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“Trust yourself.”
“Trust myself that I won’t put Fel in danger?”
“Is that what your heart is telling you? That you should return to him?”
She was going to sayyes, but for some reason, it didn’t feel that true. “No. I should… try to understand my magic.”
“Then go where you can do that.”
“And where is that?”
“You’ll have that answer, not me. Regardless, you need to leave, Leah. This is a passage to places from where you can’t return. If you stay here too long, you’ll end up joining us. It’s not your time yet.”
She sighed. “I wish I could have helped you, I wish I hadn’t…”
“Those are bigger destiny wheels than you can stir. What you have to do now is focus on your own. Your fear can be your signal. It keeps us away from danger, but it also keeps us away from change. Sometimes, instead of a warning to stay away, fear can show you the path you need to take.”
Leah managed a laugh. “So… am I supposed to go where my heart tells me or where my fear warns me against?”
“Is there such a big difference? In many cases they are one and the same. That will be your hint.”
Her father was getting translucent.
“Don’t go.”
“I can’t stay, Leah, and neither can you. Get out of here, go somewhere else. Even if you’re not sure it’s the right choice, you have to move. You’ll never be sure if you’re picking the right path, and yet you need to keep going.”
She recalled those dreadful creatures in Umbraar. “I’m afraid of dooming everyone, ruining everything.”
“Then you have something in mind, something to fight against. Trust your strength.”
His image disappeared, leaving only loneliness in its place. And cold. So much cold. Her heart only told her to go to Fel. If she wanted, she could—it would be easy. She could feel him pulling her, even if they were so far apart, except that she was afraid. But then, if her father was right, the fear could be an indication of where to go.
No. It wasn’t as much fear as it was a feeling, a presentiment. She had to stay away from Fel to protect him. But that only left her in this darkness. Unless…
Darkness. She had once called its queen, who claimed she could teach her about her power. More than ever, Leah needed power. Again, the image of those dreadful creatures came to her mind, chilling her already cold bones. That voice had been different from the voice telling her to kill, and different from the voice recognizing “the iron dragon”, but what if it was one and the same?
It was easy for her father to tell her to trust her own strength, except that she had no idea what it even was. All her life she had trained to be a necromancer, and for what?
Leah paused and mentally repeated her own words. All her life she had trained… magic. She wasn’t an ignorant novice.
King Flavio had known she wasn’t a true necromancer—and yet he had trained her. It couldn’t have been all a game of pretend; he had to have hoped that something could be useful to her. Oh, if only she had asked him about it. But there had been such little time.
Instead of lamenting her nonexistent knowledge of deathbringing, she should turn to what she did know, and ask herself what anecromancerwould do. She’d been hearing a voice for a while now, a voice telling her to kill, destroy. Then she had dreamed about a strange Queen of Darkness, offering her power. Leah had taken that offer, or at least assumed that was she was accepting, and opened the pathway for the creatures that helped save Umbraar at first, but that later were turning against them. It had to be all connected.
How would she explain it as a necromancer? It would be a spirit. It wasn’t the case; there was no way to open up the land of the dead and get any help for a battle, no matter how unhelpful it turned out. Still, there were cases where a spirit would not want to go, where it would keep bothering the necromancer. It usually meant they wanted something, but sometimes they just didn’t want to leave. Leah knew what could be done in such cases. She knew that the necromancers dealt with one place in the in-between, where it met the land of the dead. It was connected to the many realms in the hollow, which were like many levels. Deathbringers could connect with those levels and walk in some of them. Regardless, all it meant was that the techniques to banish a spirit could perhaps work to banish a living creature from one of the realms in the hollow.
The problem? There was only one place where she knew she could find the tools to do that, and right now, it would be brimming with Ironhold soldiers. She had to try, though.
What could she do to get there? Think about where she wanted to go? That had worked before, but it had been an accident and she had no idea how to replicate it. She then remembered walking with King Azir. It had been like moving through a thick, dark smoke, then floating over Ironhold.
She opened her eyes as much as she could, to check if she could distinguish anything, but saw nothing. Still only darkness, and yet she dared step forward, keeping her destination in mind. It couldn’t be that simple, though. She had heard that deathbringers could get lost or trapped. All she could do was hope that it wouldn’t be the case.
* * *
River leaned on a wall,pain and nausea tormenting him. What had that been? Something foul and strange. But what? Not metal or metal magic. It was some strange magic that Ironhold used to try to keep him contained.
He took a couple of slow, deep breaths, almost expecting guards to rush into the room and catch him while weakened, but there was only silence. River looked around. This was a small storage space, apparently abandoned, with shelves on one wall and clear, empty jars on it. Just one of the many spaces he hadn’t yet touched. This castle was gigantic, with more than thirty floors connected by long stairways and a metal magic apparatus connecting it all.
