by Jodi Meadows
“Sam.”
He paused next to me, arm around my waist.
“Remember when you told me about how you died in your last lifetime? You went north, saw a huge white wall, and there were dragons?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“Where would that be on this map?”
“I . . .” His bandaged hand drifted over the map, but never paused. “I’m not sure. You don’t want to go there, do you?”
“Of course not.” The last thing I wanted to do was put Sam in the path of dragons. He’d died by dragons thirty times. By some fluke, I’d managed to save him from dragons twice this lifetime. I didn’t want to risk him a third time. “I’m just trying to get an idea of the rest of the world, since I won’t be able to come back here.”
Sam sighed a little, like relief. “I didn’t mean to be suspicious. We’ve learned a lot about sylph in the last few months—enough to know they might not be as evil as we’d thought—but dragons still terrify me.”
Thirty times. I couldn’t imagine dying thirty times because of dragons. “I wouldn’t put you in danger.”
He gave a weak, exhausted smile, and we both dropped our attention back to the table. “Stef can put maps on your SED for you. It’s not as good as seeing the whole land on paper, but it’s better than nothing.”
“Oh, good.” I found warnings of trolls in the east, centaurs in the south, and rocs in the west. And these things were only the creatures that citizens of Heart might encounter on the edges of Range. There were more creatures beyond, though this map didn’t show that far. “I think I need a bigger map.”
Sam produced a globe, the whole world on a piece of polished stone. Continents were outlined in gold and silver, dressed in green and brown and beige and white, depending on the vegetation or lack thereof. Oceans and large lakes were brilliant, beautiful blue.
I caressed the globe, stone and metal smooth beneath my palm. “I had no idea there was so much beyond Range. Where are we?”
“Here.” He pointed toward the middle of a northern continent. “Range is smaller than the space my fingertip takes up.”
“Oh.” I turned the globe. It was tilted—one of my teachers had told me the world was tilted, but on what, I wasn’t sure—and gazed at continents that suddenly seemed so far away it was pointless even thinking about them. “Range feels so big.”
“It is big.” Sam smoothed hair off my face. “The rest of the world is even bigger.”
“It makes me feel small. I don’t like it.”
“Me neither.” Sam sat on the edge of the table and watched while I looked through more maps, dismissing some and moving others into a pile. He answered whenever I had questions, but for the most part, he kept his eyes closed and seemed lost in thought.
I yawned as I finished with the maps and rolled them up again. “Let’s go to sleep, Sam.”
“Right here?” He eyed the floor. “Right here looks good.”
I helped him off the table and we headed downstairs, dousing lights as we went. As we reached the stairs, my SED buzzed with a message from Stef.
Get down here. Big news.
4
GATHERING
HEAD ACHING FROM lack of rest and too much mortal peril, I slumped down the stairs to find that Stef had arrived with several other friends.
“So much for sleep,” Sam muttered.
“Rin is here.” I nodded toward the crowd. “She can look at your hand.” Rin was a small girl, about ten or eleven years old, but she was one of the best medics in Heart. For some reason, she liked me. She’d stuck up for me several times, even before I’d known who she was.
“Wow.” Stef looked up as we descended the stairs. “You two look terrible.”
“Ana!” Sarit jumped up and threw her arms around me. “You’re okay.”
I hugged her back, relieved she was here. Everyone knew Sarit and I were best friends; Deborl would target her if we left her behind. Stef could take care of herself, but Sarit was gentle. She wouldn’t hurt anyone, even to protect herself.
“Are we safe here?” someone asked.
Stef nodded. “I’ve secured the library entrances. And when we leave, no one goes anywhere alone. Take groups of at least five.”
People nodded.
“What’s your news, Stef?” Sam glanced around the crowd, and found an unoccupied chair to collapse into. Everyone looked exhausted, their coats on over nightclothes and hastily packed bags by the door. Weapons had been piled onto one of the tables, and several people were hunched over SEDs, sending messages or checking some sort of function that involved a map.
