Throne of the Horde King, page 43
For four days we rode.
On the third day, I saw the fog for the first time, from atop a cliff that I scaled that night as the others rested by the fire. I couldn’t help but seek out the constellations of Tanniva’s hand and Bekkar’s sword in the night sky, feeling a sharp pang and ache when I spotted them, hearing Arik’s teasing laugh and rich voice in my ear in memory.
Then I shook it off—I shook him off—and looked east.
In the dark, it had looked like a dark mass against the land. I’d mistaken it for the shadows of a valley but then realized that the fog had overtaken the entirety of the valley, that it had swallowed it up whole.
And when we reached the East Lands, on a bright, hot afternoon, the air had been thick. Breathing felt like sand scraping up my nostrils. We were greeted by a wall of red. So high and deep that even craning my neck back, I couldn’t see the end of it.
Kakkari’s punishment—Kakkari’s last chance for us all, I couldn’t help but think. But in all her facets, her many dimensions, her many faces…I could still feel her hope.
Lovely and light. Just as her vengeance was terrible and violent.
Because she was both things. She was all things.
Slowly, the others came.
Over the course of two days, our makeshift camp only grew, a temporary horde of its own.
The Vorakkar of Rath Kitala came first with his queen at his side, who looked at me with knowing eyes, as if she could see the face of her hybrid child within mine.
Then came the Vorakkar of Rath Drokka, of Rath Tuviri, of Rath Rowin, and of Rath Okkili. The Vorakkar of Rath Loppar was the last of the horde kings to arrive. The aging male was seeking to create a saruk in the West Lands, was looking to place his roots in Kakkari’s earth, his time as Vorakkar coming to an end.
As for the last Vorakkar, the horde king of Rath Dulia, I’d heard his horde had been recalled to Dothik. He’d been the only one to remain loyal to Arik’s father. As such, the Vorakkar of Rath Tuviri had informed me that Arik had ordered Rath Dulia back to the capital after he’d heard reports of him encroaching on a human village far to the northeast.
The Sorakkar of Rath Hidri arrived shortly after Loppar, and he’d greeted me with a fond smile. I could sense the power of the heartstone in his pocket. A male true to his word.
The night before the black moon, the human queens of Rath Rowin and Rath Drokka found me. Mina and Vienne were their names. I’d been standing at the edge of the fog, peering into it. Still trying to understand, after all this time, wondering what it was that Kakkari wanted from us.
As if hearing my thoughts, Vienne told me, “You’ll never know.”
The white-haired beauty had stepped up beside me just as Mina dragged her hand through the curls and wisps of red. I’d heard they were immune to the fog. That they could step right into it, breathe it in. I wondered if I could too, but I had yet to test that theory.
Most here believed that it was Vienne that had created the fog. That her use of a heartstone—the first use of one since the plague over two centuries ago—had unleashed it.
There was a hum between the three of us. I wondered if they could feel it too. It made me uncomfortable. It felt like my skin was itchy, that it was crawling with…with power.
“Do you feel it?” I finally asked, rubbing at my skin.
Mina’s gaze had shone knowingly. Then she sighed, looking deep into the fog as if she could see beyond it. As if she could see something we couldn’t. Her green eyes were bright. Earlier, I’d seen the way they’d shone up at her husband as a small, dark curl of a smile crossed over his features. Love. They were in love. And it made my chest feel like it was shredding all over again.
“When I was under the Dead Mountain for the last time, the night that it fell,” she murmured, rubbing at her own arms, “there was a Dakkari witch there.”
Lysi, I’d heard the account. From her Vorakkar himself.
“And I felt her power. I felt it clash with mine,” she continued, shuddering slightly. “Like nails dragging through my scalp. And I thought that she was just like me. That had I been weaker, I could have been just like her. Using this gift for all the wrong reasons but thinking those reasons were right. That they were just.”
Vienne reached out a hand to place on Mina’s arm. In comfort. And when Mina reached out to take my own hand, I gasped, feeling the hum and thread of power connect through us all. Like a reverberation that spread through the entirety of my body.
