Hours passed and the halls grew silent and empty. Pux stretched out on a cot in the west wing. He tried to sleep, but all he could think about was what he said to Atara. She looked horrified. He tried not to tremble, but the pain was intense. He heard the odd shuffle, but the chaos in the castle had become a dead calm. It was in the silence that Pux’s heart throbbed more than ever. Another tremor rippled through him. He curled his arms against his chest and waited for the cold to pass. This was another new feeling, the bouts of hot and cold that ran through him. He was on fire one moment, freezing to death the next.
The room he stashed himself in was plain, a cot underneath him, a dresser, an end table with fresh herbs spilling out of a bowl. White sage and willow. It was supposed to help with the fever and keep the room cleansed of negativity, but it was doing neither. Pux rolled onto his back and stared at the wooden beams in the ceiling. He counted the grooves in the wood, hoping he could keep his mind off reality awhile longer. He had no idea how much time had passed since the explosion. The ladies came in at intervals, rubbed his brow with something, fed him a tonic, and left again. He couldn’t understand why they paid any attention to him, the unwounded, the healed.
It hurt too much to think about her.
He pushed himself onto his elbows and looked at the door. He wondered what was going on outside, if the storm had stopped. He shook again as heat took him over. He wrapped his arms around his torso, trying to hold himself together. He glanced at the dresser. It would be insane to venture outside in the vest and breeches he wore. He definitely needed something more to cover him despite his hairy exterior.
He put his clawed feet on the floor and leaned over to check the drawers. Most of them were empty, but the last drawer had a white and brown embroidered wool blanket in it. When fully opened it showed the shape of the stag. He wrapped it around his shoulders. There was a noise in the hallway, someone shuffling by. He shut the drawer and stood, the blanket trailing along the floor.
He paused, opened the door. The hallway was clear. He turned left, and left again, shuffling along the floor towards the servants’ hall. Prickles hit his heart and a flash of heat crept up his neck as he descended the staircase and tiptoed across the cobblestones.
Pux paused; a heavy draft blew in from the fields. He let out a deep breath and continued through the archway to the back courtyard. Toys were on the right, a chess set on a table on the left. He entered the stables, the familiar smell of a bonfire hitting his nostrils. His ears perked up. This felt a lot more like the home he had known for years. The warmth reached his cheeks and he almost smiled.
He frowned at the empty stables, wondering why the horses weren’t there. Bracing himself, he stepped into the fields. In the darkness he could barely see the two feet of snow covering the ground. Another cold shiver rippled through him and he pulled the blanket tighter. Snow was still coming down in sheets, obstructing his view. He put a hand out in front of him, attempting to push the fluffs away. He took a step through the heavy wet stuff, followed by another, and another. The smell of the bonfire was stronger. Pux glanced around, wind blowing from the east. It whipped him in the face and forced him to turn his attention to the west. Shadows danced across the blankets of snow, the bonfire the only source of light.
The blanket dropped to the snow as he hopped through the path towards the fire. He needed to get warm. He didn’t know what to expect—singing, dancing, games? His mind raced with the happy thought that life would go back to normal. He assumed the awkward cold would pass, and the lukewarm nights of winter would return with their crisp smells and frequent bonfires. He licked his lips thinking about the food. Pheasant, quail, chicken, boar, all served with apple pie, sparkling apple juice, and pure spring water. His stomach growled. The smell of smoke was strong and fragrant, mixed with something he had never smelled before.
He turned the corner, the bonfire rising out of the snow. A dozen others gathered around it. On the far side Pux caught Istar’s features. He looked exhausted. Pux frowned. Despite what they lost, the enemies retreated. Why weren’t they celebrating?
He squinted and put a hand to his brow, hoping to see the fire more clearly. His stomach lurched. They were burning the bodies. That smell was the enemies left behind. The bonfire was a ritual to cleanse their negativity from the land. His stomach twisted as he doubled over and fell to the snow. The cold hit him and showered him in a new wave of tremors that wouldn’t cease. He curled into a ball and waited for the cold to stop. Moments passed as he listened to the idle shouts of the elders surrounding the fire. Grimand’s voice cut through the crowd, coming closer. Pux tried to bury his face in the snow. He couldn’t watch the spectacle.
