We stopped for the night long after the fierce ache of my feet had faded into numbness. As twilight fell we came upon an abandoned farmhouse and decided to make camp. The fields around it lay as fallow as the others we’d passed earlier in the day. Water glistened in the few furrows remaining in the dirt and reflected the gray and purple of the dimming sky. Weeds sprouted haphazardly throughout the field, having grown quickly after the recent rain.
The two of us trekked down the overgrown path to the house, only to find that most of the roof had burned away and caved in several moons ago. A family of skunks peered out curiously at us from a den they’d built in the fireplace. The copse of trees behind the house suddenly seemed like a far better option.
“I’ll hunt if you can put camp together,” Hal said.
I nodded, surprised he’d made the offer before me, but grateful that my sore feet wouldn’t have to trek any farther. “Will a lean-to be enough?”
“Should be. The winds are most likely to come from the north or the west, but I can wake you up if that changes.” He disappeared into the field as soon as I’d nodded my acknowledgment of his words.
I gathered branches and fashioned us a rustic shelter, thinking about the way he’d tipped his ear to the wind before he had answered me. I closed my eyes and tried to listen. Perhaps, like my ability to unravel Leozoar’s magic, the Farhearing was simply a gift I hadn’t yet discovered. I needed guidance to know what else I could do. My ability to repurpose Leozoar’s magic for other things surely represented some connection to the wind, didn’t it? Maybe a chance still existed that I could be the wind god’s daughter. But all I heard were the last soft chirps of nearby birds returning to their nests. The hollow inside me grew deeper and darker, as vast as my uncertainty about who I really was and who I might belong to.
Hal returned with two lean hares already skinned and gutted, then quietly went about the business of preparing them for the fire. I got the blaze going as he worked, then sat beside it, chilled in spite of the dancing flames. All at once the world felt so large and so empty. My anger hadn’t relented, and still I missed Ina. I longed for a shoulder to lean my head on, for something familiar. For the intoxicating peals of her laughter or the way her eyes sparkled when I knew she desired me.
I wanted to know that none of those moments had been lies.
I hung my head.
“Asra?” Hal said, putting a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“I’m all right,” I said, pressing the palms of my hands into my eyes. “I’m just upset about what happened with me and Ina.”
“I thought you two were . . .” He gestured, and if I hadn’t still been trying to gather up the shattered pieces of my heart, I might have laughed at his awkwardness.
“Not anymore,” I said softly. Definitely never in the future that stretched forward from this moment. When I remembered the hatred in her eyes, I found it hard to believe that anything—even the Fatestone—could make things right between us again. I ran my fingers over the black ribbon of the courting bracelet still on my left wrist. The time had come to take it off, but I couldn’t do it. I deserved the painful reminder of all I’d destroyed. Maybe if I kept it, it would remind me never to be such a fool again.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The simple words made me tear up. Hal let me lean my head on his shoulder until my sobs eased. He never offered any false condolences. He simply existed beside me and let me be and did not ask any more questions. I wished I’d had someone like him in my old life—someone who joked with me, who wasn’t afraid of me, who liked me for exactly who I was. Someone who didn’t lie to me. He always just pointed out the facts, reminding me that I had done more good than I realized.
That night I slept fitfully beside him, periodically keeping one eye on the horizon. But when the birds began to sing and dawn cracked the horizon with her silver hands, there was no sign of the dragon or the girl.
CHAPTER 17
IT TOOK US NEARLY HALF A MOON TO MAKE THE journey to Orzai, even with the help of a few hitched wagon rides. The sensation of being watched haunted me whether we were alone or with others. Perhaps the shadow god had left the spirits of Amalska behind to keep vigil until I rescued them from the past. The Fatestone was the only way.
As we traveled, I got used to the pressure in my chest, constant headache, and nausea that came from not sleeping well. Even my tinctures of lavender and valerian did nothing to help. Every night when we stopped, I swore I’d sleep as though I were dead, and every night I ended up lying awake with thoughts racing through my mind as swiftly as the wind lashed through grass and trees.
Many of our fellow travelers warned us of bandits, and we were grateful to lend them a helping hand with their animals or goods in exchange for the protection of numbers. Small towns and farming communities lined the road north, most of them little more than clusters of houses and fields waiting to be tilled. Hal’s way with words meant we always managed to find a place to rest—he made friends no matter where we landed.
Sometimes we heard rumors that made me think Ina had passed through these areas before us. One farmer had found a pair of his sheep torn to pieces at the back of his pasture, deep gouges in the earth around them. A merchant’s young son talked our ears off for an entire half day’s ride, telling stories of all he’d seen, insisting that just last week he’d seen a white bird big as a house. The stories made my skin crawl and my stomach turn. Where was she? How close was she to mastering her manifest and attempting regicide?
I wished she could know that, even now, I was still trying to save her and those she’d loved.
The hills became greener by the day as spring grass pushed up through last year’s dead and flattened growth. Hal grew facial hair that accentuated his high cheekbones, and the strength in my legs increased until I wasn’t nearly so sore after our long days of walking. Storms passed through, and we found ourselves running for cover, only to realize that surrounded by nothingness, we had nowhere to take shelter. So we walked on, even as ditches rushed with water and the road turned to muck that sucked at our shoes.
When the downpours became intolerable, Hal created a bubble of air around us that kept the rain at bay. Every time my mind started to storm with thoughts and memories of Ina, he told me silly stories or sang his favorite tavern songs to make me laugh. I never forgot my reasons for hurting, but they always hurt a little less because of him.
When we made camp at night, I took up singing vespers again. Hal listened with closed eyes as I let the wordless songs of prayer temporarily wash away the soul-deep ache of Ina’s betrayal—and her absence. My only moments of peace came then, as the music sank into my bones and Hal’s attention warmed me, gentle and comforting as spring sunlight.
Eventually the road curved east along the Vhala River, which tumbled with the muddy water of spring snowmelt. The river cut deeper into the land as we traveled, until the road climbed so high up on the cliffs that the rush of the water could no longer be heard. Every night mist curled into the canyon like a sleeping animal, dissipating only when the sun hit the top of the sky, growing thicker and more lingering the farther north we traveled.
“We should arrive in Orzai tomorrow,” Hal told me one night as we sat picking the last of the meat from the bones of our dinner. He’d been quieter than usual that day, which worried me. Perhaps asking him to bring me to his sister had been too much to demand. He hadn’t even made much conversation with the farmer who had given us a ride out of the last town.