by Amber Argyle
“How could they possibly last for months without something to eat?” Her voice felt rusty, old.
And then she saw it. People … eating each other.
She staggered back in horror, bumping into Denan. He steadied her.
“Why are you showing me this?” she whispered.
“I’m a hard man, Larkin. I must be. I can’t tolerate soldiers who don’t follow orders. I won’t risk you—not when you’re the best hope we’ve had in centuries.”
She wouldn’t sleep for weeks after this. Angry that he’d sprung this on her and flushed with horror, she whirled on him. Something crunched under her foot, the soft snap echoing stillness through her.
He crouched beside her, his eyes fixed on whatever she’d stepped on. Crushed bone. One piece of it stuck out. He gently dug away the dirt and worked it free. He held up a tiny, delicate human jaw. Brittle with age, the outer layer of the bone had thinned into porous gaps, revealing pockets of adult teeth embedded beneath the baby teeth. When she’d stepped back, she must have crushed the rest of the skull.
Fresh horror wrapped clammy hands around Larkin’s throat. This was not some ancient ruin. It was a graveyard. She gasped and backed up, then froze in fear of crushing another skull.
He twisted the jaw in his hands. “Men’s and children’s bones litter the place. I think they locked themselves in here while the women died fighting off mulgars.”
She could easily imagine it. They’d bolted the doors until the steam grew suffocating. The sounds of death and dying outside. Then the silence of morning.
She bolted for the exit, tripped, fell. Her ribs jarred, hurting worse than they had in days.
“Larkin!”
She didn’t stop until she was outside again. Until the weak evening light touched her face. Until the fresh breeze cooled the sweat on her brow.
She would never be comfortable in the dark again.
Denan caught up a moment later, the jaw thankfully missing from his hands.
“I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for that.”
His head fell. “It will happen again, Larkin. The White Tree is centuries old. It’s dying. And when the magic dies …”
There would be no protection from the wraiths—nothing to stop them from doing what they had done before.
“We have to stop it,” she said, voice shaking.
He nodded. “Now you see.”
Ancestors, she wanted to hit him. But he had been right. She’d thought she’d understood the curse, the stakes. She hadn’t. “I’m keeping Talox as my personal guard.”
Denan gave a curt nod. “He’ll fit better there anyway.”
Side by side, they strode back to the tree, Larkin’s mind whirling with images of people dying. She remembered what he’d said, about the women fighting while the men had hidden with the children. “Wait, women fought off mulgars?”
Denan shrugged. “In the Alamant, women’s magic was the warrior magic. In Valynthia, it was reversed, and men were the warriors. It would be the same now, if Valynthians could still manage magic.”
Valynthians. “Idelmarchians,” she corrected him. “The Valynthians are all dead and forgotten.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice. Women warriors. She couldn’t wrap her brain around it. “Why were they reversed?”
“Our tree is female, and their tree is male.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
He shrugged.
“So what did the men do?”
“Played their pipes, I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“We lost the records in a fire, remember?”
She remembered him telling her something about that when they’d been in the Alamant together. “Three hundred years isn’t that long ago.”
“The curse has a way of warping things—including our history.”
She eyed his muscles and his weapons. “So the men put down their pipes and became warriors.”
“Well, I mean, we still use our pipes.”
“But not like you used to.”
“No,” he said. “Not like we used to.”
The magic had fallen into ruin as surely as their two kingdoms had. She shivered despite the heat.
He rested a hand on her shoulder. “They’re long dead, Larkin.”
“What’s to stop it from happening again?”
“Me. Talox. Tam. And you.”
She looked into his eyes and saw only sincerity shining back at her. She flared her sigils, admiring the long, lovely lines of the sword in her hand.
Could she really do this? Become a warrior like the matriarchs of old? She’d already killed a mulgar. Something awoke within her—fear and determination and a terrible knowledge that she would kill and kill and kill again if it meant stopping the wraiths.
“Talox has already begun my training.” Her voice trembled with emotion. “Want to continue it?”
“As long as you swear to do as I command until you’ve managed to break the curse.”
The burden of that task forced the breath from her. She braced her head in her hands. “I’ve tried, Denan. My sigils don’t do anything.”
“You’ll figure it out. I know you will.”
His faith only made her burden heavier.
He tugged her into his embrace, holding her without a word. “Swear it.”
“I swear.”
He glanced toward the sun. “There isn’t much time left.” He pulled out his sword and shield. “Aside from the ardents, mulgars aren’t that bright. What—”
“So if I face an ardent?”
“You’re not ready for the ardents yet. Run.” He adjusted his grip on his sword. “Mulgars don’t feel pain or fear, so it has to be a mortal blow. Pierce their chest or bash them in the head. Behead them if you can. In a pinch, you can cut their hamstrings and finish them on the ground.”
The battle for this city had been here, right where she stood. Women had fought to protect their husbands and children. They had lost. Fear coursed through Larkin, hot and cold in turns. She shuddered.
“You have the strength of your sword and your shield. You have your wits and friends to fight by your side. You cannot lose.”
She met his gaze, some of the fear abating. “Do you feel no remorse for killing them?”
