“Why didn’t you tell us?” Tala asked.
“A worried need to ensure that I do not change the course of history any more than I already have,” the former seeress said. “And also, just a little bit, shame and embarrassment. It is difficult to be known as the Baba Yaga who had so shirked her duties to change the very future she had sworn to preserve.”
“What would have happened if you’d left Alex to die back then?” Tala asked.
Baba Yaga paused. “Would you have hated me for it, child?”
Tala swallowed hard. “How could I? Alex is alive against the odds because of you.”
“I was a good-for-nothing layabout before I received the curse of prophecy,” the younger, current Baba Yaga admitted. “A drifter just swinging from place to place without a care in the world. When the foresight fell upon me, I learned to make a better person of myself—at first because I had to and then because I wanted to. Do you know what I’ve learned since then, Tala? Prophecy isn’t as important as the choice.”
Choice. Tala had chosen not to wield Avalon’s sword, and Ken had paid the price for it.
“Surely now is the time to tell us what the future brings next,” the Cheshire said. “Maidenkeep is not out of danger yet. The young king you tried to save is still in peril, still burdened by the weight of his ancestors’ legacy. And the same goes for you, Ilyena. You cannot be this cold to hide it from us now.”
“My visions have been murky ever since the attack on the city,” Ilyena said. “I wish I had something to tell you. The Nine Maidens or the Snow Queen, or possibly both, have broken my visions. All I can see is fog. What comes next is as unclear to me as it is to you.”
“So that’s it, then? We all simply give up? Everything we fought for has come down to nothing?”
“It’s not like you to be so downtrodden, Cheshire. You’ve survived centuries on nothing but spite before.”
“I took a gamble on what today might hold. And now the scoreboard is missing, and I don’t know how much we’ve won or lost.” The Cheshire strode forward and tried to lift the sword from its stone. It refused to budge. “I promised Alice,” he said. “I told her I would protect the Avalon line. I’ve used prophecies to guide me toward that goal. But every one of them regards this strike at Maidenkeep as the decisive battle, and they offer little of what comes after. What else can I prepare for? Do we hide and wait another two decades while the Snow Queen gains a stronger foothold over the rest of the world? A world largely indifferent to our cause because it has never concerned them? Did the prophecies intend for her to rule and for Avalon to fall into obscurity?”
“This is why the sword chose Alice Liddell instead, you old sourpuss,” the elderly woman, Messinda, said with alarming frankness.
“Milady!”
“There are two things we cannot predict, no matter how much we try. One is the negating spells such as those of the young Makiling Warnock here. The other is the Nameless Sword’s wielder. Alice Liddell had not been in any of our visions until the moment she raised it. As Ilyena says, it is not the prophecy but the choice.”
It is not the prophecy but the choice.
Tala moved before any of them could react, grasping the sword herself.
It slid easily out of the anvil. It felt familiar in her hands.
The intrusive thoughts that stole their way back into her head were familiar as well.
She could kill with this sword. She could level kingdoms. She could turn its point on the Snow Queen, King John, on all the ICE agents and Royal States soldiers who tried to murder them, kill them all so quickly. So easily. They would be powerless—
She wanted to put the sword back. But the Baba Yagas were looking at her, surprised and at the same time oddly not. Nor was the Cheshire, whose gaze was both understanding and sad.
“Maybe none of you could predict what’s to come next,” Tala said, hoping to sound as confident as she didn’t feel, “because I tend to have that effect on a lot of magic.”
The former Baba Yaga was staring at her. “I see now,” she said. “Now I know what compelled me to defy fate. What made me choose to save the young Tsarevich’s life.”
“Yes.” Ilyena, the current Baba Yaga, couldn’t take their eyes away from Tala either. “As soon as you drew it out, the fog lifted…yes. Everything is clearer. Two will destroy Koschei—one his body, the other his soul. Only when you walk through the everlasting fires will you find what you seek.”
“Are you still going to be speaking in all these riddles,” Tala asked a bit irritably, “or are you finally going to tell us?”
The younger seer shook their head, looking slightly awed. “We don’t have to. You’ll know what to do soon enough.”
“Tala?” Lumina looked exhausted, her eyes falling on the sword her daughter now wielded.
Tala felt a pang of regret, knowing what she was going to put her mother through.
“Tala.” Her mother fell to her knees before her. “I—” Lumina began, paused to wet her lips. “Are you sure?”
They had likely lost her father. They had just lost her grandmother. And now her mother was steeling herself to possibly lose her daughter as well. “I’m sorry, Mom,” Tala whispered, forcing the tears away. “But I have to do this.”
“I know,” Lumina said. “If I could take it up for you, I would. Just—please. You have to be safe.”
“Well, Ilyena?” the Cheshire asked.
“Fire,” the Baba Yaga said. “Nothing else but fire from above.”
“Maidenkeep must burn before Maidenkeep can rise,” Tala said. “That’s done, and we’ve survived. And now I think I know where to go next.” She raised the blade, swung it experimentally. The perfect size, the perfect weight—it felt like it had been made for her. From somewhere within it, she fancied she could hear the adarna sing.
