by Sarah Ahiers
But the Da Vias had deserved it. Mostly. They had killed the Saldanas in order to gain power and to keep their secrets safe. Maybe the head of their Family had been at fault, but they had followed her and it had led to many of their deaths.
The travelers here, in Mornia, had done nothing. Yes, Nev had taken me. Yes, he had sent his beloved snake to try and kill Les. But that was not the fault of everyone. The vast majority of these people hadn’t even traveled to Lovero with the menagerie. They were innocent.
We broke free of the buildings of New Mornia and the dead plains spread before us.
And there, in the west, drawing closer, was an army of shrieking, screaming ghosts.
We stopped. All three of us, shocked by the vision before us. The ghosts were whipped into a frenzy, spinning, circling, wailing. But they weren’t focused on their destination. Instead, they were focused on a figure in their midst. She was too far away and it was too dark to see, but I knew it was Lea, in the center of them, pushing forward through the ghosts.
“Dost ba ebal Culda,” Bedna gasped out. Culda save us.
We pressed forward again, heading for the barrier along with everyone else.
The travelers stood in a line, like they normally did at night to sing the ghosts away, but there were so many of them, now. Everyone had come to stand at the boundaries and sing. They had already taken up the song by the time we reached them, and we squeezed into the line, Bedna on one side of me, Nev on the other.
I didn’t even have to sing. The singura around my neck picked up the song surrounding it, glowing for a moment before it flashed, connecting with Bedna’s and then traveling down the line. It didn’t end, though. The light kept glowing, holding the barrier strong as long as the travelers kept singing.
Behind us, Metta and Isha appeared. “What is happening?” Metta yelled over the song; then she saw the spectral army pressing toward us and gasped.
Isha wasted no time, stepping beside Nev and picking up the song. Metta followed quickly after her, and together we watched as the ghosts drew closer. And closer.
When the ghosts reached the barrier, I didn’t know if it would hold. Maybe the ghosts would be pushed aside, the same way they were pushed away from Lea when they got too close. Or perhaps the barrier would collapse against the strength of so many ghosts.
There were hundreds of them. They must have been following her the entire way. Days and days traveling through the dead plains, collecting the angry dead as she went.
The ghosts were close enough now that details began to emerge. They were no longer a writhing mass of glowing, spectral light, but instead were individuals—this one a man, that one a woman. A child. An old man. All of them wailing in their hunger to reach what was in their midst.
We could see her now, too. A figure in black riding a bay stallion, bone mask strapped to her face, the left half so black it practically disappeared in the darkness. Travelers gasped when they saw her, and truly she was a terrifying figure.
But she was just my aunt. Just Lea Saldana, who loved beautiful fabrics and hand pies stuffed with lamb. Who hated the scent of goldencones or hot days without a breeze.
Who had died once, and returned stronger.
She was the chosen of Safraella, yes, but she was still just my family.
When she drew close enough, she stopped. Another horse walked beside her, a black stallion who pawed at the ground. She’d brought Night with her, to take me home.
I looked at Nev then. Blood spotting his bandage, hat pressed to his head, singing beside his family.
“I’m glad,” I said to him over the sound of the song, the sound of the ghosts. He looked at me.
“I’m glad I’m here,” I said. “With you.”
His eyes softened.
Lea slipped off Kismet’s saddle and walked to the barrier. The ghosts circled her but kept their distance, having learned if they crept too close, or tried to touch her, they would be pushed back by an invisible force.
One of them bumped into the traveler barrier and the ghost was shoved away, much in the same manner.
Lea stopped, and watched a few more ghosts as they were pushed away from the invisible barrier.
She turned toward the travelers again, and though her face was covered by her bone mask, I felt her eyes lock on to mine.
“I have come for what is mine.”
Her voice was not loud. She did not yell, and yet she could be heard, clearly, over the shrieks and cries of the ghosts. Over the traveler song.
