by Rin Chupeco
“I am a bard more than I am a king. And I am not the last of my lineage. Please. Let me do one last service for you.”
She paused, staring at me with the gentlest look on her face.
And then, as she had done with her brother, she extended her hand.
“We will fight her together then,” she said.
I nodded, then clarified, “Altaecia? She is Druj, right?”
“No.” Her smile this time was grim. “Druj is a woman who has hidden herself away within the Willows for decades. A woman who has counseled me and others for so long, with none of us the wiser. Not Altaecia. Someone else.”
24
Druj may have intended to foist the Dark on me to instill new fears, but he underestimated my newfound strength. My mind barreled past the borders of Kion back into the territories of Odalia and beyond, and I was stunned by the impossible that I could manage. I flitted from the nearest thought to the next, using them as stepping-stones as I expanded my Scrying to search for one mind in particular, traveling from Odalian guard to Kion farmer to Yadoshan merchant, but found nothing of Altaecia’s mind in that whole continent. Where was she?
I changed targets, and this time located Zoya’s mind. She was on her way back to Ankyo with the other asha, but my mentor was nowhere nearby. Altaecia had sent Zoya and most of the other asha back to Kion, while she had remained behind…but for what? What was she waiting for?
I should have known. I should have known. The visions of the future Lord Agnarr told me I would gain, the crescent symbol carved into the rock at Mithra’s Wall—the same design as the zivar I had worn for so many years. How blind could I be?
Naturally, Kalen refused when I told him of my intentions. “We haven’t gotten this far for you to do this alone.” I couldn’t blame him for his anger.
“She wants something from me, and I can’t put any of you at more risk than I already have.” I didn’t want to return to Ankyo. You’ll return to Kion to mourn on graves, the Fox from Stranger’s Peak had told me.
“This is not up for discussion. You should know that by now.”
“We’re not leaving either,” Likh said just as stubbornly.
“We’re taking you back to the Willows,” I said quietly. “You and Khalad will be safe there. Now that we know the source of your blight, it should dissipate soon enough. You won’t be in any further danger.” I clenched my fists, my fears running a mile a minute. “I suffered none of the blackouts I had in Ankyo after I left. You weren’t the only one she’d been poisoning. I was meant to be a victim all along—not of the blight, but of madness.”
• • •
We stayed overnight at the Sea of Skulls, looking to regain what strength we could manage before our return to Ankyo, with plans to drop Likh and Khalad off at the nearest village. Likh wasn’t happy, though she appeared more amenable after Khalad had taken her aside for a more private talk.
Kalen, on the other hand, was a lost cause. “You already know my answer,” he growled, tossing more kindling onto the fire. “Where you go, I go.”
I couldn’t sleep, uneasy about what the next day would bring for us. “I don’t know where I’m going yet. The asha association could hunt me down for the rest of my life. You weren’t born for this, Kalen.”
“Last time I checked, neither were you.” He touched the tip of my nose with a calloused finger. “We’ll go to Istera, find a place away from the city like Lord Garindor did. Or Tresea, where the asha’s reach is paltry at best and everyone would much rather mind their own business. We’ll find our own house and garden.” He smiled. “They’re always looking for people who’re good with their hands, ready to do hard work.”
“I can sew,” I volunteered, hungry for this dream that he wove. “Enough for a livelihood, I think. And I know enough to treat the sick. I can use Illusion, change our appearances. They’ll never find us that way.”
He bent closer, brushed his lips with mine. His hands trailed to my stomach. For the first time that I can remember, his touch was awkward and unsure. “When we’re sure they won’t find us, if they do stop looking, I wouldn’t mind having some… They’ll be looking for a couple, not a family. If you would one day want to—”
My heart was full. “You’ll need to make an honest woman out of me first.”
“If you’d let me, I’ll find the nearest judge between here and Kion. Likh and Khalad could even attend to us before we send them back to Ankyo.” He kissed me longer. “You propositioned me, remember? You asked me for my heartsglass in a room full of Yadoshans. If we’d had another day to ourselves, I would have married you right there and took them all for witnesses. You would have enjoyed some of their raunchier wedding customs.”
