Page 107 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

I fought hard not to be sick and breathed through the putrid stench filling the air, forcing myself to keep singing. I kept the notes round and sweet, the words lilting, thinking of spring rain and solid mountains, clasped hands and cool breezes. Tender things, strong things, images of healing and resilience and a refusal to break. I tried to sing each image into the notes and shape the music around every phrase as if they were spoken commands—firm but gentle, and unflagging. To focus in such a ceaseless way made my whole body ache with effort. Sweat dripped down my back, and my tired mind obeyed with increasing reluctance.

You must practice this.Ankaret’s words returned, a faint whisper in my mind.You have let it sit idle for too long. She had to remind you.

Tears ran down my cheeks unchecked. It was an assault—the heat, the agony in Talan’s cries, the memory of my fourteen-year-old self sitting down happily to perform her first public concert, knowing nothing of the violent scene her music would soon unleash. The humiliation of knowing I’d bared myself to Ryder only hours before, the shame crawling through me to remember how cruelly I’d spoken to him. The desperate hope that he did love me, that he would still love me, even after I’d accused him of such terrible things—all ofthese horrible thoughts sat like boulders in my chest. Would I lose Ryder now? Should I want to?

I wiped my face, set my jaw, and concentrated on my breathing.In war, there is no room for grief or terror.I reset my grip on Talan’s arm, glanced up at Gemma’s stricken face. I kept singing.

With my song in the air, Talan’s screams softened, and the strain on his face became a little less pronounced, but he still writhed, his entire body fighting to get away from Madam Moreen’s flashing silver knife. I looked over at her and saw the sweat dripping down her forehead as she worked. The fire in the hearth was huge, its heat oppressive, but I was glad for it.

At last she cut away the final bit of infected flesh, and Bili tossed it with disgust into the fire. An hour had passed, maybe two. I had lost all sense of time.

“You can ease up on him a bit,” Madam Moreen instructed us. Her son wiped her brow with a clean cloth. “He won’t have the energy to keep fighting us now. But my lady, if you wouldn’t mind continuing to sing?” She gave me a grim smile. “I find it relaxes me.”

So I did, disappearing into the song’s simple cadence as Madam Moreen and Bili worked with their vials and salves, their bandages, their needles. While Talan moaned in quiet agony, they washed out all his wounds and packed them with medicines, wrapped him tightly in bandages. When they finished, they bundled every bloody cloth into a clean sheet, then another one, then tied it all up tight. Only then did I allow myself to stop singing. I sat heavily in the first chair I could find.

“Take those out to the refuse pile and burn them all,” Madam Moreen told her son. “Every last shred of them.”

Bili nodded gravely and hurried through the open door. Father stood there, having just come in from the entrance hall. He stopped for a moment—appalled by the smell, no doubt—and then recovered himself and came inside, with Ryder right on his heels.

As exhausted as I was, the sight of him still managed to shock me. He wore traveling clothes in his typical black and midnight blue—coat, trousers, tall boots—and he had his crossbow, and knives at his belt. His dark hair was pulled back into a tight knot; his eyes were sharp, lupine. He was ready to fight.

Only when our eyes met did his fearsome expression falter. I couldn’t read the emotion I saw there. Regret? Apology? Defiance? I went around the table to Gemma and helped her sit. She was trembling, ashen, her hands red with Talan’s blood.

“Can someone bring water?” I asked sharply. And of course Ryder was the one to do it, offering a full glass before I’d even finished the question. I glanced up at him with a prickly glare, took the glass from him, and looked away. I helped Gemma drink, my heart pounding. My two selves began warring once again. One angry, one aching. One resolute in her rage, the other longing to go to him.

“Carbreigh and his crew are on alert, patrolling the grounds,” Father said, “and I fetched Lord Bask because I thought he should be here to hear whatever information Talan has brought us. And because”—he looked at me cautiously, a little hopeful—“I thought his presence might be reassuring.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, didn’t know how I felt about it. Their clothes were dry; they must have come back to Ivyhill using not our greenway but the Basks’, which meant that Ryder had decided to trust my father with its location. Did he hope that would impress me? Soften me? And then there was my infuriating father, fumbling to do what he thought might make me happy. He wasn’t wrong, not entirely, but what did he expect me to say? Thank you? Now everything is healed between us?

