by Elise Kova
Before Vi could get in another word, the shift pulsed around her and Arwin took to the skies.
Vi and Taavin trudged through the snow, sliding on packed ice and tripping on hidden roots and rocks. Vi glanced behind them, trying to cement the path of their return journey in her mind. The falling snow and blustering wind were already filling the tracks they’d made.
They stepped onto the narrow walkway that lined a canal. People were busy going about their business as they would in any city. She heard music drifting over the wind and snow from taverns; laughter rang out in harmony to a shouting match. Vi saw a man slam his hand down on a card table in a gaming parlor as they passed.
It felt chillingly normal.
She looked for someone who looked like they knew what they were doing. Vi scanned the men and women on the streets, and in the boats traveling the canals. She searched the signs and doorways for any indicators, no matter how subtle.
If Adela was smart—which Vi had no doubt she was—she wouldn’t let everyone know where she was keeping a prized prisoner. Even if the whole isle knew Adela had the Emperor Solaris, she would keep his exact location a secret. Which meant Vi needed someone—
She stopped dead in her tracks, a flash of red in the twilight catching her eye.
“What?” Taavin asked.
“I saw an elfin’ra.”
“What?” he echoed, but this time the word said a whole lot more.
“Come on.” Vi started for the building she saw the man slip into.
“I don’t think we should be going toward the people trying to maim or murder us in order to bring about the end of the world.”
“This whole island is trying to maim or murder us,” Vi whispered hastily back.
“Yes, but the whole island can’t bring about an evil god with our blood,” Taavin muttered.
They slipped into a narrow walkway between two buildings that ended in a cliff-side. At their backs were the cliffs they’d entered from—and if the bluffs before them were anything like those, then these too had countless passages winding within them, no doubt attached in some way to the building.
“What’re you looking for?” Taavin breathed, his back pressed against the wall as Vi leaned forward slightly to peer into a window.
“Anything.” It wasn’t a good answer, but her mind was moving too quickly. She barely had time to form her thoughts, let alone explain them to him. The elfin’ra she’d seen was inside, standing at the side of a table surrounded by four others—one more elfin’ra, a morphi, and what appeared to be two humans.
Vi brought a finger to her lips, motioning to Taavin for silence. Leaning against the wall on the other side of the window, Vi pressed her ear to the frosted wood of the building. She covered her other ear with a hand, closing her eyes and focusing on the muffled words, only catching every few.
“… patrols are…”
“So far there’s no sign…”
“They’ll… up soon…”
“Adela will want… keep them alive…”
“… prisoner?”
“Guard change will happen… far he’s being quiet and…”
“… keep a close eye.”
Vi struggled to piece together the missing blanks. She listened until her pounding heart drowned out the soft words. Was she hearing correctly? Or was her mind playing tricks on her and feeding her what she wanted to hear?
They had little else to go on. Her suspicion that Adela would keep the elfin’ra close was supported by the conversation. Surely they were talking about her and Taavin showing no sign of coming to rescue her father.
There was a shuffling of chairs and Vi leaned forward slightly. Whatever little council she’d been overhearing disbanded. The two elfin’ra headed back, the others started for the door. Vi motioned for Taavin and they stepped back further into the shadows of the alley as half the group left the building, none the wiser that the very people they were on the lookout for were right under their noses.
Vi kept her ear against the wall, hearing the creaking of wood, the closing of doors, the dull metallic thud of locks being engaged and disengaged. She ran toward the back of the building, getting ahead of the elfin’ra moving through it. Leaning forward, Vi peered through the frost clouding the window of a dark room.
She squinted, making out shapes moving within it. A flash of red. Vi pulled back, pressing herself flat against the wall. Taavin mirrored her motions, trusting her without word or explanation.
“… thought I saw something.” One of the voices from earlier drew near.
Vi wriggled her fingers, keeping her magic at the ready. The spark was eager, curling like lightning right at the edge of each of her movements.
Another voice said something Vi couldn’t make out.
She glanced at the window, trying to make herself as flat and small as possible. The heat radiating off her beaded the frost into water at the bottom edge. Please don’t let them notice, she silently prayed.
“It’s nothing.” Footsteps thudded away, carrying the voice with it.
Vi closed her eyes, breathing, counting to twenty. The room was completely still for the second half of her count. She dared to lean forward, peeking through the lower corner of the window.
The room was empty.
Vi stood, stepping around Taavin, pressing her ear back to the building. There were no more sounds of doors. No more footsteps.
“We’re going in.” Vi started for the main street with wide, hasty steps. She had no idea when, or if, the previous three people would return. Or if another group would soon arrive.
No one stopped them as they rounded the front. Vi’s hand fell on the metal handle, pushing on it. But it didn’t move.
A scream wriggled up in her throat, but it escaped as a few hushed words.
“Juth calt.” The metal around the lock splintered, cracking. Vi pushed her way in before anyone on the street could look in their direction. Rushing over to the table, Vi propped up a chair against the door underneath the handle. It wouldn’t stop someone for very long, but it would at least keep the now-broken door closed at a glance, and make noise if anyone tried to follow behind them.
