its limits.
Ryder let out a thoughtful grunt. “Is that what you did before, when we fought Kilraith? Is that how it works here in the Old Country?”
That’s how it could work anywhere , came the thought. It was my own, and yet it carried the flavor of Philippa’s voice.
“I wasn’t so deliberate about it when we fought Kilraith,” I answered, thinking back. “That was instinct and fear. But now I understand better how it works. At least, I think I do.” I felt the urge to look over at him but resisted it. “Do you trust me?”
The question tasted sour on my tongue.
“With my life,” he answered gravely. He hefted his crossbow back into position, then went still. “I’ve an idea. There’s a bird over there, a sparrow. Will you sing while I try to wild it? If it doesn’t interfere with your magic, maybe I can work under the cloak of your power and ask it how to get out without being detected by...whoever or whatever is here.”
It was a sound enough idea, but watching the sparrow hop innocently about left me cold. “How are we to know that whatever animals you find are actually what they appear to be? Their true forms could be disguised, or they could be under an enemy wilder’s control.”
Ryder knelt, holding out his hand to the sparrow. “After so many years of wilding near the Mistlands, I know when something is what it appears to be and when it isn’t. I wouldn’t try wilding an Olden creature, not under these circumstances. This little fellow is simply a sparrow.”
Still skeptical, I nevertheless quietly resumed singing. If this worked, if we could move safely through this place under the veil of my song while Ryder wilded information out of the local fauna, we would be safe for as long as my voice held out. Maybe we could even find a few prisoners to bring home with us.
I tried not to think of Gareth’s smiling face, his glasses that always seemed to need a good cleaning, his ridiculous messy hair. Instead I focused on my song and watched Ryder murmur his wilding magic. The sparrow came to him immediately. It hopped onto his palm, fluffed up its feathers in obvious happiness, chirping quietly.
Ryder stroked its chest, frowning. “He’s from Edyn. He doesn’t belong here. Must have slipped through the cracks somehow.”
I fell quiet. “Or else he was brought here against his will.”
“I don’t sense any other animals nearby. When I wilded him, did you feel any sort of interference with your song?”
“Not for even a moment.”
Ryder shot me a wry smile. “Perhaps it was foolish of me to imagine that my magic could do anything to unbalance yours.”
He said it playfully, without ire or envy, but I saw the guarded look in his eyes, and the words sat uncomfortably on my skin. Demigods is the word. What would that mean for us, if we made it out of here? A creature who belonged in both worlds, or neither of them, and a human—Anointed and skilled though he was—who belonged solidly in the world of Edyn.
I pushed the thoughts aside. He’d kept the truth from me, but I was a wreck of a woman who insisted on thinking the worst of someone who loved me. That was the true chasm between us.
“Come on, then,” I said, turning away with an ache in my chest. “If there aren’t any other animals nearby, we’ll have to find some.”
***
At first Ryder and I tried to skirt the borders of Mhorghast and remain somewhat hidden in the forest, but at every turn, the trees rearranged themselves and the ground before us shifted directions, making us stumble, and suddenly the city was right ahead of us once more, as surely as if someone had picked us up and put us right where we didn’t want to go. Mhorghast was pulling at us, and no matter what we tried, we couldn’t resist it.
Grimly we surrendered to whatever magic lived here and entered the city proper. My skin prickled, a warning of danger that I desperately wished I could heed. Just as Talan had said, it was impossible to comprehend the true size of Mhorghast. The hope that my demigod blood would allow me a truer vision of the place vanished immediately. One moment, we walked through a grand city of glittering houses draped in fog, every eave trimmed with lights, every avenue paved with gilded stones. The next, we were in a cozy village with thatched-roof houses—humble but pretty—and tidy gardens bursting with flowers, and cobblestone paths illuminated by iron gas lamps. Then a blink, a breath, and the splendid city returned.
And always in the distance was the palace—Kilraith’s palace, I assumed, hardly daring to look at it. Sometimes it looked like what I guessed was its true form—a palace agleam, grand and domed and turreted. Sometimes it was a mountain on the horizon, or a foothill blanketed with woodlands. But even as its shape shifted, its size remained the same. Mountain, woodlands, palace with a thousand twinkling eyes—it was always there. Looming. Waiting.
