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An irresistible force plucked them away from the islands and hurled them through a maelstrom of fire and smoke. Ilse heard a ragged scream—Valara, shouting curses to someone named Daya. Just as she thought they would be lost forever in the void, the world materialized around them and a cold wind struck Ilse in the face.
She crouched on a bare rocky plain. Her sword, dark with dried blood, lay beside her. She blinked. Her tears turned to ice. She brushed them away with one stiff hand and shaded her eyes. Snow whirled through the air. The sun was little more than a white disk hovering above the flat horizon.
Ilse drew a long painful breath. Her ribs ached. Her head rang with an echo of the shrieks and curses from the void. A rill of magic floated past, like a second current of wind, then vanished.
Where am I?
A dark mass huddled next to her—a woman, whose hair streamed loose in the wind. Valara.
Valara Baussay lifted her head. Her tattoos stood out sharply against her cheek and lips, now gray from the cold. She spoke, but her words made no sense to Ilse. The language was neither Veraenen nor Morennioùen. It reminded her of the old text from Károví that her brother, Ehren, brought home from Duenne’s University, a time and world so long ago, they could have been a previous life.
The wind shifted, carrying with it a hint of warmth, and the overpowering scent of magic. Ilse squinted. It was impossible to see more than a haze of white and gray. She rubbed the back of her hand over her eyes and blinked. Her vision cleared, and she gave an astonished cry.
A mile away from them, argentine cliffs rose tall and straight from the snow-dusted plain, a vast rippling curtain of stone that interrupted the smooth horizon. And like a curtain, there appeared a gap in the front, where dark sand and gravel spilled forth to the plains below. Above, the air shimmered, as though fires roared inside that fantastical creation.
It was like all the paintings and ink drawings she had seen in books. It was like her own memories of this place, from lives and lives ago.
The Mantharah and the Agnau.
She knew exactly where magic and the void had flung them, as if a map lay before her. They were in the far north of Károví, a hundred miles or more from Rastov. Oh, but this was more than some lonely mountain. Here the gods had feasted upon each other’s love. Here they’d fashioned the world, drawing out a never-ending ribbon of life from the Agnau’s molten stuff—from the magical creatures of Anderswar to the ordinary beasts and all mankind.
Wind blasted through her thin clothes. She shook Valara’s arm. “We can’t stay in the open,” she shouted. “We’ll take shelter over there.” She jabbed a fist toward the Mantharah.
Valara nodded dumbly, but gave no sign of comprehension. Ilse shook her again, hard. The other woman gave a gasp. She snapped her head up to face the Mantharah. Her eyes narrowed in awareness. And recognition.
Ilse didn’t need to say anything more. They helped each other regain their feet. Both of them were stiff and clumsy with cold. Ilse sheathed her sword. She drew her hands into her sleeves and tucked her chin into her collar. Valara scowled, as if she could subdue the cold with her fury, but she did the same. Heads bent against the constant wind, they stumbled toward the Mantharah and that narrow gap between cliff and cliff.
By the time they reached its ash-strewn slopes, Ilse’s face was numb. She caught a whiff of strong magic, of warmth, from above. She and Valara scrambled up through loose dirt and gravel, breathing in that incredible scent, as though spring had bloomed, invisible, just beyond their sight.
The sl
ope led up to a hard-packed crown of stone. From there, the cliffs swept around a lake of silver, its shore a perfect circle of ink-black sand, washed smooth by the Agnau’s waves, which rolled ceaselessly from shore to distant shore. Surrounding the lake, the cliffs rose straight toward the sky. Here and there in the silvery walls, Ilse saw shallow indentations, as though fingers had touched them before they had hardened.
The hands of gods.
It was all too much. She wanted to weep at the impossibility. She sat down hard on the ground and began to curse. Her mad outburst must have frightened Valara, because the other woman retreated farther along the Agnau’s shores.
“You.” Ilse scrambled to her feet and drew her sword. “You will tell me the truth, Valara Baussay. No more lies. I am sick to my soul with your lies. Sit over there.”
She pointed to a small, broken off boulder next to her—an anomaly in this strangely smooth and perfect setting. Valara glanced from the boulder to Ilse. “You want to kill me.”
“No,” Ilse said harshly. “I want to hear the truth for once. Sit. And speak.”
Gingerly, Valara took her seat on the boulder. Ilse remained standing.
“Where should I start?” Valara asked.
“With you and Leos Dzavek. No, with the jewel you found in Morennioù.”
Valara flinched. “Yes. That.”
She chafed her hands one within the other, as if searching for the words to begin her story. She still wore that plain wooden ring, Ilse noticed. It had turned darker over the past few days, and its polished surface took on a brighter gleam. A brother’s gift. A very strange one, much plainer than one would expect from a royal prince to his sister.
Valara met her gaze. Her lips quirked into a smile. “My ring. Or rather, Lir’s emerald. I called it a gift from my brother. In a sense, that is true. I would not have it except for him. Leos Dzavek, I mean. He is not my brother now, but he was, once.”
Ilse’s pulse took a sudden leap. She lowered her sword and stared at Valara, who glanced away. Of course. It explained so much. The magical storm that destroyed the three Károvín ships. Valara’s escape from Osterling’s prison. How she killed those soldiers with a powerful magic that seemed to surprise her as much as it did others.
It took her many moments before she could collect her thoughts and focus on the essentials. Even longer before she trusted herself to speak in anything resembling a rational tone.
