Page 111 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

The memory of Ankaret’s voice gave me courage, and I began to sing quietly, a mere thread of sound under my breath. The tune was new to me, and yet it poured out as if I’d been practicing it for years. It was as swift and relentless as a swollen river. I fought hard to keep my voice low and not let myself be carried away on my power’s eager current. I felt the danger of it keenly, as if I were dragging my finger along the edge of a knife. Any sudden movement might cut me open. For a moment, Philippa’s face came to me on a thin undertow of fear.You should have stayed with me, she said.What you carry is dangerous, and only I can help you understand it.

Ryder shifted uneasily beside me. “You’ll draw someone to us. They’ll come after such a song, desperate to know who it belongs to.”

I saw the tears in his eyes before he could wipe them away. My heart ached for both of us. Yesterday, I might have reached out to comfort him. Today, I kept a wary distance. I envied the old Farrin, the one who didn’t know what I now did.

I looked out at the glittering city, trying to shove that ache down as deep as I could and think only of the task before me. “As long as I think of discretion,” I explained, “distraction, deception, the song will provide for us what I command it to.”

I didn’t tell him that this was a hopeful guess, that I was only just beginning to learn how to direct my music with such singular purpose and didn’t know the full reach of it—or its limits.

Ryder let out a thoughtful grunt. “Is that what you did before, when we fought Kilraith? Is that how it works here in the Old Country?”

That’s how it could work anywhere, came the thought. It was my own, and yet it carried the flavor of Philippa’s voice.

“I wasn’t so deliberate about it when we fought Kilraith,” I answered, thinking back. “That was instinct and fear. But now I understand better how it works. At least, I think I do.” I felt the urge to look over at him but resisted it. “Do you trust me?”

The question tasted sour on my tongue.

“With my life,” he answered gravely. He hefted his crossbow back into position, then went still. “I’ve an idea. There’s a bird over there, a sparrow. Will you sing while I try to wild it? If it doesn’t interfere with your magic, maybe I can work under the cloak of your power and ask it how to get out without being detected by...whoever or whatever is here.”

It was a sound enough idea, but watching the sparrow hop innocently about left me cold. “How are we to know that whatever animals you find are actually what they appear to be? Their true forms could be disguised, or they could be under an enemy wilder’s control.”

Ryder knelt, holding out his hand to the sparrow. “After so many years of wilding near the Mistlands, I know when something is what it appears to be and when it isn’t. I wouldn’t try wilding an Olden creature, not under these circumstances. This little fellow is simply a sparrow.”

Still skeptical, I nevertheless quietly resumed singing. If this worked, if we could move safely through this place under the veil of my song while Ryder wilded information out of the local fauna, we would be safe for as long as my voice held out. Maybe we could even find a few prisoners to bring home with us.

I tried not to think of Gareth’s smiling face, his glasses that always seemed to need a good cleaning, his ridiculous messy hair. Instead I focused on my song and watched Ryder murmur his wilding magic. The sparrow came to him immediately. It hopped onto his palm, fluffed up its feathers in obvious happiness, chirping quietly.

Ryder stroked its chest, frowning. “He’s from Edyn. He doesn’t belong here. Must have slipped through the cracks somehow.”

I fell quiet. “Or else he was brought here against his will.”

“I don’t sense any other animals nearby. When I wilded him, did you feel any sort of interference with your song?”

“Not for even a moment.”

Ryder shot me a wry smile. “Perhaps it was foolish of me to imagine that my magic could do anything to unbalance yours.”

He said it playfully, without ire or envy, but I saw the guarded look in his eyes, and the words sat uncomfortably on my skin.Demigods is the word.What would that mean for us, if we made it out of here? A creature who belonged in both worlds, or neither of them, and a human—Anointed and skilled though he was—who belonged solidly in the world of Edyn.

I pushed the thoughts aside. He’d kept the truth from me, but I was a wreck of a woman who insisted on thinking the worst of someone who loved me. That was the true chasm between us.

