“I know we still have a ways to go,” Ellarion said. “But can we all just take one moment to appreciate how totally awesome that was?”
“Moment taken!” I grinned back, and ran over to give Lyriana a hug. “You guys! That was incredible!”
“It was something else,” Zell said, coming over to join us, and then Ellarion was there, hugging his cousin close. Syan stared, a little uncertain, and then I reached out a hand to pull her in as well, and all of us were there, huddled together in the sand, hugging and laughing and cheering. My father sat alone on his knees nearby, watching us, and I swear for one moment, I think I saw him smile.
I knew the journey would be rough. I knew there was more darkness and pain ahead. I knew it would get a lot worse before it got better, if it ever did.
But we had this moment, this one moment of triumph. And I soaked it all up.
LOSING OUR HORSES MEANT WE had to march on foot through the Southlands. I’d thought that maybe we could just use Lyriana to power up Syan and have her do that Cutting thing to move us along, but that hope died when we saw just how badly it had drained Lyriana, how it took her nearly two days before she was able to walk for more than an hour without needing to rest. So no magical fast travel. Marching it was.
That meant long, slow hours, walking until our feet bled, the sun beating down way too hot for the middle of fall. It meant camping wherever we happened to be, curling up in the dirt, shivering under blankets when those chill plains winds streaked by. It meant blisters and aches and constantly, constantly, pouring dirt out of my boots.
I. Hated. Marching.
For a while, the landscape this side of the Adelphus didn’t look that different from the ones we’d just been in. But with every mile we went farther south, the land turned drier, harsher, more barren. Those little shrubs and trees I’d gotten so used to became rarer and rarer, even as the dirt underfoot turned more to brittle sand. Those lovely sheep (and their tasty tasty meat) stopped showing up, and by the second night there, Syan was trying to convince us all that fried lizard didn’t taste that bad, which was a hell of a leap when I didn’t even like looking at lizards. Our skins ran dry pretty quick, so we had to stop every few hours for Lyriana to use her magic to pull weird-tasting water from scattered cactuses. The Southlands was mostly a desert, with its cities clustered along the fertile lands by the Adelphus and its offshoots. We needed to avoid all that, at least until we got to Tau Lorren. Which meant the never-ending slog of the long-ass desert hike.
The grind wore us all down. Ellarion’s jokes trailed off, and my father looked even grumpier than usual. Even Zell’s stoic facade began to crack, with little outbursts of annoyance or frustrated grumbles. Lyriana seemed the worst of all, her brow perpetually furrowed, her expression deeply troubled.
I came up to her one night, hunkered down by her side as she worked her magic on a stubby brown cactus dotted with twitching yellow flowers. “Hey,” I said. “You okay?”
“Hmm?” Her hands moved in delicate circles around the cactus, its frame pulsing as if something was crawling around inside it. Super gross. “I’m just thinking.”
“About…?”
Her tongue poked out over her lower lip as she pulled her hands wide. Droplets of greenish water melted out through the cactus’s skin, hovering in the air like fat pearls. “What happened back at the river.” Her voice dropped to just above a whisper. “With Syan.”
“Yeah, that was something else,” I said. “I’m guessing no one’s ever combined magic like that before?”
“It wasn’t just our magic that combined,” Lyriana said, choosing every word with care. “It was all of us. I could feel her thoughts, her emotions, her memories. I could remember playing with wooden dolls by sandy banks, could remember how her mother smelled when she pulled her in close, could remember her brother’s laugh.” She gently waved her hand, guiding the water drops into an open skin. “It’s like, in that moment, we were one person.”
“That sounds…invasive,” I offered.
“It wasn’t bad.” She glanced over to the far side of the camp, where Syan was sitting next to Ellarion, talking to him as he stared at the inert zaryas. “Syan is a good person. There’s a real kindness in her, a decency. She genuinely wants to help everyone, no matter the cost.”
“Sounds like someone I know.” I grinned. “Maybe you two were already kind of the same person to begin with.”
