Bayn, carrying Erian and Llor, had run west, and the strange air spirits had chased them . . . Then what happened? She sent another one of her spirits to fetch Ven, with orders to bring him faster, and then she pressed harder on the nearby spirits.
She felt them resist, but she was strong, and she forced them westward, toward the other. And she splintered her mind, trying to touch the spirits that had attacked. If she could find them, stop them, hold them, destroy them—
Her senses brushed up against four air spirits, but she couldn’t sink into them. Her thoughts slid across them as if they were made of glass. She battered against them. Where are my children? It was as much a question as it was a command, yet she got no response. Through the eyes of her own spirits, she saw the foreign spirits from a half-dozen different directions, fragmented as if she were looking through broken glass. Beyond, the forest seemed to dissolve into a haze.
These weren’t her spirits. They weren’t from Aratay. She wasn’t their queen.
But she bore her will down on them anyway, determined to crack their minds.
In the moments before Naelin found the foreign spirits, while she was pillaging the minds of stray tree and air spirits, Ven was running with no other thought in his mind but Faster!
He refused to think about what could have happened to Erian and Llor, or what could be happening right now. Refused to think about what if he was too late. Refused to picture Erian, preening as she mastered another move he taught her. Or Llor, looking at Ven with those wide, hero-worshipping eyes. Refused to remember Naelin tucking her children in at night, or the way they’d started to ask to say good night to him too. He’d told them stories sometimes. Bandaged Llor’s knee when he skinned it. Fixed a knife holster for Erian that fit with her new princess dresses. He knew that Llor sometimes snored like a hibernating badger and that Erian squirmed in her sleep. He knew Llor hated nuts, unless they were crushed in a cookie, and that Erian could eat fistfuls of blueberries.
If I can just reach them soon enough . . .
He had to believe that Bayn was with them, defending them, buying Ven time to race to the rescue. Keep them safe, old friend. I’m coming!
A little birdlike spirit with wooden wings darted ahead of him, flew on, then flew back, as if waiting.
Naelin sent it, he thought. “Go!” he yelled at the spirit.
He veered, following it, leaping from tree to tree, running over the branches. After so many years of this, he could gauge every leap in mere seconds. He knew how to cling to the bark, how to use his knives like claws, how to dangle from a slim branch and land on the next one. He used every skill he had to run faster than he’d ever run.
But not fast enough. I’m . . .
I’m too late.
He knew it in his soul. The fact that Renet had returned to the village, slowed by a leg wound, but not killed, meant the attack was over. Whatever had happened to the children had already happened. It had been too long. Even Bayn isn’t strong enough or clever enough to defend the children from six spirits for this long.
Don’t think about that.
It was impossible not to, though.
He drew his sword as his senses alerted him to motion above him. A few autumn leaves swirled down as an air spirit, woman-shaped but with eagle wings and talons instead of feet, broke through the branches above. He crouched, sword ready, but then saw the spirit was falling talons first—
Another of Naelin’s, he thought.
He lowered his sword and let the spirit pluck him into the air.
With his leather armor bunched in its grip, the spirit carried him through the forest. Branches smacked into his legs, stinging, and he drew his knees up to his chest. The spirit let out a shrill cry that couldn’t have come from a human throat. In the distance, he saw the border of Aratay, which was also the border of Renthia itself: beyond it, the haze of the untamed lands curled like a forest fire on the horizon.
They flew closer.
Ahead, only a few yards from the border, Ven saw a clump of spirits—four air spirits, writhing on a branch as if they were caught in a fire. “There! Take me there!” His air spirit released him, and he crashed down, sword ready.
The four spirits didn’t look like the usual Aratayian spirits. Their wings were leathery instead of coated in feathers, and their bodies were bunched with muscles coated in sleek, snakelike skin. Razor-sharp beaks open, they were howling in pain. Naelin, he thought. She was trying to force them to obey her and they were resisting.
He leaped in between them and began hacking with his sword.
