by Hanna Howard
Yarrow shook me out of confusing dreams the next morning and handed me a steaming tin mug of tea. “Rise and shine,” he said with grim irony. “We’ve a lot of ground to cover today.”
I groaned.
It was colder than the previous two days—colder, indeed, than anything I had ever experienced in a life lived so close to Umbraz—and my teeth chattered as I slipped out of my bedding to layer on the rest of the warm things in my rucksack: leather trousers over my stockings, a second woolen skirt belted at the waist, a snug deerskin jacket that would help keep in my body heat, and a knitted cowl for my neck. When the cloak went on over it all, I felt bulky but warm.
Though this was only our third day of travel, I felt like we’d been trudging through the dismal, gray forest for half a lifetime. I had never considered myself pampered before, especially compared to the other girls at Gildenbrook, but now I realized that pampered was exactly what I had been. Never before had I slept on the ground, or eaten carefully rationed portions, or worn the same mud-stained clothes for days on end. And not since I was a child had I relied only on my own legs to carry me everywhere I needed to go.
I held back my complaints, though. Even Yarrow, more than four times my age, seemed equal to the exertion, and the idea of drawing attention to my weak endurance was mortifying, especially when Merrall was already so keen to notice my defects.
Midway through the morning, Yarrow called me up to walk alongside him in the lead.
“We’re in a bit of a predicament, Weedy.”
I raised a sardonic eyebrow. “I’ve noticed.”
“I mean with regard to your powers,” he said, and my stomach immediately tensed. “It’d be foolish to let you use them much out here where we’re so exposed, of course. But at the same time, I think we’d be negligent if we did nothing useful with the time we have.”
I said nothing.
“There’s plenty of theory I can teach you,” he went on, “and some small things you can practice without attracting notice.”
When I still made no reply, Yarrow looked curiously into my face. “What’s wrong? Don’t like the idea?”
I shook my head tersely. “It sounds dangerous.”
“What would be dangerous, Weedy, is for you to carry on not knowing what your powers are, or how to use them. Believe me. Learning about them is the quickest way to make them safe.”
I bit my lip.
“What you did in Umbraz tells me that without ever being taught—without even accessing your power source—you have strong natural instincts of how it should be used. So everything I teach you will only give you more control, more understanding for the future.”
“I don’t want to use them in the future. I don’t want to use them ever.” I clenched my hands into the wool of my skirt and lowered my voice until it was barely more than a whisper. “You saw what I did to Linden, Yarrow. I’m a monster—I’m unsafe to be—”
“You are not unsafe to be around.” His voice was impatient now. “And if you’re a monster, so are Linden and Merrall and I. Would you call a dog a monster just because it has teeth?”
“It’s different.”
“It’s no different at all. So stop using that word. I’ll give you a day to get used to the idea, Siria, but starting tomorrow I will begin teaching you how to control your power.”
Around midday, when I was tired of sulking and beginning to feel oppressed by the silence, I fell into step beside Linden. In ten years, I had rarely seen him wear anything other than the homemade leather trousers, woven shirts, and light boots he worked in at home, but now he had layered on much hardier garments that made him look rather intimidating. There were thick boots, laced up his calves almost to the knee; more than a few sheathed blades tucked in various places, along with his bow and quiver; and beneath his traveling cloak, a belted leather jerkin, with sleeves laced on at the shoulders. He could have been a rebel woodland scout who had spent his life wandering.
“It’s a good look for you,” I said with an appraising nod.
He grinned, but hesitantly, as if he wasn’t sure whether we were friends again or not. “And you. Much better than those torture devices they made you wear at Gildenbrook.”
I laughed my agreement.
“Listen,” he said, his voice low so Merrall and Yarrow wouldn’t overhear, “I’m sorry we never told you any of that stuff before. About me and Yarrow . . . and about you. I know you feel betrayed, and I would too. But I hope you know . . . well. I’m sorry.”
