I didn't care about the blade. It was Kidira's eyes that sent me scrambling through the dirt. The hole in my chest had closed but my insides were still twisted around one another, nothing but pulp with no definable shape, unsure of its purpose. My chest was heavy with a lack of everything; my heart didn't pound, my lungs didn't expand, but I was moving, palms grazing against the ground as I pushed back, back.
Kidira took a step forward, following me with her gaze and spear alike, and I collapsed onto my side when there was nowhere else to flee to. My back was against a mountain and I put my hands through the hole in my shirt, flesh soft and tender, unblemished, discomfort giving way to a pang of guilt so raw I could've choked on it.
“Nnng.” I tried to speak but there was blood in my throat. Kidira pulled the spear back and my heart surged. “Don't!”
I'd come back from the dead. I'd been impaled on a rock the width of my ribcage and my body had pulled itself back together in seconds. Yet there I was, staring up at Kidira, seeing Katja and all she'd done to me, all too aware of how weak I could be made to feel.
“Don't hurt me, don't...” The words rasped out of me, lungs burning with their first breath. I held out a hand, pleading as though I already knew how useless it was, but something in my voice reached Kidira. Her grip loosened, knuckles no longer white around the spear, and it struck me how I must look to her: raised from the dead and as pale as the moon, eyes blazing with light, skin glowing.
“I'm not going to hurt you,” Kidira said, teeth all but fused together. She lowered the spear and I stared at her; she was the Queen I remembered in everything but costume. She was dressed like a pane, tough leathers and purple cloth draped around her, wolf pelts wrapped around her shoulders. “Well? Get up.”
I didn't move. Slinging the spear across her back, Kidira held a hand out to me. I took it for fear of where my non-compliance would lead, unsteady on my feet. The world swayed and there wasn't much feeling beneath my stomach – had that been recreated, too? – as though I was still falling and the wind had numbed me. I stared down at my feet and then up at the mountain, where Kidira's gaze was fixed. The fall looked further than it had felt, so far that I should've lost myself on the way down, and at the time I had believed I might never strike the ground.
I stepped forward, not knowing where I was going, and walked face-first into a wall of rock. Kidira grabbed my shoulder, steadying me, and used what remained of my shirt to pull me closer. I stumbled but her grip was tight, and though I was looking down at her, I was still forced to swallow a lump in my throat. She was searching my expression for something, eyes darting back and forth, but I was light-headed and my fear had soured into a dank sort of amusement. I smiled. She gripped the front of my collar, and shook me, hard.
“Does Claire know? Does she know that you're not...” She pressed her lips tightly together, taking a moment to find the word. “Not dead.”
Claire! I thought. Claire was alive, and so was I; though I hadn't been, minutes ago. Kidira freed me from her grasp and I swayed but didn't stumble. I dropped to my knees of my own accord, face pressed against ground, rocking. Everything inside of me was cramping, one organ pressing against the next, fighting for its place within me. And Kidira, she'd saved me. She'd saved me and she hadn't called me necromancer, hadn't left me on that rock; she'd asked me about Claire and she'd called her Claire, not Ightham or Marshal or Sir. She asked because she cared about her, and I promised myself it would be enough to get me through this.
“Claire's alive,” I said, but it wasn't what I meant. I pushed my face into the dirt, groaning. “I'm alive. Claire knows I'm alive.”
Kidira said nothing. I couldn't tell whether it was the ground spinning or my head; it could've been both, though they didn't rush in the same direction. I clawed at my chest, desperate for it to stop, gasping and laughing and trembling with nausea. The muscles contracting within my chest weren't my own, just like the damn hand I was trying to tear them out with. Had it been like this for the lambs I'd fixed, once the wolves had made off with their guts? I was sorry. I was so, so sorry. I would've taken it back, if I could.
I wondered how much more I'd lose. Wondered what Claire would think of me when I stumbled back, heart and hand not my own.
There was one last jolt within my chest, throughout my ribs, and a web of veins settled into place. My head cleared and disjointed thoughts were washed away, relief rushing in through my every pore, overwhelming me.