“You would bring ghosts into our home?” Bedna shouted to her. The ghosts moaned. “You would kill us all for one girl?”
“For my family I would murder the world.”
It wasn’t her.
It looked like her. It sounded like her and moved like her. But something was wrong. It was not Lea. Not the Lea I knew.
Lea pressed forward and the travelers sang louder and when she reached the barrier, she pushed against it and it glowed brighter, but kept her out.
She wasn’t a ghost. There was no reason for her to be unable to step through the barrier, and yet she couldn’t seem to get through.
Lea pressed against it again, and it glowed once more, casting shadows onto the dead plains, and behind Lea was the largest shadow of all, stretching out behind her like the shadow of an oak or a tower. She stepped away from the barrier and the light dimmed, plunging us into night once more.
“Did you see that?” I asked Nev. He nodded, once, quickly.
The wind picked up, whipping my nightgown around my legs.
“She’s not herself,” I said.
“It does not matter,” he replied. “She comes to kill us all.”
The wind tossed my hair into my mouth and I spat it aside. “The ghosts will vanish with the sun,” I said. “I can reason with her after that.”
Nev looked at me, doubt spreading through his eyes, but he picked up the song once more, singing loudly with the other travelers, keeping the ghosts out.
The alarm horn sounded again. I glanced up at the tower and the man who stood there, blowing the horn. Almost everyone was already here, holding the barrier in place. There was no reason to sound the alarm.
Dust blew into my eyes and I wiped them clean. Behind Lea, on the horizon, the stars began to disappear.
I blinked rapidly, in case the dust had ruined my vision, but no. As I watched, more and more of the stars began to vanish.
“What is it?” I shouted to Nev.
“A bol!”
A dust storm, now of all times. Maybe it was coincidence, but I had a hard time believing there wasn’t something bigger happening that we were blind to.
The bol would come, and some of the travelers would leave the line, to secure their animals, their livelihoods.
Lea pressed against the barrier again, testing it for weak spots.
If enough of the travelers left, Lea would break through the barrier, I felt it in my bones, and the ghosts would wreak havoc on anyone still present.
The sun would rise. Maybe in an hour. Maybe less. Could we last that long? The bol was still so far away and seemed to be moving slowly, but would it be fully upon us before the sun? Before our adrenaline failed us and our strength turned to weakness, to fear? Until we fled for safety from the ghosts?
Lea stood across from me now, palm flat against the barrier, watching as light flared out from the pressure.
“You’ll kill everyone,” I said to her. And even through the wind, the song, the screams and cries of the ghosts, she heard me.
“You’re the only one who matters,” she said. “They attacked us in our home. They deserve to die.”
“Like the Da Vias?” I asked, and thought of Claudia, my mother, hidden somewhere in the dark.
“I returned the Da Vias to Her. It was what She asked of me.”
“These people are innocent! You would murder children in your wrath.”
She blinked behind her mask and dropped her hand from the barrier. In her darkest rage, I knew Lea wou
ld never intentionally harm a child. It was the whole reason she had stolen me in the first place. To keep me safe. From the ghosts. From the Da Vias.
From the world.
But I couldn’t be kept safe from the world. It was everywhere and bad things happened and that was just the way of it all.
Behind her, the brown dust from the storm bore down on us. If I could see it, it meant the sun was rising. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the thin line of black sky turning purple over the horizon. Only a few more minutes, then the ghosts would be gone.
I faced Lea. “There has been enough spilled blood.”
I remembered Les’s blood, pouring across the table. All of this because I had sought comfort in the arms of a traveler boy.
I reached over and took Nev’s hand. He squeezed my fingers.
Lea missed nothing.
“They took you,” she said. “They took you from us.”
The wind gusted behind her. Night whinnied, loud and high.
“You took me once, too,” I said.
Her head jerked, like I’d slapped her.
She stepped back and the tension seemed to ease from her. Her chest rose as she took a deep breath.
