“Their power source is on the other side. I can feel it,” I murmur. How else could I create that barrier so easily? Why else would my Godstone persist in this manic humming? It’s the very thing I’ve been looking for. So close at hand.
I approach the wall as close as I dare. My nose almost touches it. Then I shift to the side until the shimmer fades and the colors brighten. I reach up and rest my forefinger against a vivid blue pane. It’s cool to the touch. Ordinary. Laughter bubbles in my throat, and I cover my mouth to control it.
“Elisa?” Hector says.
“Get back, all of you. Against the wall. No, better yet, get into the tunnel behind the tapestry.”
Hector’s eyes dance in the torchlight. “I don’t believe our hosts will be pleased with this turn of events.”
I grin. “Indeed, they will not.”
Once everyone is safely behind the tapestry, I back as far away from the glass as I can—until my rear hits the stone wall. It’s a pity, really. The wall is so ancient and beautiful. Probably a national treasure. I pull a dagger from my belt.
The zafira rushes into me the moment I call it. I hold it inside myself for a bit, savoring this feeling of vitality, of power. After too long a pause, I allow some of it to trickle into my dagger.
The blade is a part of me, an extension of my hand, as I point it toward the wall. Control, Elisa. Use just enough.
I release the zafira, and a bolt of blue fire streaks toward the wall. The glass shatters, and a sudden wind blows my hair back. Broken panes crash to the ground, followed by a wash of tiny shards that float glitteringly like falling snow.
My companions peek from behind the tapestry and gradually creep out. Hector’s gaze roves my body, searching for injury, as Mula and Storm survey the destruction.
Glass covers the floor. Beyond the shattered wall is a huge stone balcony, open to the night sky. Pine and Hawk stare at me, mouths agape. A shining stream of blood, black in the meager light, pours from a cut on Hawk’s cheek.
Behind the Inviernos is a massive stone slab—no, an altar—shadowed against the night sky and the glowing mountains beyond. The sound of rushing is too loud now, a cacophony of wind and water and something else, something just beneath my range of hearing. The zafira, maybe. The air is crisp with predawn chill, and I wrap my arms around myself, against whatever comes next.
Pine shakes with rage, and his metal-clad fingers twitch as licks of blue flame dance between them. He is barely holding the zafira in check. “Do you realize what you’ve done?” he says.
“I believe I just succeeded in using magic to pass your gate,” I say. “Doesn’t that make me an animagus?”
He continues to gape as Hawk absently wipes at her cheek with the sleeve of her cloak, smearing blood. Hector shifts beside me, and I hear the light whisk of drawn daggers.
Pine breathes deep through his nose. The fire licking his metal fingers winks out. “Very well, then,” he says. “Come and find the answers you seek.” He whirls and steps toward the black altar.
“Too easy,” Hector mutters.
“Storm?” I whisper. “Anything you haven’t told me? Any idea what your father is planning?”
“I know nothing,” he says in an equally low voice. His hand comes up to clutch the amulet beneath his robe. “But we should be wary.”
“If you betray us,” Hector says, “I’ll kill you.”
Storm bristles. “I was Her Majesty’s loyal subject even before she saved my life.”
“I’m glad to have you both with me right now,” I say firmly. “Mula, do you want to go back inside the tunnel and wait there?”
Her eyes are huge. “No,” she whispers.
I realize I’m delaying. “All right then.”
Hector takes the lead, and glass crunches beneath our feet as we cross the threshold of the ruined wall and move toward the balcony. Hawk and Pine step aside to give a clear path to the altar. Harsh wind hits my face as the altar comes into focus.
Pine does something with his Godstone amulet, and torches spring to life one by one until the altar is ringed in fire. The torch flames illuminate smooth, round river stones, bulging in places, leveled by wind and ice and time in others. The top is perfectly flat and little more than shoulder high. I stand on my tiptoes to peer at it.
Something is up there, something that moves. I step closer.
It’s a living thing, a hairless creature with skin as weathered as deer jerky. It lies on its back, its flaccid, jellylike limbs manacled to the rock. When it turns its head to regard me with despairing brown eyes, with human eyes, my breath catches in a sob.
“You have come to take my place?” it says in a painful rasp.
“What?” I peer closer. He lies spread-eagle across the altar. His fingers are bloodless, meaty stumps—as if they’ve been chewed. Lumpy skin swells over the wrist manacles. I follow the line of thin, slack limbs to a shapeless body fully bared to the elements. A bright blue Godstone winks from a naked belly.
I gasp. This creature is one of many bearers throughout history who was never identified—or who simply disappeared mysteriously.
“Behold,” Pine intones. “Our living sacrifice.”
Red spots dance in my vision, and I’m so angry I can hardly breathe. “This is what you plan for me? This, this . . .” Tears spring to my eyes. “This is barbaric.”
“Indeed,” Pine agrees. “It’s our greatest shame that we are often forced to contend with an unwilling sacrifice. But it is no more barbaric that what your people did to ours. They were afraid of us, of our power. You made us less than we were, with your otherworldly machines.”
I’m not sure what compels me, but I reach out toward the creature on the altar and gently brush his cheek with my forefinger. His skin feels like leather. He gazes at me with such hope from browless, lashless eyes.
I whirl to face Pine. “Why?” I demand. “Why torture him this way?”
Pine’s face remains implacable. “They made us human.” He spits out the word like it’s a sour piece of fruit. “Too much humanity in our blood made it impossible to bear our Godstones beyond childhood. They started to die in our bodies. After a few generations, only a handful remained who were even born with them.”
Pine looks across the balcony, toward the glowing mountains. “But even that wasn’t enough to calm their fear,” he continues. “They forced us to flee from our source of life and power. The hidden zafira was once ours; surely you know that? But away from it, we began to sicken and die. We had to do something just to survive.”
He turns to regard me, his gaze fierce. I suddenly feel like a tiny jerboa facing down a hungry jaguar. “We discovered early on that we could draw power through a living Godstone. It’s not the same as being near a zafira wellspring, but it is enough to keep us from dying out. We used our own children for this at first—the little ones who had the misfortune to be born with a stone. It was a dark time in our history. But then we discovered that your people had not only changed us—they had changed themselves as well. They mingled the blood of our two people, you see, so they could survive better on this world. Some of them, a very few, were born with Godstones.”
“Once every hundred years,” I whisper.
He nods. “And those Godstones didn’t fall out. How could such a thing be? That our enemy could bear the stones that we could not?” He shakes his head. “So we captured a bearer, a girl like you. The zafira sustains our living sacrifices. We don’t feed them or take care of them in any way. They exist perpetually at the point of death. And it’s important that they do. Otherwise they could resist and refuse us their power.”
“But this one is truly dying,” Storm says.