Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2) (4 page)

“It’ll be all right,” I tell her, and because it sounds like a lie — an empty phrase that holds no truth because it holds no knowledge of the future — I wrap my arms around her. She stands in my embrace as if she does not know what is expected of her. I laugh into her shoulder and step back. “Come back soon.”

“I’ll try.”

Outside, Stonefall leads his horses over from the goat pen. He straps Stormwind’s pack to the spare horse and then they both mount up. She raises her hand in a final, unspoken farewell. I find I have no more words either, and lift my hand in silence. Stonefall watches me as he has this last hour or two, so I turn my hand toward him as well. He dips his head, flicks his reins, and then they are on their way, moving at a brisk walk up the trail.

I stand alone before the cottage, watching until the forest has swallowed them and I am left alone in the only place I know anymore.

I spend the remaining daylight hours gathering dead wood from the forest and carrying it back to the cottage. I’ll save chopping it for firewood for another day, when I’m not already fatigued from repairing the roof.

As twilight grows heavy in the valley, the sky lit by far-off shafts of sunlight shining over the mountain peaks, I make my rounds, completing the final chores of the evening. After milking the goats and returning them to their byre, I check the coop for newly laid eggs and round up the chickens for the night. It seems strange that these chores are now mine alone, that every meal will be spent alone, every conversation come to an abrupt end. It feels as though Stormwind must be inside the cottage, or gone foraging for herbs. But she is no more here than my mother is, and only slightly more likely to reappear in my life of her own volition
.

I wouldn’t normally worry about her return. It would be a given. But it’s Blackflame
.

While I have lost much of my past, those moments closest to the fire I lit within myself have somehow survived best — as if they were still too fresh and green to burn well. So it is not difficult to recall Blackflame’s physical presence, tall and commanding, golden hair and pale blue eyes. I can’t — will never — forget the cruel, thin-lipped smile he wore as he brought the fang lord Kol to visit our cages and feed from Alia Degath mere hours after masterminding her parents’ deaths.

Layered beneath this memory lies another one, rescued from the ashes. It is all sharp edges, disconnected impressions, but it is carved so deeply into my mind that not even my sunbolt could fully destroy it. Blackflame stands in his courtyard, his eyes hard and yet somehow bored. His words are muffled, but I hear them:
Hotaru Brokensword is dead. Do not come here again.
I did not know it for a lie then, knew only a sickening despair at the thought of my mother’s passing, and the smothering sense of his contempt.

Blackflame has no concept of compassion. When he seeks revenge, he plans it well. When he sought to destroy the Degaths, he did not account for the possibility of catching a street thief, and so I managed to escape with the Degath children. Though I was recaptured, they got away.

I have no doubt that he knows Stormwind and will not underestimate her. The only thing about her that he does not know is her connection to me.

Glowstone in hand, I clamber up to the loft and cross to the trunks lining the back wall. Stormwind has been gone since afternoon. Now that it’s full dark, she will have stopped for the night, but should still be far enough away that she won’t be able to sense my actions.

I kneel before the last trunk in the row. The only one Stormwind usually keeps warded, it contains her magical items and books. Placing my hand on the lid, I feel the faint reverberations of the ward awakening.

There’s no subtle way to do this. The ward is designed to block all attempts to open the lock except those made by Stormwind herself, a safeguard put in place before I came to live here. My hands wander over the lid, follow the prickly tingling until it becomes an uncomfortable buzz right above the lock. Resting my left hand over the unmarked surface where Stormwind traced her ward, I breathe in and let myself feel it.
Bound,
I decide, sensing the way the spell turns in on itself. That’s easy enough.

I take a moment to raise a shield around myself, drawing on the strength of the wood that houses me, the unseen force of air in motion and still. A flick of my fingers loops the magic around me, the fine hairs on my arms rising at the brush of power. The shield should protect me from any unexpected consequences of my actions. I return my attention to the ward itself, resting a finger on it. I can feel it precisely now, know the shape of it in my mind, and with three sweeps of my finger, I change it:
bound
to
unbound
.

The ward shudders, Stormwind’s magic fighting mine. I press my palm over it as if I could meld the two together.
Yes—
that’s exactly what I need to do. I trace over the ward again,
bound
into
unbound
, letting my magic pour into the first and then expand into the second, drawing Stormwind’s casting with it.

I sit back hard as the ward stutters and then flares bright as a flame before winking out. With a crack, the trunk’s panels shift apart, the corners breaking free of each other. The chest disintegrates, falling to pieces before me, no nail holding its place, the wood itself splintering where hidden cracks formed. Within the debris lies the pile of books I’m after.

Well. I hope she was too far away to feel
that
.

I let my shield dissipate and use a spare blanket to gather up the wood. I shake each item from the trunk over the blanket, gently dusting off splinters. There are five books, a number of tightly bound packages I probably have no right to open, and, at the bottom, a cloth-wrapped bundle. As I lift this last one out, the wrapping falls free and I realize I hold the separate parts of a richly made ensemble in my arms.