“Was that wise?” Taavin asked, as though she could somehow change her actions now. Vi shot him a dumb look that seemed to communicate the fact. “The morphi have a way to sense when Lightspinning has been used in their lands. What if Fallor has set up the same here?”
Vi hadn’t considered that. “Even if he did, it’s likely as Arwin said: he’s the only one who would’ve been able to sense it. And even if there are morphi here who can sense it—they have Lightspinners on their crew, remember?”
Taavin nodded, looking over his shoulder warily.
“Juth calt,” she said again to the next door that barred their progress, glancing over her shoulder at Taavin and making sure he followed her into a narrow hallway. Vi continued to press straight back through the building and toward the cliff wall.
A short humming sensation pulsed through the air. The air pressure changed and Vi’s ears popped. She rubbed them; Taavin did the same. They exchanged a look as a bell tolled, its frantic, high-pitched ringing echoed over the whole city.
“Any chance that isn’t for us?” he asked grimly.
“Us or Arwin, and it doesn’t matter which.” Vi pushed forward, no longer holding back with her magic. “Juth calt!” It exploded from her, knocking down the final, heavily locked door at the end of the hall that led to the back room she’d seen from the alleyway.
“A dead end?” Taavin turned, looking back the way they came. So far, no one was in pursuit. But Vi suspected it wouldn’t be long until someone was. If the pirates knew she would be coming for her father, then they knew right where she’d be headed.
“No, there’s a passage here.” She knocked along the back wall softly. Her hastening heartbeat led to trembling hands. But she tried to keep her rapping as quiet as possible. The pirates may know they were here given Arwin’s presumed progress on the
shift, but they hopefully didn’t know where they were just yet. “Help me look.”
Taavin lifted a hand. Vi felt the swell of magic like a rolling tide around her ankles. “Uncose.”
The unfamiliar word rattled her bones. Magic ignited around his fingers, exploding forward from the glyph—most of it bouncing off the walls in an array of sparks. However some sank in like water slipping through a grate.
“How…”
“Uncose means to expose truth,” he explained, starting for the wall where the magic had vanished. “It’s a word Yargen recently gave me.”
“Convenient, when you were looking for a way out of the Archives of Yargen.” Taavin pushed in a knot of wood and the whole panel slipped open—jagged at the edges to completely hide the passage behind. He motioned for her to take the lead and Vi did so without hesitation. “Can I use that word?”
“Unfortunately not… It’s a word given to me by the Goddess herself. I doubt I could teach you if I tried.”
“If we survive this, I may want you to try.” Her voice dropped low as they started into the narrow passage. It was rough-hewn and natural in appearance—much like the caves they’d entered through—but this one was far better maintained and… she heard voices.
“… hear the bells?”
Vi recognized the voice from one of the two elfin’ra from earlier. She slowed as amber light danced off the outlines of stones, pressing her back against the wall. Taavin did the same on the wall opposite.
A second voice. “Do you know what it means?”
Vi pressed her eyes closed, taking shuddering breaths. She had to keep her head about her. She couldn’t give in to hope—not yet. Not when there was so much risk still and so much at stake.
“It means your darling daughter is here.” The first voice again. Vi inched forward. Her magic was building to an inferno inside her, ready to be unleashed on the whole room. It was a rage she didn’t know she’d been carrying. A rage she knew could melt the whole island into the sea.
“She thinks she can save you.” The second voice again.
Let there be only two.
She and Taavin inched forward to the mouth of what looked like a cavern. From Vi’s field of vision she could see a row of cells. Two were occupied with the husks of other unfortunate souls Adela had deemed too valuable or too lowly to give the comfort of death—people she already knew she couldn’t risk trying to save.
She was here for one thing only.
“She’s like a lamb, coming to slaughter.”
How many? Vi mouthed to Taavin silently. He held up two fingers, confirming her earlier suspicions. They could manage two.
A deep chuckle interrupted her thoughts. Its rasp echoed through the caverns and was attached to a voice richer than even Romulin’s. Even weary and worn, Vi knew the sound. She’d know it anywhere in this wide world.
“I think it’s you who will be slaughtered.” Vi felt as much as heard her father’s declaration.
“Do you think you can scare us?”
“No, and I think that will be your downfall. You should never underestimate a Solaris… least of all my daughter.”
Magic swelled on pride. It flowed out of her as sparks of fire and light, dancing on waves of power and heat that scattered off her skin. Vi pushed from the wall, swinging her hand in the same motion. Power for the glyph was already collecting under her fingers before they turned. Vi took a breath.
“Juth mariy!” One of them hissed. The glyph shattered and Vi used it like a starting gun on a line.
They’d been paying attention to the wrong hand and the wrong glyph.
“Mysst larrk,” Vi breathed between wide steps. Her right hand was held behind her, grasping the sword that bloomed from the light under her palm. She swung it wide, putting all her force behind it, both hands clasped around the grip.
It sank with a satisfying crunch into the elfin’ra’s side. Vi shredded bone and sinew, dark pride rising within her. It felt good to wield a sword again.
You should never underestimate a Solaris… least of all my daughter.