Like a connection. Like knowing.
Like roots, I reminded myself. Roots of a tree.
“When she died,” Mina told me, “I felt her death. I felt it inside me. I felt my own power responding to it.”
She sighed.
“So yes,” she whispered. “When you ask if I can feel it, feel you and Vienne. If I can feel the Seta Kalliri. If I can feel the Vorakkar of Rath Drokka. And they can all feel us, congregated in this small place. I think it’s a beautiful but frightening thing.”
“The five heartstones,” Vienne said. “We can help channel them. We want to help you.”
“Our husbands don’t want us to,” Mina said, exchanging a glance with Vienne, “but I know, as well as you, that there are not five priestesses here who have the gift, at least one that is strong enough. There is you. And there is the Seta Kalliri.”
“I am not a priestess,” I informed her.
“No, you are not,” Vienne said. “You are something else entirely.”
Those violet eyes peered at me, and I shifted on my feet, dropping the connection of their touch.
“Are you not afraid?” I asked her. “Afraid to use the heartstone again?”
“Yes, I am,” Vienne told me, her lips lifting in a small, but sad smile. “But I am the only one alive that has before. I know what to expect. I know that it can be done. My only fear…my only fear is that I will make it worse.”
“You won’t,” I informed her. “Kakkari wants us to succeed.”
“And she did not before?” Mina asked quietly.
How to explain it? When I didn’t even think I understood it myself?
“We all know that Kakkari is not one entity. She is not one being. She is the soul of this planet. The soul of us all,” I told them quietly. “When you hear Kakkari, you feel that. And if she is us, then she feels the suffering that has happened here too. She feels the souls of the vekkiri. She feels the unrest of the Dakkari and the Killup. The consumption and fear of the Ghertun. Not all the Ghertun had evil in their hearts. Many were living in fear, just as you were. And now their souls are gone too, and there must be a price for that.”
I took a deep breath and continued, “But if Kakkari is us, if she feels these things deep in her core, all the suffering and despair and greed…then she also feels hope. Love. Like the love you have for your husbands. The love you have for your children and your future children. The desire for change, for a better life for us all. The drive to see good. The need to be kind and understanding. I have seen what happens here. I have seen what will happen. The fog will be no more. We have the power to defeat it, and we will. Life will continue. This will fade in our memories. A new king will rise. But after this…I believe that she will intervene no more. At least not from what I’ve seen. This is our last chance. And we have to set Dakkar right.”
I felt the power surge within all of us. Mina and Vienne looked at me in knowing.
Then I whispered, “We will not have the heartstones anymore. So if you truly wish to help, if you wish to give the last of your power, then know that this is the price she demands. This will deplete us all. And only then can we begin anew.”
On the morning after the black moon, just as dawn was breaking over the land, Arik finally arrived.
Chapter 62
Kalloma squeezed my hand. I felt her strength seep into me even as I caught Arik’s eyes across the clearing.
It was just as I’d seen. Everyone in their places, in a half oval that the wall of red fog intersected. There was a noticeable tension, a quiet in the thick, hot, suffocating air.
As if the fog felt the power of the five—nik, six—heartstones near…I sensed its restlessness. A pull that I remembered from my vision in the dark tunnels of Dothik. I closed my eyes just as I felt a hushed murmur of voices in my ear.
Kakkari.
In all her forms. Every last soul of her.
Bekkar’s sword was still strapped down my back, the hilt visible behind my left shoulder. I felt the hum and pulse of that heartstone…just as I felt the one clenched in my palm. Kalloma had already collected them from Arik. Both of them. The one she’d given us from the orala sa’kilan—which I clenched tightly, just as my mother had as she died—and the other from the temple in Dothik—which was in the Seta Kalliri’s possession.
Vienne held one. The same one she’d used under the Dead Mountain, retrieved from the ancient tree where she and her husband had hidden it once more. One was in Mina’s possession, from the outpost of Rath Okkili. The last was in the Sorakkar’s possession.