“Even if the bride was an asha?” I was horrified. He laughed, and I was on his lap in an instant, kissing him eagerly, my hands running through his hair. “I was drunk and out of sorts,” I whispered to him, but found myself liking the idea more and more. Surely I had nothing left to lose. Surely I could start a new life, not as one, but as one half of two…
“I regret nothing I said. Marry me, Kalen. Take my heartsglass and honor me with yours.”
His arms encircled me. “You already do.”
From behind us, Khalad cleared his throat. “I, uh…I’m going to take the rest of the utensils. Just go ahead and—”
He crumpled abruptly. Stunned, we broke apart and rushed to him. “What’s wrong with him?” I asked in a panic, immediately Delving him and finding nothing.
“Have no fear, Tea. He’s only asleep. He’s too important a person to kill, but I would like him unconscious for the rest of our conversation.”
A figure emerged from the darkness, and only then did I sense their presence. There were two of them: the mysteriously cowled figure that looked down on me from the cliffs of Mithra’s Wall, and—no, no, no—Altaecia. Kalen let out a growl. Likh stumbled toward us, shock clear on her face.
“You don’t seem as surprised as they are.” Altaecia greeted me with a smile, as if she had not just gone out of her way to betray me, to betray everything the asha and Kion had stood for.
“I should have known sooner. There were signs, but I refused to believe them.” I was angry, horrified. “Why, Althy?”
“It was for you, my dear.” Her voice was as I remembered it, patient and kind and wise, but a strange tremor lay tucked behind it. There was sadness in the way she walked and sighed, a peculiar regret that I could not understand. “And for Mykaela, surely you didn’t think you were the only one who wanted to save her? To find some method to keep her from drawing in the Dark and prolong her life?”
“I had hoped I was wrong. That someone else had contaminated the herbs when you were unaware of it. But you gave us a fresh batch back at the Odalian camp, and the rune was just as strong there. I could have explained away the first, but not the second. Surely you wouldn’t have been so careless.”
“I had no intentions of hiding any longer, Tea, and hoped you would discover it once you had left the Odalians and Yadoshans. I encouraged you to leave quickly, as you’ll recall. After learning you had gone to Stranger’s Peak and endured the Gorvekan trials, I knew it was time for us to join strengths.”
“You could have killed Likh!” Kalen all but snarled.
“We needed collateral, a contingency for occasions like these. Tea was our priority, but another asha would do. I trusted that you would find a means to stay Likh’s condition, and I was right. I could not have taught you so much of what I knew only to see you fail.”
“And what can you offer me that Aenah could not?” I asked bitterly. “Did you think our previous friendship would be enough for me to accept your offer when I rejected hers?”
“This is not a betrayal, Tea. I do this to save your life. I was complicit long before you were asha, almost twenty years now, in fact. I was too late for Mykkie—I had no idea where
her heartsglass had gone, you see. That was Aenah and Telemaine’s doing, and the elder asha exacerbated the matter by refusing to investigate. I would not have been complicit in something that would so affect her health that way.
“I raged when Polaire died—if there was a way to bring her back, I would’ve done so. It was always about her, about Mykkie, and, then later, about you. I knew the Dark would claim your lives as it has everyone it was unfortunate enough to touch. But shadowglass would ensure your survival. We have no need for magic, child. I would destroy every rune to keep you both safe.”
“How? By Blighting everyone else? By putting Likh in danger? By corrupting Aadil and starting a war among the kingdoms? That’s your idea of helping?”
“Yes. What better evidence to show how easily spells are abused than by demonstrating them in all their corrupted glory? Runic magic was not made for us mortals. No person should hold this much power. It will be used to destroy people as much as help them, as you have already seen. We must start anew—in a world without magic, with nothing but our own will.”
