Chapter 2
THE ALIN MOUNTAINS
“I can do it myself.”
Ria’s voice pitched up an octave. It sounded childish to her ears, but did result in Niri leaving her alone.
Ria tucked her long, blonde hair behind her ears and focused her concentration again. The tiny briar before her grew new leaves, all a healthy green. Snow around it melted slowly, feeding the roots as the plant grew. Ria exhaled a shaky breath.
The trick was in combining all the elements at once. At first, Ria had thought she could force plants to grow using just spirit, an ability the Church called magic. When Kailal had seen what she was doing, he’d looked at her with expressionless, dark violet eyes. When the small strawberry plant had grown, withered, and died without producing a single fruit, he snorted and turned away.
She’d wanted to throw something at him, like a good fireball, as she had when he’d been the Curse. It had been two weeks since the fight in the clearing where she'd freed him, but he still could not remember his name or much of his life before the Church changed him into a creature of magic, bound to hunt and kill those like it. They needed something to call him though. Darag had suggested Kailal, the name of the island he claimed was his home, or had been almost 900 years ago.
Since the day Ria had broken the bond holding Kailal to the Church of Four Orders, he had not used his power. Not for himself and not to teach her. He had met her early requests for help, explanations, and lessons with angry silence at best. The first days after he woke, he just turned and walked away from her. It drove her to near madness, until Niri pointed out that Ria could try on her own.
“The Curse is gone. Nothing will chase you anymore if you use your gift. Just go and try.”
So, she had. Ria had been working on growing food as they traveled. Zhao, born in the foothills of the mountains, recognized the first, withered patch of alpine berries and wished fervently that it was spring. Zhao’s hungry yearning had given Ria the idea. Unaided, she learned to warm the air with fire as well as create light. Ria melted the snow or called water to the tiny plants. She pushed them to grow with her true gift of spirit until they produced fruit. It wasn’t much, but it was food and it was useful.
It helped that she’d grown up among olive trees and vineyards. Still, it had taken Darag to show her how to ensure pollination. Ria hadn’t been bright enough to figure that out on her own. Without any help from Kailal, the most practiced Spirit Elemental within the known world, it was still hit or miss. Sometimes everything came together right and Ria could convince a small plant to provide some berries. Sometimes it would shrivel and die, becoming a withered twig, surrounded by snow and mountains.
Niri often offered to help, but there were so few plants and Ria barely knew what she was doing. Niri and Zhao completely floundered with calling forth life from something. Niri was a Water Elemental, but had learned to control earth and air. Zhao was an Air Elemental, the first gifted child born to the Tiak in generations. He could control fire and water, but like Ria, he was still young and learning. It wasn’t worth risking their limited food supply just to have them try as well. Darag, being Kith, was really the only other Elemental with skill in spirit. Darag and Kailal, but unfortunately, Kailal only walked silently with them. He was more of a ghost than a Spirit Elemental.
Ria kept thinking of summer, warmth, and life. The briar burst into tiny white blossoms. Ria smiled and pushed it a little further. They really needed the food. She didn’t want to fail. A worm of doubt grew in her. She should let Darag do this, or even Niri. They were so much more skilled. It was too important to fail. A few blossoms died and Ria could feel the balance slipping from her.
Instead of reaching out to grab the pieces before they collapsed, Ria held still. Calm like the mountains, isn’t that what Zhao had told her? Calm and sure, as if she were Darag.
“You were born to this too,” she whispered.
With a twist of will, the blossoms were fertilized, just like Darag had shown her. Berries grew and ripened as she sat watching as still as the rock beneath her. Shadows lengthened and light grew dim everywhere but the small patch of thorny weeds before her. The raspberries were still warm as she reached out to pick them.
“I have nearly a handful for each of us this time,” Ria said as she walked back to camp, stretching the stiffness out of her legs. She must have been sitting for over four hours. A long time to wait for food when days were already short. She needed to learn to be faster.
Niri beamed at her. “You are really getting good at this. We’d starve without you.”
Ria smiled and turned away, handing out berries to everyone. She didn’t look at Kailal when she gave him his. If she wasn’t wasting so much time learning, Darag would have figured out how to grow food. If Kailal would simply show her, she could do it better. Ria sighed as she sat near the fire. Lavinia glanced at her, her sky blue eyes startling against her pale skin and black hair. Lavinia looked so much like her brother, Ty, that they could have been twins instead of him a few years her senior.