The shin-length pleated skirt flows black with two wide rows of brightly colored ribbon sewn at the bottom, red and green. The cloth — Northland, perhaps — is soft in my hands, thick and warm. The matching forest-green vest is tailored to be form-fitting. Embroidered flowers and leaves cascade down the front and flow along the hem in an exquisite interplay of reds and yellows, a touch of black and white bringing the design into further relief. Beneath these
,
I find a simple white blouse with full sleeves. Put together, the dress would be stunning. It’s meant for high ceremony, weddings and the like, handed down from mother to daughter.

Something falls free from the blouse as I hold it up and thuds to the floor. Laying the various parts of the dress gently over one of the remaining trunks, I stoop to retrieve the fallen pouch. Through its fabric I can feel the outlines of a book no bigger than my hand — and something else, wide and hard. Without giving myself time for second thoughts, I tug open the pouch. The book appears to be a diary of sorts. I close it quickly, then stare at its leather cover. These words weren’t written for me, and whatever the story of this dress, it isn’t mine to read, however much I want to know what it says.

I make myself set the book down. Stormwind respected my few silences. I can do the same for her. Still, I slip my fingers back into the pouch and withdraw a large circular brooch that shines gold in the dim light of the loft. Many-petaled flowers follow its rim, each with a small ruby at the center. A far more ornate flower at the brooch’s heart holds a ruby nearly as large as my smallest fingernail. The dress may or may not be an heirloom, but this brooch certainly is.

I carefully return the piece to its pouch along with the diary and wrap up the dress once more. I wonder if Stormwind ever wore these clothes herself. If I see her again —
when
I see her again — I’ll ask. After all, it’s not like I can put the trunk back together again. She’ll know what I’ve done. With a guilty grin, I pack the dress away with its pouch in one of the remaining trunks and carry the books down the ladder to the worktable.

With the fire crackling cheerily in the hearth and the cottage brightened by glowstones, I can almost believe Stormwind is outside, taking a solitary walk, or perhaps gone to gaze into the lake. Almost.

I lay the books out before me. Each concerns a different branch of magic:
The Healer’s Compendium, Advanced Elemental Castings, Magical Wards and Defenses, The Transformation of Objects,
and
The Making and Breaking of Bonds.

I’ve learned a great deal of healing magic and herbs from Stormwind. I suspect that her original training was as a healer-mage, though she’s never said as much. Perhaps it was long ago for her, a part of a life she left behind. At any rate, I don’t need more herb lore now.

I flip open
Advanced Elemental Castings
and page through it. I’ve just finished
Elemental Castings
, its precursor
.
It took me nearly the whole year to work through the book, my progress agonizingly slow. Stormwind insisted that I perform each spell flawlessly before moving on to the next. Unfortunately, the blaze I welcomed into my core when I cast my sunbolt changed the balance of magical elements in my body. Fire comes naturally. Earth and air are a challenge, water even more so. Still, I made it through, completing the last of the spells this past week. No doubt Stormwind planned to bring out this book in the next few days.

If I had a month, I would read
Advanced Elemental Castings
at once. I would take an additional hour daily for
The Transformation of Objects
and
The Making and Breaking of Bonds.
But I don’t know how much time I have, so I reach for
Magical Wards and Defenses.

I read into the night. The first two chapters cover basic defense spells Stormwind taught me or helped me to remember, and I get through them quickly. I wonder if she sometimes consulted these books while I was outside attending to my chores, for thus far there isn’t a spell I
haven’t
learned. They are mostly simple defensive sigils and their counterparts — like the protection on the trunk I so masterfully negated just now. Perhaps she used that ward specifically, knowing I’d easily be able to break it should the need arise. I wouldn’t be surprised if she did.

The book goes on to describe how to prepare a circle of wards like those surrounding the valley. Or, as I recall from that last day before my sunbolt obliterated the rest of my memories, like the stone prayer beads I set around the vacant building where my friends and I meant to spend the night. Although those wards only contained the power to alert me to betrayal and could not provide any further defense.

I rest my head in my hands. How differently might that night have unfolded had I been a fully trained journeyman by then, as I should have been? If I’d had such a book at my fingertips years ago, if I’d committed it to memory, each spell imprinted in my mind, the soldiers who attacked us might have been easily turned back. We might have escaped all together, betrayer and betrayed.

I needed this book, needed it desperately. And now I may need it again. Except I need to have mastered it already, to have practiced the spells it describes until they come as naturally as breathing. At its first casting, a new-learnt spell can be as clumsy and uncertain as a newborn foal taking its first steps.

We discussed my work each month and negotiated together what I would focus on, but I didn’t know about this text. Stormwind didn’t tell me — probably for good reason. She was trying to fill the gaps between what I’d studied with my parents and what I’d taught myself. She must have believed I would have another two or three years to learn from her, which would have been plenty of time to memorize this book — all of these books — from cover to cover. Neither of us considered that Blackflame’s reach might extend to this valley.

Letting out a shaky breath, I go back to reading, stopping only when my head grows too heavy to continue.

In the morning, after seeing to the chores I can’t forego, I raid Stormwind’s belongings once more. This time I look through the tightly wrapped bundles I’d relocated from the destroyed trunk. Eventually I find what I need, a set of pouches containing three necklaces. The first two are hardly any use to me at all, being fashioned of gold. A ward stone can hardly be made of metal. But the third necklace is lapis lazuli. The deep blue stone beads lie on my palm, coiled on their cord, and I wonder if I’m thieving.