My throat was dry, my entire body hot with nerves. The streets felt hot and crowded, and they buzzed with noise, but the air was strange, shimmery, and whenever I tried to peer through the hazy chaos at a shape that looked like it could be a person, it disappeared. Instead I tried to focus on the air in my lungs, the notes of my song rich and full in my throat, the road in front of me. The ground was real, physical, whether it was gilded stone or pocked cobbles. Whatever it was, it was solid beneath my feet. I was alive, I was moving. I still had my body and my breath.
I let my vision blur to soften the disorienting effect of the shifting stones and flitting gray shapes around me. I heard Ryder breathing next to me and clung to the reassuring sound of his footsteps. The low murmur of his voice as he worked his wilding magic acted as a familiar undercurrent to my song. Birds darted here and there, brighter and more numerous the deeper we traveled into the city—a sparrow, a jay, a finch—as unnoticed and ordinary as they were back in Edyn. But every now and then, a brilliant jewel tone shimmered, or an unusually long tail flapped past me like a hissing ribbon. The murky shapes around me began to resolve and become distinct, as if my eyes were slowly becoming used to a new kind of sight. With each step, the shimmering haze that clouded the streets faded, allowing me a better view of the world around me. I saw a white lizard with two heads, each sporting two gorgeous aquamarine eyes. I saw a sleek golden cat bright as coins, a looming black hound with a sharp red gaze, even a pearlescent flash I thought might have been the horn of a unicorn, though it was there and gone too fast for me to be sure. These creatures Ryder did not touch and guided me to avoid as well.
The others, though—the sparrows, the gray squirrels, the harmless garden snakes—he spoke to in so many bestial tongues I couldn’t tell one from the next. Quiet, fluid, his words were a melody in their own right, and the beasts answered back in hisses, quiet trills, soft chatter.
But watching him was a distraction I couldn’t afford. I kept my eyes straight ahead and my voice steady, determined not to falter even as the labyrinth of Mhorghast became terribly clear to me. It felt wrong to ever again call it Moonhollow, as lovely and aptly moonlit as it was. Mhorghast—the deep vowels, the harsh consonants—seemed much more fitting a name. For no matter how pretty the lights on all sides and the stars above, no matter how grand and soaring the towers of each building we passed, everything about this place was deeply wrong. Every street, every building housed a party, some wild revel: dancing and feasting, or a contest of some sort—races, wrestling matches, games with hoops and balls and flung axes.
And everywhere I looked, I saw Olden beings, as if all the tales I’d ever been told, all Gareth’s lectures I’d patiently sat through, had suddenly come garishly to life. No one seemed to notice us, and no traps magicked to catch trespassers sprang up to snare us, so it appeared my song was working, but the impossible horror of it all nearly stole my voice from me. There were pale vampyrs in rich brocade coats, their eyes black and glittering. Hulking wolfmen skittered up the walls, water nymphs and wood nymphs held court at the edge of a lake rippling with fountains, and furiants—who could move objects using only their minds—tossed doors and tables and trees at one another as lightning crackled up their arms.
Seeing such extraordinary beings on their own would have been surreal enough, but they weren’t alone.
There were humans too. Humans everywhere. Humans in chains, humans in cages. Ankaret’s words took on new, sinister life. Taken humans are there in chains and cages, on tables and stages .
And she was right. At first it was as though my mind couldn’t understand what my eyes were seeing, and then, as I found my courage and looked harder, I saw the truth. Those axes were being thrown at humans forced to dodge them. The water nymphs and wood nymphs were fighting each other, some sort of playful war game, with their elements as ammunition and pet humans on chains as the targets. The wolfmen chased frantic humans, limping and in rags, across the gleaming rooftops. They were entertainment, I realized, my bile rising. They were prey .
