Kaja opened her eyes. It was dark, too dark to see anything except the shadowy silhouette of the evergreen trees. She waited a few moments for her eyes to adjust, but they never did. She stood cautiously. Where were her friends? Was she even still on the mountain?

  “Kaja.”

  She turned abruptly towards the sound. A golden light flickered on the horizon before her like a miniature sun, as a warm, southern breeze brushed through her hair.

  “Kaja.”

  There it was again. The light pulsed gently. The voice was familiar, yet strange. Where had she heard it before?

  Suddenly her surroundings shifted, swirling into a mass of undefinable shadow. The golden light grew larger and more brilliant, cutting through the dark and illuminating bright, white rock, red roofs, and innumerable banners in a rainbow of colors. Kaja was floating above a massive city on an island, hugged by sparkling blue water and white seafoam on all sides.

  It was Aurea.

  “Kaja.”

  The voice sounded closer, more real. . .

  “Kaja.”

  Kaja’s eyes fluttered open to Jo peering down at her. Blinking herself fully awake, she sat up and took in the sights of morning camp: Amale brewing hot tea, Leif polishing his axe, Sakrattars reading his book. Everything was as expected. She was never really in Aurea at all.

  “Sorry to wake you,” Jo said sympathetically, “but we should be heading out soon.”

  Kaja nodded, her fatigue catching up to her almost immediately. The Skolka was half a day’s journey away—it was the day she had been avoiding for nearly a year. Her stomach turned. She wanted nothing else than to curl back up and sleep through it all. It didn’t help that Sakrattars had kept her awake the past couple of nights, badgering her with questions about Snihl’ad and imploring her to recount every single detail of the encounter for him.

  Mercifully, the others didn’t force her to interact that morning beyond offering her a drink and some meager rations, both of which she refused. Jo’s lips pulled into a tight line, her amber eyes glinting with obvious concern, but she stayed silent on the matter. Kaja appreciated this too. The last thing she wanted to do was argue.

  After a quiet breakfast, the companions packed up their campsite and continued on the winding mountain trail. Sakrattars huffed and puffed, his breath a stream of mist dissipating in his wake. He was used to paved roads and the gentle rolling hills of Aurelia and Taracosia, not steep cliffs zigzagged with narrow, snow-laden paths. His legs were about ready to quit, but each time he found himself hunched over, gasping for breath, he reminded himself of all the things he would learn about zmaj in the Skolka—things he could add to his first-of-its-kind ethnology on them. His work would be the envy of academics across the entire continent. The thought was enough to infuse his tired muscles with another burst of energy.

  Meanwhile, Kaja navigated the terrain with the effortless ease of someone born and raised in the environment. Though she tried to slow down for her companions’ benefit, she easily outpaced even Amale, with his wilderness experience, and Leif, with his familiarity in snowy, mountainous land. Eventually, they told Kaja that she could go ahead and they would catch up with her.

  “But don’t stray too far!” Jo called out. Kaja nodded once in acknowledgement but didn’t say anything. She wasn’t in the mood for words.

  As she scouted ahead, she began to recognize certain landmarks, triggering the buried memories that went with each one. There was the pine tree Mila got stuck in and that mentelj had to climb in order to get her down, the rock that sort of looked like a wolf’s head that they enjoyed playing near, the little ravine leading to the pond they secretly swam in when they felt like rebelling. Kaja paused at one of the icy streams and scooped a handful of the crystal-clear water to her mouth. Her eyes darted up and she swore she could see Jaromil and Feodor, playfully pushing each other until Feo stumbled into the water. As he surfaced, he brought with him a young trout. Chessa, Mila, and Jaromil all laughed and helped him out. Kaja could still taste that fish, as if she had only taken a bite a few moments ago.

  The whole morning, memories like this one haunted Kaja—memories she had spent over a year running away from. It seemed as if every tree, every outcropping, had a memory attached to it. It was familiar, yet alien; like she had been gone for years, yet never left.