Everyone was newsoul-friendly. Some had given me lessons on various subjects, while others were simply close friends of Sam. There was another handful I recognized from a list Sarit and I had made: they were pregnant women. They might be carrying oldsouls, but . . . they might be carrying newsouls, too.
“It’s all bad news.” As usual, in spite of the chaos, Stef looked like she’d spent an hour grooming herself. Not like she’d just been sneaking people out of their houses, and possibly killing others.
I glanced at Sam on his chair, but there wasn’t room for both of us unless I sat on top of him, and no one else was sitting on their friends. Even the other newsouls were tucked away somewhere, sleeping. Grudgingly, I claimed my own chair on the other side of the crowd.
“Everyone knows that Sam and Ana were attacked tonight. They asked me to bring most of you here in case there were other attacks, but the truth is there’s much more for us to worry about. I’ve sent a program to all of your SEDs. Whit and Orrin already had it, of course, but the rest of you should pay attention.” Stef held up her SED. “This program is linked to the monitoring stations around Range. They read all seismological activity and translate it into information that’s useful to us.”
As she spoke, I found the new function on my SED and opened it. Several small red dots appeared over a map of Range. A large one was centered right under Heart.
“The dots are recent earthquakes,” Stef went on. “The bigger the dot, the bigger the earthquake. If you tap the menu, you can switch between different types of events. There’s another that shows where the hydrothermal eruptions took place. We won’t know all the details on those until someone actually goes to look. I’m afraid some of the equipment was damaged or destroyed, but this should give you an idea of what’s going on.”
“And what is going on?” Rin pulled a blanket around her shoulders and yawned. “Sorry, I’m just tired, not bored. Stef woke me up, even though no one was trying to kill me.” She flashed Stef a dark look, suggesting she should probably not sleep anywhere close to Rin or risk waking up dead.
And that was curious. Why were all these people here? I’d been expecting the parents of newsouls and a few of our closest friends. Ten or twelve people. Not forty.
Whit spoke up. “The caldera is unstable. The ground has been rising measurably over the last few months, and Midrange Lake is draining, probably from a crack at the bottom. The geysers have been going off more frequently, and the number of earthquakes—even small ones you never feel—has more than tripled.” He looked all around the group, meeting my eyes for a moment. “The caldera is going to erupt. I don’t know when, but I know it will be soon.”
“It will happen on Soul Night,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
The seconds stretched like minutes, and finally Sarit said, “Well, are you going to explain how you know that?”
“Meuric told me, the night of Templedark. He said something would happen on Soul Night, and that nothing would matter after it. I think he meant the eruption. And”—I glanced from Sam to Stef, who nodded encouragement—“that Janan will ascend.”
Someone gasped.
“Janan isn’t real,” Aril said. I only vaguely knew her from mathematics lessons; while she was always friendly, I’d never realized she’d cared about me that much.
“He is real. Menehem proved it the night of Templ
edark. He stopped reincarnation with a poison, remember?”
Everyone shuddered.
“Janan is real,” I went on, “but he’s not what you think he is. He’s not what Meuric and Deborl have told you.” That was probably safe to reveal, though the truth—that Janan had once been nothing more than a human—was no doubt something they would immediately forget. “He’s going to return on Soul Night. Or rise. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. I don’t know what will happen after. But it’s pretty certain that his ascension will cause so much instability in the caldera that it will erupt. Not just hydrothermal eruptions like we had tonight, but a cataclysmic event.”
Stef nodded. “I agree. Whit? Orrin? You’ve been studying Rahel’s work.”
People winced at Rahel’s name—she was a darksoul, a soul lost during Templedark—but Whit and Orrin nodded. “That does seem to be what all this is pointing toward,” Whit said with a sigh. “But what can we do? There’s no way to stop it.”
“No way to stop the caldera,” I said, “but if we stop Janan from ascending, perhaps that will put everything else back in order.”
“That sounds impossible.” Sarit leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “It sounds a little crazy, too. I believe what you’ve said about Janan, but it sounds crazy.”
