The questions were a joke, and not a funny one. I had taken a running leap onto this path the second I’d sought knowledge from hags, thinking I could outsmart them. If it turned out my descent was a steep downhill slide, I had no one to blame but myself. Maybe once I had the power arcane, I would kill the hags myself and take up residence in their disgusting lair. Maybe five hundred years from now, I would be the evil archmage some group of adventurers murdered for glory.
I closed my eyes and remembered the power of the orrery and the feeling of the universe unfolding at my whim. It had been so vast, so . . . ineffable. No life meant anything compared to that. If I had starved and gone homeless for the party tricks they taught at the Regia Arcanum, was it such a stretch that I’d pay for the cosmic magic of the power arcane with a few random lives? Not so much. Would it be any consolation to them if I swore to avenge them as soon as I got what I sought? Probably not.
If only I’d been able to find the artifact, or even ask about it without the hags torturing me from a distance. Or ask about it without my companions immediately realizing I had knowledge I shouldn’t, which would most likely lead to Talsar or Firenza to murdering me. There was just no way out of this. I’d heard that hags took joy in corrupting people, especially people who prided themselves on their morals or wits. Having few morals, I thought I was beyond corruption already.
I had been wrong. They could corrupt me—and they had. They had won.
There was a slight rustle—something Talsar did on purpose when he reentered camp so he didn’t scare the living daylights out of the rest of us. Half a second later, he stepped into the little clearing like he’d materialized out of leaf and shadow.
“The top of the hill and the village are about a fifteen-minute climb from here. There are two ogres and four trolls patrolling this side, but they haven’t cleared the trees around the wall at all, so there’s plenty of cover. Our best chance is a crack large enough to slip through about a quarter of the way around hidden by some close-growing trees. That’s where you got in, Adeline?”
I nodded.
He met each of our gazes in turn. “All right. Let’s do this.” He lingered on Firenza. “Just remember, be quiet.”
Firenza grimaced.
We stuffed our packs in a hollow log, each person taking only the essentials, which meant weapons for most, my spell components and book for me, and the little bag full of gears and tools Ezo was never without. I wondered briefly if the artifact the hags wanted so badly had been left behind, but I didn’t think so. I didn’t know if they’d ever had what the hags wanted at all. Maybe, after the hags killed all of them and turned on me, they would reveal that it had been a sick joke designed to teach me, too late, the extent of my own hubris.
Single file, we followed Talsar up the hill, trying to step where he stepped. None of us were silent, but we managed well enough. The forest was so overgrown that I didn’t realize we were near the wall until Talsar stopped.
“The opening is behind that stunted willow.” He pointed, and the misty middle distance between a few trees, maybe thirty feet away, resolved into the inorganic straight lines of stone stacked upon stone, which rose about twenty feet into the air. The willow was a dark, drooping shape next to it, but I remembered.
Rain dampened the sound of my labored breathing as I edged along the wall. I hid from the guards in the willow and nearly cried when I discovered a crack concealed there plenty large enough for a halfling girl to slip through. My fingers scrabbled at freezing, wet stone as I tried to climb high enough—
“The guards patrol between here and there,” Talsar’s voice cut through the memory. “We wait for the next one to pass, then go quiet and quick. Adeline, are there wards?”
I closed my eyes and shot off a spell to reveal magic. There was none. Either the hags hadn’t bothered to redo the wards I’d undone on my first desperate journey, or they were making this easy on purpose. For theater’s sake, I nodded, reached into my pouch, and made a show of casting something that was definitely not a spell.
“That should take care of it,” I said.
“Thanks, Adi,” Firenza whispered. She thumped me on the back, and only Ezo’s steadying hand kept me from falling over. The rest of them nodded, looking impressed. Like I was a member of the group. Like this was my part, and I’d played it.
Oh gods. I was going to vomit. Think of your hands. Think of keeping your magic. It’s all that keeps you safe.
The guard passed, clattering and clanking so loudly I don’t think he’d have heard us if we’d decided to form a choir right then and there. As soon as he was out of sight among the trees, Talsar motioned us forward one at a time. I slung Bob on my back and scurried to the hunched willow second-to-last, pushing through the clinging branches. Ivy was there waiting for me. Instead of having to scramble on the slick rock, as I had the first time, she boosted me up and through the fissure in the wall.
I found my feet and turned, catching her hand. Even this high up, I was only about a foot above her eye level. “Ivy,” I whispered. “Those things I said the other day. All of this . . . please know that I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.”
She smiled and shook her head. “We all say things we regret when we’re under pressure. I can’t imagine what you’re going through, worrying about your sister. Don’t even think of it.”
I wanted to tell her I would think of it. I also wanted to tell her I was a terrible person who didn’t deserve her forgiveness, but she’d started to climb, so all I could do was back out of her way. I scooted on through and came out the other side, where Firenza helped me down onto swampy earth.
The name of this village had been lost to time long ago. Tiny as it was, perhaps it had never had a name at all. There was one overgrown and crumbling cobbled road running through the middle, lined with fewer than a dozen houses, each in various states of ruin. At the very center, the road circled around a village green. Behind the houses and enclosed by the wall were gardens. Or what had been gardens, now reclaimed by the forest, so that there was nearly no difference between inside the wall and without.
Ezo huddled near a low line of stone that might once have been a garden wall, peering toward the remains of the houses nearest us.
“Nothing’s moving,” he whispered.
Nothing would. The hags didn’t allow the trolls and ogres inside, leaving their minions to the elements and whatever bits of shelter some of the old guard towers provided as they tumbled down. Nothing lived inside except the hags.
Heart heavy, I jerked my head toward the line of fallen stone that blocked our view of the village green. “It’s that way.”
“We stay together,” Ivy whispered. Metal sang quietly as she drew her swords from their sheaths. “Firenza and I will take the front. Talsar and Ezo in back. Adeline, you stay in the middle. You’ll be safest there.”
I swallowed a bubble of hysterical laughter. As if swords and daggers and whatever exploding things Ezo kept in his pockets could keep us safe. Could they not sense it, riding on the air? A magic that crawled up my skin and wiggled down into my lungs. A sick, maggoty magic, clammy and moist and tasting of hag.
This is what you’re giving their lives for. This is the magic you came to learn.
My breath hitched. For an instant, I was going to lose my lunch. My hand went convulsively to the chains and my wrist, clawed like I would tear them off, and never mind if doing so also tore off my skin.