  Desperate for a distraction lest she lose her nerve to continue, Kaja shifted her attention to the unusual dream she had. She called it a “dream”, but it felt like a dream in the same way that meeting the masked child attached to her locket or leaving her body as a spirit dragon felt. Kaja’s hand unconsciously went to the locket and she rubbed the old metal between her fingers. Who had been calling to her and for what purpose? She felt an irresistible pull towards the voice, towards Aurea, as if she was destined to meet the mysterious person on the other end.

  Lost in memories of the past and thoughts of the future, Kaja didn’t notice that she was being watched.

  *

  *

  Jo lagged behind Leif and Sakrattars as they followed Amale up the mountain. Each step, each muscle contraction, brought with it a shot of pain through her side like her innards were being lit on fire. The axe-strike was the worst injury she had suffered since she had earned the brand across her back and she was ready to be done with it, to have the pain subside into the strange numbness of gnarled scar tissue. A cold sweat prickled on the back of her neck, her breath catching part way in her ribcage. Jo knew that the others knew how badly she was doing, but she was determined not to draw attention to herself and was relieved that her companions seemed content to play along.

  Besides, this journey was not about her. It was about Kaja.

  Jo paused and watched Koa soar overhead through the clear, blue sky, his sharp eyes scanning the landscape below. Could the hawk see Kaja right now? What was she doing? What thoughts were running through her mind? Jo remembered the terrified, exhausted girl she had found in the Goldenwoods, remembered the fear and shame on Kaja’s face when Jo suggested that they go back to the Skolka together. She thought she was doing the best thing by protecting that frightened girl from the truth in Linnea’s letter but, deep down, there was another reason she did what she did.

  Jo’s undershirt rustled against the tight, bumpy contours of her brand, the scarred flesh unable to feel the fabric yet still oddly aware of its touch. It was a reminder that her own past was taken from her. She could never go home, never live again among her people, never even reclaim her own name. She first lost her sister, then later her infant son. She had nothing, and she was no one, without Kaja. If Kaja went beyond her reach, back to her old life, who would Jo be then? It was a thought that deeply shamed Jo, that offended the very spirit of the Guardian Wolf Cuilun—who taught the natiuhan people responsibility, the value of family, and the sacredness of children.

  Yet, it wouldn’t be the first time that Jo had insulted Cuilun with her actions.

  “I am surprised you let Kaja wander so far ahead.” Sakrattars’ irritating voice jolted Jo from her thoughts. “The Jo I met back in Aurea would scarcely let Kaja out of arm’s reach.”

  “She knows this place better than any of us,” Jo replied gruffly. “When I lived in the Goldenwoods”—she jerked a thumb to the south—“I never saw anything more dangerous than a bear, and they’re all going to sleep by now.”

  “Yeah, have some faith, fancy elf,” Leif interjected good-naturedly. “Kaja took on Gorzog Ironfang and lived to tell the tale!”

  “I wasn’t doubting Kaja’s ability to handle herself,” Sakrattars said haughtily. “I was just observing that Jo would not normally let her out of sight.”

  “Well keep your observations to yourself,” Jo grumbled.

  Sakrattars sniffed but any other retort he might have had got cut off by a shrill shriek. It took them a moment to realize that it was Koa.

  Amale raised his ears, reacting to some sound the others couldn’t hear. “Kaja. . .” he murmured.

  That was all it took. Without hesitation, Jo leapt out of her natiuhan form and into a sabercat, leaving her clothes and armor and possessions in a tangled heap. Not missing a single step, she bounded into the brush, leaving behind her stunned and scrambling companions.

  *

  *

  Kaja tore through the forest, branches whipping her face and arms and cloak as she ran. Behind her, she could hear the heavy footfalls and harsh breathing of her pursuers. Yet even this had a ghost attached to it, reminding her of the time the lone wolf was after her and her friends which led to them discovering their secret cave. But this time, it wasn’t a mere wolf chasing her and she didn’t have Mila here to save her.

