“‘Magnifico nomen tuum, et faciem tuam ad quaerendam.’” Thy name to extol and thy favor to seek.
I could barely form the words. I had little awareness left of myself. It was hard to know which parts I needed to move—?I had no sense of mouth or lips or tongue with which to speak. Wind was whipping around the wall like a hurricane; I borrowed it. I bent the air to form the required sounds. Magnifico nomen tuum, et faciem tuam ad quaerendam. It wasn’t my voice but the melancholy whistle of the wind.
Zan dropped the match into the bowl, lighting the contents inside with a whoosh and a flash. In that instant I felt the power of the white-hot fire rise and join the wind, swirling into a burning column, carving a circle in the sky.
And then I saw them: the ley lines.
The world outside of Achlev was covered with dazzling streaks of white light. Right, left, back across . . . they wove like a net over the earth, everywhere except within Achlev’s Wall, around which they spun and spun . . . but even as I watched, the lines began to slowly dim; the wind began to wane.
“Don’t stop,” Zan commanded.
The blood in the bowl consumed Falada’s mane, turning the fire from gold to silver. I saw a vision of her, riding free across a great, misty moor. I felt her fierce pride, her exuberant joy, her wild passion. It was as if she knew that if she chose it, she could run fast enough to fly and join the goddess in the sky. She was Empyrean. She was magic. And she was going to give me everything I needed. Because she loved me. She trusted me. She didn’t use words, but I knew she was telling me that she wanted to help me, because Kellan would have wanted her to help me.
But then the fire sputtered. “Wait! Wait!” I begged. “I’m not done! Not yet!” I stepped out of the triquetra, chasing after the diminishing vision.
“What are you doing?” Zan asked as I dropped the bowl and spilled blood and ash in a line across the chalk drawing. “Wait, Emilie. Don’t!”
“I heal too fast,” I said in a daze, trying to hold on to the silver fire as it ebbed away. “The pain isn’t enough.”
All those other times I’d experimented with magic, it wasn’t pain I used to make it work. What had Simon said? Blood magic is rooted in emotion: the faster your heart beats, the faster your blood pumps. At home I never used magic without being terrified that the Tribunal would somehow find out. When I rescued my pregnant mother, I’d done so out of sheer desperation. When I’d burned my assailants in the streets of Achlev, it was to end their savage assault on my person. Out loud, I breathed, “Fear. I need to feel fear.”
I pushed Zan aside and ran for the battlement, clawing at the top of the merlon and hoisting myself upon it. Broken mortar crunched under my bare feet, and a few loose pieces of gravel tumbled into the yawning void below. I leaned out over the edge, remembering what it felt like to watch Kellan slip from my hands to his death, and my heart lurched into an angry, drumming rhythm. If I fell, I would die—?but my life wasn’t the one I feared to lose. The only way I could be frightened enough to finish this was to put the lives tied to mine on the line. I lifted my hand one more time and let the blood fall directly onto the battlement stone.
It worked, but I knew it would not be for long. Frantically, I reached across the void to where Falada was waiting for me. She bent her head and put her beautiful white muzzle into my bleeding palm. “Thank you,” I told her, drawing the silver light of her spirit into my hands. I took only what I needed and held it inside, letting it circulate and expand. Then I stretched my awareness and again found the fissure in the wall, and I salved it with Falada’s silver spirit. Almost there! I thought, but the fire began to fade again. My body was stopping the flow of my blood, and with it my access to the magic inside the wall—?I was clotting, binding, healing myself. I needed to be more scared. I leaned even farther out, standing on my toes . . .
“Emilie!” Zan said, catching my hand as I teetered there. “Emilie, don’t. It’s dangerous. Don’t!” He gave me an angry pull, and I tumbled from the edge into his waiting arms.
I was shuddering. I was covered in blood. But I’d failed. Failed.
“Are you all right?” His white collar was askew, his hair tangled, his eyes as dark as the black woods themselves. We stared at each other. And slowly, I lifted my bloodstained fingertips to his face, resting them softly against the line of his jaw. There was no sound.
“Not afraid of anything, are you?” Toris had asked me at the banquet in Syric. Everything, I’d thought. “Not anything,” I’d said.
Not afraid of anything, are you? I heard him ask again, an echo.
Yes, I answered.
Zan.
I’m afraid of Zan.
Everything slowed, stopped. We were alone in that fragile moment, suspended together in magic and light.
Then I closed my eyes and let go.
The last bit of power burst from me in a wave, rippling across the wall and filling the cracks like salve in a wound. When it was done, I collapsed into Zan’s arms. The magic was gone, leaving me empty and deflated and cold. And yet, as we held each other in breathless bewilderment, I was certain I’d never felt more alive.
19
I barely remembered getting home; the spell had sapped my strength completely. The only thing I could recall was the sound of Zan’s soft encouragement to put one foot in front of the other. “I can’t carry you,” he said, though the words were fuzzy in my memory. “Please, Emilie. Keep going. We have to do this together.”
The next morning I woke in my cot to a chorus of soft, syncopated taps that grew into a murmur. It was a familiar, comforting sound, and I drifted for a long while in the borderland between sleep and wakefulness, listening contentedly. Kate had done a goodly amount of work on my hut; the murky atmosphere and the smell of dust were gone, replaced by the scent of fresh garden flowers and rain-soaked pine.
It wasn’t until a second noise—?a hard, harsh pounding—?interrupted the first that I shook off the last dregs
of slumber. I sat up on my cot and saw that Zan was waking up too, rubbing his eyes as he pulled himself to his feet, papers scattering from his lap as he rose. It looked as if he’d fallen asleep while drawing by the hearth after helping me to bed. “What is that?” Zan asked in a creaky morning voice, dark circles under his eyes, soot stains on his fingers.
Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! I stumbled to the door and flung it open to find Nathaniel on the stoop, his clothes soaked through, rain slathering his hair onto his forehead.