Naelin lay on the floor of the late queen’s bedchambers in a puddle of muck. It was nice on the floor, without spirits around her. She breathed in and out and didn’t taste the odd mix of salt and pine and moss and ash. All of the spirits were outside, flitting around the palace. They’d stayed close but they weren’t right here, which was what made it nice.
This isn’t working, she thought.
She wasn’t used to them. She wasn’t less afraid of them. She wasn’t becoming inured to them. She was simply having more nightmares, including ones that sometimes hit when she was awake. Naelin hadn’t told Ven about those—about the moments when her rib cage felt tight, her lungs felt squeezed, her skin dampened with sweat, and her vision seemed to collapse to only what was right in front of her.
The problem was she could sense them all. Every little last vicious one of them. She felt their antipathy like a sore on her skin, constantly raw. Before her training began, she’d no idea there were so many of them. They clogged the trees. They filled the air. They permeated the water, always near, always watching, always listening, always hating. Shutting down her mind, she tried not to sense them. All she wanted was a moment. Just one—
A scream broke through her thoughts.
She sat bolt upright. Outside. It was from beyond the room, the hallway, just outside. As Ven had taught her, she thrust her mind beyond herself, and she felt—a spirit? It seemed like a spirit, but one that had been torn apart or inside out. It writhed and twisted as if in pain, except it wasn’t pain, it was . . . ecstasy, brutal joy that poured out of it and flooded into Naelin. She felt as if she were choking on it. Stop! she thought at it.
It didn’t hear her. She stumbled to her feet. Preparing to broadcast the command louder, she opened her mind wider, and from every direction, she felt spirits spinning wildly, as if they were about to explode in a thousand pieces.
She couldn’t see. Everything dripped red in front of her, and the world tilted. Feeling her way across the room, she hit one of the posts of the bed. She clung to it, feeling the solid wood, trying to draw her mind back from the whirlpool.
It would suck her in. It would drown her.
Clinging to the post, she tried to pull out of the rush of pain-joy-need.
Blood, the taste of blood. She tasted coppery saltiness on her tongue and realized she’d bitten through her lip.
Stop.
This time the command was to herself.
She was human, not spirit. She could control her emotions. Drawing in tight to herself, Naelin concentrated on her own breath, feeling it enter her lungs and fill her. She focused on her skin, the limits of where her body was—she was here in the room, not split and sprawled across the palace.
Another scream, and more. Naelin ran across the room to the balcony doors and threw them open. Outside, it was as if a storm had hit the palace. The bodies of spirits darkened the sky, blocking the sun. They were twisting and cackling.
Below, she saw people running as the spirits dove for them.
They’re attacking! Why are they attacking?
The spirits couldn’t attack here, not in the presence of the queen. The palace should be the safest place in all Aratay. “Erian. Llor.” She spoke their names out loud as if that would work as a talisman, and then she ran for the door to the bedchambers. She had to reach them. She had to—
There was blood in the hallway, streaked down the wall.
A woman was huddled on the side. Her head was bent to her chest, and she was motionless. One arm was wrapped in vines that grew from the wall. The other arm had been shredded, and the bone gleamed through the red of her muscles. Blood pooled around her, seeping into the carpet. Naelin ran to her and then stopped. The woman was dead, no question.
A spirit had killed her. Here, in the palace.
This can’t be happening! This shouldn’t be possible!
And then something worse hit her:
What did I do . . . ?
She’d summoned the spirits here. What if . . .
She heard more screams ahead of her, from the stairwell. Erian and Llor were five flights down. Naelin ran toward the stairs. She thrust her mind ahead of her and felt a knot of spirits. They were caught in the same frenzied whirlwind of joy and pain. One, a water spirit, was causing water to spill through a window and cascade down the stairs in a waterfall. An ice spirit followed in its wake, freezing the water, while a tree spirit caused the ceiling of the stairwell to sprout thorns.
She plowed her mind into them. STOP!
For an instant, they paused, but they were vibrating, as if she were holding them steady through sheer force of will, and she was certain that if she stopped broadcasting the command, they’d break free. She wasn’t going to let them. I drew them all here; this is my fault. She broadcast the command as she ran down the stairs and through a pack of three fire spirits. Past them, she released them and threw her mind to the next spirit.
She was too slow. Erian and Llor were too far away. And there were too many spirits between her and them. In the middle of the stairwell, a fire spirit blazed. Sparks landed on the wood and lit into fires. The spirit cackled.
Naelin didn’t think about whether she could do it. She had to do it.
Opening her mind, she felt the spirits again, their wild fury. She let it wash into her, and then she grabbed it firmly, as if it were the arm of an unruly child. She held it steady and then reached farther out. She grabbed more spirits and held them.