“We’re going to the Burn,” she said.
There had been a complete ban on porting in and out of Nibheis in the wake of the attack on Maidenkeep, Ken’s parents notwithstanding, but Lord Nottingham had understood the importance of her request. Reports were coming in that the Snow Queen had abandoned Avalon after Maidenkeep disappeared, and no one knew for sure yet where the whole city had vanished to.
There were other reports, too, of King John proclaiming martial law, though it was up in the air as to whether he actually had the right to declare such a thing. There was more news of other extremist factions from other kingdoms attempting revolutions. It was like the whole world had been waiting for a signal from the Snow Queen to create chaos under the guise of patriotism.
Tala couldn’t think about that now. She was thinking of Alex, whose vital signs were holding steady. Of Dexter and everyone else who’d been injured in the fallout. Of Ken and Cole, and of Lola Corazon and her father and General Luna and everyone else who didn’t make it. So she concentrated on the raging fires before her, refusing to think about what would happen should this fail too.
Only Lumina and the rest of the Banders were with them, as was the Cheshire and, strangely enough, one of the Filipinos who had come with Lola Corazon’s contingent, who insisted that he be there. “What are you doing here, John Lloyd?” Lola Urduja asked, glaring suspiciously at the man.
John Lloyd raised his hands. “I understand your disdain for us, Urduja, but I am here on Corazon’s behalf, simply because she is no longer able to. If anything, I wish to see her theories confirmed with my own eyes.”
“She is far too interested in the Burn than she should be. Was,” Lola Urduja corrected herself, a shadow of what was almost sorrow briefly crossing her face. “What does—what did—she know of this place?”
“She believed that there are more creatures lying in wait here than even Avalonians know. The Burn was thought to be the consequence of the fight between Hook and Pan, but she had always argued that it made no sense. Esopia is far enough from World’s End that the concentration of magic here would not have been of this potency. She was an expert in the study of magical barriers, given our own agimat, and she thought that the Burn had all the makings of a barricade—one deliberately created to keep everyone out of Esopia.”
Lola Urduja pursed her lips. “I suppose she had a point,” she muttered. “But she would have been better off sharing her knowledge with us instead of keeping it to herself like she always did.”
“Lola Corazon had always been a proud woman. It was difficult for her to admit she was in the wrong, and her hostility toward you stemmed from the belief that you had encouraged her daughter to drift apart from her, to wed the Scourge. But whatever your disagreements with her, she always thought you wise and kind.”
Lola Urduja looked away. “If it means anything, I thought the same of her, for all her irrationalities. Did she provide you with any more ideas as to how we are to break this barrier, then?”
“Unfortunately, no. All she said was that it would require immense willpower to do so.”
“That’s why she was trying to punch holes in the wall of flames,” Tala said quietly. “And why she was encouraging me to do the same.”
They had all agreed that more soldiers in the area would attract interest and would cause the Snow Queen to return. Ryker and Loki had taken up their usual spots on either side of her. Ryker remained stoic upon seeing Tala and the Nameless Sword, though she could still sense his worry. Loki’s emotions were harder to disguise, their anxiety over her plain to see.
“It’ll all work out,” Tala murmured to them, hoping to inject more confidence into the words.
“I am going to glue myself to your side from now on,” the ranger said stubbornly. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Tala. I can’t. We’ve lost so much already.”
“As will I,” Ryker said.
“I can protect her well enough on my own.”
“Even after everything that’s happened?”
Loki hesitated. “You’re just as easily a danger to Tala as the queen. She wants your head now.”
“I know.” Ryker flashed them a brief, terse grin. “You’ll protect me too, won’t you?”
“I’m more than capable of protecting myself,” Tala said irritably. “I’d rather not have you two breathing down my neck if you’re both going to be weird about this. You two will be better off protecting the others.”
“No,” both said at the same time, then glared at each other.
Tala sighed and directed her attention back to Nya. “I’m not entirely sure it works, honestly. But the logic should hold.”
“I think you might have something there,” the other girl said cautiously. She was bearing Ken’s death easier than Tala had thought, though there was something now blank and quiet about her, like she was only going through the motions. “But can West repeat it a third time?”
“I think I can,” West said soberly, the raskovnik in his hands. Only two of the four leaves remained healthy and evergreen. “Except I, um, I’m not entirely sure how I did it the first two times either.” He held out the plant toward the wall of fire and concentrated. “Do you see anything?” he asked after a few minutes. “Is it working?”
“Not a thing, unfortunately,” the Cheshire said. He had shunned his human form and was now back to his cat shape so as not to add to the plethora of spells already running rampant within the area.
“Do you remember anything you did leading up to the moment you were able to use it?” Loki asked.
“I was scared,” West said. “And worried that we wouldn’t be able to find a way out. I remember just squeezing my eyes shut and trying to think about how to break you all out of the ice, and then I felt the raskovnik grow warm. Before I knew it, you were all free. And then I thought that it would be useless anyway, because we didn’t know the way out, and then it turned hot to the touch, and the doorway was there all of a sudden. Was it because I felt desperate?”
