Page 164 of Keldori By Daybreak

“Ergoth is dead.” I dragged my nails across the skin of my neck as I lowered my hands.

Gams’s lips parted as she stared at me with a strange mix of pity, fear, and fascination.

“Dead?” she repeated. “But that shouldn’t be possible.”

“I killed them.”

“Killed—?” She stammered, then her eyebrows drew together in understanding. “The seismic activity. Wren, did you kill Ergoth with a volcano?”

“I don’t know, are you going to yell at me about it more?” I hissed.

“Your magick is developing at an alarming rate. Are you okay?”

The stinging of the tears returned, and while I was sure she could see them swimming in my eyes, I refused to respond.

She stepped forward with her arms wide to draw me in, but then she staggered backwards, looking at the advancing figures of ice at her feet.

“Dammit,” she growled, and looked up at the distant shore. “That’s the Baron’s army. Hold on.”

Blue electricity sparked between her hands, and wind kicked at her skirt. A peal of thunder shook the bay, and lightning blasted apart an iceberg between us and the shore, signaling the restart of the storm.

“So you killed Ergoth,” Gams said evenly, but I could tell she was forcing the tone. “And Liam?”

My stomach twisted with panic, but it loosened again as I recognized the gentle buzzing at the back of my head. He was far away but alive.

“He’s fine, but his name isn’t Liam. It’s Ciarán Ahltira.”

Another crack of lightning lit the bay.

“He told you his name then?” Gams sniffed.

“Yes.”

“He shouldn’t have.”

“He had to prove to me he was real somehow.” I swallowed the painful lump in my throat. “Ergoth was using his image to trick me.”

“Yes, I know how Ergoth works—” Gams started.

“How?” I demanded. “Ergoth killed every Magician that entered the strath.”

“Because I spent the last three hundred and seventy-two years listening to Ergoth in my head as they ate my friend,” Gams snarled, suddenly harsh.

I remembered the skeleton held aloft over the graveyard, and my stomach turned to lead.

“Your friend?” I pressed.

“Glaciers are lonely, Wren. The other four Magicians gave me their full names so I could let my consciousness wander outside my body and see the world we had built through their eyes. It’s how I know Lyria would sneak away to Keldori to visit her daughters every few months.”

“One of Skalterra’s founders went into the strath?” I hissed. “But why?”

“Ergoth was a failed experiment,” Gams said. “Quill was worried about the bloodline lock on my prison, so he sought a way to cheat death. He created a marsh in Skalterra’s Deadlands where no one would find it, ripping open a new Skal spring, but using himself as a conduit that filtered the Skal that poured from our world into this one. It nearly ripped him apart to do so, but the result was purer Skal. Different Skal.”

“Different?” I demanded, but I’d felt it when I had been connected to Ergoth. The Skal beneath the forest had felt cleaner and lighter than normal Skal. It had been more stable, less volatile and entropic.

“Quill discovered that no matter how much Skal he used from the marsh he’d created, it never threatened to tear him open. It never threatened to overwhelm him and turn him into a rotsbane.” Gams explained. “It was a clever trick, one that would remove rotsbane forever if we ever learned to do it on a massive scale.”

I’d breathed the Skal in all night through the spores and had made countless apparitions, but never once had the magick felt the same way usual Skal did when I used too much at once. There had been no feverish hunger for more, no need to claw myself open in search of more Skal.