Lyriana looked away, back at the skin, where the last droplets were plopping in. I thought she’d smile, but she frowned instead. “There was something else, though. Something in her thoughts I can’t shake, an image that I kept thinking about, like a bad dream.”
“What image?” I asked, even though I kind of didn’t want to know.
“I saw fire, Tillandra. Towering waves of fire, bigger than the Godsblade, scorching across the world, destroying everything in their path. A storm that swallows the world.” Her voice dropped so low it was almost inaudible. “Zastroya.”
“That’s what Syan talked about, right? What she said would happen if we didn’t stop Miles?”
Lyriana nodded. “I’d thought it was a metaphor, or some Red Waster religious thing. But what if it isn’t? What if she’s talking about something that’ll really happen?”
I swallowed. “Then…it’s all the more reason to stop Miles.”
Lyriana nodded, screwing the cap on the skin, her worry hardening into determination. “Damn right.”
We marched on. And the morning of our third day in the Southlands, we stumbled onto a battlefield.
From the distance, it didn’t look that different, because, well, the desert kind of all looked the same. We could make out shapes as we approached, upright blackened silhouettes framed against the bold red disc of the setting sun, but I figured they were just cactuses or something. It was only when we got closer that I realized the sand below my feet had turned black, that the rocks all around us were scorched and shattered. That the silhouettes were people.
Not living people, of course. Statues. Soldiers turned to stone mid-strike, their anger and fear permanently frozen on their cracked faces. There were about a dozen of them still standing, and a dozen more scattered around in broken chunks. And that’s just the ones who were turned to stone. So many more bodies lay all around us, young men and women, stabbed and burned and crushed. They were Southlanders, their heads shaved bald, wearing shingled silver armor and leather sandals, many still clutching their spears. There were other bodies too, royal soldiers wearing Kent colors, a few robed men who I think had been bloodmages. But the Southlanders outnumbered them ten to one.
The sprawl of the field was too wide to walk around, so we walked through it instead, taking care not to disturb any of the dead. I’d seen my share of carnage, of course, but this still managed to unsettle me, bury deep in my gut and twist. The massacre at the Godsblade had been terrible, but it had also been kind of unreal, a whole room turned to ash in a blink. But this, this was so much, so vivid, so real. Raw gaping wounds, caked in dried blood. Hands clutching unspooled intestines. Heads cleaved in half. So many dead, just left to rot in the baking sun.
“What happened here?” Syan asked, more curious than affected.
“A battalion of Southlander soldiers must have run into a royal company,” my father said. “I didn’t know Miles’s army had gotten this far south. The war is going even worse than I thought.”
We passed another one of the statues, a hearty man holding a spiked mace. Deep fissures cracked his face, but I could still make out his young handsome features. “The Southlanders,” Zell said. “They don’t have magic.”
Lyriana shook her head. “No. They never have.”
“And yet they charge into battle against those who can do this.” Zell reached out, pressing a hand to the statue’s face. “True bravery.”
“The spirit of men fighting to be free,” my father said.
Ellarion, at the front of our group, let out an irritated snort. “Are you adm
iring them? Seriously? They died fighting your soldiers.”
“I never sent soldiers into the Southlands, only to hold the border. This is Miles’s work,” my father insisted. “I’ve always viewed the Southlands as cousins to the West, free men struggling against the Volaris’ chains. I never wanted this war.”
“No King ever wants a war,” Zell scoffed. “Yet history is built on the bodies of the people who died in them.”
My father turned to Zell, looking at him, like he was really seeing him for the first time. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you don’t get to wash your hands of blood because your great conquest didn’t turn out how you wanted it to. You don’t get to pass all the failure off on Miles,” Zell replied.
“And what would you know of guilt and failure, son of Grezza Gaul?” my father replied.
Zell stiffened, and I found myself holding my breath. “I know less than you,” Zell said, pushing down the anger. “But I know that my guilt is mine and mine alone. I know that actions I took, choices I made, have resulted in unspeakable harm. And I know that’s on me. On me to fix. On me to atone for. On me to carry as a weight until my dying day.” He gestured out at the battlefield, at the corpses, at all the blood. “And this place? That village back there? The thousands killed across the length of the kingdom? That’s on you.”
