Bloodleaf (Bloodleaf 1)

“Yes,” he answered. “Imagine how different Achlev would be without it—?think of all the art and thought and innovation we’ve missed out on because of it.”

“And danger,” I said. “A wall is protection, too.”

“And yet, the greatest threat this city has ever faced came from within, not from without.”

“Is it done, then?” I ventured. “Was Dedrick arrested?”

“Most of the guards had gone with the king to hunt, but I was able to recruit—?which is to say, bribe—?a few of those who remained. When they went to retrieve him, he was still in the sanctorium, just like you said he’d be. Your spell held true; they couldn’t get him out until he was good and chained. He’s being held in the dungeons tonight. I plan to question him tomorrow. If I have my way, he won’t make it to the next Petitioner’s Day. Whoa, there.”

The toe of my shoe had caught on a gnarly root, but Zan caught my hand before I fell. He eyed a new red-dotted bandage around my palm.

“Casting spells without me?” he asked.

“Are you going tell me that I shouldn’t?”

“I know better than to tell you what to do and what not to do.”

“It was for Nathaniel and Ella,” I said. “It wasn’t a spell, exactly,” I said. “It was more like . . . like a prayer. For them to find peace now that Kate is in the arms of the Empyrea.”

He agreed. “Let them have peace even if we cannot. I’ll never forgive myself. For choosing to follow the king when I knew it was wrong.”

“If there’s blame to be had, I must share in it. I figured it out too late.” I sighed. “I practically walked her to Dedrick’s front door.”

We stopped at an impression in the steep hillside, an opening like a cave. Ducking into it, he said, “We’re here. Follow me.”

It wasn’t a cave after all, just a short, shallow walkway that quickly widened into a meadow sheltered on all sides by mountain stone, open to the sky. The fog swirled around my feet as I ventured into the moonlit circle. Everywhere I turned, there were markers standing like pylons in drifting eddies of fog. There was no pattern to the placement or materials used—?some were stone, some moldering planks, and there were even a few roughly hewn statues. Still others were simply mounds, their adornments long lost to time. But unlike Renaltan graveyards, where spirits wait and wander among the ostentatious tombs, this place was quiet—?no sounds or souls stirred.

“Nobody is buried here,” I said, turning and turning again. No spirits meant there were no bodies. This was a place made to comfort the living, not to house the dead.

“That’s true,” he said. “On the old maps, this was called ad sepulcrum domini quod perierat, the Tomb of the Lost.” He gazed across the fog-shrouded shrine. “The city of Achlev has always burned its dead. It’s meant to hasten a person’s spirit into the arms of the Empyrea, and it’s considered a great honor to receive such a sendoff. But during the wars, there was not always a body to burn. For the noblest soldiers, a raft was burned empty. For the very poor, or the prisoners of war, or the ones who died by their own hands instead of the enemy’s . . . there was simply nothing done or said to honor their life—?imperfect as it may have been—?or mark their passing. They were just . . . gone.”

“The Lost,” I said.

He nodded. “And to the bereaved, being unable to have their loved one acknowledged was unbearable. So they came here, made their own rituals of goodbye, placed their own markers to honor their dead. Often at night, often alone . . . always in secret.”

“There are no names on any of these.”

“To place an unsanctioned marker for the disfavored here—?or anywhere inside the wall—?could bring a great fine or worse. They left off names so that if this place was discovered, there was nothing that could be traced back to them, so they couldn’t be punished for what might have been viewed as an act of rebellion.”

“But the kings let the stones stay?”

“If they knew, they looked the other way. When the war eventually ended, so did this method of mourning the dead, and the custom became as lost as the people it was created to remember. And yet this place endures.” He unfolded the portrait of Kate and handed it to me.

I found a nice spot near the edge of the hollow and knelt, laying Kate’s picture down gently and carefully pinning it in place with a stone. Tendrils of mist curled and cradled it for several long moments before drifting back into place over the top of it. Kate’s visage disappeared like the sun behind storm clouds.

Returning to my feet, I noticed another marker nearby. A thin slab of slate that had been placed upright into the ground so that it looked like a headstone. Scratched coarsely into it was the shape of a bird like the Silvis raven, but delicate and white. A dove.

The stone, unblemished, stood out from the rest. All the others had been in place for two hundred years at least, and even without rain or wind or snow, time had still taken a toll on them. Not this one, though; it was new in comparison.

“This one is yours, too,” I said. “Isn’t it?”

Softly, he replied, “I was sick when my mother died. Unconscious, near death myself. She took her own life, so she was not given an Achlevan funeral. She was buried in a shallow, unmarked grave in the forest outside the wall before I ever knew she was gone. To this day, I don’t know where she rests.?

? He took a deep breath. “She was everything that was good about my miserable childhood. She would draw with me, read with me, study maps with me. This was one of the last places we discovered together, before I was too sick to leave my bed.”

I knelt next to the slate marker. The bird etching was rough, rudimentary. I swallowed, reaching to trace the grooves. “Who helped you place the stone? Was it Simon?”

“Simon was not always around. His duties as a blood mage often kept him away.” He shook his head. “It was just me. I was seven.”