Snow Like Ashes

  Sir rears his horse around and I break out of my stupor long enough to note that we’ve crossed through all of Angra’s cavalry. At first I’m flooded with the sweet, pure burst of relief—there are so few of them! But then I see what waits for us behind the cavalry.

  “MATHER!”

  Sir’s scream rips holes in my body, breaking me out of my stupor. I whirl around to see Mather nearing us. He’s almost here too. He’s almost—

  I don’t have time to finish the thought.

  Cannons waited for us. Dozens of them, pulled by oxen over the hills. Soldiers stand next to the iron monstrosities, and even from so far away, I can see, feel, taste their glee as they light the explosives that will send death barreling toward us. That’s all I have time to absorb, the horrific weight of the soldiers’ impending joy at our demise, and just as my eyes register that the black balls slamming into the earth around us are cannonballs, an invisible force shocks me off the horse and cracks me like a rag doll against the ground.

  Fire-red pain lances across my vision, radiating out from a solid crack in my chest. Sounds deaden against the roar of agony that fills my head, and something beneath me reeks of iron, wet and warm. But it’s not the comforting smell of iron mined from the Klaryns.

  It’s blood.

  The muted noises rise to a horrible ringing. I push up, one of my ribs screaming out in anger, but I don’t care as more cannons fire, more of Noam’s cavalry gets launched into the air.

  It was a trap, and now there are more Spring men running at us around the cannons, and the remaining Spring soldiers we didn’t kill from the initial charge fly back to surround us. Here and there a few clumps of Cordellan riders stay up, hacking at enemies, firing blindly. But it’s no use. We’re too cut off from the bulk of Noam’s army, helplessly lost in our stupid rush to destroy Angra’s cavalry.

  I scramble up. The armor and extra padding lock my broken rib in a pathetic makeshift cast and I’m able to stumble forward, debris clouding the air, bodies littering the way. The stench of blood and sweat clogs my lungs, growing with each explosion, each scream.

  Mather. I think I shout it but I can’t hear myself. Maybe I only mouth it, a feeble cry in the dark. William!

  A cannonball hits the ground nearby, knocking me down with its invisible force. I collapse on a body that reaches up, a bloodied hand gripping my shoulder. Panic numbs everything in me for one beautiful, horrifying second when I see who is grabbing me, how bloody he is, how mangled in the filth of battle.

  Sir.

  Whenever he described situations like this before, the scenario seemed like a distant, foreign thing I would never have to face. Injuries on a battlefield. Excessive blood loss, broken bones, ripped flesh—

  This isn’t real. This can’t be real. Not now, not him.

  A Spring soldier wails in front of me, a Cordellan sword through his chest. The sound of his dying scream warps in my ringing ears as Sir’s lips move. I lunge to him, shouting, willing the ringing to lessen enough so that I can hear him beyond warped screams and explosions.

  His lips move again. “Meira.”

  Blood and dirt and sweat make his fingers slick as I grip his hand. “What do I do?” I shout. “Tell me what to do!”

  Sir smiles through the bloodstains on his cheeks. The blood trails down to show its source—a gaping wound in Sir’s stomach, ripping open half his chest. Dark blood pulses out, brittle white bone protruding from the cavity.

  “Meira,” he says again. His hand comes up to cup my cheek, his thumb rubbing at my temple.

  “What do I do?” I scream again. Another cannon strikes somewhere close by, closer and closer. They’ll hit us soon. We’re still in range. I have to move him, get a medic—

  “I’m sorry,” he wheezes.

  I can’t move. Sir’s eyes drift out and he stares vacantly at a space beside my head. When he looks back, his gaze is distant and hazy as if he’s seeing through me.

  “No,” I growl. I shake his shoulders, trying to pull his focus back to me. “No! You listen to me, William Loren. You do not deserve this!”

  Sir nods. “I served Winter.”

  Another cannon. A Spring soldier howls above me, sword raised, and I reach for my crossbow. It isn’t there—it got torn away with the cannon blast. Before I can scramble for another weapon, a Cordellan arrow comes whirring out of the ashes, and the soldier crumples beside Sir’s legs.

