Storm Siren

by Mary Weber

  The sounds outside are growing louder. “And why would I want that?”

  “Because I can unleash your powers and teach you control on a level Eogan can’t. And because if you don’t leave the Keep alone and let the war take its course, my men and I will gut you and your Terrene friend fassster than yo—”

  I lunge for him, but he touches my side, sending immediate images from his fingertips through my veins of Eogan being burned alive at Adora’s house. In disgusting, excruciating detail. I whimper and grab his wrist. And abruptly, the pictures fizzle out as his body goes rigid and begins to shake.

  The energy transferring from my hand wrapped around his arm begins to spark and flare, lighting up his skin like a torch. He screams and drops the knife, jerking violently. He thrusts his other hand to mine, sending fresh pictures dancing through my eyes of Breck lying dead and Eogan being ambushed and me splayed out cold and pale three feet in the ground while dirt is shoveled on top of me.

  I press harder. Until the heat in my hand turns to cold and a wave emits from my palms, spreading a film of ice from my fingertips out over his clothes, his skin, his gasping face. It crackles and stings. And I know it will kill him. I will kill him to keep him from hurting them.

  Use death as a last resort, Nym. Eogan’s words slip into mind.

  Myles drops his hand from my skin with a gurgle.

  I stop.

  Abruptly, everything stops.

  The lord protectorate falls, skin smoking like icy breath, just as the ground beneath us starts quaking. Cries erupt and the commotion grows as the earth keeps rumbling. Inside the cave, the ceiling is throwing down dust and rocks the size of my fist. The horses bolt out beside me, barely missing running us over. I cough on the filth, then grab Lord Myles by the arm and drag him out while my muscles and burning leg beg me to leave him.

  Then Colin’s behind me. He has grabbed the horses and is yelling about Breck in words too fast for me to understand.

  “Where is she?” I ask.

  “I don’t know! An’ why in hulls is Lord Windbag here tryin’ to kill us, and why in kracken did you drag ’im out with you?”

  I drop Myles’s arms and head for Colin. “Where’d you last see Breck?”

  “She was gone when I got out here.”

  “What about the other men?”

  “They fled into the forest after their hor—”

  A crashing along the tree line cuts him off. It’s followed by Breck’s cry and a bolcrane scream.

  CHAPTER 30

  BRECK APPEARS LIKE A LAUGHING MADWOMAN from the forest, legs racing and hair sticking straight up. A half terrameter behind her, the tops of snow-frosted trees are shaking and bowing to the accompaniment of cracking limbs and uprooting trunks. The ground trembles.

  An adult bolcrane.

  Colin’s eyes grow melon-size. He shoves Haven’s reins at me and jumps onto his mount, spurring it toward Breck.

  “Nym, let’s go!” he’s yelling. “Breck, what in hulls?”

  I reach for a stirrup as the bloodcurdling cry of a grown man explodes from somewhere close in the forest. Colin races for Breck. The assassins’ heat drew the monster right to us. Fools.

  I strain to get my aching leg up on Haven, but before I do, Colin’s already reached his sister. He leans down and yanks Breck up behind him, and I’m at once relieved and terrified as the forest screams grow louder. I’m also suddenly aware of Lord Myles lying beside me in a faint.

  I look from Colin and Breck to Myles and back.

  “Nym, what’re you waitin’ for? We ’ave to go!” Colin hollers.

  I bend down to feel Myles’s pulse as my legs quiver and threaten to give way.

  “You can’t be serious!” Colin dashes up to me while Breck’s hanging on to him for dear life.

  “We can’t just leave him!”

  “That thing’s comin’, and if you bring Lord Myles, he’ll probably just try to kill you when he wakes!”

  The shuddering in my thighs moves up my body, making my head feel dizzy and my skin cold. I slip out the medicine box and swallow the final two tablets, then tuck it away and yank up my hood. He’s right of course. I can’t bring Myles.

  I look at the cave, which, while still bellowing smoke and debris, is miraculously still intact. “He betrayed Faelen to Bron, but we can’t just let him die.” I lift the man’s arm again and, clamping my lips shut, try to drag him back into the cave, while my own leg and gut revolt.