The Vorakkar of Rath Drokka—the Mad Horde King, or so I’d heard him called—was pacing the edge of the fog, his heavy boots crunching over the dead earth.
“Give me a heartstone, Seta Kalliri,” he called out, breaking through the tight silence. “My wife will not venture inside it. I will take her place.”
Vienne walked to him, placing a hand on the center of his back to still him. They had twin children, but they had stayed behind at their horde. Safe, though I knew the distance was grating on them both. She bent her head and whispered in his ear.
Kalloma looked at me, and I shook my head. She pursed her lips.
“Nik, Vorakkar,” she told him. “You have Kakkari’s gift, lysi”—I heard Drokka’s scoff at the word—“but your wife is better suited to withstand the goddess’s power. It is her she has chosen for this. Not you.”
“There are five heartstones,” Drokka argued, beginning to stalk to the Seta Kalliri, though the aging female held her ground, tilting her chin high. “If you think the three of you can withstand such power, you do not know what you are dealing with. But I have seen it. I remember it, and it nearly killed my wife!”
At his words, the Vorakkar of Rath Rowin—Mina’s husband—stepped up beside his queen, his palm clenching around her waist. I watched her tilt back her head to look up at her horde king, but she smiled. There was an entire conversation that passed between the two—one held in silence—and eventually, I saw Rowin’s head dip. I saw his subtle nod.
Drokka thought that only the Seta Kalliri, his wife, and Mina would be bearing the weight of the heartstones.
“It is my daughter who will bear the final two,” the Seta Kalliri announced quietly to the half circle, looking straight at Rath Drokka as she slid her hand to my shoulder. I’d told the plan to Kalloma last night. I’d finally told her what I’d seen, and it was only after my reassurances that she had agreed to this.
“Nik.”
The word was rough but firm.
And it came from Arik, growled out in the clearing, stilling all murmurs that suddenly erupted among the Vorakkar and their wives and their council members.
The Dothikkar stepped forward, his eyes pinned on me. But staring into them too long made my heart begin to curl in on itself, and so I looked down. To find my palm glowing from the heartstone. To find the gentle swell of my belly beneath the gray silk of my dress.
It is coming to pass, I thought. Just as I saw it.
“Nik,” Arik said again, and when I looked up, he was pointing his finger at my kalloma. “You know I would have never allowed this.”
“It is my choice.”
His jaw tightened when he heard my voice. His nostrils flared as we stared at one another, the first time we’d spoken since the morning I left Dothik, sent away on his orders. It still felt raw. That pain. That hurt. Even as I felt myself aching for him, needing him.
“And you will not interfere with this, Dothikkar,” I said quietly, the voices becoming louder in my mind. “You have no power here. Not when it comes to Kakkari’s will.”
As we regarded one another across the clearing, I’d never felt the distance between us more. Behind him, I saw the faces I’d come to know well. Kalik. Errana. Ulli. Bakkia.
“Kalles,” came another voice. It was the Vorakkar of Rath Kitala, stepping toward me. “He’s right. One heartstone alone is too much to bear. Two would kill you. Surely.”
A snarl erupted from Arik’s throat at the mere mention of it. The bitter part of me wanted to ask why my safety mattered to him. Because he’d been resolved to never see me again, to dismiss me, just as he’d dismissed the thought that I was carrying his child.
But I knew that wasn’t fair. I knew that he cared for me. Just not enough to want me at his side.
I leveled my gaze on the Vorakkar of Rath Kitala. If he knew that I would have to withstand three heartstones, he would balk. If Kalloma knew what I needed to do, then she would forbid it too. Even after my reassurances.
The heartstone in my hand began to heat. I reached out to grip Kalloma’s wrist when I felt a particularly strong pull from the fog. Even this far away, it felt like it was seeping into me, calling me closer.
“I assure you, Vorakkar,” I said quietly, “I will survive. We all will. The fog will be gone soon. The East Lands will be restored. But first we must do this.”
When I stepped forward, I found the Sorakkar of Rath Hidri with my gaze. I walked to him, drawing in deeper and deeper breaths. The fog was cloying. Drifting into the air like a sickness across the land. I was surprised I hadn’t been able to feel it from the North Lands.
