“Cloudlander, you look very thoughtful,” Inshara says, and with a blink, I realize I’m still staring at her. The golden paint on her lips shimmers in the torchlight and she has one brow raised.
“I, um.” My first attempt at an answer crashes and burns, and I feel the cat weaving through my ankles, the warmth of his fur and the easy movement of his muscle somehow comforting. “I was examining the stonework there. What’s the meaning behind it?”
Techeki, at my side, murmurs an explanation, willing to work with me to stall for time. “The first symbol, on the far side of the guardian stone, belongs to the nameless god. The other, on this side, to the nameless goddess. He was the first incarnation of the living divine, and she was the second. Their names are lost, but not their aspects. He was the god of endings, and saw the Exodus of the rest of his kind to the cloudlands. She was the goddess of beginnings, and saw the start of a new world in their absence.”
I have to fight to keep the shock off my face. Nobody in the world but Nimh and I have heard the words of the prophecy that came to her as she manifested.
The Star shall light the path in the place of endings and beginnings.
And here I am. The Star. In the very place I’m meant to be.
No matter how hard I try to get away from it, the prophecy keeps grabbing hold of me and dragging me back in. And I’m done running from it.
Nimh’s prophecy is coming true, and it’s happening now.
I’m here to play my part, and I’m here to do it for Nimh.
That realization hums through me like an electrical current, as shocking as it is impossible to ignore. I can’t leave her—Iwon’tleave her.
I’m here for Nimh.
“She’s coming, isn’t she?” Inshara murmurs, turning her gaze out across the darkened city. “I can almost feel her. She’s coming to save you.”
I swallow hard, my eyes on the horizon, where the stars are blacked out by a distant gathering storm. It’s still a small, dark shape, flashes of lightning illuminating it from within. “You’d better hope she isn’t. You might find she’s a bit more than you can handle now.”
Inshara’s gaze swivels toward me, but when I look at her, her lips are curved in a smile. “I think she’ll find me prepared.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask slowly, a flicker of unnamed dread running down my spine.
“Our friends in gray stand ready at their stations,” she replies, taking in the city. “On my word, they will alter the river forever. I will do what she never could have, and create a permanent barrier around the whole of the city. It will be one great Haven. Six anchors of sky-steel have been placed along the river. When they are immersed, the water will connect them, and the whole city will be ringed in protection. No one inside the ring will be able to use magic.”
“No one except you,” I breathe, my heart dropping into the pit of my stomach.
A million questions shout inside my mind.
Where did she get the sky-steel for the anchors?
How many guardian stones were shattered?
How many villages were lost or will be lost to her need for power?
How many died, or worse?
I feel sick.
Inshara stands tall, gazing down at the rivers. “The mist-storm grows, but it can rage as mightily as it wishes. With a single word, I will keep it from us.”
We’re all looking at the storm as she speaks, and there’s something about the way it moves that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, unease prickling my skin. It breaks apart and swirls back together, and at the very center of it I keep catching glimpses of a white light.
There’s something about the way it moves… .
“I don’t think that’sjusta mist-storm.”
Her head snaps toward me, which is when I realize I spoke out loud. Her voice is soft, dangerous, when she speaks—these words are just for me.
“What did you say, cloudlander?”
But I don’t answer—I can’t. I can’t look away from the great, roiling clouds bearing down on us, suddenly moving faster, eating up the distance to the city. They’re the size of mountains, twisting and writhing like a great flock of birds, tumbling over themselves to reach us, breaking apart like the water of the river when it foams around the rocks.