*
It was night when I came to. I'd been dragged into a cave, fire burning beneath a low, sloping ceiling. I blinked my eyes open, not daring to move, trying to understand my surroundings. Trying to piece together what had happened. The blood and all else had been washed away and I'd been wrapped in the purple spool of fabric Kidira had been wearing. She sat on the other side of the fire, tending to the pot over it. She knew I'd woken up, but she said nothing, giving me the time I needed to sit up.
I scrunched my nose, working my jaw. My face felt odd. As though it should've hurt, but didn't. The whole of my skull must've pieced itself together, not letting my memories slip out through the cracks. My teeth were tingling and I realised that the cave smelled incredible. Kidira was stirring whatever she'd concocted in the pot, and the thought of food gave me the strength I needed to face her. She wasn't her daughter, I told myself. She'd saved me and spoken Claire's name. I was going to be alright.
“How long... ?” I mumbled, pushing myself up. I glanced down at my hands; they were still outshining the fire.
“Three hours,” she said sternly, as though I was running late for something. “I would've thought you dead, if not for...”
She gestured vaguely towards me, willing to pull the wreckage of my body off a rock, but unable to say the word necromancy. Kidira said nothing more. She let the stew simmer and leant back against the cave wall, not asking where I'd been or who I'd been with. It took me too long to realise that it wasn't because she didn't care about the others, wasn't because they weren't at the forefront of her thoughts; two years was a long time to get used to the idea of people being dead, that was all. And I, I was no ray of hope. I was a necromancer and they weren't.
“What are you doing down here?” I asked, glancing over at her things. There was a bag next to her spear, packed full enough supplies to last another handful of days in the wilderness.
“What am I doing down here?” Kidira asked, but didn't go so far as to scold me for my lack of gratitude. A moment passed and she said, “Scouting,” as though spilling all of her secrets in that single word.
“Oh,” I said. “I was heading to Kyrindval.”
“Did you decide to take a detour?”
I scowled at her but couldn't bring myself to answer. Any explanation would lead to more questions, questions I didn't have the strength or clarity to answer. I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, trying to hide my new flesh from myself, trying not to meet Kidira's eye. Here was the woman who had saved Claire, who had saved me – and my horse, by all accounts – yet I was full of an untenable anger towards her. I knew she wasn't to blame for her daughter's actions. I knew she wasn't expected to speak to Kouris a mere handful of days, weeks, months, after she'd disappeared for decades on end. I knew this and still, it did nothing to help.
“I was in trapped in Canth,” I said slowly, “With the others.”
Kidira hesitated. I saw her open her mouth and snap it shut, dropping her gaze to the side as she reined in whatever words had tried to leap forth.
“... the others?” she finally asked, too cautiously for me to risk wasting any more time.
“Akela, Atthis. Your daughter,” I said, rushing to distance myself from Katja. “And Kouris. We're all back. Everyone's in Orinhal, except for Kouris. She came looking for you a while ago.”
It wasn't my place to tell Kidira so much at once, but I had even less of a right to keep it from her. She stared into the fire, cleared her throat, then became unduly focused on stirring the stew over and over. I turned away and busied myself with adjusting the cloth Kidira had wrapped around me, giving her a moment to herself. I knew that if I saw anything like weakness ripple across her expression she wouldn't be able to come back from that. I'd no doubt she was doing her best to convince herself I was lying; my words wouldn't truly sink in until she'd seen everyone she'd counted dead with her own two eyes.
“Kouris thought you were dead, you know,” I added, against my better judgement.
“Good,” Kidira replied briskly. “Then she knows how it feels.”
I lowered my head, wincing. My heart gave a jolt at the words, still settling into place. It beat too hard and I brought my hand to my chest, fingertips sliding cloth over smooth skin. Oh, Katja: would you be proud of me now? Had I finally reached my potential, or at least scratched at the surface?
I kept my gaze low, willing to deal with the brunt of Kidira's scorn so that Kouris didn't have to. Kouris wouldn't be hearing any kind words from Kidira no matter how much I endured, but I thought I could take off the edge while the sting was fresh.
“Canth, again?” Kidira murmured. “No points for originality there.”
“We had no choice,” I said, looking up, eyes fixed on her shoulder. “There were dragons everywhere, the whole country was burning and—”
“And you got on a ship and sailed away to safety,” Kidira said, and I wanted to scream that her daughter had been saved because of whatever cowardice she imagined had fuelled us, but couldn't. “Save your excuses. I was in Kastelir; just like you, just like Kouris. I didn't run; Claire didn't run.”
