Choose.
Choose!
And then she heard Merecot’s voice, reverberating inside her, “Choose me!”
Merecot felt as if lightning skittered beneath her skin as the spirits flooded into her mind.Yes!She stretched, her mind expanding, to hold all the new wants and needs that tugged on her. She could sense the trees around her, tall and deep, and the wind that chased between them. She felt the water in the air and the hint of ice in the sky above.
This was what she needed.
This was power!
She laughed from the sheer magnitude of it. She’d held nearly as many spirits in her mind when the wild spirits were in Semo, but the feel of spirits who were tied to the land was entirely different. She felt the strength of their connection to Renthia, and she made it hers.
I can do this.
All her planning and all her dreams... felt only a finger-touch away. Casually, as if she weren’t about to change the world, she projected one thought:You are done.
It was simple, but wrapped in that one sentence was all that it implied: you have completed your destiny, and then now you may rest. You have finished. You can move on and evolve and cease to plague this world. Your hatred and anger are obsolete, for you have completed the task for which you were created.
The Great Mother of Spirits is pleased with you.
I speak for her.
Change.
And the spirits heard her words. Across Aratay and Semo, her words sank into the minds and hearts and into the very essence of the spirits. She felt them grow limp and sink down from the sky, from the trees.
It’s working!
Merecot pushed harder, boring down on them.
Let go.
Be free.
Be gone.
Watching Merecot, Daleina could not hear her commands. She saw the threads, connecting them to Merecot, not to her, not anymore. She couldn’t hear the spirits, except as a distant haze that made her head ache if she reached for them.
But she felt the moment that the trees began to die.
Creeping around her, the air tasted stale and sour. She heard a cracking sound, as if a piece of paper were being crumpled over and over. Or as if winter ice were breaking in a stream. Looking up, Daleina saw the golden leaves, once glorious in their autumn brilliance, shrivel into brown and begin to fall.
All the leaves, falling around the grove, in a shushing sound as they drifted down through the still air.It’s not working, she thought. “Merecot? Merecot, you have to stop! The land is dying! Merecot, stop!” Grabbing Merecot’s shoulders, Daleina shook her.
But Merecot did not respond.
She did not stop.
West of Aratay, beyond the borders of Renthia, Ven knew the spirits of the untamed lands were in a killing frenzy, attacking Naelin’s spirits. He couldn’t feel them the way that Naelin could, but after so many years fighting spirits, he didn’t need to.Besides, the tornadoes kind of give it away, he thought.
Just beyond the ridge of rocks, three funnels of wind rose toward the sky. They looked like dark undulating snakes, defying gravity to stand upright, swaying. Between them, fires burned bright. Shielding his eyes, Ven tried to see into the battle.
“Take the children,” Naelin ordered him. “Get them across the border. I’ll hold the untamed spirits back and then meet you in Redleaf.”
“Not leaving you,” Ven said as both Erian and Llor clung to their mother, crying and screaming at her to not make them leave her.
She hugged them, clearly not hearing what he’d said. “You must go with Champion Ven. I’ll rejoin you. I promise. But as soon as I leave here, the spirits will follow me—and their attackers will follow them. You need to get across the border.”
