I never thought I’d come to the point where I felt safer with spirits.
But these were her spirits. And even though they had come from the untamed lands originally, they were bonded to her now, and that made them instantly different from the unleashed spirits who roamed this land. Her spirits knew what it was like to have a queen, to be controlled and have control, to be able to create and destroy but with restraint. Unlike the ones here . . .
How can Erian and Llor be here? How can they survive here? And how can I find them either way? She felt like a single leaf in an overwhelmingly massive forest. She’d thought she was strong, but this place . . . From their vantage point on top of the rock, she surveyed the untamed lands in all directions.
The forests of Aratay were no longer visible, though she could feel the border to the east, a sharp cutoff to the sense of wall-to-wall spirits.
They’re not wall-to-wall, Naelin told herself. It only seemed that way because there were so many, and they flitted so quickly that many were almost indistinguishable from the gauzy fog. She felt the attention of the spirits shift away now that she and Ven were motionless. They have the attention span of children.
“Which way?” Ven asked.
She studied the sea of mist. It all looked the same—except no, it didn’t. Squinting, she saw a flash of blue in the distance, far to the southwest. It widened, and the mist shifted away from it. A river? A lake? Perhaps an ocean.
Ven pointed north. “Mountains.”
She saw gray peaks above the clouds. She could have sworn they hadn’t been there before, but they must have been hidden by the mist. Even unleashed spirits couldn’t form mountains that quickly. Smoke curled from the peak of one of the mountains, and it was ringed with blackness. She thought she saw a streak of red, like a bloody tear on the side of the peak.
“Northwest,” she decided, between the sea and the volcano.
He nodded. “It’s the clearest path. A sensible choice.”
Nothing about this place feels “sensible.”
It felt as foggy as a dream. Summoning a spirit with leathery bat wings and a cat body, Naelin climbed on its back, with Ven behind her. He kept his sword unsheathed and held her waist with only one arm. The spirit kicked off the rock and flew westward.
As they flew farther in, the mist became more wisplike, and she saw it wasn’t all blankness like it seemed from outside. There were colors here.
Red. Fire that danced across stone.
Blue. A snake of a river that shifted and then tumbled into a waterfall.
Gold. Lightning that chased from the sky but never hit the earth.
Black. A crevasse in the earth that was so deep it was only darkness.
They flew over a canyon that looked as if a great hand had scraped it from the earth, and they flew over a single tree whose branches snaked in twisting braids for miles. In the north, the volcanoes bubbled and boiled. In the south, the seashore seemed to shift and undulate.
Stones molded themselves out of the earth into towers that then tumbled into dust. Naelin and Ven flew between them. A field of ice erupted into frozen shards.
All of it was ever-changing. The more she saw, the more she felt the hope inside her wither. No one could survive in a land like this, she thought. The spirits recarved the landscape every moment: a canyon became a lake became a field of ice became a cliff became a waterfall. Down, Naelin ordered the spirit. “There.” She guided them to a circle of brilliant green. Flowers were blossoming throughout the field, a riot of colors on plants from spring, fall, and autumn all at once, cycling through the seasons right before her eyes.
She spotted the spirit in the center of it. The earth spirit looked like a green-skinned man with black antlers. His eyes were black as well; even the whites of his eyes glistened black.
She thrust an image of Erian and Llor at the spirit. We seek a boy and a girl.
She felt its confusion.
She couldn’t read it as well as the spirits she’d bonded to, but she could sense it, the same as she could before she became queen. It was agitated. It hadn’t expected them to come to it. It didn’t like them here. It wanted to be left alone, yet it also yearned—for what, she couldn’t sense, but she felt it reach achingly toward them.
Humans, she pressed. Have you seen any? Have you seen a wolf? A great gray wolf?
Instead of answering, it turned and galloped away. The flowers withered in its wake. The air smelled sour from the dying flowers. Naelin wrapped her mind around her own wild spirits—she felt them, frightened. They huddled together.
How do I find them? Help me find them!
“Protect me while I search,” Naelin told Ven.
“Always.” He stood beside her, sword raised, while she sent her mind with the spirits, spreading out through the untamed lands. Split into hundreds of eyes, she swept across the constantly shifting landscape. She touched the minds of other spirits, briefly, felt their shock, their confusion, their anger, their hope.
Hope?
It reminded her of what she had felt from her own spirits, but she didn’t have time to consider it. She focused as her spirits searched the land. Dimly, beside her, she heard cries and shrieks and knew that Ven was fighting, but she kept pressing onward, searching, searching . . .
She felt only spirits. Saw only the wildness.
At last, she drew back, and she fell onto her knees, crushing the dead flowers. Beside her, Ven lowered his sword, and she saw a circle of spirits withdraw as her wild spirits flew back toward her.
As the spirits of the untamed lands withdrew, she tried to think how next to search. She’d have to compel the spirits from here to help her, search their memories. It wouldn’t be easy, but . . .
“Naelin.” Ven’s voice was soft, insistent.
She looked up.
Across the field of dead flowers stood a ragged child. Human, not spirit. A boy younger than Llor, with dirt smudging his cheeks and clothes that dangled around him. He stared at them for a moment, and then he ran.
Chapter 27
Hanna folded the paper and let her hands rest on her lap. She didn’t know how Merecot was going to react to this invitation. With suspicion, of course. The untrustworthy always saw deceit in others. Knowing Daleina, the offer is likely genuine. And will likely get her killed. Hanna didn’t know how Daleina had suffered through so much and still kept her idealism intact.
Damn inconvenient.
They’d managed the extraordinary here: siphoning away the excess spirits. Best to leave well enough alone and not invite trouble onto your doorstep. Hanna had already had the servants pack for her and her guards, and had been anticipating a pleasant trip home, without any more excitement.
Briefly, Hanna considered pretending she hadn’t received the note. But that would be cowardly, and, more important, impossible, with Champion Havtru so proud that he’d been able to deliver it in person. He’d arrived shortly after dawn, with a man, a girl, and Queen Daleina’s sister.
Staring out the window at the mountains, Hanna tented her fingers under her chin. It was a hostile kind of beautiful here, with mountains cutting the sky in every direction. The morning sky looked under attack by the peaks, and that thrilled her just a bit.
“Ambassador Hanna?” Champion Havtru asked from behind her.
He was a good boy. Earnest. Worked hard. He’d also, she realized, arrived here very quickly, if Daleina had indeed waited to send her message until after Queen Naelin had left. “You traveled here on foot, Champion Havtru?”
“Yes, Madame Ambassador.”
Interesting. “On foot from Mittriel? With the queen’s message?”
“A spirit delivered it to me at the border, and then we hurried the rest of the way.”
Aha, then he had been sent for another purpose. Maybe Daleina has a plan after all. Certainly she wouldn’t have risked her sister without a good reason. Hanna crooked her finger at him, to indicate he should come closer.
He bent down.
“Tell me your true purpose,” Hanna whispered.