Footsteps crunched nearby. “Pux,” Grimand said. Pux looked up at him. He was clad in a large hooded gray robe, his animal features concealed by the length. He stretched out a hand to his apprentice and waited for him to take it. “Pux, you need to go back inside!”
Pux crunched himself into a tighter ball. He wanted to transport back to his room, but when he thought about the room he also thought about the mountain, torn between the two. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the mountain, but the final memory of the Village of the Shee pierced his mind.
“Come now,” Grimand said loudly. He grabbed Pux by the shoulders and forced him to sit. Pux looked past his elder at the fire. “You need to rest.” Grimand attempted to pull Pux to his feet, but Pux pushed him away, moving to his feet and stumbling backwards.
“How many?” Pux asked. He didn’t really want to know, but the bonfire was so high.
Grimand hung his head. “Go inside.” He turned Pux around and pushed him towards the stables. Pux took a step, and paused. He squeezed his eyes shut and balled his hands into a fist, transporting inside the Elmare Castle.
4
In Love
Atara sat on the windowsill, staring into the courtyard. The sun was setting, casting dull light into the candle-lit room. Thick smoke left the room doused in rosemary. She had her knees hugged to her chest and her auburn hair hung in lines over it, frizzy and wet. There was nothing on her mind. She glanced at the sky; striped across the familiar pastels of the sunset were gray dead clouds pouring snow onto the land. The only emotion she could muster was shock; she was otherwise a void of numbness. She retreated when the servants began taking everyone to their quarters. She didn’t even want to talk to Istar after what he said. She wouldn’t force him to explain, but she needed him to at least say something because there was nothing stopping her heart from breaking.
A knock on the door interrupted her and she slid her long legs off the windowsill. She was in a long-sleeved white nightgown, loose around her curved body. She opened the door, caught her breath and left it for the woman on the other side—Desaunius. She drew another stick of incense and lit it, sending more smoke into the air. Prickles crept up her neck as she finally moved her gaze towards the woman. Desaunius hadn’t changed since the battle. Her white hair fell down her back to her waist, her royal blue dress covered in mud. Her green eyes looked tired and wrinkles marred her face.
“I trusted you,” Desaunius began, her voice soft and controlled.
Atara stood speechless. She expected an outburst, but this wasn’t that. Kaliel’s first mentor, the woman who had raised her in Evennses for fourteen summers, looked defeated. “I know.”
“How long did you know?” Desaunius moved towards the fireplace, held her hands out to feel the heat, then pulled them away. There were no logs behind the grate.
Atara didn’t know if she could stand for much longer. She drifted towards the windowsill and sat on it lightly. “I thought the Great Oak’s words meant something else. I never thought she was a danger to Avristar.” She crossed her arms and noted the bits of grass protruding through the rocks in the cobblestones of the courtyard.
Desaunius gasped. “A danger to Avristar?” Color rose on her cheeks. She turned in a circle and let her arms drop at her sides, pacing, circling. Atara thought she loo
ked like a tiger in its cage, and was afraid its fury would unleash. Instead, Desaunius shook her head. “Kaliel didn’t want this. She didn’t bring this. This is the Valtanyana and you know it.” Her tone was sharp.
Atara hung her head. She never told Desaunius what Kaliel was, never told her about the relationship she insisted upon entertaining. Atara didn’t know how to tell her, and she didn’t want to show inferiority to Desaunius. She knew what Desaunius would say and it hurt to know it. Desaunius wouldn’t have let Kaliel stay in Avristar; she would have sent her to Tor, the High King. Atara gulped and took a deep breath. Desaunius wouldn’t tear her gaze away and the guilt only deepened in Atara’s bones.
