“I make my own choices, Shrikeling,” he said, sparing me a half-smile. “Don’t feel guilt for what I decide to do.”
“Just ... you have to make it back here to your family,” I whispered, nervous suddenly. “Whatever happens to me, you need to promise you’ll get out safely.”
“Like I said, I make my own choices.”
And that was all he was willing to say. We walked the rest of the way to Essena in silence and with every step, I grew more and more nervous. What would be there on the other side of the gap? Would Essena betray us immediately, or wait until it was too late to escape? Acid filled my mouth, and I was glad I hadn’t eaten breakfast as my stomach twisted within me.
Relentless, Aella, be relentless.
I’d just had a sweet reminder of all the reasons I was fighting. I didn’t dare lose my nerve now.
Essena’s owl flew over us as we approached her – far too close for comfort. Its talons almost scraped my shoulders as it hovered there, and her smile was placid when we joined her – though it never reached her eyes.
“We should begin immediately. There are horses waiting for us on the other side of the gap,” she said smoothly.
“I thought you knew nothing about the Forbidding,” I said. I was trying to reconcile this Essena with the cool, informational Essena I’d known before the Forbidding caught our caravan near Vlaren, but it was hard to do. What had happened to her that day?
“You can learn so much in a single encounter with something, don’t you think?” Still, her smile didn’t touch her eyes.
When I’d entered the undertrails they had kneaded and folded me into more somehow. And again, in the tower, more of who I was had been teased to the surface. Had the same thing happened to Essena? Had she become more of herself and had it made her into this steely-eyed woman?
“How will the others get to where they are going?” I asked Abghar. “And how can we all get there in time?”
He looked at the Forbidding as we stepped toward the gap and his face held all the worry and wonder that I knew was on my own.
“All these years, and we never realized how powerful the magic of this place is. This thing we call the gap bends and folds time and space. It will take us to where we’re going, we just need to step in the right spot and this path marks that spot. There are other trails leading from the encampment that go to other gaps. Each party will take the right one. I have a map in my bag, but we don’t need it. It’s a simple thing to walk to the gap.”
“When Marcel led us in, we were a full day or more journey to Glorious Ingvar,” I said, eyeing the gap suspiciously.
“Yes,” he agreed. “When we enter the gap, we’ll take a turn, and it will bring us closer to the city.”
“I don’t remember any turns on the way here,” I said suspiciously.
“The things you don’t know and don’t remember could fill a very long book,” Essena said sharply. “You still have those bees buzzing around you willy nilly, despite my attempts to teach you control. They’re a clear sign to anyone watching that you still have a lot to learn – about magic and about the dark magic known as the Forbidding.”
“And are you going to teach me?” I asked wryly. “I would think that since you wanted me dead this morning, you wouldn’t waste your time.”
“I do not want you dead. Nor do I want you to remain ignorant,” she said in a voice so cold it could have been used to chill drinks in summer. But I didn’t believe her. She wanted something more from me than just stirring up the camp. She’d planned all this to get us away from everyone else. But if I was careful, perhaps I could keep her from getting what she wanted.
We set out on the path and immediately my stomach lurched as the path banked sharply to the side and then seemed to spiral over itself. I kept my eyes focused straight ahead and tried not to be ill as we followed in single-file down the path. What worried me even more than the nausea-inducing path was that the pain in my feather eased slightly as if my body were glad to be headed back toward Juste Montpetit.
I was greeted – as if the vision was summoned by that thought – with an immediate view from Juste’s honeycomb. He was walking down a line of Claws standing in military parade. They looked very crisp in their blue jackets with the white swans embroidered heavily across shoulders and chests. I barely had time to register more than the sheer numbers of them when I swayed back into my body again.
Abghar had me held by the elbow. “Are you hurt, Aella?”
“No,” I said with a gasp. “But if I stumble like that again, please keep my feet on the path. It happens from time to time.”
“If she’s going to faint, perhaps we should leave her here and carry on without her,” Essena said with mock sympathy in her voice.
“Leave her on the path in the gap?” Abghar’s tone made it clear that he’d never do that.
“It was only a kind suggestion,” Essena said and the little flicker of movement around her mouth told me she was testing him.
That wasn’t what had me worried. The sheer number of Claws he had assembled in Glorious Ingvar was what made me feel ill. How were we supposed to get around them and also avoid the curfew restrictions? There was no point in mentioning it. Aghar already knew we’d been sent on a quest that was more intended to kill us than to achieve anything, and Essena would gladly turn me over to the Claws in a heartbeat. Perhaps, we’d be lucky, and we could find a way to slip from her grasp on our way into the city.
After what felt like an hour, we reached a sprawling oak tree that was tangled by the Forbidding – its branches reaching out like waving tentacles and a huge hole in its trunk that seemed to almost dance and waver if you looked at it for too long. I noted the tree – and noted it again when we passed the exact same tree a second time. Abghar paused and turned us all around going back the same way we’d come.
“Are we lost?” I asked.
“That was the turn,” he said as if it was perfectly understandable to walk a distance and then turn and go back the same way. He looked at me sympathetically. “None of it makes any sense. But it works. You’ll have to trust me.”
I did trust him. And it wouldn’t have mattered if I didn’t. The Forbidding was whispering in the back of my head.
FOLD. BEND. FIND THE WAY. YOU ARE UNDER JUDGMENT.
I tried to ignore it, but it only grew louder as if the mind of the Forbidding was trying to reach me the way the tentacles had reached for me before.
A PIECE OF US IN EVERY HEART.
Another vision gripped me as I was still struggling to buck the voice of the Forbidding. I was just lucid enough to keep stumbling along with Abghar supporting me as my bee transmitted back to me what it was seeing.
Ixtap and his men were in that stone corridor again – waiting. One leaned against the stone wall, face upturned, chanting something in near silence. Another carefully cleaned his teeth with a carved bone pick. Ixtap had his eye to a tiny peephole. He was utterly silent. Watching. Waiting.
I almost jumped when he suddenly sprang into action. He jammed his hand against a protruding rock in the wall and that portion of it swung outward.
Without having to be ordered, his men fell in behind him and his snake poured from his hand, enlarging into a massive creature as it shot out from him into the decadent room beyond. He was almost as quick as it was, darting in behind on quick feet, head held high, arms raised up as if conducting a religious ceremony.