  She scrambled over the ice-coated trunk of a fallen tree, powerful jaws snapping shut frightening close as she pulled herself away. As she fell, she bent back a thick branch then released it with a sharp snap. It smacked into the face of the pursuing beast with a burst of snow, causing it to tumble off the log with a yelp. Kaja, landing on all fours, pushed herself upright to continue the sprint. She heard a snarling howl through the trees off to the side, and knew one of the beasts was outpacing her, trying to get in front to surround her. There was only one thing she could do to avoid being trapped.

  She took a sharp turn, diving into a dense patch of overgrowth. Hot on her heels, her pursuers tried to follow but got caught up. They snarled viciously as the web of branches snagged on their fur. Taking advantage of the brief lull in the chase, Kaja swung herself nimbly into a nearby pine tree, snaking around its spoke-like branches like she was climbing a set of spiral stairs. The branches were thin and bowed under her weight, but allowed her to reach some height before her pursuers burst into the clearing below.

  They were wargs, not dissimilar from the beasts that Ironfang’s scouts rode across the Steppe, though they were larger and their fur was a bright, clean white. The mountain was covered in patches of snowfall, but still the wargs’ coat stood out unnaturally. They were strangers in a strange land, looking to make the territory around the Skolka their own.

  The pack, three beasts strong and led by a large female, skidded to a stop under Kaja’s tree and stared up at her with intelligent, dark eyes. One, still riled up by the pursuit, leapt up at Kaja, its drooling maw gnashing uncomfortably close to her feet. Kaja quickly scaled a few more branches, her heart beating out of her chest when she realized she could not go any higher without risking the branches breaking.

  The big female tested a few of the lower branches, placing her paws on them and steadily adding more pressure as if assessing their integrity. Kaja huffed out a burst of magic as a warning but the wargs paid it no mind. They were used to the buffeting, icy winds of the northern Volgarian plains and Kaja’s magic felt like a spring breeze in comparison.

  The female barked and the smallest, lightest of the wargs climbed the tested branches, bringing his fearsome teeth and jagged claws closer to their prize. Kaja slung down another blast of magic and the wood beneath the wargs’ paws instantly rimed over with slick ice. The beast slipped and crashed to the ground. Emboldened by the minor victory, Kaja screamed, “go away! Go!” The large female bared her teeth in response.

  Then a sudden noise caught both the wargs’ and Kaja’s attention. Before any could react, a giant sabercat launched itself from the brush and tackled the large female. The beasts rolled across the forest floor, kicking up a cloud of snow and clumps of moist leaves.

  “Jo!” Kaja cried.

  Jo arched her back, keeping her belly wound away from the white warg’s vicious flailing, as she dug her sharp claws into the creature’s dense coat. The warg snarled and snapped, closing her jaws around the closest chunk of flesh and hair she could reach. She shook her head violently, but couldn’t penetrate the thick ruff of striped fur and loose skin protecting Jo’s neck. Jo kicked the warg repeatedly with her hind legs, slashing a series of deep, bloody grooves into the animal’s flank and forcing it to let her go. She jumped back and repositioned herself to face the other two wargs coming her way.

  An arrow whistled out of the trees and sliced between the wargs and Jo, sinking deep into the bark of Kaja’s tree. Startled, the wargs paused, giving Jo a chance to slip quickly around them, positioning Amale and Koa to her back and the wargs to the front. Jo’s hackles rose, her fur fluffed. Behind her, Amale set another arrow on his bowstring as Leif burst from the trees, swinging his axe and yelling.

  The wargs fanned out, searching for an opening, when a dense ice-ball struck the lead female in the face. She looked up in time to dodge another. Kaja was scooping snow from the branches around her and hurling them down. The female growled menacingly to her pack-mates.

  “Deal with the tree-whelp. The big-cat is mine!”

  Amale’s ears went up and he blinked in momentary confusion, relaxing his bow as he did. He didn’t know how, but he could sense a message in the warg’s growls, as if it had been speaking a known language and not just behaving as animals do. Was he losing his mind?

