She didn’t know how long she’d been walking. Hours? A few minutes? When she felt a gust of fresh air on her face, she instinctively picked up her pace. There were more minutes of walking—or maybe it was a few hours. Then she finally found it.
A crack in the outer wall, the way to salvation, the way to freedom. Nihal pulled herself over to it and stuck her head out. A river of sewage ran below her. She mustered her last remaining strength and scratched at the bricks with her hands until she’d made an opening that was wide enough. Then she drew in a mouthful of air and simply let herself drop.
The impact with the water was unpleasant. Nihal was cold and felt weak. She was completely uncoordinated. She felt like she was about to drown and so, exhausted, she gave in. The current dragged her along for what seemed like a long time. Every now and then she noticed she was closer to the bank, but she had no strength left. All she wanted to do was float with her eyes shut. Rest. Forget.
Suddenly, she felt someone grab her arm.
Here we are, she said to herself. It’s over. Finally.
Someone was dragging her along the bank, but she couldn’t make out the face.
“Nihal!”
The voice seemed to come from far away.
“It’s Sennar. Nihal!”
She closed her eyes. “Livon. Livon is dead,” she whispered.
Then it was like in her dream.
She slid backward, and darkness enveloped her.
FIGHTING
He was little more than a boy when he became a member of the Council of Sorcerers. A native of the Land of Night, he was blessed with extraordinary magical powers and struck others as a wise young man, dedicated to good and to justice. He was welcomed into the Council unanimously. It wasn’t until he was nominated Head of the Council and began excluding councilors from the most important decisions that his true nature became apparent. …
The young sorcerer was dismissed dishonorably, but he had planned everything to perfection. With men and weapons provided by kings deposed by Nammen, who were eager to take back their lands, he led an assault on the Council hall.
Only a few sorcerers managed to escape the massacre. They took refuge in the Land of the Sun, but the man destined to become the Tyrant took little notice. In just a few hours, he had become master of half of the Overworld. Gradually, he deposed even those rulers who had supported him, until he assumed control over four lands: the Land of Days, the Land of Fire, the Land of Rocks, and the Land of Night. That was when war between the four free lands and the Tyrant became a permanent condition.
—Excerpt from the Annals of the Council of Sorcerers
9
THE TRUTH
Nihal was unable to move a single muscle. She didn’t know where she was or what was happening. She heard muffled sounds something like a prayer. She felt something warm along her side. Then she saw a light. Nothing else.
It was early morning when Nihal woke again. A dim light filtered in through the window near where she lay. She remembered little apart from a long journey through a narrow passage—an escape from something.
Her memory returned slowly and in fragments. She could remember running away from an army and being captured. But the room where she now lay was nothing like a prison cell. She tried to move her head. Someone was sitting at her side. Her vision was blurry, but she tried to force her eyes into focus in order to make out the person’s face. At last, she recognized him.
“Nihal, you’re awake!”
Sennar looked pale and weary. There were questions she would have liked to ask him, but not a sound would come from her throat.
“Shh. You’re at Soana’s. There’s no reason to be afraid. Try to rest. We can talk when you’ve recovered.”
Nihal closed her eyes and slipped into a dreamless sleep that lasted a day and a night.
When she opened her eyes the next morning, the sun, already high in the sky, was casting a light that looked unusually wan. Then she understood. An acrid odor filled the air and dense clouds of smoke blotted out the sky. The army must have finished its sack of Salazar and set fire to the city.
She still felt very tired, but now she remembered everything.
Livon is dead. It was her first thought. She relived the scene in her mind’s eye, his body falling to the ground, the monster as it pulled back its sword. She closed her eyes again. Her chest felt like it would burst. Livon is dead.
Sennar was still there beside her. “How are you?”
“I don’t know,” Nihal answered, and marveled at how weak her voice sounded.
“It was a very serious wound. It’s a miracle you’re still alive.”
