“Too easy,” Hector mutters.
“Storm?” I whisper. “Anything you haven’t told me? Any idea what your father is planning?”
“I know nothing,” he says in an equally low voice. His hand comes up to clutch the amulet beneath his robe. “But we should be wary.”
“If you betray us,” Hector says, “I’ll kill you.”
Storm bristles. “I was Her Majesty’s loyal subject even before she saved my life.”
“I’m glad to have you both with me right now,” I say firmly. “Mula, do you want to go back inside the tunnel and wait there?”
Her eyes are huge. “No,” she whispers.
I realize I’m delaying. “All right then.”
Hector takes the lead, and glass crunches beneath our feet as we cross the threshold of the ruined wall and move toward the balcony. Hawk and Pine step aside to give a clear path to the altar. Harsh wind hits my face as the altar comes into focus.
Pine does something with his Godstone amulet, and torches spring to life one by one until the altar is ringed in fire. The torch flames illuminate smooth, round river stones, bulging in places, leveled by wind and ice and time in others. The top is perfectly flat and little more than shoulder high. I stand on my tiptoes to peer at it.
Something is up there, something that moves. I step closer.
It’s a living thing, a hairless creature with skin as weathered as deer jerky. It lies on its back, its flaccid, jellylike limbs manacled to the rock. When it turns its head to regard me with despairing brown eyes, with human eyes, my breath catches in a sob.
“You have come to take my place?” it says in a painful rasp.
“What?” I peer closer. He lies spread-eagle across the altar. His fingers are bloodless, meaty stumps—as if they’ve been chewed. Lumpy skin swells over the wrist manacles. I follow the line of thin, slack limbs to a shapeless body fully bared to the elements. A bright blue Godstone winks from a n**ed belly.
I gasp. This creature is one of many bearers throughout history who was never identified—or who simply disappeared mysteriously.
“Behold,” Pine intones. “Our living sacrifice.”
Red spots dance in my vision, and I’m so angry I can hardly breathe. “This is what you plan for me? This, this . . .” Tears spring to my eyes. “This is barbaric.”
“Indeed,” Pine agrees. “It’s our greatest shame that we are often forced to contend with an unwilling sacrifice. But it is no more barbaric that what your people did to ours. They were afraid of us, of our power. You made us less than we were, with your otherworldly machines.”
I’m not sure what compels me, but I reach out toward the creature on the altar and gently brush his cheek with my forefinger. His skin feels like leather. He gazes at me with such hope from browless, lashless eyes.
I whirl to face Pine. “Why?” I demand. “Why torture him this way?”
Pine’s face remains implacable. “They made us human.” He spits out the word like it’s a sour piece of fruit. “Too much humanity in our blood made it impossible to bear our Godstones beyond childhood. They started to die in our bodies. After a few generations, only a handful remained who were even born with them.”
Pine looks across the balcony, toward the glowing mountains. “But even that wasn’t enough to calm their fear,” he continues. “They forced us to flee from our source of life and power. The hidden zafira was once ours; surely you know that? But away from it, we began to sicken and die. We had to do something just to survive.”
He turns to regard me, his gaze fierce. I suddenly feel like a tiny jerboa facing down a hungry jaguar. “We discovered early on that we could draw power through a living Godstone. It’s not the same as being near a zafira wellspring, but it is enough to keep us from dying out. We used our own children for this at first—the little ones who had the misfortune to be born with a stone. It was a dark time in our history. But then we discovered that your people had not only changed us—they had changed themselves as well. They mingled the blood of our two people, you see, so they could survive better on this world. Some of them, a very few, were born with Godstones.”
“Once every hundred years,” I whisper.
He nods. “And those Godstones didn’t fall out. How could such a thing be? That our enemy could bear the stones that we could not?” He shakes his head. “So we captured a bearer, a girl like you. The zafira sustains our living sacrifices. We don’t feed them or take care of them in any way. They exist perpetually at the point of death. And it’s important that they do. Otherwise they could resist and refuse us their power.”