My throat was raw with all the yelling I wasn't doing. I couldn't tell her not to breathe Claire's name as I had to Katja, because when it came down to it, Kidira was the one who'd been there for Claire when I hadn't. She was right. We'd run, we'd saved ourselves. It didn't matter that I was carried onto that ship. We left Kastelir and watched it burn from the ocean, while Kidira had stayed amongst the rubble of Isin, pulling bodies out of the wreckage.
There were burns on her hands, up her arms. I watched her ladle the stew into wooden bowls taken from her pack, and stared blankly at it when she placed it in front of me.
“Eat,” she said bluntly, and I took hold of the bowl for fear of what she might say if I refused her orders. I brought it to my lips, sipping it. My tongue was old and worn and the taste didn't overwhelm me, but when I swallowed it, I felt it slip from my throat and trickle into my chest, as though I was riddled with holes and it was about spread throughout the entirety of my body. I choked it back up, stomach turning for the first time, and couldn't stop coughing and heaving.
My hands were in the dirt as I rocked forward, glowing brighter than ever, all the nothing I had inside me mixing with bile, splattering on the ground. I groaned, gasping for breath, and Kidira sat there, watching. Unmoving. She didn't slap my back, didn't offer me a drop of water. It was as though she was in on this with Katja; she was ignoring me, acting as though what I was going through was nothing.
“... she was dead,” I mumbled, just as soon as I could mumble.
“Pardon?” Kidira asked, more disinterested than wary.
“Kouris. She was dead,” I went on, and as the words slipped from my tongue, I knew how bad an idea it was. It wasn't my story to tell, but Kouris never would do so, not if Kidira forgave her a thousand times over. More than that, I thought I might finally get a rise out of Kidira. I wiped my eyes, mouth, and chin with the back of my hand and continued. “She went to them. She went to the people who wanted to punish her for what she'd done and she let them cut off her head. All because you made her think it was the right thing to do. They made her kneel at the gallows and they took her head.
“She didn't ask for anyone to bring her back. A necromancer pieced her back together and when she returned, she was in Canth. And do you know why she stayed? Because she thought keeping Kastelir together was more important to you than she was.”
As I spoke, I felt justified in what I was doing. I had steeled myself; my words came out slowly and clearly, too strong and certain to be anything but the truth. But when I finished and the crack of wood burning was the only sound to fill the cave, I wanted nothing more than to draw the words back into my chest.
Kidira stared down at her open hands. She didn't move. She didn't breathe. I saw two years pass across her in a flash; the downfall of her country, the certainty that her daughter and Commander were dead, the knowledge that the Kings she had ruled alongside for thirty years were gone, along with the weight of Kouris' absence once more pressing down on her. I saw that she was a person, a person who had suffered as we all had.
I'd been patient with Claire. I'd forced myself to understand how she could be so distant, so blunt. Why she could only face herself while intoxicated, some days, and all the little things that had changed between us. And yet I'd been cruel to Kidira because she'd been short with me. She'd saved my life and I'd blamed her for losing Kouris. I would've apologised, if saying sorry wouldn't have made Kidira felt weaker than she already did.
She rose to her feet, leaving the cave without looking at me, without taking her spear.
“Stay,” was all she said to me, and I obeyed. She needed time to process what I'd said in whatever way suited her, though I couldn't imagine her crying or screaming. It was pitch-black outside and I was ablaze; I'd only draw the soldiers' attention if I wandered out in the dark. There was no drawing my light back inside, not now. I didn't even try.
I hadn't seen much during my brief spate of consciousness at the foot of the mountain, but I knew we were somewhere with no roads. The soldiers wouldn't be able to take such a direct route down. It could take them days to find the spot I'd fallen to, and Kidira and I would've moved on by then. We'd be back on our way to Kyrindval, avoiding all the soldiers because... because Kidira would be there. I'd seen her at her lowest points, when Kouris had first returned to her, when Jonas had been lost, and now, yet I had no doubt that she could cause an army to tremble.
I tried the stew again. Took small sips and let it settle in my stomach. Hours passed before Kidira returned, and I drifted not quite to sleep in the interim, but felt numbed to the passage of time. She came in quietly, piling more wood onto the fire that had died down, despite me doing a fine job of keeping the place bright. Once there was life in the flames again, Kidira stood back up, staring down at me.
