She turned to Azariah. “Did you or did you not know what it would come to when the Wanderers made a move?”
Azariah’s shoulders seemed to sink in. “I… I didn’t know the full details.”
Sonara felt her hand slide onto Lazaris. “Jaxon is gone because you didn’t warn us about what was to come.”
Azariah scrambled to her feet, kicking dust on the fire. It flickered for a moment as she held out her hands, her fingers trembling as an auraof fearswam towards Sonara, sticky and sharp with the tang of iron, almost like blood. “I swear. I didn’t know they would trap them in such a way, that they would do what they did! That… Dohrsarans would die. I only knew that they would come, that they would use force if they had to. But never this.”
She looked at her hands as if they were foreign to her.
“They are my people,” she whispered.
And suddenly her fear becamesorrow,the aura’s scent like a flower pressed in a book. Present, but no longer alive.
“I tried.” She swallowed. “Itriedto summon it, but I’ve never felt fear like that. I’ve never felt…”
“Like a coward,” Sonara said.
But her voice lacked the harshness she’d originally spoken with. Because suddenly she was speaking of herself. In her mind, she saw the ghostly memory of Soahm again, and Jaxon beside him, two hands stretching towards her as she ran away. Was there more she could have done?
She already knew the answer. There wasalwaysmore, always another way out, a solution to every problem. But she hadn’t solved either one of them.
“A coward,” Azariah said, and nodded. “I suppose… that is exactly what I am.” She gently sat back down as she seemed to notice the threat in Sonara’s voice had faded.
“It’s a sob story, ladies, it truly is.” Markam leaned back onto his elbows. “But there’s nothing we can do to save them. We should be halfway across the Deadlands by now, holed up in a better cave, drinking the day away. We’ll simply wait until this little feud with the Wanderers passes. Jira will get his Antheon when the Wanderers uncover it, and then they’ll let the prisoners go. The end.”
“Always so cold,” Sonara said.
“I prefer realistic,” Markam corrected her with a shrug.
“It won’t pass,” Azariah said. “That’s… that’s why we came in the first place. The Wanderers have only just begun. And once they uncover the Antheon, they’ll come back, time and again, to replenish their supplies.”
“And the king will allow this?” Sonara asked. “He’s trapped in there with the rest of them.”
“Not trapped,” Azariah said. “They have a deal. He is on their side, waiting for them to find the source.”
Somewhere beyond the mouth of their cave, out in the tunnels, a creature cried out in pain. It was distant, the threat far away, as if something bigger and stronger was devouring it, with no hope of being saved.
“They’ll use the prisoners to dig up the Antheon,” Azariah explained. “It’s somewhere near the valley, from what my father’s partner can tell. A great source of power, but it remains unseen.”
“What partner?” Markam asked.
“His name is Geisinger,” Azariah said. “A powerful Wanderer from another world. I’ve overheard them speaking. He sends messages by the Gazers that soar the skies. The plan is to make the prisoners work until their backs break. They’ll take nearly all of it,and my father will receive a cut. And once he gets his hands on it… it will change him.”
“How?” Sonara asked. She narrowed her eyes as the princess spoke, searching for any sign of a lie, or more truths to be uncovered. The aura usually came as a scent with another hiding beneath it. Like a cup of wine with a bitter poison mixed in.
“I saw him with it, only once,” Azariah said. “I watched from my hiding place as his messenger arrived, with one of the Gazers. The orb has a hollow interior, I suppose, because I saw it open wide, a hidden compartment of sorts, to give my father a bit of the Antheon. I’ve no idea what trickery the man did to it, for it was originally just a bit of black stone… but he gave it to my father in the form of a small black pill. And when my father swallowed it…”
“What?” Markam said, leaning forward.
Azariah wrapped her arms around herself. “Hechanged.I could have sworn… I could have sworn his eyes turned to shadows, black as the night sky.”
“The King will use the Antheon to gain power over all Dohrsar,” Thali said. “He lusts for it, just like he lusts for the abilities of the Children of Shadow. It is why he arranged for the Wanderers to strike during the Gathering. So the queens of the north and south would be taken captive, an easy way to remove them from power in one fell swoop.”
“No one is coming to save the prisoners, then,” Sonara said. “No army to get word, no great leader to journey here to fight for them.”
She felt like a hollow pit yawned wide inside of her, threatening to pull her in.
Jaxon will die in there.
