She shut her eyes. If she looked at him right now, if she saw the fire, she wouldn’t be able to block out the memories. They would consume her. Still, his voice was a comfort, something familiar to keep her grounded where she was. Not back there, on that day. But here, now, on a wooded hill in Kavora, not far from Tamaya Takhar’s house. A man was dying, and his friends wanted her to save him.
“Kes,” Lucian whispered. “It’s all right. You’re safe. Amar is dying, but we might be able to help him. I can walk you through it. You can give him a chance.”
“What if I make things worse?”
“They can’t get any worse,” Lucian said.
“Please try,” Mitul urged.
She wanted to. A small, frail part of her, locked away deep down in the dark, wanted nothing more than to help him, to use her magic and save his life. The stronger part of her was sick at the idea.
“I can’t.”
Saya glared up at her, the muscles in her neck and shoulders taut as she shouted. “What’s wrong with you? He’s going to die, and you’re going to stand there and—”
“Enough!” Lucian roared back, growing as big as a wolf and swooping down in front of Saya. She jerked back, eyes wide. Lucian shrunk back down to his usual apple-sized ball of flame and spoke more gently. “If she says she can’t do it, she can’t do it. I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Mitul said quietly. He pulled his hands away from Amar’s wound. “He’s gone.”
The night pressed in on Kesari, threatening to strangle her. Amar was dead, and she had done nothing to stop it. She pulled down the sleeves of her coat—Rajiv’s coat—and wrapped it a little tighter around herself. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s done now.” Mitul wiped his bloody hands on the grass and stood up. His eyes were wet, but no tears fell. “How much farther did you say it was to Tamaya’s house?”
Kesari exchanged a glance with Lucian. Mitul’s voice was weary, his expression tense, but aside from that, he was almost calm. Saya didn’t seem particularly distressed, either. She looked at Kesari as if waiting expectantly for her answer. They’d just lost a friend, but already they seemed eager to move on.
Kesari hesitated. “Shouldn’t we…take a moment, or something?”
Mitul looked at Saya. “If we can get him to Tamaya’s house before he revives, she can see for herself. That might be helpful.”
“It would,” the warrior agreed.
“I’m sorry,” Lucian interjected. “What do you mean, before he revives?”
Mitul took a deep breath and looked at Saya again, but she only shrugged. “That’s what we wanted to see Tamaya about,” he said. “Amar can’t die. Not permanently, at least. He always comes back.”
“Back to life?” Lucian exclaimed.
Mitul nodded. “I know it sounds absurd, but I’ve seen it twice before this. He’s dead now, but he won’t be for long.”
“He might as well be,” Saya said bitterly. “If everything else you’ve told me is true, he won’t be the same when he comes back. He won’t remember anything.”
Mitul winced at this, casting a forlorn look at Amar’s body for the briefest moment before composing his features once more. “We’ve been through that before,” he said softly. “We’ll get through it again.”
“So you’ve never seen this phenomenon yourself, then?” Lucian asked Saya. “Yet you believe it?”
“I do. A man I know saw it once, years ago. A man I trust.”
Lucian drew closer to Kesari’s ear. His glowing heat warmed her cheek as he whispered. “They’re out of their minds. They have to be. We should leave before they turn their madness on us.”
“What if they’re telling the truth?” Kesari hissed back.
“It’s not possible. Even the most powerful magic has limits, and death is one of them.”
“It’s ludicrous,” Mitul said, attempting to wipe the blood off his hands in the grass. “Trust me, I know. You’re giving us the same looks I’ve seen on the faces of every Tarja we’ve told about this. But I don’t need you to believe me. I only need you to take us to Tamaya. That was our bargain, wasn’t it?”
He made a fair point. Kesari looked at Lucian.
“I don’t like this,” he murmured.
She turned back to Mitul. “I’ll take you. What are we going to do about him?”