A vampyr sprawled luxuriously across a claw-foot couch on a breezy veranda. I watched in horror as she lured close a man who was absolutely goggle-eyed for her, unaware that others around him were pointing and laughing, for he was wearing a ridiculous costume: too-big shoes, a too-tight velvet suit, his limbs heavy with jewels wrapped so tightly that they were cutting into his flesh. As he approached, leaning in for a kiss, the vampyr—who I realized with a shock of horror held a knife—opened his throat with one quick flick of her wrist. Blood came pouring out of him in sheets. She held him to her until her goblet was full, then let his body fall and took a long drink. All around her, an audience cackled—other vampyrs, tittering light-nymphs with glowing teeth and hair, a huge muscled man gobbling down fistfuls of wriggling raw fish. He had sleek blue skin, sea-foam hair, and a long beard tangled with weeds. A titan, I thought, hot-cold with terror. A titan of the sea, who’d decided to take solid form and join in the fun.
Worst of all, there were other humans among the giddy onlookers—some in finery, some in rags, some gaunt, some well fed. Their eyes were wide and white, all of them laughing and smiling as the dead man’s blood pooled at their feet.
I nearly got sick watching them. I felt like I was quickly losing my wits. I had known, of course, that Olden beings existed. They populated our lore and decorated our storybooks. There were whole courses about them at the university, and my own sister patrolled one of the boundaries between their world and ours. But to see them in reality, to see so many of them here together, populating a city that, if Ankaret and Nerys could be believed, existed solely to imprison and torment humans…
I faltered in my song; for the space of a breath, the notes broke.
An eerie, cold feeling swept across us A dark hound lounging at the feet of the feasting vampyr raised its head. The wind whispered with a sly voice, and the sea titan stopped eating, scaly wads of fish flesh clutched in his giant hands.
“Farrin, keep singing,” Ryder said tensely. He touched my lower back, making me jump. I recovered myself, my heart pounding, and continued my song. After a few seconds, the eerie feeling faded, the sea titan resumed eating, and the hound lowered its head. My own spun with wild relief.
“I know it’s terrible,” Ryder murmured, “but you’re doing wonderfully. Please keep going. I…” His voice cracked a little, and I looked over at him in alarm, but he wasn’t hurt. He was fuming , his jaw tight and his eyes blazing. An impudent little jay perched on his shoulder, chirping quietly into his ear.
I didn’t dare stop my song to ask even a single question. Instead I touched his arm, trying to ignore the nightmarish sounds from the veranda.
“Alastrina is nearby,” Ryder explained. “Three different birds have told me so. She’s…” He shook his head roughly. “Their words are disjointed, slow, like they’re drunk. They say she’s… fighting ? They say there’s a hole in the ground not far from here.”
He glanced at me, saw the question on my face. “They’ve said nothing about the moonlight road,” he said grimly. “I’ve asked in five different languages, and each one confuses them. They think I’m talking about the moon or the stars or the road we’re walking on now.”
My heart sank. An arrow whizzed past us, so fast and close that Ryder had to duck. I shrank against his side, and he held me there, his arm like iron around me.
“Can we go to her?” he said, very low, his voice thick. “If there’s even a chance we can find her in all of this, take her home with us…”
I found his hand, squeezed it, and tried not to cry when he whispered his thanks and bent to kiss my brow. But my tears were perilously close, tingling behind my nose and eyes; it was this awful place, the smell of it, the beautiful rot of it. We waded through ankle-deep water, warm and clear as the Citadel baths. Huge white blossoms floated atop it, pushed along by some magical current, and fireflies bobbed lazily from bloom to bloom. Exquisite. Breathtaking.
And yet from everywhere came the sounds of tortured screams, frantic music, rapturous moans. I gripped Ryder’s hand hard as we followed his birds upstream, trying not to imagine the monstrous things that were being done in every house we passed. Shapes undulated against windows framed by gauzy curtains; bodies floated lazily in courtyard pools—alive? Dead? I couldn’t tell, didn’t try to find out. The image of the humans back on the veranda had lodged itself in me. How ecstatically they had celebrated the execution of one of their own. It didn’t make sense to me. Either their happiness was a lie, and they smiled and laughed only because, that time, the doomed person hadn’t been them. Or perhaps they were not themselves at all.
