For a moment, the intruders—the sprite scavengers—were silent. They stared at Myraden, then glanced at the Hand.

  The last time Seissens had come to ískan, they were the harbingers of destruction. Perhaps these sprite survivors were right to be worried.

  The two of them turned to each other and whispered again, and Myraden let them. She glanced over at the Hand and asked, “Should we trust them? Could Lord Two sense our presences better with their help?”

  The Hand shook his head. “Look at their breathing patterns. They’re mortals—or at the very least, they have no Familiars—but they’ve learned to veil themselves. They would’ve had to in order to avoid the detection of any wizards the Dominion sent to clean ískan up.”

  “And they did not just leave?”

  “Not everyone had that luxury. The Dominion watched the bridge, and though eventually, they began not killing sprite survivors on sight, the Mainland wasn’t a terribly welcoming place for those with antlers.”

  She lowered her head, then glanced at Kythen. She’d…just assumed that the remains of ískan were lifeless, but it wasn’t true. There were still plenty of survivors trying to chisel out an existence on the wasteland.

  ískan had been her home too, and she’d left these people behind…

  Was she even a sprite anymore, or had she become more elf now? If they offered her kindness because she looked like them, did she even earn the kindness?

  Myraden, Kythen said, approaching. He nuzzled her with his forehead. Two things can be true. When you arrived, and…up until a few years ago, you often outright rejected all Sirdian traditions and comfort. But being in a different country doesn’t make you any less of a sprite, and being a sprite doesn’t mean you have to push away all the Sirdian comforts, either. These scavengers, though, they just saw you do an incredible feat. I’m sure they’d be willing to help you.

  She nodded, then turned back to the Hand. “We need to make for Harmkvord, correct?”

  “Assuming you grew up here, had your formative years, then yes.”

  “Are the plains of ískan dangerous, now? We will have to take a route northeast across the bottom quarter of the nation.”

  “I imagine there are a fair few wraiths, given the lack of Cursebearers to keep them in check, and we wouldn’t want to go at it without a guide.” He tilted his head toward the scavengers. “My plan had been to take the coastal route, where the Eane is weaker.”

  ískan was in a unique position. A crack in the earth gave the country’s central plateau a range of active volcanoes, but it also had veins of Ichor running closer to the surface, creating a stronger Eane field. One of the duties of ískan’s ruling wizard families, the Cursebearers, had been to keep the wraiths down and dispersed. As long as they fell in line with Dominion policies and didn’t get too uppity, not to mention didn’t vie for a position as an Unbound Lord, they could keep their little fiefdoms.

  But now, there were no more Cursebearers.

  “Then we will need their help, unless we want to spare a few extra days skirting the coast.” Myraden grimaced. “We do not have time for that.”

  She turned back toward the two sprite survivors (who had stopped talking amongst themselves) and spoke in íshkaben: “Good evening! I mean you no harm. I am Myraden Leursyn, daughter of Meythis Leursyn, and I’m trying to reach Harmkvord—or what’s left of it. Would you two be able to guide us?”

  The two sprites shared a glance, then one, a young man in a tattered tunic and a matted fur cloak, said, “We don’t know the way, My Lady. There are many wraith-patches and death-circles now.” He spoke in íshkaben, but in the formal register, and both—the young man and woman—bowed their heads. “But Ganbjarne does. He has made the northeast pilgrimage many times. If Our Lady is willing, we will lead you to him, and he will take you to Harmkvord.”

  “Thank you,” she said, then clasped her hands in front of herself in a formal gesture and bowed in return.

  “They’re…taking us to see someone?” the Hand asked in Low Speech. “And they recognized you?”

  “They recognized my father’s name, more likely,” she replied. “They will bring us to a guide, and he will lead us to Harmkvord.”

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  Pirin and Gray swooped in and out of the fray, passing as close to the Sirdian squadrons as they could. Pirin reached out with the Whisper Hitch, and latched onto the impressions of their spirit that lingered around them.

  It wasn’t as effective as staring them in the eyes and latching directly onto their soul, but he still picked up on the majority of the thoughts they left. As soon as he gained access to their minds, he filtered it through G?ttrur. The jumbled messages and impulses of bird riders fighting for their lives were unintelligible to Pirin, and especially when he reached multiple groups at a time, but G?ttrur sorted them out and turned them into something usable.

  With each Sirdian squadron he passed, he added them to the Whisper Hitch. As a Catch, he wouldn’t have been able to hold more than one target. As a Flare, no more than three. But Blaze was orders of magnitude more powerful, and he’d bridged such a broad gap that now, he could hold hundreds of minds at a time.

