by JA Andrews
The bundle she carried gave an irritated, tiny grunt and Will pulled his hand off his knife. “Where’s my sister?”
Lilit stepped into the room, stopping underneath the empty sword pegs. Hal took a step back away from her, his hands held out to the side, unthreatening. Sora stood her ground, letting her knife fall to her side, but not putting it away.
“I had expected you two to return as Hal’s prisoners.” Lilit’s eyes were cold and flat. “Not as his companions, sneaking into my house like thieves.”
“We were his prisoners briefly,” Sora said when Hal didn’t answer. “And then he was ours.”
“He wasn’t our prisoner,” Will said. “He was merely restrained momentarily so we could make our escape.”
“And then your husband sent the dragon,” Hal said, “and I would have been a charred lump on the mountainside if they hadn’t saved me.”
“That’s very touching,” Lilit said. “Which part of that compelled you to show my husband’s enemies the hidden entrance that leads into our very home?”
Hal dropped his hands to his side. “Did you know it was Killien who brought the frost goblins to the clan?”
Lilit stood perfectly still, her eyes fixed on Hal suspiciously.
“It’s true,” Sora said.
Lilit was quiet for a long moment before she breathed out something between a laugh and a curse. “He called an army of goblins.”
“Where’s my sister?” Will asked again.
Lilit shifted to face him, bouncing the baby in her arms and considering him, distaste mingling with frustration on her face. “I know you were there, with Sora in the tent. The night Sevien was born. I remember your words.” Her eyes closed. “But the Flame of the Morrow was not like the grass…She reached down into the Sweep…and found the strength to fight on.” She opened her eyes. “But it wasn’t the Sweep that gave me strength that night, was it?”
He considered denying it a moment, then shook his head.
“I felt it come through your hands,” she said.
“Does Killien know?” Sora asked.
Lilit shook her head. “I wasn’t sure it was real.” She looked down at Sevien and blew out a decisive breath. “Killien has left, taking several slaves with him, including Ilsa.”
“Where?” Will asked.
Hal looked up at the empty sword pegs on the wall. “He went to the enclave.” He turned back to Lilit, his face incredulous. “He took the seax, and went without being invited. They’re going to kill him.”
Lilit’s shifted the baby and her head twitched in a nod.
“What’s he going to do? How many men did he take?”
“No one, aside from the slaves. He wouldn’t tell me his plans, but I think he’s going to kill Torch Ohan. It was the Panos who attacked us and betrayed their word.”
“He went alone?” Hal shook his head. “He’s gone mad.”
The baby fussed and she dropped her face down to kiss his head, bouncing him gently. When she looked up, it was at Sora. “Go after him.”
Sora stepped back. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“They’ll kill him.” Lilit turned to Hal. “You have to bring him back.”
“He’s not going to listen to us,” Hal said.
“If he kills Ohan at the enclave, they’ll execute him. If he dies we have no strong choice for a Torch. The clan will be overrun. And I—” Her voice caught and her hand tightened on Sevien’s blanket. “He can’t die.”
“He’s impossible to stop once he sets his mind to something,” Hal said.
“Then tie him up and drag him home.” Lilit’s words cut through the room. She spun toward Will, the coldness of her face cracking with desperation. “You saved my life when you had no reason to. And you have no reason to save Killien now, but stop my husband from getting himself killed and I promise you, you will have your sister and your freedom.”
“Why did he take Ilsa?”
She bounced the baby for a breath before answering. “Because she’s the only leverage he has against you. And he wants to make sure you don’t steal her away.”
Lilit clung to the baby. She was angry, but she was genuinely scared.
“How far is it to the enclave?” Will asked.
Sora blew out a frustrated breath.
“We can’t get in,” Hal objected. “They meet in a cave. The other clans bring legions of stonesteeps and their best warriors, all of it spread across the front of it, guarding the entrance. No foreigner could ever walk into the enclave. And even if the Morrow were invited, they wouldn’t let me into the mountain unless I was with Killien.”