“All right,” she said. “All right.”
Then she walked away from the barrier, the ghosts following after her.
Beside me I could practically feel the relief as it rushed through Nev. Lea was bringing the ghosts away from the barrier, pulling them with her, waiting for the sun to rise.
The bol struck.
And the barrier shattered.
thirty-eight
THE WIND GUSTED INTO OUR FACES. PEOPLE STUMBLED or turned away, protecting their eyes.
And it was enough for the barrier to collapse.
As if someone had taken a mallet to a glass bowl, the light flashed before us, then crackled in spider webs and suddenly was gone, vanishing like a candle, snuffed out in the wind. The light from the singura at my chest died, and even though many of the travelers kept singing, the light didn’t return.
“What . . .” I managed to say, before someone screamed, the bol whipping her voice instantly away.
She’d probably screamed once she’d recognized how much danger we were in, with the ghosts so close.
But screaming only attracted them.
Even through the wind and sand and dirt, the ghosts were apparent, their spectral glow gleaming through the storm. Almost as one they turned away from Lea and toward Mornia, and the travelers who stood at the border, trying to keep their homes safe.
“Run!” Someone shouted, and only later would I realize it was Lea, her voice reaching us even through the storm.
I turned to my left but Bedna was already gone, rushing away with the rest of the travelers, heading for the nearest home, whether it was a building in New Mornia or a hole in the ground in Old Mornia.
The ghosts screamed and streamed toward us.
“Allegra!” Nev shouted, yanking on my arm. But we wouldn’t make it to safety in time. The ghosts would catch us, would rip our souls from our bodies until we, too, were ghosts wandering the plains.
We needed protection.
“This way!” I pulled him forward, stumbling toward the ghosts that rushed at us.
Nev held his ground and my fingers slipped from his and suddenly he was gone, disappeared in the dust and the sand that swirled around me.
“Nev!” I shouted into the wind. “Nev!” But if he answered, the wind stole it from me.
A ghost materialized to my left. It screamed, its open mouth black and empty and hungry.
A flash of light in front of me and the ghost vanished, replaced by Lea.
I stumbled to her. She caught me in her arms, and never before had I held so tightly to someone.
A ghost appeared behind us, but Lea’s power deflected it away.
Lea pulled back and looked at me, her face covered by her stark bone mask, wind bellowing around us. “I have you,” she said to me.
“I know,” I said over the wind.
And the sun rose.
Even in the midst of the bol the ghosts vanished, leaving everyone safe once more.
From the storm a shadow rushed us.
Lea shoved me aside with just enough time to yank her sword free and block the attack by Claudia Da Via.
I fell to the ground, the wind pelting me with sand and dust. I held my hand in front of my eyes, trying to protect my vision.
I expected Lea and Claudia to talk, to shout things at each other like they had the last time they’d been together, standing on either side of a street that separated Ravenna and Lilyan. But they were utterly silent, and that was more frightening by far. They couldn’t waste the energy and effort words would cost. They were in it to kill each other.
“Stop!” I shouted, climbing to my feet.
Thunder approached, and shadows. Night and Kismet galloped through the dust, eyes wide as they fled toward Mornia.
A gust of wind caught me straight in the face and I fell, my hand pressed against the sand on the ground, trying to stay on my feet.
The fall saved my life.
Perrin slashed her knife where my face had been. She lost her balance and staggered away a few steps.
“The gods were wrong when they chose you!” she shouted over the roar of the wind. “It is just you and me now, ghoshka.”
And she was right. I’d lost Nev in the storm. Behind me I caught a glimpse of Lea and Claudia dueling, their leather-clad forms dodging in and out of my sight like sand wraiths or storm ghosts or some other myth.
Perrin charged.
But I still had the knife I’d taken from Claudia and I raised it now, to defend myself.
I’d beaten Perrin before in a knife fight. But that had been days ago, before I’d fallen ill. I should have killed her then, and none of this would have come to pass.