She felt as if she were splintering, but she kept a tight grip on her thoughts of Erian and Llor. The spirits had to obey her, because she had to keep her children safe. There was no other option. I caused this. I must fix this.
Thrusting her hands into the water that flowed down the stairs, Naelin plunged her mind into the water, into the walls, into the fire, and into the air. Out, farther, until she’d embraced the entire palace. She felt the earth spirits in the gardens, the fire spirits raging in the stairwells, the air spirits at the top of the spire . . . Do no harm!
She felt as if every spirit suddenly turned its focus to her. Her heart began to pound, and she again heard her mother’s screams, but she held the image of Erian and Llor firmly in her mind. She felt the spirits converging on her. Coming from every corner of the palace . . . just like she’d commanded them to come during her training, but this time, she felt their hatred. They wanted her blood. They wanted to squeeze the air from her body, to crush her bones, to burn her flesh . . .
Do! No! Harm!
She burned the words into them, driving them deep inside.
The spirits pressed closer, wanting, needing her pain, her blood, her death.
And she held them still.
Queen Daleina felt a weight on her. She opened her eyes. Her eyelids felt stiff, as if they’d been stuck shut for hours, and she looked up at the blue sky above, framed by a circle of trees. Turning her head, she saw Champion Ambir, lying across her.
“Champion Ambir?” Her throat felt stiff, and her mouth was dry. Worse, her thoughts felt as if they were swimming in muck. She couldn’t piece together why she was here, why he was here, or what had happened.
“Your Majesty!” a woman’s voice cried. Looking beyond Ambir, Daleina saw Champion Piriandra leap from arch to arch around the circle of the chamber. Piriandra’s knives were drawn and slick with blood. She had a cut that ran down her thigh, dripping with red raindrops. Daleina stiffened—if Alet’s suspicions were right, either Piriandra or Ambir wanted her dead . . .
“Move yourself, Champion Ambir,” Daleina instructed, and pushed as she sat up. The body slid onto the ground with a thump. Only then did she realize that’s what it was: a body. The old champion was dead. His back had been shredded, and his throat had been pierced by a thick thorn.
She felt a whoosh inside her mind as her thoughts at last coalesced in a coherent order. False Death. Struggling to her feet, Daleina reached her mind out, feeling for the spirits. They were congregating several floors down, squeezed into a single stairwell. Why— Why doesn’t matter, she told herself. Champion Ambir doesn’t matter. Piriandra doesn’t matter. She had to stop any more deaths. That’s all that mattered.
She forced her mind at the spirits, broadcasting the core command: Do no harm. She felt it reverberate inside them, catching an echo and bouncing back. Do. No. Harm. She reached out beyond the palace, touching the spirits in the forest beyond. But the frenzy hadn’t spread. It had been contained here, somehow.
She had to reach them, to see, to know why or who . . . She walked two paces and then sagged as her legs wobbled under her. She caught herself on one of the champions’ chairs. Before she could regain her strength, Champion Piriandra rushed toward her. “You live!”
Daleina reached for the spirits, trying to call one to her, to defend her if necessary, but the spirits were still held tight in a ball in the stairwell. “Tell me what happened.”
“You did this,” Piriandra said. “Your weakness. Your failure. You brought this on yourself and on all of us.”
She refused to be baited into arguing. Putting the chair between herself and the champion, she demanded, “How many died?” Arin! she thought. Her sister was in the palace. She should have sent her farther away. Home. Farther. Beyond Aratay into Chell or even Elhim.
A man’s voice—Champion Havtru—answered, “We don’t know.”
“How long was I . . .”—her throat clogged on the word “dead”—“. . . gone?”
Piriandra pulled a rust-colored cloth from her pocket and wiped her blades before sliding them into sheaths. “Too long.” She won’t kill me while Havtru is here, Daleina thought wildly. She won’t want a witness. Her poisoner had picked an unknown poison, one that mimicked a disease, rather than a blade through the ribs. It stood to reason that he or she wouldn’t want to be caught. If Daleina was careful to never be alone with her . . .
“Where’s Ven?” Daleina asked. He should be here, defending her. She then squashed that thought. He’d know she was safe while dead. He must have gone to defend those who weren’t safe. Like Arin. “I must know what’s happened. Help me.”
Hurrying to her side, Havtru supported her. More slowly, Piriandra helped her on the other side. Daleina felt as if her bones had been softened into churned butter. Her knees buckled, and she leaned heavily on the two champions.
She made it three steps before she stopped. “This is too slow. Go, both of you. Find out what has happened. Help who you can. I’ll regain my strength here.”
Piriandra released her, and Daleina sagged half onto the floor until Havtru shifted his weight to support her against his side. “We won’t leave you, Your Majesty,” he said.