“I shouldn't have said any of that,” I said, looking up at her. “And I really shouldn't have said it like that.”
Kidira shook her head.
“I pulled your body off a rock and you've spent much of the day vomiting and lapsing into unconsciousness. You're allowed to be insensitive this once,” she said, and I knew it was the only time I'd ever get away with it. “Why did you leap off the mountain?”
She sat down in front of me. I took it to mean that I was being given the chance to start over with her and made the right choice in holding nothing back.
“There were soldiers on the way to Kyrindval. At first they were letting me pass without a problem, but then there was a whole party of them. And they knew who I was,” I said, thinking back to that slip of parchment they'd been glancing over. The way they looked at me was enough to tell me what it said: necromancer heading to Kyrindval, here's what you need to look for—be careful! “It happened up on the path. There wasn't anywhere to run, so I did the only thing I could. I jumped off the mountain. I wasn't about to let them catch me.”
“Couldn't you have killed them?” Kidira asked bluntly, testing me.
“I could've,” I said, trying to shake the light out of my fingertips. “But I couldn't.”
Kidira paused, sorting through the information. Whatever conclusion she came to wasn't given away by her demeanour. Nothing in her expression changed; she merely went on with her questions.
“Why were you headed for Kyrindval? Did something happen at Orinhal?”
“Yes,” I said, hurrying to elaborate lest I concern her. “Yes and no. It's just... me. The people found out what I was and it didn't go well for me. Again. I was causing too many problems for Claire, for Sen, for everyone. I thought it would be best to get away from Orinhal.”
She barely paused.
“And Canth?”
I told the story of our arrival and stay in Canth in clear, concise terms. It wasn't the rendition of the tale I'd told my father or Claire; I stuck to the facts, to the bones of Canth. I told her how we'd headed there out of necessity, meaning to regroup and return to Kastelir the moment we could. I told her how the Felheimish army had blocked our way, how we'd done everything we could to get back to Asar. I told her how Kondo-Kana had found me and she didn't care to question me. I told her how I earnt our passage home and she nodded slowly.
“And I take it you can't do anything about that?” Kidira asked, waving a hand towards me.
I'd almost manage to forget about the glow. She hadn't.
“I can, but it might take some time,” I admitted, rubbing my hands against my forearms,
“You may continue towards Kyrindval, if you wish,” she said, pausing. “Or you could make yourself useful.”
How the years must've tempered her to make an offer come out in lieu of an order. I leant towards the fire in anticipation of what she was going to say, asking “How?” though she didn't answer me. Not right away. She kept her lips pressed into a tight, thin line, and looked hesitant to say any more. She was torn between regretting what she'd already said and being unwilling to ever doubt herself.
“I will trust you because Claire trusts you. Do not let her down,” Kidira finally said, staring up from the flames. “I have spent the last few weeks in the Bloodless Lands.”
I almost toppled forward. For a moment, for a single split-second, I wondered how she even knew about it, as though it had been some secret between Kondo-Kana and myself.
“The Bloodless Lands? How did you—why aren't you... you know?”
Kidira tilted her head to the side, mildly irritated. Not so much with my questions, but with the fact that I didn't automatically know these things, being what I was.
“The Bloodless Lands don't reach the mountains. Not quite. There's a stretch of unscathed land between the Bloodless Lands and the mountains; fifty feet wide, perhaps,” she explained. “Its effects aren't instantaneous. Discomforting at a glance, yes, but if one averts their gaze and employs a blindfold...”
I nodded over and over, showing that I understood, all of a sudden aware that I should've been asking her why she was there.
“I shouldn't be the one to do this: tracking down those responsible for manipulating the dragons. But circumstances compel Claire to be where she is, leading the people, and so I must act in her place,” Kidira went on to say. “I did mean to head back to Orinhal for reinforcements, but I should think you will do better than any soldier I could've fetched, and I rather wouldn't waste any more time.”
“Me? Because I'm a necromancer, you mean?” I said, determined to get the word out around Kidira without my voice cracking.
“Exactly that.”