They sprang to life, focusing on this new threat, and he swirled, kicked, and struck at them, hoping that this distraction was what Naelin needed.
It was.
As Ven engaged the foreign spirits, Naelin sank into their minds. They couldn’t fight him and block her at the same time.
She saw images: Erian and Llor, on the back of Bayn, running through the forest. She felt the spirits’ hunger, their hate, their need. And she saw through their eyes as two spirits—two who had come with the others but weren’t with them now—pull Erian and Llor from Bayn’s back and then fly north while the other spirits drove Bayn across the western border.
Naelin yanked her mind away from the spirits. And she heard herself in her own body, screaming. “Erian! Llor!”
They’d been taken north.
Toward Semo.
Alive.
Reaching out, Naelin grabbed the mind of a large air spirit and pulled it toward her. Heronlike, it had a sinewy neck, white feathers, and broad wings. She flung herself onto its back and compelled it northward.
As she flew, she flung her mind out like a net, catching every spirit within fifty miles and driving them toward Semo. SAVE MY CHILDREN!
ATTACK!
Far from the border, in the capital of Aratay, Queen Daleina felt the cry of the spirits in the northwest. Naelin’s command shook through her, the other queen’s rage hitting her so fast and hard that Daleina sank to the floor.
“Your Majesty!” Her seneschal rushed to her side.
On her other side, her sister, Arin, grabbed for her, touching her arm, her forehead. “Is it happening again? Daleina, can you hear me?” To the seneschal, she snapped, “Get Healer Hamon!”
“Not . . . me,” Daleina managed. “Naelin.” She felt her spirits race northward, full of bloodlust—toward the border of Semo.
What was she doing? Naelin!
They finally had peace! Queen Merecot had been defeated. This was a time of healing! If Naelin attacked Semo . . . She’d start a war!
As the first wave hit the border, the Aratayian spirits crashed into a line of foreign spirits. The Aratayian spirits were a random assortment: a few larger earth spirits made of rocks and moss, mixed with tiny twiglike tree spirits and dandelion fluff–like air spirits, but the Semoian spirits stationed at the border were giants made of granite and dragons made of obsidian. They met the forest spirits as they crossed, and they tore them to shreds.
Daleina felt her spirits die—and with them, bits of Aratay.
Plants withered.
Flames engulfed trees.
Rivers dried.
No! What was Naelin thinking?
Daleina forced her mind northward, seizing the spirits before they could plunge over the Semoian border. No! STOP!
The minds of the two queens crashed into each other.
Chapter 5
Daleina knew Naelin was stronger. She’d started out stronger than most heirs, and becoming queen had only amplified that strength. Before today, Daleina had considered it a boon to Aratay: two queens, one with training and one with power, to protect their people. Together, they could usher in a new era of peace to their forests and guard their land against threats from within and without. She’d considered Naelin to be a sensible and reliable, even wise, queen.
She’d never considered the possibility that Queen Naelin could lose control.
It felt like a tornado. As Daleina
touched the minds of the spirits, she felt their thoughts whipping cyclone-like, caught in a rush of fear and anger. They whooshed northward, swept into the maelstrom of Naelin’s fury.
Daleina tried to grab them, but they slipped away from her commands. She felt as if she were shouting into the howling wind, her words swallowed instantly. Jamming her fists into the floor, she concentrated—throwing her full self outward.
Stop! Do not cross!
She stretched her mind, imagining her thoughts were a wall that blocked the northern border.
The spirits, propelled by Naelin, battered against her wall. Her body flinched as if she’d been kicked, but she held firm. It didn’t hurt that the spirits wanted to obey her. They didn’t want to leave Aratay, especially once the first few died.
So she fed that. Stay here, stay safe, stay here, she repeated. She sent the command flowing into them, undercutting Naelin’s pure scream of raw power. Daleina couldn’t stop Naelin’s push—she didn’t have that kind of strength—but she could soften it, and hopefully hold the spirits long enough for someone to reach Naelin.
Distantly, she heard voices shouting at her.
