“How do you know all this?” Tenn asked.
“Because we have tried,” Rhiannon said. “In the beginning, when the Howls first formed, we begged the spirits for a solution. A cure. But not even the spirits we served were willing to delve into those darker mysteries. So we attempted on our own, tried to reverse or mute the language. It only made things worse. And, in our hubris, the spirits we served turned their backs on us.” She sighed and stared out the window. “There was a time, years ago, when we could hear the gods in every sigh of wind, in every drop of rain. Now they have grown almost silent.”
“Hearing the gods is my calling,” Luke continued. “For some reason, the gods chose me to be their vessel. I’ve become the one person in all the clans who can hear their voices and translate those words into runes. That’s how we learned to cloak ourselves from danger, how to purify water and grow food in barren soil. But it was like hearing a melody from far away. They were whispers from the past, old skills. The spirits refused to speak anything new. No matter how much I begged or tried to prove myself, they refused to speak the greater magics. I wasn’t... I’m not a suitable vessel for their power. They refuse to help us do anything more than scrape by and survive.”
“If that is true,” Dreya said, “why did the spirits tell you to wait for us? Why do they want Tenn?”
And, Tenn wondered, why didn’t you tell anyone else? You could have saved millions! The anger rose in his chest, but Rhiannon’s words stamped it out.
“Because they need a host who can handle the power these words would carry. To speak the full language of the gods, one must be godlike.” She looked at Tenn.
For a moment, his heart refused to beat.
“I’m not godlike,” Tenn whispered. His words caught in his throat. If he had any special power, he would have been able to save Jarrett.
“So says the one toward whom the elements bend.”
Tenn swallowed hard. Water seemed to curl in his stomach at the words; instantly, all he could think of was the battlefield only days ago, when the Sphere opened against his will. As if to keep him alive. As if the element itself was trying to protect him...
“How did—”
“I felt it the moment you stepped into our camp,” she said. “The elements swirl around you like moths to the flame. You don’t wield power. You attract it.”
For a moment he envisioned Tomás and Matthias; he was attracting a great deal of power. Most of it, he wanted to avoid. He shook his head and tried to keep the memories down. He didn’t need them to be acting up. Not here. Not with everyone watching.
“Water...” he said, trying to stay in the present, “it’s been acting up. Taking over. Sometimes it’s almost like it wields itself. Like it’s trying to survive.”
“The greatest vanity of our time has been the belief that we can control nature,” Rhiannon said. “We manipulate the elements, but they always fight back. Look at what has happened to the earth. Rivers boiled, mountains moved, forests turned to deserts and deserts crumbled to the seas. We don’t control or wield the elements—only those who serve the Dark Lady would be so vain as to think we could truly change creation. No, the elements allow us to work with them. But humanity has always tried to claim dominance. The elements have been waiting for years to find someone that they could work not with, but through.”
“Why me?”
She smiled, as though she’d been waiting for him to ask that question the entire time.
“Because you never asked for power. Power asked for you.”
Tenn wanted to say that they were insane, that he wasn’t special or chosen or anything like that, but before he could voice his concerns the trailer door slammed open. A boy burst in, his face bloody and a mangled arm held to his chest.
“Mother,” he panted, gripping the doorframe. “We were attacked. Howls in the forest where we were playing. Near the final barrier. They took...they took Tori.”
Rhiannon was there in a moment, her arms embracing the boy as he broke into sobs against her chest. Luke stood.
“I reinforced those runes myself,” he said, shocked and staring out the window, as if waiting for the Howls to seep through.
It wasn’t enough. It will never be enough.
“We’ll find her,” Tenn said. He was on his feet and already heading toward the door, blood pounding in his ears and guilt riding his heart. It didn’t matter how the Howls broke through, only that they had. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with. We do. We’re the ones who brought him.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
RHIANNON GRABBED HIS arm before he could make it out the door.
“We are not fighters, Tenn, so you are the only ones who can save Tori, but if you leave without an escort, you’ll never find your way back. You’ll need a tracking rune. Luke—I leave them in your care.”
Luke pulled the brass singing bowl over to the table while Rhiannon left the camper, the boy held tight in her arms.
Tenn hovered by the door. Water was singing its siren song. It was time to kill. It was time to drown. He couldn’t keep his agitation from his words.
“We don’t have time—”
“Then learn fast!” Luke barked. He took a deep breath. “Runes are a language, yes? Each is a different word, a different purpose. But on the page, they’re just marks. Letters. Same way a written word is just ink until read or spoken.” He pointed into the brass singing bowl. A symbol was etched into the center, a dark, deep groove that looked like the letter S, with two strikes through it.
Just looking at it made Tenn’s head ring, sent whispers of waves and an arrow through the dark in his mind. “This is a tracking rune. Most runes require elemental energy to work, but this one runs on thought. Memorize it. Memorize the rune and the object it is carved upon. Each clan has a unique object—it’s how we stay connected, no matter the distance between us. I’m assuming that’s how you found us.”
Tenn barely noticed Devon nod. The rune took up his entire focus: it burned itself into his mind, humming in his head as he memorized the curve of the bowl, the grain of the metal, each individual hammer-mark of its forming. He felt heavy with power, with a knowing that settled into his bones.
“When you have it memorized,” Luke said, his voice barely cutting through his thoughts. The rune seemed to be calling to him. “Close your eyes and bring it to mind.”
He did so. He could still see it, glowing in the dark of his eyelids, orange and fiery like a lantern. The moment he brought it to mind, he could feel it. Like an inner compass, he could sense precisely where the bowl was in relation to him. He turned and felt the proper direction slide around him, always calling him to the bowl.
When he opened his eyes, Luke was nodding.