Chapter Twenty-Six
Our journey through the barren, rocky land north is slow going, not because of the weather or the terrain but because we’re frequently forced to leave the road.
We take turns on Kira while Quinn rides Bitey, scouting ahead and warning each other when to find a place to hide.
We hide in caves and beneath rock ledges, behind boulders, and once in nearly plain sight, relying on Octavia’s and my shadow magic and being forced to hope the group of armed Selaran refugees has no shadow-born who can see through it.
We avoid as many people as we can that way, not knowing who could betray us to a Nithyrian patrol and not wanting to silence everyone we encounter to keep ourselves safe.
It takes us the better part of five days to make it out of the rocky wasteland between the western and eastern cliffs and onto higher ground, even when we use the griffins to ferry ourselves along faster.
Having two griffins is a lifesaver in the end. They catch us food: fish, mostly, from scattered lakes and the sea, but occasionally rabbits, ducks, and once, a strange deer-like creature that had fur that changed colors based on its surroundings.
Or it did until it was dead. It was truly delicious cooked over the fire. Typhon had hesitations about eating something so rare we didn’t have a name for it, but the need to stretch our remaining supplies over the Machair Wastes was motivation enough to give it a try.
As we climb up onto the plateau that once surrounded Avaris, a sense of dread washes over me.
I’ve only been through the Wastes once before, several months ago when we were on our way to Faros.
We took the southern route through a dried riverbed and had encountered little trouble apart from the bandit attack, but we’d been in a carriage then.
This time, we’ll have no road to follow. The few who make the trip overland typically do so on horseback, from what Taran has told us, but most travel the Green Sea to avoid this stretch of road entirely.
And yet the mountains leave us no choice. It’s too late in the year to travel the eastern pass. A quick flight confirms that the route is already impassable from snow, and the mountains are too high here for the griffins to fly the entire way once, let alone several times to carry us all over.
And so we head out into the Wastes, into the blighted land Ronan’s father made from what was once the fertile soil that fed Nithyria.
Seth prattles on as we walk, conjecturing about the poisons and nature-born magic used to scour the land, the only one of us seemingly unaffected by the eerie silence of our surroundings.
“I wish I could have seen it for myself,” he says, trudging over the sand dunes with dramatic effort. Lightning flashes in the distance over the mountains, casting strange shadows among the sands. “It must have taken hundreds of people to do it while we were all fighting.”
“Thousands,” says Ronan absently, his eyes on Kira in the skies with Octavia. “We were without healers for more than a month.”
“Insanity. Your father was really something.”
I glare at Seth. The admiration in his voice, despite all that we suffered for God-King Aurelian’s foolish decision, is despicable.
“I’m just saying that it was a bold move. If we’d known they were without healers, we would have pushed harder. To be honest, we couldn’t tell.”
“Ronan did nothing but heal during that time,” says Taran. “He exhausted himself every day.”
Seth rolls his eyes. “Of course he did.”
Our journey has done little to endear my brother to Ronan, but Ronan’s general detachment has kept them from coming to blows.
That, and the goodwill of Taran coming between them.
We make good time across the wastes in spite of how unpleasant they are to travel. The griffins are unaffected by whatever magic makes this place seem inhospitable, and the open landscape makes it easy for us to see each other while we ferry across it.
By nightfall, we’ve made it to the shadow of the hillside where Avaris once stood.
It’s a strange hill, approaching it from this direction.
I remember standing on it as a child, looking out at the golden grain in the plains.
It felt like a cliff then, but from this angle, I can see that it stands on its own, isolated from the rest of the flat land like someone scooped up one of the Palador Mountains and dropped it here out of place.
Ronan takes my hand as we prepare to stop for the night.
“You remember our dream?” he asks me, looking up at the top of the hill.
There’s no temple there, but he’s right—this is the place.
“Maybe we should keep going. If we travel through the night, we can make it to the mountains.” I can’t shake the sense of unease when I look up at the empty spot where the temple stood in our dreams, can’t help but hear the sickle at my back, to feel the wind it stirred in the breeze.
“I was going to ask if you wanted to go up there to see. Don’t you feel drawn to it?”
