Brightly Woven (33 page)

“I can’t…,” I mumbled.

“Silence!”
the king bellowed to the nobles. He turned back to me, speaking in the same strange language as before, studying my face closely for any sign of recognition.

“She does not understand the holy tongue,” the queen said shrewdly from her throne.

“Is that so?” The king seized me by the shoulders, giving me the slightest of shakes. He spoke again in the language I didn’t understand, his words punctuated with flying spit.

My entire body began to shake, and I tried to pull away. “Let me go!” I cried, but the king was still shouting at me in that horrible speech.

“If I may interrupt,” a voice called over the others. “I think you may need to give her a moment.”

Dorwan stood at the very back of the chamber in his pale coat, and for the first and only time, I was actually relieved to see him. The king released me immediately, and I stumbled back.

“Get that lying demon out of here!” the king bellowed, sounding nothing like the gentle man I had met in private. “Throw him into the ocean for all I care! Let this be a lesson to everyone never to trust a wizard!”

A small troop of guards rushed toward Dorwan, but the wizard merely held out his hands to stop them.

“I tried to warn you that not all of her powers would have awakened yet,” Dorwan said, coming closer to us. No one stepped in his way or tried to block his path, but many eyed him with a look of revulsion that had nothing to do with the scars on his face.

“You have brought me a false goddess.” The king sneered.

“I have brought you the goddess of destruction herself,” Dorwan said. “She is everything you need to crush Palmarta, just as your Book said.”

“Lies, lies, all lies,” said the king, pushing him away, down the steps. Dorwan reached into his pocket without thinking, to the talisman hidden there. If he revealed himself, there would be no chance for either of us.

I did what I had to do, what my heart, faith, and resolve told me. I left myself open to Astraea’s will.

“I’ll prove my power to you,” I said, proud of how strong my voice sounded. “I’ll prove myself.”

Dorwan’s eyes narrowed, searching for my motives. The king looked back and forth between the two of us. No one spoke. Even the priest remained silent.

Finally, the king said, “If she cannot level a mountain at the very least, I will have both your heads, but first I shall feed parts of your bodies to my dogs while you are still living.”

I nodded, pressing a hand to my heart. Dorwan was no longer the architect of this game. “Choose a mountain, and we will leave at once.”

Beatrice had time only to throw a fur cloak over my shoulders and give my arm a gentle squeeze before I was loaded into a carriage to begin our journey up the long road to the coastal mountains. I glanced back through the small back window, to the queen and noblewomen who had been left behind.

I shared the trip with Dorwan and two guards, whom the wizard had sent into slumber with a wave of his talisman; the driver sat on the outside of the enclosed carriage. I had hoped Dorwan would get into one of the other carriages with the king and the rest of the nobles, but he had stubbornly pushed himself into the carriage after me and shut the door firmly behind him. Now he watched me carefully.

“What spurred this plan?” he asked, his voice barely audible over the grinding of the carriage wheels. “What could you possibly be thinking?”

“I’m wondering how you’ll feel when your plan unravels, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it,” I said.

“Oh, please continue,” Dorwan said.

“All this time,” I said, “I’ve been wondering why you didn’t just twist us away from the king, but it’s because you need him to destroy Provincia first, isn’t it? So that you can sweep in later and take over, just when he thinks he’s won the kingdom for himself.”

“Very good,” he said quietly. “Though I hope you’re not laboring under the misguided impression that I no longer want to collect your blood. The amount I would need would call for your death, and that simply won’t do until Provincia is nothing but rubble and memories.”

I sucked in a deep, angry breath. “You don’t have a curse.”

“It has hundreds of uses beyond curses and poisons.” Dorwan leaned forward in his seat, passing his talisman back and forth between his hands. “Your blood is pure magic. Mixing it with my own would give me power you can’t even imagine. After you destroy Provincia, I’ll be the only wizard left—and with your blood running through my veins, no nation will be powerful enough to defeat me.”

“Spoken like the despicable hedge you are,” I said. “No, you were too repulsive for them, weren’t you? You disgusted even them.”

His face curled into a snarl, and he backhanded me across the mouth so hard I tasted the very blood that tempted him.

I struggled to pull away from his gaze.

“You talk of curses as if they’re some sort of rarity. They aren’t. Everyone is cursed, from the farmer with the pain in his back to the girl who can destroy worlds,” Dorwan said. “And do you know how you destroy a curse, Sydelle? You become one. You consume your fear and become it. You plague everyone and everything that dares to hurt you or stand in your way.”

He pushed me back against the seat. Perhaps from the noise, the guards had jolted back into awareness, looking between Dorwan’s flushed face and my bleeding lip.

“There’s not a problem,” Dorwan told them. He leaned back in his seat, pulling out a small golden pocket watch and flipping open its cover with a small smile.

We were only halfway up the mountain path when a soldier rode up on horseback and told us to beware of snow ahead. There was no way for the carriages to fight through the icy covering that awaited us at the mountain’s summit, so the king improvised.

“That is the Sleven Mountain,” he told me. We were standing on the road, near where the horses and carriages
had been left. The king pointed to a mountain, just across from us in the small range.

“If you can reduce that mountain to rubble, you will have proven yourself to be Salvala’s vessel.”

