CHAPTER 21
Stepping through the scry did not feel like stepping into air. It was hot and muggy, like wading through thigh-deep water. Or gelatin.
It was over in a few seconds. The scry grew silent behind us, its insides dulling to a dark gray. The portal would reopen in exactly an hour. Time was already running out. Calendula shivered gently on my shoulder, and I knew it was not from cold.
The stretch of land Caleb and I stood on was warm, unlike the cool air at Valhan House. It reminded me of the summers on Serila. The grass was patchy and dry, as if it hadn’t seen rain in a very long time.
When I looked out, I could see nothing but empty land. There were no other candidates in view. The scry had deposited them further along the boundary.
As for Caleb and I, we stood quite close to Cosanus. I could see a thin line of salt yawning across the dry grass for miles.
“We should just stay out here and wait for the hour to pass,” Caleb said.
We could do that. It wasn’t like there was anyone out here to make sure we crossed over into Cosanus and endured whatever horrors were waiting on the other side. Maybe the others would stay on this side of the border.
But I couldn’t. This Trial – finding the weapon – was important.
“You don’t have to come.” I shrugged. “But I’m going.”
I took a step toward the salt and Caleb groaned. “I can’t just let you go in there alone.”
“Then come with but decide quickly. We’re running out of time.”
He made an irritated noise and then I heard his hurried footsteps behind me as I crossed over the boundary.
As soon as I did, it was clear I was no longer on Lortan as I knew it.
Sweat pricked on my nape. The field of grass had disappeared.
What stretched before us now was scorched ground, a desert of cracked soil, uneven with dips and swells, some far higher than others.
Though the moon hung low overhead, the heat was sweltering.
Dusty sand stirred in a warm breeze, billowing across the top of my shoes, and I blinked against the small grains in the air.
“We’re here now. Which way should we go?” Caleb scanned left then right. There was nothing but abandoned land as far as I could see.
“Can you feel anything?” I asked Calendula.
The tiny sprite shuddered. “There is nothing left.”
But the night sky was out, the stars in full, unimpeded view. I looked up toward the gentle curve of Mahleia, the northernmost star. “Let’s carry on straight ahead and see what we find.”
Caleb set a hard pace, his strides long and measured – but I had been training for this too. Running each day and building my strength so that I could keep up. Calendula’s foot bobbed nervously at my clavicle, and I whispered, “Are you okay?”
She made a faint noise that was halfway between a yes and a no. “There is so much death here. I can feel it.”
The land certainly looked dead, but aside from that there were no rotting carcasses or skeletal remains visible.
In fact, our surroundings had not changed much in the minutes we had been walking.
Only a few rocks had cropped up, jutting out of the ground like monoliths.
Every so often, we stumbled across geysers.
I steered clear of one now as it rumbled menacingly, and hot water jettisoned out of its tip in a quick stream, filling the air with steam.
The ground fizzled where the water splashed, searing the earth. Sweat streamed down my neck.
Then there was silence. There were no insects or other animals, no vegetation that I could see. It was as if the land had wholly swallowed all traces of life. Even if something wanted to grow here, I had a feeling the land would not let it.
“This is pointless,” Caleb muttered as we passed yet another stone that looked similar to one we’d seen moments earlier. “Wandering around a desert, looking for a cave and some mystical weapon. You do realize that the farther we go, the longer it will take to get back to the border, right?”
I glanced down at the watch strapped to my wrist. We had been walking for fifteen minutes now, which did not leave us much time to find a weapon and return to the scry before the land cracked one sleepy eye and consumed us too.
“I know that. But we have to try. Maybe we should climb one of the higher banks to see our surroundings better? Let’s also keep watch of the time and when it hits the halfway mark we’ll start to head–” I paused.
“Can you hear that?” I cocked my head to the right as music – no, not music, voices called out.
A cacophony of them, all overlapping, all crying and screaming at once. It was too much. I grabbed my head, dropping to one knee as I struggled to focus around the sound.
Caleb clutched my wrist, his face angling in front of mine. “What is it?”
I grit my teeth. “Voices. So many voices!”
“I can’t hear anything!”
“It’s the death.” Calendula hovered in midair, then dropped to my knee. “Breathe, Lirah. Push through it. You need to follow it.”
Follow it? I wanted to run a hundred miles from it.
