We crept forward, and, carefully, I laid one hand on the wooden door.The ghisting within allowed Tane to peer through, and I glimpsed a guard chamber with four guards, one reading while three played dice.
I took a breath to calm myself.I had known tonight would test the extent of my abilities, but there was one I had truly hoped not to use.Quelling.
I recalled quiet afternoons with my mother on the coast of Usti, in a croft punctuated by tiny beams of light, in view of a crashing sea.Over and over, I had driven the air from the little house until dead, smothered mice and insects had fallen from the thatch, and I had refused to continue.
But I knew how to do it now.How to turn closed rooms into coffins and coax the air from an enemy’s lungs.To force others into unconsciousness.Or kill.
Tane brushed across my mind, a quiet consolation, a reminder of why I was here, and I rallied.I began to sing lightly and softly, funneling my intention into the space beneath the door and the slim crack around the frame, where light seeped out.
At first, all I heard was my own voice.The ghisting in the wood shifted, and Tane soothed him in words I did not register.In theguard room, I heard a brief swell of conversation, followed by the clatter of a chair.The candlelight dimmed and went out.I heard a scramble then a series of thumps.
I counted a few seconds of perfect quiet, save for the barrage of blood in my skull.I only needed the guards unconscious.Too long, and they would die.Too short, and I would find myself in a well of trouble.
I waited one more breath.When the quiet was so complete that my ears rang and I could bear the tension no longer, I eased the door open.Immediately my song wavered.Lack of air would not kill me, not with Tane in my bones, but I needed it to sing.
Air rushed back into the chamber from the hall, cool and sweet and smelling faintly of cheap tallow candles and smoking wicks.
Two of the guards had fallen over.Another had slumped onto the table, skewing their game of cards and dice, and appeared to be slipping slowly to the ground.The last guard was curled up on the stone like a child, a limp hand on her chest.
All were still breathing.Relieved, I focused on the other side of the room, where another door lay.This one was wholly iron and marked with runes, and the frame was rounded in a way that reminded me of the coin talismans in my pocket.It also had the same feeling as them—magic.Other.
My eyes fell to the lock, massive and intimidating, and I turned back to the guards.“Keys.Keys.Pardon me, sir.”
I began to pat the guards down.Sure enough, I found two sets of keys, both nearly identical.The pressure of magic, and the size and intricacy of the key, told me which one I was looking for.
I slipped it into the lock of the round iron door.The feel of power shifted, and I sensed the ghisting from the hallway door manifest, watching the procedure with glassy-eyed indifference.
Boots planted, I put all my weight into hauling the door open.As soon as it parted from the wall a fresh sense hit me—one of powerand brooding anger, and the impulse to run.But that impulse did not come from me.
Magni power.
I stepped into a circular chamber.A huge brazier burned in the center, chasing back the cold just enough to make it livable, and ten cells spread like the petals of a flower.Several were empty.The others contained one prisoner, each in various stages of waking or staring or ignoring me with eerie detachment.
The exception was the cell to the left of the door.This one contained two women.
One lingered against the bars, fingers wrapped around cool iron.I saw with horror that her eyes were little more than pits of scarred tissue.A Stormsinger’s gag restrained her jaw and mouth, and the nails of her fingers were torn to the quick.She couldn’t speak.Couldn’t see.But one finger tapped against the bars—a familiar, Aeadine rhythm.A children’s song.
The fox is in the bushes, my memory whispered.The wolf is in the wood.
Behind her, the other woman began to hum along from beneath her own muffling mask, swaying back and forth.She too had been blinded.The air in the cell began to eddy, just a fraction.Enough to make the flames in the brazier flutter and my skin prickle with gooseflesh.
The deer is in the meadow, but John is in the well.
Blinded eyes.That was a hallmark of the Black Tide, the same cult that had tortured Benedict into madness and shattered Samuel’s connection to the human world.This fruitless cruelty— was this what would have happened to me, if the cult had caught wind of me?If my parents hadn’t protected me so thoroughly?
Compassion welled, so painful and raw that I forgot to breathe.What horror it must have been, for Sam to be a child, to be handed over to such monsters by his own mother.For Benedict.
John is in the well, Mama, John is in the well.The hen is in her roost, Mama, but John is in the well.
The urge to silence the Stormsingers rose up in me and then was overcome by a desperate need to cross the room.
Another impulse came, then another and another—from every direction.I stood transfixed, feeling like I were being pulled apart at the seams.More faces appeared at the bars of the cells and figures moved, hidden in the darkness.Hollow, hungry eyes came into focus.Desperate eyes.Emotionless, glassy eyes.
Eyes of deep, earthen brown, staring at me from a pale, bearded face.My instincts immediately recognized him as Samuel, but my mind—and Tane—knew otherwise.
Benedict.
I advanced on his cell, moving with a slow, inexorable pace.He watched me come, at first in disbelief, then with intense scrutiny.All the threads of power besetting me cut away, save one.Benedict’s magic overrode them all.It felt like freedom, so I did not fight back.