There were any number of Olden beings who carried the power of Jaetris, god of the mind. My own mind frantically ran through a list, the echo of Gareth’s voice eagerly whispering each word. There were readers, who could study and influence others’ thoughts; figments, who could trick others into believing illusions; furiants, who could manipulate objects with their minds; and dreamwalkers, who could enter someone’s mind, and even travel from person to person, using dreams as their conduits.
And then there were others, like the greater demons—like Talan—who were descendants of Jaetris and Zelphenia, goddess of the unknowable. These greater demons could not only create disguises but also read, possess, and even alter the minds of their victims.
And beyond that, there was Kilraith, whoever he was, what ever he was. How far did his powers extend? How much could he control?
“There she is,” Ryder murmured, wresting me from my frantic recitation. He pulled me to a stop, and when I followed his horrified gaze, all hope drained from my body.
We stood at the edge of a huge sunken arena— a hole in the ground , the birds had called it—and at the bottom, on the hard-packed black earth, stood Alastrina.
A chimaera faced her—huge, quick, and clever, with the head of a mountain cat, giant bony pincers, and a dozen scuttling legs. It scrambled toward Alastrina and lunged for her with one of its claws. She rolled at the last moment, and the pincer stabbed the ground, cracking it open. Steam escaped, blasting the chimaera in the face. It reared back, shrieking, and Alastrina took advantage of its confusion to dart under its body toward a crude spear lying on the far side of the arena.
The crowd gathered in the surrounding seats—hundreds of people, Olden and human alike—roared their approval at her maneuver. They pumped their fists, threw coins and flowers and silk ribbons. Clearly they adored her, and it was easy to see why. She was fearless, nearly as fast as the chimaera, and when she flung the spear, it landed true, piercing the creature’s exposed soft belly. Bright green blood spurted across the arena, splattering the crowd.
But they didn’t care about the mess, or its boiling, sour stench. They were on the edge of their seats; the chimaera wasn’t yet done fighting. The spear stuck out of its belly, and it trailed a thick swath of green blood wherever it went, but that was no deterrent. It reared around just as Alastrina threw another spear and knocked it from the air with one of its pincers. It advanced on her fast, crossing the arena in mere seconds. She shouted at it, some ferocious growling command in a bestial tongue, but whatever she’d said only made the chimaera falter for an instant. It stumbled, shrieking with anger, and reared up once again to strike—but that brief distraction was enough. Alastrina grabbed its right pincer with one hand, a broken spear clutched in her other hand. She dangled twelve feet in the air, barely managing to hang on as the chimaera snapped its jaws, trying to snatch her legs—but its last confused effort wasn’t enough. With a triumphant scream, Alastrina thrust her spear right into its exposed throat.
Its death was quick—a waterfall of green blood, a stumble left, then right, and then it crashed to the ground, releasing Alastrina to roll out from under its tumbling bulk. It did not move again.
The crowd’s applause was thunderous. They surged to their feet, shouting two unfamiliar words over and over again. I couldn’t interpret them, nor could Ryder, judging by his frown. He glared down into the arena as two hulking figures in armor ushered Alastrina away. They clapped her in chains but didn’t drag her through the door in the arena’s far wall. No, she walked there herself, her head held high. I thought I saw her flash a grin up at the bellowing crowd.
I licked my dry lips and kept singing—no matter what, I couldn’t stop singing—but my legs were shaking with fear, and when Ryder pulled me away from the arena, his grip strong on my elbow, I was glad for it. I wasn’t sure I could have moved on my own.
“We have to find her,” he said, his voice thin with anger, and then he murmured something to our jay friend, who had not stopped flitting back and forth over our heads. The jay gave a raucous cry—an answer to Ryder’s question?—and sped away.
As the arena’s crowd emptied into the streets, we followed the jay, dodging rivers of beasts, beings, humans, flares of fire and lightning. A laughing swirl of air nearly knocked us both off our feet. I thought it might be one of the four Winds, or perhaps one of their squalling children.