“I always feel bad when I stop keeping the plant warm. I hate watching it freeze again,” Ria said as she savored a berry, sucking on the light red stain marring her fingertips.
Lavinia laughed. “We can’t take them with us.”
“Too bad,” Zhao sighed. “It would make finding food easier.”
The journey through the mountains had grown steadily harder. The frost rimmed clearing where they had fought the Curse seemed a warm memory now, not even two weeks later. The river Dhazoh had changed from a small water course, to a stream, and finally to an alpine trickle as they climbed higher.
They never found the hoped-for path. Even Zhao no longer mentioned looking for markers to indicate that Air Elementals had come this way, traveling down from Finndale and through the mountains to reach the Temple of the Winds. Ty lead them now as he had in the desert, reckoning by stars and sun.
Zhao seemed confident that somewhere ahead of them they would connect with the headwaters to the great river Torfel. If so, they would descend from the mountains into the forests along the river. Ria had seen a few maps, looking over her parents’ shoulders as they laid out shipments to foreign ports. She didn’t remember much of the southern shores of the Sea of Sarketh, but both the river Dhazoh and Torfel looked to have many branches. It would have been so easy to take the wrong fork.
It snowed for the first time six days ago. Ahead of them, mountains rose above the clouds into icy heights. Passes between them were hard won as they scrambled up through snowfields that never melted, beyond the reach of even stunted trees. It was cold and windy. There was almost no food and winter was coming fast in the mountains. And they were lost.
Ria knew it from the line between Ty’s brows when he looked at the sky and then scanned the mountains before them. Yes, they were heading north but the mountains were a wall not easily scaled. Ty sat in silence, often with Darag, most mornings and nights, looking for a way forward.
After Ty's initial dislike of Darag and poor reaction to Lavinia having married him, it seemed an unlikely friendship. But since Darag had come to their rescue in the desert, it was one that had grown. The two men conversed quietly, Ty proposing a route and Darag speaking softly to the stones of the mountain to see if it was passable. Darag’s power was unfathomable to Ria, like being able to comprehend the entire sea from shore to shore. Something she was certain Niri could do, if she wanted.
Snow swirled through the evening air. Dusk lingered on the horizon, the tallest of the peaks reflecting golden light on their snowy summits. Ria breathed out and huddled closer to the fire, hoping for enough warmth to at least not see her breath.
Lavinia handed Ria a cup of soup before she slid next to Darag where he draped a blanket across both their shoulders. They sat further back from the beating flames, their breaths twin puffs in the deepening twilight. Ria had grown used to Darag's patterned skin, so similar to the tree he said his spirit, and now his wife's as well, was joi
ned to. Like all Kith, that bond granted Darag a lifetime measured in centuries. It was hard for Ria to imagine that Lavinia would still be much as she was now when Ria was an old woman. It didn't seem to bother Lavinia. She looked up into her husband's bright green eyes while brushing his russet hair back from his face. Darag took her hand and kissed it, pulling Lavinia closer under the blankets.
Ria sipped the broth without even examining it. She had helped find or grow most of the ingredients: wild onion, bay leaves, and shelf mushrooms. A few grains of rice floated in her mouth. Most likely it was the last of the rice they’d brought from Xiazhing. It made her heart flutter to think of it as she looked north at the wall of mountains. Ria’s eyes slid toward Niri.
Niri sat resting against Ty, her long, brown hair sweeping over his shoulder. Two layers of blankets swaddled them. Still, Niri's cheeks were pink with cold beneath her olive skin tone. Niri could not call fire like Darag or Ria. Zhao had more control than Niri over what was a very precious element when the temperatures dropped below freezing most nights. Yet, Niri did not look worried, not about the cold, shortage of food, or lack of a path. Niri’s calm puzzled Ria even as it gave her confidence. Surely, Niri had a plan or had faith in Ty’s to be so unflustered.
Next to her, Zhao shifted uncomfortably.
“How is your arm?” Ria asked Zhao.
Like Ria, Zhao sat as close to the fire as he could. He had taken on the responsibility of finding firewood and keeping the flames dancing as his contribution to their nomadic camps. Scouring the mountaintops for fuel gave him the chance to help identify plants for Ria. He was far more used to the mountainous land of frost and snow than she. Nothing looked like olives, oranges, or grapes here.
