My best recourse was to find the flute player. Interrupt their song. Break the thrall over Kessian. But the music didn’t seem to come from any one direction, it came from inside my head. Deep down, I knew it was not the flute player this time. It was the wraith, mimicking the music of its own creation.
So I followed a trail of blackened leaves left by the monster. I crashed through the brush, heading in the direction the song had taken me allthose years ago, to the sheer bank where the river narrowed so sharply you could leap from one side to the other.
The air got colder as I caught up. I started to hear things other than the song. Plants withering, crackling underfoot. Movement like a fell breeze, and uneven footsteps interspersed with the thud of a cane. Lungs burning, I ran faster. Then I saw it.
The wraith stalked through the woods, a tall pillar of black ink amongst the trees. The thicket and plants of the forest floor curled away from it as if from a wildfire. It cleared a path, and walking behind it with leaden feet was Kessian.
I sped up, but ahead I could see the bright shimmer of moonlight off the water and hear the its rush getting louder, and I was still a good distance from the shore. The wraith began to whisper. The words were unintelligible at first, if they were words at all. They sounded like the river’s flow. As we got closer to the strid, its proximity buzzing against my skin like a live wire, the wraith’s whispers and song resolved enough that I understood.
You must walk the branching paths, the tributaries and small veins.
Though I couldn’t comprehend the meaning of the words, something in my blood answered the call, waking up.
You must find me where the river runs deep, where the poison made its home in Shearwater.
That frightened me.Where the river runs deepdid not sound like the sort of place I could go without drowning.
Through gaps in the trees ahead, the river ran blackly through the rocky crags, water thick as blood. Kessian staggered. He tried to dig his heels into the soil, but the wraith grasped his neck and moved him like a puppet.
Fear and adrenaline pushed me, but I already sprinted at my limit. A root moved to trip me. I went down, pine needles in my palms. I pushed up again and kept running.
The wraith reached the river, paused at its edge, then strode across. Instead of sinking into the depths, its feet skimmed the surface, the water frothing against it. It turned to face Kessian, insomuch as a creature with no face could. There, it waited, and Kessian went to it.
It all struck me as familiar. The vision. I’d dreamed this.We’ddreamed this, dipping our toes into a future we’d hoped would never come to pass.
Heart in my lungs, I cried out to him, “Kessian!”
He looked over his shoulder and saw me. His face might have brought me immeasurable comfort, if he wasn’t already six paces from the edge of the river.
He stumbled a few steps as though the wraith had tugged him forward faster. It inclined its head to him, then abruptly sank below the water’s surface like a drop of ink, unfurling then vanishing, the splash leaving one drop suspended in the air for an interminable time before it, too, disappeared in the stream.
“Kessian, stop! Fight it!”
I had no doubt he was. It didn’t matter. He reached the river’s edge and took another step. Ripples spread out from underfoot and under the point of his cane. One step, then the other.
I prepared to watch him vanish like the wraith had, but he walked across the water until he stood at the center of the stream.
The current will carry you home.
The wraith had Kessian in its thrall. It had won. He stood atop its lair, seconds away from a watery grave, and whatever magic kept him afloat, it had the power to dispel whenever it wished. So why didn’t it?
“Kessian! Please fight it.”
Kessian turned in a stiff, slow circle to face me. He was fighting. I could see it in the strain of every limb. His throat worked to speak through teeth clenched shut against his will.
I was close. I would reach him in a dozen steps. Eleven. Ten.
Even if I’d had the talisman, I couldn’t use it. Banishing the wraith would banish its magic—the only thing keeping Kessian from drowning.
I came right up to the water’s edge and held a hand out to him, hardly believing I’d made it this far, though a recollection scratched at the back of my mind. The vision we’d shared in the spring when this all began, I recalled how it ended. We were playing it out exactly.
It didn’t change the fact that I would try to save him. “Take my hand. I’ll pull you out.”
Kessian’s eyes seemed to scream a warning, but he reached out for me. His fingers were so cold as they grasped mine. Weakly at first, thenstrong. I started to pull. There was no relief in his expression, only despair.
A black hand rose up from the water, slinking around Kessian’s ankle. It dragged him under in one great pull, and he held onto me so steadfastly that I went down with him.
Chapter 30
