Page 75 of The Stolen Throne
The twirling staircases that went up into the trees are all smashed. Shards of wood and belongings litter the ground like dismembered limbs. The Vanished did that themselves, using large logs on swinging ropes to destroy the way up and prevent our attackers from getting to where we’d taken refuge. Except the Tyndrans shot flaming arrows into the canopy, forcing us down to the ground to be decimated by the soldiers and barbarians waiting below. Some of the trees are burned to charred husks while some are only partially blackened.
But the damage isn’t what turns me immobile or why, I’m pretty sure, Tziah made that sound. It’s what’s missing.
There’s not a single corpse to be seen.
The sound of my own breathing is harsh in my ears. None of our people returned to bury our dead. The Tyndran soldiers and barbarians were wiped out by Reven’s shadows. Not slain. More like disappeared. Disappeared. No one was left behind to do anything about the bodies.
Maybe animals came through? Ate the bodies? I don’t see any bones, though.
“Mother goddess,” Horus, who stops beside me, whispers more to himself than me.
Reven is up ahead.
I can’t leave him to face this alone. I walk up behind him and lay a hand in the center of his back. He doesn’t flinch at my touch like I was bracing for. I scoot around to his side, though I don’t touch him again.
Still. He’s so still.
What he must be feeling now… He was the one to hear every single person in the darkness, to find them, to bring them here to safety. He knows exactly who we’ve lost. He knows each and every face, each soul, each story, each name, in a way I never will.
What do we tell their families and friends when we return to Aryd?
Neither of us voices the question out loud.
“I don’t like this.” Cain’s voice breaks the silence around us. “We should have done what I suggested in the first place.”
He means gathering the other zariphates and storming the palace. But he wasn’t there when Reven and I fought Eidolon in Oaesys to see how impossible it is to kill him.
Reven moves away from me. “Vos, unthaw what you can around here. We’ll need supplies. Start with the creek in the clearing for water.”
He’s right. Without Reven’s protective veil of shadows in place, even as close as we are to the warm springs, it’s colder here than before. Without a word, Vos sets off.
Tziah watches after him, and I almost think she’ll follow, but instead, she points up into the trees. Into a specific tree—the one where the books were stored. Relief rushes from me on a sharp exhale because the library looks like it’s still intact. The flames seem to have scorched the roof, but that appears to be all.
Let’s hope that’s all.
The staircase leading up that tree is crushed in the middle like all the others, so there’s no way to get up there easily. I already have an idea to deal with that, though.
“Here.” I move Bene to Tziah’s shoulder.
Pulling my power forward, the heat of it in my blood, under my skin, is almost enough to dispel that ominous sense that still hovers over everything here. My yellow light adds a sunnier, warmer glow to the surrounding trees.
There is still sand on the ground. Not naturally, but because of me. I drew it out of the dirt what feels like ages ago, first while trying to figure out how to make a portal, and later to fight. Now I gather a pile at the base of the library tree and start forming it into stairs, filling in those that were crushed by the falling logs the Vanished devised as a defense.
At least I don’t need my amulet to help. I can do this much.
“I’ll leave some for you,” I tell Bene.
He hops to the ground and starts growing in size, back to small-horse proportions.
I’ve made it halfway up the tree, focused on what I’m doing, when the oddest crackling noise reaches me.
“No! Stop!” Vos’s shout from within the woods is a distant clap of sound.
The shock of it has me dropping my hands and spinning into a defensive crouch, ready to fight. Behind me, my sand stairs scatter back into formless piles in a hissing whoosh. Tziah, Horus, and Reven sprint toward the sound of Vos’s shout.
I take off after them, Bene running at my side.
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