Pia pressed her lips together. She looked out over the town, as if seeing it for the last time. Something in her face made him think she was about to lie to him.
But the heightened sounds of Tarik and Shane came through the window, and Pia sighed.
“Excuse me, I should return to my guests,” she said.
She started back to the house. Essix screeched, circling overhead, and in that moment Rollan noticed Pia’s hand straying to her apron pocket, as if making sure something there lay hidden.
Rollan rushed after her, catching her just inside the small kitchen.
“What are you hiding?” he asked, indicating her apron pocket. “What do you have?”
She was still smiling, yet somehow it looked more like a frown. Her hand went into her pocket, and he could see the indecision on her face. “I was going to give this to one of you. And I think you and your friends have a better chance of finding Suka than the newcomers.”
Truth. She meant what she said.
A squawk startled Rollan — Essix shouting a warning. He turned to see Wikerus flying past the open kitchen door and flapping over to Aidana, who was emerging through a small copse of trees.
“Rollan?” Aidana called out, just as Pia dropped something heavy into Rollan’s inner cloak pocket before hurrying back into the main room.
Rollan was addled by the presence of his mother, and he didn’t think to examine Pia’s face before she was already gone. He opened his pocket and peered in — a compass. Why would Pia give him a compass?
He shuffled back outside. The sharp light of morning sun sliced at his eyes, and he blinked rapidly.
“Rollan, are you all right?” Aidana asked, coming nearer. “You ran off.”
Must be a family trait, he thought.
But now she was here — his mother — alive, real. That face from his dreams wasn’t just the vain imagination of a pathetic, lonely orphan boy. And his heart ached where that chunk had torn free.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
And he believed her. She was sorry. Everything she’d said had been true. She’d been sick, mad, trying to protect him. And now she’d found him again. So why did he hurt so much more now than when he’d believed her long dead?
“Stay with me,” she said. “Please.”
Words of affirmation rose in his throat. He choked them down, glancing at the house where Tarik’s and Shane’s voices lashed out the window.
“Shane is good,” said Aidana. “I swear it. I’ve seen so much good that he does.”
“I’ve seen . . . other things,” said Rollan.
“He is passionate about protecting the world from the duplicitous Greencloaks. They hoard the secret of the Nectar; they subject us all to their secret plans.”
He didn’t want to argue with her, but the words came out, pleading. “We don’t need the Greencloaks or the Conquerors.”
She shook her head. “Zerif saved my life, Rollan. I won’t abandon his cause. Abandoning you was hard enough — I won’t do that again, not to anyone I care about. Besides, with the Bile, we’re saving hundreds more from the bonding sickness. The Reptile King is turning the tide of power all over Erdas! Come join us. Be a part of the new world.”
She held out her hands, as if yearning for him. Essix wasn’t there to disapprove. So Rollan stumbled forward and almost fell against her. Her arms wrapped around him, warm and wonderful. He didn’t lift his own, just let himself be held. He felt her cheek lay against the top of his head, her heartbeat steady against his chin. Part of him felt safe and whole for the first time in his life. And another part ached beyond belief.
ROLLAN WOKE WITH HIS HEART POUNDING. HE’D BEEN dreaming of a raven, wings as wide as the night sky, coming at his eyes, talons first.
Rollan wiped at his face with his sleeve, trying to scrub the image away. His shirt smelled like his mother’s embrace.
He covered his face with his hands and took deep breaths to keep from weeping. He felt as if someone had pressed a wedge to his heart and struck with a mallet, splitting him like firewood. All those years on the streets, he’d carefully hardened his heart, building calluses like the ones on his bare feet. He’d worked hard to mold himself into a tough, unbreakable street kid. It nearly brought a laugh to his throat. He was so tough and unbreakable, yet even the thought of his mother almost reduced him to tears.
She’d been sick to madness. There was comfort in knowing that she hadn’t abandoned him out of indifference, at least. And where had the Greencloaks been with their precious Nectar and lofty promises when his mother had turned eleven? They’d abandoned her too.