Even though part of me longed to say just that, I fought against the instinct. A single clumsy kindness wasn’t enough to warrant forgiveness, no matter how desperately I yearned for such peace.

“We must move quickly,” Ryder said, breaking the awkward silence. “If Talan can tell us how he found Moonhollow—”

“Absolutely not,” Madam Moreen said firmly. “He needs to rest and remain under my close observation. I’m not accustomed to treating demons. His body may react adversely to the medicine, especially if he experiences undue stress. And besides all that, I don’t even know what attacked him.”

“It’s all right,” Talan whispered. He shifted on the table, his eyelids fluttering open. “I can talk. Ryder’s right. It’s important. And Madam Moreen should stay. She should hear…what got me…”

Gemma went to him at once. “Darling, you don’t have to—”

“You know that I do.” He smiled weakly up at her. “My fierce wildcat. Don’t worry. All of this looks worse than it is.”

Not one of us believed that, but Gemma didn’t argue. She bent to kiss his forehead, smoothing back his damp hair. “Fine.” Then she looked up at Father and Ryder, her blue eyes blazing. “But the moment you start to push him too hard, I’ll put an end to this.”

“And I’ll help,” Madam Moreen added irritably.

“I was caught in a storm past the Spine of Caiathos, near Marrowgate,” Talan began, his voice faint but steady. “I was chasing a rumor I’d heard of a great fire—maybe a Mistfire—that had run wild in the woods there, and a mighty elemental who had managed to stop it. I’d wondered if…” He paused, glanced at me, at Ryder. I suspected what he wanted to say—that he had wondered if this mighty elemental, talented enough to extinguish a Mistfire, could have been yet another god reborn. Caiathos himself, perhaps, living in a human body just as Kerezen now lived in Philippa’s.

“Well,” Talan continued, “the storm came quickly, as storms sometimes do, and this one was particularly fierce. I lost my way in the wind and the dark, and then thought I saw a path. A glimmer of moonlight like a road through the forest.”

He glanced over at his raven, who sat with regal indignation on a cushioned perch in the corner of the room, his broken wing bound. He let out a single cross chirp.

“Ianto tried to stop me,” Talan continued with a fond smile. “He tugged at my hair and sleeves, flew right at my face, but the moonlight road was calling me. It grew brighter and brighter, such a welcome sight in that howling storm. I had to follow it. Of course, I see now that it was pulling at me with some sort of magical lure. Itwantedme to follow it, and I couldn’t resist. And suddenly I was there, like when you see something out of the corner of your eye—you’re sure of it—and then you turn, and immediately the thing is gone. That’s how quick it was for me, only when I turned to find the shape flickering at the edge of my vision, it didn’t disappear. It became…a city.”

He paused, recovering his breath. Gemma took his hand in hers. “Talan, please, it’s all right,” she said. “You can rest. We can talk about this later.”

“No, no. I’m fine.” He took a deep breath and continued. “There were gardens hanging from towering trellises. A sprawling city—or so it seemed at first. With each step I took, my perception of its size changed; it was as grand as the capital, then a mere bustling village. I did at least have enough sense to take on a disguise and decided I would explore and observe for as long as it seemed safe to do so. The sky was full of stars, the moon brilliant and huge. And there was a palace…a palace on the horizon, and then suddenly I was on its steps, and then the next moment it was far away again, like the distant shadow of a mountain. Then Ianto…he felt something. I don’t know what it was, but suddenly he stopped trying to fight me, and off he went like a shot. I followed him. I thought…”

He shifted, wincing, to look at Ryder. “I thought maybe he’d sensed Alastrina. One of your ravens, raised by the two of you… Your wilding magic runs thick in his veins. It’s possible, isn’t it?”

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