  “Did you hear that?” he asked Leif.

  “Hear what?”

  Amale lowered his ears. Yes, I am going crazy. . . he thought.

  But he didn’t have time to dwell. Two of the beasts loped off into a snowdrift, heading toward Kaja’s tree. Jo snarled and made to dash after them, only to be tackled by the big female. They tumbled off into the undergrowth once more, in a flurry of snow and a cacophony of snapping branches. Leif swore as he and Amale moved after the wargs as fast as they could, which turned out to be little more than an awkward waddle. But the wargs’ wide paws kept them from sinking in the snow and they nimbly dodged the flash-frozen snowballs Kaja sent sailing their way. When Kaja ran out of snow, she tried to freeze an icicle into a dagger like mentelj showed her in her time at the tabor. But in her terror she couldn’t focus and it kept breaking under its own weight, far too brittle to be used as a weapon.

  Without slowing their pace, the wargs barged their shoulders into the scratched and shredded trunk below her, one after the other, shaking the tree’s foundation and causing Kaja to grab on with both hands and her tail for support. Encouraged, the wargs continued their furious assault. With a series of loud cracks, the tree started to break, jerking down sharply before being caught in the embrace of another tree. Kaja squeaked in alarm as she nearly fell into the waiting jaws below, only catching herself on a branch at the last minute.

  Koa dove past her with a screech, talons outstretched towards one of the wargs. The beast snarled in frustration, shaking its head and lunging at the bird, its jaws snapping shut on empty air as Koa banked sharply up into the sky.

  “Leave it! Get the pup in the tree!”

  Hearing this, Amale aimed an arrow at the “speaking” warg’s face. It met its mark, slashing a deep groove across the muzzle and blinding the beast for just a moment.

  Finally reaching the base of the breaking tree himself, Leif bellowed a war-cry as he backhanded the other warg across the face with his shield, knocking the beast sprawling into the snow. “Hah! Bad doggie!” he cried.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Amale pinned his ears.

  “I didn’t mean you! Don’t be so sensitive!”

  “Leif!” Amale raised his bow, aiming at the warg Leif had hit. It had reared up behind him and was ready to crush Leif under its weight. But before Amale could loose his arrow, there was a squealing yelp and a torrent of movement. The big female, having been thrown from the underbrush by Jo’s powerful jaws and muscular forearms, slammed into its rearing pack-mate, sending the two rolling and snapping at one another in confusion.

  Leif tossed his axe and shield into the snow, and looked up at where Kaja dangled. “Drop! Just drop! I’ll catch you!”

  Kaja shut her eyes tight and let go. She landed in Leif’s arms and they collapsed into the snowbank with a grunt. As they struggled to their feet, they found themselves shoulder-to-shoulder with Amale and Jo, facing three very angry wargs that did not seem dissuaded from their hunt.

  The fight had lasted less than a minute, but it was already clear they were outmatched. Arrows did little against the beasts’ thick coat, and ice magic did less. Jo was their only real chance, but she was covered in cuts and bites. Though none of the wounds seemed serious, Kaja was dismayed at the sheer number of them and frightened at how the exertion was taking its toll on her already-injured friend.

  Looking to the large female for guidance, the wargs circled and growled menacingly, their own hackles raised and short tails puffy. The large female looked about ready to lunge at Jo once more when she suddenly paused, her nose twitching. All three wargs lifted their heads, their sharply pointed ears at full attention. Then they lowered their heads and backed away from the companions, uttering a series of low snarls and guttural rumbles. Once again only Amale heard the words buried in the growls.

  “The Hounds are back. The Hounds, the Hounds. . .”

  After they reached a sufficient distance, the wargs turned tail and dashed into the forest. Jo shifted back into her natiuhan body once it was clear that the beasts were not coming back. Not long after, Sakrattars emerged into the clearing, dragging all of Jo’s things behind him. “You’re welcome,” he gasped preemptively as Jo approached him to reclaim her items. He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow as if he had had the toughest job out of all of them.