Nothing ever changed. What I was had seen me exiled from my village and now a city, had sent me running across countries, but as soon as I was useful, as soon as I became a means to an end, then people could tolerate being in my vicinity. Canth accepted necromancers, uplifted them, but I'd still had to abuse my powers to deserve Queen Nasrin's help. And now Kidira thought she could make use of me; thought I could wipe out those who stood in her way.
“I'm not going to just kill the soldiers for you,” I said firmly.
“Is that what you think of me? Kouris does me no kindnesses, as is usual,” Kidira said, sighing, but paused, as if taken aback by how easily she'd spoken Kouris' name. “I will not make an assassin of you. This is to be a rescue mission, of sorts.”
Kidira returned any offence I'd dealt her by way of a stare, making me feel small.
“A rescue mission... ? Is there anyone in the Bloodless Lands?”
“As I said, the edges are safe enough. Where better to twist and warp dragons?”
She had a point. There wasn't anywhere on Bosma as desolate as the Bloodless Lands, and all on Asar grew up knowing that to draw close to the Bloodless Lands was to succumb to the madness of necromancers. Back when I was a child, I let myself be convinced that the Bloodless Lands were to blame for making the pane as I was told they were, and the elders would often murmur that the settlements close to our side of the mountains weren't as safe as they ought to be.
“I'll go with you,” I said, still desperate, in a way, to prove myself worthy of my own life. “What do you need me to do?”
Kidira was already packing away her things, pouring out the last of the stew neither of us had really touched. She hummed flatly, back to me, slinging her bag over her shoulders. I followed her lead, extinguishing the fire without having to worry about fumbling in the dark, knowing there was an answer coming and doing my best not to be too anxious for it. She wasn't going to have me kill anyone; I wouldn't have to prepare myself for climbing onto pirate ships and stealing heads.
“You'll see when we get there,” Kidira eventually said as she stepped out of the cave. I didn't have it within myself to press her any further. I followed, knowing we couldn't afford to linger in any one place for too long. “Here. Put this on.”
Kidira retrieved a hooded cloak from her bag and I wrapped it around myself without any fuss. Dawn had yet to break and I would've led any wandering soldiers right to us. I pulled the hood up so that it covered my blazing eyes, vision fixed on the ground, the backs of Kidira's feet. I'd taken enough clothing from her already, what with the sash of purple cloth she'd had to give up to provide me with a makeshift cloak; only tough leathers and furs remained, arms, back, and body strengthened by years spent amongst the pane, wandering the mountains.
We headed back on ourselves, passing the rocks I'd crashed into. I wouldn't have recognised them, for much of the landscape repeated itself around the mountains, but the rock and dirt I'd plummeted to had turned white; whiter than dragon-bone. The fact that it was still dark had no bearing on it. The white stood out as though night had forgotten to fall across it, no shadows marring the surface. The few dark spots were made of blood and all else, and I did my best not to focus on them.
“Look,” Kidira said, driving the blunt end of her spear into the ground. I winched, certain she meant to ask me questions I didn't know how to answer, but when I followed the direction of her spear, I saw Claire's dragon-bone knife thrown off to the side. My hands went to the small of my back, where it'd been tucked into my trousers, pulse spiking when I realised it wasn't there; when I realised I would've lost it, if not for Kidira's sharp eye. I lunged forward, snatched it up, and checked it for scratches, of all things.
On we went. To the best of my knowledge, it'd been two months since Kidira had set out from Kyrindval. I hoped that much of that time had been spent searching, to no avail, and that we weren't going to march for a solid month through the Bloodless Lands. We weren't even through the mountains and I could see no end in sight; just mountain after mountain cutting valleys into the horizon. Kidira walked at a pace that was hard to match, and I began to regret that I didn't have—
“Wait!” I called out. “My horse, I left him halfway up the mountain. I need to go back! What if the soldiers have him?”
“If the soldiers have Charley then there's nothing you or I can do about that,” Kidira said bluntly, not slowing her pace. I ground to a halt in protest, and as if no longer able to hear my footsteps following her, Kidira said, “But I very much doubt that the soldiers would go to the lengths required in order to guide a horse down the mountains when they're clearly so very distracted by their hunt for you. The pane will find him, sooner rather than later. Enough of them will recognise him.”