If I hadn’t been so frightened, so absolutely petrified of what might happen should my voice give out or should something hit me and knock me out, I would have laughed. I would have sat down right there in the road and laughed until I cried. It was absurd, what we were doing and where we were. Some strange flickering city where the sun never shone, tucked away somewhere in the Old Country and only accessible by a road paved with moonlight? My thoughts became frantic, started spinning into one another. Why had we let the road coax us here? Why hadn’t we been stronger?
Ryder pulled me around the corner of a huge canvas tent. Bright banners hung from its peaks, fluttering in the breeze. A small golden craft sped through the air over our heads, trailing glittering dust in its wake. I stared after it, dazed, my voice continuing its song automatically, as if I were a machine, a golden craft myself.
Ryder shook me hard enough to break my stare. “Farrin? Farrin, look at me. Don’t stop singing, but look at me.”
I obeyed slowly, gazing at him through a shimmer of tears. When I sang, I tasted salt. Every time I breathed, I smelled another new, terrible thing—a putrid yellow stench that reminded me of Talan’s dead skin. A floral perfume so sweet I had to fight not to follow it, find its source, and claim it for myself.
Ryder’s expression softened. He gathered me to him and held me against his chest. I clung to him. I sang and sang; I feared I would have to sing forever. The jay hopped frantically on his shoulder, letting out angry, piercing cries. I hoped my song was enough to hide it too, or someone might notice a bird losing its mind for no apparent reason. Though did there have to be a reason in such a place?
“I know,” Ryder muttered angrily into my hair. “It’s awful here. Evil is too mild a word. Even the air feels malevolent. But you’re doing so well, Farrin. You’re so good, so brave and strong. Can you keep on for a little while longer?” He tightened his hold on me. “I have to see her, even if it’s only for a moment. And the jay says she’s near. Maybe we can free her, or…”
There was a question in his voice, one he didn’t dare put to words. Can we? Will you help me?
I squeezed my eyes shut against the burning air and nodded against his chest. Of course I would. We could certainly at least try.
Ryder gave my temple a fierce kiss. Then he pulled me forward, following the jay’s darting path through a small village of opulent tents and glittering pebbled paths. A child in silken robes glided between the tents with jeweled amulets on gold chains draped over her arms. A rather peckish-looking vampyr sold fine crystal goblets and brocaded cloaks while gazing longingly after every passing warm body. At the mouth of a black tent spangled with tiny diamonds like stars sat a creature I could not name. She was pale and faceless—a woman on her upper half, a glistening worm on the bottom. When we passed her tent, she said nothing, but she spread her arms wide. I heard the chime of distant bells and tasted honey on my tongue.
Ryder’s grip was painful, but I squeezed back just as hard, and after what felt like hours of winding through this awful clanging maze, we reached a shimmering, sky-blue tent. Ryder whispered hoarsely, “I think this is it. He says it’s clear. Sing hard, love.”
I obeyed, marveling at the unwavering cascade of my voice. I’d never sung for this long without rest, without even a moment’s pause, and yet my throat felt as smooth and supple as if I were lounging in the Green Ballroom at home and trying out some new aria, completely at my leisure.
Ryder held the jay close to his chest, whispering something to it. It went very still and quiet. Its beady black eyes sparkled with eerie intelligence. Then it flew off into the night.
Ryder lifted his crossbow. “Stay close,” he whispered, “and ready your knife.” I grabbed the obsidian-handled dagger from my boot and nodded up at him. He took a breath and ducked into the tent. I kept as close to him as I could. My heart pounded so hard I worried it might disrupt my song. My hand that gripped the knife was slick with cold sweat.
The inside of the tent was dim and quiet. The sudden change disoriented me, and I stumbled a little, right into Ryder’s back.
“Who the fuck are you?” spat a sharp, familiar voice.
It was Alastrina. She sat at a large table laden with food, a roasted chicken leg in her hands and her lips smeared with grease. She wore a vest and trousers, just as she had in the arena, and her bare feet were splattered with mud and blood. Scars striped her face and arms, and though she clearly didn’t want for food, she looked newly gaunt— her cheekbones sharp, shadows in the hollows under her eyes. Her wrists were still bound in chains, though fortunately her guards were nowhere to be found.