The sound grated against my eardrums like a high-pitched staccato, but mournful. So mournful. The last note sounded like it was drawn by a violin.
The noise gave way to a fervent muttering, a thread of words spoken over and over, but at least the screaming had ceased.
“Your nose,” Caleb said in horror. “It’s bleeding.”
I lowered a hand to it, dragging my fingertips across my skin to find it wet. The blood glistened beneath the moonlight.
“I’m okay.” I caught my breath for a minute and when the ground stabilized beneath me, I allowed Caleb to pull me back to my feet.
“What happened to you?” Caleb asked.
“I don’t know.” I glanced around, the voices still playing in a loop in my head, urgent and panicked, in a language I didn’t understand. But from their tone, I knew it was a command. They wanted me to do something.
“It’s this way.” I stumbled across the plain, in a more western direction, where the earth sloped into a steep skyward curve.
Following the sound like I followed the link, I allowed myself to be tugged by the crescendo of voices.
It was almost unbearable. I couldn’t think around it, and still they spoke, words that were guttural and melodic at the same time; strange sounds overlapping in different pitches with one another.
“Don’t you think it’s weird you’re hearing things I’m not?” Caleb called from behind me. “That it might be a trick?”
“A trick from who?” I was breathless as I climbed the hill, nearing the top.
“I don’t know, maybe this evil fucking place we’re in?” Caleb grunted as he trailed after me.
I shook my head as the voices continued fervently, like they were trying to tell me something.
At the peak, the plain stretched out in uninhibited view. And visible with it was a cave-like structure. It was as wide as it was tall and seemed to be made of many small stones, all welded together to form a large circle.
“There it is,” I said, relief wending through me as I slid down the slope. Scuffling sounded behind me from Caleb.
“What does it mean?” I asked Calendula as I strode toward the cave. The very ground thrummed as I neared it. I recognized it for what it was: energy, unlike anything I had ever felt before. Radiating from within the monolith was death. Glacial, ruthless death.
I repeated the chant; the words being yelled at me.
Her face went pale gray. She whispered, “Keep away. And never return.”
“That’s encouraging,” Caleb muttered.
A large black mouth gaped open like it wanted to devour us. Another salt line ringed the base of the cave, fencing it off.
“Fuck.” Caleb’s eyes tracked the salt. “They really don’t want the fae getting out.”
A shiver skittered down my spine. No one would save us. If we died here, Kilian would not even be able to cross into Cosanus to retrieve our bodies.
“We should go back,” Caleb said, his voice wavering. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
I did too. A gut-gnawing, sinking feeling that nothing good was going to come of entering this cave.
The voices… I’d thought they were commanding me toward the cave. But they were warning me away. They went silent now, as if they had done their job and now waited for me to make my own decision.
I looked at my watch, chewing on my lip. “We still have time.”
“Gods above, of all the people I had to get paired with for this challenge, I had to get the one who wants to go into the scary cave filled with ancient monsters,” Caleb complained.
“You don’t have to come,” I snapped.
“If you die in there, I’ll have to explain how it happened to your terrifying instructor, and then he’ll probably kill me anyway,” he grouched. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Caleb reached into his pocket and drew out a small globe. It glowed a bright silver. “Orblight,” he explained. “I nicked it from one of the sconces in Valhan House.”
I was reluctantly impressed. How clever for someone who’d insisted on the easiest solution for Septimus’ alphabet riddle.
I unsheathed the dagger Umma had gifted me so long ago.
It brought me a small comfort. Rubbing my thumb across the ruby hilt, I thought of home.
Home, which no longer felt like Serila, but like a girl with cornsilk hair and fierce loyalty, a soft boy who loved his brother, and a pair of silver eyes that haunted me.
I stepped across the boundary. Calendula’s wings fluttered, timed perfectly with my own racing heart.
The light from the orb illuminated the rocks around us and the parched ground ahead, casting everything in an incandescent sheen.
Goosebumps prickled my skin as new shadows were thrown into light, each step bringing us closer to the unknown.
We followed the curve of the wall until the stones sliced open, revealing a cavernous space.
What was set inside turned my saliva to sawdust.
In the glow of the orblight, a long banquet table swam into view. Food, which had long since rotted and turned to powder, littered the surface of the table. And among it, discolored in the light, was bone.