My father shook his head. “No. I don’t accept that. Everything I did, every choice I made, was to free my people, to end the tyranny of Lightspire. I never wanted this.”
I swear to the Old Kings, Zell actually rolled his eyes. “In all the time you spent with my father, did he ever tell you the parable of the archer?”
“I can’t say he did.” My father shrugged, stepping over the body of a woman impaled on a spear. “We weren’t exactly friends. Just allies of convenience.”
“It’s one of the oldest tales in the Hall of Gods,” Zell said. “Once, in the old days, when the Twelve walked the earth, a young archer wanted to prove that he was the best. So he laid an apple at the base of the steps of Zhal Khorso, and fired an arrow from the very highest spire. And his arrow flew, the truest shot, and it would have struck the apple right through. But at the last moment, a young mother saw the apple and went to pick it up, to take home for her son. And his arrow caught her right in the side, and killed her.”
“Grim story,” Ellarion said, and Zell ignored him.
“The Grayfather descended from the Hall of the Gods, furious. ‘Who has killed this innocent young woman?’ he demanded. ‘It was I,’ the archer admitted, throwing himself on his knees, ‘but it wasn’t my fault! I merely meant to strike the apple! I never intended to kill her!’ But the Grayfather was unmoved. ‘And does your intent feed her children? Does your intent mend the heart of her grief-stricken husband? Does your intent bring her back from the veil?’ And the archer cried, for of course it did not, and the Grayfather made his decree so that all could hear. ‘You nocked the arrow. You let it fly. You face justice for the target you struck, not the target you aimed for.’”
He stopped, letting his words hang over us. “Well?” Lyriana demanded after a moment. “What happened to the archer?”
Zell stared at her like she was asking about the most obvious thing in the world. “They hanged him.”
I expected my father to have some cutting retort, some cold line to justify himself. But he didn’t say anything at all, just walked on, his head down. Had Zell actually gotten the upper hand? Had someone managed to win an argument with my father?
Soon enough, mercifully soon, we made it off the battlefield. The bodies grew scarcer and scarcer, the scorch marks faded, the only debris a few toppled husks of supply wagons. When we were finally clear of the last one, back on normal ground (if you considered sand normal ground), Lyriana turned around, facing the battlefield with closed eyes. Syan stared at her, confused, and I shot her a look not to pry. I’d seen Lyriana like this before. I knew what was coming next.
“Blessed Titans above,” she intoned, her voice calm and reverent. “I ask you to sanctify this battlefield. Guide the souls of the dead to your arms above. Ease the pain of the living they’ve left behind.” She breathed deep, her Rings giving off the same golden glow as her eyes. “Titans…grant us all your mercy.”
I glanced away. I felt bad admitting it, but I always felt uncomfortable when Lyriana got religious. I knew it was a huge part of her personality, but I never felt more removed from her than when she was praying. I just fundamentally couldn’t fathom it. How could she still believe? Especially after everything we’d seen?
Like pretty much everyone in Lightspire, Lyriana had been brought up in the Church of the Titans. Even out in the West, I’d known the story. The Titans were these all-powerful beings who came down from the sky thousands of years ago, back when mankind was still huddled in caves, eating meat raw and wearing furs. The Titans gifted mankind with fire and agriculture, taught us how to build cities and forge metal and all that other stuff. Then, after a century or so, they left, Ascending back into the heavens or wherever they came from. According to the Church, they left their magic Rings behind for the Volaris to find, because of all the people in the world, they trusted that family the most to carry out their Heavenly Mandate: to shepherd and guide mankind, to unite the Kingdom in their holy ways, and to make our species so great that we could join the Titans in their heavenly paradise.
