Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2) (5 page)

For now, I need to do this. When Stormwind comes back, I’ll return it to her. And if she doesn’t … well, perhaps I’ll still be able to give it to her. I add the gold necklaces to the pouch containing her diary and brooch and make my way back downstairs, clutching my prize.

With
Magical Wards and Defenses
propped open beside me, I untie the cord from the silver clasp and slide the beads off. They’re comparable in size and shape — elongated barrels, thicker at the center and thinner at the edges. Together, they make a truly beautiful necklace, but no one bead stands out from the others, so I take a knife and carve a ring around the center of one of the beads. I’m not quite sure what I’ll say to Stormwind about that.

With the first bead marked, I string them back on a different cord nearly six paces in length, tying a knot between each stone to space out their placement. I attach the silver clasp to the ends of the cord, creating a circle within which I can comfortably sit alongside my pack, or even curl up for a nap.

Finally, I set about creating a set of wards. At heart, the spells I’m weaving are no different than the valley’s wards, except I don’t need a warning as much as a shielding from hostile magic and protection from attackers. I want these beads to create a bubble around me that cannot be penetrated. I don’t know if I have the ability to manage this casting or not, but I’ll get as close as I can.

I work for nearly two hours layering my enchantments. I cast a simple shielding
,
strengthening it repeatedly until it can withstand a spell of the highest order. Then I stabilize the boundaries created by the shield to stop physical objects from passing through: arrows and swords and stones. By the time I accomplish this much, my eyes feel dry as dust and I have to blink often to keep my focus clear. There’s a faint ringing in my ears from the magic I’ve expended, and I have a new problem to contend with once I’m rested … the air I breathe within the wards might not naturally replenish itself.

I gather up the cord, looping it around my hand until it’s compact enough to stuff back into its pouch. That’s enough for now.

After a light lunch, I walk out to the lake and perch on a small boulder, staring out across the rippling waters. How had Stormwind managed out here alone day after day? What was she running from, what was so terrible that she chose to spend her years here in solitude?

I massage my temples, trying to ease the ache spreading behind my eyes. With the gentle autumn sun warming my shoulders and the wind whispering to itself across the lake, I feel sleep softly beckoning. All the magic-working has taken its toll. I stretch out beside the stone, turning my head to gaze out over the shimmering water.

Before long, I slip into a doze, my mind drifting along familiar paths, thinking now of Stormwind, then my mother, then Val. In the way of dreams, I find myself inexplicably somewhere else, my thoughts untroubled.

I stand at the stern of a good-sized ship. Two tall masts with slanted triangular sails rise at my back, the mark of a sea-faring dhow, built to navigate rough waters. Before me lies a city unlike any I’ve heard tell of before. The buildings are carved into two huge cliffs that face each other, forming a deep gorge above the rolling waves. The city is bounded by low-walled streets and sheltered by soaring cave roofs. The buildings must be built into caverns, though I cannot tell how deep they go. The city might just as easily hold a few thousand as a few hundred residents.

I shift, leaning against the rails. No— not
me
, but the man whose eyes I look through. I hold myself still, hovering beside his awareness, conscious now of the faint pressure of his thoughts, words that bear the sound of his voice:
home
and
barrier
and
trouble brewing.
I know the eyes I see through are amethyst in color, that the body I have slipped into isn’t human at all.

I’ve had dreams like this before, a handful of times. Each time I lost my hold on it before I could be sure of its reality. This time, I intend to stay as long as I can. I make myself small, keeping away from the thoughts that brush past me, light as the wings of moths.

The boards creak behind us. “It always looks better at a distance, doesn’t it?” The speaker, a man with light brown hair and peridot green eyes, steps up to the railing beside us. He gazes at the receding city with a mix of humor and contempt.

“Most things do,” the breather whose body I share replies blandly
,
his voice deeply familiar. I pull farther back, try to keep from speaking his name in my mind.

“Bah.” The man spits into the water. “I don’t know what we expected of them anyway.” He turns away. “I’m going under.”

Val nods. He glances to the side, and I see that the ship approaches a rocky shoal. As the ship shifts, the captain adjusting its course, a faint ripple crosses the deck. Val looks back at the city — but it’s no longer there. Blank cliffs run unbroken along the shore. The canyon is gone, the buildings hidden. The wide-open waters are rocky and unwelcoming now, waves crashing against jagged stones where a moment ago we sailed through calm seas.

Magic.
I think the word aloud without meaning to, awed by an enchantment so stable and powerful it can mask a whole city from sight.

I jerk awake as suddenly as if someone slammed a door in my face.

Stunned, I sit up, staring unseeing at the lake before me. The sunlight reflects off the water, burning my eyes. Only a dream. I rub my face, press my fingers into my eye sockets.