“But this one is truly dying,” Storm says.
“Yes. Eventually death takes them all. Some scholars posit that they pray themselves dead. This one”—Pine’s voice is thick with contempt—“only lasted a century.”
A century. I know who this creature is. The bearer before me.
“Lucero,” I whisper.
He smiles, an ancient, toothless smile, and says, “You know my name.”
I’m shaking so hard, and I can’t stop. This is what they want for me. A century or more of lying on hard granite, exposed to sun and ice, my fingers eaten by vultures.
Hector’s hand is on his scabbard, and his gaze darts around, sizing up the area. Our eyes meet. I know what he’s thinking. But surely now that I have promised to tell the Deciregi of the zafira, their plan for me has changed?
“What about a ‘willing sacrifice’?” Hector asks after too long a moment. “Franco said it would be better if Her Majesty came willingly. What does that mean?” He edges toward me. His question is merely a stall for time; he wants to get me away from this place, and fast.
“Exactly twice in our history we’ve had a bearer come willingly,” Pine says. “A willing bearer is permitted free reign of the city. He is waited on as if he were the High Deciregus, his every need attended to. In return, he agrees to willingly let us siphon the world’s power through his stone. Both times we had willing bearers, Invierne experienced a golden age. We bore more children, we lived longer. Apparently the zafira is richer and more accessible if the bearer does not resist.”
I stare at the lump of flesh on the altar before me. Lucero was a poor village boy. Illiterate. Surely the prospect of being treated like a king would have made him a willing participant. Why did he resist?
Hector says, “What aren’t you telling us? If being a willing sacrifice is a position of such honor and luxury, surely you would have convinced more than two.”
Pine hesitates. He exchanges another glance with Hawk, who nods. Finally he says, “Having power forcefully pulled through a living stone is somewhat . . . uncomfortable, as I understand. But yes, a willing sacrifice enjoys many benefits to compensate.”
The Deciregus is too glib. Never have I met an Invierno so willing to part with information. Even Storm, my ally and friend, causes me no end of frustration with his reticence.
Storm must sense something amiss as well, for he says, “We’ll no longer need a sacrifice if we have direct access to the zafira.”
No one responds. Wind whistles across the balcony. Beyond the altar, the silhouettes of the mountains are edged with morning light. One of the volcanoes spews a bit of lava. From this distance, it looks like fiery pudding, the way it sticks together midair and plops onto the side of the mountain.
“Please,” comes a whispered voice.
I turn toward the creature on the altar, forcing myself not to flinch at the sight.
“Kill me,” he says.
I step closer. His eyes swim with longing. With pain.
“I came to destroy their power source,” I admit, softly enough that only he can hear. “But I didn’t know it would be a person. Maybe I could take you away from here. I could heal you—”
“No,” he says, sharply enough that it startles me. “Everyone is dead. Gavín, Jedro, Melita . . . All gone. My life, my friends. I lived for the blink of an eye. But I’ve been dying for a very long time.”
I’m surprised by his clarity of thought. His sanity. I don’t know that I would fare so well.
I lean toward his ear and whisper, “If you want me to kill you, I will. But I’m not sure it’s necessary. I’m bargaining for peace. Invierne will never need a living sacrifice again.”
Lucero blinks at me with lashless lids, as if trying to focus. Is he blind? He says, “I think that is not a good place for you to stand.”
“What?”
The earth drops out from under my feet. My stomach leaps into my throat as I freefall into darkness.
“Elisa!” Hector yells.
I crash onto hard ground. My right leg snaps, a rib, a collarbone, as I crumple like weak kindling. Pain explodes everywhere, and I open my mouth to scream, but I can only convulse.
My lungs are empty of air. Blood fills my mouth. It will choke me if I don’t swallow or spit, but I can’t. Something closes in around me, something so much darker than the mere absence of light.
20
HECTOR
I’M only two strides away when the trapdoor opens and swallows Elisa.