I turned my face away from him and walked forward, standing at the edge of the road. In the distance, I could make out the faint line of blue that was the Serpentine Channel, but mainly I saw the heavily forested and rocky slope of the mountain below my feet.

The wind increased, kicking up a smattering of snow. I drew the fur cloak around me tightly.

I closed my eyes again, feeling Dorwan’s presence beside me. “You heard the king, Sydelle.”

I turned around to face the others, not bothering to hide my disgust.

“Get this filth away from me,” I said.

“For what reason?” the king called.

“This man is a liar,” I said to the king, and the reaction was instantaneous. “He may be a wizard, but he is certainly no prophet. He found me in Provincia, saw the color of my hair, and decided to use both of us to his advantage.”

I relished the look of alarm that stole across Dorwan’s face when fifteen firearms and even more swords were turned in his direction.

“A lie,” Dorwan said, raising his arms slightly in surrender. “Your Majesty, I can prove her power.”

“Take him!” the king barked, waving the soldiers forward.

“They’ll kill us,” Dorwan said as the soldiers came closer. “They’ll kill us, you foolish little—”

He reached into his coat for the talisman waiting there, but even in my heavy robes I was faster. I shoved him as hard as I could; he stumbled back into the approaching soldiers, who pinned his arms behind him and forced him to the ground.

I was his curse now.

“Sydelle!”
he snarled.

“Good-bye, Dorwan,” I said. “Good riddance.”

He saw my plan in my eyes: I would take down this mountain and everyone on it—the king, his men, but, most of all, Reuel Dorwan. And if I couldn’t escape the destruction, so be it. At least the war would be over before it had the chance to begin.

“Take the girl, too!” the king shouted. I heard, rather than saw, a few of the soldiers rush toward me. I held out a hand to stop them.

“Don’t touch me,” I said calmly.

I closed my eyes again, taking a deep breath as I searched for the magic that had once held so much fear for me. Magic is a tool, Pascal had said. Wizards open themselves up to it.

I focused not on my fear or my sorrow but on the world slowly spinning beneath my feet, on the anger I felt inside of me. I thought of those who had wanted to use me, who had thought I was a pawn in their games, and let myself feel every lick of disappointment and fury. This time, I knew how to control my powers. All along I had been
feeling
, and those
feelings had driven the storms and quakes. Now, as the torrent of emotions passed through my heart and out into the world, I felt the familiar warmth of magic rise up with me.

I seized the connection. A thousand threads of light in every color appeared in my sight, rising from the ground. The warmth began to work its way through every vein and sinew in my body. A light breeze of cold air caressed my cheek, but I hardly felt it. Instead, I focused on the sound of it, strengthening it, pulling on it as if it were tangible. My fur cloak blew up and away with the force of the new wind, fluttering down the slope of the mountain.

A startled cry went up behind me as several of the horses spooked. I did not relent. I felt the spark of magic the moment my fingers brushed the ground, and a great shudder ran through it at my touch. I dug my fingers into the soil and pulled on it as hard as I could. The force of the ensuing quake rattled every bone in my body.

I heard the thunderous roar of the snow at the top of the mountain as it came barreling down toward us. The king’s soldiers scattered, trying to break the bucking horses free from the carriages.

“Your Majesty!” one of them shouted. “We must leave—”

The king did not acknowledge him. He held out his hand, palm up, with a reverential expression on his face. A light spray of snow fell down over us as the mass of it barreled through the line of trees above us, groaning and straining like a living beast.

In that moment my connection to the world snapped, and the only thing I was aware of was the voice in my head whispering urgently,
Run, Sydelle
.

I ripped the diadem and veil from my hair, leaving them for the snow to claim. The shuddering ground made it hard to climb over the jagged rocks and upturned trees. My long skirt gathered around my knees, the beautiful red fabric torn and dirtied as I cut through dead brush and rocks. All I could feel was the burning of my lungs and the beating of my heart. Nothing else touched me, not the cold against my bare skin nor the branches and rocks that cut my arms. Nothing.

I was running, but not fast enough.

The snow picked up momentum as it barreled toward me, forcing me in the direction of a cliff. I looked back and forth desperately for a way down that wasn’t as steep, but the cliff seemed to line the entire face of the mountain. From my position at its very edge, I could see the blue water of the channel over the line of trees.

The drop was hundreds of feet below, but I lurched forward again, unwilling to surrender to the snow. I fell to my knees, crawling over the edge of the cliff. My feet slid against the rocks, trying to find purchase as my hands clung to a long tree root. I scraped my chin against the hard earth, my hands slowly slipping with the force of the quaking ground. I clenched my teeth, ignoring the mass of white barreling toward me, and forced myself to continue climbing down.

“Sydelle!”

My head turned toward the direction of my name. It wasn’t possible.

“Syd!”
Again, over the roar of the avalanche. “Syd, jump!”

I risked a glance down, looking back over my shoulder to the slope below, scattered with men and women in familiar black uniforms. Standing at the forefront were two dark-haired men, looking up. They were hundreds of feet below me, but there was no missing North’s distinctive stance and unusual cloak.

“North!”
I screamed in warning.

“Jump!”
He yelled back.
“JUMP!”

And because I was out of time, because I felt the ground begin to shift beneath me with the river of snow, I did. And I flew.