I nodded, looking down at the dim, rocky ground, but found that I wasn’t angry at Linden anymore.
“Thanks, Linden.”
He gave a real smile this time.
After a few steps I said, quietly, “He’s not really your grandfather, is he?” It was just a guess, but one I had been feeling more and more sure of since learning what they were.
Linden looked surprised, but not abashed. “Yarrow? Not by blood, I suppose. But he may as well be in every other respect. I was only seven when I met him. He’d known my father, so when the rebels hatched this scheme to send people to look out for all the girls who might be you, Yarrow asked if he could take me.”
For the first time since learning about my birth parents, I remembered Linden was an orphan too. I couldn’t believe how little consideration I had spared for this fact in all the time I’d known him. “You always said your parents died in the overthrow . . . somehow I thought that meant they were fighting for Iyzabel.”
Linden gave a bitter laugh. “What else would you have thought?” He sighed. “No, they died after Iyzabel killed your parents, when she slaughtered half the nymphs in the kingdom and gave the rest the ‘opportunity’ of the obsidian band. My family lived in a village that was among her first targets.”
I stared at him. “Do you . . . I mean, do you remember . . . ?”
“No, thank the Light. I was too young—only three. My father didn’t die then; he managed to escape the massacre with me. We went to the rebels, and lived there until I was seven. When I met Yarrow. My father had just been killed on a scouting mission, and I think Yarrow felt sorry for me.”
Linden had been eight when they came to Nightingale Manor. The year after he’d lost his father, the last member of his family he’d had left. He was my best friend, but I had never bothered to ask him any of this. Not only that, I had also spent the last four years trying fit into the society that enslaved, persecuted, and murdered his people.
My people too, I realized with a start. My family.
If they had survived, might his parents have been branded as nymphs and made to serve in disgrace at Gildenbrook or Nightingale Manor? Might Linden? And if so, would I have treated him with contempt, instead of friendship? And how narrowly had I escaped any number of those fates, just by being in the right orphanage at the right time?
“Linden, I’m sorry.” My voice sounded small. “For so much. I haven’t been a very good friend to you.”
He regarded me for a moment, then looped an arm around my shoulders, hugging me to him. “On the contrary, Weedy,” he said. “You’ve been my best friend. You’ve just been lacking some important pieces of the story.”
This was generous, but I was grateful for it. I hugged him back, and felt warmth spread through my body at all the points we touched. A moment later I remembered with a shock of dismay that warmth had become dangerous. Stiffening with the effort to control the fire in my chest, I let my arm fall and casually stepped away.
20
CHAPTER
By the time we made camp that night, I was starting to feel a definite sense of doom about the journey ahead.
“We still have roughly two months until the equinox,” Yarrow said, sitting down heavily on one of the sturdier-looking logs in the clearing we had picked. “And while we may be taking the longest route possible to the Northern Wilds, it’s also the safest.”
“We’ll stay in the forest the entire way?” I tried not to sound too appalled, but I could easily visu
alize the map of our kingdom that hung in the Gildenbrook library. By its depiction, the forest curved around the entire eastern side of our island. It eventually touched the Wilds in the north, but the route was at least three times longer than the Queen’s Road, which ran straight from Umbraz.
Yarrow rubbed his forehead, looking just as weary as I felt. “Better to spend twice as long trudging safely through the wilderness than to cut across the kingdom and get murdered along the way.”
“I suppose.” I crouched beside the crude stone ring we had assembled and began to mimic Linden’s fire-building technique, even as he stomped out of the trees with an armful of thick branches. He raised an eyebrow at me but didn’t object as I built the little twig-and-leaf pyramid and held out my hand for his flint and knife.
Beneath my palms, a small shower of sparks cascaded off Linden’s knife and fell into the pile of dry twigs, smoldering a little. I blew gently and was gratified to see a tiny orange tongue lick up the side of one twig. In another moment the entire pyramid started to burn, and I reached for slightly bigger twigs.