“No. I feel…” I’m not sure what I feel. “It feels wrong somehow.”
Ronan nods. “To me as well. But I feel like it wants me to go to it. Like the way you felt with the torch.”
“All the more reason not to go then. That torch has been nothing but trouble.” At my words, I feel it stir, a weak reflection of Ronan’s feelings from within his bag a dozen feet away.
I manage to convince Ronan to wait until the morning, but he’s up early, pacing around before dawn.
“It feels like you. No, not just you. Us. I can sense it from here.”
“Come on, then.” I take Ronan’s hand, and I nudge Quinn awake from where she sleeps next to Taran. “We’re going up to see the ruins. We’ll meet you on the other side.”
“Wait,” says Quinn. “Shouldn’t we all go? Did you wake me because you knew I couldn’t follow you without help? That’s a low blow, Sylvie.”
“It’s not a long walk. You’ll be able to see us from down here if we get into any sort of trouble.”
“Fine. If you get into trouble, shout if you’re not dead. I’m going back to sleep.”
I follow Ronan as he cuts a path up the hillside, switching back when the terrain gets too steep.
The ground here is barren, like the rest of the wastes.
This side is completely without buildings, the land too steep to build on even during better times.
The climb is tough on my body after so many days of hiking.
Ronan helps me along, guided by some unseen force that compels him beyond all reason.
The rocky soil levels out near the top. Over the side, I see the ruins of the settlement of Avaris, little more than a pile of rubble and a handful of low, half-destroyed walls of grey stone. It looks like no one has been there in years.
Despite the fact that it’s been clear there’s no temple or any sign of it for some time, I still expect to see it there somehow when we arrive. “It should be right here.”
“I know,” says Ronan. He walks around the sides of where the temple stood in my dreams, careful not to cross into its interior. He enters through the invisible doorway, and I follow him in, ignoring the brushing feeling against the back of my neck, the sense of being watched.
“Ronan, I don’t like this.”
He shakes his head, not turning around to look at me. Entranced by something ahead of him. “It’s just up there. The altar.”
“Ronan.” I grab his hand. I don’t know how I know, but I need to stop him from seeing what’s up there. “Please.”
He shrugs from my grip, and that’s when I’m certain something is wrong. I speed up to walk around him, trying not to feel the oppressive sense of foreboding that weighs me down, trying to ignore the strange, high-pitched ringing in my ears.
I stand in front of him, looking up into his blank expression. “Ronan, please. It’s me.”
His eyes snap to mine, and they’re empty. Dark and malevolent. I stumble backwards, and his expression clears, his eyes returning to their normal golden-brown hue.
They soften and then startle when he sees my face. “What happened? What’s wrong?” He pulls me to him, and his heart pounds against my ear.
“I don’t know. I don’t like it here. You weren’t yourself.”
“No, I wasn’t. I’m sorry. I thought I felt…but you’re right. It’s the magic in this place, the scouring magic. It has to be. I didn’t think they would have bothered to come up here, but clearly they did.” He gestures at the barren ground.
I’m not so certain it is the scouring magic that we’re feeling. That feels wrong too, but not like this. The scouring magic feels lifeless, like something vital is missing.
This place feels like death.
“Can we go back now? I don’t think we’re meant to be here—”
There’s a loud screech from below.
“Kira,” says Ronan, grabbing my hand and running towards the camp.
In our haste, I don’t notice where we’re going until we pass over it.
The altar. I can’t see it, but I feel it. It pulls on me, urging me downwards, inviting me somewhere dark and horrible, somewhere outside of time…
And then it’s gone. The feeling passes as soon as it came on.
“Did you feel that?” I ask Ronan as we run.
“Like stepping into a grave,” he says. “This place is cursed.”
I shudder, my shoulders tightening as we run, desperate to put that terrible place behind me. I have the urge to look back and see if something is following us, but I’m too paralyzed by terror to turn around.
It’s just the magic, I tell myself as the hair rises on the back of my neck. Just the magic, I think as I feel the wind of the sickle, as I hear its whistling sound.
The sight of the camp below is what snaps me out of it.
We’ve been ambushed.