“He will help us, and we will consume the sun, or they will die.”
Only then did the truth of the hags’ malice hit me. Only then did the depth of the part I’d played become clear, and it wrenched my heart in two.
I looked down then, and saw my hands. The chains had sprouted a dozen smaller ones that had wrapped up and around my palms and fingers, crushing the delicate bones. Blackened and bloody and grotesque, they would never be supple enough to cast a spell again.
I would have sacrificed them a hundred times again not to have done what I had done.
“Ezo,” I whispered, tears in my eyes, “I’m sorry.”
“Consume the sun, huh?” He looked at me, like there was some meaning in that I was supposed to grasp. Then he looked to the sky above Granny Maude. “Well, I’ll do my best, but you might be busy for the next few minutes.”
A violet missile streaked through the mist and slammed into Granny Maude. Firenza let out a berserk war cry as they went tumbling wings over silver hair from the platform and onto the ground.
Ezo bent and ripped open the trap door, revealing an intricate web of gears and springs and other things I could not name. One moved toward the bottom, spinning in a lazy circle. “Aha. Yup. I see what the problem is.”
He pulled the box of gears out of the small bag over his shoulder and found the one made of gold. Then he was on his stomach, arm extended down into the machine. When he caught sight of me still standing there, he frowned. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Well she said something about the consuming the sun, so you’d better use your big Regia Arcanum–educated brain to figure that out before those hags kill the others.”
I stared at him. “Even after all this, you trust me to take control of the power? You know what it is, right? Plane-shattering, planet-ending power. And you want that in the hands of the halfling girl who tried to lead y’all to your deaths?”
He looked at me like I was insane, arm still moving around deep in the machine. “This is how it works, Adi. We do our jobs; you do yours. So get moving!”
He withdrew his hand and pushed to his feet. The gear was gone. He’d fixed the orrery.
There was a creak, a groan, a screech of metal against metal. Above us, planets turned and began to revolve on their golden arms. Moons spun around them. I ducked as one golden arm came toward my head. In front of me, gold slats slid out of the column that held the sun as it, too, began to rotate. The slats clicked into place one at a time, rising like a spiral staircase.
Consume the sun. I looked up to the big golden ball overhead. My inclination was to overcomplicate things, but . . . could it really be so simple? If the orrery was a construct, like my scrying spell, then the power would gather at its center. Like my scrying spell, all I should have to do was reach out and stick my fingers in. Useless as they were, they could do that much.
With one last look at Ezo, both warmed and confused by his trust in me, I climbed. Around once, twice. Somewhere in the fog, Silver Maude and her daughters were screeching. Around again, until I reached the orb that towered over the center of the orrery. Wavering rays made of beaten gold radiated from it in a line around the center.
Without Ezo’s words, I might have stopped. For all I never wanted to be helpless, it finally occurred to me that power like this required some kind of worthiness. Worthiness of which I would always fall far short. But I had Ezo’s trust, and even if I couldn’t keep this power, I could use it to save my friends.
I lifted my ruined, blackened hand and pressed it, unfeeling, to the sun. Though the orb looked like solid metal, my hand sank beneath its surface.
So . . .
Much . . .
Power.
As if I had cast a hundred million million scrying spells at once, the magic lit me up, zapped through me, filled my body with a heat that should have incinerated my bones. The hags’ chains on my wrists flared, then sublimated into nothingness.
Too much. There was too much. As the chains and pain disappeared, I could feel myself doing the same, all the little bits that made me vibrating away into nothing. The magic needed somewhere to go. If I died, the hags would get it, and I had no doubt they would be able to take it in. But there were others with me. I could sense them, connected to me. But I couldn’t force the magic into them. They had to take it voluntarily.
Help me, I whispered into their minds.
Ezo answered first. I remembered the dead look on his face after I’d betrayed him. But still, he reached out. He had forgiven.
Ivy answered next, body battered, life leeching from her with every heartbeat. She did not hesitate. She trusted.
Still, it was not enough.
Firenza burst into the connection like a boulder breaking the surface of a still lake. She cackled in delight as she let power flow through her body, spreading her wings to their fullest.
Still, it was not enough.
Talsar hung back. He could not forgive. He did not trust. He did not delight. But he loved. He loved his companions with a protective fierceness that burned like the sun. Finally, for them and only for them, he joined the connection.
The brightness flared, crescendoed. Stars danced, and planets spun. Seasons turned one into another and then back again. I looked down from the wheeling heavens and saw the hags. They crouched together, blinded by the radiance burning from the bodies of myself and my friends.
“You are ended,” I said.
And they fell into dust. Granny Maude, Auntie Pearl, Auntie Posey. Ten thousand years of living between them, so much magic, gone with a thought.
I looked to the heavens again. They whispered mysteries to me, arcane secrets that tickled my mind. In time, I could explore them. I could understand. There was power here to rival the gods’. I saw how to stabilize the flow, and I did, gifting my body the capacity to hold it.
Then I released my friends one by one. Until finally it was only me and the arcane secrets of the universe.
I looked down from the heavens and saw the orrery. I saw everything I had ever wanted. Except I wanted to live in the world, not watch it. I didn’t want to be alone. And no one, not one single being in all the cosmos, was worthy to hold power like this.
So I did one more thing. No, two more things. And then I said to the orrery, “You are ended.”
It, too, fell to dust.
“I don’t trust her.”
Talsar didn’t bother keeping his voice down. We all knew how he felt. It probably hadn’t helped that I undid the memory spell, and he very much remembered catching me going through his things.
Ivy sighed. “Talsar, listen—”
“Why should I listen when you’re just going to repeat yourself for the third time?”
I leaned my forehead against Ivy’s back. Beneath us, her horse swayed, hooves thudding lightly against the packed dirt road. The treasure-laden saddlebags jingled in time with the hoofbeats of Firenza’s great destrier in front of us and Talsar’s quiet gray mare behind. Firenza was somewhere scouting for a campsite, so Ezo sat in her ridiculously oversized saddle, guiding her horse.
Bob rustled in its sling. Whole, now. I’d kept its handle the length it was because it was just the right size. But instead of ending in a jagged break, the top of its handle was shiny and complete. It could fly anywhere I needed it to, just as fast or as slow as we pleased. But for now, I didn’t mind riding behind Ivy.
Firenza swooped out of nowhere, startling every horse except hers. “I FOUND A GOOD PLACE!”
“Really, Firenza. Just a little quieter,” Talsar pleaded.
We followed Firenza off the road and into the clearing she’d selected for that night’s camp. Personally, I couldn’t wait to get to an inn. I wanted a bed. Roughing it was not one of my talents.