“It’s judgment,” Frali said, shaking her raven hair and looking back at the small tangled mass that had once been a pool. “We have it deep in our hearts and we have it manifesting in the earth itself. A judgment on us for how we have walked on this earth.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense, Frali.”
My voice was deep and rumbling.
“Doesn’t it? We drove out all magic except that of the snake. We plucked mothers from children. Fathers from homes, never to return. We took all they owned and all they were and joined it to us.”
“For good reason. All manifestations except snakes are abominations. And in other lands they do this. I have heard of one where they only manifest birds!” I shuddered at the thought.
“And now the earth has manifested,” Frali said as if I hadn’t even spoken. “It has manifested something to take back from us what we took. Or maybe just to take everything from everyone. All that pent up magic unloosed in the earth is angry. It wants to be let out to make and to heal, to rend and to create.”
“Can you stop it?” I asked as the pool reached out and began to slowly wave its tentacles toward one of the trees growing along its edge. Already, it had conglomerated on a living tree until that tree was nothing but darkness and tangles like the pool.
“I can possibly manipulate it – for now – find ways to help us travel through it – to use it and be unaffected by it. Channel it into great works, maybe. But I cannot stop it. I can’t see a way to do it.”
“We could burn it.”
“You know that’s only temporary. We burned this pool seven days ago and now it is alive again.”
I shook my head. “There has to be some way to stop it. Some way.”
She began to shake her head but then her eyes rolled back into her head as they did when sometimes, the prophecy took her, and she said, “The joining of wing and snake shall be the end of the curse. From their pairing shall judgment be finally met, the price taken, the world set ablaze. From the crowning of the Adder and the Wing, and the spilling of their blood upon the heart of the tangle – one payment for guilt, one sacrifice to make us whole.”
I surfaced, shaking my head of the memory, gasping at what I’d seen – at what that ancestor of the Hissan had said. I didn’t fully understand, but the talk of payment, and judgment, and sacrifice worried me. I bit my lip.
I realized I was kneeling, facing Juste. He had his hands on both my arms, steadying me. He must have dropped me into this position while the memory rocked me. The Skybinder stood over us, intoning a blessing as the choir continued their wordless song.
“You remembered something,” Juste said, his face very hard for someone who was getting everything he wanted.
“Where did your new crown come from?” I whispered.
“It was crafted for the Adder,” he said, his eyes alight. “According to the specifications given to me by Ixtap before we parted.”
That meant that he, Juste Montpetit, Le Majest of the Winged Empire, had been led on a merry chase by the Hissan. I wasn’t sure exactly what the crown might do. It might kill him, leaving Ixtap to snatch up both the Winged Empire and the Far Stones. It might destroy the Forbidding – something I desperately needed right now with my family at its mercy. It would likely kill us both – based on the words of the prophecy I’d heard. I could warn Juste. Perhaps I even should.
I pressed my lips tightly together.
The wordless choir soared and above us, the Skybinder said, “And so, we honor you as our lord and emperor. May clear skies favor you and the land show you peace. May the sea calm for you and the people bow before you. And all the people said?”
And around us, the crowd replied, “Le Majest!” as they made the sign of the bird.
Juste’s shoulders went just a little further back.
I should warn him. I should say something.
I bit the insides of my lips to keep them closed.
This was clearly a trap from the Hissan. And I didn’t know what it might do or who it might hurt.
And yet, I wanted so badly to see him destroyed, to see him ruined forever, to see all this evil collapse in on itself. The fury I thought had abandoned me began to buzz again. With it, I could feel the hum of my bees. They were near. They were ready.
“And we also crown your empress, subservient to you, ruler under your rule, joining together for the first time, land and air.”
They laid the crowns on our heads at the same time and I said not a word.
Chapter Twenty-One
WIND TORE THROUGH THE city, whirling through the crowd, carrying the brackish scent of the sea with it. There was a cry as one member of the chorus fell from the dais and above us, the Skybinder swayed in the wind. The strength of it nearly bowled me over, snatching my breath from me. Juste surged to his feet, pulling me with him. But he was looking in the wrong direction, facing the wind that came from the south of the city, when he should have been looking north through the city gate to where the Forbidding suddenly stilled.
I felt the voice in my head before I heard it.
JUDGMENT HAS COME WITHOUT MERCY.
And then everything was fire.
It seared across my vision and sent me to my knees. With it, my bee sent a frantic vision of Raquella, running through the Forbidding trail, the flames licking at her heels. It flicked to Osprey, eyes wide, mouth hanging open as the tentacles he was battling morphed into flame. It leapt to Ixtap looking out from the high towers of Kestrel City at the flames curling on the edge of the horizon.
Fire. Fire. Fire.
Heat.
Pain.
More fire.
I opened my eyes and Juste was shaking me.
“What have you done? What have you done?”
What had I done? I’d let him crown himself even though I knew it was a trap. Because I’d thought he was the only one who could be hurt by it. Shock left me wooden and paralyzed.
I opened my mouth, but no words came out of me.
Juste slapped me across the face – hard – and I fell forward without meaning to, my face slamming against his chest – my cheek right over where his feather was embedded.
Had I imagined it, or had it flared with warmth? Perhaps it was just the flames.
He shoved me off and I struggled to get up with my hands tied firmly behind my back. I was facing the gate side of the dais and the horror on the faces there seared me as much as the bright light of the flame did. People ran up and over each other like ants escaping their hill. The back row of seats was nothing more than ash and dust as the flames licked toward us.
Behind me, Juste was bellowing orders – orders for firefighting, orders to seal the gate, orders for those on the wall. His voice sounded frantic over the voices of so many others. No one was still. No one was waiting for anyone else to move.
My heart felt like it had stopped in my chest. Raquella. Osprey. My other siblings. The children.
Oh stars and skies, the children!
I was praying without knowing it, my lips flowing through the old prayer.
“Skies have mercy. Skies grant them peace. Hand of the almighty shelter them.”
My vision stuttered and I was seeing through my bee’s frenetic lens. He was trying to keep Raquella in view even as the flames licked at him. She sprinted just ahead of him, her back bright orange as the flames crept closer and closer. And then suddenly she was snatched up into the sky, talons wrapping around her shoulders.