Denan looked away. “They are not people—not anymore.”
Only that wasn’t entirely true. Maisy was proof of that. Still, she was a warrior. She would not balk at this. “Show me?”
He crouched behind his shield. “Here, swing at me slowly.”
She did so. Her blade tapped his shield. He flung his shield and her blade to the side and thrust at her with his sword. “Sweep. Stab. Reposition. Now you try.”
He worked with her until she could manage at nearly full speed.
Denan demonstrated how to take a charge by shifting to the side and letting her opponent fly past her. “Mulgars can survive almost anything, a broken back or a missing limb. To be sure, you always have to cut their heads off.”
She stilled. “Venna’s head wasn’t chopped off.” Denan turned away. “Venna fell thousands of feet. No one—nothing could survive that.” So why did it sound more like a question?
Denan sniffed. “That mulgar—it wasn’t Venna anymore. It was the monster who killed your friend.”
“And did that monster survive the fall?”
He wiped at the sweat on his temples. “I don’t … I don’t know.”
Gripping her amulet, Larkin faced the darkening woods. Her friend, or what was left of her, could still be out there. The pain of that thought … She gripped the amulet tighter. The sharp-edged branch slipped into her skin. She gasped in pain. The forest darkened around her as if it had been covered with rotted black cloth. And on the other side of that cloth, images flickered, burning through until they replaced Denan and the city of Ryttan.
Gaping, horrible faces in the shadows pressed against what appeared to be layers of enormous shields that protected
dozens of peoples. The shadows’ screams and chittering shuddered down Larkin’s spine. She summoned her sword and shield, cowering behind the latter.
The shadows’ claws shredded through the magic like wet paper. The barriers hadn’t even finished fading to ash before the shadows darted forward. They forced themselves down the throats of enchanters and enchantresses, who staggered, gagging, gasping, clawing at their throats.
Then they stilled, paused, looked up. Each of their eyes were solid black, forked lines flaring from their sockets. They were mulgars. Mulgars who hadn’t been turned by a wraith blade, but the shadows themselves. She was watching the birth of monsters.
They turned on each other. Old and young. Men and woman. They turned and rent each other with their bare hands.
The second barrier fell. More people writhed and stilled and killed. One of them lunged at Larkin. She screamed, her shield out. But the shadow passed through her.
Panting, she spun in place. The battle continued around her as if she didn’t exist. Because she didn’t—not really. This was a memory.
A woman caught Larkin’s attention. In the centermost barrier, she stood on a platform around a font surrounded by wicked thorns. Warm, golden light shot through with color that danced beneath the surface. Larkin recognized the place.
The White Tree. She was in the Alamant on the day the curse had come into being. At the center of it all was a woman in a glittering black dress. Larkin stumbled toward her, through one layered barrier after another, panicked people passing through her like shadows. She reached the stairs before the platform.
The woman was young, no older than Larkin. Hair was a pale gold shot through with silver, her eyes a warm brown. The diamond-encrusted black dress she wore was a piece of art that flashed with a hundred sparks of fractured color. But it was the sigil revealed by the plunging neckline that held Larkin’s attention—a sigil that mirrored the one on Denan’s chest, only hers was silver instead of gold.
This was the queen of Valynthia.
Beside her stood a sharp-featured man with dark skin and hair. The tops of gold branches peeked out from his collar. The king of the Alamant. Working together. Hadn’t they been at war?
Their attention fixed on the distance. Larkin followed their gazes to see shadows spread throughout the city like smoke, devouring light, twisting people’s expressions into rictuses of hate.
The king and queen played different flutes, the music impenetrable and unmovable. The queen manipulated the magic with her bare hands, the gold and silver splitting off into different colors that she wove with quick fingers.
She threw the resulting orb into the air. A large, domed shield flared, expanding to include those in the next layer of defense. Enchantresses and enchanters desperately fed their magic into the gleaming sphere. Together, they pressed it outward, driving the shadows back from one layer of defense to another until the entire White Tree gleamed—a refuge in a sea of shadows.
They were doing it. They were defeating the shadows. But Larkin knew the ending of this story, knew this rally couldn’t last. Ancestors, why couldn’t it have lasted?
Inexplicably, the expansion halted. The vault trembled like a drop of water about to fall. The king collapsed. His magic wavered. The queen knelt at his side and gripped his shoulder. Face flushed, he panted, his eyes unfocused.
What was wrong with him? “Get up,” Larkin said through clenched teeth. Every part of her tensed for these two to win, though she knew they would not.
“Dray,” the queen begged. “You have to keep fighting. Together, we can defeat him. I know we can.”
He looked up at her, resolve shining in his eyes and his sigils gleaming white and gold against his dark skin. “Help me up.”
She braced under his arm and strained. He leaned against her until they reached the font. He pressed his palm onto the hollow thorn, blood swirling through it.
“Please. See what’s happening. Help me. Let me fight.” For a moment, his face was stark with determination. Then he relaxed. He turned to the queen, all his sigils alight—the apex of power and strength.
He dropped, the light going out like a spent candle. As the fledgling shield fell to starlight and ash around her, he gripped her hand. Between their palms, the light flared. Blood ran between their entwined fingers.
