Page 33 of A Song of Ash and Moonlight

Frantically I looked around for a weapon, any weapon, and spotted an enormous fallen branch. I heaved it up from the forest floor and spun around clumsily to press my back against the tree. The branch was too heavy to be of any real use to me, but I tried to hold it up anyway, like I thought someone might hold up a spear. My arms shook under the weight of it; I held my breath and listened. Sweat rolled down my back. Then I realized Ididhear something—a low hum like the buzz of magic, or a distant teeming hive of bees, or maybe a fire roaring in the next room. My mind couldn’t quite make sense of it; every time I thought I had pinpointed it, the sound shifted and slipped out of my grasp.

But I knew it was close. Something was making that noise, and it was behind me, beyond the shield of my tree, and it wasn’t moving, and I knew—Iknew, with the instinct of prey—that it was waiting for me.

I couldn’t bear to just stand there anymore. I needed to fight;I needed to run. If I stayed where I was, I’d be disappeared, just as Alastrina had been. My heart pounding, white-hot panic tearing through me, I gripped the branch and imagined driving it into flesh and bone. I would do it if I had to. I could kill.

I lunged out from behind the tree and spun around, fumbling with the branch, almost dropping it, a muted cry of terror bursting out of me, and froze.

A creature stared back at me, though I wasn’t sure that was the right word. It was made of fire, I thought at first, but then the flames shifted and became feathers in a glorious array of colors: scarlet and gold, sunrise orange and sunset violet, all outlined with shimmering white. It was fire, then feathers, then flames again, and at the heart of this restless conflagration was a white-blue kernel, an agitated shape. First it was a bird, beaked and mighty, a raptor with piercing eyes, its wings rising up as if it was ready to alight upon a mountaintop. Then I blinked, and it was a person, maybe a woman, tall and lissome—tootall, unnaturally tall, with the same lightning-hot eyes and feathers falling around her like hair, like an extravagant gown. I blinked once more, and the creature was simply a column of fire, sparks spitting off of it and bouncing harmlessly onto the wet black ground.

For a long moment, our eyes locked—if those were indeed eyes fixed on me, fierce and unblinking, and not an illusion. Then a spark from the creature’s wing burst toward me, falling very near my foot. I flinched back from it, my nightmare of that long-ago fire returning to me in a paralyzing rush of fear. When I stepped back, I snapped a twig in two.

The creature flinched and shrank back into itself. Suddenly it was smaller, less terrifying, and it let out an ugly, discordant roar. Was it angry? Was it afraid? I didn’t understand the sound, had never heard anything like it: beastly and musical, ancient. I thought I heard a crack of thunder, and the strike of a mallet against a bell, and a great tearing,like an underground seam of the world splitting open.

Then the creature turned and fled, darting off through the trees faster than anything should be able to move. I dropped the branch and took off after it, not knowing what I was doing, not knowing anything except that I couldn’t let the creature out of my sight, not until I understood what it was. A word came to me as I tore desperately through the deep forest, following the creature’s blazing brilliance. It was the only word I could think of to describe what I was seeing.

Firebird.

Chapter 8

I ran after the firebird for as long as I could, tripping over half a dozen tree roots and nearly tumbling down into a few rocky creek beds along the way. The problem was that I couldn’t take my eyes off of the creature; the flickering train of its fiery feathers transfixed me, a burst of impossible color in the dark woods. I ran so hard my chest felt like it might split in two, but all my running was for nothing. I dashed through a dense copse of smaller pines, following the creature’s trail and reaching desperately through the trees as if that would somehow bring it right to me, and when I burst back out into the greater wood, it was gone. All that remained was a few dwindling embers scattered across the ground and a faint scent of smoke spicing the air.

Breathing hard, blinking away the black spots dancing in front of my eyes, I started to hear faint voices calling to each other and realized I’d run almost all the way back to the house. Its fearsome towers loomed, their windows glaring at me through the trees. I ran for it, my body screaming in protest, and when I reached the stone drive, panting and shaky-legged, unable to speak, everyone there turned to stare at me—house staff, stable hands, Father and Lord Alaster, Gemma and Lady Enid and Gareth, the Nashes and the Barthels.

Ryder strode forward and steadied one strong hand on each of my arms. “What is it? Did you find her? What did you see?”

I gripped his jacket in thanks and said breathlessly, “There was a creature, a fiery thing with wings and long legs. It found me in the woods and then ran, and I chased after it but couldn’t catch it.”

Gareth hurried over eagerly, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his hair an utter fright, as if he’d been running both his hands through it. “A fiery creature? Did it appear to be an animal or a human?”

“Both. First a bird, then a person—a woman, I think—then a bird again, and then nothing. Shapeless fire. Pure light.”

Ryder glanced over at Gareth, who shook his head. “I’ve never heard of such a thing,” he said. “But there has to be a connection between it and the shadows.”

“Or maybe itisthe shadow,” said Gemma, coming over to join us. “If it can shift from bird to woman, maybe it can shift from fire to darkness.”

Ryder looked back at me, his eyes bright and furious. I tried to imagine what it must feel like to have your sister torn from you like that, all at once and ruthlessly, by forces you didn’t understand, and realized with a blow as mean as a punch that Ididknow what that felt like. I’d felt it the day the Warden took Mara away from us.

I touched Ryder’s hand, which still gripped my arm hard, as if I were now the one keeping him onhisfeet. I noticed Gemma and Gareth exchange a glance and made a mental note. The next chance I got, I would robustly disabuse them of whatever ribald notions might be coming to life in those naughty heads of theirs. I merely knew what it meant to lose a sister, that was all, and Ryder had done me a kindness with his lessons over the past few days. Touching him meant nothing more than that.

“Where did you lose it?” Ryder said roughly.

I led them all to the spot, where a handful of embers still glowedin the dirt. Gareth measured each one, examined the singed bark of the nearby trees, and furiously scribbled his observations in a notebook he took from his jacket pocket. Everyone else fanned out through the forest, searching for any further trace of the creature but finding none. By the time we all tromped back to the house, it was evening; stars twinkled in the darkening sky. My cheeks burned with a sort of desperate embarrassment. I hadn’t imagined the creature, IknewI hadn’t, and yet we’d spent hours searching the forest and had found nothing. The silence in the house was sullen and afraid. We gathered around the dining hall table, and tearful servants brought out a cold dinner.

“I’m beginning to question my soundness of mind,” I mumbled over a sandwich I couldn’t bear to eat.

“We couldn’tallhave imagined the embers and burnt trees,” Gemma said firmly.

“Unless that was all part of the same illusion,” Gareth pointed out, “designed to distract and confuse us further. Figment sightings are rare by their very nature, but they have happened.”

“And with the Middlemist weakening…” Father murmured, rubbing the bridge of his nose as if fending off a headache. I knew the feeling.

Lady Enid looked at Gareth curiously. “Figment sightings?”

“Figments are Olden beings who can create illusions in the minds of their victims,” Gareth replied. “No one knows what they really look like, as they disguise their true appearances with what are essentially mirages, but I think theyhaveno real appearance. They’re ancient entities of an indeterminate magical substance, who have no physical shape we can see other than whatever forms they assume to play tricks on their victims.”

I gave Gareth a warning glance; he was starting to sound a little too enthusiastic about Olden arcana, given the situation. He caught my eye and snapped his mouth shut with a sheepish nod.

“An illusion,” Lord Alaster said quietly. His gaze lifted to fix coldly on my father. “And is it possible that thesefigmentshave loyalties that could be bought, should their employer have enough wealth at his disposal?”

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