Then, with a great echoing groan, like the plates of the earth had been shoved out of alignment, the path before her cracked open. Tiny chasms snaked across the ground, widening like the swarming mouths of subterranean creatures eager for a kill.

Rielle’s stomach plunged to her toes. But there was no time to waste. She closed her eyes and jumped.

Her feet slammed to ground.

She opened her eyes. Still alive, still breathing.

She jumped and jumped again across the shifting patches of rock. The chasms widened; the ground quaked and jerked, trying to buck her off. A violent shudder threw her to the side. She fell—scraping her arm and knees raw—pushed herself up, and ran.

The air churned with shards of ice and rock. The avalanche blocked out the sun and sucked the air from the sky. The world above her was white and roaring; the world beneath her was coming apart like it must have done when God first breathed life into the universe.

I will not die here, she thought.

She pushed herself faster, her entire body on fire. Past the trees ahead there had to be a path to safety, ground too high for the avalanche to touch. If she could just make it a bit farther—

Then she saw the truth:

Beyond the trees, there was no path.

It was a sheer drop. A canyon—and no way across.

Her mind screamed that this was the end.

Her body decided to disagree.

“No,” she whispered.

No, agreed the voice. Not today. Not ever.

Rielle whirled around to face the roaring white snow-sea, planted her frozen legs on the cliff’s edge. She thrust her hands into the air and squeezed her eyes shut. Didn’t think anything, didn’t even think stop.

She threw up her hands, the solid heat inside her screaming No! more loudly than any voice or word ever could.

A narrow wall of rock, wide enough to shelter her, burst out of the ground before her and shot up into the air mere seconds before the avalanche slammed into it.

Rielle stood, head bowed and eyes closed, her hands pressed flat against the fast-rising rock, palms sparking against the stone like flint. The avalanche broke with a roaring howl on either side of her. The churning snow and rock scraped against her arms and feet, threatened to lift her up off the ground and fling her into the canyon.

Hold fast to the rock, said Rielle’s blood.

Hold fast.

And the narrow slab of rock seemed to listen. It stood tall, shaking against the force of the crashing avalanche. The air tasted sour, damp tendrils of mud-scented earthshaker magic straining to their limit as they whipped through the air.

A tiny flame of triumph unfurled between Rielle’s burning lungs.

They had tried to kill her, and they had failed.

They had crashed a mountain down atop her, and she had lived.

She stood trembling on the cliff’s edge, the same mountain that had tried to kill her now shielding her from itself.

“Please stop,” she whispered to the mountain. She didn’t blame it for being angry at such abuse. She pressed her cheek against the hot wall of stone, which now stood rigid like an ancient thing that had always existed on that spot—a queer pillar of rock, lonely and stubborn.

The tips of her fingers were aflame. If she kept this going much longer, her chest would crack open, her heart would burst, her lungs would give out.

“Please,” she whispered, each word an effort, “stop.” Exhausted tears leaked down her cheeks.

Then, whether it was a response to her plea or simply the moment Grand Magister Florimond decided enough was enough, the mountain eased itself back whole. The avalanche subsided; boulders dropped abruptly from the sky.

It was chaos to stillness in the span of five seconds.

A bird called out forlornly.

Rielle let herself fall, slumping at the foot of her rock. The snow was a cool pillow under her flaming cheek.

“Only six more,” she whispered, a watery smile playing at her lips, and then pain hit her all at once.

I’ll be here when you wake, said the voice, and some dim, spinning part of her tired mind whispered back, Thank you.

14

   Eliana

“Since our war with the humans began, I have had only one dream. Every night, the fog surrounding it lifts, and I understand more of what I see: a woman, made of gold brighter than the sun. She stands in a river of blood, and light falls from the ends of her hair. Is she friend or foe? This my dreams have not made clear to me. But I know this: she will come. In this war, or the next, she will come.”

—Lost writings of the angel Aryava

“I hear you’re a storyteller,” said Navi.

Eliana waited for Remy’s response.

Nothing.

For two days they’d been driving the horses north by night, hiding in tense silence when they heard signs of pursuing adatrox patrols, and then, from sunup to sundown, waiting in the trees for nightfall.

The moment they’d had a chance to rest, hiding in a ditch lined with reeking mud as the sun shone dangerously bright above, Remy had whispered, “What happened to Harkan?”

“He stayed behind to give us time to escape,” Eliana had told him, her voice carefully careless and her heart in shreds. “I left him instructions. He’ll catch up with us later—”

“Don’t lie to me. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

She couldn’t look at him. “Harkan? Come on, you know it takes more than a few adatrox to—”

“Shut up.”

“Truly, Remy. We can’t know for certain.” Even as she said the words, she couldn’t bring herself to believe them. “He could still be alive—”

“Please.” Remy had drawn his knees to his chest and turned away from her. “Just shut up.”

He had said nothing since.

Now, however, Navi seemed determined to make him speak.

“What kind of stories do you like to tell?” she asked.

Eliana, on first watch, leaned against a nearby silver oak, Arabeth in one hand and Whistler in the other. She glared into the forest. Slender silver oaks with faintly gleaming bark surrounded them, as did waxy-leaved, white-flowered gemma trees. Stout watchtowers, branchless save for frazzled-looking clusters at the top, stood lopsided throughout. They were popular along Orline’s outer wall, traditionally planted to ward off invaders, which Eliana found hysterical. She’d always thought they resembled old men with soft bellies and wild hair.

When she’d first told Remy that, he’d considered the tree nearest them, then put his nose in the air, bowed, and said to the tree, “Well met, good sir. Might I offer you a comb?”