“It was her fault they came. She was a Flame.” Atara said the words so quietly she wasn’t sure Desaunius heard, but when she dared a glance at the elder, Desaunius had sunk to the floor.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Desaunius looked smaller somehow, like a child. She idly picked at the mud on her dress, clearing it away with her fingertips.
Atara gazed out the window. Kaliel was so different from any other apprentice she had ever met or trained. She was a peculiar child even before Desaunius became her elder. Atara let a smile twitch at the corners of her mouth. “I couldn’t send her to Tor.”
Desaunius looked up, her eyes blazing, but they quickly softened. “That would have been the wise thing to do.”
Atara smiled. She could read Kaliel’s heart and mind the moment she crossed the threshold to her room. She held in her heart the kind of love Atara only dreamed of feeling. She staved off telling the girl, never wanted to persuade her to marry the land, to follow in the footsteps of the other elven adepts. She wanted to see the girl happy, in love. Her head swelled with pain as the guilt intensified, forcing her to draw her eyebrows together. She winced. “I couldn’t take her life away from her. She was in love.”
Desaunius looked stricken. Her cheeks darkened, her eyes darting back and forth. She pushed herself up and dusted herself off, sending plumes of dirt onto the burgundy rug. “That’s not possible. She was elven.” Her voice sounded off-kilter.
Atara looked at Desaunius with a wistful expression. “I think she loved him long before she was ever my apprentice, or yours, or on Avristar at all.” She had that dreamy expression on her face again, the one she got when she was imagining fairytale-like love. It was rare that old souls came to Avristar; they were usually given lives in the Lands of Men because Avristar was a paradise, and reserved for those who needed to be cared for. Avristar wasn’t a refuge for damaged souls.
Desaunius looked horrified. “And not once did you think to summon me? Did you really think she could have a normal life, being a Flame? Did you think it wouldn’t end in disaster?”
“Istar sent her to Mallorn. Krishani was crushed. He never loved anyone but Kaliel either,” Atara said, her eyes not focused on Desaunius or on anything she was saying. Her heart pulsated with agony and her head prickled with pain, but it didn’t matter what Desaunius had to say about it. Tearing those two apart was almost impossible, and the way it made the castle feel—melancholy, like the stench of death was rolling through the halls—was atrocious. She hated the night she found Krishani in the courtyard and knew once and for all he couldn’t have Kaliel. She never wanted to admit to them she knew what they had would end. She always hoped that end would have been more benign.
“That wretched old coot?” Desaunius shrieked.
“Mallorn helped her,” Atara said. She tore her gaze from the window and made Desaunius stop in her tracks. “And I’d appreciate it if you would stop mucking up my carpet.” She glared at the mud on the rug and brought a hand to her lips, coughing into it.
Desaunius stopped, staring her down. She lifted her chin and crossed her arms. “I hope you’re happy.”
Atara rubbed her arms on her thighs. She shook her head. “I’m not happy. You didn’t know him. You didn’t know what he was like before she came. He was uncontrollable, uncouth. He only calmed down when she got here. It hurt so much to send her away, but Istar wouldn’t listen to me. I knew they were coming for her. I knew she had to stay dormant, but Istar and Mallorn, they wanted to awaken her.”
Desaunius shot her a puzzled look. “What who was like?”
“Krishani, the Ferryman.”
Desaunius’s eyes widened. “Kaliel was in love with the Ferryman?” There was an incredulous tone to her voice, sharp like icicles.
Atara fought back the urge to shudder. “Nobody knew he was the Ferryman. Istar told me after Krishani ran away.” Atara stood and moved to the bureau. She opened a drawer and pulled out another stick of incense. She lit it and blew the smoke around the room.
Desaunius rocked back and forth on her heels. “And now she is dead because of you, because of Krishani.”