  “I didn’t know white wargs lived this far south,” Leif remarked.

  “They don’t,” Jo said as she quickly dressed herself. She didn’t want anyone to notice the fresh wet stain near her wound, least of all Kaja. “I never saw one in all my years roaming these woods.”

  “You never saw a zmaj, either,” Sakrattars mumbled. Jo scowled.

  “There were stories about beasts descending from the north,” Kaja said quietly. “Before—before I left the Skolka. The adults didn’t want us going out into the forest. Many fishermen and hunters. . . never came home.” Sakrattars chewed his lip; Amale lowered his gaze.

  “What’s north of here, Volgaria?” Leif mused, attempting to bring some humor into the grim lull. “Seems even the beasts don’t want to stay there, eh?” When no one chuckled, or even smiled, Leif’s expression fell and he retreated into silence.

  “The mountain is out of balance,” Amale said. “The thing that was keeping the wargs up north is no longer here.”

  Kaja’s stomach sank as she remembered Snihl’ad’s words:

  Many of my children have died. . .

  Were the zmaj the ones keeping the beasts out of the mountains? That would mean. . . She shook her head, forcing away the terrible thought.

  Just how long had the Irkallu been hunting down her people?

  Kaja stayed with the others for the rest of the short journey to the Skolka, unwilling to tempt another encounter. The sun was just past its zenith when she suddenly stopped in her tracks.

  “We’re here,” she said, as if in a trance. There wasn’t anything that stood out to the others as signaling their arrival in a village, inhabited or otherwise. But as the companions continued, certain signs began to emerge: organized hut-like shapes covered in a layer of detritus and snow, partially-cleared trails binding the village together, and, in the distance, a large, ice-blue building nestled in the shadows of giant trees.

  Sakrattars clutched his robes and felt his stomach churning beneath. The Skolka was permeated with the same sickening, overwhelming fog that had affected him in Bandrigan and Feriel’s estate—the lingering shades of extreme emotion and horrific tragedy, altering the very fabric of reality. Whatever they would find here, it would not be good.

  “This is where my parents lived,” Kaja said, stopping in front of one of the huts. It looked like it had once been built of wood and straw, with walls of shaped ice and a powdered snow roof. Now, it lay in ruin: the wooden beams charred, the top caved in, and the icy walls partially melted. Kaja pulled back the familiar deerskin flap and peered inside, but the only sight that awaited her was a mound of collapsed debris and a collection of leaves and droppings left by some recent animal inhabitant. “They aren’t here,” Kaja observed, as if she had been expecting another outcome and was merely taking note of the one she saw instead.

  Sakrattars looked over her head, laying his hand gently on the side of the door. When his palm made contact with the structure, he caught a sudden whiff of smoke, could hear distant screams and feel the glowing warmth of fire against his face. He quickly removed his hand, taking a mental note of the building to record in his notes later.

  They followed Kaja away from her parents’ home and towards the giant blue building at the center of the Skolka. As they approached, Amale knelt, placing a paw near a trail of hurried footprints. They were bipedal, made with an artificial sole.

  They were made by people.

  “Fresh,” Amale said. “Since the last snowfall.”

  Kaja perked up, a glimmer of her old self flickering into her eyes. She turned and ran towards the village center, but when she arrived, she slowed, her heavy breathing creating misty puffs around her. Her expression fell into disappointment, then grief. Eventually she stopped and stared up at the ruined building that used to be her home.

  The tabor was nearly destroyed. The ice was mutated in several places, as if melted and then refrozen. The trunks of the huge ancient trees that the walls attached to were blackened and so badly burned that the upper branches were beginning to wither in a slow death. Whoever had been here recently, they didn’t live here—none of the villagers, whether they were ice-shapers or not, would have allowed the sacred tabor to fall into such disrepair.