Which…okay. I could see how, if all you knew was what the priests taught, you could believe that. But Lyriana knew more than that. She knew that the whole Heavenly Mandate thing was a load of horse shit, that the only reason her family had magic was because they lived in a tower with the giant all-powerful magic source that was the Heartstone. She knew that the Church was a propaganda tool of the old monarchy, preaching whatever it took to keep her family in power. And she’d been there right by my side when we’d stumbled into that crypt deep below the city, when we’d seen the bodies of Titans all around us: porcelain-skinned giants with rictus smiles, flesh rotting and taut like jerky, deader than dead and very much not Ascended.
And yet here Lyriana still was, eyes closed reverently, hands raised at her sides, a true believer. Tiny lights sparkled out of her fingers, glistening golden orbs that hovered over the fringes of the battlefield like stars. A Lightspire funeral tradition, the ascendance of the souls.
A hand clasped mine, warm and firm. I looked over to see Zell, standing next to me, gazing at Lyriana with…respect? He squeezed my hand, and I squeezed his back, and okay, that made being cynical a lot harder. Behind us, Ellarion bowed his head, lips moving as no words came out. Syan didn’t pray, I don’t think, but she folded her hands together like she did when she was using her zaryas, and let out a sound, a soft singsong exhale, like she was just barely whispering a melody.
My father alone didn’t show any emotion, didn’t change. He watched us all, his expression hard, his eyes narrowed in judgment, and then he turned away.
“Grant us strength and fortune as well, blessed Titans,” Lyriana said, and the glowing orbs of light flared brighter, twinkling suns dancing as they rose up over our heads. “Grant us the determination to complete our journey, and grant us favor when we stand before the leaders of Benn Devalos. Grant us the powers we need to defeat the forces of the Inquisitor, and the glory to take back your Kingdom.” She hesitated for a moment, voice breaking. “And grant me the wisdom I need to mend this broken world.”
Something stung at my eyes and I pressed myself into Zell, burying my face in his shoulder. The orbs of light rose higher, higher, growing brighter and brighter, a false sky of stars burning above the blasted landscape and its scattered dead. It was beautiful, even for a cynic like me.
Maybe Lyriana wasn’t as hard to understand as I’d thought. Maybe we were more alike than I gave us credit for.
We all had our load-bearing convictions, after all.
SOMEWHERE ALONG THE NEXT FEW days, I started to get used to the desert trek. The flat stretches gave
way to these beautiful sloping dunes that sparkled gold under the sun and blue under the moon. I got over the sour tang of the cactus water, and I tried one of Syan’s fried lizards and was honestly uncomfortable with how good it tasted. That awful aching in my feet didn’t go away per se, but it became so overwhelming that my brain just tuned it out, like the sound of rain pouring against your window during a storm.
And there was something else too, something that grew on me more and more, a calm in the solitude. It had been over a week since we’d seen another living soul, a week where the world didn’t seem to exist outside the six of us. Out here in the silence, you could almost forget there was a war going on, that Miles sat on the throne of Noveris, that villages were being put to the torch. Out here, you could stare up at the endless sky or marvel at the sloping dunes, and lose your connection to the madness everywhere else. In the emptiness, I actually started to feel peace.
I think the others did, too. My father went whole days without speaking, lost in his own thoughts. Lyriana smiled more, especially when she was talking to Syan. And while Ellarion kept up his practicing, the desperation was gone, replaced with something else, something approaching hope.
I watched him one night as the sun set, standing at the camp’s edge with Syan behind him. Her zaryas lay flat on a mat a few feet in front of him, and he stood in that rigid pose, his removed hands resting at his feet, his wrists crossed across his chest, breathing slow, long, and deep.
“Feel the fire circling the zaryas,” Syan said, gently pressing a hand to Ellarion’s back. “Feel the fire within you.” Her voice was low, calm, soothing, the way someone talks when lulling a baby to sleep.
“I feel it,” Ellarion whispered. A single sweat drop streaked down his cheek. “I feel the fire. I can see them. So clear. Blue and red and crimson. I see them circling the zaryas. I see…so clearly…”
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