Guilt drenches me like a freezing bucket of water. Maybe theydoneed the rations the Shoniin are stealing? But would they even see them if they’re the king’s sacrificial lambs, sent to hold the war front with no support? These new treasonous thoughts clang around my head, making the collar of my tunic feel too tight.
This is wrong. Inhumane. Just as atrocious as what’s happening to the shepherds.
And it proves Temujin right.
Again.
I accidentally clench my fists, and darkness consumes the tent. The recruits gasp, and I blow out a breath and ease back. I have to stay calm.
“This way,” I whisper, revealing my face for a moment, so they know I’m a person instead of a ghost. I lift the tent flap, and as each deserter ducks past, I toss my net of darkness over them, stretching it wider and wider until it drapes over us like a blanket. Without a word, I place the front-most girl’s hand on my shoulder and instruct them to do the same down the line—to keep us together and so my ability will transfer through them. Then we inch forward like a train of bumbling camels.
I repeat the same process at the next two tents, and by the end of my rounds, twenty recruits extend behind me like an unwieldy tail. I start to hyperventilate every time I glance back. If even one of them trips or sneezes, we’re all doomed.
We shamble forward slowly, forced to break apart again and again to let guards pass, which means I have to loop back around to retrieve the severed group members, who are standing, blind and petrified, in the darkness.
By the time we finally make it to the clearing, my hands are tingly and I can’t feel my face. It’s been a lifetime since I’ve breathed. “Stay together until we’re safe in the Boneyard,” I whisper.
But the sight of safety is too much.
With a hysterical whine, the youngest boy in the center of the pack surges past me, and the rest of the group bolts after him—like horses at the start of a race. As if the rocks will conceal them better than my darkness.
They burst from beneath my blanket of night, and I have to throw my bad arm up to catch it. The pain is so blinding, I nearly fall to my knees. The effort leaves me sick and shaking and for an instant I have no control. My Kalima power falters, drained to the final drop. Everything goes black. Even for me.
Behind us, there’s a shout.
I grit my teeth and hobble as fast as I can to the Boneyard, where I find the deserters sprawled across the grass. Most are crying. A few are vomiting. “Keep moving!” I snap as I throw off my mantle of night. “The guards could be right behind us.”
The recruits’ faces pale as I stomp toward them, and they dive out of my way with a yelp.
“Youshouldbe afraid,” I growl.
Iam. For that single, terrible second of absolute darkness, I had no control. The monster could have claimed me, like it did at Nariin. Flashes from my nightmares bombard me and it’s all I can do to keep walking, to keep my lips clamped tight over my screams.
The recruits fall quickly into line behind me, and Kartok claps slowly as he materializes from the rocks to our left. “You’re a natural born leader, I see.”
“You could have warned me that following basic orders isn’t a requirement for Shoniin recruits.”
Kartok laughs and pats my head. “Breathe, Destroyer. You did it. The hardest part is behind us.”
The hardest part for the rest of them, maybe.
A handful of guards do come to scout the Boneyard, and it takes every morsel of my strength to drape the darkness strategically over our group so the large swathes of shadow appear to come from surrounding trees and boulders. On top of that, it takes every modicum of my patience to keep the young warriors from giving in to their panic and condemning us all to death. Our progress is slow and my head aches. What took me two hours on horseback takes us five hours on foot, and by the time we steal into the city, fire ripples across the horizon, stamping the blackness like a molten orange brand.
The threads of night begin to quake and peel away.
Just a little farther.
We spill into the tavern, and I toss the blue pebble at the bedroom wall. With a sizzle and a flash, the gateway burns through the wood grain. The recruits clap and practically throw themselves at the light.
Something niggles at me as I watch them vanish—that feeling you get when you’ve forgotten to pick up something from the market, something essential, but you can’t for the life of you remember what. As the last boy disappears, I realize what it is.
“None of them were afraid,” I say to Kartok. “No one balked at the fiery gateway.”
He shrugs with his entire body. “Why would they? They are believers, like you and me.”
I nod slowly. Of course.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” I motion to the flickering door.
