Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2) (34 page)

I open my eyes to a strange land. Peacocks perch in baobab trees, whistling merrily. Their long, shining tail feathers fan out in display, a thousand lidless eyes glimmering in the sunlight. Below them, baboons play at dice, squatting in the dirt and chittering at each other as the dice roll. I walk among the trees, pausing to watch two baboons break off their game in a show of anger, shrieking and scooping up handfuls of dirt to toss at each other. The other baboons, enthralled by their own games, ignore the tussle.

“Hitomi.”

I pivot toward the voice, but I can make out little beyond the trees. Above, the peacocks burst into synchronized song, then separate into a series of complementary harmonies, as if their lovely voices had been trained to replace the instruments of a great symphony. I tilt my head, considering. Something is not quite right.

“Peacocks don’t sing,” I tell the swell of melody and harmony.

The music ceases.

It doesn’t trail off, as the players of a musical troupe might if unexpectedly interrupted, some stopping before others. It simply ends, wholly and completely, as if it had never been. The baboon fight falters before stumbling to a standstill behind me.

Every last baboon turns to look at me. Then they bare their teeth.

Uh oh.

“Hitomi
.
”

I swallow hard and slowly back toward the voice, hoping to God it’s not some other baboon. Or someone worse than that.

A baboon a blood-curdling yell, taking a step after me. Another baboon answers. Then they’re all screaming, nearly human shrieks of fury blistering my ears as they jump up and down. Suddenly, one of them charges.

I bolt, dodging around a tree trunk, darting past another one, the roar of furious monkeys rising behind me like a lethal wave. I’m going to die. I’m going to be ripped to pieces by gambling baboons.

“
Hitomi.
”

“Where are you?” I cry. I plunge over a low rise, breaking free of the baobab trees.

Val stands beside a river, a golden plain stretched out behind him. He is exactly as I remember him, midnight hair tied back, pale face grimly serious, violet eyes bright and dangerous as two gems. I really hope a breather can take on a troop of vigilante monkeys. I have my doubts.

“Run,” I shout as I near him.

His brow creases. “Stop.”

Is he insane? “Run!” I repeat, putting all the force of my breath into the word.

As I reach him, my focus already on the river we’ll need to cross, he swerves in front of me, one arm reaching across my chest and spinning me around, throwing off my balance completely. I flail, knocking his arm away, and land hard on my side.

For a moment, I just lie there, trying to catch my breath, my cheek pressed against the rich earth.

“Hitomi,” Val says for the umpteenth time, reaching a hand out to help me up as I lie wheezing on the ground.

I scramble to my feet, ignoring the hand. “The baboons—”

I pause, blinking. The baobab trees are gone. Instead, the same golden plain that stretches out from the opposite bank of the river lies before me as well.

“Baboons?” Val repeats.

“And—” I stop, clicking my jaw together before I can add
peacocks.
“Um,” I look around, half-expecting the baboons to jump out of a ditch. “There were … where exactly are we?” I ask Val, finally registering his presence for what it means. “And what are
you
doing here?”

He shakes his head, a quick, hard movement. “What were you doing back there in the Mekteb? And why in all the hells did you stop fighting that lycan?”

“I—” I stare at him, the pieces of the puzzle falling into place. The voice in my head. My body knowing how to fight, moving faster than humans are built to, answering someone else’s commands. “
We
were going to kill him.”

Val’s face is a study in restrained fury. “And now he will take you to your death. You do realize you’re a prisoner of the High Council now?
How do you think you’re going to get out of this…
.
” He pauses, searching for the right word.

I could provide a few: Alive? With my mind intact? Free?

“Safely,” he finishes.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I don’t think my safety is worth another man’s life.”

“You don’t even know his name. He’s nothing to you.”

“What difference does a name make?” I snap. “He’s still a person.”

Val doesn’t answer. He gives me a long, inscrutable look. Then he turns away, walking slowly toward the river, the anger seeping out of his broad shoulders.

Should I say something else? I’m not sorry for pulling back, for having the presence of mind to stop before Val used my body to kill the lycan. I’m not sure I could have lived with that. The lycan is not what Kol was, and his death still haunts me. No matter what I think of the High Council, the lycan was only doing what he thought was right. Which means I have to be prepared to die for his life. It’s not a particularly good trade-off, and I didn’t have time to consider the ramifications in detail, but it’s done now.

“You haven’t changed,” Val says, breaking the silence between us. He stands at the river’s edge, watching the waters, his words carried back to me on a breath of wind.

“Neither have you,” I quip. He hasn’t aged a hair since I last saw him. But as a breather, he wouldn’t have, not when each breath he takes from another being grants him new life. A decade means about as much to breathers as a year does to humans.

From the rise and fall of his shoulders, I expect he just sighed again.

“You haven’t explained why you’re here yet. Or where we are.” Or how he took over my body.

“This is a dream,” he replies. “I came to speak with you.”

“A dream?” I echo. That would explain why I’ve already forgotten the fall I took. It doesn’t hurt one bit.

Val turns on his heel to face me. I’d forgotten how tall he is, forgotten the inhuman grace with which he moves, forgotten those eyes. I’m no longer sure I should meet them as naively as I did a year ago when he was my only ally, and then when he was all I had of my memory.

I wonder what he sees when he looks at me.

“Why did you come to the High Council?” he asks, calm again. “You were to study with Stormwind.”

Ah. Maybe he’s merely peeved that I appear to have abandoned the apprenticeship he assured me. “I did. She was called before the High Council to face charges drummed up by Blackflame. They’re imprisoning her at Gereza Saliti.”

If anything, Val looks more frustrated. “I suppose you were rescuing her.”

