Conjurors do not need fire to see in the dark.
Ellina risked another step closer. It was an odd scene: their somber faces, their single silly candle, the elf in his casket. Ellina could not begin to fathom the meaning of it all.
The forward-standing conjuror opened and closed his raised fists. The elf sitting inside the casket moved to stand. He swung his leg over the casket’s lip, used an arm to push himself upright. His neck was tense, his movements stunted. He turned his eyes towards Ellina.
But hehadno eyes. No lips, no hair, little flesh. His face was bone-white, stretched taut. A skull.
Ellina bit back a scream. She clutched at the wall behind her, blood wailing.
The dead elf stood on unsteady feet. It was naked, its dried flesh sagging off bloodless limbs. It moved in jerky bursts and stops. Its frame hung like a shriveled oak.
Nearby, the conjuror was still moving his fingers, controlling the corpse like a puppeteer. He clawed upward and the corpse came forward. He twisted his arms and the corpse assumed a fighting stance.
Someone handed the creature a sword. Ellina thought, surely no. She thought, it cannot be. But the corpse took the sword. Another conjuror—a female—had one too. She came at the corpse, who lifted its sword heavily at its master’s command, parrying the first attack, but not the second.
The female conjuror hacked off the corpse’s arm at the elbow.
The creature did not even falter. Its arm lay severed on the floor, but it raised its weapon and kept coming.
The female parried, dodged, and broke through, piercing the corpse where its heart should have been. The creature stumbled, readjusted its grip, and kept coming.
Finally, the female chopped off its head. And still, the corpse kept coming.
The duel continued, but Ellina saw no more. She bolted back up the tunnel. She had thought she would not flee, as if that was what mattered. Her stomach lurched, mind racing. Necromancy. Corpse manipulation.Thiswas Farah’s secret. This was what the conjurors had been working on in the night. They were practicing, learning how to use corpses as weapons. And what a weapon it was. What would war become, if one side could not be killed?
The thought seemed to puncture something vital inside her. An army of undead.Thiswas what the resistance was up against.
Ellina had to get to the everpool. She had to warn Dourin.
Now.
???
She did not waste time returning to her rooms, which were set on the opposite end of the palace. Instead, Ellina entered an empty library. She found pen and parchment, bent over a low table meant for taking tea, and scrawled her message. In a bare minute, it was done.
She folded the note and shoved it in her pocket. Her hands were shaking. Her pulse beat fast. She left the ink unstoppered on the table, the pen rolling.
Later, Ellina would understand what her haste had cost her. She had not been thinking. When she turned her head, all she could see was that corpse looking right through her.
She made for the stone gardens.
The shadows followed.
???
The sky was lifting. Dawn crept slowly over the world. The gardens were calm, everything impossibly quiet. The everpool waited, patient as always.
Ellina came to the pool’s edge. Though the morning was chilly with early winter, Ellina felt warm. Her skin was flushed. The air hung heavy all around her, thick in her throat. She kicked out of her shoes and pulled the message from her pocket.
A hand came around her mouth, stifling her scream.
TWENTY-EIGHT
At first, Ellina could not see who held her. She strained against her assailant, her hair in her face, her breath sharp and fast. “Ellina.” Raffan’s voice came close at her ear. “Stop.”
She did not stop. She slammed his foot with her heel, jabbed his ribs with her elbow, on the left side, where she knew an old injury still pained him. He released her with a grunt and she spun, pulling her dagger from its sheath, slashing the green glass through the air.
He disarmed her. Just as she knew his weaknesses, he knew hers. He used the trailing end of her swipe as an opening to grab her wrist, digging a thumb into the tendon there, forcing her fingers to open. The dagger dropped from her hand.