I frowned at her back, not wanting to relax, to believe that it would really be alright, but softened regardless. I took wide strides in order to catch up with Kidira, wishing I could bring myself to turn and run back up the mountain path without feeling as though I was plummeting again at the mere thought.
Dawn painted the sky an angry, muted shade of red and I prepared for the elements to turn against us. When it was as light as it was going to get, I pulled the hood back and shook my head, dried blood clumped in my messy hair. I wasn't going to contest the sun, wasn't going to stand out to anyone tracking us from a distance.
The mountains and their valleys weren't at all as I'd imagined them to be as a child. The ground wasn't dry and barren, the air wasn't bitterly cold, and my surroundings came to me in more shades than stone grey; there was a wealth of life there, more than I'd been able to catch a glimpse of from Kyrindval. The grass grew tall and wild flowers tangled with it, and deer sprang about in the distance, ears perking at the sound of us passing through. There were a thousand insects trying to scream over each other, and it didn't take more than a few minutes for us to catch a rabbit.
We skinned it, cooked it, ate and moved on. I managed to keep the meal down without gagging; my body was already used to itself, even if I wasn't. Kidira and I continued to march between the mountains, down sloping valleys and up sharp inclines, rocks tumbling out from beneath our feet. It was peaceful out there. Conversation came by way of laboured breathing and the calls of birds above served to emphasize the calm and quiet of the place. There weren't any other humans around for miles, and there was warmth to be found in the shadows of mountains.
I'd been wrong about the weather.
But all the while, I was overly aware of where we were heading and what awaited us. I was anxious, but none of my muscles tensed and my chest hadn't tightened; there was nothing I could shake out, nothing for me to focus on.
The wall came into view. A valley a mile-wide stood between us and the Bloodless Lands, space between the mountains filled in by my ancestors hundreds upon hundreds of years ago. The scale and age of it were the only impressive things about the wall. From a distance, I could tell how crudely it had been put together. It was more a pile of rocks than any wall I'd ever seen, as if meant to serve as more of a warning than an actual obstacle.
“Why did you pull me off that rock?” I asked when we stopped by a stream to refill Kidira's waterskin. “I mean, you must've known what I was, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered.”
“I knew what you were because Claire told me what you were,” she said, handing over the waterskin.
Which didn't answer my question. I kept my eyes on her as I drank, having softened, hours ago, at the thought of her saving Claire. But now, all I could think about was the first time I went to Orinhal, and how the necromancer had been dragged from his home.
“So you saved me because of Claire? Is that it?”
She met my gaze and stepped towards me, saying, “I saved you because you were clearly not dead, not completely. You were suffering and I saw how best to put an end to that.”
Kidira took the waterskin from me but didn't break eye-contact. I expected her to say something more. Expected her to shout, to put me in my place, but she just waited. Waited for me to say whatever it was that was driving me to clench my hands into fists and grit my teeth at her.
“But you—you're asking me to go into the Bloodless Lands with you and I don't even know why! Maybe you just want to...” I paused, throwing my hands out to the sides. Kidira didn't flinch, didn't step back. She seemed patient, if anything. “The first time I went to Orinhal, they took a necromancer from his home because of you, and you made a spectacle of his execution for the Agadians ...”
“Why is it so very important to you that I am some manner of monster?” Kidira asked. “I save your life and instead of thanking me, you demand to know what my ulterior motives are. Kouris has had your ear for too long.”
I would've told her all about burning necromancers, if not for her comment about Kouris. It seemed more pressing, somehow, that she had spent all this time thinking Kouris had turned against her. I let my own frustration slip away in favour of defending Kouris, and doing that only brought anger around in turn.
“Kouris has never said a bad word about you,” I said, and it drew a stony silence out of Kidira unlike anything I'd said before. I flinched at the thought of what was swirling behind her eyes and so said, as quietly as I could without murmuring, “... thank you for pulling me off that rock.”
Because I'd still be there, if not for her. I'd still be blacking out and coming to, a little more aware of my surroundings each time; maybe I would've been able to pull myself off the rock within day, but I doubted my mind would've recovered as it barely had. Kidira turned with a sharp nod but all I could think of was the necromancer tied to a post, burnt over and over until only ash remained; all because the woman before me had willed it so.
I didn't ask her why she'd done it. No explanation could've excused her actions.