But when I stopped singing my melody of disguise, I could see at once that she didn’t recognize our true faces. My stomach sank to my toes. Her eyes were wide and white—sharp, aware, but glazed—and she was glaring at Ryder as if he were not her brother but an enemy.
She shot to her feet, spat out her food, and opened her mouth to shout something. She was fast, but Ryder was faster. He grabbed her, spun her around, clapped his hand over her mouth. He looked at me, desperate—she was strong, and she was fighting him. She bit down on his finger, hard, and kicked over her chair, sending her drink clattering. Someone would hear us, someone would come—
Unless I sang a different song. A song of reason, of clarity.
I shifted on a heel-turn of sound, my power knowing what I meant even if I couldn’t fully articulate it in my own mind. The melody I’d been singing for an age changed at once to something sweeter, calmer, in a major key instead of a minor. Into each note, I sang every clear thought I could think of, every open feeling I’d ever known—hope, contentment, assured industry. I imagined a dewdrop, a winter lake, a cleansing rain, the ping of a silver fork against a crystal glass.
The effect was immediate. Alastrina calmed in Ryder’s arms, and her glazed eyes cleared to their familiar sharp blue. She let out a gasping sob against Ryder’s palm, and when he released her, she turned and threw herself against him, clutching his jacket—the best embrace she could manage with her hands bound.
“Ryder, oh gods, I’m sorry, I…” She leaned back and punched his arm. “How are you here, and why , you unforgivable idiot? You should never have come. Don’t you understand?”
I took a step forward, infusing my song with a note of urgency. I didn’t dare stop, but I needed them to understand the danger we were in, now that we’d lost our disguise. Make it fast , I thought into every light-footed note.
“We’ll tell you everything later,” Ryder said quickly. “Right now, we’ve got to get out of here. How do we find the moonlight road?”
Alastrina frowned. “The what?”
I pushed on past my dismay. I could not allow my song to waver a second time.
“It’s how we got here,” he said, “and how we can get out. Have you never seen it?”
Alastrina blew out a sharp, sad laugh. “I’ve seen this tent, and I’ve seen the arena. That’s about it. Luthaes keeps me on a short leash. If there’s a way out, I’ve not found it. Others, though…” She hesitated, shaking her head a little. Her eyes clouded, then cleared.
I dared to sing slightly louder, my body breaking out into a cold sweat. Whatever had hold of Alastrina wasn’t giving her up without a fight.
“Wait.” Alastrina glared at Ryder, then at me. “Did you come alone? Just the two of you?”
Ryder glanced at me, uneasy. “Yes. We didn’t plan to, but the road—”
“And you’re going to rescue me and leave everyone else?” Alastrina stepped back from him. Her eyes glistened with angry tears. “You can’t. You fools, if you were going to come you should’ve brought an army , one strong enough to raze this place to the ground.”
Before either of us could respond to that, the tent flap flew open and a gleaming figure strode in. His beauty nearly knocked me flat. His skin was a burnished copper, his hair a long white cloud of braids that seemed to dance like cottonwood seeds in his wake. His eyes were a bright turquoise, his pointed ears glittered with bloodred jewels and silver chains, and his gauzy robes were filmy as clouds, the same perfect sky blue as the tent.
My blood ran cold, and my song at last fell silent. I’d never seen one in the flesh, but I knew at once what he must be: one of the fae.
“And here’s our gorgeous champion,” he said. His voice was light and silver, like water rushing over stones. But then he saw us and froze, and those cheerful bright eyes turned dark with fury.
“What is this?” he purred, a slow smile curling across his face. “I don’t believe I gave you permission to entertain guests, my pet.”
The fae snapped his fingers, and an instant later the two armored guards from the arena burst into the tent, their swords flashing. But just then came a clamor of noise from behind us—shrieks, caws, feline yowls. The fae’s eyes widened; even the guards faltered. I whirled to see a whole herd of beasts stampeding into the tent, our jay friend leading the way—at least two dozen birds, a handful of raptors, a sleek panther wearing a jeweled collar, a white stallion with its silver reins trailing.
