The trail inclined sharply, and Ella bent down, walking with her hands on her knees as her strength flagged. Loose stones and dust-covered rubble littered the ground in abundance. It was already proving to be hard going.
She wondered where the High Enchantress was, whether Evora Guinestor was behind her or ahead of her. Part of her hoped Evora wasn’t far away; thinking about Evrin’s reaction when he’d talked about Petrya, she felt a strong sense of foreboding.
The elementalists were always discussed in hushed tones in Altura, as if discussing a dark spirit would bring it out of the shadows. They were considered strange, even sinister. They kept largely to themselves, and rarely travelled except for physical and lore-based contests, which they participated in whole-heartedly. It seemed their whole society was built around competition. They fiercely asserted their independence, both individual and that of their house. If they fought with someone as an ally, it was the way they wanted to fight, on their own terms.
They’d fought with the Emperor against Altura and Halaran in the Rebellion, and High Lord Tessolar still refused to communicate with the Petryan High Lord, Haptut Alwar. Terrible atrocities had been committed in the last war of the houses, especially by the Petryans. It seemed they had no respect for weakness, no sympathy for the sick, the old or the infirm.
The majority of elementalists lived in their great tiered city Tlaxor. It was perhaps the most well-known and least-travelled city in the world. For — as if to defy their chosen deity, the Lord of Fire — the Petryans had built it on an island in the middle of a lake. This lake, Lake Halapusa, was in the caldera of an active volcano.
The water of Lake Halapusa was constantly at near-boiling temperature. It was said that one of the Petryan High Lord’s favourite methods of execution was to throw criminals or dissidents into the lake and watch their skin turn bright red as their bones were boiled from them. If he was particularly angry with someone, he would dangle them from a rope, lowering the rope by a hand’s breadth every day.
First their feet would enter the water. The next day, when the feet were no more than stumps of bone, the rope would be lowered a little more. It was said a man might survive for up to five agonising days in this way.
Ella felt these might just be stories. At any rate she didn’t plan on spending time in Petrya; she just wanted to catch up with Killian and get back to Altura with the Lexicon.
She stopped and caught her breath, looking back the way she had come at the road down below, a ribbon of dusty brown. The barren ground stretched on and on, until some poor farmland could be seen at the limits of vision.
Ella now looked ahead, upward. The rough path twisted and turned as it wound its way up the mountainside. It was steep enough here that she would be forced to follow the path as it doubled back on itself, intentionally curving first one way, then another. It was either that or climb up the nearly vertical face.
She tilted her head back and looked further up. Above her the imposing mountain range frowned down, dark and forbidding. She still could not see how a crossing could be possible; the jagged crags and sheer walls seemed completely impassable.
She scanned the series of peaks to either side, following them with her eyes, looking for an indication of where she might cross. Then she stopped. There was something there, some kind of bird, flying along the range. Then, realising the scale, she squinted harder. At that distance, it must be huge.
She could almost make out the sailed wings as they swept up and down, the feathers brown and white. It coasted in an updraft of wind, soaring majestically. She realised what it must be then — an eldritch, the world’s largest bird. They were so rare that it was said there were fewer than one hundred of them left. Capture for lords’ private collections had taken its toll.
Realising how lucky she was to be seeing it, Ella stopped for a moment to watch it fly, so swift it took barely moments to cross from peak to peak. She knew there was no danger — the large birds were supposed to feed on rabbits and other large birds.
As the eldritch came steadily closer, though, Ella realised something was wrong. Every now and then it twitched as if in pain, the curved sword of its beak snapping at its side. It was now close enough for Ella to see that there was something strange about it, an eerie presence. She realised what it was at the same time that the eldritch saw her. It was glowing silver. Someone had drawn runes on the bird.
It shrieked — a piercing sound, as it tucked its wings tucked to its side and plummeted towards Ella.
She was completely exposed here on the mountain. Looking around frantically, she saw a few rocks but little else. There was a mid-sized boulder further up the mountain. With nowhere else to hide, she sprinted for it.