Chapter Forty-Three

The power of the binding ring must have faded while I was working on the control circle; Ruven’s villagers had fled, taking the bodies of the innkeeper and the old woman with them. Emmand, friendless, lay where he had fallen.

I shook Zaira’s shoulder, with increasing vigor. I needed her awake. Not just to spare my cracked rib the pain of carrying her down the hill, but to save me from the dark spiral of my own fears. She stirred at last, groaning.

“Come on,” I urged. “I don’t know how long we have until the eruption.”

She blinked her eyes open and lurched to a sitting position, one hand on her temple. “Hells on a stick, my head hurts. Please tell me I imagined the part about not killing him.”

“Ruven is disgustingly alive,” I admitted. “And I couldn’t stop the eruption, but I …” I swallowed. “I redirected it. It’s probably safe here, but we can’t take chances.”

“Fine.” Zaira let me help her to her feet. Her eyes lit on Emmand’s still form, and she froze. “I didn’t kill him, did I?” Panic stretched her voice raw.

“No,” I said. “You didn’t. Ruven did.”

She averted her eyes as we passed him, mumbling, “That poor little bastard.”

As we plunged once more into the darkness of the forest, the ground under my feet trembled, and the trees shook their leaves in a rising whisper. I thought for a moment it was Ruven moving the land against us but then realized the truth.

“An earthquake.” The words took on a corroded edge of dread in my mouth, tasting like old iron. “Just a small one. Mount Whitecrown is getting ready.”

“You’re sure we’re safe here?” Zaira asked, face pale in the speckled moonlight.

“If the magic works as it’s supposed to, and nothing unexpected happens, yes. But this is the first time anyone’s tried anything like this. So, no. Not at all.”

Zaira hurried a bit faster.

The blood rune I’d sketched on the control circle seemed to have given me a lingering sense of Mount Whitecrown, and the volcano pressed at my awareness with overwhelming urgency. The forces built up within the mountain could move the earth far more than that little tremor, and the fires raging within it dwarfed even Zaira’s inner inferno. I supposed that was one good thing; if Mount Whitecrown dominated my senses even with such a weak connection, Ruven must be blind to anything else. He might well not realize we were escaping, and I doubted he could pinpoint where we were.

Kathe met us partway back to the castle, limping up the path, a crow riding on his shoulder. Seeing him clearly injured sent an unexpected pang through me. I almost ran to him; much as I hadn’t forgiven him, I didn’t want him to get hurt on my behalf. But I caught the wild gleam of his mage mark through the darkness and held myself in check.

“Are you all right?” I asked, trying to sound like I didn’t care.

“Better off than you.” He lifted his face to catch the moonlight, seeming to strain to listen. “What’s happening? Something is stirring, all across the land.”

“Mount Whitecrown. We were too late. It’s going to erupt.” I caught my breath, wincing at the sharp stab of pain from my rib. “I’ve redirected it away from … from most people, I hope, but you should still take cover.”

“As should you.” He glanced behind him. “I’ve taken care of the immediate pursuit, but there’s an uproar at the castle. Ruven is sending more forces after you, and the new Witch Lord of Sevaeth is after your blood as well, Lady Amalia. She blames you for her mother’s death.”

“But I didn’t kill her!” I protested.

“I, ah, may have neglected to correct her assumption that you were responsible,” Kathe admitted. “Suffice to say it’s not safe for you at the castle anymore. You need to get out of Kazerath as quickly as possible, while Ruven is still distracted with the Conclave and this coming eruption. If you’re still here in the morning, he’ll be able to bring his whole domain to bear on capturing or killing you.”

“We’ll head to the border by the shortest route, then. Maybe we can catch up to Marcello.” It meant running toward Mount Whitecrown, which seemed foolhardy in the extreme, but in all I’d rather take my chances with the volcano than with Ruven.

“I have to get back to the castle.” Kathe reached out and put a hand on my shoulder, warm and gentle and strangely hesitant. “I should have told you about the trap. I’m sorry.” The words fell strangely off his tongue, as if it might be the first time he’d spoken them.

Sorry was a start, but anger still simmered in me like chocolate too hot to drink. “Yes, you should have. I might even have played along.” His crow half spread its wings, muttering deep in its throat, and I caught its beady eyes. “Wait! Can you send a message?”