  Colin just glares as he jumps down to help. “You want to save all them too?” He dumps Myles’s body inside before batting a hand back at the forest where more cries are erupting.

  “His men came knowing what they were getting into, and they left the same way. But the lord protectorate isn’t even conscious enough to defend himself,” I say, limping for Haven. “Just seal the entrance enough so the bolcranes can’t get him. Please.”

  Colin doesn’t bother responding. He simply lifts me onto Haven before turning to thrust his hands over the snow-speckled ground, drowning out all noise with an earthquake. A thick wall of dirt shoots straight up, and within seconds the entrance is mostly covered. The bald boy lunges for his mount, pulls himself up, and tugs Breck’s arms around his waist.

  My mutter of “Thanks” is claimed by the wind as our horses take off in lengthy strides, ears flattened, dirt flying.

  A wail from the charging bolcrane, and suddenly the treetops are flapping in a forward motion, and glimpses of enormous black leather flash between the white and green branches we’re rushing past. The monster is keeping pace just inside the forest edge.

  He’s hunting us.

  I put out my hand and jerk down four lightning bolts in succession. Breck says something I can’t understand as I watch the bolcrane slow, then stumble and appear to fall. I turn my attention back to Haven and, putting my head low, follow Colin close to the mountain wall, praying the gradually climbing space we’re in meets up with a path soon. Or that the wall tapers down enough for him to cut a trail.

  His attention stays trained on the sheer-faced mountain where green tufts are sprouting out and farther ahead is an overhang of snow. The air begins getting colder and eventually the cliff drops down until it’s only fifteen feet above us before quickly turning into a slope that eases upward into a tree-spattered, steep meadow.

  Colin veers off to guide us up through the clear space, which increasingly narrows into an actual path. We push the horses, leaning forward as they fight for their footing on the snowy ground, and over the next couple of hours, Colin has to hop off multiple times to create a line of ridges deep enough for their hooves to dig into. In between those pauses, I find myself slipping into semiconscious sleep on Haven’s heated neck until, finally, we reach the lowest peak and I force my head to clear.

  I’m home.

  That is my first coherent thought.

  I push it away. I don’t want to imagine it. I don’t want to think it or care about it.

  But the sickening in my stomach stays.

  I peer around to distract myself and see the sun is almost at center sky even though it’s doing nothing to warm the frigid air. The rain-washed atmosphere is already showing new, thin lines of smoke drifting in from the entire southern border, and more trailing in from the west. A low hum echoes across the mountain range. At first I think it’s from bees, except it has a distinct metallic ring.

  We’re nearing the pass.

  Another ten minutes of riding, and the sparse smattering of trees becomes thicker with snowdrifts caked to them.

  I press forward to where Colin’s riding. “How you holding up?”

  “Tired. But I’m not the one riding with an injured leg. You?”

  I hold out my water skin to him. “Fine. As long as we keep moving.”

  His breath comes out in foggy puffs as his face morphs into a grin. He gulps mouthfuls and hands the bag back as, behind him, Breck snores with her hooded face ducked onto his back.

  He squints at my eyes. My tremb
ly hands. And clicks his mount to keep up with mine. “So, you gonna tell me what’s really goin’ on between you and Master Bolcrane?”

  I shift in my seat. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me.”

  “It shouldn’t.”

  “Anything botherin’ you matters to me.”

  My eyes well up for no blasted reason. I lift my chin and smooth the crack in my throat. “It’s fine.”

  “Maybe I should be the judge of that. Especially if there’s somethin’ I need to know.”

  Fair point.

  He waits.

  I let him, until it becomes awkward.

  “Eogan is King Odion’s twin brother,” I finally say in a steady voice.

  His head whips around. “He what? Did he tell you that?”

  “He and Isobel.”

  “Yet he fights for Faelen.”

  “So it would appear.”

  Colin’s gaze turns challenging. “What, you think he’s a spy?”

  “You don’t?”