Atara turned from the bureau a deadly expression on her face. “Don’t blame Krishani for this. Don’t.” She gulped. She never told anyone about the contained fires in the hallways, the black clouds that roiled over the courtyard and drenched it in buckets of rain. She never said anything about the lightning, or the cold winds, nothing about Krishani’s ability to destroy the land. Istar said the boy had problems in Amersil, problems that prevented him from living peacefully with the other boys. There was always so much more to Krishani than what Istar ever told her, and yet, she made her assumptions based on the weird things that happened when he came to Orlondir. Kaliel was the catalyst to all of that; Atara thought that was what the Great Oak meant. Kaliel would stop Krishani from destroying Avristar. She wasn’t even sure if she was wrong.
Desaunius glared at Atara, opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. A moment later: “Love has always been your weakness, Atara. You should have sent her to Tor.” She gathered her dress in her hands and stormed out of the room.
Atara slunk back onto the windowsill. “It would have made everything so much worse.”
5
Limbo
Krishani was in limbo.
Limbo was between life and death, stark stretches of darkness spread across its bounds. Time stood still. Krishani wanted to negotiate with limbo, tell it to raise the final axe of destruction, only limbo was unable to do things like that.
Krishani desperately thought of the Great Hall, the place on the other side. The Great Hall was a massive golden fortress said to exist in the center the stars. Where Avristar, Avrigard, Avristyr and Avrigost made up the spokes of the wheel, the Great Hall made up the hub.
The Great Hall was the afterlife.
If Kaliel was anywhere, it would be there.
The Valtanyana wouldn’t dare attack it.
Krishani would have died to be there, but he wasn’t dead.
Instead, this slick, oily darkness covered him in his own filth. It rotted him from the inside out. He tried to steady himself, tear it away, breakthrough it.
Krishani wrestled against the darkness cascading over him in sheets, curling around his arms like tentacles and pushing at him with menacing desire. He gasped as he felt his heart beating, heard the rise and fall of his chest as air flushed in and out of his lungs. Prickles of pain rocked every muscle to the core, pushing heat through his limbs. He stifled a gag, plunging himself back into limbo. He tried to pull the darkness into his lungs, tried to force it deeper and further into himself, but limbo wouldn’t give him what he wanted. Death. It pressed against his temple like a handprint and he gurgled at the pain, visions bubbling up under his eyelids.
Istar betrayed him. The Lord of Avristar raced against him on his way to the volcano. Istar stopped Krishani from being with Kaliel, from destroying himself. He wasn’t grateful. A life without Kaliel was no life at all. He would never forgive Istar for the atrocity of her death. He panted as he pushed himself further into limbo, felt it thicken and resist him with relentless force.
He never thought it would be difficult to die.
He never thought it would be impossible to live.
He sucked in another mouthful of the in
ky blackness, another memory mushrooming across his temples.
The explosion.
Krishani rested on his knees, her name drowned out by the blast. Darkness enveloped him as his heart shattered into pieces. All he could think about was her snow-white strands of hair framing her face, her eyes filled with melancholy, a deep apology for what she had been forced to do. He thought about the orb of ice and all the times she asked him to make it snow. The thought roiled across his mind, picking up speed as darkness pulled him under.
Krishani wasn’t certain of anything until the cold hit him, and even then darkness kept him enveloped in limbo, suspended between life and death, waiting for judgment.
Krishani begged for death.
And limbo didn’t agree.
Fire raced through his veins as he fought against the currents of cruelty forcing his lungs to expand, forcing his heart to throb on as though it was splitting in two, forcing his insides to ache with the instinctive longing to hold Kaliel in his arms. He let out a silent cry as his stomach tightened. He curled his fingers into a fist, refusing to pay mind to the lingering scent of lavender and honeysuckle clinging to him. Her essence hung on his shoulders; it wrapped arms around his waist, pressed lips against his with unmistakable authenticity. Anger raced through Krishani’s veins as he clung to limbo, a comforting blanket of suffocation. No matter how real it felt, he wouldn’t delude himself into believing she was still with him.
JUSTICE (The Ferryman + The Flame #2) Page 3