in that same bell-like voice, “Forty-Second Vessel of the Divine.”
Nimhara, the canyon whispers back, stretching the syllables on the wind. Nimhaaaaara …
Nimh turns in a slow circle, though her eyes dart this way and that, scanning the windows.
Diviiiiine …
The words float back again just a fraction too late to be an echo. Nimh’s gaze meets mine, her eyes wide. I feel her fear like a knife’s blade trailing down my back.
“Let’s go,” I whisper. “Nimh, let’s just go. The people have abandoned this place. It can’t be safe.”
“They did not abandon it,” Nimh murmurs, reaching out and placing her palm against the base of the broken guardian stone. “There was a mist-storm … Can you not feel it?”
“You mean they’re …” I swallow, trying to imagine an entire village struck down. “Mist-touched. Like Quenti?”
“Oh, no.” She stands amid the ruins of the stone, the rising wind tossing her hair around. Her eyes meet mine. “Much, much worse.”
“I don’t understand,” I mumble, though the worst part is that I think I do. “Where are they, then?”
Nimhaaaaara … , whisper the many dark eyes in the canyon walls.
Nimh shivers, and whispers back to me, “Everywhere.”
Then her eyes flick to the side, fixing on something just behind my shoulder. My body won’t move, so I watch Nimh watch the thing she’s just seen behind me.
Slowly, her gaze never wavering, like that of a falconer approaching a wild bird, she slips one hand into a pouch on the belt she wears. Under her breath, she murmurs something. She visibly draws herself up, fills her lungs, and then casts her fist out, tossing a powder past me.
The air sparks and flashes, half deafening me—but not enough that I don’t hear the hissing, howling sound as her spell finds its target. The cold sensation crawling across my shoulder vanishes, and suddenly I can move again—suddenly I can’t not move.
We run, feet pounding the hard-packed earth, my lungs aching, my pulse roaring. When I risk a look over my shoulder, at first I see nothing, the landscape jumbling up in my gaze as I run. Then I focus, and see movement near the guardian stone, where I’d been standing. Something is writhing, stirring inside like ice-pale smoke, against the ground.
A head takes shape in it, arching back like something straining against a set of immovable bonds. The mouth opens, enraged, and the echo of a scream comes wailing down the canyon toward us.
I stumble on a loose stone and go sprawling in the dust. Ahead is a narrow ravine that leads up out of the village—a steep climb that normally would have me groaning. Right now, it’s a glorious staircase out of this nightmare.
We’re headed for it when another shriek rings out. A pair of translucent hands reaches from the shadows toward us. Nimh reels back, forcing me to fling myself to one side to avoid a collision.
We whirl around, feet pounding until we reach a precipice, skidding to a halt so abruptly that pebbles skitter ahead and down into the ravine. Nimh’s gaze travels along the edge until it falls upon a rickety rope bridge beyond it, leading to the far side of the canyon. It looks like it’s made of string and toothpicks.
“You’re kidding me,” I burst out, and she looks back, incredulous, as if I’m the one who’s kidding her.
“North, hurry!”
The cat certainly doesn’t hesitate. He runs out onto the bridge on light feet, bolting for the safety of the other side. Nimh’s only a moment behind him, and the whole thing wobbles crazily, but she’s almost as light on her feet as the ginger streak ahead of her, every undulation seeming to carry her farther.
The second she reaches the other side, I’m after her. But I weigh more, and I have no idea what I’m doing. I cling to the ropes on either side, the bridge bucking wildly as I stumble along it. Nimh waits for me on the far side, and one look at her face tells me there’s something behind me.
I twist around to see a face made of smoke contorted into an impossible scream, its mouth too wide, black holes where its eyes should be. My foot goes over the edge of the bridge as the thing’s face shifts between something vaguely human and something animal, like a vidscreen flicking back and forth between two channels.
I drag myself across the last bit of the bridge as it swings wildly, and scramble after Nimh as she finds an open doorway in