Dawn of Ash (17 page)

I watched the perfect recall of those moments play again: Edmund and Joclyn beside the wells of Imdalind, Joclyn fighting, the blood, the screaming. I watched in horror before I began to act, letting my magic take control and infect the sight, to change it, as I had so many times before.

The image of her and Edmund standing beside Imdalind was now Edmund drowning her inside the muddy waters. The boy fighting was now the boy dying. Some little girl I did not recognize running to Joclyn in help was now the child running to her with a knife.

One after another, I changed them, intertwining them with the image of Ovailia standing in the snow, her caped companion changing from one person after another—from Wyn to Ryland to Risha to Ilyan.

A sight that was so perfectly clear before was now nothing more than the maze she had learned to fear.

I could already feel her alarm as the sight crippled her, the image becoming more twisted as her magic tried to rebel against the changes, rebel against the ironclad lock I was placing on it.

“Here is where it starts again.”

I twitched, jumping away from her as though I had been burned.

I had heard that voice before when I had pulled Dramin from the mud, when the sight had crippled us both, and he had started crying for the first time.

You have done the wrong.
The same words echoed again as Joclyn collapsed in an unconscious dead weight right into Risha. The woman held onto Joclyn’s tiny frame for dear life, afraid she would fall to the ground, and by the way she held her, I could tell it was a real possibility.

“What is it?” she exclaimed, obviously concerned. “What happened?”

It took me a moment to realize the question was directed at me and not Joclyn.

“She had a sight,” I said, my fear still running through me in a numb reality I didn’t want to accept.

“What was it?” Risha asked, the panic in her voice pulling me out of my own and right to the powerful woman before me and the realization I might be able to get more information out of Risha with Joclyn out of commission.

“Is she okay?” Risha asked when I didn’t answer, her hands pressing against her skin in an obvious desire to heal her or to figure out what was wrong before they flew off again.

At first, I thought she was hurt, but in reality, she was only concerned about “touching” her precious queen in such a way.

It was kind of disturbing. The level of regality the girl had obtained was such that even Ilyan’s second was afraid to touch her.

Who knew, maybe she was afraid of her.

Perhaps she was.

Perhaps it was something else I could use to my advantage.

“Yes, she’s going to be fine,” I lied, knowing my plans would deter that. “Sometimes, this happens after an especially intense sight.”

“She’s been having them an awfully lot lately—”

“I know.”
I have been helping that along.
“They seem to be doing her some damage.”

“Why don’t you pass out after your sights?” She looked away from Joclyn, her terror easing a bit as she looked at me in wonder.

The awe I had missed so much over the years flooded through me in a heavy reminder of why I was doing all this, of the rightful place due to me, and the respect I was missing.

“Because I know how to control my magic. Drak magic can be powerful, and if you are not strong enough, it can destroy you.”

“Is that what’s happening?” Risha asked, concerned. “Her magic is destroying her?”

“I believe so. Normally, I can help my people, help them restrain their magic, but she won’t let me. She knows what the vision about the end says, and she’s trying to change it. It makes all her sights unreliable when she goes against one like that. When she doesn’t listen to her magic, it destroys her ability.” Yet another little lie, yet another worried glance.

My lips trembled, though I tried to stop the grin. At least I was able to restrain it before it turned into a full smile, before the sweet taste of victory beat against my tongue.

“Did she have a sight before?” I asked as innocently as I could, my head spinning slightly at the prod of a sight I would never let come.

“Yeah”—she was hesitant—”right when she and Ilyan came back … She couldn’t really stand—”

“It was the same sight,” my voice growled as I looked at her, the hatred for her coming back even in her partially unconscious state. “I saw it as she did.”

“Did you see it then?” Her eyes narrowed at me in suspicion, a question behind the words I didn’t quite understand.

I didn’t know what I had said wrong, but my guard went up, my eyes narrowing a bit as I tried to decipher where this was going.

She stood before me, staring at me, her mind pulled from the unconscious child she still held.

“See what?” Better to feign my innocence again.

“The sight … Did you see it when you were with the kids?”

And there it was. I was sure Risha had no idea why Joclyn had been so concerned with my whereabouts; I could see that much on her face. Regardless, she knew Joclyn was, and therefore, she was going to take every chance she could to find out the information Joclyn could not.

“My sight is not hindered by her inability. I can control what sights come to me, and I was with the children. It was not the right time to see.”

Risha glowered at me, her eyes hard, all thoughts of the injured girl she held gone.

I had never liked Risha before. Through all those years, she had acted more like a spoiled brat than the powerful Skȓítek she was. Right then, though, I was sure Ilyan had chosen wisely for his second.

She hadn’t missed anything.

At least I had been able to plant a seed of doubt within her, and considering the questioning light in her eyes, it was already starting to take hold.

“I don’t know what either of you are getting at, but I was helping the Chosen with their futures. I was here. I don’t have anywhere else to go. I don’t have anywhere else I
can
go.” I had tightened my jaw as I looked at her, waiting for her to say something, when a sudden pulse of powerful magic alerted me to the arrival of someone I really didn’t want to see. Luckily, I had already stepped into an easy escape.