“He left hours ago,” Lilit said, ignoring Hal and walking over to a wallhanging mapping the northern half of the Sweep. She pointed at a single mountain that jutted out into the grass. “The enclave is here. It won’t begin until tomorrow night. Killien will have to ride far south of the Panos and Odo rifts to avoid being seen. He’ll be lucky if he reaches the mountain before the enclave begins.”
“Can we get to him before that?” Will asked Sora.
She scowled at the map. “Maybe.”
“You must,” Lilit said.
Will nodded and Sora shot him a glare before giving Lilit a curt nod and pulling the fabric away from the tunnel opening.
“There is no way this will work,” Hal grumbled, following her.
Will pressed his fist to his chest and gave Lilit a short bow. She gave him only a nod in return.
The wind shoved into the far end of the tunnel as Will climbed the ladder. Rass greeted him, peering eagerly down the hole behind Will.
“She’s not there.”
Her face fell as he explained.
“Can you feel them anywhere nearby?”
Rass shook her head. “This close to dawn there are more people out. Small groups of rangers and hunters are spreading out everywhere.”
The wind shoved past with long gusts and fleeting moments of calm. The moon was so low it grazed the horizon, sending a thousand golden fingers dragging through the fur of the giant creature that was the Sweep.
Sora turned to him. “Was she lying to us?”
Will shook his head.
“Did you read her? Or whatever you call it?”
“I didn’t need to. It’s hard to fake that sort of desperation.”
Sora looked unconvinced.
Hal sat on a low rock, his eyes fixed on the mountain peaks stretching to the west. “If Killien’s going to the enclave, he’s not going with a handful of slaves.”
Sora nodded. “He’s planning to call the frost goblins.”
Will turned to Rass. “Can you tell if there are goblin warrens under the grass?”
“If they’re not too deep.” She knelt down and ran her hand along the new grass that reached a handbreadth out of the ground. “There are some, but they are small and feel…unused. There are none like the night the goblins attacked the clan.”
“Makes sense,” Will said. “He won’t call them until he reaches the enclave.”
“Which means”—Hal pushed himself to his feet—“we need to get to him before he gets there if we have any chance at stopping him. Does anyone have any idea how we’re going to do that?”
“Did Patlon tell you how far west the dwarven tunnels go?” Will asked Sora.
“Not exactly, but I think a good deal farther than we are now.” Sora’s gaze trailed along the Hoarfrost mountains. “I had no idea the dwarves had tunneled so far from Duncave.”
“Neither did I,” Will said. Did they have an equal amount of tunnels stretching along the northern end of Queensland? Burrowing through the Wolfsbane range? Did their tunnels stretch down the Scales to the sea?
“We’re running out of darkness,” Sora pointed out.
The jagged top of the Scales cut a crisp purple line across the indigo sky, and Hal led the way back toward the dwarf tunnels. Will cast out across the Sweep, as though he’d find Ilsa and Killien walking over the next rise instead of hours away
already. He found Hal and Sora, two pillars of energy moving steadily ahead of him, and the bright burst of life that was Rass, gamboling through the endless carpet of vitalle made by the spring grass. There were bright bits of energy from small animals scurrying across the plains and some bird soaring off to the south, but no other people.
The sky over the Scales glowed a serene blue by the time they reached the boulders at the dwarves’ tunnel. Will peered at the dark lumps of rock, none of which looked like the entrance. Patlon called to them from off to the right and they wound their way to the tunnel entry. The pale sky above them was empty of any little hawk-shaped specks. Will cast out, and even though he found nothing, he lingered an extra moment before squeezing his way back into the small room.
He sank into a chair at the table while Patlon closed the entrance. The wind whistled through with a final, loud protest before it swung shut and the mountain closed around him like a shield against the vulnerability of the Sweep.