“That’s impressive,” said Linden as I handed back his flint. “You only had to try twice.”
“Maybe I’m a natural,” I said, and Yarrow snorted.
Merrall came tramping up to our fire ring then, soaking wet and levitating a gourd-sized, swirling ball of water in front of her, which she carefully directed into the tin pot Linden had just untied from his pack. He nodded his thanks and began adding herbs and pinches of spices from our supplies.
“Yarrow, why did Iyzabel create the Darkness?” I asked, my eyes drawn back to the fire. “The truth would be nice.”
He frowned at my jibe, and then considered the question. “She created it,” he said at last, “because that’s what she needs.”
I dusted myself off and crossed back to sit beside him. “Meaning?”
“What do you know about witches?”
I chewed my lip. “I know they’re magical, and more powerful than any other being. And extremely rare. They’re the blessed ones. Only once every few hundred years is one born, and they are always given rare magic to save and to rule. Queen Iyzabel is the only one in Terra-Volat.”
Yarrow leveled his gaze at me.
“What?” I said defensively. “That’s what I was—”
“Taught at Gildenbrook?” finished Merrall with a sneer.
“Well, it was,” I said, glaring at her. “What’s the truth, then, if you’re so smart?”
“That you are gullible,” said the naiad, rolling her eyes.
Yarrow frowned and turned back to me. “All right, Weedy. I want you to forget what you heard at Gildenbrook. Just chuck it all out, and we’ll start over.”
I nodded, then angled my body so I couldn’t see Merrall in my peripheral vision.
“First of all,” he said, “nymphs and mages are all born with their magic, and they can be born to humans or nymphs. Lineage matters more for mages, but for nymphs, it’s about birth circumstance. A sunchild is only born at the precise moment of dawn, and elves—wood nymphs—are always born outdoors, under trees. That sort of thing. Their powers don’t change, they just develop. You, for instance, were born a sunchild, but your powers stayed dormant until you turned sixteen. Now, for the rest of your life, those powers will continue to develop, but they won’t ever change. The same with Linden, except elves come into their power at birth.”
“And naiads?” I asked, curious in spite of myself. “When do they get theirs?”
“Age nine,” said Merrall, leaning into my line of sight with an irritating smirk. “But naiads are sainted at birth because they are so naturally benevolent and pure and suited to being worshiped.”
“Shut up, Merrall,” I grumbled.
Yarrow plowed on, ignoring us both. “Wind nymphs—pixies, I mean—grow wings at twelve, but can’t begin to truly manipulate the air until they’re eighteen. And mages have power from birth, but it takes extensive training and a conductor”—he held up his Runepiece—“to learn to use them.”
Yarrow looked critically at the gray disc, then peered at the hard, prickly log beneath him and gave a decisive grunt. He stood up. There was a shimmer of white light, and the Runepiece became a rocking chair identical to the one he’d used at home, except this one was silvery gray. He shifted it onto a patch of ground that was slightly less uneven and sank into it with a groan of relief.
“Nymphs sometimes use a conductor too,” he added. “But you don’t need it the way I would—nymphs use them only to focus the power they already have, whereas I need my conductor to make the magic occur. And in this respect witches are more like mages, because Iyzabel needs her conductor as much as I do.”
“She uses a Runepiece?”
“No, she uses a dagger. In that way alone is she like Linden and Merrall when they use a conductor. Like you would too, if you’d grown up learning your powers. A stone in the hilt connects to the magic, and for Iyzabel, that stone works to pull out the magic inside her and activate it in the world. Whereas for nymphs, it’s merely helpful when you want to increase the strength of your power, and is usually a stone whose properties are associated with the element in question. Linden’s is agate, which is an earth stone. Merrall’s is aquamarine.” He nodded at them, and Linden pulled out his short dagger—which I’d seen him use a thousand times—and turn the hilt toward me. Sure enough, there was a swirly, reddish-brown stone set into the top. Merrall looked like she’d rather not humor me, but after a pointed look from Yarrow, reached into her boot and unsheathed a deadly-looking silver stiletto, which she flipped carelessly, causing the watery blue stone to glitter in the firelight.