  When the party caught up to Kaja, each paused in turn at the sight. Amale lowered his ears and scratched Koa’s neck for comfort, struggling to comprehend both the loss of the zmaj and the tortured suffering of such venerable trees.

  Then something caught everyone’s eye at the same time, something that looked out of place. There were strangely-shaped pillars of ice in a scattered pattern around the tabor, surrounded by a flurry of footprints. It looked like there had been a violent struggle.

  “Were these pillars always here?” Sakrattars asked.

  Kaja shook her head. “No. This is different from our magic.”

  “Different? As in how?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  Sakrattars furrowed his brow, frustrated by Kaja’s response but also trying to tamp down on the growing nausea in his gut.

  “What’s this?” Jo reached into the snow and pulled up what appeared to be a spear of some sort. It was made of silver metal, thin and simplistic in design, with a grip wrapped in worn leather and an odd, conical head shaped like a tooth complete with jagged serration. Kaja reached out her hands and Jo handed her the spear. It looked comically large and unbalanced compared to her small stature, but something about the object fascinated Kaja. “I assume that wasn’t here either?” Jo asked. Kaja shook her head, her eyes still transfixed on the weapon. “Well, whoever wielded it must have met their mark,” Jo observed, gesturing to a scattering of blackened blood in the snow. Kaja’s heart pulsed at the sight of the blood, her inner dragon salivating. She turned away quickly.

  “The prints lead to the building,” Amale announced. “Two sets in, two sets out. They’re gone.”

  Kaja handed the spear back to Jo, who held onto it despite not knowing why she should.

  “What is this place, Kaja?” Sakrattars asked, the question strained.

  “The tabor,” she replied softly, inspecting the blue ice, now coated in a layer of oily soot. She placed her hand on what was once the door frame. “It’s where we all lived. The mentelj—the teachers—and the other children. They were. . . my family. This was my home. I—I want to go inside.”

  Jo nodded, her eyes scanning the building. Large as it was, Jo couldn’t be sure that she would fit into the tight, partially collapsed spaces within. The last thing she wanted to do was further desecrate the site. “I’ll keep watch outside,” she said, placing a supportive hand on Kaja’s shoulder. “Take as much time as you need. I’ll be here when you come out.”

  Kaja’s lips turned up into a small smile of acknowledgement, but the gesture didn’t reach her eyes. Then she slipped inside, with Leif and Amale close behind. As they passed through the doorway, Amale noticed a stiff strip of hardened deerskin along the top, singed across the edge. There was once a door on the building but it had been burned away long ago.

  Sakrattars hesitated. The feeling was most powerful here, at the tabor, and every sinew in his body was telling him to leave.

  That was ridiculous, though! He had dreamed of this moment ever since meeting Kaja in Barsicum and he wasn’t going to be denied. Pushing away the inner warning, Sakrattars stepped through the threshold and immediately keeled over, clutching his stomach. The nausea reached a breaking point and he heaved, his eyes burning with tears as bile stung his throat. The act was so violent that Bartholomew was thrown from his cozy place in Sakrattars’ cowl, and bounced onto the floor—kicking up a mix of dirt, ash, and snowy leaves that had blown in from outside.

  “What’s wrong?” Leif cried out in surprise as Amale lent Sakrattars a supportive arm.

  “Nothing,” Sakrattars said, his voice hoarse. His fingers dug into the coarse fur on Amale’s arm. “Bad food, perhaps.” It was a lie. A flurry of awful visions and feelings flooded his mind, squeezing breath from his lungs and forcing out the contents from his stomach. He trembled, a fresh wave of nausea coming over him as the most potent vision flashed again through his mind’s eye.

  It was a vision of huddled children, crying and screaming as the flames closed in around them.

  “Want to wait outside with Jo?” Leif asked. Sakrattars shook his head, forcing himself to stand upright. Kaja handed him Bartholomew, her innocent blue eyes an eerie reminder of the terrified eyes of the children from his vision. Clenching his jaw and holding his breath against the sick, Sakrattars took Bartholomew back with a small nod of gratitude.