The Bile cures bonding sickness! This realization struck him with a force that nearly knocked him back. Abeke had insisted that Shane meant well, and here was proof that the Conquerors were doing good. They’d cured his own mother.
His mother. He had a family again.
Rollan eased himself onto his hands and knees, and started to creep toward his boots and cloak. The soft grass cuttings hushed beneath him. His hand pressed through the grass and hit a nail on the stable floor. Rollan’s breath hissed with pain and he fell.
There was Meilin, her sleeping face turned toward him. He hadn’t seen her look so peaceful, so content, in a long time. Not since before the Devourer and his forces had attacked them, unprovoked, and killed Meilin’s father. Her family was gone, taken by the Conquerors, and now here his family was back, given to him by the same people.
He looked toward the door, his muscles shaking with the effort it took to remain still. His mother was out there, waiting, hopeful. But if he went to her, she would take him to Zerif and those other murderers.
He felt his leg muscles tense, ready to run to her anyway, so instead, there in the dark, he made a quick decision.
“Meilin,” he whispered, shaking her sleeping form. “Meilin, wake up.”
She bolted upright, hands defaulting into fists.
“We need to go,” he whispered. “Now.”
Meilin woke Tarik and Maya while Rollan shook Conor and Abeke. All put on their boots without asking questions.
They passed near the house where Aidana and her companions were sleeping. The window gaped open. Rollan’s muscles still shook, but he kept his gaze straight and did not look inside — not to see her face one more time, to make sure she was okay. It was almost worse, not looking. In his mind he saw her sleeping restlessly, waking at dawn, looking for him. Finding him gone. But he kept walking on without a backward glance, and his heart tore just a little more.
Essix appeared, settling on his shoulder. The weight grounded his feet.
Abeke and Uraza led the way, the leopard’s eyes detecting the best path in the dark. The pair was completely silent. Rollan followed Abeke through a break in the fence and waited until Samis was out of sight before speaking.
“Thank you,” he said.
The group moved in closer to Rollan as they walked.
“For what?” Conor asked, keeping the farthest back, as if uneasy about walking near him.
“Thanks for trusting me that it was time to go.” Rollan pulled out the compass. “Pia gave this to me. I think it will lead us to Suka, and I didn’t dare risk Shane and the others overhearing us talk about it. I thought it best to leave while they slept.”
“Well done, Rollan,” said Tarik.
Rollan didn’t admit the other reason. Perhaps if he ran, suddenly and quickly, he’d have the strength to leave Aidana.
And perhaps someday when the war was over, she’d have the strength to leave Zerif. The idea of a family — his own family, his mother — was a greater draw than any talisman in the world.
Rollan fell in beside Conor as they walked.
“Hey, Conor,” Rollan said quietly. “Hey, Briggan.”
The wolf turned his head and looked at Rollan with those blue, unblinking eyes. Rol
lan sensed disapproval.
“Listen, I just wanted to apologize,” said Rollan. “I didn’t get it — what you did, giving up the Iron Boar to save your family. It seemed selfish to me at the time. And . . . well, I get it now. That it was the opposite of selfish.”
“Thanks,” Conor whispered. “But I know it was horrible of me —”
“It wasn’t horrible of you,” said Rollan. “Or at least not nearly as horrible as some of the other horrible things you’ve done before or since.”
Conor stared, stunned. “What?”
“That stew! That meat-grass abomination you made for us in Zhong was way more horrible. And that sheep joke you tell to everyone new we meet. Horrible! And your stench! Good gravy, it’s like the passed gas of the Devourer himself!”
Conor gave a half smile. “You like the sheep joke. I know you do. I’ve seen you laugh.”
“Yeah, you got me,” said Rollan. “But anyway, the Boar thing? It was an impossible situation. And I’ve been a jerk to you. Sorry.”
Briggan trotted closer, letting his furry back rub beneath Rollan’s hand, and they walked in silence for a few moments. Briggan was big. Not Great Beast big, but still, fanged-and-furry-canine-predator big. On the streets, dogs were bad news. They’d fight you over scraps — or worse, chase you, snarling and rabid, one bite certain death. Now here Rollan was walking beside a wolf, his hand resting in his gray fur.
