Lindon cut his speed. He wouldn’t be any good without a guide, though it grated on him to slow at all.
Eithan grimaced. “I’m not used to people slowing down to let me catch up.”
“I don’t prefer it either. Have you found them yet?”
Mercy reached them, flying on her staff, though she lurched and bobbed unsteadily in midair, the aura too thin to support a smooth flight. “Do you know where we’re going?”
Eithan ducked a tree branch that extended over the path. “They passed through here, but it won’t be long before you’ll be able to see farther than I can.”
Lindon had extended his own spiritual perception before Eithan had said anything. Since leaving, he’d kept his spirit wide open.
Orthos’ presence smoldered in the back of his mind.
The turtle didn’t feel any closer now than he had before. Lindon was getting no direction, no clear emotion. It still felt like Orthos was a hundred miles away.
Were they going the wrong direction?
He had to trust in whatever Eithan saw, but he hated how little they knew. What if the Heaven’s Glory Elders had misled them? What if the giant turtle who had fought them wasn’t actually Orthos?
If everything was as it seemed, and a group of Heaven’s Glory fighters had gone after Orthos, then Orthos would be in battle soon. He would give some signal, and Lindon would feel it.
Unless the curse of Sacred Valley interfered with their contract more than he suspected. Maybe Orthos was fighting now, and this was all Lindon could feel.
Dross tried to reassure him. They were doing the best they could with the information they had. But nothing helped his worries.
Until he felt what he was looking for.
Orthos’ presence went from a smoldering coal to a dark, blazing torch. Hot anger covered a layer of cold fear, and it was all suffused with grim determination.
Lindon felt the moment when Orthos sensed his presence too.
Relief. Urgency. Pure joy.
Lindon couldn’t tell where Orthos’ feelings ended and his own began.
And now he had a direction.
“Follow me,” Lindon ordered.
He filled himself with the Path of Black Flame, and the Burning Cloak blasted him onward.
Wei Shi Kelsa had failed everyone.
Heaven’s Glory burned tents and sliced open boxes as they cut their way across what had once been the camp of the exiles that had sheltered her. There were hundreds of them, along with at least a dozen Jades, and they cut down stragglers and those too old or sick or injured to run. There was no mercy, only a burning, golden advance.
This was her fault.
It was her failing that had led her to be captured in Heaven’s Glory. If she had been more skilled in the Path of the White Fox, they would never have been caught. If she were stronger, as strong as Orthos, then they could have won the fight. If she were smarter, she would have stopped them from tracking her back here.
She looked down over the camp as Heaven’s Glory marched onward. Most of the exiles had escaped into the hills at the base of Yoma Mountain. Her father was among them. And her mother.
But they were caught between a tiger and a pack of wolves. The Fallen Leaf School wouldn’t protect them, and this mountain was their home. The best they would do would be to hand the exiles back to Heaven’s Glory.
Her father was with those fleeing up the mountain, but she had stayed back on this hill to watch the attack.
Her three allies—maybe the three most powerful people in Sacred Valley—stood with her. And none of them could do a thing.
Orthos grunted and hauled himself to his feet. The huge turtle’s leathery black skin was wet with his blood. His left eye was swollen shut, he favored his left foreleg, and his spirit was weak. He was running on his last drops of madra, after having practically dragged her back here.
“Go,” the turtle said, his voice like a gentle earthquake. “Hide with the others. I will thin their ranks.”
Jai Chen stepped up on his other side, and her eyes were full of tears. She was a small woman, at least compared to Kelsa and her family, and she looked…soft. In every sense of the word. Eyes, skin, hair, hands, demeanor. Soft.
But she had fought at Kelsa’s side, and soft didn’t always mean weak.
She raised a trembling hand to place on Orthos, but his shell was radiating heat, and she couldn’t touch him.