W e landed in a forest, and I nearly toppled over. It had been a long time since I’d reacted so strongly to Stratagram travel, my stomach
churning and the world spinning. Or maybe it was the smell of ash making me sick, or the remnants of my strange dream that still seemed to simmer in my veins.
I stumbled away from Sammerin’s grasp, forcing my heartbeat to slow. I felt as if everything was running too hot.
Sammerin, too, was breathing heavily, leaning against a tree. “Thank you,” I managed.
“You looked like you needed help.”
“How did you know? What I was trying to do?” “You? Self-sacrifice? How would anyone guess.”
I laughed, too shrilly. It wasn’t funny, and I wasn’t amused. I blinked and still saw the fire of the burning village, as if it was burned into my eyelids. A part of me screamed to go back, even though I knew it was the worst possible move.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Somewhere south. I don’t… know exactly where. I tried to fling us as far away as I could, but without a known target, I couldn’t have gotten us more than a few miles away.”
Gods. We were lucky we didn’t wind up scattered into a hundred pieces. Stratagrams without a set destination were incredibly dangerous. Sammerin looked a little pale, as if he too was surprised we’d made it here—wherever here was—in one piece.
But the Fey saw me too. That was the most important thing. Hopefully they were searching for us now, instead of destroying the camp.
Sammerin’s stare settled on my left hand. “Did Ishqa know what it is?
Why they want it so much?”
“He did not get the chance to tell me.” But I needed that information desperately.
I reached into my pocket and closed my fingers around the single feather left in my pocket. Where was Ishqa right now? Was he helping to defend the village? Or did he leave it to burn while he came to find me?
The thought made it difficult to breathe.
Serel. Filias. Riasha. So many key members of rebellion leadership—so many of my friends. How many of them had been killed or captured?
I swallowed my panic.
“I can’t go back. The Fey will keep trying to find me. Hopefully they already are, now that they know I left, instead of…”
I didn’t want to give voice to my worst fears.
How much time did we have before I was found? What if the Fey could track the thing on my hand, as Ishqa seemed to suspect? It took them less than twenty-four hours to get to the village. But at least here, I was alone. We were surrounded by trees. Logistically, it would be harder to reach me.
I turned to Sammerin. He was buttoning his sleeve, looking so put- together I almost hated him for it.
“You can still leave,” I said. “Why would I do that?”
“Because half the Zorokovs’ army, and the Fey, are probably on their way here.”
He lifted one shoulder in a delicate shrug. “I have nowhere more interesting to be.”
Maybe it was selfish of me to feel so relieved. And yet, to say that I was grateful to have Sammerin with me was an understatement.
I pulled the feather from my pocket.
“Alright,” I said. “Then we walk. I call for Ishqa. And we hope he comes here with some answers before the Fey and the Zorokovs do.”
 |
ISHQA DID, thankfully, reach us before the Zorokovs did. Sunrise was encroaching upon the night by then, the sky a mingling of dusky red with remnants of dark blue. When Ishqa arrived, he cut through that beautiful sun-stained sky like a streak of light, careening through the canopy of leaves in a flash of gold. Even at his most approachable, Ishqa never quite seemed human. But now, I wondered if perhaps ancient encounters between Fey and humans inspired the stories we told of gods and monsters. Ishqa, backlit by the sun, golden wings spread, looked like a god.
He pulled his wings in, surveyed us, and said, “It was foolish of you not to run when I told you to.”
“The village,” I said. “Did you stay to help? Did they…” How could I even word the question?
Something softened in Ishqa’s expression. “Many of your people were able to escape.”
Many. Not most. Not all. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved.
“So long as you don’t return to them, the Fey will let them go,” he said. “You are far more important.”
Ishqa had a strange way of comforting people. He reached into his robes and placed a glass vial in my hand. “Drink.”
I blinked at the vial. It was perhaps the length of my palm, filled with a shimmery silver liquid.
“What is it?”
“It will help mask you—it—from them. Imperfectly, but we will need to settle for imperfection.”
That was enough for me. I uncorked the vial and shot it back in one gulp, an act I immediately regretted. It felt like swallowing fire.
“I am not sure how humans will react to it,” Ishqa said, somewhat thoughtfully. “It gives us terrible stomach cramps.”
How nice. I tucked the vial away, then, yet again, thrust my hand out. “What is this, Ishqa?”
“It is a…” He paused, as if uncertain of which word to choose. “Wayfinder.”
“A wayfinder?”
“A tool. A compass. A key that leads to other things.” “What other things?”
Ishqa was terrible at this. What was it about six-hundred-year life spans that made one so frustratingly bad at communication?
“You are aware of how magic works,” he said. “That it is like rivers running beneath our world, different streams of different substances. Solarie magic, Valtain magic, and our Fey magic.”
“And the deeper levels beneath them,” I added. Ishqa nodded.
“Yes. The deep magic that is still connected to you, even if that connection had been severed and stitched over. The very same magic that your lover drew from, that… Reshaye drew from.”