“Now, if you will excuse me,” I growled like a lion, stepping around Risha and my invalid daughter, determined to put as much space between me and them before Ilyan’s arrival. “You should see that she makes it to someone who can help her.”

It was harsh, but right then, I didn’t care.

I needed those seeds to grow, and I would do anything to make sure it happened.

Tension had wound through the room in an anxiety so thick it was hard to breathe. In fact, I wasn’t certain if anyone was breathing. I wasn’t.

I sat still, my old body sagging against the headboard of my bed. Stagnant air pressed against my skin while the dim, red light faded to a deep black as the sun set.

Everyone stood around the tiny room Thom and I shared, refusing to make eye contact. Each of us was lost in the new development Ilyan had thrown at us. Not that it should be surprising; it was one more thing to add to the list of many.

I wished I could solve this new, more complicated problem. I wished I could see where it was leading us. Nevertheless, all of that had been gone for months. I knew as well as everyone here that it wasn’t going to come back, just like the tension and fear and war weren’t going to leave any time soon.

“So, when you say this …
person
… stuttered…” Ryland began as he leaned against the wall, the muscles in his arms tensing from where he had folded them over his chest.

“We saw him, Ry,” Joclyn retorted, her voice strong from where she sat at the foot of my bed. “Just as Ilyan said, I couldn’t find his magic after that, so either he moved through the wall, or he found some secret world within a stutter that neither Ilyan nor I know about.”

“That’s what you said before—”

“Then why are you asking again?” Joclyn snapped, the old metal frame of my bed groaning as she shifted her weight.

She was getting agitated, something not missed by Risha who looked between Ryland and Joclyn in obvious worry.

Ilyan took a step closer to her, his hand wrapping around hers in a deep connection that warmed the room. As if it wasn’t warm enough.

Joclyn had come to my room hours before, half carried by Risha as she dropped her on the foot of my bed. I would have been more concerned for her well-being if she hadn’t been fuming about “stupid sights” and “stupid fathers.” Even though she had been weak, she had recovered quickly enough. That was probably more thanks to her stubborn temper than actual well-being. We should probably be glad she was merely agitated now.

Then again, without that stubborn temper, I wouldn’t be alive to witness this conversation, something I was still torn over. After all, we had seen my death in the very first sight she received, and yet, there I sat. Despite everything Tatínek had taught me about the infallibility of our gift, despite everything I had thought I knew about our magic, I was here.

“Can we just say this mysterious, cloaked person got caught in some other dimension?” Wyn mused acidly before Ryland had a chance to retort, leaning her head against Thom’s headboard with a thud. “If only to get Ryland to stop asking the same thing again and again?”

“I’m not asking the same question again and again,” Ryland snapped, his voice hard as his focus jolted to Wyn, who raised her eyebrows in some kind of challenge I didn’t understand.

The two glared daggers at each other, fueled by the tension in the room, and I seized, my muscles clenching painfully throughout my back.

“He’s asking questions as a good leader should,” Risha interrupted.

“As we all should.” Ilyan’s loud, commanding voice took over the conversation with a snap, causing Ryland to collapse back against the wall with one look from Ilyan, his focus drifting back down to his shoes.

It was as if the whole room took one, big sigh with the end of the standoff, the tension releasing ever so slightly. Thankfully, my body didn’t feel so much like it was smothered by a pile of rocks.

Ilyan’s shoes snapped against stone in the suddenly silent space, the ribbons of light dimming as he moved back to the center of the room, the place he always occupied during these meetings. I only wished this meeting had been like all the others, not an emergency council held in secret, or rather, held without Sain.

We were holed up in this tiny room, one of our usual numbers conspicuously missing. Even without sight, I already had an idea where this was going.

“So this man,” I began, my hands wrapping tightly around the old, earthen mug I held, “you are sure he works for your father?”

“I don’t see any other reason for someone to avoid us except to move through the barrier,” Ilyan answered in Czech, his voice growing deeper as he switched to his native tongue. “I don’t see how they could know
how
to move through the barrier unless they were.”

I nodded, knowing he was right. I heard Wyn ask some question about motive, but I stared into the dry and cracked bottom of the mug, silently wishing I had the ability to fill it myself, that the next question would never come.

“—and he’s one of us,” Wyn finished her thought, her voice drifting away as she avoided the obvious.

Too bad I wouldn’t.

“You believe this cloaked man to be Sain.” It wasn’t even really a question.

I didn’t often get nervous, or I hadn’t for all my life until a few months ago. Right then, as I sat with a dozen eyes on me, the solitary sound in the room that of Wyn’s heavy breathing and Ryland uncomfortably shifting his weight, I was positive my heart was going to explode out of my chest and do some sort of twisted tap number for them all to see. Nerves and anxiety were a new addition to a life without sight, it seemed. Much like Black Water.

Luckily, Joclyn understood my need for the latter. Her hand extended toward me in a silent request for the mug. Her face was torn between sympathy and anger that I had already made the connection about why our father wasn’t here, not that it was hard to miss. Sain had never missed a war meeting before; I was just the first one to put voice to it.