Thus, blind prejudice was born.
“I stayed here”—Crony indicated the ashy terrain around their skeletal home—“as the twisted trees grew ’round me and the sins of others crept down the trunks to swallow me bare feet. I left all me possessions in the castle behind, let the king believe I was swallowed by the earth that day. I couldn’t return to me kingdom, for by then they believed I betrayed them by siding with Dyadia, and may-let I had. For I’d made a new vow to her. In those last minutes when I be seein’ her face through the castle’s drawbridge, afore the bubble of magic formed around her palace and all those homes . . . afore every citizen and creature were dragged again’ their own will into the moon’s pull . . . we had our last words. I begged her forgiveness. She refused . . . said I chose Eldoria o’er her precious son; that there be no forgivin’ a sin so vicious. I told her it was for the world, for the greater good. But she knew me heart, and the cowardice and fears lurking there. And she knew me sworn loyalty to King Kre?imer. She made me vow I would leave all kingdom politics behind, ne’er interfere again, for look what I had wrought. I agreed, and vowed as she said, and in her anger and bitterness she added a curse upon me head. That I could ne’er close me eyes so long as I walked the bright, sunlit earth. That I would have to always be seein’ the world’s undoing. And should I interfere again in either kingdom’s politics, the world would ne’er heal. I felt the curse take hold when me eyelids thinned to transparency. Now ye see why I can’t stop seein’, and ye know why me interference is forbidden.”
Luce’s face contorted with compassion, a reaction Crony had never expected—an unworthiness compounded by her recent understanding of the depth of a parent’s love for their child.
“Wait,” he mumbled, his eyes alight with cunning perception. “So, the grimoire I found hidden within the tunnel . . . ?”
She nodded in answer. He opened his mouth again, as if needing to air out the many facets of this revelation, but was interrupted by the bark of a dog at the edges of the thicket.
They both leapt from their seats and turned to see a brown spaniel and Dyadia’s crow leading five Nerezethite soldiers.
“Ready your weapons!” said the man at the head, drawing out a sword.
A woman came forward and paused beside the garden. Her purplish eyes glinted with an odd mix of trepidation and authority. It appeared she’d been warned about crossing the threshold. “Cronatia of the Ashen Ravine, you are under royal order by Prince Vesper to accompany us to Eldoria’s castle and face Regent Griselda and Princess Lyra. You are to account for the murders of King Kiran and his first knight, along with the princess’s cousin Lustacia. Also for the malicious misuse of your magic against the kingdom, causing its subjects and citizens to be imprisoned within their homes over the last five years. Will you come peacefully?”
Luce tensed as if to defend her, but Crony whispered, “No interferin’.” She didn’t tell him that should she fight back, she could be killed prematurely, before her part was complete in all this. “This be in the hands of the fates. Keep to our code. Find Stain and tell her of me imprisonment. Tell her I be sorry for hurting her, and that she made every day brighter just by bein’ here. But don’t force her hand. She must be makin’ choices of her own accord.”
Jaw clenched, Luce dropped the flowers and transformed, scampering out the opposite side of their home as a fox, his talisman dangling from his neck. The spaniel began to take chase, but was caught by the female soldier. Crony looked around at her belongings, stopping on the cedar chest. The contents of the two boxes—Lyra’s memories and Griselda’s conscience—would be safe with her nightmare wards. Luce would return in search of weapons. And he would find Crony’s note, waiting to be read.
The old witch stepped over the threshold and laid herself prostrate, allowing her captors to bind her, giving all her faith to the crafty nature of prophecies. It appeared the prince wouldn’t be luring the princess to the castle after all.
17
A Collection of Corpses and Consciousness
In the ravine’s lowlands, where the ash thinned and the shade deepened, the Shroud Collective prepared to feast. It had been a long famine—three full weeks—since their last taste of flesh. Soon their suffering would end. The page boy who escaped five years earlier was about to stumble back into their keep. From this distance, he appeared to be in much the same state as when he first arrived in a pine box: shredded clothes matching his torn skin, deserted and broken. The perfect candidate for luring into their lair. Mistress Umbra began casting out her siren’s song—a whispering enticement meant to trick those walking the path overhead, meant to sound like whatever their heart wanted most to find. The page boy would take the bait. He was too lost to do otherwise. The mother shroud gathered her children within the clearing, each amorphous silhouette conforming to the black, gnarled trees that hid them. Innumerable glowing white eyes blinked between branches, awaiting attack.
Stain paused along the steep pathway, perking her ears at a rustling down below. The ash within the ravine muffled most sounds, like a thick layer of downy feathers. The ravine’s lore echoed within that silence . . . a tale she hadn’t thought of in some time: those who came to live here brought their sins and shed them upon the trees. The wickedness, having nowhere else to go, transformed to a sentient moss that slunk to the ground and decomposed every wild, beautiful thing to ash.
Had she been so wicked, in her past? That someone had shed her here like a vile sin? Or was she once beautiful until left to decompose and rot in the wastelands?
With the absence of wind, birds, and skittering bugs, the quiet became deafening. She’d been calling for Scorch in her mind to fill the void, to no avail.
Before ending up here, she had searched their usual haunts: the market where they frolicked in the after hours when everyone closed shop (Scorch was fascinated by human customs and items, much as he tried to deny it); the lofties, where the ravine’s dense canopy reached to monolithic heights so high Scorch could fly without even stirring the ash below; and the quagmire-quarry, where they held contests to see who could outrun the most puddles. Scorch had the advantage of wings, but Stain learned that climbing trees worked as well, since a living puddle—no matter how agile—was repelled by wood and stone. Over the years, she had tied with Scorch in only three matches, and only because he allowed her to, according to him. Every other time, she had to tolerate him mocking her lack of wings and extra legs. Today his arrogant jibes would be music, if she could only see him safe.
She’d circled around the tarn of clear water where they liked to go fishing, only to stop in her tracks, hidden behind a trunk. Though she didn’t see the Night Ravager, his crew had set up camp there—close to the labyrinth of thorns where Stain first encountered them. Scorch hadn’t been anywhere in sight, so she slipped away undetected, ending up here at the ravine’s entrance.
If she couldn’t find her friend, perhaps she could at least find herself.
She licked her lips and tasted blood, which reminded her of the drying spots that dotted her clothes. The healing ointment she’d brought promised a numbing comfort, but she wasn’t sure how much Scorch’s wing might need.
The tin and bandages were no longer tucked in her vest. They were now residing in a bag she’d found earlier at the marketplace. The nightmare wards set upon Crony’s booth to prevent anyone stealing wares after hours held no sway over Stain. She fingered the talisman at her neck and swung the bag against her thigh, causing the assassin’s knife to clink against the kinder sleep chimes she’d plucked off the shop’s pegs. Stain had always liked the bedtime stories and lullabies that played out across the cylinders of glass, and decided if Crony wouldn’t give her memories back, she had every right to steal some from the shop’s supply. She required them, after all, for her plan—as dangerous as it might be.
The rustle again. It came from her destination: the lowest clearing surrounded by a circle of black trees in the distance—down the steep decline and past stumps and burbling quag-puddles. She’d always avoided the lowlands. Even Scorch had abided that rule, wary of the repulsive creatures subsisting there. Yet today the valley held an irresistible pull.