“For you, my lady? Anything.”

“To my cousin Roland.” I caught both his arms in my urgency. “He’s in the path of the eruption. Warn him to run and take shelter, please.”

“I’m not sure he’ll have enough time for a warning to do any good,” Kathe said dubiously. “But all right.”

He stroked the crow’s beak, whispering to it in some strange guttural tongue. The crow made a noise of protest and flapped its wings. He soothed it, stroking the feathers of its chest, and finally it fluttered off, cawing.

“Will it be all right?” I asked, feeling suddenly guilty.

“That depends on the size and nature of the eruption. I’ve told him to be quick and careful, and not to get himself killed.”

I felt a bit odd, worrying over a crow. But there’d been enough death already, and more was coming. I squeezed Kathe’s arms. “Thank you.”

“Now, hurry.” Kathe leaned forward, hesitated, and placed a quick whisper of a kiss at my hairline. “I’m heading back to the castle, to do what I can to make sure the other Witch Lords know that the volcano is Ruven’s fault, and that the Lady of Thorns’ death is … well, that it’s no loss.”

“We may need to have a talk after this is over.” I sounded like my mother, letting a younger me know the only reason she wasn’t reprimanding me right now was because guests were watching.

Kathe laughed. “I suppose we should. Good luck, Lady Amalia. Don’t die.”

“I’ll try not to.”

The ground shuddered again under our feet as Zaira and I fled through the cold silver night. Through the gaps in the trees, we could glimpse a pale gray light rising in the east, washing out the farthest stars. A breeze picked up, growing stronger, swaying the highest tree branches to point deeper into Kazerath; I hoped it was Jerith, raising up a wind to protect the Empire from falling ash.

So much now depended on factors out of anyone’s control. How big an eruption could magic trigger, if the volcano wasn’t naturally ready? How much pressure had Ruven’s enchantment built up, and how much had our sabotage released? How much of the mountain would be blasted skyward when it unleashed its fury? How precisely could the control circle direct such a terrible and untamable force? They were the sort of questions I would have enjoyed discussing over a pile of books with Venasha and Domenic, had they been purely theoretical. But now they chased each other around my head with bleeding-sharp edges, answerless and echoing.

We stayed on the road, taking a trader’s path that led up over a low point in Mount Whitecrown’s long shoulder toward the closest mountain village across the border in Callamorne. Ruven must have been busy, because the trees seemed content to behave like a normal forest; they hadn’t been grown and nursed on hatred of us, like those in Sevaeth. We occasionally heard large things moving in the woods, or an ominous howl or growl in the distance, and we passed close enough to an army encampment to smell the smoke from it; I released Zaira’s power at the first sign of danger, but the road remained safe. For a while, it looked as if we might make it to the border unmolested.

But as the road began to climb the base of the mountain, we found our path blocked by a line of some dozen soldiers. The graying light was bright enough to pick out gleams from the row of muskets pointed at us.

“If I burn them all, you’re going to have to carry me,” Zaira muttered.

“Maybe we can bluff our way through,” I replied, without much hope. The pain from my rib and general exhaustion dulled my wits; I wasn’t sure I could have bluffed my way out of a boring meeting, let alone mortal danger. But I had extreme doubts that I could drag an unconscious Zaira up a mountain with a broken rib, either.

“If I see one spark of balefire, I’ll shoot,” the man in the center of the line called, sighting grimly along his musket. “Come with us back to Lord Ruven’s castle, and no one will be hurt.”

Hells. They knew who we were. This was no random mountain patrol; Ruven had sent some scouting party in the area to stop us.

“You’re making a mistake,” I warned, trying to sound sure and dangerous. “Get out of our way, while you still can.”

“I can’t do that, my lady,” the officer said, and by the tension in his voice, I knew he meant it. “Now, if you won’t come with us quietly, I have orders to—”

I never found out what his orders were. A light flashed on the dark road behind him, and a loud crack split the air. It sounded like a flintlock pistol, but even as the soldiers whirled to face their attacker, it was followed by a deep chime, as if someone had rung a massive bell. The air rippled with a wave of magic.

