An Ember in the Ashes (An Ember in the Ashes 1)

As I pass them, their voices murmur secrets in my head—

My wife was pregnant—

I was sure I’d kill you first—

My father swore revenge, but died before taking it—I clap my hands over my ears. But the boy sees, and his clammy fingers pull mine away from my head with inexorable force.

“Come,” he says. “There are more. ”

I shake my head. I know exactly how many people I’ve killed, when they died, how, where. There are far more than twenty-one men on this battlefield.

I can’t have killed them all.

But we keep walking, and now there are faces I don’t know. And it’s a kind of relief, because these faces must be someone else’s sins, someone else’s darkness.

“Your kills,” the boy interrupts my thoughts. “They’re all yours. The past. The future. All here. All by your hand. ”

My hands sweat, and I feel lightheaded. “I—I don’t—” There are scores of people on this battlefield. Well over five hundred. How could I be responsible for the deaths of so many? I look down. There’s a lanky, fair-haired Mask on my left, and my stomach sinks because I know this Mask. Demetrius.

“No. ” I bend down to shake him. “Demetrius. Wake up. Get up. ”

“He can’t hear you,” my first kill says. “He’s gone. ”

Beside Demetrius lies Leander, blood staining his halo of curly hair, trickling down his crooked nose and off his chin. And a few feet away, Ennis—another member of Helene’s battle platoon. Further ahead, I spot a mane of white hair, a powerful body. Grandfather?

“No. No. ” There isn’t another word for what I’m seeing, because something so terrible shouldn’t be allowed to exist. I bend next to another body—the gold-eyed slave-girl I’ve only just met. A raw red line cuts across her throat. Her hair is a mess, snaking out every which way. Her eyes are open, their brilliant gold faded to the color of a dead sun. I think of her intoxicating smell, like fruit and sugar and warmth. I turn on my first kill.

“These are my friends, my family. People I know. I wouldn’t hurt them. ”

“Your kills,” the boy insists, and the terror inside me grows at the sureness with which he speaks. Is this what I will be? A mass murderer?

Wake up, Elias. Wake up. But I cannot wake, because I’m not asleep.

The Augurs have somehow brought my nightmare to life, unrolled it before my eyes.

“How do I make it stop? I have to make it stop. ”

“It’s already done,” the boy says. “This is your destiny—it is written. ”

“No. ” I push past him. The battlefield has to end eventually. I’ll get by it, keep going through the desert, get out of here.

But when I reach the edge of the carnage, the ground lurches and the battlefield stretches out ahead of me again it its entirety. Beyond the battlefield, the landscape has changed—I’m still moving east through the desert.

“You can keep walking,” the disembodied whisper of my first kill brushes across my ear, and I start violently. “You may even reach the mountains. But until you conquer your fear, the dead will remain with you. ”

This is an illusion, Elias. Augur sorcery. Keep walking until you find your way out.

I force myself toward the shadow of the Serran Range, but every time I reach the end of the battlefield, I feel the lurch and see the bodies spread out before me yet again. Every time it happens, it gets harder to ignore the carnage at my feet. My pace slows, and I struggle to stumble on. I pass by the same people over and over, until their faces are burned into my memory.

The sky lightens and dawn breaks. Second day, I think. Go east, Elias.

The battlefield grows hot and fetid. Clouds of flies and scavengers descend. I shout and attack them with my dagger, but I can’t keep them away.

I want to die of thirst or hunger, but I feel neither in this place. I count 539 bodies.

I won’t kill so many. I tell myself. I won’t. An insidious voice in my head chuckles when I try to convince myself of this. You’re a Mask, the voice says.

Of course you’ll kill so many. You’ll kill more. I run from the thought, willing with my entire mind to break free of the battlefield. But I cannot.

The sky darkens, the moon rises. I cannot leave. Daylight again. It’s the third day. The thought appears in my head, but I hardly know what it means.

I was supposed to do something by now. Be somewhere. I look to my right, at the mountains. There. I’m supposed to go there. I force my body to turn.

Sometimes, I talk to those I’ve killed. In my head, I hear them whisper back—not accusations, but their hopes, their wants. I wish they would curse me instead. It’s worse, somehow, to hear all that would have been had I not killed them.

East. Elias, go east. It’s the only logical thing I can think. But sometimes, lost in the horror of my future, I forget about going east. Instead, I wander from body to body, begging those I’ve killed for forgiveness.

Darkness. Daylight. The fourth day. And soon after, the fifth. But why am I counting the days? The days don’t matter. I’m in hell. A hell I’ve made myself, because I am evil. As evil as my mother. As evil as any Mask who spends a lifetime relishing the blood and tears of his victims.

To the mountains, Elias, a faint voice whispers in my head, the last shred of sanity I have. To the mountains.

My feet bleed, and my face cracks from the wind. The sky is below me.

The ground above. Old memories flit through my head—Mamie Rila teaching me to write my tribal name; the pain of a Centurion’s whip tearing into my back that first time; sitting with Helene in the wilds of the north, watching as the sky swirled with impossible ribbons of light.

I trip over a body and crash to the ground. The impact shakes something loose in my mind.

Mountains. East. Trial. This is a Trial.

Thinking those words is like pulling myself from a pool of quicksand. This is a Trial, and I must survive it. Most of the people on the battlefield aren’t dead yet—I just saw them. This is a test—of my mettle, my strength—which means there must be something specific I’m supposed to do to get out of here.

“Until you conquer your fear, the dead will remain with you. ”

I hear a sound. The first sound I’ve heard in days, it feels like. There, shimmering like a mirage at the edge of the battlefield, is a figure. My first kill again? I stagger toward him but fall to my knees when I’m just a few feet away. Because it is not my first kill. It’s Helene, and she is covered in blood and scratches, her silver hair tangled as she gazes at me with empty eyes.

“No,” I rasp. “Not Helene. Not Helene. Not Helene. ”

I chant it like a madman with only two words left in his mind. Helene’s ghost comes closer.

“Elias. ” Skies, her voice. Cracked and haunted. So real. “Elias, it’s me. It’s Helene. ”

Helene, on my nightmare battlefield? Helene, another victim?

No. I will not kill my oldest, best friend. This is a fact, not a wish. I will not kill her.

I realize in that moment that I cannot be afraid of something if there’s no chance it could ever occur. The knowledge releases me, finally, from the fear that has consumed me for days.

“I won’t kill you,” I say. “I swear it. By blood and by bone, I swear it. And I won’t kill any of the others, either. I won’t. ”