Hamon: “Daleina, can you hear me? Answer me, Daleina!”
Arin: “Is she all right? What’s happening to her? Hamon, is she dying? What’s wrong with her? Make her wake up!”
And then Hamon’s mother, Garnah: “Leave her be. Can’t you see she’s concentrating? Although how she can with you two hens clucking at her, I don’t know.” Daleina heard glass shatter as Garnah snapped, “Don’t give her that! Idiot.”
She blocked them out—Garnah was right, she needed to concentrate. Naelin screamed and flailed—it was like trying to hold back a tidal wave with her arms. Naelin’s mind slammed against Daleina’s so hard that Daleina cried out. I can’t hold her, not forever. But that was never her hope . . .
Ven, she thought.
She plunged into the minds of the spirits, searching for him.
Ven knew something was wrong the second he saw spirits streaming north. This was not due to brilliant intuition. It was very obvious something was wrong. All around him, the spirits of Aratay were hurling themselves northward in an uncontrolled stream.
“Naelin!” he cried out. “What are you doing? Stop!”
But if she heard him through the ears of the spirits, it didn’t make a difference. Screaming, the spirits clawed at the land, trying to cling to the branches, and then they’d suddenly release and hurl themselves full-tilt northward.
He slashed again at the foreign spirits—the only ones immune to whatever Naelin was doing—and then he began running, following the stream of spirits. He spared a moment for regret: he was allowing the foreign spirits to escape. But there was a more immediate danger. All around him, the forest was full of Aratayian spirits, howling and shrieking as they flew and ran and slithered and crawled northward against their will. He weaved among them, ducking and leaping, trying to get ahead of them as they flowed around him. “Naelin! Stop!” he yelled.
Above him, he saw one air spirit break from the stream. It dove toward him—it had an ermine-like body and bat wings, the kind of spirit that Daleina preferred to ride. You’d better not be attacking me, he thought. But it was coming at him the same way Naelin’s spirit had when it came to carry him, so he jumped, grabbed onto its legs, and instead of fighting him off, it flew upward, bursting through the leaves of the canopy.
Across the forest, he saw trees burst into flame as if struck by lightning, he saw rivers overflow, he saw leaves darken and die, withering to black in mere seconds.
And to the north, at the Semoian border . . . he saw Aratayian spirits dying.
Ever since Queen Merecot’s failed invasion, she had kept her most powerful spirits at the border, fearing retaliation. All the border guards had reported on it. And now he was seeing it in person.
Naelin should know this! What is she thinking?
Aiming for one of the gaps, the spirits of Aratay were crashing into the Semoian spirits—and dying by the dozens. Even from this distance, he could hear their howls of pain, and he could see the effect on the forest.
“Faster!” he urged the ermine spirit.
He spotted Naelin, on the back of another air spirit, in the thick of the battle. He didn’t know what commands she was issuing, but she looked to be lashing out wildly, using the spirits as if they were her fists and swords, trying to cause as much damage as she could.
But the Semoian spirits held their line.
Ven raised his sword and urged his spirit forward, toward the queen. She wasn’t blocking herself. She’d given zero thought to defense. It was all attack. I have to reach her before—
He was only a few feet away when the stone fist of an earth spirit slammed into the side of Naelin’s head. He lunged for her as she toppled off her spirit. Her body twisted in the air as she fell. Around them, the spirits of Aratay fled south, back across the border, but Ven’s mount continued to obey him—he sent a silent thank-you to Daleina as he aimed his spirit into a dive.
He caught Naelin in his arms as a black dragonlike spirit shot toward them. Cradling his queen against his chest, he brought his sword up.
It hit with a clang against the dragon’s hide.
In Mittriel, Daleina felt the moment that Naelin lost consciousness.
It was as if all the water in a waterfall had suddenly ceased. Daleina gasped for air, suddenly able to breathe again, see again, hear again, feel again. Hamon’s arms were around her. Her sister, Arin, was kneeling in front of her, holding her hands.
