5. Chapter 5
Chapter 5
T hey left before dawn.
Isabel had knocked on Karim’s door with sleep still dragging at her eyes, a light pack strapped to her back. They needed to get an early start. It was going to be a grueling, six-day journey to the citadel, even with the help of Cassandra’s extensive network.
Karim had emerged from his room looking just as tired as she felt. He’d clearly taken a bath and cleaned the grime from his face and hair. The stolen coat was gone, replaced with a well-fitting leather tunic that punctuated his dark hair and bronze skin. His face was still purple and bruised, but the swelling had gone down considerably, and he’d shaved the ragged beard. She’d blinked. She hadn’t thought very hard about what he looked like before, but with the grime cleaned from his face, wearing clothes that fit him well, he was...better looking than she’d expected.
“Are you ready?” she’d asked a little too curtly, surveying the pack he’d slung over his back, outfitted, as she’d been, by Cassandra.
“I’d have preferred to sleep for a few more days,” he said. “But sure.”
Isabel would have too, but she couldn’t let him know that. “There will be plenty of time for you to sleep when you’re dead.”
“I would be dead by now if it weren’t for you.”
She arched a brow at him. “Well, you will be dead soon if we don’t get moving.”
He followed her through the quiet halls of the pre-dawn palace and into the empty streets of the Rendran capital. Most of the inhabitants hadn’t woken up yet, and only a few carts trundled through the cobblestone streets, lanterns of enchanted orb fire hung on poles above their seats. A few people hurried through the alleys, some with packs slung over their backs, others leading animals or swigging from a final pint of ale. Isabel knew the streets would be bustling before long as the sun pushed its way over the horizon, full of hawkers shouting their wares, mothers with their children going to market, and dogs yapping at people’s heels .
When Isabel had first arrived in the capital four years earlier—a fresh farm girl from the north—she had been at once overwhelmed and delighted by the frenzy of the city. It was a place that was easy to disappear into, a place where one could become anonymous, forgotten, left to do as they pleased. A place where she could use her magic without people giving her suspicious glares and whispering about dealings with darkness.
It was also the place that had taken everything from her.
The densely gathered villas of the city gave way to smaller, less opulent structures, and then those faded into clay-roof houses with spacious gardens. The fields beyond that were green with cold-weather crops—cabbage, lettuce, and rutabaga pushing their way through the damp earth.
Isabel’s body ached from the ordeal the day before, and she could tell Karim was just as exhausted. After weeks locked up in a tiny cell with minimal food, he was weak. Guilt tugged at her chest. Maybe she should have let him rest for another day or two.
They came to a squat stable at the outskirts of the city, and Isabel showed the sign of the queen’s shadow to the proprietor. A few minutes later they were outfitted with a pair of brown mares, one with a white diamond on her forehead, and the other with a white muzzle. Isabel pulled herself onto the one with the white muzzle.
“You can ride, right?” she asked Karim.
“Of course,” he said curtly. “I was in the military. Cavalry.” He held out his hand for the horse to sniff, then patted her neck, his fingers slow and sure. The horse’s ears flicked back in interest, and then she turned and nuzzled Karim’s hand with her nose.
Karim smiled. It was the first genuine smile she’d seen from him, untinged by bitterness, since this whole sorry business had started.
She hardly knew anything about him, she realized, watching as he moved around to the horse’s side and expertly pulled himself into the saddle. What had his life had been like back in Ineti—before his family’s fall from grace, before he’d been sent on Amankar’s doomed mission to Medira?
Karim looked up at her then, his eyes bright, and she jerked her gaze away. She didn’t need to be thinking thoughts like that. It was enough to know that he was human, that he deserved some semblance of respect—even if he were a complicated sort of traitor.
“I don’t suppose you could try that trick with your magic again and just carry us where we need to go,” Karim said dryly as they guided their horses out into the road .
“I don’t suppose you could find your own way to the citadel to save me the trouble,” Isabel returned. “I’m not going to risk my hide just to save you from a few measly miles of travel.”
Karim’s lips twitched. “I suppose I’ll learn to endure.”