Nihal turned toward her friend. “How did you manage to escape?”
“With magic, but it was very difficult.”
Sennar told Nihal he’d cast an invisibility spell before venturing into the narrow alleyways of the city. Salazar was like a crazed termites’ nest. The Tyrant’s soldiers were everywhere. There was nothing to be done. Sennar, certain that Nihal had gone to Livon, tried to reach her, but the spell required too much energy. He hid in a tavern. There was a soldier there, dead. Sennar took his armor.
“It was already too late when I got to Livon’s forge. I saw Livon and the two Fammin. Then I saw the breach in the wall and I figured out what had happened. I ran to the riverbank. When I pulled you out, it seemed impossible that you would ever breathe again.” Sennar smiled at his friend. “It’s lucky you’re so small, you know that? I rolled you up in my cloak, threw you over my shoulder like a sack, and headed toward Soana’s house. We didn’t meet anyone along the way. The army came from the east and didn’t go anywhere near the Forest.” Sennar rubbed his red and weary eyes. “Since we got here, I’ve used every healing spell I know. That’s how I spent the night, hoping that the army would set up camp around Salazar and not venture this far. Then Soana came back. She and Fen were at the border of the Land of the Wind when they saw the advancing army. They raced back. Fen wanted to gather his troops and defend our land. Soana wanted to warn the population. It was too late—but you know that as well as I do.”
“How long was I unconscious?”
“Three days. Three days without showing any sign of coming to.” Sennar stopped and turned a grave look upon his friend. “I was really afraid you were going to die.”
When Soana appeared that afternoon, she looked nothing like the beautiful sorceress Nihal remembered. It was clear from Soana’s puffy eyes that she had been crying. Soot covered her face. Her hair and her dress were in disarray. The skin on her face was pulled tight from the strain of maintaining a magic barrier around the house so it would be invisible to the Tyrant’s army. Even if a group of soldiers passed close by, they would see nothing but a dense grove of trees, and an unknown force would compel them to move on.
Soana sat next to the bed and tried to smile. “How do you feel?”
“Who are the half-elves?” asked Nihal in a cold tone.
“If you rest you might get better soon and …”
Nihal raised her voice. “Why did those two monsters call me half-elf?”
Soana breathed a deep sigh. A tear coursed down her ash-stained face. “Okay,” she said to Nihal. “You have a right to know.” She began her tale. “Sixteen years ago, I hadn’t yet joined the Council. I was merely the assistant to one of its wisest members, the sorceress Reis, a member of the dwarf race. We were on a diplomatic mission in the Land of the Sea and we decided to visit what remained of the half-elf community. What we found was horrible.”
There was blood everywhere.
The air was filled with the metallic smell of blood and covered in a heavy, utter silence.
There wasn’t the slightest bit of wind, no noises, not even the rustling of leaves or the distant sound of birdsong. Nothing but death.
Soana brought her hand to her mouth. “He’s been here.”
Reis’s tiny fists tightened around the folds of her long dress. Hatred flashed in her eyes. “This will never s
top.”
The two sorceresses were picking their way around the corpses that covered the ground in the village. They walked dazed, as though they were dreaming, and forced themselves to look at the atrocity before them. No matter where they turned, all they could see were faces tight with pain; open, blind eyes; bodies that had fallen heavily to the ground.
Then they heard a sound so feeble they might have imagined it.
Soana turned with a start, almost as if she smelled something in the air. For a few seconds, she heard nothing but a deafening silence. Then, once again, came that feeble cry. She bent over and began rummaging through the corpses, turning them over as she looked.
“What is it?” asked Reis in her cold tone.
“A voice! Someone must still be alive.”
Gradually, they neared the source of the sound. It wasn’t a cry of pain. Nor was it the muffled, desperate cry of a survivor. It was the wail of an infant, strong and full of life.