“I know.”
Stef put her SED in her pocket. “I agree with Ana about stopping Janan.” When she met my eyes, I knew she was thinking of Cris and his sacrifice, and everything else that had happened inside the temple. “But let’s debate that later, because there are other things we need to discuss before everyone passes out from exhaustion.”
I shot her a grateful look. I didn’t want to discuss a plan for stopping Janan in front of all these people. Particularly since I didn’t have a plan.
She looked at all of us. “Deborl and his friends want to harm newsouls. We know this. The laws the Council has been working to pass won’t do anything to deter them. But the truth is that we’re all in danger.”
I studied the crowd, their weary postures and disbelieving looks. “The best thing for newsouls—and anyone who wants to help them—is to get out of Heart.”
“We’ll have to go very far to avoid the eruption,” Orrin said. “If the caldera does erupt, Range will be nothing more than a hole in the ground. Everything surrounding Range will be covered in ash as high as Ana. Beyond that, there will be yet more ash. The air will be toxic across most of the continent, and ash in the atmosphere will drop the world’s temperature. Animals will die, and crops won’t grow.”
“How far away will people have to go to be safe?” I thought of the globe and how big the world had seemed, not half an hour ago.
Orrin shook his head. “Everywhere will be affected somehow, but the farther we travel, the better our chances of survival.”
“Both from the eruption and Deborl.” I swallowed hard. “Please consider leaving Heart soon.”
“This gives me a good place to lead into the next bad news,” Stef said. “It seems Sam and Ana weren’t the only target tonight. Every Councilor who approved the newsoul protection laws has been killed. Frase, Antha, Finn, Sine: they’re all dead.”
5
PHOENIX
“THEY’RE DEAD?” I lurched to my feet, SED tumbling off my lap. “No—”
Everyone was speaking at once, outrage and grief flooding the room in torrents. People shouted, “Deborl will pay!” and “We need to call the guards!” Several people pulled out their SEDs, but Stef lifted her voice.
“Stop!”
Everyone went silent.
“Here’s the truth of the matter.” Stef looked around the room. “We don’t know who’s involved with Deborl. He and the others escaped prison during the earthquake, that much we do know, but how? Did something shift and free them? Did they do it on their own? Or did someone help them, knowing the earthquake and eruptions would be the perfect cover?”
“No one can predict earthquakes,” Moriah said.
“Deborl might be able to.” I cleared my throat. “He replaced Meuric as Janan’s Hallow—Janan’s representative—and since the earthquake was connected to Janan’s ascension, Deborl might have known something would happen. When friends visited him in prison, he’d have been able to warn them and ask for assistance.”
Stef nodded. “But how he did it isn’t as important as the fact that he did escape. I asked all of you to come here for one of two reasons: either Deborl is an immediate threat to you, or there’s no question where your loyalties lie. But everyone else? We don’t know. We have to assume they’re with Deborl.”
Forty people against the world.
They began muttering among themselves, and I caught Sam’s eye. He flashed a sad smile, like he knew I thought this was hopeless.
“So what do we do?” Lorin asked. “We won’t change everyone’s minds about newsouls, or siding with Deborl. Not even if we can find proof that he killed half the Council. He’ll convince them he did the right thing.”
“Like I said, we leave.” I bent to pick up my SED, and put it into my pocket as I sat. “I’ve already been exiled.” Did that still stand if half the Council was dead? “I want newsouls to leave, too, for their protection. As for the rest of you? You can stay, or you can go with the newsouls. They’ll need your help.” Assuming they could travel far enough from Range in the event of an eruption. If the only way to stop the eruption was to stop Janan, then the future looked very bleak. But I would try, even if it killed me. “The safest thing for everyone—newsouls and oldsouls alike—is to go far, far away.”
“Then we all go—where?” Lidea asked.
I shook my head. “Talk with Whit and Orrin about where the safest place will be. Far away. That’s all I can guess.” I pressed my mouth into a line and glanced at Sam, who just looked sad. “There’s something else I have to do, so I won’t be going with you. Not the whole way, at any rate.”
