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Perhaps he’s heard the Kingdom of the Summer is on the verge of collapse? Ha. The only exaggeration there is to say verge. Even the stubborn, stupid humans are abandoning our settlements on the great plateau, and even the king’s most loyal boot-lickers, like the merchant Damoira, are moving their operations out of our Kingdom. We have no money in the royal vaults, our harvests fail three times as often as they succeed, and the only reason we haven’t been swallowed up by someone like the Kingdom of Stone and Sea is that nobody wants the burden of maintaining Rensivar the Wicked’s magic that keeps the Kingdom of the Fall imprisoned. Every year, King Grathgore’s grasp around his kingdom tightens, and every year, more and more of that kingdom slips away.
With a sigh, I run my eyes across the low, scruffy bushes as we pass, watching for the white flash of the servant’s uniform I’d taken from the dirty pile in the laundry room. But the man from the Lands Below couldn’t possibly have made it this far, could he?
And why do I even care? I growl under my breath, annoyed with myself. Why does it matter what happened to the man who materialized inside my bedroom, offered me freedom, and then abruptly became a burden instead? He’s the one who chose to jump through unstable magic. The consequences of his stupid decision are on his own illusion-enhanced shoulders.
Besides, with or without him, whoever he is, I’m still going through the anomaly. I’m still claiming my own life in another world. With the pile of gold coins I’ve stolen over the years, with the hundreds of magical weapons and defenses I can construct, I could build a life in any one of the nine hells. If that’s what it takes.
I wrap my free hand around my midsection and the secret little spark of life that’s kindled inside. Because I will die before I give birth inside the palace of the Kingdom of the Summer.
The air cools as we follow the foaming Summer River into the waiting maw of the Barrier Mountains. Shadows close around the road. The sound of hoofbeats and creaking saddles echoes off the steep walls of the Dragon Pass, where Rensivar the Wicked once marched the armies of the defeated Kingdom of the Fall into their eternal imprisonment in the Lands Below. Those echoes make it sound like we’re being followed, or led into an ambush. A shiver sneaks up my spine.
One of the horses ahead of me spooks, jumping to the side with a snort. Its rider cries out, and a ripple of alarm moves through the column. My horse snorts and stomps the ground, then shifts closer to the churning river we’ve been following. I stand up in the stirrups, looking for whatever scared the horse ahead of us.
Of course. We’re here.
Just ahead of the lead riders, there’s a crack in the crumbling cliff walls that line the Dragon Pass. Magic leaks out of that split in the mountain’s flank like blood pooling beneath a raw piece of meat. It’s an old, wicked sort of magic, and it’s so thick here that I can taste it in the back of my mouth. Someone next to me gags.
“Riders! Dismount!”
I tear my eyes away from the crack in the cliff walls and see Malron, the leader of Grathgore’s captive magicians, facing us from his black steed. He’s wearing a twisted little grin that makes me think he likes the taste of this, of the dragon Rensivar the Wicked’s raw magic leaking into our world. I turn away as my gut clenches. I’ve never liked Malron, and I very much doubt he’s ever liked me.
“We have arrived,” Malron announces, as if it weren’t perfectly obvious.
The soldiers peel away from the magicians, riding up or down the pass to do whatever in the hells it is they’re supposed to be doing, while a few stay behind to collect the magicians’ horses. I dismount before the stern-looking soldier can approach me. I might have spent my adult life trapped in King Grathgore’s palace, but I’m still the daughter of Liavaris, who bred and trained the finest horses in the Kingdom of the Summer. Until both his daughters were stolen from him.
I swallow hard against that memory, then pat the shoulder of the bay mare I rode. The canyon fills with dust and the general commotion of dozens of nervous horses being abandoned by their equally nervous riders as I press the mare’s lead rope into the soldier’s hands. He avoids meeting my gaze, of course. Who would look a magician in the eyes?
“Magicians!” Malron calls, from the mouth of the crevasse. “To me!”
What little sunlight manages to penetrate the heavy shadows in the canyon gleams off the silver spheres on Malron’s necklace. Just looking at them makes my skin crawl. I was part of the experiments that created those metallic reservoirs of magic. Malron wears them as a signal of his high rank, and also just in case he needs to suddenly punish anyone.
My throat feels tight, and I struggle to pull my next breath into my lungs. My fellow magicians look just as hesitant as I feel. Saria’s face is almost as pale as the stranger from the Lands Below, and Luthias looks like he’s about to lose his lunch. I shuffle across the road as the soldiers pull the horses away until nothing remains between King Grathgore’s captive magicians and the narrow little canyon leaking malevolent magic into our world.
Great. My fingers tighten around the thick leather strap of my bag. It suddenly doesn’t feel like much at all, this bundle of stolen gold and tiny sweaters I knit for the life that may yet grow inside of me. Stars above, I didn’t even think to bring a weapon.
Malron barks something, and I fall into line behind Saria. The entrance to the little canyon is choked with brush; the branch Saria pushes out of her way swings back to smack me across the face as she vanishes. Wincing, I cast one last look down the road, through the brilliant green tangle of willows that knit a tunnel above the Summer River, and back to the jagged stone walls of the Dragon Pass.
There’s no flash of a white servant’s uniform, no strange gurgle of portal magic. There is no sign at all of the man who appeared in my bedroom last night. The back of my throat tastes bitter, and I try to reason with the strange ache of his absence.
It’s not my fault he made stupid choices, damn it. Why would he show up in my world with no resources, no plan, and soaking wet? Why couldn’t he even read a damn map? My lips curl into a snarl. I push back against the branches, although they tangle in my hair and yank at my cloak, and I almost trip over a fallen log.
And then something catches my eye. It’s a strange flash of color, something soft and crimson, and so out of place that I think for a moment someone must have dropped something beautiful.
Then the scent reaches me. It’s illusion, the thick, almost spicy scent of that kind of magic, something that reminds me so powerfully of Balmyr it makes my heart pull as tight as a fist.
“Oh, no,” I whisper.
Beyond the little red flower is another, this one a pale sort of pink. And I’ve seen that flower before, damn it. When I asked the man from the Lands Below for magic to make my map, he gave me flowers. Red flowers. Pink flowers. And, as my eyes follow the tangle of bushes, I find a delicate purple lupine growing where no self-respecting lupine should be.
Right beside the tree where Malron is standing.
“Damn the stars,” Malron growls. “I can’t see a thing in here.”
Malron raises his hand to the silver spheres around his chest. Magic pulses through the canyon, low and gritty, like the smell of something dead that’s been left in the sun. My eyes water, and the back of my throat stings.
Malron turns toward the huddled cluster of King Grathgore’s magicians with a smile I sometimes see in my nightmares. Then he raises both his hands and turns toward the brush-choked canyon. Magic thickens in the air, making my skin prickle.
And flames shoot out of both of Malron’s open hands.
