Lowering her gaze from the spirits, Cajara met her eyes.
“Good.” Arin shuddered as an ice spirit grazed her arm, the cold shooting down to her fingertips. She kept her voice calm, as if this were a pleasant summer day. Behind Cajara, she saw an earth spirit, a stone giant, rise out of the ground. It held boulders in its fists. “Now all you have to do is tell them to choose you.”
Cajara shook her head. “I’m no one. Why would they choose me?”
“I choose you,” Arin said, and then she leaned forward and kissed Cajara. Cajara’s lips tasted sweet, like strawberries just ripened in the summer heat. She pulled back, but not too far. Foreheads touching, she whispered, “Tell the spirits to choose you too.”
Cajara’s eyelids fluttered closed. Still holding on to one of Cajara’s hands, Arin reached into her pocket for another potion-laced charm . . . and felt nothing. Her supplies were gone. She looked up at the sea of spirits filling the sky, and at the stone monsters closing in on them.
“I choose you,” Arin repeated.
Far to the west, in the untamed lands, Ven hacked his way through the wild spirits. There were so many of them, diving, charging, tunneling, biting, fighting, in a whirlwind of talons and claws. He was bleeding from dozens of wounds.
I will not fail, he promised himself. He kept the people clumped tightly together as they moved forward, bit by bit. He couldn’t see the cave or even the rock formation where it was, but he knew it was ahead.
Naelin was clearing a path for them—a narrow one, but he could thread it. He ran up and down the line, protecting the children, the men, the women, the old and the young. He didn’t see the faces. But he did see the eyes, full of fear. And full of trust.
He fought for them, widening the tunnel through the mist as they pressed on toward the cave where the body of the Great Mother of Spirits lay. Inch by inch, he won ground. Until at last he reached them: Naelin with Bayn and the children, outside the mouth of the grave.
“In,” he ordered the people.
They touched him as they passed—his face, his hand, his arm, as if they were blessing him or seeking his blessing. He kept his eyes trained on the spirits, but he felt them.
“Can you clear a path to Aratay?” he asked Naelin.
“I can try,” she said. “But . . .”
“But what?”
“My spirits will die.”
Naelin felt the spirits suffering.
Don’t leave us, the spirits whispered. Don’t let us die.
The untamed spirits were pressing in, gaining ground with every strike. All she had to do was call enough spirits to carry her, Ven, her children, and the villagers, as well as Bayn if he wished to come. They could fly for the border of Aratay on the backs of a handful of spirits while the rest of her spirits defended their retreat. Her spirits were strong enough to keep the untamed spirits at bay for at least a while. Long enough for us to escape.
The people would live.
But her spirits would die.
I don’t care, she told herself.
But she did care. Yes, she hated spirits as much as they hated her. Yes, they filled the world with fear. They forced all of humanity to lead brief, frightened lives, always expecting an arbitrary death at the whim of a spirit. Bridges snapped. Ladders broke. Trees fell. Winds blew hard at the wrong moment. Fires broke out while people slept. And then there were the direct attacks, from spirits who dared.
But they also felt fear. They felt hope and anger and joy. They felt, therefore they were worthy of care. She didn’t have to love them. She didn’t have to stop being scared of them herself. But she did have to protect them. Serve them, as they served her. Because she had promised them. If they helped her find her children, she’d said, she wouldn’t leave them.
While Ven herded the people inside to the relative safety of the cave, Naelin looked at Erian and Llor. They were her primary responsibility. Her children.
We are yours too, the spirits whispered. And you are ours. Our destinies are linked.
The Great Mother is dead, she thought back. There are no destinies. There are only choices.
Erian’s face was streaked with tears. Llor wiped his cheek and nose with the back of his hands. Naelin drew her children close to her as she kept her mind within the swirl of spirits. Beside her, the wolf watched her with yellow eyes.
“I know what you want me to do,” she said to Bayn.
He, as always, said nothing.
It was her choice. It had to be. And it was a choice. She could escape, return to life in Aratay. She could shed the remaining spirits at the border and become what she was before: a woodswoman, with children. She could begin a new life, perhaps in Redleaf. Ven would return to the capital—he had duties, and she knew him better than to think he’d forsake them, even for her—but he’d return when he could. She had no doubt of that. He loved her, and he loved Erian and Llor. He’d come here, risked himself, for the three of them.
Because you risk yourself for those you love, she thought. You choose to do it.
Standing, she wrapped her arms around her children and led them into the cave. The people buzzed around her, talking and whispering, but she didn’t speak to them. She walked straight between them to the mossy body of the Great Mother—they parted to let her through.
She didn’t know what had happened long ago, whether the Great Mother was murdered, died by accident, or died by sacrifice. It didn’t matter. What mattered was what they did now, the humans and the spirits.
We live. Together.
“We aren’t leaving,” she said.
And then she sent her thought outward: Live. With me. I am your queen, you are my spirits, and this is our land. She plunged her mind into her own spirits and then into the land, tying them to it with threads that she saw as glowing lines. Eagerly they dug in, thanking her in their own way, even as they started to shape the land around them.
Then she reached out farther into the tangle of untamed spirits.
She claimed them, as many as she could. And she claimed the land.
Knowing there was another way, knowing she could have saved herself, knowing she could have returned to Aratay and lived happily ever after with her family around her—if only she had been willing to let the spirits die—Naelin chose to become queen of the untamed lands, as far as her mind could reach.
Chapter 35
In Semo, outside the grove, Hanna closed Champion Havtru’s sightless eyes. “You were an excellent champion,” she told him. “Greet your wife with pride.”
She sat slumped beside his body for a long while, before she found the strength to drag herself to the earth spirit. It hadn’t moved since Arin and Cajara had entered the grove, and Hanna doubted she had the ability to control it. Her affinity was for air. But she rested her tired body against the spirit anyway, willing it to stay while she watched the stone circle of the Semoian grove.
At last, she saw two figures walk out, hand in hand: Arin and Cajara . . . Queen Cajara, with a crown of diamonds and other precious jewels dug from the mountains of Semo. The girl was stumbling as she walked, weaving between the stones in the path, but seemed unhurt. Arin was helping her, keeping her from falling. Hanna wished she could go to them but could only wait until the two girls reached her.
“Your Majesty,” Hanna said.
“They want . . .”
“I know,” Hanna said as kindly as she could. This had to be a shock to the poor girl. “You must control them. It’s on you now. Tell them do no harm.”
“That’s all?”
“For now, it’s enough.”
Cajara closed her eyes.
Hanna wasn’t powerful enough to sense how far the new queen could reach, but Cajara’s expression eased, and she opened her eyes.
“They hate me,” the girl reported.
“Of course they do. They hate us all.”
“But they want me too.”
“You’re bound, for better and for worse,” Hanna said. “Think of it as a marriage.” An unhealthy marriage in which you’re only staying together for the kids.