“You better,” she said as she nudged her horse into a canter.
He was right that he could ride. He kept his seat as if he were part of the horse, his hands sure on the reins, whereas Isabel, who had ridden mostly plodding farm horses until she’d started working for Cassandra, sat like a sack of potatoes next to him.
They followed the main road south until the farm fields gave way to thickening rows of trees, then turned along a smaller lane to the southwest as the forest thickened, trees sprouting almost impossibly high into the crisp autumn air. They stopped a few times to eat, to stretch, and to water their horses, and each time, Isabel couldn’t help but watch the quiet wood around them for signs of movement. Just because nothing unusual had happened so far didn’t mean they were safe.
“Gustav is good, but he’s not that good,” Karim said when she glanced over her shoulder for the fiftieth time that afternoon. “Chanting is a precise business. They would have to locate us first and then understand how to open a door to where we are. And we’ve been constantly on the move. I’d say we have at least a few days’ lead time.”
Somehow, that didn’t make Isabel feel any better.
Each day they moved, the snow-capped mountains in the south—their destination—inched a little closer. There, on a rocky cliffside that wasn’t marked on any map, was the old citadel, secured by wards that kept those who had no business there from finding it.
At night, they stumbled, exhausted and bone-weary, into one roadside inn or safe house or another, owned by one of Cassandra’s contacts.
“We’ll have to leave our horses here,” Isabel said to Karim the evening of the third night as they dismounted in front of a small inn near the foot of the mountains. “The path climbs sharply from here—at least where we’re going.”
The tavern was small but glowing with light. Isabel had met Marta, the owner, a few times. She was a round, smiling woman with two teenage sons, but Isabel knew there was a will of iron beneath her soft exterior. She had worked for Andre, the queen’s shadow before Cassandra, and had proven her loyalty to the crown more than once.
“How many rooms?” Marta asked when Isabel showed her the sign of the queen’s shadow, her eyes darting curiously between Isabel and Karim .
“Two, please,” Isabel said a little too quickly, her cheeks flooding with heat. Karim snorted beside her as Marta raised a suggestive brow at them.
That night, Isabel fell onto the straw tick bed (in her own room) and slept like the dead.
Karim was already up and shoveling down a bowl of grits and bacon when Isabel came down the next morning.
“Here,” he said, tossing a leather object in her direction. Isabel caught it and held it up. It was a sheath for a dagger, the black leather marked and worn, and she could feel the wards twining through it—safety, strength, precision, alertness.
She gaped at him. “When did you have the time to make this?”
“Last night.” His eyes flashed with mischief. “And since I had my own room, I had the time.”
She gave him an indignant look. Her stomach clenched as she looked at the sheath. “I can’t take this, Karim. You’ll need it, probably more than I do.”
“Oh, I have warded pieces of my own, don’t worry about that.” He patted the belt around his waist with its knives. “But since you have my dagger—I figured it needed a home.”
She swallowed, her fingers curling around the sheath. It was an incredible piece of work. Despite his blasé demeanor, this wasn’t something he had just tossed together. He was incredibly skilled. She had known that already, but seeing this, knowing he had spent so much time and energy for her —her heart clenched.
“Thank you,” she said roughly, hating the wobble in her voice. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had done something so specifically for her. Not since her first days in the Rendran capital.
A cold wind was blowing in from the south when they set out, and Isabel pulled the deep hood of her cloak over her head to stave it off. She watched quietly as Karim said goodbye to his horse, running his fingers gently along the mare’s flank.
“Let’s go,” he said, giving the mare a final pat.
The way was flat at first, winding into the trees, but steepened sharply. Isabel could feel it in her legs as the day wore on. Karim was getting slower, and she tried not to think of the weeks he’d spent in the darkness of the Mediran dungeon. He’d gotten stronger even in the days they’d been traveling, but she knew his body hadn’t had enough time to heal.
The path flattened out again around midday as they reached the top of a rise. The trees were thick and dark around them, and they stopped by a narrow stream, fed by the snowmelt from the mountains higher up. Isabel pulled her pack off and rolled her shoulders to release the tension that had built there.