  “No,” he says without hesitation.

  I look away.

  Me neither.

  “But that’s not what’s bothering you. Yer upset ’bout somethin’ else.”

  I glance up at him. Open my mouth. Close it. And there it is: the admission that this bald boy knows me better than I have ever given him credit for.

  He watches me in silence, and for whatever reason I recall that night at Adora’s party when he told me about his mother and father and Breck and his home. When he told me his story.

  Something in his eyes says now he’s waiting for mine.

  But apparently I’ve not been paying attention to where we’re going because the trail abruptly splits in two, and just as we set in on the higher one, we round a bend and a boulder and emerge near an enormous field. It’s surrounded by fir trees and snow and a mossy stone outline of what used to be the foundation of an estate house.

  I slow.

  Smoke drifts across the horizon and the breeze carries in its burnt, violent scent as crocus heads rustle across the white meadow.

  My blood shivers.

  Haven stops.

  It’s a full minute before I work up the nerve to slide off. When I do, I press my booted toe into the icy ground as if to make sure this is real. That the heartbeat and lung-breaths thumping inside of me are the same as those that ripple beneath the earth here.

  They are. I can feel the energy, the familiarity of its steady life-rhythm in this place. It is old and purposeful and deep. Not like the Valley of Origin, but . . . it’s a rhythm that has kept going even after everything that existed here was destroyed.

  A chain jingles and Colin dismounts beside me.

  I ignore him and stare at the mound of flowers pushing up through a snowdrift. The meadow’s now filled with baby saplings and new life, belying the violence done to it. I scan the area until I see it—the little spot where I stood and watched my world fall. I can almost picture the blood spatters in the snow.

  Colin stays quiet. Still waiting.

  “Do you believe a person is born for violence?”

  He looks surprised. I watch him consider it a moment. Then, “I like to think we’re all born to do good, but dark things sometimes get in the way. Why?”

  One breath.

  Two breaths.

  Five breaths.

  “Because Eogan helped kill my parents here when I was five.”

  His silence reveals his feelings more than the quick jerk of his arm against mine.

  After a pause he says, “I’m guessin’ he didn’t know what he was doin’.”

  It’s a hopeful statement more than a question, to which I respond, “He didn’t know who they were, but he knew what he was doing. Just like he did with all the people he murdered. And his spending the last few years trying to be sorry doesn’t make it better.”

  “No. I doubt anythin’ would.” Colin rubs his neck. “But makin’ a hurtful choice is different than being born for violence—than being truly evil—isn’t it? Just like the things you and I did in our past don’t make us evil.”

  I kick the dirt with my shoe. “Eogan believes you and I were born to bring deliverance to Faelen.”

  “So?”

  I stare out at the smoke-whispered valleys and forests covered in death-eating birds and shrug. “How can you say it’s not a person’s fault when he harms others, whether intentionally or not, but then say it’s honorable when he chooses to help? I mean, what makes a person evil? If you believe a person was born to bring help, then were others born to bring destruction? Was Eogan born to kill my parents?”

  Was I born to destroy life, or to defend Faelen?

  Colin bumps my shoulder. Then does it again. Until I look up and that bald-boy smirk emerges. “I think some have to fight harder to choose good over evil because the evil’s got it out for them. And maybe it’s because those’re the ones evil knows will become the strongest warriors, recognizing true wickedness when it rears its head.”

  Something, a wave, a feeling, a force, tingles up through my feet as if the earth beneath is agreeing with his words.

  He slips his arm around mine. “Maybe the ones who’ve struggled with true evil are the ones meant to make the biggest difference against it, you know?”

  He hands me Haven’s reins. Pauses. Then plants a kiss on the side of my head and winks. “You ready to go be not evil with the most attractive male friend you’ve ever known?”

  I feel a smile edge the corners of my mouth. One last gaze around the sun-drenched meadow and I slip my hand into his. “Thanks.”

  With a deep breath I turn to Haven, and I find Breck has been listening. She’s wearing an expression halfway between a smirk and disgust. But when I blink, it’s gone and her look of tired annoyance is back in place.