Will dropped his head into his hands. Everything was so much worse than it had been a few hours ago. The room around him was silent until Hal explained what had happened to Alaric, Evangeline, and the dwarves.
“I know the mountain you’re talking about,” Douglon said. “The tunnels will take us almost that far.”
“Cousin.” Patlon’s tone was hard. “Escaping a dragon was one thing—although I’m not sure even that’s enough for Horgoth to forgive us for bringing outsiders into the tunnels. We can’t take a band of humans and an elf on a tour to the western end.”
“You don’t have to come,” Douglon answered.
“Horgoth,” Patlon answered, speaking slowly and clearly, “is going to kill you.”
“He’s wanted to kill me for years.” There was a rustling of paper and Will saw the edges of a map spread out on the table and Douglon let out a short laugh. “This is one of the first times he’d actually have a reason to. Makes the relationship feel more…complete.”
Patlon let out an irritated breath and dropped onto the bench.
“You with me, cousin?” Douglon asked.
“I’m always with you,” Patlon grumbled.
“Excellent. The route we’ll take will lead us here…”
The sound of Sora, Hal, and the dwarves discussing their route filled the room with echoing murmurs and Will stared at the table through his fingers. Killien was going to attack the enclave with an army of frost goblins. The truth of it tasted sour. He wanted to shake the man. To drag him back south on the Sweep, back to when he was rational. To break through the obsession that drove him to make the Morrow powerful. No, not obsession. Fear. The fear that if he didn’t strengthen the Morrow, the Roven would destroy what he loved. And now he was going to kill hundreds of people, bringing even more violence to the Sweep.
Were all wars started from fear? He turned the idea over in his mind. Perhaps. Fear that sank so deep that it grew up in the forms of anger and greed. Anger that the fear existed, and greed for anything that would stop it.
Was he here on the Sweep because of fear? Will spun his ring slowly, pushing away the immediate refusal of the idea and forcing himself to consider it. He’d first come because he’d been afraid Queensland was in danger. But after that, what had driven him the entire time, if he really looked at it, was fear. The fear that had been planted the night Ilsa was taken, the night Vahe had stepped into his life and murdered and stole. The night when the sense of safety he’d always lived in had shattered.
Alaric leaned over the map and asked the dwarves a question. It was such a familiar sight, Alaric in his Keeper’s robe, poring over some book or map. Whatever he’d asked, Douglon and Patlon both paused and considered the map before nodding. Will rubbed his hands across his face, scrubbing at the exhaustion. That was familiar too, Alaric asking the right question at the right time.
It didn’t take much soul-searching to see that the last year had been fueled by another fear, more recent than Vahe. Will ran his fingers along the cuff of the greyish robe he wore. The fabric was thin and the stitches along the edge were irregular. It was simple, basic fabric with no pressure and no expectations. A small hole had formed next to the seam, and he worried at it with his finger.
The bench shifted next to him as Sora sat down. She glanced down at his hands. He tried to smile at her, but somehow the effort fell flat. He pushed his finger at the hole, widening it a bit.
“I can lend you a needle and thread,” she offered, the hint of a different sort of question in her voice.
Will dropped the cuff from his fingers and ran his hands over his face again. “This isn’t really worth mending, is it?”
She considered him for a long moment, her eyes dark green in the light of the glimmer moss. He spun his ring, pushing aside the edges of the bandages to get at it.
“Do you think you’ll ever go home?” he asked her. “Could you ever go back and just be you? Somehow not tangled up in the expectations they have for you?”
“I don’t know.” She pulled his hand over toward her and began to pick at the knot on his bandage. “You shouldn’t need these anymore.” She picked at the knot in silence for a minute and Will watched her hands. Her nails were rimmed with dirt. Scratches and thin scars nicked her skin.
“Even with the Morrow,” she said quietly, “there were expectations. They saw me partly as a ranger, but mostly as a foreigner.” She worked the knot apart and started to unwrap the bandage. “But they had those expectations because it’s what I gave them. If I wanted the Morrow to see me as more, I would have had to have shown them more.”