“Where Ana leads, I follow.” Sam managed a half smile.
“I’m going with Ana and Sam, too.” There was a deeper meaning in Stef’s words. She was the only one other than Sam and me who knew what Janan was, and what he did to newsouls. The time she’d spent inside the temple had opened her mind, shattering the memory magic that had kept her ignorant for five thousand years.
“I—I’ll go, too.” Sarit met my gaze. “I’m not completely sure what’s going on, but I want to be part of this.”
“Thank you.” Maybe it shouldn’t have relieved me to know Sarit and Stef were coming on what would no doubt be a dangerous mission, but it did. Stef was Sam’s best friend, and Sarit was mine. They would help. They would make the journey more bearable.
“I’ll go along, too.” Whit looked at his hands. “Maybe an archivist will be useful.”
“You will.” If I managed to get the temple books again—and I had to try before I left—Whit might be able to help translate.
“I . . .” Orrin dithered, looking between Geral and Whit.
“You’ll go with Geral,” Whit said. “And Ariana. They need you.”
Orrin nodded.
“I’m going to stay,” Armande said. “Someone needs to stay here and keep an eye on Deborl.”
Stef nodded, but from the edge of my sight, I caught Sam looking down. Armande was his father in this life, and they were close friends as well. He’d lost Councilor Sine, and now he was losing Armande.
“I’m sorry.” Armande didn’t look at Sam or meet anyone’s eyes. “It sounds cowardly that I don’t want to go, but—”
“It’s not cowardly,” I said. “It’s brave. It’s going to be dangerous here. You’ll have to hide. There will be constant earthquakes. You won’t even be able to stay at home or open your pastry stall, because Deborl knows we’re friends.”
Armande nodded. “I understand.”
“Then it’s settled,” Stef said. “Everyone but Armande leaves.”
“What about Emil?” Whit asked. “He should come, too.”
Emil the Sou
l Teller wasn’t in the library.
Stef shook her head. “No one else. We don’t know who might be working with Deborl.”
“Emil wouldn’t. And neither would Darce. There are lots of people we should take.” Whit stood and faced Stef. “We can’t leave them behind.”
“I agree with Whit,” Orrin said.
“Of course you do.” Stef rolled her eyes. “No, we’ve taken a chance on people before. Anyone remember what Wend did after Ana invited him to our meeting about newsoul rights? He told Deborl about our plans. Together they killed two pregnant women, caused another to miscarry, and almost killed two more. Including Geral.”
Lidea, formerly Wend’s partner, dropped her head like his actions were somehow her fault.
“Stef’s right,” Sam said. “We can’t trust anyone else. We’ll all be leaving behind people we care about, but the risks are too high. If Deborl stops us from leaving, that’s the end of it.”
“Security over friendship?” Orrin asked. “Is that it?”
A few other people spoke up, arguing Stef’s fears or Whit’s anger. Their voices crowded the library, crescendoing into shouts as they struggled to make their opinions heard.
I surged to my feet. “Stop!”
The room went quiet.
“I agree with Stef and Sam. We’ve already seen what happens when we’re betrayed, and I won’t risk the newsouls’ safety. I can’t.”
Sam gave me a small nod, and Whit and Orrin slumped in their seats. “When did you lose faith in people, Ana?” Whit asked.
It was amazing he ever thought I’d had any, considering all I’d been through with Li and everyone who’d fought my entrance into Heart. People kept doing things to reinforce my aversion to trusting them.
“I have faith in you,” I said to Whit. “And Orrin. And Sam and Stef and Sarit and everyone else in this room. But I have to consider what’s best for the newsouls. If we don’t protect them, no one will. Perhaps other friendly people, like Emil and Darce, will announce themselves after we’ve gone. Armande can send them after us, or they can stay here and try to form some kind of resistance. But the newsouls need to leave now, while there’s still a chance they can survive the eruption.”