“The heartstone, Sorakkar,” I murmured to him, holding out my palm.
Arik stepped up behind me. I could feel his heat. I could scent him too—that scent that reminded me of wonderful, wonderful things. Frost and fire and earth. I tried not to remember.
“Kara,” came his voice, dropped and soft. “I said nik.”
The Sorakkar looked down at my open palm and then met my eyes, indecision written across his face. The tension in the half circle rose even more.
“Hanniva,” I murmured to the Sorakkar. At his side, the Arakkari placed her hand on his arm. “Trust me in this.”
“Hanniva,” Arik murmured behind me. “Kara, hanniva.”
In the end, the Sorakkar placed a wrapped cloth in my hand.
“I hope you know what you are doing, leikavi,” the older male finally murmured.
He plucked the cloth away, and the heartstone tumbled against my skin. I swayed, the voices rising until I could hear nothing else. I closed my eyes, the world swaying beneath my eyelids, overwhelming. There was a hint of the pain I’d felt in the Dothikkar’s chambers the night I’d woken to find him dead at my feet. But only a fragment of it. A small piece that I could manage.
Then I felt Arik’s touch.
I felt his touch pulling me back from the brink, and I wanted to sob at the rightness of his warmth, of his steadiness.
Loss and grief spilled into me again when I resurfaced. Then I stepped away from underneath his hand because it hurt too much. When I turned and met his gaze, his own jaw clenched. A flurry of shocked murmurs flooded the clearing.
Against my back, I felt Bekkar’s heartstone heat and begin to throb against my skin. Like a second heartbeat.
“Everything I have done,” came Arik’s ragged whisper, dipping his head low to peer into my eyes, which…which I thought might be glowing blue, given the reflection in his own, “was meant to keep you safe.”
“Nik, it was meant to keep you whole,” I corrected quietly. His brow furrowed at my strange word. “Because you broke me a little to keep yourself safe. You took from me and gave nothing of you.”
Except for the child in my belly.
A flurry of raw pain flashed in his eyes, surprising and sudden. “You believe that?” he asked me gutturally.
I didn’t answer him.
My lungs felt tight. This was not the time or the place for this conversation, but the pain was still raw. It was unspoken, roving through me like a hungry beast. I wondered if it would ever be sated.
Stepping past him, I walked through the half circle, aware of the whispers about my glowing eyes.
“I want this done,” I said softly. “I want this mended.”
But my gaze was only on the fog, and I strode toward it. There was a breeze that began to flow in, blowing away the suffocating air, giving life. The ground began to hum with every step I took, like the connection I’d felt to Vienne and Mina. A connection to the earth, to its very core, to the roots that flowed wild beneath us.
Kakkari was here. I could feel her. I could feel her life inside me. I could feel her fingers running down my arms and her whispers in my ear.
“Kara, nik,” came a growl.
Arik caught my hand, to keep me away again, and I knew I could not let that happen. It was now or never. It needed to be done. A wave of energy—not unlike the power Kalloma harnessed—pulsed out from me, and his grip left me. I heard him fall, a heavy thud on the ground when that wave sent him flying back. He could not stop this. I could not let him even if he thought he was keeping me safe.
Because didn’t he understand?
I was trying to keep him safe. I was trying to keep us all safe.
“Get her back,” came Arik’s order. Kalik moved toward me even as I saw Kalloma step up to the fog. Vienne and Mina were coming too, approaching. “Get her back now!”
Do they feel what I feel? I wondered. There was an elation inside me. A revelation too. Something sliding into place, and I felt it boom through the entirety of my body. Booming in time with my heartbeat. With all of our heartbeats, which began to feel like one, heartbeats I could sense and feel like they were pulsing beneath my feet, like they were pulsing into Kakkari’s earth.
Kalik never reached me. Whatever it was that was protecting me kept him back too. And Errana. And Ulli. And Bakkia. And Arik, when he tried again. They never reached me.
And when I slipped into the fog?