  With reassurance that Sakrattars was fine, or as fine as he was going to get, the companions refocused on their surroundings. The inside of the tabor was deformed and desolate, with large icicles drooping from the ceiling and down the soot-coated walls like spent candle wax. A pyramid of debris that had fallen in from the opening ceiling lay in the center of the floor. Beyond the foyer, there was a long, two-story hall with rooms branching off—all of the doors burned away and the weeping walls bowed and uneven.

  As they followed Kaja through the ruined building, Amale gestured quietly to the sets of mysterious footprints as they came across them, with Leif and Sakrattars silently nodding in response. Who were the strange visitors and what were they looking for?

  When they reached the second floor, Kaja stopped at one room, looking inside for a long time. Where she and her friends all slept in a pile of furs, there was a mound of frozen ash. Where they sat as Matus taught, there were blackened lumps of charred wood. Her eyes became distant, her vision blurred. If she let herself fall into that deep, dark well within her heart, she could still hear the playful yelling of the younglings on the first floor, the loud gossiping of the older children next door, the girlish giggles she shared with Mila and Chessa when Jaromil and Feodor weren’t around. . .

  Finally, Sakrattars took a deep breath. “Kaja,” he said as gently as he could, still fighting the lingering nausea. “Is there a reason someone would come in here? Someone not from your village.”

  Kaja started, shaken from her memories. “No, I don’t think so. This is just where we lived and the mentelj taught us.” Her gaze lowered, her eyes becoming glassy once more. “I don’t know why anyone would come here.”

  Sakattars looked over his shoulder, back at Amale and Leif. “I think that it is important that we find out,” he replied.

  Kaja nodded, but her heart wasn’t in it. Instead of focusing on who had made the wet, smudged footprints in the soot, she was thinking of the people who hadn’t.

  *

  *

  Outside, Jo had been seated on a snowy rock, but as the cold seeped into her skin, her wound began to ache. She got up and walked, stretching gently to ease the clenching muscles. As she did, it was difficult to tear her eyes away from the fallen structures around her. She was looking into Kaja’s past, and felt a strong desire to have seen the village when it was alive and thriving. What were the people like, who lived here? What was Kaja’s family like?

  She paused when she reached the edge of the village. In the distance, near the treeline, were clusters of flat stones, too uniform and organized to have been a natural formation. Jo felt a lump form in her throat as she slowly approached to investigate.

  As she thought, they were graves.

  Built in the Imperial tradition, a flat stone had been placed on top of each of the burial mounds—symbolizing Aegis’ shield defending the soul within from darkness. Jo scanned the field of stones before her, the true scope of the tragedy finally setting in. Linnea’s letter had mentioned that the Ordo scouts had buried the bodies they found with respect, but it had not mentioned that there had been dozens upon dozens of them. Jo lowered her gaze. By her feet were a collection of small mounds. The graves of children.

  Her knees buckled beneath her, bringing her to a kneel before the sight. Hot tears stinging the corners of her eyes, she murmured a prayer to Cuilun and then to Melcuni. She thought of her own son, buried not too far away in the southern Goldenwoods. How many sons and daughters had been lost here? How many families had been annihilated?

  A gust of wind played with the fine crystals of snow, sending a sparkling cloud dissipating into the chilly air and uncovering something fluttering lightly in the breeze, partially pinned under one of the flat stones on the small graves. It was a cluster of crow feathers, bound together with a lingonberry sprig—an offering to the Imperial goddess of birth and death, Aia.

  Jo closed her eyes, grief giving way to a bright, burning rage. She knew it was only Melcuni’s domain to know when a life should end; yet, she couldn’t help but think that whoever could do such a thing as this didn’t deserve to live.

  *

  *

  “The prints stop here,” Amale said, his tail swishing as he stood. The others hurried to join him, only to be met by the puzzling sight of the wet footprints idling around a blank wall.