Perrin slashed at me and I ducked, twisting around her. The wind buffeted my hair into my face. I hastily brushed it aside. Visibility was bad enough with the sand.
Perrin stabbed for my ribs. I slammed my forearm onto hers, shoving her knife down. She grunted. I jumped back, panting. My chest pounded with every breath. My vision spun. I didn’t have much to give.
Lightning flashed above us, static from the sand. And in the brief illumination shadows loomed over me, taller than trees. Three of them. Or four. They were gone almost immediately. Perrin rushed me.
I feinted right and she bought it, placing her foot and stabbing. I twisted left and slashed with my own knife.
It bit into the flesh of her arm. Perrin jerked free, dancing away until the sand swallowed her from my sight.
I coughed, and then coughed again. And then I couldn’t stop. The cough brought me to my knees, hand pressed against my chest, eyes watering from more than just the sand and dust.
A figure in the storm. I raised my knife, prepared for her next attack.
But the figure appeared and it was Nev, followed by Metta and Isha. They held hands to keep from getting separated, and all three wore scarves around their mouths and noses, protecting them from the sand.
“Allegra!” Nev shouted, his voice muffled behind his scarf.
“Perrin!” I tried to yell at him, to warn him away. But my voice emerged as a croak and I coughed again, until I was forced to use both hands to keep me upright on the ground. My vision blurred, darkness creeping on the edges.
They dropped beside me, and Isha tied a scarf around my nose and mouth, blocking out the sand. I continued to cough, but after a few moments I was able to catch my breath, to ease the tightness in my chest, to clear my vision.
Nev grabbed me under the arms and pulled me to my feet.
“Perrin!” I croaked out. He leaned closer, trying to hear me.
Perrin dashed out of the storm, smashing into Nev. Her shoulder connected with his chest and I heard him grunt, his breath bursting out of him before he fell, yanking me off my feet with him.
Perrin and Nev tumbled to the grou
nd, but Perrin recovered quickly, jumping to her feet.
Isha rushed to me, trying to help me up.
The wind gusted around us, the sand pelting our bare skin.
“Perrin!” Metta yelled. But Perrin ignored her. She kicked Nev in the head and he collapsed, unmoving.
Perrin strode to me, switching the grip on her knife.
Isha stepped in front of me in a moment of bravery I would have never expected from her, but Perrin shoved her out of the way, and Isha’s dress wrapped around her legs, tripping her.
I stumbled away from Perrin, breath wheezing in my throat, knife held before me. I couldn’t beat her. She would kill me, here in the storm, on the dead plains.
I backed toward Nev and Metta, who was on her knees beside him, trying to revive him. Perrin hadn’t tried to kill him, and I didn’t think she would injure either Metta or Isha. The only one she truly wanted dead was me.
From the corner of my eye a shadow flitted past us. It vanished before I could do more than register its speed as it coursed low to the ground.
Perrin charged. She stabbed for my right side. I blocked.
She flipped the knife to her left hand for the same attack. I blocked there, too. I staggered backward, the sand shifting beneath my feet, keeping me off balance.
Perrin pushed at me again, relentless in her attacks. Calm and confident.
Her knife caught me across the knuckles, then again on the forearm.
My blood dripped into the sand at my feet, staining it red only for an instant until the wind and dust blew it away.
She was trying to bleed me, to wound me so much that I would lose strength with every drop of blood.
Another nick. This one across my cheek. I tasted blood as it soaked into the scarf covering my mouth.
The shadow again. A quick flit of . . . something. It wasn’t human. It moved too fast to be human.
Perrin attacked again, in my moment of distraction. She stabbed straight for my chest. I brought both arms up, crossing them in a block, but the strength of her stab was enough to force me off my feet. I slammed to the ground, the sand and dust exploding around me before it was whipped away by the wind.
I couldn’t catch my breath. Couldn’t find the strength to get to my feet.