Uraza led the way with Abeke, but Meilin kept Jhi in her passive state. Rollan supposed the panda wouldn’t be able to keep their brisk pace, still Meilin rarely let her spirit animal out. Unlike Essix, who was always out.
Rollan could sense Essix off to his left somewhere, probably taking a rest in one of the trees, since she could fly faster than the group could walk. Rollan whistled three notes trailing up, their code for Come here, please.
He heard the response: one falcon screech trailing down — Essix’s way of laughing at him.
He hadn’t really expected her to come. But it would have been nice. The weight of the gyrfalcon on his shoulder might have distracted him from the stinging weight in his heart.
“Have you been wondering how Shane and Zerif and all those guys always show up wherever we are?” Conor asked suddenly.
“Um, yeah,” said Rollan. “You think someone is feeding them information?” Rollan couldn’t help glancing over at Abeke. She’d been awfully friendly with Shane.
“Not Abeke,” Conor insisted.
“Then who?”
No way it was Meilin. Or Tarik. Conor was just too honest and straightforward to be a spy, and Shane and Zerif had always seemed to find them long before Maya had joined their group. Certainly it wasn’t Rollan himself. There had to be some other explanation.
Tarik was leading the way, compass in hand.
“Normal compasses lead to the true north — the very top of the world,” said Tarik. “This one appears to be leading us north-northwest. Perhaps it’s tuned to Suka or her hiding place.”
“It better be,” Rollan muttered.
It was dawn when they reached the rocky northern coast of Eura. With a lightening of the sky came a salty breeze that whisked over Rollan’s face, cold as a slap. At this point, only a narrow channel of the sea separated Eura from Arctica.
“There’s a village on the shore across the water,” Rollan said, shielding his eyes from the glare of the cold sun overhead.
“Where?” asked Conor, staring.
“Can’t you see it?” Rollan pointed.
“I don’t see any land at all,” said Meilin. “Just the sea.”
“Your vision is sharpening,” said Tarik. “Interesting. Yes, my map says there is an Ardu village on the coast. The Ardu only live in Arctica, but for a price they will ferry people across the channel — usually Euran hunters looking for seals or walrus.”
“Walrus,” Rollan said with a snort. He was determined not to be gullible. There was no such thing as a huge-tusked sea elephant.
“We need a way to signal the Ardu village,” said Tarik.
“I got this,” said Maya. She held her hand out, and her salamander, Tini, scampered out of her sleeve and onto her palm. She whispered something to him, or breathed on him or something, and then carefully balled her hand into a fist with the salamander inside. She raised her fist above her head and Rollan heard a crackling sound, like the first twigs of a campfire catching heat. The air around Maya curdled with a smokeless heat, strands swirling, gathering slowly around her hand. He felt himself hypnotized, staring blankly at her shimmering fist. He started back a step when she opened her hand suddenly and a ball of fire the size of a saddlebag popped in the air above their heads. It rose, flickered for a moment, and then faded.
“That good enough?” Maya asked.
“I think so,” Tarik said, smiling.
Some time later, a petite, bearded man paddled over in a canoe. He wore a caribou-hide cap with long flaps over the ears that dangled almost to his shoulders. The canoe was built of hides stitched together and stretched across a frame of animal bones, almost as if the canoe were the carcass of some hollowed-out beast. It reeked of fish and blubber; it was clearly a fishing boat, but probably all the boats were fishing boats there. Rollan stepped in, wary of the way the boat moved with every small lap of water.
Space was tight, so Briggan and Uraza entered passive state on Conor’s and Abeke’s arms. Essix circled far above. Rollan smiled up. He felt a little grumpy with her for refusing to come, but if he could fly, he’d be up there too, finding a good breeze and letting it carry the weight away.
Tarik paid the man a gold coin. He dipped in his oar and paddled away from the Euran shore with surprising speed. Rollan looked back, half expecting to see his mother standing there in the mist. She wasn’t.