Soana noticed a bit of cloth moving vigorously beneath a woman’s corpse. Delicately, she turned over the lifeless body. The woman was barely more than a girl. An axe had felled her.
The woman clutched a tiny newborn baby in her arms. The baby hollered insistently, like any infant who needed changing or food. Soana moved aside the bloody cloth that covered the baby and lifted her aloft. The child’s tunic was spotless; she had not been harmed.
Reis drew near. “Is she wounded?” Her manner was, as always, cold and direct. Only when she spoke of the Tyrant did a terrible, dark light fill her eyes.
Reis grabbed Soana’s arm and pulled her lower to the ground so she could get a better look at the child. All of a sudden, her expression changed.
“Do you see something?” Soana asked apprehensively.
“A child found alive and unharmed among corpses is a sign. I have to check my cards. Only then will I be able to say something to you about what this could mean.”
Soana stood and began rocking the baby, whispering tender, soothing words.
Reis looked around. “There’s nothing more we can do here. There’s no point in staying. The Fammin could arrive at any moment. Cover the child so no one sees her. We must get back to the Council.”
Soana obeyed. The two sorceresses left the village.
Soana paused and looked at Nihal, who’d listened in silence. “That baby was the last half-elf of the Overworld, the only survivor of an entire race. We decided to bring her to the Land of the Wind, where no one would be likely to notice her features.”
Nihal’s heart began to beat more quickly.
“She had big purple eyes, pointy ears, and blue hair. That baby was you, Nihal.”
A seemingly infinite silence descended over the room.
“But then … Livon …”
“Livon was an extraordinary man. When I brought you to him, he welcomed you without hesitation and swore to protect you with his own life. At first, we raised you together, but then things became more complicated. Reis left the Council. People began spreading rumors about me in Salazar, saying that I was a witch, and I had no choice but to move away. And so Livon raised you alone. He loved you like a daughter, Nihal. But you know that already.”
Soana reached out to caress the girl’s cheek, but Nihal angrily moved her head away.
“Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me anything at all?”
“Because we wanted you to live freely and without worries for as long as possible. For sixteen years, I let myself believe you might live a normal life. Reis saw something in you, something important for the future of the entire Overworld, something she chose not to tell me. I hoped she was wrong, I hoped you weren’t predestined for anything. But Reis has never yet made a mistake. I didn’t want you to find out like this. I’m so sorry, Nihal.”
But Nihal was no longer listening.
She was thinking about Livon. He wasn’t really her father, yet he’d dedicated his life to her, had even died to save her.
She was thinking about all the times she’d wondered about her mother.
She was thinking about her people, who no longer existed.
She was thinking about the massacre of an entire race.
That’s what those voices were, those dreams—a cry for revenge, for blood. And they were demanding it from her: the last one, the only survivor of an entire people and of Salazar. She would have preferred to die a thousand times at Livon’s side rather than find herself here in this bed, crushed by sorrow.
Soana brushed a strand of hair off Nihal’s forehead.
Then she stood and left the room without a word.
10
FLIGHT
Nihal spent the four days that followed in utter silence. She lay in bed and looked wordlessly out the window; the pain in her leg kept her company. She needed to think about things. It was as if she’d been thrown into someone else’s life. Until that moment, she’d woken in the morning to the sound of Livon’s hammer against steel, the sight of his back bent over his work. She’d gone to meet Soana, learned magic, talked about the future with Sennar. She’d taken her sword in hand, played at being a warrior, and looked optimistically to the future. In a second, everything had changed. She’d killed. Her sword was no longer a toy. She’d never see Livon again, except in her memories of him as a dead body on the ground. And it was all her fault.
Who had distracted Livon, driven by a lust for battle? She had. Who had acted like a child and treated death like a game? She had. She was the last survivor of a race the Tyrant had sought to eliminate; she was the danger. Wasn’t she the one the Fammin wanted to kill when they entered the forge?
Nihal felt like the agent of doom.