“I think it’s because you wanted to believe so badly in an escape that it was able to turn your desires into reality,” Lord Suddene said in his low burr through their earpieces. “The Serbian stories I have read dealing with the raskovnik often dealt with those who’d been backed into a corner and knew it was escape, fight, or die.”
“What I want is for Ken to be alive, and Cole and General Luna and everyone else,” West said with a low sob. “It’s—it’s hard. And I know that’s not what the raskovnik is for, but I can’t help thinking that maybe if I wasn’t so weak—maybe if I could do more than just shift, that I could have done something to…”
“West,” Nya said, placing her hands on both West’s shoulders, forcing the shorter boy to look up at her. “I think it’s okay to grieve,” the young mermaid said quietly, a sudden quick spasm that flitted across her face the only evidence that she was also in pain. “But we can’t let their deaths be in vain. We have to do this for their sakes. Otherwise, if we give up now, then everything we’ve done to this point has been for nothing. Do you want to face them and tell them you’ve given up when they fought so hard to get us here?”
“West,” Tala added, placing her own hand on his arm. “You and your animal forms are literally what saved us from freezing at World’s End. You were the one to find the raskovnik when none of us could. I don’t want you ever belittling yourself again when you are the reason we’re still here.”
West wiped at his face. “Thanks. It’s just—it’s still hard.”
“West,” Nya said again, voice raw. “I don’t want to give you any false hopes, but I think there’s still a way. You have to trust me on this. But we need to find a way past the Burn.”
“And we have to do it quickly,” Zoe said in her quiet, emotionless tone. Normally one to offer suggestions and plans of attack, she had remained unnaturally silent until then.
West looked at her, straightened his back. “I’ll do it,” he said firmly, then clasped his hands before him as if in prayer, the raskovnik still in between his fingers.
They were silent for several minutes, watching West concentrate. Lumina brought her hand up to her earpiece, a startled look crossing her features. “What did you say?” she asked into the receiver on another communication channel that Tala wasn’t privy to.
A loud crackling sound came from the wall of fire—and then the flames began to part.
Astonished, Tala stared at the slowly widening pathway as the Burn shifted itself to offer them a way inside. She had not even known that was possible.
“Fascinating,” she heard Lord Suddene say.
“Did I do it?” West asked giddily, looking down at his hand. Sure enough, three-fourths of the raskovnik had curled up, wizened and unusable, leaving only the one last healthy leaf.
“How did you do it?” Ryker asked.
The shifter reddened. “I—I thought about how much I love you all. How much I want us to be together again. And that if finding a way into the fire is how that’s gonna happen, then that’s how it’s gonna happen.”
One last chance at doing this right. One last chance to protect Avalon.
The path that the plant had opened up led straight into darkness. It was as if no light existed beyond the burning wall, like everything beyond it existed within a cave.
Loki aimed the lotus lantern at the entrance. A ray of light shot out of its center, shooting unerringly into the penumbra.
Tala raised her sword. She had not thought to name it yet. In her mind, as ridiculous as it was, it felt like it was still Ken’s sword and that she was only borrowing it for his sake, to finish what he had started. “Let’s go,” she said.
Despite the light of the lotus lantern, darkness continued to loom before them. There were no pathways beyond the Burn. There were no cities. Tala wasn’t even sure if it was ground they were walking on or if anything above them contained sky. Not even the stars were visible. It was like the night had consumed everything in this place and nothing else could exist alongside it.
The gateway behind them had disappeared before any of the Katipuneros could enter. Only the Banders and the Cheshire had managed to make it through with Tala before their only way back winked out of existence. But the lotus lantern never wavered, only continued to shine a road ahead of them. “Nowhere to go but forward,” the Cheshire said. “I doubt they would take all the trouble to allow us entry if they were only going to eat us.”
“To eat us?” West asked apprehensively. “Who’s going to eat us?”
“If the legends are right, they wouldn’t. I hope they don’t.”
“This is a really good time for you to tell us if there might be cannibals here, milord,” Tala said. Holding the sword seemed to have gained her some of Ken’s usual levity, as if she was trying to be a poor imitation of him. Nya realized that, too, and smiled sadly at her.
“Not cannibals, technically. If I am right, we will not have long to wait.”
“I hope so,” Tala said, gripping her sword tightly. “Doesn’t look like there’s been anything else living here since the fires went up.”
She was, as it turned out, wrong about that.
Fire blazed before them again—first singly and then in pairs. All too suddenly, the light burst forth, and the fearsome faces of strange creatures loomed down on them from hundreds of feet above, both familiar and strange at the same time.
Dragons, Tala thought, stricken. These were dragons, but unlike the Snow Queen’s creations, these were not made of ice. They had scales that rippled when they moved, leather wings that expanded on either side of them, and small streaks of fire that drifted up from their nostrils. Real dragons, like the stuff old legends were made of.
“Oh,” Nya said. “Crap.”