We carried on towards the wall. I had divided the last few years equally between the ocean and sand and had trouble finding my footing on steep, rocky inclines. More than once Kidira turned to me, offering out her hand to help hoist me up, and each time I took it, looking away from her as I did so. I didn't want to resent Kidira, but I didn't want to fall into the trap of trusting her, either. The fact that Kouris and Akela loved her did nothing to sway my thoughts. So many of us had loved Katja, and that had done nothing to shield me, in the end.
We stood side-by-side at the foot of the wall, and without turning to me, Kidira said, “What you said earlier, about Kouris—is it true? Did they really execute her?”
“Yes,” I said, and knew I needed to say no more. Kidira was looking down at her open hands again, fingers curling, very slightly, towards her palms. As if she was seeing something she'd once held.
She cleared her throat and I looked towards her. Her eyes focused on her surroundings as she returned to the present, staring up at the rubble that passed for a wall. Throughout the fifteen hundred years that had been and gone since the end of the War, moss had grown atop the rocks and creeping vines and gnarled tree trunks had twisted free from between the chunks of wall in search of sunlight. Birds had made their nests there, and a handful of goats had beaten us to it. They were already halfway up the wall, chewing contentedly on leaves.
I squinted up at the top, but the sun rested along the edge of the wall, brighter than I was. The glare punched holes of light into my vision that I had to blink away, but I was certain that nothing grew or lived upon the top of the wall.
Kidira went ahead, leaving me to follow her lead. We could walk across the wall in places, hop from one rock to the next as easily as taking a single step on solid ground, but in other parts the moss had made the rocks slippery. We clung to low-hanging branches and gripped onto rocks above, Kidira never looking back at me in the same way I never looked back at the ground below. The rocks made my hands dusty in places, dug into my palms in others; I expected that Kidira's feet and hands were being torn as mine were but didn't dare to offer to heal her.
The thought of the Bloodless Lands awaiting us behind the rock kept me in a trance, kept me moving. I could feel it. What's more, I could hear it; it sounded like every note Kondo-Kana hadn't sung to me. As we neared the top, I reached behind myself, making sure Claire's dragon-bone knife was still there. Tracing my nails across the grooves of the pattern, I meant to conquer the last stretch of the climb, meant to pull myself up across that last layer of rock, but Kidira took hold of my shoulder, stopping me.
“Rowan,” she said calmly and clearly, looking right at me. I pushed myself back against the last of the rocks keeping me out of the Bloodless Land, terrified, for the first time, that I'd look down and wouldn't be able to help but return to the ground. “Rowan, I am going to ask a lot of you. I am going to ask to you be strong, to be what others cannot, to be brave—”
My mind screamed jump! jump! and Kidira put a hand on my shoulder, grasp firm but not tight.
“But especially to be brave,” she added in more of a murmur than anything else. “Do you understand? I won't stop you from turning back, from heading to Kyrindval.”
Head back to Kyrindval. Take the easy way out. Never know what was in the Bloodless Lands, never know what Kidira needed of me. Have fallen all this way for nothing, have run my heart through just because I could.
“I've come this far,” I said. “Might as well keep going.”
Kidira didn't wait for hesitation to take its place upon my expression, nor did she ask me if I was certain. She carried on to the top of the wall, eyes fixed on the rocks as she climbed into the Bloodless Lands.
I should've faltered, but my hands were grasping at the rocks, even as I told myself that I was woefully unprepared for what I was about to see. The destruction that hollowed out half a continent, three entire countries, was certain to have left scars scorched across the landscape; there would be crumbled ruins, angry read marks across the ground, and beyond all that, emptiness.
When I pulled myself up over that last rock, emptiness was what I saw.
Cities and cities of emptiness.
My eyes scanned the horizon and I took it all in without processing any of it. The Bloodless Lands were pristine. From a distance, I saw spires and towers rising towards the sky, twisted into bizarre shapes, but far from warped; the architecture was strange to my eyes, familiar but all at once removed from anything I'd seen before. Nothing had cracked or crumbled; it was as though the cities had been frozen in time when they'd fallen out of memory.
If darkness and shadow had fallen across the Bloodless Lands, they would've been perfect. If night could claim the Bloodless Lands for its own, I could've been fooled into thinking there was life there. All I saw before me was pure, brilliant white, as though the light that surged through me had been made solid, tangible. I'd seen it before; the rocks I'd fallen to had been drenched in it, the floor of Katja's apartment had been riddled with the same, and before, the bridge of Isin's castle had cracked with the first signs of it.