“I’ll carry him." He nodded to Saya. They both knelt back down, and Saya helped Mitul hoist Amar’s body over his shoulders. His thin legs shook as he rose, but then he stood tall and strong. A dark stain was already spreading over his shoulders as Amar’s blood seeped into his clothes. “Lead the way.”
They set off through the forest. The undergrowth was thin and the trees were spread out in this part of the woods, so it wasn’t a difficult trek. Mitul walked next to Kesari much of the way with Saya taking the rear again, watching their backs for any sign of their attacker’s return.
Amar’s dangling arms flopped haphazardly against Mitul’s body. Kesari shook her head and whispered to Lucian in Atrean, not wanting to offend her companions in case they could still hear her. “This is all a little morbid, isn’t it? It seems disrespectful.”
“Maybe, but we’re too far into this madness to turn back now.” Below the two empty black spaces that formed his eyes, a wide, jagged shape split open like a fanged mouth—his version of a smile. “Think of it this way. Whether they’re telling the truth or their minds are completely addled, Tamaya won’t be able to deny that this is all very interesting.” The smile faded, and in a softer voice, he said, “You’ll finally get your answers.”
Answers he didn’t necessarily want her to have, despite spending the last two years seeking them with her. “Lucian…”
“It’s all right, Kes. I lived my life. I won’t take away your freedom to live yours however you see fit.”
Mitul hurried a few paces to catch up with them, breathing heavily and struggling under the weight of Amar’s corpse. It was amazing he’d managed to carry him so far already without complaint. They were roughly the same height, but Mitul was thin and lanky while Amar had a more muscular physique. He had to be heavy.
“Are we close?” he huffed.
Kesari pointed to a bulky shadow through the trees ahead. “That’s her house.”
Tamaya’s home was a squat, mud brick structure with a thatched roof. A few chickens stirred and clucked at their approach, and Kesari motioned for the others to tread carefully past the garden. At the door, she rang the heavy iron bell hanging from an exterior wall.
They waited, but there was no answer. Kesari rang the bell again.
“Are you sure she’s even home?” Mitul asked, shifting Amar’s weight. A few drops of blood hit the dirt at his feet.
“She’s home,” Kesari said, ringing the bell more forcefully now. “She’s always home.”
And there it was. A faint light seeped through the underside of the door, which was flung open to crash against the wall a moment later. Behind it stood Tamaya Takhar. She stared up at them all with small dark eyes and a drooping frown. Her gray hair was piled on top of her head in a big, round bun, the top of which barely reached Kesari’s nose. Her skin was as dark and as creviced as the bark of a teak tree, and in one withered hand, she balanced a magical orb of pale, yellow light.
She raised the light higher to examine her visitors’ faces. Her eyes immediately found Kesari’s, and she made a guttural sound like she was trying to dislodge something unpleasant. “You again! Won’t you let an old woman have some peace and quiet?”
“I’m sorry to disturb you.” Kesari touched her palms together in front of her and made a slight bow. “I wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t important.”
“That’s what you say every time,” the Tarja grumbled. “Well, out with it then. What kind of trouble have you brought me now?”
“Something interesting,” Lucian said. He floated over to illuminate Mitul, Amar, and Saya.
Tamaya’s lips turned down lower
as she peered between their faces. Her gaze lingered on Amar’s body for a moment before darting back to Kesari. “I’ve seen plenty of corpses, girl, and I don’t much like the idea of one bleeding all over my doorstep. You have tested my patience for weeks now. I’m finished! If I ever see you here again—”
Kesari thrust out her hand to stop the door from closing. “Wait! Please, hear me out. None of the people I brought here before were half as interesting as this group is. You said you wanted something that wouldn’t be a waste of your skills. If what they’re saying is true, then this is something worthy of your time.”
Tamaya crossed her arms, her toe tapping impatiently, but she said nothing.
“Just listen to what they have to say,” Kesari pleaded. “If I’m wrong, I swear you’ll never hear from me again.”
Tamaya’s eyes narrowed, and for a few moments, her jaw moved back and forth like she was chewing on something. She pointed a gnarled finger at Kesari’s face. “I will hold you to your word, girl. You understand?”