She hesitated for a moment. She didn’t want to be alone with anyone, but Havtru was a new champion. He couldn’t yet despise her, could he? He could. Any of them could want her dead. Or none of them. Or . . . She couldn’t think straight. She felt as if the spirits were shrieking inside her head loud and high enough to shatter her skull. “That’s an order.”
“Forgive me, Your Majesty. Your safety overrides your orders,” Havtru said. “Champion Ven was very clear on that, when he recruited me. You had a brush with death. We will not leave you alone until you are fully well.”
“Fine. Go, Piriandra. Havtru will prove his worth.” She kept her eyes on Havtru, hoping this wasn’t a mistake she’d regret, hoping she hadn’t misjudged him, hoping Ven hadn’t. If she couldn’t trust her own judgment, she thought she could trust Ven’s.
Champion Piriandra sprinted for the stairs and was running down the steps without a sound. Daleina was alone with Havtru. There wasn’t even a breeze. No spirits were nearby.
She went for blunt. “If you kill me when there is no heir, all of Aratay will suffer.”
His eyes widened. “Your Majesty!”
Either he was an excellent actor, or he was innocent. She chose to believe the latter. Closing her eyes, she reached out her mind toward the knot in the stairs. The hostility had drained out of them, and the fire spirits spread back into the lanterns. She guided the water spirits toward the fires that had started throughout the palace. She set the earth spirits to soothing the fault lines beneath the city. She instructed the tree spirits to regrow the palace, healing the places that had been torn apart, withering the branches that had been grown where they shouldn’t. She couldn’t sense humans, but she could feel where the spirits had been—the damage they had caused, and she felt her stomach knot. So much damage.
Please, don’t let this cause another false death. She had to gain control . . . but gaining it meant risking losing it again. Still, she had no choice.
After she had distributed the spirits, she opened her eyes. Havtru was watching the sky, his back was to her, and he had a staff held ready in his hands. The air spirits filled the sky again, flitting from cloud to cloud, as if they hadn’t just tried to kill everyone.
She felt stronger, somewhat. “I need to see.”
Putting down his staff, Havtru crossed to her and without a word scooped her up in his arms. She wanted to object, but she knew she didn’t have the strength for the stairs. And who will I impress? By now, everyone must have lost faith in me.
He carried her down the stairs. She saw the cracks in the steps, which looked as if someone had tried to tear the staircase away from the wall of the tree. Cracks snaked up the wall, and the railing was strangled with vines. Farther down, she saw vines ran all along the outside of the palace, as if they had wanted to squeeze the walls until they split.
At the base of the stairs, she saw the first bodies: caretakers, two of them, their arms wrapped around each other as if they’d tried to comfort each other. One was young, barely a woman, and her hair was streaked red with her own blood. The man’s leg was burned.
The next, farther down the hallway, was unrecognizable, a mass of blackened flesh. “Don’t look, Your Majesty,” Havtru said.
“I must. This was my fault.”
“It was your illness. You cannot blame yourself.”
She did blame herself, for not finding the poisoner, for allowing herself to be poisoned, for not pushing the champions harder to find an heir. “Take me to the east staircase.”
She passed others who were still alive, but wounded and stunned. They stared at her as she passed. One leapt to his feet and kissed her hand. “You live!” he cried.
“Help them,” she told Havtru, pointing to the wounded. “Wrap this around their wounds.” She wormed her fingers into one of the holes of her skirt and tore the fabric. Setting her down, Havtru helped her slice off bandage-size strips.
“But your dress . . .” the caretaker sputtered.
“Wrap it tight above their wounds, as tight as you can. Stanch the flow.” She remembered Hamon doing that for other wounded. “Stop the blood loss. Tell them to lift the injured limb up. Prop it up. Healers will be here soon.” She hoped.
Half the eyes she passed looked at her with gratitude—she saw their relief etched into many of their faces. Their queen was alive. The spirits were subdued. But others looked at her with stares that felt like daggers. She flinched each time but forced herself to meet their eyes. They thought she’d abandoned them, that she deliberately let the spirits attack.
I have to tell them the truth. Soon. Speculation would be running wild. But if she told them she was dying before she had an heir, there would be panic in the city, across all of Aratay. “How ready is your candidate, Champion Havtru?” Daleina asked quietly.
“Frankly, she isn’t. She can boss around one at a time very well. Have it going up, down, sideways, acrobatics, you name it. But she can’t stretch herself to command more than one. We’re working on it. She’ll get there. She’s a good girl. Tries hard. You’ll like her.”
It didn’t matter if Daleina liked her or not. If she couldn’t command multiple spirits, she wouldn’t be suited to be queen. “How many days away is she from success?”