I leap forward, bellowing for her to hold on, though there is nothing for her to hold on to. The tips of my fingers just brush her braid as she drops out of sight. I crouch at the opening to jump in after her.
My limbs turn to stone.
Sweat pours from my forehead. My breath comes in gasps. I’ve felt the magical paralysis of an animagus before. I’ve fought through it and won. But this is no mere animagus, and within moments I know this is a battle I will lose.
A stone slab slides across the dark hole Elisa disappeared into and thuds closed. I can hardly take it in, that I’ve lost her again. That they stole her right from under my nose.
“What did you do?” someone screams, giving voice to my own rage, and suddenly my body is released and air rushes into my lungs. I topple forward, barely catching myself with my hands.
I spring to my feet, drawing my sword. I lunge toward Pine, but pull up short because Mula has gotten there first. She pounds him with tiny fists, still screaming, “What did you do? What did you do? Bring her back!”
Pine regards Mula with puzzled annoyance, as one would a pesky gnat, but her distraction was enough to free me from the Deciregus’s grip.
“Mula, step away now,” I order, expecting to be frozen again at any moment. The girl ceases her assault at once and backs away.
It might be best not to launch at the sorcerer after all. I watched my best friend burn in the fiery, unavoidable grasp of an animagus. I switch my grip to a throwing position. I haven’t practiced throwing with a sword this size and weight, but maybe I’ll get lucky. Or maybe I’ll lose my best weapon.
“Take me to the queen at once.” I’m in no position to demand anything; I’m just stalling until I can form a better plan.
Pine raises his chin in amusement. Beside him, Hawk chuckles.
I try a different tack. “If you don’t take me to her, you’ll never learn the location of the zafira.” I sheathe the sword, sending it home with a decisive snick. A weapon won’t help me now.
“They don’t care about the zafira,” Storm says, his voice a near whisper. He stares at his father, his expression unreadable. Was he part of the plan the whole time? I should have forced Elisa to be more cautious with the Invierno. “They just wanted her,” Storm continues. “The other Deciregi would destroy a nation for the zafira, but not my father and his allies. They just want peace for another century.”
In that case, I’ll find the other Deciregi. Tell them that if they free the queen, they can have access to a power source even more vast. But it will only work if I can get us off this balcony.
Hawk and Pine want Elisa for their living sacrifice, so they’ll keep her alive. But badly injured. Like the boy on the altar, they want her at the point of death. So she can’t resist.
My stomach knots, even as my jaw hardens and my teeth clench. In order to help her, I must leave her. Then I can bargain for her release. If that fails, I’ll tear the city apart stone by stone.
Pine and Hawk share a look of triumph. Gently, Pine raises his hand—the bare one—and strokes her cheek. “We did it,” she says, smiling up at him.
Pine turns to me. “We will present the new sacrifice to the Deciregi in two days, at the height of our annual Commemoration.” His voice rings with triumph. “It will be a great coup for our houses. I will present you and the queen’s other companions as well, for my daughter says that you all hold great status in your kingdom.”
I glare at Storm, who gazes blandly into the distance, betraying nothing of his thoughts.
“I cannot guarantee your safety at that point,” Pine continues. “The others will contend that if you return with news of the queen’s fate, your country will declare war on ours and invade. It might be better if you all just . . . disappeared. You’ll never be allowed to return home. But in honor of the queen making my son into an animagus and bringing him home to me, I’ll try to convince them to spare your lives.”
Pine pauses expectantly. Does he presume gratitude? Obeisance? He’ll get neither.
Eventually the Deciregus shrugs. To Storm, he says, “You must choose. Will you be escorted back with the others? Or will you retake your place as my heir?”
A muscle in Storm’s jaw twitches. Then he says, clear and strong, “My first loyalty has always been to Crooked Sequoia House.”
I clench my hands into fists to keep them from drawing my sword and running the Invierno through. My nails bite into my palms—a welcome pain. As soon as I get the chance, Storm is a dead man.