  “What part of the tabor is this?” Sakrattars asked. He leaned in close to the wall, inspecting it, but stopped short of placing his hands upon the ice, in case the action triggered the visions once more.

  “It’s where the mentelj lived,” Kaja said. “They had their own rooms down here.”

  “The mentelj were your teachers, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were they skilled with magic?”

  “Yes, they taught us everything. Only the Great Elders were more powerful.” Kaja turned her gaze downward, her voice trailing off.

  Sakrattars pursed his lips, seemingly convinced of some theory he harbored. He reached into his scroll case and pulled one out, then recited the words of magic written upon it. When he was done reading, a shimmering halo shined dully through the soot on the wall. “That’s what I thought,” he mumbled, his breath shallow from the energy he spent casting the spell. “There is a door here.”

  Kaja’s eyes widened, matched by both Leif’s and Amale’s. “You sometimes come in handy after all,” Leif joked as Sakrattars rummaged through his spell components. It was a simple lock, like the ones every wizard used for their studies to prevent lay-people from wandering in, or the one Sakrattars used for his apartment in Barsicum to keep his drunken landlord out of his things. It would be an easy thing to undo for someone else trained in the magical arts.

  But when Sakrattars said the words and spent the components, the magic held fast. Confused, he at first wondered if he said the spell incorrectly. He performed the spell again, and still nothing happened.

  “Guess I spoke too soon,” Leif grumbled.

  “I don’t understand, I—” Sakrattars paused, staring down at Kaja who was waiting expectantly for something to happen. If the spell was built with dragon magic, then perhaps only dragon magic could undo it. “Kaja, can you please place your hand on the wall?”

  Kaja did as she was told.

  “Do you know an unlocking spell?”

  She shook her head.

  Sakrattars sighed. “Alright, well,” he said, digging into his pouch for more components, “I’ll cast the unlocking spell, and at the same time, you infuse the door with your magic. Hopefully that will do the trick.”

  Kaja nodded.

  “Ready? I’m going to count to three,” Sakrattars said. “One. . .”—he rubbed the components between his fingertips—“two. . .”—he brought the words of the spell to mind—“three.”

  But before Sakrattars could begin the spell, the concealed door suddenly shattered into a million pieces, ice shards flying like daggers every which way. Leif and Amale dove for cover, as Sakrattars ducked from the worst of the fallout. Kaja stood quietly in the ruins. Then she lowered her hand and turned to the others.

  “It’s open,” she said.

  Sakrattars sighed again, but looked eagerly inside.

  The room was tiny, little more than a closet. Spared the flames, the ice walls reflected the waning daylight with clear, brilliant blue hues—a pristine capsule of how beautiful the tabor once looked. Rows of ice jutted out from the wall, resembling shelves, but there was nothing upon them.

  “Looks like whatever was in here has been taken already,” Sakrattars said, disappointed. “Was there any important information or objects here? Books or something that the mentelj might have kept?”

  Kaja faltered. “I don’t know. We didn’t have books.” Her forehead wrinkled as she thought back in time. “Um, there was a map though. A big map on animal skin. Mentelj would sometimes bring it out for lessons.”

  “A map? A map of what?”

  Kaja suddenly reached out, grabbing Sakrattars’ sleeve. Her eyes were wide, her mouth slightly ajar. “It showed our ancestral lands, where zmaj live and once lived. Someone—someone took it!” she gasped.

  Sakrattars looked at the empty room sadly. Had the map still been there, it would have been pivotal to his studies. “But if the Ordo had found it when they were at the Skolka, Linnea would have told us, right? And the only other ones who might know a map like that existed are—” Sakrattars blanched as the realization finally came over him.

  “The Irkallu,” Kaja finished, her voice shaking.

  *

  *

  Jo was still kneeling before the graves on the outskirts of the village when she noticed that the woods had gone eerily silent. Suddenly, the hairs on her arms stood on end as a deep, primal fear pulsed to life in her gut. She lifted her head.

  In the sky above, a dark shadow was sliding ominously across the face of the setting sun.