She felt a faint dimming inside her as her body adjusted to the loss of power that came with the death of her spirits. It was only a slight change—she still felt the strength of the vast numbers of Aratayian spirits, buoying her—but it was becoming a depressingly familiar sensation.
Garnah, Hamon’s mother, had plopped herself on top of the banquet table and was helping herself to grapes. “Well now, that was all very exciting. You gave your loved ones quite the scare. Granted, they have the nerves of a chipmunk, but still.”
“It wasn’t me,” Daleina said, mostly to Hamon and Arin. “It was Naelin. Something happened to her children. She lost control. Not of the spirits. Of herself.” She shuddered—it was a nightmare scenario, an out-of-control queen. If Ven hadn’t been able to stop her . . .
“Oh, how delightful,” Garnah said. “A woman with nearly unlimited power is emotionally unstable. Would you like me to kill her?”
“No!” Daleina, Arin, and Hamon said simultaneously.
“Pity,” Garnah said, and ate another grape. “Death solves so many problems. Won’t you at least entertain the notion? There’s a new potion that I’ve been just dying to try, pun intended—”
“Absolutely not,” Daleina said. Enough had died. I have to reach out, try to see how much damage Naelin’s ill-conceived attack did. But first she had to recover. Her mind felt as if it had been shoved through a cheese grater. She also had to conserve strength, in case Naelin woke and decided to rage again. She’s too strong, Daleina thought. That power dump probably didn’t even leave her winded.
“Mother, could you please leave us?” Hamon asked.
“Of course.” Scooting off the table, Garnah swept toward the door. “Arin, come with me. You haven’t mastered today’s potion.”
Arin didn’t move.
Garnah commanded, “Arin, come. The crisis has passed.”
Not budging from beside her sister, Arin, squeezed Daleina’s hands. “Has it passed?”
Daleina tentatively reached her mind toward the northwest corner of Aratay—This much I can do without exhausting myself, she thought. Even still, she felt herself stretch thin as she strained to touch the borders. The spirits had fled, hiding and burrowing as deep and as far south as they could. All was still. Drawing her mind back, Daleina nodded at Arin. “I believe so.”
Arin didn’t let go. Daleina saw the worry on her sister’s face as plain as if it had been painted th
ere, and she felt a stab of guilt—Arin was still so young. Not yet fifteen. She should be in their home village, chasing her dream of someday owning her own bakery, figuring out who she was and what she cared about, maybe finding someone to take the place of Josei, the boy she’d dreamed of someday marrying . . . Instead she was here in the palace, worrying about catastrophes, and Josei was dead, one of the first casualties of Daleina’s ascension. Arin’s eyes bored into hers. “You’ll call for me, if anything changes? If you need me at all?”
“I will,” Daleina promised, although she wished she could just send Arin back home. The middle of a crisis was not the time to start an argument with her sister, though. Later, she promised herself, I’ll find a way to get her out of danger. Daleina shot Garnah a look and hoped the woman understood that if anything happened to Arin . . .
Garnah met her eyes without blinking, and Daleina was certain she did understand. Hamon’s mother had an excellent survival instinct. It was empathy and other ordinary emotions that she lacked. Herding Arin before her, Garnah left the room.
Daleina and Hamon were alone.
“You need to rest,” Hamon said.
Daleina shook her head. “I have to stay alert, in case it happens again.” But she did lean her head against his shoulder. “It was supposed to be better now. Easier.” They’d stopped an invasion, thwarted an assassin, and found a second powerful queen to protect their forests. They should have at least bought their country a little more time before the next disaster. Apparently not, she thought. “I am going to go down in history as the worst queen in all of Renthia.”
He kissed her forehead. “None of this is your fault.”
That much was true. “Then the unluckiest.”
“Perhaps that.” He drew back. “I know it was Queen Naelin, but may I check you anyway?” When she granted permission, he opened his healer’s bag, then checked her temperature, blood pressure, heart rate. He had her spit into a vial and tested it by adding a drop of a purple liquid—it turned white when he shook it.