Page 104 of Brimstone

I was numb down into the basement of my soul. “Okay. Yes.” I nodded. “You’re right.”

“Carrion?Carrion!” The hiss came from the other side of the square. It was Hayden, stooped down and hiding behind the horse-drawn cart. The boy’s hair was wild, sticking up in every direction like he’d been struck by lightning. His face was spattered with blood. There was a knife in his hand. “Carrion, this way. I know where we should go.”

The smuggler didn’t even ask. He grabbed my arm and pulled me along after him, following Saeris’s brother. Houses whipped past in a blur. I ran hard, keeping up, and with every step I came back to myself a little more. I had just killed forty guardians. Fifty of them. And I didn’t feel remotely bad about doing it.

Yessss, this is the way, the quicksilver purred in my head.This is the way!

The ground was quaking beneath our feet now. As we sped through the Third, toward our unknown end, Madra’s men drew closer, and a stillness settled inside me.

The guardians wouldn’t pose a problem to us if they couldn’tfindus.

My magic should have been gone. The source of my power feltsofar away, and yet there it was, ready to answer my call. I had just used a prodigious amount of magic back in the square, and yet, when I ran my fingertips along the surface of it, I found a mind-bending well of energy waiting for me.

I stopped running and brought it forth.

It slammed out of me in a tide of glittering black sand and shadow so overwhelming that it swallowed the street we were standing in. And then the ward. And then the entire city.

My magic encompassed all Zilvaren.

For the first time in history, the shining banner in the north fell into darkness.

24

TRIA PRIMA

SAERIS

At the first stages of ascension, equilibrium must be found. Every acolyte has an affinity toward a certain path. Without the appropriate guidance and training, the path will claim the acolyte. They must marry the Tria Prima into one within themselves if they are to truly master their power.

The enlightened Alchemist walks all three paths.

—Elemental Runes and Their Purposes:

A Comprehensive Guide to Alchemy.

THE FORGE WASunlike any other I’d ever found myself in. For starters, there was no fire. The Blood Court, it seemed, was firm in its view that fire had no place within the walls of Ammontraíeth and hadn’t made an exception even here.

Evenlight flickered in the hearth where hungry flames should have been. Not long ago, on the side of the mountain above Irrín, I had handed a sword over to Lorreth, and the sky had exploded with dancing light. The aurora, Fisher had called it. The evenlight bore more than a passing resemblance to that aurora as it writhed and danced in the grate. Vivid green and tinged with pink, it was hypnotizing to watch. It gave off no heat.I could run my fingers through it, even, and I didn’t feel a thing. Yet I knew, deep down, that this was more than just light. That when I thrust the crucible I had prepared into the flow of it, achangewould come about.

There was a token amount of quicksilver inside the crucible. Very little was required for this purpose. I felt the moment that it entered the evenlight, as if a chord had been struck, a note plucked, and the sustained hum of a note was ringing all around me.

I reached out with my mind, searching for the quicksilver, and found it almost instantly. According to the book, I should have been able to “connect” with it at this point. I was still trying to figure out what that meant when the quicksilver spoke.

She sees us. She hears us. She sees us . . .

I clenched my jaw, angling my head, trying to focus.

She doesn’t speak to us. Why does she not speak?

I filled my lungs until I could inhale no more. It was right there, an intangible buzzing source of energy, at the periphery of my mind. It felt as though I should have been able to close a hand around it, but whenever I tried, it evaded my grasp, slippery, like a piece of soap.

“Godsdamnit,” I spat, opening my eyes.

Filthy mouth.The quicksilver chuckled.So ill-tempered. Bad, bad, bad.

“Oh, shut up, you.” Iwilledthe quicksilver to change. It did so without complaint, but I couldn’t escape the wrongness of the sensation that shivered down my back as the flat, matte bead of quicksilver became molten and rolled around the bottom of the crucible. Much as I disliked admitting it, Foley’s words had stuck with me. Willing the quicksilver to do anything was not forming a partnership with it. There was another way. A better way . . .

Quickly, I plucked a ring from the tray I had set out on the bench when I’d arrived and dropped it into the crucible. Thering was made of silver, but it was impure enough that I needed to add a little more to help the process along. The quicksilver formed a snake-like thread, winding around the ring’s band, mimicking the tiny vines that were engraved into the piece of jewelry.