“Of course.”
“Bring them inside, then.”
She held the door open, and Kesari stepped through, followed closely by the others. Tamaya jerked a nod to a room on the left, and inside, they found an empty bedroll spread out on the floor. “You can lay him there,” she said.
Saya helped Mitul maneuver Amar’s body onto the bedroll. Kesari’s stomach churned at the sight of his wound and the exposed parts beneath it. She took deep breaths through her mouth to avoid the iron scent of blood.
Tamaya approached the bed with grim curiosity, shaking her head. Her thin fingers searched for a pulse at Amar’s neck, then again at his wrist. She muttered something to herself before turning to face Kesari and the others. “Now that I’ve invited a corpse into my house in the middle of the night, would someone care to explain what all this is about?”
Tamaya fixed her gaze on Kesari, and Mitul looked at Saya, who stared back at him with a shrug. Kesari shifted her eyes to the floor before anyone could start demanding answers from her.
Mitul cleared his throat. “Well, to start with, he’s not exactly a corpse.”
Tamaya raised an eyebrow. “I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies in my time. Seen a lot of nearly dead bodies, too. There’s a difference. Your friend here is most certainly dead.”
Mitul nodded. “For now. But I’ve seen him die three times now. He always comes back to life the next morning, but when he does, he can’t remember anything from before he died. That’s why we came to see you. We want to know what’s happening to him.”
“And you thought I’d find this more convincing, is that it?” She gestured to Amar’s body.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” Mitul said. “I’m truly sorry for the inconvenience, and the mess. We were attacked on the way here. But if you can wait until morning, you’ll see for yourself.”
Tamaya looked at Saya. “And you—you’ve seen this as well?”
“No,” she said. “But I know Mitul to be an honest man. I believe him.”
The old Tarja grunted and began to mutter under her breath, casting dubious looks at all of them. After a short pause, she sighed. “I’m going to bed. Wake me up when he’s alive again.” She shuffled past Kesari and Lucian on her way to the door.
“You believe them?” Lucian asked with a hint of amusement in his voice.
Tamaya’s hunched shoulders shifted forward in a shrug. “No magic I know of can bring back the dead, but I learned long ago not to assume anything’s impossible. Besides, what’s the harm in waiting to see how this plays out?” She shot a glance back at Mitul. “True or not, I can see he believes what he’s saying. Which means either he’s right, or he’s gone mad. Either way, this is the most intriguing riddle I’ve been faced with in a long while.”
Kesari’s heart leaped. “Does that mean you’ll answer my questions?”
“I suppose it does,” Tamaya muttered. “But not now. Even an old woman needs her beauty sleep.” She swept aside the colorful woven cloth hanging in the doorway and left the room.
“What now?” Lucian asked, floating down a little lower to hover at Kesari’s shoulder.
She leaned against the wall with her hands behind her back. “Now, I suppose we wait.”
6
Aleida
With each of the horse’s footfalls, the sharp point of the arrow embedded in Aleida’s lower back seemed to be digging itself deeper, one hair’s breadth at a time. Her fingers itched to pull it out, but that would only worsen the bleeding, and she couldn’t stop to deal with her injuries yet—not until she was far away from that Sularan warrior and any chance of being pursued.
What she really needed was more strength and less pain. Magic could help with that. She drew in altma from her surroundings—the trees, the grass, any living energy source she could sense—and channeled it through her entire body. The effect was minuscule. Maybe she’d finally reached her limits. Maybe her emotions were in too much turmoil to command her magic after coming so close to death. Breathing techniques and calming meditations could sometimes be useful in reestablishing control, but not so much with an arrow in her back and a wide, raw gash across her thigh. Or maybe she was simply too feeble-minded to focus, in this condition.
She tried again, but the altma she did manage to channel was weak and quickly slipped from her grasp. She tilted her head back and roared into the starry sky above.
“Stop here,” Valkyra said.
They were only halfway back down the trail they’d followed into the hills. “We should keep going.”
