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The illusion shifts again as those round curves grow and grow, taking on the rugged little spikes of trees. I adjust the rough pack I made out of my cloak. It’s still wet. The water of some strange ocean leaks through my cloak and seeps into the rough weave of the white servant’s uniform Alindra handed me.
“Wait at the mouth of the pass,” she says. “There’ll be more cover there than further up in the mountains.”
She hesitates, and her teeth close over her lower lip.
“Wait for what?” I whisper.
Alindra shakes her head like she’s coming out of a dream.
“For me,” she answers. “I’m going into the pass this morning, with all the rest of King Grathgore’s magicians.”
I wrap my left hand around my jaw and frown at her map illusion. Maybe it looks like a road that will lead me into the mountains. Or maybe not. I guess I’ll find out.
“Am I allowed to ask why you’re traveling into the mountains this morning with all the rest of King Grathgore’s magicians?” I say.
Her frown looks like it hurts. For a heartbeat, I can almost hear her mind weighing whether or not she can trust me. And then landing on probably not.
“There’s an anomaly in the mountains,” she says. Her words come out fast, like an explosion. Like she’s trying to release them before she can change her mind. “It’s like a portal, and it leads to— to the Lands Below. That’s where Prince Folwynn fell through.”
Folwynn. That name burns through my mind, trailing screams in its wake. Screams and the splash of blood on the snow, black in the failing light of the glowsoft orbs. He’s the monster who attacked me from behind, Prince Folwynn of the Kingdom of the Summer, just as I was bending over Kara’s broken body to see if there was anything I could do, any hope left for her.
That damned horse snorts in the gloom behind us. Alindra’s eyes dart back over her shoulder. I realize I’m holding my jaw so tight my teeth ache.
“We need to close it,” Alindra whispers. “I mean, they need to close it. The anomaly.”
She looks up at me, dark eyes and dark skin in the soft light of the oil lamp flickering on the wall behind me.
“We’ll go through it,” she whispers. “We’ll step inside right before it closes, and then no one will be able to follow us.”
This is a terrible, terrible plan.
It also sounds like a plan Alindra has been considering for a long time. I think of the suspiciously large bag she held to her chest as I fell through the portal into her bedroom, trailing water and the burned, metallic scent of unbalanced magic. I think of how quickly she took my hand. This woman clearly wants to go to the Lands Below. But why? What in the Worlds Above is she running from?
Or is she running at all? Perhaps she’s being sent. Her sister Ithronel was sent, after all, along with three magical weapons that would have killed all of King Galan’s magicians if Rowan hadn’t been there to save them. Is it too much to think Ithronel’s sister might have picked up the mission that Ithronel couldn’t complete?
Alindra’s eyes dart down, then back to the horse, who huffs from inside his wooden cage in a vaguely menacing way. She doesn’t look particularly threatening, this small, rather adorable magician. But then again, it wouldn’t make any sense to send someone who looked threatening. If I was going to attack the Kingdom of the Summer, I’d send someone who looked delicate and innocent. Someone who looked like they needed protecting.
“Phaedron?”
She’s looking up at me again, all soft eyes and round cheeks. I nod, then clear my throat.
“Come on,” Alindra whispers. “You’re going into the trash chute.”
Chapter4
Alindra
WHY DO I CARE?
It’s only mid-morning, and already the sun is relentless.
The wind blowing gritty dirt against my cheeks feels like it’s come directly out of an oven, and the distant horizon undulates like waves on an ocean, riding the heat-blasted air. Towering above the road, the snow-glazed summit of Mount Victory might as well be another mirage. It’s always seemed cruel to me how Mount Victory holds onto its snow, even as the plains below the Barrier Mountains bake in the heat. I wonder what the man from the Lands Below made of that paradox.
My chest tightens. I glance down and pretend to fiddle with my saddle as the shoulder strap of my heavy bag cuts into my neck. That man’s skin was as pale as the snow that still clings to the slopes of the distant mountain. Stars above, how long has it been since he’s seen the sun? Would he remember what it can do to exposed skin?
And, if the sun burned his pale skin, would he expect me to heal him? Stars, I hope not. I’m terrible at taking magic and using it to mend flesh or calm illness, and burns are almost as hard to heal as fevers. If only the man had taken a horse. Then he might have made it to the shade of the Barrier Mountains before the sun rose high enough to scorch the world.
I snort, then sit back up in my saddle. I hadn’t honestly expected that man to crawl through the trash chute. Men who wear beautiful illusions, in my experience, don’t tend to be the type of men who are willing to crawl through manure for any reason, let alone on the recommendation of a woman. Perhaps he was just desperate to escape the palace. Maybe he’d heard terrible things about us, although the stories they tell in the Lands Below are probably nowhere close to as bad as things actually are in the palace.