  So many bodies. Spring and Cordellan alike, so much death and blood piling up so quickly—

  Sir’s thumb moves on my temple again. I bend over him, shielding him from debris, from blood, from all of this. “No,” I mumble. It’s all I can do, all I can say, eyes blurring with dust and hot, pulsing tears. “No, no, William, don’t—”

  Sir wheezes. He looks at me again, and one last ray of clarity brings recognition to his eyes. “Meira,” he whispers. “You have to save them.”

  “Of course,” I croak. “I’ll do it. I promise I’ll do it. But you have to help me. I can’t do it without you!”

  Sir shakes his head. “Did you hear Bithai’s poem when we first arrived?”

  I nod, and Sir presses on.

  “No,” he says. “The words. Did you hear the words?”

  When I shake my head this time, Sir inhales, closes his eyes, and lets memory say it. The gentle poem rolls out, past Sir’s wheezing breath, past his pain.

  “Cordell, Cordell, today we come

  To kneel before your blessed throne.

  Let all who find refuge be glad

  They hide behind your walls of stone.

  Cordell, Cordell, if we must leave

  To battle, travel, or to die,

  Let those who do not come again

  Forever in your presence lie.”

  His eyes open again. “Winter needs that,” he rasps. “Winter must have that.”

  I shake my head again, tears pouring down my cheeks. “No, William—Winter needs you!”

  Sir smiles. The smile catches as his thumb stops moving, everything in his body hardening like a pond freezing in winter. The sudden, scary pause echoes through my body. He’s not moving. He’s not breathing. He’s not—

  Alive. He’s not alive anymore.

  Slowly, so slowly, his hand drops through the air and collapses against his chest.

  “Meira!”

  Someone calls my name, voice ragged with fear. I grab Sir’s face, my dirty fingers digging into his hair. He stares into the sky, his eyes absent and empty, an expression that branded its horrible meaning into my mind long, long ago. A candle without a spark, a sky without a sun, the look people get when they cease to be people, start being bodies. But no—no—he is too strong for this expression, his face too wise and hard to support the sheer nothingness cascading over him. I refuse to let him go, not like this, not while I will always, always need him.

  “William,” I sob, and shake him, his blood squishing between my fingers. “Look at me! Please, I’m begging you, look at me…”

  All I ever wanted was for you to look at me.

  “Meira!” Mather slides to the ground beside me, throws his arms around my shoulders.

  “No!” I claw at him, pushing him away, but he fights me to my feet. “NO!”

  We stumble back, trip on another dead body. Like Sir, staring up at pockets of blue sky through holes in the wafting debris, just another casualty in Angra’s war.

  I shove Mather away, rage coursing fresh at Angra’s name. This is his fault. All of this, his greed and his conduit and Winter being weak, so weak …

  Mather’s arms leave me long enough that I turn back to Sir and reach out in one final grasp for him.

  Please, you can’t die too.

  Coldness streams down my arm, flies from my fingertips. I can feel it crawling across the battlefield and over Sir’s body, spreading like frost creeping over the ground. It touches every blood vessel, every nerve, turning everything around me into a field of ice. Is this what shock feels like? Is this how it fe
els to have a piece of who you are ripped from your life—cold and desolate?

  Mather pulls me away like nothing happened. “Meira, we have to run! It’s not safe!”

  I stare at him. Doesn’t he feel cold too? How can he not feel it? But his panic, the way he drags me through the battle, tells me he didn’t feel anything.

  Cannon fire pierces the air, spinning and whistling in the dust, and I react without thought—I shove my shoulder into Mather, throwing him sprawling to the ground as the earth next to me explodes. The weightlessness returns, heaving me up and up, slamming me back into the blood-soaked ground. Something else pops in my chest, pain flaring.

  I try to pull myself up, to see where I landed, but only manage to get to my elbows before blackness swarms over me in the form of twisting agony. As it descends I see Mather too far away, screaming, getting dragged toward Bithai by a few of Noam’s men.