“You can’t keep going like this. I doubt they’ll pursue us this far on foot. We should be safe enough.”
She was probably right, and stopping to rest and heal would be a welcome respite. Aleida pulled back on the reins. A new wave of pain shot up into her shoulder blades as the arrow in her back shifted. Skies be damned, she just wanted to get the thing out.
With a cry, she forced her leg over the saddle and slid clumsily from her horse’s back. Despite her best efforts not to lean on her injured leg, it still burned and oozed fresh blood when she put the slightest pressure on it. She stumbled forward and barely managed to catch herself on her hands when she hit the ground.
“We need to get that arrow out before we can heal your injuries,” Valkyra said, hopping off her shoulder. “You won’t be able to get a good angle to pull it straight out. It might be better if I do it.”
Aleida grit her teeth and dug her fingers deep into the grass and the cool dirt beneath. “Do it.”
Valkyra went around to Aleida’s back, then stretched up and placed her tiny, clawed forelegs on either side of the shaft. There was a tight pressure around the wound as she pushed against Aleida’s body to give herself more leverage, then an intense pain and a slow squelching noise as the arrowhead came free. Aleida sucked in and bit down on the insides of her cheeks to stifle a scream.
Valkyra fluttered to rest in front of her with the arrow in her jaws. Red blood smeared across the pristine white fur at her muzzle and feet. She dropped the projectile onto the ground. “We need to start by mending the tissue underneath. Do you think you can do that?”
Aleida started to nod, but stopped herself and shrugged instead. Healing oneself was said to be twice as difficult as healing someone else, and healing magic had never been one of her strengths. She could channel altma with a force that rivaled some of the best Tarja soldiers in the Kavoran army, but healing required a different kind of precision. Valkyra had once said it hadn’t been a great skill for her, either, when she was alive. That partially explained why it was difficult for Aleida, even under the best of circumstances. Those Bonded to the spirit of a dead Tarja were often limited by the same skills—or lack thereof—that person had once possessed in life.
Could she heal herself now, in this condition? She had no choice but to try.
She reached around and gingerly touched the wound in her back. It didn’t feel so bad on the surface, but ther
e was deeper damage underneath. She closed her eyes and tried to seek out the underlying injury with her magic, but there was nothing, no sensation at all. It was as if all her power had abandoned her, leaving her empty. She focused on her connection with Valkyra, who served as a bridge between her abilities and the energy she channeled. Even that didn’t seem to help.
“I can’t do it.”
“You need to calm your mind,” Valkyra instructed.
“I am calm!” She tried again, but still felt nothing.
“If that were true, my dear, you wouldn’t be struggling to channel your altma now. Take a breath. The danger is past. There’s nothing left to fear.”
“I’m not afraid,” Aleida growled.
“What, then? Something is distracting you.”
“Of course something’s distracting me. This hurts!” Her eyes burned, but she blinked away the tears before they could fall.
Valkyra dipped her head in a nod. “That’s good. Acknowledge it. We don’t fight our pain. We don’t ignore our emotions. But we don’t let them overpower us, either. We acknowledge them, accept them, and stay in control.”
Aleida fought the urge to strangle the dragon. How easy it must be for her to spout off lessons about control when she wasn’t the one suffering. She’d been dead long enough that she probably couldn’t even remember what physical pain felt like anymore.
“You’re angry,” Valkyra observed, meeting Aleida’s glare with her usual serene repose. “You’re angry at me, and you’re angry because we didn’t succeed tonight.”
“We almost had him,” Aleida hissed. “Damn it all, I even managed to kill him. If I’d killed the Sularan, too, we could have taken him, and this would all be over. We could have been on our way back to Tyrus right now. But I failed. Again.”
“They were more prepared for us after our last fight, and we never accounted for the Tarja who was with them today.”
“I know, but Tyrus is…” An image of her brother’s too-thin legs and twisted posture flashed through her mind. She swallowed the lump that rose in her throat. Tyrus was dying. She couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud.
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