I flush like a scolded child before her schoolmaster. “I came to see if I could help—”

“You’re an
apprentice
. Not a thrice-cursed high mage like her. If she can’t take care of herself, it’s not up to you to save her.”

“It is if no one else will,” I retort.

We glare at each other.

“Where is she now?” he demands.

“Escaped, I hope.” If she opened the note I gave her, and followed its instructions to get to the roof — if she wasn’t caught along the way.

“And what will happen to you?”

“I don’t know.” I pause, studying Val. “Why do you care? When you left, you made it clear I’d never see you again. But here you are. How is this even possible? If this dream is real, if that fight was real, then what about all those other moments…” I trail off, thinking of the times I’ve found myself by his side, even if only for a few seconds. At least half a dozen times in the last year.

His eyes slide away from mine.

“What?” I press. “Is this spirit walking? Because it’s all I can think of and it doesn’t make much sense. Spirit walking doesn’t give you the ability to take over someone else’s body.”

He rubs his chin, then looks back at me, his eyes deepening to indigo with an emotion I can’t begin to interpret. He opens his mouth, hesitates, says, “I gave you a breath.”

“You…
.
” I stare at him, trying to understand. He’s a breather. He takes breath — the life force of other creatures — to survive. How could he
give
me a breath?

“After you killed Kol with your sunbolt. You were hardly more than a burned-out shell. I thought you were dead, but then you took a breath. I knew you wouldn’t take another one, you couldn’t, so … I gave you a breath.”

I can’t think of what to say, how to understand this. He gave me the lives and breaths of other people, and
that’s
how I survived? On their stolen years? “No,” I manage, the word so small it nearly gets lost between us.

“It meant that you were able to hold on long enough for your body to begin to heal.” Val’s gaze burns into me. “It also means that no matter what we do now, we share a bond. Even if we do not want it, try to distance ourselves from it, in a moment of need, it will be there.”

I latch onto this. It is so much easier to deal with than accepting what taking a breath means. “That’s how— when I was fighting…”

“Yes.”

“And … in the Burnt Lands? That voice in my head was you?”

“Yes.” His voice remains toneless, but the word itself is enough to shake me.

I run my hands through my hair, pulling hard, as if that will help me straighten my thoughts out. “Does it fade, this bond?”

“No. That’s why we do it so rarely.”

“Right.” This time, I’m the one to look away. I can’t gather my thoughts while listening to him turn the last year of my life upside down with his velvet voice. “How rarely?” I ask, to say something.

“Since the Great Burning, perhaps twice.”

“
What?
”

“It is neither safe nor wise for us to develop bonds with humans. Not when your mages hunt us as they do. And then … it is hard to watch your bond die.” The words are gentle, a quiet reminder that he may only age a few years by the time I’m in my dotage. Should I live so long. The High Council won’t kill me outright, I remind myself. Though I’m not sure that being bonded to a madwoman or a slave would work out well for Val. Not that I prefer either option myself.

“So why?” I ask, trying not to sound ungrateful. “Why did you give me a breath?” I push down the ants-crawling feeling that skitters beneath my skin when I think how my life has been paid for in the lost years of other people. Even if they were Kol’s guards. Even if they meant to kill me.

Val’s boots crunch in the dirt as he crosses to me, head tilted. “Do you remember the tower room? The agreement you made with me?”

I nod.

“You could have escaped alone, and you would have had a better chance of getting away. But you gave that up to free me, knowing I might turn on you. When the dogs found you in the forest, you led Kol away from the cave where I hid. And finally, when you saw that I would lose my fight with Kol, you killed him. You could have waited, but instead you acted when I needed your help, and nearly destroyed yourself. You gave your life thrice over for me. You, a mageling, and I, a breather.”

“I told you I wasn’t that kind of mage,” I whisper, my throat hoarse, aching. I hear the lie in my words even as I speak them. I claimed that I hadn’t learned how to kill — and then I annihilated Kol, leaving nothing but a scattering of ash.

Val smiles faintly, aware of the irony. “I know. And I could not let you die for your kindness.”

Is that what it was? Or did something else drive me? Guilt, perhaps, at what I left behind me in Karolene? I shake my head. “I don’t think I’m as good as all that.”

Val doesn’t argue. Instead, he says, “I don’t regret it.”

I stare at him, unable to wrap my mind around all he has said.

“Even though you have the annoying habit of nearly getting yourself killed for other people on a regular basis.”

“Mm.” I don’t know what words to use. A breath. My life is mine because it was sustained by others’ lives — directly. I remember how Val breathed from James, and wonder suddenly, sickeningly, if part of James lives in me.

“I have to go,” Val says abruptly, glancing to the sky and then back at me. “I’ve held you here long enough.”

He steps back, and the world around us wavers. It’s enough to jerk me back to the moment.

“Wait,” I say, my voice sharp. His gaze snaps to me. “Three things. Can I call you if I need you?”

“Of course. Reach out for me, use my name, and I will hear you. What else?”

“If I’m in trouble again, ask me before you take me over. Just in case I have a plan, or there’s something I can do.” Or I don’t want to risk what he might do.

Val nods. Behind him, the plains have faded into a murky brown haze, the river turning dark. He spreads out his fingers, his arms at his sides. It looks as though he is pressing back against the changes behind him, holding them at bay.

“And the other thing?”

“I’m sorry,” I admit. “For what’s going to happen to me.”

His eyes narrow. “If they give you a choice, become a source slave. Do what you can to convince them it’s the best option.”

A fine dust begins to rise between us. I shake my head, raising my voice to reach him. “If the mage they give me to is anything like Blackflame, I’ll be funneling my magic to a monster.” And I won’t survive the year.

“You can escape slavery,” he says as the darkness behind him expands, wraps around us. “Madness is a much greater struggle to overcome.”