He rarely spoke of Reshaye—of Aefe—by name. He never seemed to know which term to use.
“But,” he went on, “magic is far more complicated than those four levels. None of us know how many different streams lurk beneath the surface of our world, or what they are capable of. Even the extensive modifications that humans and Fey have done to tap into deeper streams merely allow us to reach a fraction of what exists. And for many years— millennia—the Fey had no interest in learning more about those powers. The humans, at least, always strove to innovate. We… thought such things were blasphemous and unnatural. That is, until Caduan took power. He saw how we could use magical innovations to strengthen our civilization and help our people—end hunger, cure illness, even advance art and music.”
Despite all that had happened, when Ishqa spoke of Caduan, there was a tinge of admiration to his voice.
“Five hundred years ago, when the humans were slaughtering our people, they were doing it because they were searching for power. Specifically, they were searching for mythical pools of deep magic—which we now know as Lejaras. They did not understand what, exactly, they were looking for, only that it was a power strong enough to win their own wars. And when they…” His voice stumbled. “…When they found another option, in Reshaye, they ceased their search. They had the power they needed. But that does not mean that the legends they were searching for did not exist. Caduan pursued knowledge relentlessly during his reign, and the Lejaras were no exception.”
I pieced together what he was saying.
“And this thing,” I said, “is a way to find these… these pools of magic.” “We believe so. Over these last few months, Caduan’s drive for the
pools was reinvigorated. While I was in Caduan’s inner circle, we had not been able to locate them. But we knew that we could if we had that.”
I looked at my hand. The mark didn’t feel like a compass or a key. It just felt like some metal stuck to my skin.
“So now what do we do?”
“These powers cannot fall into Caduan’s hands,” Ishqa said. “Not under any circumstances. And while I may not know exactly what you hold, why it reacted to you as it has, or how we use it, I know that it’s key to the Fey finding and harnessing these powers. Locating them before they do may be our only chance at defeating Caduan.”
“You propose that we go use it ourselves. Just us.” Sammerin looked unconvinced.
Ishqa gave him a cold stare. “Imagine what this war would be if either side came into possession of such power. Caduan, who wants nothing more than to wipe out your kind for good. Your human queen, who has already shown that she is willing to burn down the world to protect her country. Imagine what the world would be, if either of them—or worse, both of them
—had the power to literally shape reality. We don’t need to use it. Perhaps it would be better if we destroyed it, even. But we certainly need to keep it from them.”
Sammerin was quiet, clearly unsettled by the future Ishqa painted. It unsettled me, too. I had seen what Nura was willing to do to win her wars. And though I did not know the Fey king beyond what Ishqa had told me, I had seen what he had done to Ara, had seen the monsters he created. I had felt his fury when I reached into Max’s mind to sever the connection he had built there.
Ishqa was right. If either of them obtained that kind of devastating power, the world may very well end.
But that wasn’t my first thought.
My first thought was of a stone prison off the Aran shores. I was thinking about walls I hadn’t managed to break, no matter how hard I tried. And I was thinking of how much easier it might be if I had such a power.
I was so, so selfish—and I didn’t even care.
You were the one that wanted to save the world. I just wanted to save you.
Max told me that, once. Now it seemed ironic. He had thought there was absolutely nothing that mattered to me more than my people, my goals, my duty.
He had been wrong. There was one thing more important.
“You’re right,” I said to Ishqa. “We cannot let Caduan or Nura find these powers. So I suppose we must do it ourselves.”
Ishqa looked pleased with this reaction. If only he knew.
“The Fey will keep trying to hunt you,” he said. “You understand that. It would be unwise to return to your people.”
No. I wouldn’t put them at risk. I thought of Serel and fought an overwhelming wave of sadness. The last time we talked, I had been so, so angry at him. The thought that it could be the last thing I ever said to him… “You’ll fly over them, though?” I said, my voice rougher than intended.
“You’ll find out if they are alright?”
“Yes,” Ishqa said, solemnly. “I will.”
I nodded and turned to Sammerin. “And are you sure you want to stay?” “Of course,” he said, as if it was a ridiculous question. Despite what we had just been told, he was remarkably calm. Right now, I found his stability the most comforting thing in the world, and I resisted the urge to embrace
him.
I looked down at my hand and the rivulets of gold over it. Was it different than before? Had it spread? It was so hard to tell.
“I don’t feel anything,” I said. “If this is a… a compass of some kind, then I don’t know how to use it.”
“Nor do I,” Ishqa said. “But I may know someone who does. We go north.”
“North?”
“Closer to the Fey lands,” Sammerin said. “Is that a good idea?”
“We don’t have a choice,” Ishqa replied. Then he turned, lifting his chin to the sky and raising a single finger. “North.”
Nothing lay before us but a blanket of underbrush and forest. But nothing lay behind us, either. So I started walking. Sometimes there was nothing to do but put one foot in front of another.