“Farrin!” Ryder bellowed, running toward me. He dragged a stunned Alastrina behind him. I noticed with dismay that without my song to help clear her mind, her eyes had begun to cloud over again. But now was not the time for a song of clarity. I heard the desperation in Ryder’s voice: Hide us!
Together we ran from the tent, and I began singing the melody from before, the one that had cloaked us. Note for note, phrase for phrase, the song poured out smoothly, as if my frantic running body were one creature and my serene voice quite another. The song carved a path for us through the crowds, and though I could see people turning all around us, exclaiming and curious, their eyes slid right past us, and we ran on—until, suddenly, Alastrina changed. She jerked on Ryder’s arm, wrenched herself free of him, and kicked his legs out from under him. He fell hard, hit his face and elbow. Alastrina pounced on him, started pounding him with her bound fists, and in my shock I stopped singing for only an instant—but it was enough. I felt eyes cut toward us from all sides, heard hisses and gasps, roars of anger. An arrow flew past us, then another; the second one grazed my arm.
I cried out in pain but somehow managed to hold on to the threads of my song—no longer the song of distraction but the song of clarity. I stopped long enough to scream, “Alastrina, stop !”
That seemed to jolt her, as did my song, each note shaky but clear. She staggered back from Ryder, looking at her fists and then at him in horror. Her eyes were free of fog. Ryder reached up and yanked her down just before a spinning ax went flying through the air where she’d been standing.
“Whatever’s in you,” he shouted at her, “you need to fight it! Farrin can’t hide us if she’s busy holding you together!”
Alastrina looked at me, then spun around and shouted something I didn’t understand—another bestial language, each word sharp as a knife. I hoped she was shouting for help, calling out to any beasts she could find. I huddled on the ground, shifting back to the song of distraction. But it was too late to hide; everyone knew we were here. Cascades of colors and shapes streamed toward us from all sides. Ryder jumped to his feet to shield me, desperately firing arrows from his crossbow. But he quickly used them up, and whatever Alastrina was shouting wasn’t enough. I saw no animals running to our rescue, no jay wings cutting through the air.
I closed my eyes, pouring every bit of strength I still had into my song. Maybe I could change it yet again, sing a song not of simple distraction but of defense. Or maybe I could somehow hold all three songs in my head at once and infuse my voice with three instructions—distraction, defense, clarity. But as soon as I tried to make that shift, a wave of sickness rushed up my body. I fell to my hands and knees, fighting not to retch. What I was trying to do couldn’t be done—not by me, at least, or perhaps simply not yet .
Then, all at once, everything around us disappeared: our glittering attackers, the flowering streets of Mhorghast, the great shadowed palace looming over it all. The world turned bright and white and cold, so brilliant and overwhelming that it sucked the breath right out of me, and my song died in my throat. The air shimmered, holding me still, humming its own eerie melody. I couldn’t move; I could hardly think .
Suddenly I felt a hand on my arm—not Ryder’s hand but someone else’s. The grip was strong and cold, the skin hard and smooth as polished stone. I squinted up into the glare and saw a face that was both strange and familiar to me—Philippa, golden-eyed, sharp-toothed, resplendent in platinum armor. She wore a necklace of gilded bones around her pale swan’s neck, and her long, loam-dark hair glittered with dozens of topaz jewels.
The sight of her turned me as cold as her grip on my arm. Any sliver of doubt that remained inside me regarding the truth of her claims shriveled up and blew away like ash on the wind. This was not simply Philippa. This was Kerezen, goddess of the senses and the body. Kerezen, reborn.
Somehow I found enough of a voice to rasp their names. “Ryder. Alastrina.”
“Of course I have them,” Philippa responded, her voice booming and bold as brass. It rang through my every bone, made my teeth chatter. “But I can bring no more with us. What a fool you were to come here. My brave little bird.”
A memory fell softly into my mind. Your music, little bird, will give the gods new life.
Then she bent to kiss my forehead. I expected a frigid touch, but in fact her lips were scorching and turned me limp and pliant in her arms. The white world grew whiter still, and all sound fell away, including my own pounding heartbeat. Then I knew nothing more.