“I can’t. Fox—”
“You know as well as I that there is a way to save Fox. The juice of the First Harvest, wasn’t it? Failing that, well, perhaps shadowglass can be used to shape the world according to how we want it to be. As a god, you would have no limits. We could remake the world, make it a kinder place.”
“Are you insane?” Kalen shouted. “You cannot build a kinder world on the blood of innocents!”
“Can Tea tell me, with yourself as the exception, if there is no other heartsglass Tea would value more than Fox’s? Is the price too great to see him alive in the truest sense? Ask her if I lie, Kalen. Her heartsglass tells me all I need to know.”
“I can’t do that,” I choked out. “So many lives already—Yarrod, the Drychta, Aadil’s madness, Knightscross, Kance and Telemaine…Daisy…”
“Daisy was an unfortunate accident. The Dark was stronger in you than I thought.”
“I escaped the blight, but your medicine made me weaker, more complicit to accept the Dark. You plagued me with fevered dreams, made me doubt myself, made me think I was falling into darkrot. You did it so that Kion would turn against me, to make me more susceptible to join your cause. You offered your services to Kance under the guise of healing, but instead you gave him nightmares and headaches. And you gave him Blight for a time, in case I needed further persuasion.”
She offered no defense, and my rage grew. “And Daisy—why did you make me kill her?”
Altaecia gazed serenely back at me. “I did nothing of the sort, Tea. My herbs may have given you greater cause to take in the Darkness, that is true, but your actions have always been your own.”
“And what of this Faceless?” Likh demanded, staring at the figure. “Druj committed countless atrocities. How could you stoop so low as to ally yourself with him?”
Laughter, nearly hysterical, bubbled at the back of my throat. “Because we trusted Druj ourselves. Didn’t we, Althy? How many times had we gone to her, asking for advice? I should know—I went to the temple more than anyone else.”
“Tea.” Likh quaked. “What do you mean?”
“Nobody knows what Druj looks like, because Druj had always lived inside Ankyo. What better sanctuary than in the Willows itself? Hadn’t Aenah taught us that even Ankyo can be compromised? And yet, we made the same mistakes we should have learned from when she posed as a young servant of the Valerian. How would Druj know to carve out a moon-and-crescents symbol in a Seeking Stone for me to find—a symbol that resembled a crescent pin I own? A pin that I had tried to sacrifice to her sacred fires not long ago and was refused?
“Druj too went through the same trials I had at Stranger’s Peak—and failed. What were the gifts that mountain granted? Greater strength in the Dark—and the ability to look into the future. Perhaps Druj was better at prophecy than I am, with more years to hone her foretelling. Isn’t that right, Oracle?”
The figure removed her hood, revealing features only previously hinted at during my visits to the temple: long, flowing hair the color of corn silk, so light it was pale under the moonlight; bright-green eyes no longer hidden under a thick veil; pale, unblemished skin; a wide, lovely mouth. “I had hoped you would know me,” she said. Even out in the open air, a faint chorus of voices echoed her words.
“But how?” Likh stuttered. “I—we trusted you. Everyone in the Willows trusted you!”
“The trust has not been in vain, young Likh. My duty in the Willows was always to serve as a balance to the asha association. To ensure they did not go astray, did not go beyond their own selfish desires. It was a responsibility passed down to me from countless oracles who had served before, harkening back to the days of Vernasha herself.”
“Impossible!”
“Vernasha was our greatest asha, yet her greed was as deadly as her power. Many of her colleagues knew what she had tried to corrupt, the legends she tried to undo. But they too were weak. Magic was not a drug they could give up so easily, no matter their fear of damnation.
“But the strongest-willed of them, a Dark asha whose name had long since been lost to time, learned of the Gorvekai’s trial and sought to be worthy of shadowglass, only to fail as you and I had, Tea. But the trial imbued her with the powers of prophecy, and she knew one day there would be one worthy to fulfill Hollow Knife’s wish.