Karim removed his water skin from his pack, then wordlessly reached for hers, filling both before handing hers back. As Isabel took a long swig, she realized how used to him she’d gotten in the past few days. How much of a rhythm they’d fallen into. A sinking feeling gathered in her gut as she straightened. She couldn’t afford to think like that. She had been alone for the last three years—she couldn’t get used to having another person around. This camaraderie that was building between them wouldn’t last. Couldn’t last.
Karim eased his pack back on, then stilled beside her, his brows drawn together as he peered downstream.
A flock of blackbirds startled into the air, and Isabel’s hands dropped to her sides as she watched them. The back of her neck prickled, and a rolling sense of dread washed over her.
Karim frowned. “Something doesn’t feel right about—”
A flash seared the riverbed, like a bolt of lightning striking too close, and the acrid scent of sulfur rent the air. Isabel dropped to the ground, throwing one hand over her head, while the other yanked Karim’s knife out of her belt. The wards reacted, threading up her arm in a hiss of power until her body was tingling with warmth.
There was a shout, followed by words Isabel didn’t understand. Her body went cold. She was hearing Inetian. How had Gustav’s men found them?
Six men materialized out of the brush along the river, dressed in grays and greens and browns, swords glinting in the sunlight that filtered through the trees. Karim stood at her back now, his own daggers in his hands, and she could sense the coiled tension radiating from him. She desperately tried to gather shadow around them, but even with the help of the wards in the knife and its sheath, the shadows were too thin, too fragile in the daylight to do much more than flicker around her ankles before dissipating all together.
“I see you’re still doing Gustav’s dirty work, Paarsav,” Karim said from behind her.
The man closest to them pressed his lips together, and Isabel could see his grip on the short sword in his hand tighten. He was broad-shouldered, with golden brown skin and a wicked-looking scar that traveled from his left temple and across his cheek. He was maybe twenty years older than Isabel, but there was a hollowness to his cheeks that spoke of his weeks in the Mediran prison .
“Just come with us, Karim,” the man said tiredly. “You should have left when the doors first opened in the prison. Instead, we’ve had to spend precious time and energy searching for you.”
Karim tensed. “You shouldn’t have bothered.”
“You know we need you. You have abilities none of us could ever fathom, even if we spent years learning what Gustav had to teach us.”
Isabel remembered the way Karim’s wards had twined above them in the forest after they’d escaped the Mediran prison. She could feel the strength and surety of the wards he’d woven into the knife now in her hand. She had no trouble believing that Karim was as powerful as this man claimed, even if Karim downplayed it himself.
“I’m sure Gustav would be more than happy to use me in any way he can,” Karim said sarcastically.
Paarsav’s eyes narrowed. “So, you’re truly deserting your countrymen when we have nothing.”
“I’m not deserting you!” Isabel could feel the fury radiating from him. “You were there , Paarsav. You saw what happened to Akil. Gustav is using you. He’s using us all. He needs chanters to help him open doors. And if you mess up—he’s not coming to save you, not from a rift. ”
“He was the only one willing to do anything about us rotting away in that abysmal prison,” an angular man to Paarsav’s right spat.
“And that suddenly makes what he’s trying to do right and just?” Karim drawled. “I know none of you are stupid. If Gustav gets his hands on those texts of old magic, if he amasses enough power to break through into shadow, the entire world will end up like what we sat in the cave—shattered and broken, the edges between earth and shadow blurring. No one will be safe, least of all you.”
Paarsav’s eyes flashed dangerously. “Don’t tell me you’re innocent of all this, Saad. There’s no way you made it this far so quickly without opening doors of your own.”
“Believe what you want,” Karim said. “But I’m done with Gustav. I’m done with all this.”
Paarsav took a step forward. “And where are you going to go? We can protect you. Help you.” His mouth twisted bitterly. “Believe me, I understand exactly the predicament you’re in. We are all in it too. No land to go back to. Wanted in every corner of the world. We’re trying to fix that. Trying to create a space for ourselves.”
“And doing an abysmal job of it,” Karim said.
“Don’t waste any more time talking with a traitor like him,” the angular man to Paarsav’s right spat.