“Use my light,” he gasped. “Drive out the wraiths.” His eyes rolled up, and he went perfectly still. He was dead.
The queen panted, looked at the bloody thing in her hand in horror. She held an amulet that looked like an ahlea.
The colors faded, the moth-eaten cloth surrounding her. Between the gaps, she could make out her world—the forest and ruins in the faded light. The cloth burned away. Larkin gasped in a breath. Arms held her close—too close. She shoved.
“Larkin?”
Denan carried her.
Disoriented, she clutched the amulet in her fist, blood running from her fingertips. She released it, hand aching, the puncture stinging. A vision. She’d had a vision. The amulet had triggered it.
She clutched his shirt, breathing deep his scent. “Put me down.”
He gently set her on her feet, though he kept an arm around her waist. “You’re all right?”
She staggered, her head spinning. She was in the ruins, not far from the baths. “How long was I out?”
“A minute or two.”
She looked around the dead place, searching for mulgars and blood and death. Instead, there was the quiet of the coming dark.
“Larkin?” Denan sounded worried.
She pinched her eyes shut and forced a deep breath into her lungs. She blew out slowly. “There was a king and queen there when the curse formed. The Alamant’s king was Dray. What was the Valynthian queen’s name?”
“The Curse Queen?” Denan asked.
“Curse Queen?” Larkin asked in confusion.
“Her name was Eiryss.” Denan’s expression darkened. “It was her dabbling in dark magic that brought the wraiths into being.”
“But she was fighting the curse,” Larkin protested. “Trying to stop it.”
“Yes, and she broke the Silver Tree trying to right her wrong. It was she who condemned Valynthia.” Denan ground his teeth.
“That can’t be.” Larkin reeled. The girl she’d seen had been no more than seventeen. And she’d been as horrified by the events as Larkin had.
“How did you know Dray’s name?”
“I saw them.” At his incredulous look, she started at the beginning and told him everything.
When she was finished, Denan watched her, brows drawn. “The story goes that on the day Queen Eiryss and King Dray were to be married, the wraiths descended and laid a curse upon the land. The wraiths came about as a result of her dabbling with dark magic. Eiryss used up all Valynthia’s magic as queen to create a countercurse to stave off the shadow.”
Larkin’s two weddings hadn’t exactly been happy moments, but at least her entire kingdom hadn’t crumpled. “I thought Valynthia and the Alamant were at war?”
“They were. The wedding was supposed to bring the two kingdoms together.”
“You’re sure about that?” Larkin sat heavily on a large stone. “Your records were burned.”
“Some stories aren’t forgotten.”
She supposed not.
He passed a hand down his face. “He was one of my ancestors.”
“Who?”
“Dray.”
“But he died!” Larkin said in surprise.
“He had two children from a previous marriage. Both survived.”
She looked at Denan anew. Dray had been darker skinned, but she supposed they had similar sharp features and large builds. The resemblance wasn’t enough to look like family, but then, what she saw was generations ago.
“Why this vision?” she asked.
“I’ve only ever had one vision—the vision of a bird in my hand.” She’d heard this story before, but she held silent, wanting to hear it again. “If I tried to
hold it, it died. If I let it free, it flew away, but always came back.”
He sat beside her. “When I received the ahlea sigil”—the ancient sigil for women’s magic—“I knew I would find the person to break the curse. And I gradually figured out that I had to let her come to me.”
Larkin gave a half grunt, half laugh. She had gone to him. Granted, she’d had no other choice, what with a murderous mob on her heels.
He bumped her shoulder with his. “I did find her, and she did come to me. There’s a message the White Tree wants you to learn. You’ll figure it out.”
She wished he didn’t believe in her quite so completely. It would make the possibility of failure a little easier to bear.
Oblivious to her burden, Denan cast a glance toward the setting sun. “Come on. The battle will begin soon.”
Larkin and Denan reached the base of the tree, where Tam had finally fallen asleep along with Talox. Denan strapped on his boiled-leather armor studded with metal.
Larkin studied the amulet, the way the light sparked colors across the surface like early morning frost. The way the depths gleamed silver. Next to it, the dampener flashed with colors, gold seaming the edges.
Her gaze narrowed. “Denan, this amulet is not made of the White Tree.”
Denan pulled the chain over her head, the amulet and dampener clicking against each other, and held them in his fingers. He jerked his hand back. “You’re right. They’re from different sacred trees.”
She felt naked without her amulet.
“The Silver Tree is corrupted,” Denan said, eyeing the amulet like he was considering breaking it. “So is its magic.”
She snatched it from him and held it behind her back. “It saved my life.” Once when it showed her the way out of the flood and again when it had formed a shield between her and Garrot. “And it gave me the vision you said I needed.”
He reached for it. “Larkin—”
She shifted out of his reach. “If it was corrupted, we would have known by now.”
Denan’s expression tightened.
“It’s my decision,” she said firmly.
Denan sighed. Before he could argue, Tam whimpered in his sleep. Tears streaked from his eyes. Denan crouched next to him and shook his shoulder. Tam struggled to open his eyes. His gaze finally fixed on Denan. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I saw them. I always see them.”