“And so she imposed a balance of sorts: by installing herself as an oracle, her precognition easily won Vernasha’s trust. But her purpose was different from the rest of the Willows; she would serve as a gatekeeper to shadowglass, to prevent the unworthy from attaining that knowledge, and to pass on these learnings to Dark asha brave enough to take her place as a new oracle. Bone witches died quickly even then, and it was simple enough to stage their deaths one day and resurface as a new incarnation of the oracle the next.
“Our veils and seclusion made for easy camouflage. We knew that one of us would eventually find favor at Stranger’s Peak, and it is she who shall remove the dishonor that all Little Tears’s descendants share.
“But there are many others who seek shadowglass. We soon found it easier to fight against them under the guise of another Faceless. And so we adopted the moniker of Druj, ‘the truth,’ as oracles before me had. We have many followers among the Willows, Tea, silent and unseen. Althy is my most trusted confidant. We hope to invite you into that same circle.”
“She is right, Tea, and you know it,” Althy added gently. “Mykkie was too weak without her heartsglass, and we could not risk her health to enlighten her to our cause. But when you arrived, the oracle took one look at you and knew you were worthy. She is never wrong.”
“She is wrong. I failed.” To gain shadowglass, Kalen would have paid the price. Even if they could bring Fox back to life without killing anyone else, I would have refused from that alone. “I am not worthy. I never was.”
The oracle—Druj—sighed, and unseen voices sighed with her. “Most Dark asha do not pass one test, let alone two. That you have is telling. The trial for Duty grants one the power of foretelling. The trial for Honor grants expanded abilities. But the third—the third trial is Love, isn’t it? No asha has ever passed it. It was always the last test we choose. Perhaps, instinctively, we know it would be the worst of the lot.”
Kalen growled.
Druj ignored him and continued, “I know your strength. I was within the zarich’s mind when you explored it, and in your fear, you killed it for my sin. I know how powerful you can be, Tea. I cannot allow a millennia of efforts by Dark asha who have slaved and sacrificed to come to naught. I have lost so many to the cause, so many Dark asha have gone mad and withered trying to reach this moment. The prophecy will be fulfilled, regardless of what you believe. We are so close. We are so close! We have angered the Great Creator for so long. We will not allow you to prolong our torment.”
We were six on
the azi: the Dark asha and I; Lords Kalen, Fox, and Khalad; and the Lady Zoya, who insisted on coming despite all opposition. The flight to Drycht was brief. We bypassed the populated cities of the desert kingdom: Rasha, Karinsha, even my once-home, Adra-al. There were no other civilizations to the east of the continent; a slew of mountains surrounded the dried lands, unfit for living for several thousand years. There was a reason they call Drycht “the Impenetrable Kingdom.” If the harsh, unforgiving sun did not bake you dry, then the absence of water, runes or otherwise, made death long and lingering.
We flew past the Dry Lands and into the Ring of Worship: a mountainous posy of craggy peaks and unscalable heights that protected a small, barren circle of sand. There was little that could be called life there; nothing but tiny, horned lizards and unhealthy shoots of brown moss. An unknown cataclysm—Vernasha perhaps, as Lord Garindor believed and Agnarr claimed—had corrupted what history swore was a lush, fertile greenscape, and four of the Five Great Heroes had met their ends here. How, no one had ever been certain.
The rest of the daeva were already present, but they gave the broken circle of mountains a wide berth, their reluctance to draw closer obvious.
“She is here,” the Dark asha murmured as we disembarked. “She is not even hiding it.”
“What happens now?” Zoya asked.
“Say and do nothing until Tea orders it,” Kalen told her. “You could have stayed with Kance, you know. Shadi would not be happy, you coming along.”
“Shadi isn’t here. And we need a representative from Kion to see this through. Empress Alyx would appreciate my efforts.” She leaped to the bone witch’s aid when the latter stumbled, her breathing uneven. Kalen sprang to her other side, arm hooked underneath hers.
“Are you sure about this, Tea?” the Kion asha asked, biting her lip. “You aren’t well. You cannot think to go there and confront Druj in your weakened state.”