  “Meira.”

  A shadow drops over me. At first it looks like Sir, but it can’t be Sir, it can never again be Sir, and I whimper in the terrible truth of it all.

  The shadow crouches down. He sneers at me, a sickening movement that clashes with the men wailing for their lives behind him, against Mather getting sucked away to safety. Against my great rush of terror when I recognize that face.

  Herod.

  “You stole something from me,” he hisses. “It’s about time I take it back.”

  As he bends down, pain, and fear, and exhaustion sweep over me, throwing everything into darkness.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  19

  SNOWFLAKES DRIFT AROUND me, turning the air over the ivory field white and cold.

  I’m in Winter.

  “I thought I’d have more time.” Hannah stands beside me in a white silk gown, the locket gleaming from her neck. Her eyes are glazed, whether from tears or the shooting cold I can’t tell.

  “What?” I feel a flicker of alarm. I shouldn’t be in Winter. Last I remember, I was … somewhere else. Where?

  “I thought I’d have more time,” Hannah repeats. “The connection to conduit magic never breaks, but it was too soon before. I’ve been trying to give you time, but time has run out.” She faces me, and I know now that those are tears in her eyes, tears that crest over her eyelids and tumble down her cheeks. She steps forward, reaching one hand out to me.

  “Wait.” I pull away. I can’t remember … anything. Why I’m here, in a dream again, why my stomach hangs with a painful weight. Why …

  Sir’s dead. And I’ve been captured by Herod.

  I fall to my knees, gasping on snowflakes. “No …”

  Hannah steps closer. “Once you arrive in Spring, Angra will use his dark magic to watch you like he’s been watching Mather since Winter fell.” Her face softens. “I’m sorry I can’t explain what I’m about to show you, but I don’t have time for more than this now.”

  She puts her hand on my forehead. I moan in protest, but the moment her skin touches mine, scenes fill my head, images and pictures of … the past. Hannah is showing me the past. I don’t know how I know that, but the truth zings through me as certainly as the images, and I draw in ragged breaths to keep myself from descending into panic.

  Dozens of people stand on a dark lane, holding stones and pendants and sticks in unrelenting fists. The objects glow faintly, gentle pulses of light under the deep black sky. The people turn as a different group approaches, also holding glowing objects. The two groups don’t hesitate—with a scream and a bellow they attack. Fists split bones as if they’re no more than brittle pieces of wood; bodies fly through the air, thrown like fistfuls of straw.

  Normal people shouldn’t be able to fight like this. But these aren’t just normal people—those objects are conduits. People once had their own conduits? But only the Royal Conduits were created before the chasm disappeared….

  Or was that wrong?

  A shadow rises from the fight, drifting out of each thrown punch, each snarl of hatred. The larger it grows, the angrier the crowd gets, like each feeds the other. Anger for more anger, evil for stronger evil—

  From the light, there came a great Decay.

  More black clouds of Decay appear, rising out of towns, villages, all from people who use conduits to do terrible things. A murder, a theft, a woman cowering as her husband beats her. Each time someone uses a conduit for corrupt ends, the Decay grows; and each time the Decay grows, it finds people, seeps inside of them, and makes them do even more corrupt things.

  And woe was it unto those who had no light.

  Eight people stand before me on the edge of a cliff in a great underground cavern. A brilliant ball of light all but blinds me from the endless depth beyond, and as I realize what this is, everything I’ve ever felt evaporates, leaving only gentle awe.

  The lost chasm of magic.

  They did beg, thus the lights were formed.

  The eight people stack stones and pendants and sticks on the edge of the chasm. Conduits, still glowing softly. On the very top of each pile, every person places an object that does not glow. A locket, a dagger, a crown, a staff, an ax, a shield, a ring, a cuff. I run my eyes over the eight people again. Four male, four female.

  The four did create the lights; and the four did create the lights.