As the wave hit them, the soldiers went suddenly limp. Their muskets clattered to the ground. Their bodies followed, boneless and oddly graceful.

I slapped my hands over my ears and scrambled backward. The wave had nearly petered out by the time it reached us, but still it shuddered through me with numbing force, and my legs buckled under me. I fell to my knees but was able to rise again at once, the tone still echoing in my head. Zaira clutched my arm for balance, her free hand pressed to her temple.

“What in the Nine Hells was that?” she growled.

The scent of gunsmoke teased its way along the path. Marcello stepped from the shadows ahead, pistol in hand. Brass bands marked with glowing runes spun lazily around the barrel, which was encased with crystals and wire. Sweet relief swept through me at the sight of him.

“I left my pistol where Istrella could get it,” he said. “Now I have no idea what it’ll do each time I fire it.”

“Where’s Terika?” Zaira demanded.

“Safe on our side of the border.” Marcello glanced at the stunned soldiers, who were already stirring weakly. “Come on. I’ve got more people up the road, but we’d better run.”

We’d made it past the Kazerath boundary stones and a set of imperial guard towers and could see the walls of a border fort well enough to pick out the cannons on the battlements in the rosy light of dawn, when the mountain shook hard enough to throw us off our feet at last. I caught myself on my hands and knees in the dusty road, beside the stream course the trader’s path followed; the great trembling in the earth traveled up my arms and rattled my bones. Marcello let out a startled cry, and fearful oaths rose from the imperial soldiers who’d joined our escort on the way.

In the bones of the mountain, something broke.

Hell of Disaster. Here it comes.

There came a deep and terrible rumbling, greater than a thousand thunders. I grabbed onto Marcello, who sprawled in the road beside me, and lifted my eyes to the sublime glacier-mantled peak of Mount Whitecrown. Immense and remote as the sky itself, it reared above us, past the green-swathed ridge that rose immediately overhead.

Gray ash unfurled skyward from the far side of it, blossoming greater and greater, reaching and spreading in awful immensity. The colossal dark cloud reared up like a living thing, some demon more terrible than all the Hells rolled together, here to bring the Dark Days upon us once more. The noise was terrible, as if the sky itself might crack open and crumble down on us. And still the mountain shuddered.

The ground should not buck like a tipping boat. The sky should not hold so much billowing darkness. My senses tried to reject it all in horror, but it was real.

My heart seized with guilt and terror. Roland. Graces protect him.

Marcello’s arms went tight around me, sending a stab of unheeded pain through my cracked rib as we clung to each other. Zaira let out a steady stream of profanity, her usual creativity lost to emphatic repetition. Still the ash cloud loomed larger above us, opaque and unreachable as death, spreading faster than spilled blood as it unfolded across the blue sky. But it bent and leaned, pushed by the wind that tugged our hair and clothing, and the top of the terrible plume began reaching toward Vaskandar.

We were alive. And the Empire was safe. Our efforts had worked; no deadly flows of ash, rock, or lava had poured down the south side of the mountain onto the fortresses, villages, and encamped armies there.

But I had just killed my cousin.

I could feel it, deep in my blood—the same way the jess gave me a vague sense of where Zaira was, and the same way I recognized the blooding stones in Atruin. I was dimly aware of the bloody rune I’d painted on the control circle, of the mountain’s fiery heart to which it connected me, and of the gaping hole in Mount Whitecrown’s side from which the towering ash cloud continued to rise. I knew of the path of devastation down the side of the mountain—the hot flow of gas and ash and pulverized rock that had blasted down ancient pines and wiped a clean swath down Mount Whitecrown’s forested flank to the river below.

And I knew the lives that had winked out there, like snuffed candles, one-two-three.

Roland.

A sob tore out of me, no more possible to repress than the eruption itself. Marcello and Zaira stared at me like I was mad—they didn’t know. But I couldn’t explain, not now. I was crying so hard I could barely gasp in enough breath.

Treat strong emotions like cards: keep them close in hand and show them to no one, my mother’s voice admonished me in my memory, but it was too late. Grief shook me harder than the earthquake, and a bewildered Marcello folded his arms around me and stroked my hair while the tears ran down to my chin.