“Iyzabel uses obsidian,” concluded Yarrow.
“Like the obsidian bands that stop nymph magic?”
“That’s right.”
“So when do witches come into their powers?”
He rocked back, looking ominously through his spectacles at me. “When they take it.”
“Take it?”
“Witches are not born with magic. They have to steal it from someone else.”
I gaped at him. “How can you steal magic? Magic isn’t a pair of shoes you can just take off. Or . . .” I faltered at the look on Yarrow’s face. “Or is it?”
A wild hope rose in me, that maybe I could discard my own magic. Then I would be safe to touch, safe to be near. I could meet my brother as an ordinary human, and live an ordinary life—
“You can’t take it off, no,” he said, squashing my hope flat. “But it can be taken from you, if the thief is desperate enough.”
I waited, leaning toward him. But it was not Yarrow who answered me.
“A witch becomes a witch by eating a magical person’s heart.” Merrall’s husky voice was flippant and hard, and as I jerked around to look at her, she raised a challenging eyebrow. “Yarrow, you should not coddle her so much. She has to grow up some time.”
Yarrow looked angry, but I was too horrified by the information itself to be troubled by the way it had been delivered. A prickling chill swept down my spine.
“Eating?” I repeated, staring at Yarrow. I imagined the queen, with her fair skin and perfect features, raising someone’s hot, bloody heart to her face while her hands and mouth dripped with gore. My whole body convulsed. The last traces of desire to belong in her court vanished.
“And . . . and then they get that person’s magic?”
“After a fashion,” he said, looking every bit as disgusted as I felt. His lips were pursed, and his chin—growing the first stubble I had ever seen on it—was scrunched up. “But a perverted, backward version of it. A witch who had killed an elf would be able to destroy plant life instead of create it, or manipulate dead wood instead of bringing roots back to life. They could set animals to savage others, rather than earn their trust.”
“And if,” I said slowly, the horrible truth dawning on my mind, “a witch ate the heart of a sunchild . . .” I stared at him, hoping he might contradict me.
<
br /> He nodded. “Yes,” he said. “She would have the power to bring Darkness instead of Light.”
21
CHAPTER
For a moment all I could do was sit with my mouth open in silent revulsion. Iyzabel—Queen Iyzabel— who everyone worshiped, who even I had fumbled over myself to try and serve, had gotten her powers by eating the heart of a sunchild.
Someone like me.
The questions that occurred to me were dreadful, but I had to know the answers. “Does . . . does she eat the heart of every sunchild she kills? Does her power increase the more she does it?”
A shadow crossed Yarrow’s face before he shook his head. “It’s only necessary once. A witch cannot steal more than one kind of magic, and she can’t gain more by repeating the act. But I believe Iyzabel wanted to kill you while you transformed, which was why she waited so long to do it.”
“Why, if she already had her power?”
“That I don’t know. We know a fair amount about Iyzabel’s past, but very little of her plans after she claimed the throne. Her manipulative power became too great with the spread of the Darkness, and she never let anyone close to her until they fell completely under her sway. But I have no doubt she was planning something hideous. If Linden hadn’t been there to stop her in those moments when you were so vulnerable—”
“Linden stopped her?” I twisted around to find him frozen in the act of stirring the stew.
“You didn’t tell her?” Yarrow sounded surprised.
“There was no reason to,” Linden muttered, cheeks darkening slightly.
I turned back to Yarrow and found him studying Linden. Finally he looked at me and said, “He set the queen’s gown on fire as soon as you started to transform. She was distracted just long enough to miss her moment.”
A glance back at Linden showed him bent studiously over the pot, face still flushed.
“Linden,” I said, and he looked up at once. “I had no idea. That’s why the whole place was on fire, wasn’t it?”