“This is not part of the Agreement, Gabriel. There are none under the devil’s protection who are harmed here; the men who did this have been punished, either by death or worse, and the ancient one is not mine to interfere with. This is . . .” Her voice slowed, grew more strained. “This is not the devil’s due, nor were those magicians. And yet I carried out that sentence, without hesitation, as though . . .”
The ground swelled underfoot as she spoke, a rumbling he could feel with his skin, and behind them Steady let out a ringing cry, part defiance and part fear, even as the hills rising above them shook hard enough to cause, in the distance, the crashing sound of a rockslide.
“No.” Her eyes were wide, her face ashen. “No?—”
She wasn’t speaking to him, he realized even as Isobel picked up the salt stick and threw it at him. “Ward yourself and the horses,” she told him. “And stay there.”
She grabbed the fabric of her skirt in both hands and hitched it, then took off at a dead run for the center of the valley, going three quarters of the way across before stopping as though she’d hit a wall, spinning around, and collapsing to her knees.
A heavy wind slicked through the valley, low along the tops of the grasses, the ground shuddered, unruly, and the blue sky overhead seemed a distant, peaceful joke. He ground the salt between his palms and tried to draw a warding circle, but the wind scattered the grains faster than he could pour them. Giving up, he stuck the salt stick between his teeth, wincing at the bitter, sharp taste, and ran for the horses, grabbing their reins and bringing them close together. If he could, he would have sent them back through the passage, but he worried that a rockslide there would be deadly for all three of them.
Better to stay here, as far from rocks or trees as he could, and pray the ground did not open up and swallow them—or Isobel.
And then the world broke loose.
The moment Isobel had dropped to her knees, her palm down on the ground, she felt slapped between two impossible weights pressing the air from her lungs, the strength from her limbs.
“Please.” She wasn’t sure what she was asking for, or who, but the word was all she could squeeze out. “Please.”
They did not listen, could not hear her. The wind picked up, nearly knocking her sideways, the grass sharp-edged and harsh against her hands and face. Her hat was knocked clear off her head, only the leather cord under her chin keeping it from blowing away, digging into the soft skin there until she jammed it onto her head again, defiant as though to tell the wind to keep its hands off her and hers.
She didn’t hear it laugh; that had to have been her imagination.
She turned her fingers downward, nails digging past the grass into the dirt, all her weight pressing into her palm until her arm and shoulder ached with it, doing her best to ignore everything but the knowledge of the sigil on her palm and what it meant, what it meant she was, what it meant she was required to do.
“Please,” she said again, asking the barrier that met her to allow her through, the way she had moved past bone and stone and warding, to reach the magicians within the hut. The valley shuddered under her, the disorientation outside and around her as well as within, as though she were trapped in a fever rather than the fever being under her own skin. The spirit raged; she could feel it, this close, as though she’d grabbed a heated poker, no, something hot but spiked, a handful of gooseberry vines or a cactus pad that wriggled and fought within her grasp, and each wriggle sent another rumble through the bones as they pushed back, pressing that rage flat in an attempt to calm it.
“That won’t work.” She was unsure if she spoke the words or merely thought them, unsure if the barrier she sensed was aware enough to even know she was there, much less hear her. “You’re doing more harm that way, can’t you see?”
It was useless; the bones knew only the bones, knew only the earth they were buried in, the deep slow movements and the sudden cracks; the barrier was there to protect itself, not those who lived above.
She thought of the elk’s advice and the Reaper hawk’s. To save herself, to do what she had been sent out to do. To leave the bones to themselves, to meddle in it.
The Agreement gave the devil dominion over those who came into the Territory but not those who were of the Territory—the tribes, and those born of the bones themselves, the creatures of spirit and medicine. And not the magicians, who came from outside but gave themselves over to the winds.
But what of the Territory itself??? She could feel it spreading out under her hand, though they were far off the Road here, in this deserted hollow, the cool fire of stone and bone rising from below to tower overhead, everything resting just so, and she thought again of Gabriel’s story of the Black Hills. Too large, too strong for even the devil to comprehend. He thought to control this?
She bit her lip until she felt blood in her mouth, her thoughts hurt as badly as the burning thorns, prickly discomfort that made her shy away.