“I used to dream of being crowned here.” Smiling, Merecot held out her hands toward Daleina, waiting for her to take them. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”
“Tell me this isn’t just ambition,” Daleina said, not moving.
“Ambition isn’t bad when you’re trying to change the world.”
Hamon spoke up. “You need to keep Daleina from being killed. You know what the spirits will do the second she abdicates.” He’d dressed in healer’s robes, and Daleina had watched him cram his bag full of every medicine he had. Garnah carried no bag, but her skirts were full of pockets with powders and potions. Several pouches hung from her belt.
Merecot waved her hand. “You forget—I’ve done this before. With Queen Naelin. And I kept Queen Jastra alive for years, didn’t I? Even though thousands of spirits despised her?”
Garnah snorted. “At least until you had her killed.”
“Yes. Until then.”
If Daleina hadn’t been watching her face so closely, she might not have seen it: a shadow of a frown that looked like regret. She has emotions, Daleina thought. She hides them, but she’s not like Garnah. She’s capable of guilt, regret, mercy, love. “I trust you,” Daleina said.
“And I’m showing my trust in you, by allowing your people here with us,” Merecot said.
Hamon began to object, but Daleina cut him off. “You don’t ‘allow’ me anything. I am queen here, at least for a few minutes more. And this is my choice.” She said it as much for her companions’ benefit as for Merecot’s. “All right, Merecot, my friend. Let’s save the world.”
Closing her eyes, Daleina reached out with her mind and felt the threads that linked her with the spirits of Aratay. She held them gently for a while, feeling the swirling emotions and desires of the spirits, the way they loved the earth and the sky, letting that connection flow through her until she felt as if she were Aratay, within the soil and the wind.
And then she severed the connections, one by one.
Like a scissor cutting a string.
With each, she felt the recoil. Merecot held her hands and did not let go.
Daleina thought she heard words around her, in the grove, but they were distant, as if underwater, and she couldn’t make sense of them. She felt so very alone. She reached out with her mind—but nothing was there.
She didn’t remember feeling this weak before. Or this empty.
Distantly, she heard howls, but not with her ears—they were the howls of the spirits, now free, streaming across Aratay toward the grove, coming for her.
“Tell them to choose,” she heard.
She grabbed on to those words and pushed them outward.
Choose.
Choose!
And then she heard Merecot’s voice, reverberating inside her, “Choose me!”
Merecot felt as if lightning skittered beneath her skin as the spirits flooded into her mind. Yes! She stretched, her mind expanding, to hold all the new wants and needs that tugged on her. She could sense the trees around her, tall and deep, and the wind that chased between them. She felt the water in the air and the hint of ice in the sky above.
This was what she needed.
This was power!
She laughed from the sheer magnitude of it. She’d held nearly as many spirits in her mind when the wild spirits were in Semo, but the feel of spirits who were tied to the land was entirely different. She felt the strength of their connection to Renthia, and she made it hers.
I can do this.
All her planning and all her dreams . . . felt only a finger-touch away. Casually, as if she weren’t about to change the world, she projected one thought: You are done.
It was simple, but wrapped in that one sentence was all that it implied: you have completed your destiny, and then now you may rest. You have finished. You can move on and evolve and cease to plague this world. Your hatred and anger are obsolete, for you have completed the task for which you were created.
The Great Mother of Spirits is pleased with you.
I speak for her.
Change.
And the spirits heard her words. Across Aratay and Semo, her words sank into the minds and hearts and into the very essence of the spirits. She felt them grow limp and sink down from the sky, from the trees.
It’s working!
Merecot pushed harder, boring down on them.
Let go.
Be free.
Be gone.
Watching Merecot, Daleina could not hear her commands. She saw the threads, connecting them to Merecot, not to her, not anymore. She couldn’t hear the spirits, except as a distant haze that made her head ache if she reached for them.
But she felt the moment that the trees began to die.
Creeping around her, the air tasted stale and sour. She heard a cracking sound, as if a piece of paper were being crumpled over and over. Or as if winter ice were breaking in a stream. Looking up, Daleina saw the golden leaves, once glorious in their autumn brilliance, shrivel into brown and begin to fall.
All the leaves, falling around the grove, in a shushing sound as they drifted down through the still air. It’s not working, she thought. “Merecot? Merecot, you have to stop! The land is dying! Merecot, stop!” Grabbing Merecot’s shoulders, Daleina shook her.
But Merecot did not respond.
She did not stop.
West of Aratay, beyond the borders of Renthia, Ven knew the spirits of the untamed lands were in a killing frenzy, attacking Naelin’s spirits. He couldn’t feel them the way that Naelin could, but after so many years fighting spirits, he didn’t need to. Besides, the tornadoes kind of give it away, he thought.
Just beyond the ridge of rocks, three funnels of wind rose toward the sky. They looked like dark undulating snakes, defying gravity to stand upright, swaying. Between them, fires burned bright. Shielding his eyes, Ven tried to see into the battle.
“Take the children,” Naelin ordered him. “Get them across the border. I’ll hold the untamed spirits back and then meet you in Redleaf.”
“Not leaving you,” Ven said as both Erian and Llor clung to their mother, crying and screaming at her to not make them leave her.
She hugged them, clearly not hearing what he’d said. “You must go with Champion Ven. I’ll rejoin you. I promise. But as soon as I leave here, the spirits will follow me—and their attackers will follow them. You need to get across the border.”
Lightning branched across the sky, struck the earth, and a water spirit burst out from between two rocks. It rose higher and higher, the watery shape of a serpent with wings. A water dragon. As it reared, it knocked boulders from the top of the ridge, and water gushed over the edges. “One of yours?” Ven asked.
Naelin didn’t answer—she was concentrating.
He saw ice spirits dart at the water dragon, and ice crystallized along its wings. Howling, it stretched, and the ice shattered. He heard the cracks from where he stood. The dragon spirit lunged forward, and water gushed over the ridge. And then Ven realized something else: the camp of humans was in the water spirit’s path.
“Naelin, the children are safest with you,” Ven said. “There’s something I have to do.” He adjusted his grip on the handle of his sword. He bent his knees, trying to convince himself he was still good for one more outnumbered, terrible-odds fight.
“No, Ven! There are too many. I won’t let you!”
“Not your job to protect me.” He kissed her quickly on the cheek.
“You know I can stop you if you make me.”
“There’s a camp full of people down there,” Ven said. “And this time, I’m not too late to save them. I’ve been too late so many times, Naelin. Let me at least try.”
Naelin’s hands were in the air, sketching patterns, and her spirits were obeying her, flying the patterns she sketched, holding back the air and fire spirits. “Fine. Stubborn idiot. I can keep a path clear for a little while, but you have to move fast.”