She’d prove her father’s words right as he watched in shock and awe.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The scream the elfin’ra let out was sweeter than any music she’d ever heard.
“Mysst xieh!” Taavin’s voice called out from behind her. A shield appeared at Vi’s side. Magic ricocheting off of it. “Loft dorh.” The elfin’ra at her left was frozen still.
Vi had only taken her attention off the man before her for a moment, but it was long enough for him to grip the blade of her sword with a hand, blood streaming from between his fingers as he ripped it from his side and her fingers. She moved to take a step back, but wasn’t fast enough. His hand clasped her face.
His dark blood smeared across her skin, red lightning crackling between the blood and his fingers as he pulled away.
“Narro vah’deh.” He rasped at her.
She knew what narro meant—acts of the mind. But vah’deh was a new and foreign phrase. It rumbled across her uncomfortably in a dissonance that made Vi’s teeth clench to the point of pain. There was something distinctly wrong about it. Something that made her toes curl and her head hurt instantly.
His eyes flashed a brilliant red, brighter than anything she’d ever seen. So bright, her mind went blank. The world was awash in that crimson shade. Shadows carved shapes from a bleeding reality before her, but Vi could no longer make sense of what she saw.
This is wrong, something in her screamed—a voice she knew once. It was her voice. But she couldn’t figure out how it had become so distant. She couldn’t fathom anything. Her mind wouldn’t move. Every time a thought formed it was gone, falling through her fingers like the magic that poured from them.
Another scream and Vi awoke back to the room, not as she’d left it.
The elfin’ra who had been holding her was ablaze, thrashing to try to put out the flames. The other elfin’ra had lunged for Taavin and the two tumbled on the floor. Her head was splitting in two, pain seeping out from her ears. But Vi forced her thoughts to work enough to conjure the symbol and sounds she needed.
“Juth calt.” This time, the other elfin’ra couldn’t stop her. The one assaulting Taavin crumpled as Jayme had on the beach, blood dripping from his mouth. Vi turned in place, repeating the process before the remaining man could put out the flames. “Juth calt.” As soon as the glyph was gone, Vi gripped her head, wincing in pain. “Mother above,” she hissed.
“Vi—” Taavin pushed himself from the ground, rushing to her. “Let me—halleth maph—better?”
“More or less,” Vi mumbled. He had stinted the pain, but a dull throbbing in the back of her skull promised it’d be back with a vengeance soon enough. She needed to find out what that elfin’ra had done to her. But first…
She turned to face the jail cell, and the man within.
Her father was a shade of his former self. He looked more like the man on the beach than the man in her memories—but somehow, even worse. His clothes hung limp on his emaciated frame, torn and tattered. Dark circles lined his sunken eyes and cheeks. Icy shackles Vi recognized coated his wrists.
But his eyes were alight, shining in the darkness. They were eyes Vi knew well from looking into the mirror.
“Do you know who I am?” she whispered, even though Taavin had only just said her name. She was overcome by the inexplicable fear that he might somehow deny her. So much had happened. She was so far and away from the girl he’d last met years ago when he’d managed to escape the pressures of ruling to visit her in the North.
A smile spread across his cracked lips. “I would know who you are anywhere. Not even a haircut can hide you from me, my daughter.”
“I’ve come for you.” She took a slow step forward. Her voice echoed in the cavern. Or maybe it just echoed in her ears. Vi couldn’t be certain. “I’ve sailed across the world for you. I’ve come to bring you home, father.” Vi looked to the heavy padlock on his
cell, not even bothering to search for a key. “Juth calt.” It fell with a heavy clang and Vi swung the door open.
“I should scold you for this—coming to such a dangerous place.” Even as her father spoke, there was a prideful smile on his mouth. He stared up at her as though in a daze, as though Vi had become the Mother herself.
“Let’s save the scolding for when we make it out alive.” Vi knelt down, looking at Adela’s icy shackles. “Taavin?”
“It’s strange magic.” He stepped forward, looking over her shoulder.
“It stints my power.” Aldrik cursed under his breath—colorful language Vi had never heard from her father before.
“I know, I wore them once.” Vi glanced up at her father, then to Taavin. “It took a bunch of fire to get them off me.”
“Then I’d try fire,” Taavin suggested. “If Adela really is from the Dark Isle, her initial training may be closer to that of a Waterrunner than anyone on Meru—like your training with fire. But you may want to hurry.”
“Are you ready?” Vi looked to her father. Fire shouldn’t hurt a Firebearer… but her magic seemed so different from his that there was a twinge of worry she may actually harm him.
“Yes.”
Vi placed her hands on the shackles.
The ice was so cold it burned her skin. Even the initial flames Vi pushed forward were snuffed in a puff of steam. She narrowed her eyes, pushing through the barrier. More flames, more power.
“Taavin, starys,” Vi ground out through clenched teeth. Her magic was hardly making a dent on its own.
Without hesitation, he uttered, “Juth starys.”
A glyph appeared around her hands and her father’s. It swirled slowly in orbit above the shackles. Fire blazed inward from its outer rings in a breathtaking display of power. Vi was a wildfire compared to the measured elegance that was Taavin.