A single person was responsible for this. A person like me.
I had died, I had been tortured, and yet the emptiness had not spread much further than my arms could reach. I couldn't fathom what Kondo-Kana had been forced to endure throughout the war. What had driven her to this.
Kidira climbed down, back to the Bloodless Lands. I went on ahead, leaping from one rock to the next with no sense of caution, making each jump purely because I didn't think it through, because I let adrenaline push me down, down. I landed hard on the stretch of dirt that hadn't been touched by the corruption or cleansing that had taken the Bloodless Lands and charged off the very edge of it, where the ground abruptly turned white.
“Do not stare into it,” Kidira called from behind me.
“It's fine,” I murmured, unable to take my eyes off it. “Kondo-Kana said...”
I crouched down, hands pressing to the border of the Bloodless Lands. It felt—it felt like nothing. I should've been touching dirt. The dry, untouched ground shifted beneath the toes of my boots as I knelt, but all that was white refused to shift. It wasn't made up of individual grains anymore. I ran my fingers across it and knew that every tree, every building and every book that had been whited out would feel the same.
Kidira grabbed my shoulder, pulling me back.
“We don't have time to waste,” she said, not letting go until I was on my feet. She was looking away from the Bloodless Lands, blindfold wrapped around her forehead, pulled down over her left eye, ensuring that nothing of the Bloodless Lands slipped into her vision. “Now,” Kidira snapped, and I realised that my feet were being uncooperative, body trying to drift into the Bloodless Lands. There were answers out there, I knew it. All that silence had to be burying something.
But I marched on alongside Kidira, because the pull of her fingers wrapped around my collar was stronger than the pull of the Bloodless Lands.
“How far do we have to go?” I asked, miles in.
We were walking along the edges of what must've once been Myros; everlasting indeed. How curiosity didn't eat Kidira from the inside I couldn't say. Cities and towns came into view, along with the roads that once led through the mountains. We passed a village that I could've run to before Kidira thought to shout at me. From the path we took I could see characters carved into the gate at the entrance to the village. I wanted to grab Kidira's shoulder and ask her to read it to me, but even if she could stare into the Bloodless Lands, she still wouldn't have been able to read Myrosi.
“Far,” she eventually said. “We need to reach the mountains behind Thule. It'll take us weeks and we'll have to cross back over for food, but this is the quickest way.”
Somehow, the prospect of spending weeks in the Bloodless Lands didn't feel like any real stretch at all. They hadn't changed since they'd been frozen over at the end of the War, and in the same way, time around them seemed to have slowed to a stop. We could've spent an hour or a month there and I wouldn't have noticed a difference.
I wondered if Kidira felt it too. I couldn't comprehend walking along the edge of Myros and noticing nothing but the way the mountains all seemed eager to stand out from one another without ever crossing into the Bloodless Lands. I couldn't understand being unable to tear disease and rot from a body either, and that was an impossibility to most people. I didn't linger on it, didn't ask Kidira how she bore it all. In the silence of the Bloodless Land, her words were of no comfort. They rose up into the air, scattering out into cities that were neither living nor dead, spreading out as if to drive in how immense the Bloodless Lands were; greater than all of Felheim, the territories and Agados put together.
The words slipped away as though they'd never been spoken. When I heard a low rumbling, a pounding in the distance, I thought I'd imagined that too, until the noise remained, ricocheting off the mountains. Kidira came to a sudden stop, arm held out to prevent me going any further, spear at the ready.
We held our breaths, watching the edge of the mountain we roamed close to, noise growing ever-faster, ever-louder. I convinced myself that it was soldiers, a hundred or more, all marching in unison, knowing there was only one place a necromancer would run. I didn't breathe a word of my suspicion, for Kidira only would've sneered at my paranoia, and with good reason; a strangled cry twisted itself into the air and a series of claws cracked into the mountainside, splitting the rock in its grasp.
A wing stretched out, and for a moment, I was back in Isin. A dragon as large as any fishing boat that had ever pulled into port spread out its golden wings, crawling around the mountain that warped into a castle tower, ready to crumble.