Traitor? Isabel almost snorted .
“Just kill him now. Be done with it. This world would be far better off without him in it.”
Isabel took a step forward. “You’ll have to get through me first,” she snarled.
The angular man’s eyes flicked to her, then traveled down her body in a way that made her want to gouge his eyes out. “Who’s the girl?”
“That’s none of your business, Ankar,” Karim said sharply.
A sly smile spread across Ankar’s face, and he said something in Inetian that made Karim bark what Isabel was certain was an obscenity.
“Give it a rest, Ankar.” Paarsav cast a tired glance at the man beside him. “I’m giving you one more chance, Saad. Come with us willingly, and there will be no consequences. You’re our brother. You belong with us after all we’ve been through.”
“Can’t you see that none of it matters?” Karim’s voice took on a note of desperation. “We were all being used—by Sethos, by Gustav, by everyone . You’re better than this! There is another way.”
“Maybe for you,” Paarsav said. “But not for us.”
The earth rumbled beneath their feet as the pair of men on the other side of the stream began to chant. Their words twined in the air, crackling with power and magic and meaning.
Ankar charged, his dagger raised, while Paarsav darted forward. Isabel shifted, ready to throw herself to the side and let Ankar’s momentum knock him off balance. They could take two of them, maybe three, but not six.
“Isabel!” Karim shouted, and suddenly she felt his fingers wrapped around hers, power crackling in his touch. “Pull your shadow, now. ”
Isabel did as he asked. Shadow still lingered from when she’d tried pulling it earlier. Before, it had been an intangible thing, somewhere out of her reach, but now, it thundered around her, stripping away from the forest floor and the branches of the trees and the mossy trunks. Power and shadow roared through her limbs until she thought she might burst; it wrapped around them like a torrent, as powerful as the moon and the wind and the night. She let out an involuntary howl at the intensity of it, wanting it all to blow away, for the pressure building in her head and her hands and her arms to release.
And suddenly it did, like an explosion, and shadow howled and raged into the forest, wrapping around the men as they tried to flee, their screams disappearing into the raging black cacophony.
“ Move !” Karim shouted .
And then they were running, power shifting and crackling where their hands twined together, and Isabel had never felt more alive, more full of energy and life and the will to live. The forest flew by them in a flash of silver trunks and craggy branches and twisted needles. All at once she could see a flock of deer skittering out of their path and the birds in the trees fluttering up into the canopy and the salmon shuttling their way through the icy streams of the mountain heights. For a moment, she wanted to know what it was like to fly, to become a bird and stretch out above the mountains so that everything looked tiny and insignificant below, the petty problems of nations and humans fading away at the majesty of it all.
But Karim was holding her hand, and she heard him shout, “Isabel, stop!” and she realized they had to stop, to let this power go, to dissipate. They were brightness and night at once, and it couldn’t continue like this forever. So, she stopped.
They both collapsed in a heap on the forest floor. A sharp wind rustled the thick canopy of pines above them. Her body was heavy—so, impossibly heavy. All she wanted to do was crumple into a ball and sleep until the end of time.
Karim was on his knees beside her, looking as stunned as she felt .
“I did it again,” she managed weakly. Her vision was swimming. She wanted to sleep. Needed to sleep.
Karim shook his head, his eyes wide and sparkling with more energy than she thought she would ever have again. “That wasn’t you,” he said. “That was us. Both of us. Together.”
“What?” Isabel slurred as the forest swayed around her.
“Our magic,” Karim said. “I didn’t understand it when it happened before, but something about the way our magics collide— this happens.”
“Oh,” she said, hardly able to comprehend what he was saying. So, it wasn’t her. It was them...together. And it was...madness. She had never heard of magic of that enormity being worked, not since the time of the old mages.
She laid her head on the ground, despite the chill. “I think . . . I’m going . . . to sleep for a while,” she said.
She thought she heard Karim say something, but then her head was swimming, and she drifted out into darkness over a great wide sea. The last thing she remembered was a pair of strong arms wrapping around her, and a voice whispering, “I’ve got you, Isabel,” before everything went dark.