I studied the almond tree before me, breathing deeply. I had to do it. I addressed the pale pink blossoms. “I figured it out.”
“Figured what out?” he asked, stroking a rose on the bush at his side like I might pet a dog, for comfort. The flower curled up toward him, yearning, as though he was the sun itself.
“Why you’re here.”
He stilled. “Did you.”
I took a deep breath and plunged onward. “It’s because of the scrolls.”
He looked at me. Not a look of confusion or realization or surprise. Just a steady, even gaze. Which meant I was right.
Which meant he knew what was in the scrolls.
And if he knew what was in the scrolls, if he was here because of them, he hadn’tcoincidentallybecome betrothed to a girl attempting to decipher them.
“No lies or games,” I said. “Tell me the truth, Daziel. Why are they so important?”
He inhaled deeply, steadying himself. Then he focused on me. His gaze was direct and unwavering. “Because,” he said, “we think they contain knowledge about how to cure the Ziz.”
Twenty
This was not what I’dexpected to hear.
“I’m sorry,” I said blankly. “We’re going to need to back up.”
Ever since I’d started at the Lyceum, I’d heard—and participated in—speculation around the scrolls’ contents. People hoped for all sorts of things—strange and powerful spells, the diaries of kings. When my cohort was overworked and exhausted, we joked it’d be grocery or to-do lists.
No one had suggested it might be a cure for a divine beast.
Why would a divine beast even need a cure?
Daziel looked upward, where clouds drifted like ships setting off. In the distance, I could hear wind chimes clanging. “The winds aren’t behaving like normal. There’s always been atmospheric disturbances—hurricanes, cyclones, heavy swells. But storms are becoming unpredictable, destructively so.”
His dark eyes returned to mine. “We don’t knowwhythe winds are changing. But we do know what has shaped the winds for millennia. The Ziz.” Daziel’s voice was even, as though he’d had this conversation many times. “The Ziz is one of the three stabilizing forces of natural magic. Natural magic is malfunctioning. Given how the winds and air storms are most strange, we think it’s the Ziz who is ill, or hurt.”
I pictured the Ziz, depicted in children’s books as a giant bird with the body of a lion.A wingspan great enough to block out the sun, went the saying.So tall it can stand in the middle of the ocean and the water only reaches its ankles. Once it dropped an egg, which flattened cities.
“I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing my temples. Here in my aunt’s garden, surrounded by manicured plants and with my chamomile tea still steaming on the round table, his words seemed preposterous. “Are you trying to tell me the Ziz is a real, physical creature that can get hurt?”
“Yes.”
“No,” I replied. My brain simply couldn’t handle this. The Ziz was a legendary, eternal beast. Legendary, as in…maybe not corporeal. Eternal as in forever. “The Ziz isreal?”
Daziel sounded puzzled. “Did you think it wasn’t?”
“No…” I drew out the word, uncertain. “I believe in the power of the Great Beasts—like that they can impact a ship’s passage or whatever. But maybe I thought of them more as—a force? Like gravity? Or sunsets?” This didn’t seem like the point. “How can the Ziz get sick if it’s eternal? Where do the beastslive?”
“I don’t know.”
I frowned. “That’s not very helpful. How do you know the Ziz is real?”
“How do you know gravity is?”
“Because if I drop a mug, it falls.”
“And if you hurt the King of the Birds and the Air, all the birds go to their wounded ruler’s side. And the air starts malfunctioning.”
Okay. He had a point. “What about the increased earth tremors in Ilthalit, or the maelstroms? Those aren’t air.”