  “By the way . . . what were you doing in the forest earlier, Breck?” I tip my head at her.

  Her blind eyes stare at nothing as her lips peel back into a wide, toothy grin. “Hunting.”

  “Yeah, about that, Breck,” Colin erupts. “What the kracken? What’s with you? You coulda been killed, you know.”

  I don’t wait for her reply to him. I don’t want to know. I just mount up and, taking the lead, let them hash it out in their snappy sibling way while I hurry us along toward the ridge that gives way to views stretching from the valleys of Faelen to the Sea of Elisedd.

  When we get close, I swear the ocean sparkles and sings my name with salt breezes that stimulate my tongue. Clouds drift in with the wind, moseying their way toward us, and toward the small fortress I assume is the Keep, which is jutting up through the smoke and fog about a terrameter below. With three buildings, a courtyard, and an exterior wall made of stone, it’s carved right into the mountainside—gray like the dulling afternoon sky and topped with shake shingles crusted with snow. The Fendres Passage splays out like a string far below it, spanning from the Litchfell Forest east of us, through the mountains and out to touch the open sea.

  Beyond that are the ships. Bron’s. Ours. Covered in such a shroud of smoke that it’s impossible to tell which is which. And above those fly the airships—I can hear them clearly now—droning like murderous gnats, making their way in an advancing column toward the pass and Faelen.

  The closest airship pushes through a cloud not far from us and my mouth goes dry. It’s enormous. Like a tin castle floating beneath a giant, rippling pale balloon that is the size of Adora’s house, with insect-larvae-like wrinkles and a huge dragon painted on the side. Even Colin’s breath seems to catch at the sight. The monstrosity it’s carrying looks like a metal tube with pipes and gears and a bladed thing that appears to propel it forward. And underneath—the bomb.

  The closer it moves, the more it stirs the air, sending wisps of eeriness up from the fortress.

  I shudder.

  There’s something dark down there. Another presence. More insidious even than the Bron army.

  The thought emerges that the unseen things that
haunt this world have taken residence here, and it would only take one rip in the atmosphere to release them. A form of evil colliding with the skin of our Hidden Lands. Seeking to soil and own it.

  A wolf howls in the distance, and the minstrels’ songs about Draewulf slip into mind. Colin’s horse shies. Even Haven gives a slight tremble.

  Colin gulps and looks at me. He feels it too.

  Let’s just get this over with.

  I peer at the fortress, at the tiny men roaming around it like ants, and imagine it going up in flames. Poof.

  Just. Like. That.

  I lift my arm and it shakes. I don’t want to do this.

  Use killing as a last resort, Eogan’s voice whispers in my chest.

  I try to ignore it. This is different. There’s something wrong with this place.

  Colin stretches out his hand and the earth rumbles.

  My chest flinches.

  Curses.

  I move my fingers over to stop Colin’s. “What if we can halt the war without killing them?”

  “What?” Both he and Breck turn in my direction.

  “What if I can get to the fortress and find another way to stop them?” I hate the words even as they’re coming out of my mouth. I don’t want to go down there, but I also can’t bear the guilt.

  “Are you jesting? You want us to go down there? That place is crawling!”

  “Not you, just me.”

  “Stop bein’ an idiot,” Breck says. “Just do what yer suppose’ to.”

  “Nym, your ability doesn’t protect you,” Colin says. “Those men’ll kill you in a heartbeat.”

  “I won’t get caught. I’ll be quick, and if I’m wrong, then I’ll come back and we’ll do what Adora asked.”

  He stares at me as if this is the worst idea I’ve mentioned in his history of knowing me.

  “Look, if we’re going to take a bunch of lives, I need to be sure it’s the only way. I have to live with mysel—”

  “You’re not ’ere to investigate!” Breck explodes. “You’re ’ere to obey the order you’ve been given! How dare you think—”

  “Breck,” Colin says firmly. He turns and chews his lip at me. “I know you. Once you see the person you’re supposed to kill, you won’t be able to, Nym.”