Except that I’ve had such dreams before.

“It’s not really possible,” I tell the mountain air. It’s wishful thinking, the hope that I could maintain some contact with the one other person I remember as well as Stormwind. No magic would allow as simple a connection as these dreams. There are those who learn to spirit walk, but that takes great training and even greater effort. I slip into these dreams, the five or six I’ve had, as easily as if I were stepping into the lake for a swim. One moment I’m dry, the next
,
immersed. Besides, if it
were
magic, Stormwind would have discovered me long ago.

“Just dreams,” I say to assure myself.

Neither the mountains nor the lake make any answer.

I spend the afternoon on the roof. Yesterday I repaired a third of the north face with its low overhang. Today, working much more quickly and with far less concern for detail, I finish mending the remainder of the north side. Stormwind and I had worked on the south face together, and I take only a few minutes to inspect our repairs. The roof will hold for the winter, whether we’re here or not, and I have more pressing concerns.

As evening sets in, I finish the last of my chores and settle in to read
Magical Wards and Defenses
, making note of the sections that might help me enhance my wards. I won’t be able to commit even a fraction of what I read to memory, but at least I’ll have gained a greater understanding of the various spells, and can select what I want to work on next.

I keep the mirror beside me as I work. Stormwind should have reached the portal at the nearest town, Sonapur, sometime today, but Stonefall will likely take her straight through to the portal to Fidanya. She won’t have a room to rest in, or the privacy to contact me, until very late. In all likelihood, she’ll wait till tomorrow. Still, I can’t help checking the mirror now and then.

Before I retire for the night, I gather up three of our daily-use glowstones, replenish their store of magic, and carry them up the ladder to tuck into my own daypack. Standing there in the magic-brightened cocoon of the loft, the house empty below me and charms and wards in my hand, I can no longer avoid the
why
of what I’m doing.

I don’t believe Stormwind will come back. Regardless of her innocence or guilt, Blackflame will not allow the possibility of losing.

There’s so much I don’t know, but this much is certain to me: Stormwind is gone. Without someone outside of the High Council to break her free, she’ll never return.

The only question left is whether I pursue her or follow her instructions to remain here, living alone and teaching myself. And when I can bear the isolation no more, will I go in search of a family I don’t know, and from whom I’ll always have to keep my talent a secret? How will I live with myself, knowing the choices I’ve made?

I curl up on my pallet, staring at the darkness until I slip into a dreamless sleep.

I spend the following day improving my string of wards and collecting dead wood from the forest. With our harvest already in, there’s little else to worry me other than caring for the animals. I find myself checking the mirror regularly as the day progresses, but no matter how often I look, it offers me nothing more than my own reflection.

As used to solitude as I thought I’d become, the silence left behind in Stormwind’s wake feels heavy and smothering. My movements sound overloud in the small confines of the cottage; the walls seem a little too close together. It’s funny how a home I considered cozy and comforting has so quickly become an eerie shell, made so only by the departure of a friend.

By the time I slide under my blankets, I know Stormwind should have reached the High Council. Once she was safe in her own room and had set her wards, she should have contacted me. But the mirror has been quiet all evening long. I lie on my side in the darkness, watching the pale blur of my reflection and trying not to worry.

But I have run out of excuses for why, even now, deep in the night, Stormwind has yet to appear in the glass.

The following day, I teach myself a smaller charm from my now-favorite book: smokers. I bind ash and smoke into a casing formed from an empty nutshell. Given my proclivity for fire, it hardly takes two tries to make one. When I snap it to the ground out by the lakefront, a dense black smoke pours forth in a forty-pace radius from where I stand.

I take a deep, untroubled breath, stretch one arm into darkest night, and begin a count until I can see again. Even with the gentle breeze blowing in over the lake, the smoke lasts surprisingly long. And, as my book had promised, it merely creates a visual barrier. I can’t see my own fingertips, but neither my throat nor my eyes react to the fog.

It provides the perfect cover for an escape, and even though it’s based in fire, it neither kills nor harms. I can allow myself this. By the time I’m ready to turn in for the night, I have a handful of smokers to add to my daypack.

I’ve kept the mirror by me all day, carrying it with me even into the goat byre and chicken coop, and now I lay it beside my pallet. It offers me nothing more than a glimpse of my own features. It isn’t long before I slip into a land of murky dreams.

I wake to the sound of a voice. “Hikaru?”

I jolt upright, blinking at the bright oval on the floor.

“Hikaru?” The voice is tinny but familiar.

“Mistress Stormwind?” I scramble to pick up the mirror. “Are you well?”

“Yes.”

She doesn’t look it. Her eyes are shadowed and her skin sags with exhaustion. She seems a different person from the hardy, confident woman with whom I’ve studied this past year.