“Healing. It itches, but that is better than the pain.”
Zhao’s gray eyes slid toward Kailal as he rubbed the arm that the Curse had broken during battle. Kailal did not remember much of the fight, or much of his centuries as the Curse, but he had apologized sincerely to Zhao and Lavinia for their injuries while waving away Lavinia’s regret for the slash across his nose. He had been trying to eat her at the time he received the blow, Kailal had pointed out.
Still, it was easy to feel uncomfortable around Kailal. He rarely spoke and his dark eyes were always haunted as he gazed across a world and time he did not know. Nine hundred years or thereabout, he had been a creature controlled by the Church of Four Orders. When the magic broke, Kailal returned to the young man he had been, at least physically.
He was nearly as tall as Darag, with straight, long, black hair and reddish skin. Ria had not travelled much before the discovery of her gift of magic. The ability, forbidden by the Church, had driven her from her home. So the fact that she had never met anyone who looked like Kailal didn't mean his people were gone like he feared. Ria had never met Tiak either with their dark hair and eyes contrasted by golden skin. Zhao was unique as a Tiak to have gray eyes, but then he was the first Air Elemental in generations as well. As for Darag, few people had ever met a Kith because they so rarely left their forest. Ria could be forgiven for never having heard of them.
Gazing at Kailal from under her lashes, she wondered what memories he did have. Her few experiences with him when he was the Curse gave her nightmares. She didn’t want to imagine what it was like to be him. Ria had come upon him twice when he’d walked away from camp by himself. Unnoticed, she watched him rock in silent sobs. She could no further understand him than she did Lavinia’s love for Darag. It was a reasoning apart from her.
Ria snuggled into her few blankets feeling more contrite toward Kailal. Perhaps it was reasonable that he did not want to use his gifts after what he had done. Who he had been. But still she wished fervently that he would teach her. All she wanted was to learn what she could do.
—
Darag was shaking his head the next morning. The tiny camp was packed and everyone was ready to go, but Darag and Ty could not agree on a direction.
“It doesn’t feel right. The ground feels steep and loose. We should go further east.”
Ty’s mouth tightened as he looked eastward. His gaze swung back to the north. “I think we are too far east as it is. We need to go north or northwest for the quickest way to reach the Torfel. East will lead us deeper into the mountains.”
“Until we reach another branch of the Torfel to follow north,” Darag argued.
“Niri, can’t you feel the river at all?” Lavinia asked. Her hand held her blanket closed around her shoulders. This morning, Lavinia had belted the blanket around her waist like it was some great coat. Ria thought it looked like a good idea.
Niri closed her eyes. Wind played with her dark brown hair as they waited. It took too long for her to answer. Worry chewed at Ria’s stomach again. Niri sighed as she opened her lavender eyes. Always lavender, whether she used her power or not. They had been ever since Niri called the sea to drown the Temple of Dust.
“There is water all around us, slowly trickling down. So many streams, all flowing, winding paths. Some go south, some north. I cannot say where the headwaters to the Dhazoh or the Torfel might be.”
Ty's brows drew closer together. He stood with one foot on a rock as he leaned an elbow on his knee and looked down the mountainside. His fingers drummed against his chin.
“Is it that steep, do you think?” Darag nodded apologetically. Ty sighed. “I just wish I could see. We are above the clouds here like blind birds.”
Ria blinked. Birds, she had been a bird once in an effort to escape the Curse. She had even been a dragon. As a Spirit Elemental, Ria could change the form of other things, cause plants to grow, and she could become something else as well.
“I can do it,” Ria stuttered as everyone turned to look at her. “I mean I could change into a bird and scout out the path. I did it before,” she added when no one said anything.
“I think you’ve been doing quite enough,” Darag said, an unaccustomed crease running across his brow. “I am a Spirit Elemental too. I’m sure I could manage to transform.”
“You could, I’m sure of it. But I don’t think jumping off a mountain is the best way to have to learn. I don’t mind, really. It’ll be fun to do something other than trip over boulders all day.”
“Yes, learning to transform to escape from being eaten was a much better way to learn,” Niri said with a wry glance. “If you are tired...?”