“Does everyone else have room for their feet, or am I the only one resting on a bed of dead fish?” Abeke asked.
“I’ve just been throwing the more disgusting ones out as we go,” Meilin said.
The Ardu oarsman paused. “Excuse me?”
“Oh,” Meilin said, and Rollan saw an expression flicker across her face that he couldn’t quite pin down. It looked like embarrassment, but Rollan didn’t think Meilin had experienced that particular emotion, ever. In her entire life. She cleared her throat and wiped her hands on the sides of the canoe. “I’m sorry. That was probably your food. I swear they were just the mangled ones you wouldn’t have wanted to eat.”
The Ardu turned, examining the water behind them. “Not all creatures are so picky,” he said.
Suddenly, the canoe lurched, as if struck by a large rock. But there were no rocks nearby — no shore, and no land. Only water and what might be in the water.
“Take this!” shouted the Ardu, giving Tarik the only other oar. “Strike it when it surfaces. Otherwise, paddle!”
Rollan and the others began to scan the water, moving about nervously. “Stay still,” Tarik said. “You risk toppling the craft without the help of the beast.”
“Beast?” Rollan asked. “What beast?”
“There are predators in the water, Rollan,” said Tarik, “the same as on land.”
A keening roar rose from the side of the craft and Tarik struck something in the water that sounded like the flank of a wet horse. Rollan grabbed a handful of fish from the bottom of the canoe. “Should I throw some out?” he yelled. “To distract it?”
“No!” shouted the oarsman and Tarik in unison.
What could they do? Uraza or Briggan couldn’t fight a creature in the water. The talismans seemed useless here — the Granite Ram’s leaping ability and Slate Elephant’s power to enlarge a spirit animal offered no way to battle a sea creature. And how could they fight something they couldn’t see?
There was another hard thump on the canoe. The Ardu kept paddling, faster and stronger than Rollan imagined someone that small an
d that old could manage.
Lumeo sat on Tarik’s shoulder, and the man put his hands in the water.
“Tarik!” Conor shouted.
Rollan watched, eyes wide, waiting to see some great jawed creature bite off Tarik’s hands. But instead the water around his wrists shuddered, as if a stone had been dropped, sending out ripples on still water. Again, the ripples and a pulsing Rollan could feel beneath the boat.
“Tarik?” Abeke asked.
“Lumeo lends me some minor abilities with water,” said Tarik. “I’m thumping at the creature with a push of water, hopefully encouraging it to leave us alone.”
Several tense moments clawed past and the oarsman’s pace slowed.
“I can paddle,” Rollan said, worried the man was too tired to outrun whatever sea monster was chasing them.
“I’m sure you can, boy,” the man said. “But we wish to get to the shore, not splash about like a wounded seal.”
Rollan frowned.
“I believe we have outrun the creature,” Tarik said, and the Ardu grunted. “Or at least it lost interest.”
“Maybe don’t give the giant people-eating sea monsters any more treats,” Maya said, voice quivering. “Okay, Meilin?”
The motion of the sea started to make Rollan so queasy he forgot to be scared. Or sad. Or mad at the undervaluing of his paddling skills. At last the rocky shoreline came nearer.
“Hmm. I’d thought Arctica was all ice,” said Tarik.
“Oh, there’s plenty of ice, don’t worry about that,” said the Ardu with a mischievous smile.
“Wait, you haven’t ever been here before?” Rollan asked.
Tarik shook his head. “But I have longed to. I want to know Erdas in all her different forms of beauty.”
Rollan clambered out of the animal-skin boat and into the Ardu village. Small huts made of mud-and-grass bricks faced the sea. An elderly woman with bright blue eyes and a face like a raisin came out to meet them. Tarik spoke with her for some time, asking advice about how to survive in the icy north of Arctica.
“None live on the ice but those Ardu who bear a mark,” she said. “My son drank the Nectar and bonded with a snow hare. He left us to live in the ice lands with his uncle, who had bonded with an ermine. Only those who have bonded with northern beasts can bear the eternal snows.”