She had always thought her odd appearance was just one of nature’s quirks. Now it turned out to have a terrible significance. Her dreams had shown her in graphic detail what had happened, and she’d watched, a spectator to the annihilation of her people. Soana’s story had confirmed the events. That forgotten massacre had a terrible relevance for Nihal.
Every night during those four days, the voices of Nihal’s slaughtered race tormented her. They cried out for vengeance.
The last night, Nihal dreamt of the faces of her kinfolk, each one bearing down on her with despair, their mute gazes telling her that what had happened could never be put right. She saw Livon’s face among them. His eyes revealed a profound sadness as he whispered to her, “You’re the one who killed me. It’s your fault, Nihal.”
She woke up screaming and bathed in sweat. Sennar was immediately by her side.
“Another nightmare?”
Nihal nodded, short of breath. “I’m all alone, Sennar. I shouldn’t be here with the living. I should be with my people.” She looked out the window. “Why am I alive? Why did Livon die for me?”
Sennar had preferred to say nothing to Nihal up to then. He was convinced she had to find her own explanation. He remembered the soldiers who had tried to console him, how empty their words had felt. Silence was better. Now, though, at the sight of Nihal’s tears, he could no longer hold his tongue.
“I don’t know, Nihal. And I don’t know why the Tyrant killed all the half-elves. But now you’re here. And you’ve got to look ahead, for yourself and for Livon, because he loved you and he wanted you to be strong and happy.”
Nihal shook her head. “It’s so hard. I think of him all the time, all the things he did for me and especially of all the things I didn’t do for him. I keep telling myself over and over again that what happened is my fault. He was a real swordsman. He could have fought those Fammin. He could have made it. But I distracted him, and I killed him. I’m so stupid. I …”
Nihal burst into tears. She hadn’t shed a tear since the day of the battle. Sennar hugged her tight, the way he’d done that night in the Forest. That time felt like centuries ago.
The next day Nihal saw a small, frightened face through the window. It was Phos. Sennar let him in and he settled down on Nihal’s bed. It was some time before he began to s
peak.
After a few days of raiding throughout the Land of the Wind, the Tyrant’s army entered the Forest to stock up on wood. There, they’d discovered the wood sprites and set to hunting them down. It was terrible. Many were captured, many more killed.
Phos gathered together all the wood sprites he could and brought them to the only safe place left: the Father of the Forest. The minute the Fammin approached, the towering tree defended them by grabbing four or five of the horrible monsters by the neck with its branches and strangling them. The others fled. Phos and his companions hid for days until they could no longer hear the cries of the Fammin and the soldiers. When they came out from their hiding place, the Forest had been devastated and less than half of their population remained.
“Then I happened across Sennar. He told me about everything that happened, and I decided to come to you. I thought that maybe, if we cried together, we might feel better.”
The wood sprite began to sob. Nihal lifted him and held him against her cheek.
“Come on. You’ll explore and find a new land where you can live.”
“You don’t understand. We can’t leave. If they see us, they’ll capture us and then it will be all over.”
Sennar, who’d been listening quietly, interrupted. “Listen, Phos. We’re going to have to leave here soon. Soana is exhausted. She’s not going to be able to keep up the barrier much longer, and I’m exhausted, too. We’re going to go to the Land of Water, where Nihal will be safe. You can come with us. We’ll hide you. There are lots of wood sprites there. You can start over.”
Phos fluttered up from the bed and threw his little arms around Sennar’s neck. “Thank you. Thank you. Whatever can I do to repay you?”
“We need horses and ambrosia for the voyage,” said Nihal. “Otherwise, I’m afraid you’re going to end up leaving me behind.” Nihal was beginning to regain her wits.
They began preparing for the journey. It was decided that Sennar would wear the armor he’d stolen on the day of the invasion so as not to arouse suspicion. The group would travel along a hidden path Phos knew. All they had left to decide was the date of departure.