“I’ll be fine, really.”
Ty described the path he hoped to follow while Ria listened, balancing on her toes as she gazed down the sloping terrain. She couldn’t help it. Ria could not wait to launch herself into the air. It promised a sense of freedom, a time away from the worry of the mountains. Maybe she could fly all the way to the Torfel.
With Ty finished, Ria walked to where the terrain dropped away. “I’ll be back soon, maybe an hour. Don’t go too far,” she teased.
Lavinia, her best friend since childhood, stuck out her tongue. It made her laugh. As Ria turned back to the open sky, her eyes slid past Kailal. It was not the usual haunted look on his face. He opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated. Ria did not wait. She bounded forward and then leapt into the air. She did not come back down.
She wasn’t sure how she knew what to do. Maybe it was like Niri had once said to her, that using your birth element was as easy as knowing how to smile. One moment she was a soil bound girl, the next she was a hawk on the wing.
Updrafts hit her stretched feathers. Ria let instinct tell her how to correct the flight, how to soar along the ground, and then into the abyss of air between the peaks. The world fell away below her. For a moment, Ria simply soared, circling out over the nothingness. Then she wheeled back and down.
With a bird’s eye, she could pick out her friends. How small they were, standing on such a huge peak. Seeing Lavinia wrapped in a blanket made her realize she was no longer cold. The feathers insulated her against the chill air.
I wonder if I can sprout feathers as a girl to wear while we are in the mou
ntain?
Ria smiled, if hawks can smile. She screeched into the wind. Niri waved a hand as Ria plummeted along the mountain flank, looking for a path.
—
It had been less than an hour before she came back to join her friends. She dove from the clouds, spreading her wings to stall her descent at the last moment. As her legs came forward to land, she became a girl again, stepping lithely from the air.
“The only way down is east. North has an ice field that ends at a cliff, that is why Darag couldn’t feel it.”
Ty rubbed his temple. “When we get down and cross the valley, can we head back west?”
Ria smiled despite herself. “I didn’t go that far. I wanted to come back before it had been too long. I’ll go and see. Be back soon!”
This time, she bent forward as if to hurl herself from the mountain. Before she could fall, Ria became a hawk, shooting down the steep slope like an airborne rock. Flying was that much fun.
Hours later, near the lingering dusk of alpine evenings, Ria realized she wasn’t alone on the wing. Far off down the valley, another creature zipped from shadows to sunlight to shade again. Her hawk eyes recognized another flier, light colored like the alpine snow. Curiosity caught her. Whatever it was looked large and fast.
Ria had been back to her friends several times, telling of a good camping site in the valley tucked amid a copse of pines. She was to meet them there after scouting a route for the following day. So far, the way back west had been blocked by impassable heights and steep terrain. Ria was now gliding east. It was the wrong direction, but it was passable.
Now Ria pumped her wings to fuel her speed. Staying to the shadows along the valley’s edge, she craned her senses for other aerial beings. It was a shadow passing over her that told Ria she had missed something, but it hadn’t missed her. Ria banked and dove out of instinct, landing deftly on a rocky ledge. When she turned, her pounding bird heart gave a double beat.
It wasn’t the sudden fear of capture, but born by what was watching her that startled Ria. A massive bird with white and gray feathers, a dark gray, curved beak, and bright black eyes approached the ledge at a gentle glide. The creature was easily twice Ria’s size as a girl. Looking at it from the perspective of a small hawk, it was gargantuan.
The giant bird eyed Ria with a cocked head, as curious as Ria had been earlier. The familiar gesture eased Ria’s nerves enough for her to realize what she’d been too surprised to notice before. The large bird was a Spirit Elemental as well.
Niri had taught Ria to see other Elementals after Niri had recognized Zhao. It was an easy gift. Elementals, even when not using their power, were surrounded by a soft aura of colored light. The animal before her had a green tinge in Ria’s vision, a sure sign of a Spirit Elemental.
Calm now, Ria watched the massive bird fan wings over forty feet from tip to tip. A gust of wind swept over Ria as her larger companion settled on the rocks to her left. Roosted, with dark, pointed wings tucked, the bird tilted its head down toward Ria.
Words, carried on thoughts as lively as she imagined Beite’s would be, sang in Ria’s head. “What are you?”