“Don’t know. Never trained a candidate before. But Esiella tells me she’s been trying for a year and almost did it twice. Maybe a few months? I don’t know if my candidate will be the one, Your Majesty. I wouldn’t say that in front of her, of course, but I’m thinking you want honesty.”
“I do. Thank you, Havtru.” She hoped the others were farther along. She’d need to announce the trials soon, ideally at the same time as she announced her illness. The trials would distract the people and push the candidates to be ready. “Please push her as hard as you can. I cannot let this kind of disaster happen again.”
“If I am to be honest . . .”
“Please do.”
“Many of the other champions were, let’s say, optimistic in their reports. I don’t think any of them are ready yet. At all.”
“None?” Surely he was exaggerating. They had to be close.
“Well, Yanan had one that was close, but she died. And Gura’s . . . she thought hers could be ready, but she died too. The best ones keep dying off. We’re pushing them too hard, I think. People have limits. You have limits. You should let me take you back to your quarters. The healers should tend to you.”
At last, they reached the east staircase. The walls were buckled out, but there was no trace of the spirits anymore, or any hint of who or what had brought them here. This hall didn’t look any more special than any other. She expected to find a slew of bodies, but there were none. Why had they congregated here if not to attack? She thought this would be the worst of it, but it was oddly empty.
“Let me take you back to your quarters,” Havtru repeated.
“I have to find my sister,” Daleina said. “I have to be sure she’s safe.”
“A guard can do that.” Havtru called to one of the guards, and an uninjured woman with a streak of blood on her cheek jogged to them. “Find the queen’s sister, and make sure she’s in a secure location.”
The guardswoman bowed and hurried away.
“Now will you rest?” Havtru asked Daleina.
She nodded and didn’t ask him to let her walk. She just rested against his chest and endured the stares as they passed by more and more of her people.
As they approached her quarters, Captain Alet ran toward them. Her helmet had slipped, and her hair had unraveled. Her armor was streaked with blood and soot, and her sleeve had a jagged slit. “Queen Daleina!”
“I’m all right,” she told Alet. “I’m relieved to see you in one piece.” Here, at least, was one friend she hadn’t lost. She thought of Linna and Revi and Mari, and how she was failing them.
As Alet checked the room for spirits, Havtru carried the queen inside.
It was pristine: perfectly made bed, beautiful sunlight through the open doors to the balcony, a slight fire in the hearth. For a moment, she was shocked, and then she realized there hadn’t been anyone here to hurt. The spirits had gone after only the parts of the palace where there were people to kill. “It’s my fault,” she gasped. As Havtru opened his mouth to speak again, she waved away his words. “I know I didn’t intend this. But Piriandra was right: I failed. I’m failing. We need the trials now.”
“More candidates will die,” Havtru predicted. “They aren’t ready.”
“Make them ready.”
“You can’t just will it so. Even you, Your Majesty.”
She closed her eyes as he laid her gently on the bed. “I can try.” Listening, she heard him close the curtains around the bed and back toward the door. She heard him and Alet talk in low voices. He’d stay and guard her, she knew, along with Alet. Ven had trained him well.
He was a good teacher. She thought of his student, the woman Naelin. He hadn’t had a chance to answer on her progress before she collapsed. She hoped Naelin was as advanced as he’d expected. From the champions’ reports and Havtru’s statements, she had the clear impression that no one else was.
She felt a spirit arrive. The curtains shuddered, but she didn’t move. Even tired, she knew she could control one spirit if she had to. But if she didn’t have to, she wasn’t going to expend the energy or risk another false death. The spirit perched at the foot of her bed.
At last, she opened her eyes to glare at it.
It was a tree spirit, tiny and gnarled, with leaves matted all over its body. Possibly the same spirit who had been in her bedchambers before. “Come to gloat?” she asked it.
“Yesss,” it hissed.
“If you would be so kind as to gloat elsewhere, that would be delightful.” She wished she could tell it to burn. She wanted to destroy every spirit that had participated in today’s slaughter.
“Their blood was sweet. It flowed into our branches.”
“Go,” she told it, but she didn’t put the force of a command behind the word.
“We watch. We wait. You will fall again, and more will be ready.” It rubbed its hands together, and it sounded like leaves in the wind. “We will feast.”
It’s right. Next time, the death toll would be worse, because more spirits would be ready, waiting, watching. She couldn’t let that happen. As soon as anyone was ready to be heir, she had to abdicate, whether or not the poisoner had been found.
She raised her voice. “Captain Alet! Champion Havtru!”
The two warriors burst into her bedroom, swords and knives drawn. Squealing, the spirit darted out the window. Alet shut and locked the door behind it, and Havtru stalked around the room with his sword raised.
But even with the two of them, she did not feel safe.