  Snapping fingers of energy strike the eight piles one at a time, unstoppable waves of power drawn to the new conduits like lightning to metal. Magic fills up the Royal Conduits, connecting with their rulers, their bloodlines, their genders.

  The scene changes again, flashing by me. The clouds of Decay dissipate now, waning under the power of the Royal Conduits as the rulers chase the Decay from their lands. People rejoice as the Decay’s fog leaves them.

  Then I see something I recognize all too well—Spring. Cherry blossom trees stretch in a sea of pink and white around a man with curly blond hair, nearly translucent green eyes, and pale skin. He stands at the entrance to his city, holding a staff. And around him hovers the last black cloud in Primoria, pulsing weakly.

  “You are true strength,” the man tells the cloud, and opens his arms to it.

  I scream, needing someone to hear me, needing someone else to see that they didn’t destroy all of it. The Decay still exists—and it’s in the ruler of Spring.

  “Tell me how to save them.”

  The scene changes. Centuries pass. I’m in a bedroom in Hannah’s palace, Jannuari visible beyond open balcony doors. The Decay has faded to a distant, forgotten legend, and the only thing anyone in Winter fears now is Spring. Hannah crouches at the foot of a canopy bed, tears streaking down her face.

  “Tell me how to save my people from him,” she begs. Who is she talking to?

  Then I see it. The small white glow in her hand where her fist sits against her chest. She’s holding the locket, begging it to tell her what to do. Has any other monarch done that before? Used their conduit as more than just a source of power, but as a source of authority? I hadn’t thought so … but maybe that was wrong too, just like believing there weren’t any conduits made before the eight that exist now.

  Hannah’s locket responds to her pleading, a radiant white chill that ripples out of her hand. The magic pours into her, and through that pouring comes … this. All of this knowledge. The past, why the Royal Conduits were really created, what Winter is truly facing in Spring.

  I fight the urge to curl in a ball and never leave this place. It’s safe here, there’s no Decay, no evil, and my chest aches with everything that awaits me outside of this dream.

  “You will understand how to use all this when you are ready,” Hannah says, and I jump. I thought this was a memory of her, not actually her, but she swings her tear-rimmed eyes to me as I release a sob that burns my throat. “It’s you now, Meira. Wake up.”

  Warm, flickering gold throbs beyond my eyelids, and I squint in the rays of sun passing above me
, columns of dancing light under a clear blue sky. The wind churns the scent of dead grass and dried earth, so pungent that I instantly know where I am—the Rania Plains.

  It’s you now.

  I close my eyes, biting back the sobs that come as Hannah’s dream plays through my head. Why did she show me all of that? Why me?

  Because Sir is dead and Mather is gone. I’m the only one left, the one about to face an evil created thousands of years ago, so long ago that not even myths remain from that time.

  I bite back another sob, drawing in deep, slow breaths. I can’t worry about that now; I have to focus on figuring out where I am. Step by step, breath by breath, I open my eyes and survey the world around me.

  I’m in a cage. Wooden bars keep me trapped as a great, lumbering ox pulls me on. Men trail alongside, their breastplates showing Spring’s black sun. I’m Herod’s prisoner. Gregg’s story comes hurtling back to me, every detail crisp and clear from when he returned to camp so many years ago, a battered soldier who had just watched his wife die. The way the words tumbled out of his mouth like he didn’t even know he was saying them, just kept coming and coming, telling us every detail about how Herod killed Crystalla….

  Nausea rolls and I turn over, barely making it to the edge of the cage before my stomach pushes out everything I’ve eaten in the past few days. I cling to the bars, heaving and fighting down tears as an all-too-familiar shadow crosses over me.

  “Good morning, Meira. It’s Lady Meira now, though, isn’t it? I haven’t gotten a chance to congratulate you on your engagement. A Season managing to snag the wealthy Cordellan prince. I didn’t know Rhythms were stooping to charity now.”

  I focus on the grass rolling beneath the cage’s wooden wheels, on the smells of earthy dead plants and sour vomit. Not on Herod’s booted feet, keeping pace beside me, his fingers curled around one of the bars.