Besides, I’ll need all the help I can get in the untamed lands. Fighting through the chaotic swirl of thoughts, she projected a command: Down. Rest.
And the spirits obeyed easily, as if they’d always obeyed her, though she thought it was more likely they obeyed because they wanted to rest than because they respected her authority. They plunged down through the trees, knocking off the last of the golden leaves. Several lit on branches in the canopy, while others plunged deep in between the trees. She felt them infiltrate the forest—and as her spirit landed on a branch beside Ven’s, she felt a wave of uneasiness.
She stayed mounted on her spirit while Ven climbed off and began setting up camp, stringing hammocks between the branches.
“The trees don’t want us here,” she said suddenly.
No, that’s not right. Trees don’t feel.
But she felt watched . . .
No, worse than watched. Hated. Feared.
Around her, the ex-Semoian spirits were filling the trees. The feeling wasn’t coming from them. She tried to pinpoint the source of wrongness that pervaded the air. Around her, the spirits chattered and chittered and chirped as they burrowed into the ground, grew new branches onto the trees, and dusted the leaves with frost.
Then it dawned on her. What she felt was the spirits of Aratay pouring toward them. Agitated. Angry.
“We can’t stay here,” Naelin said, louder.
Ven stopped.
Her spirits noticed the Aratayian spirits surrounding them. She felt her spirits press closer to her, felt their anger shift outward, and felt them begin to sink into the land beneath them. Quickly, Ven unhooked the hammocks and tossed the supplies onto the nearest spirit that could fly—a black serpent with iridescent dragonfly wings. Naelin climbed onto a water spirit shaped like a swan.
Keep moving, Naelin ordered the spirits.
The spirits resisted—they liked this land, they wanted to stay, reshape the earth, grow the trees, play in the breeze. Not yours, she told them firmly. We can’t stay.
It was worse than dragging reluctant children on a walk, because the spirits itched to fight. She felt them snap quickly from exhaustion to rage, and they wanted to tear, rip, rend, destroy. No. Come. Fly, run, crawl.
Follow me.
She felt the haze of all the memories burn away, like fog in the sun, and she focused on the single command, guiding her spirit up higher and higher above the canopy.
Naelin drove them across Aratay as the spirits of the forest pursued them. When one of her spirits stopped to snap at a tree spirit, she wrapped her mind around it and propelled it forward. She felt sweat dampen her back and her hands as she clutched the feathers in her spirit’s neck. It bucked beneath her—it too wanted to spin around and fight, fight, fight.
Come, she told it. And while it obeyed, the command seemed to drain her. She was pushing the spirits—and herself—too hard. Already, lights began dancing in front of her eyes . . .
“We won’t make it!” Ven shouted. His spirit was weakening beneath him. She felt it as it struggled to keep pumping its wings. She tried to will it to stay aloft, but even if she weren’t completely wiped, she couldn’t make a spirit suddenly find strength it didn’t have. “It’s too far to the untamed lands! Naelin, we’ll have to stop!”
But if they stopped, the spirits would fight, and she couldn’t let them tear apart Aratay. She wouldn’t. Which meant they needed someplace safe to stop. Somewhere the spirits wouldn’t attack those of Aratay. Somewhere they could rest. Somewhere . . .
And then she remembered the whole reason these spirits followed her in the first place: the barren patches. Her little army could rest safely within one of the dead zones.
She reached with her mind and, instead of looking for spirits, looked for the absence of spirits. She felt one, not far, a small circle of emptiness within the trees.
There, she told the spirits.
They streamed toward it.
She felt the spirits funnel into the barren circle, and she guided her swan in, diving through a swarm of spirits. She saw the dark forest ringing them, hazy through the bodies of so many spirits. She felt them continue to pour into the tiny space.
The swan landed on the ground, and she slid off it. Her knees buckled and she sank to the ground. Her palms touched the earth. The soil felt strange, dry and dead, and the air too tasted almost metallic. Her wild earth spirits burrowed happily into the earth, and her sense of it began to change as they filled it, bringing it back to life, bonding with it—
No, it is not yours, she cut them off sharply.
Confused, they halted.
The spirits couldn’t bond to this land—she’d never be able to bring them out of Renthia into the untamed lands if they did. And besides, there were too many of them for such a constricted space.
Only tonight, she told them. Not ours.
“Can we stay here?” Ven asked.
“I don’t know,” Naelin said. “Yes. But we can’t stay long. The spirits . . . they want . . .” She lost track of the rest of the sentence as the thoughts of the spirits pulled her into their minds again.
They wanted to stay.
They wanted land.
They wanted sky.
They wanted fire, ice, water . . . Flames skirted the edge of the barren circle, and little sprouts burst from the dry earth, to be tinged with frost then frozen. A sheet of rain swept through, and the earth spirits pushed from deep within, shaping the ground up—
Stop. Not ours.
They whispered back: Ours. Now, ours.
Not yet. You’re going home. She pictured the untamed lands, the shifting haze, and she pushed the image out.
They recoiled.
Here. Now. Home, they told her.
But they were fighting with one another. It was only a bit of land, a small circle, not nearly enough for the hundreds of spirits she’d brought with her. Barely enough for them to squeeze into for the night.
She felt a hand touch her arm, and she jumped.
“You need to eat,” Ven told her.
“They’re . . .” Words failed her, and Naelin waved her hand at the spirits clustered around them.
“And you need to sleep. I’ll keep you safe.” Ven met Naelin’s eyes.
She couldn’t sleep, not with so many spirits pressing around her, wanting to fight one another. It wouldn’t take much for them to launch into one another, and the two humans in the middle . . . She had to keep control of them. “They want to bond with the land,” Naelin told Ven.
“You can’t let them,” Ven said.
“I’m aware of that.”
He was silent for a moment. “How can I help you?”
She loved him for that question. As before, it was exactly what she needed to hear. Naelin let herself sag against him and felt his arm around her—one hand because the other held his sword. “Just be with me.”
She pushed her tired mind out into the sea of spirits. Rest. Sleep. Rest, sleep. She repeated the order over and over until she felt the spirits sink and sag. They were exhausted too, after being severed from a queen and bonding with a new one, after traveling across Semo and into Aratay. She felt the flurry of thoughts and emotions around her begin to slow and then dissipate. Sleep.
Sleep.
Sleep.
The spirits slept.
Curling up against Ven, she closed her eyes. She didn’t think she slept, but morning came faster than she expected, so perhaps she did. Awake, the spirits began again, trying to bond with the barren patch and clashing with one another over the same scrap of lifeless dirt.
Onward, she told them. Toward home.
They questioned her: Home?
On the back of a feathered deer spirit—this one with silver and black feathers—she drove them out of the barren circle and up above the forest canopy. She felt the spirits of Aratay following, watching, hating, and hoped Queen Daleina had a tight grip on them. She must feel this, Naelin thought. Every hedgewitch with a shred of power had to feel it as her spirits swept through the forests.