“Come on, then,” I said, turning away with an ache in my chest. “If there aren’t any other animals nearby, we’ll have to find some.”

***

At first Ryder and I tried to skirt the borders of Mhorghast and remain somewhat hidden in the forest, but at every turn, the trees rearranged themselves and the ground before us shifted directions, making us stumble, and suddenly the city was right ahead of us once more, as surely as if someone had picked us up and put us right where we didn’t want to go. Mhorghast was pulling at us, and no matter what we tried, we couldn’t resist it.

Grimly we surrendered to whatever magic lived here and entered the city proper. My skin prickled, a warning of danger that I desperately wished I could heed. Just as Talan had said, it was impossible tocomprehend the true size of Mhorghast. The hope that my demigod blood would allow me a truer vision of the place vanished immediately. One moment, we walked through a grand city of glittering houses draped in fog, every eave trimmed with lights, every avenue paved with gilded stones. The next, we were in a cozy village with thatched-roof houses—humble but pretty—and tidy gardens bursting with flowers, and cobblestone paths illuminated by iron gas lamps. Then a blink, a breath, and the splendid city returned.

And always in the distance was the palace—Kilraith’s palace, I assumed, hardly daring to look at it. Sometimes it looked like what I guessed was its true form—a palace agleam, grand and domed and turreted. Sometimes it was a mountain on the horizon, or a foothill blanketed with woodlands. But even as its shape shifted, its size remained the same. Mountain, woodlands, palace with a thousand twinkling eyes—it was always there. Looming. Waiting.

My throat was dry, my entire body hot with nerves. The streets felt hot and crowded, and they buzzed with noise, but the air was strange, shimmery, and whenever I tried to peer through the hazy chaos at a shape that looked like it could be a person, it disappeared. Instead I tried to focus on the air in my lungs, the notes of my song rich and full in my throat, the road in front of me. The ground was real, physical, whether it was gilded stone or pocked cobbles. Whatever it was, it was solid beneath my feet. I was alive, I was moving. I still had my body and my breath.

I let my vision blur to soften the disorienting effect of the shifting stones and flitting gray shapes around me. I heard Ryder breathing next to me and clung to the reassuring sound of his footsteps. The low murmur of his voice as he worked his wilding magic acted as a familiar undercurrent to my song. Birds darted here and there, brighter and more numerous the deeper we traveled into the city—a sparrow, a jay, a finch—as unnoticed and ordinary as they were backin Edyn. But every now and then, a brilliant jewel tone shimmered, or an unusually long tail flapped past me like a hissing ribbon. The murky shapes around me began to resolve and become distinct, as if my eyes were slowly becoming used to a new kind of sight. With each step, the shimmering haze that clouded the streets faded, allowing me a better view of the world around me. I saw a white lizard with two heads, each sporting two gorgeous aquamarine eyes. I saw a sleek golden cat bright as coins, a looming black hound with a sharp red gaze, even a pearlescent flash I thought might have been the horn of a unicorn, though it was there and gone too fast for me to be sure. These creatures Ryder did not touch and guided me to avoid as well.

The others, though—the sparrows, the gray squirrels, the harmless garden snakes—he spoke to in so many bestial tongues I couldn’t tell one from the next. Quiet, fluid, his words were a melody in their own right, and the beasts answered back in hisses, quiet trills, soft chatter.

But watching him was a distraction I couldn’t afford. I kept my eyes straight ahead and my voice steady, determined not to falter even as the labyrinth of Mhorghast became terribly clear to me. It felt wrong to ever again call it Moonhollow, as lovely and aptly moonlit as it was. Mhorghast—the deep vowels, the harsh consonants—seemed much more fitting a name. For no matter how pretty the lights on all sides and the stars above, no matter how grand and soaring the towers of each building we passed, everything about this place was deeply wrong. Every street, every building housed a party, some wild revel: dancing and feasting, or a contest of some sort—races, wrestling matches, games with hoops and balls and flung axes.

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