  Doing something with them was a better trick. If they were enemies, perhaps he could strike them with Essence. There were too many at once, and not a strong enough connection to completely annihilate their minds, but he could disorient them.

  For allies, he could aid their ability to work together.

  Once he had all fifty pilots’ minds gathered up, invisible tendrils connecting them all to him like a leash, he began sending the thoughts back. He interwove everyone’s distinct packets of organized thoughts, letting them instinctively know what the rider next to them was going to do, letting them silently and unknowingly catch a dive-bomber in a perfect pincer, or know when a different rider needed help and convincing them to assist.

  It was subconscious for most of them. Pirin couldn’t talk to them, couldn’t control them. Their skill as soldiers and pilots was simply enhanced by his ability to coordinate them all, his sight, his overview.

  They whittled the enemy squadrons down three quarters their original size. Only three losses of their own.

  Pirin concentrated on the technique still, on cycling Essence and maintaining the strength of the Whisper Hitch. Though he had his mask on, he didn’t pass all his Essence between himself and Gray. The Whisper Hitch stayed purely internal. The Reyad made it stable enough.

  After a few minutes of it, he realized that he was barely paying attention to the technique, and instead, watching the birds dance and whirl in the sky, watching the Sirdian pilots’ startling effectiveness.

  They took the enemy squadron down to half its size. Pirin once more registered arrows flying at him, which Gray expertly evaded. A rockwing dropped in behind them, intent on hunting him down and shooting them out of the sky, but Pirin was also interlacing his own thoughts into the battle meditation.

  Two Sirdian pilots broke off. They sensed the wind perfectly, they sensed each others’ angles of attack, and fired their arrows in unison. One pierced the rockwing’s flank, another shot the rider off the saddle.

  Pirin silently thanked them, then pulled Gray back in a circle, angling back toward the fighting. With greater concentration, he could help out in other ways, too. Like using wind currents to rip riders out of their saddles, or to drive dive bombers to the ground before their payloads could strike.

  Only a few dive bombers had reached the wall, and even fewer had dropped their payloads. One had struck a trebuchet platform, reducing the artillery to a heap of charred wood and rubble, and another had struck the ramparts, crushing the merlons, and killing the defenders.

  The Dominion’s land army crashed on the wall like a silver river smashing rocks. They approached with shield’s raised, guarding a battering ram and archers, and protecting siege ladders and the crews pushing the siege towers.

  When the siege towers rumbled up to the wall, their mouths opened wide, and they dropped a drawbridge, exposing their crews to the wall and depositing an endless stream of conscript foot soldiers.

  If Pirin had to guess, he’d say the strategy was to weaken the defenders as much as he could, then finally, send in the Flares to break them—instead of sacrificing valuable wizards that could still be overwhelmed.

  When he and the Sirdian birds struck the last dive bomber from the sky, he exhaled in relief. The Sirdians could clean up the rest—only twenty-five or so birds—without him, and when they did retreat, there’d be no one to attack from the sky, harrying a running army.

  He deactivated his battle meditation and concentrated on the wall, looking for places he could help, when a presence bubbled up behind him.

  A man lifted up off the ground behind Pirin and Gray, holding his arms out to the side, and unveiled his spirit. He threw off his cloak, revealing a bare chest and knotted green tattoos, and a dragon-bat Familiar.

  Ah, there he is! Gray exclaimed. Wait, wait, that’s not a good thing. We didn’t want him. Or, you didn’t! Perhaps now’s my chance to show my strength, against a true—

  “We run,” Pirin said. “We run now.”

  Ganbjarne would’ve been an impossible elf. For one, he had a beard of red, bushy hair. For two, his shoulders were almost as wide as he was tall—and, even ignoring his antlers, he was three heads taller than Myraden. The soot-covered fur cloak didn’t help, no, but he was still massive.

  Being a male northern sprite, he’d lose his antlers in the next week or so, but until then, he was still clearly a sprite.

  He unfolded a sheet of parchment and, in Low Speech, said, “You two need a guide, huh? This is Meythis’ daughter?”

  They stood in a sheltered alcove at the edge of the two sprite survivors’ camp. Lord Two was nowhere to be seen—or sensed.

  Myraden glanced at Kythen, then back at the Hand, then shrugged. “We would appreciate your help, Ganbjarne-Kjer.” Even responding in Low Speech, she still addressed him with the suffix of respect. Something akin to Master Ganbjarne.

  “It seems you have been busy dealing with the local pests as well, which we appreciate,” said Ganbjarne. “Your father was a good man, and he helped me many times in my life. In his memory, I will bring you to Harmkvord. But you may not like what little you find.”