She pulled the last layer of bandage off and picked up his hand, tilting his palm toward the glimmer moss. The skin was red and shiny. Sora ran her finger over the edge of where the blister had been and he flinched at the sharpness of the sensation. She raised an eyebrow.
“It’s sensitive.” He opened and closed his hand. There was a jolt when his fingers touched his palm, but not exactly pain.
Sora gave an approving nod and motioned for his other hand. “You’re the first Keeper I’ve ever met, Will. I don’t have any idea what a Keeper is supposed to be like. But I’ve seen you do some astonishing things.”
“You wouldn’t be impressed by pushing heat toward frost goblins, or starting candles with my finger if you’d spent time with other Keepers.”
“I’m not talking about that,” she said, nodding her head toward where Rass sat nestled in a corner, braiding together a wide, complicated band of grass. “It’s more like what you did with Rass.”
Will let out something between a laugh and a snort. “I’m never going to admit to Alaric that I knew her for weeks and thought she was just an odd little girl.” He watched her fiddle with the grass, picking a new piece off the floor next to her where she had a small bundle, and weave it into the rest. “Until she exploded the ground in front of me, I had no idea she was anything else.”
Sora shook her head. “You saw her as a little girl, when everyone else saw her as…nothing. No one else even noticed her.”
“She came and talked to me,” Will objected. “The first afternoon I was in Porreen.”
“And what did you do then?”
“I talked back, Sora,” he said, trying to to hide his exasperation. He shifted, wishing she’d hurry up so he could have his hand back.
Instead, she stopped and looked him in the face. “And you fed her an avak.”
Will drew his hand back in surprise until her grip stopped him. “How do you know that?”
“I told you I was watching you. Your stealthy creeping around had caught my attention.”
“I obviously wasn’t stealthy enough.”
“I hadn’t noticed Rass before that.” She pulled his hand closer and picked at the stubborn knot. “And I notice a lot. You set the avak on the bench and drew her out. Then you talked to her, just like she was anyone else.”
“She was better than everyone else. She was the only safe person in the entire festival.”
“And then somehow you convinced a pratorii to trust you. To walk with you, to eat food she’d never eaten.” The knot came loose and Sora began unwinding the bandage. “To leave the Sweep with you.”
“I didn’t do anything…special to make that happen.”
“I’m not saying you did. I’m saying it happened because of who you are. And it wasn’t just Rass who trusted you. Hal did too.” She pulled the last of the bandage off and lifted his palm to examine it. When she rubbed her finger across his palm, he almost kept it still.
Hal was over by the shelves helping Patlon sort through some supplies.
“He’s never going to believe I didn’t do something to trick him.”
“Maybe not, but I believe you. And I believe you did nothing to trick Killien into trusting you either. Nothing more than seeing him. Seeing past the expectations that everyone else puts on him, past the expectations that he’s built up around himself. And befriending what you saw.”
“You don’t know that.” He spun his ring. It was so satisfying after not being able to reach it for so long.
“Yes I do.” She let go of his hand.
He rubbed his palms together, trying to press out the weird sensitivity. She kept her eyes focused on his hands.
“Because you did it to me too.”
Will’s hands froze and something hitched in his throat. She started gathering up the bandages.
“So, from the little I know about Keepers,” she said, “if I were in charge of choosing them, you’re the sort of person I’d want to pick.” She wrapped the bandages into a bundle.
He reached out and put his hand on hers to still them. Her skin and the jumbled edges of the bandage shot a painfully strong sensation across his hand.
“Come with me to Queensland.”
Chapter Forty
The words shoved their way out before Will could stop them.
Sora’s eyes widened. He squeezed her hand, ignoring the sharp twinge in his palm. “Once we’ve found Ilsa, will you come back with me? Not forever, if you don’t want to, but for a little while. I can’t stay here. I’ll have to take Ilsa home.”