Page 188 of Brimstone

The nearness of the ocean flooded my senses. The tang of it cut above the smoke. The rushingshushhhhhof its waves crashed against the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs. I knew it was out there, vast beyond imagining—a body of water so immense that it swallowed the horizon. I’d been excited to come and witness it for myself, but not under these circumstances. Not like this.

We followed a paved walkway all the way to the edge of the cliffs, at which point we veeredoffthe walkway and Lorreth forged a path for us among the scrubby vegetation and loose rocks. He was following a scent, that much was clear. It must have been strong for him to be able to pick it out over smoke and salt. I couldn’t smell a thing around the two.

Eventually, we came to a small two-story house, perched on a ledge that overhung the cliff. The glass in the window frames had been smashed here, too. On the ground floor, double sets of thick curtains had all been sucked outward, through the open windows, and snapped angrily on the breeze.

“They’re inside,” Lorreth said in a tired voice, gesturing to the front door.

Carrion and Foley carried what remained of the books we’d brought from Cahlish. More than half of the titles had been destroyed or lost in the fight. I knocked on the front door, hissing when I discovered the hard way that my knuckles were raw and bleeding. There was a scuffling and then came the sound of something heavy scraping against the floor. A moment later, the door opened, and a tall female satyr with skin the color of warm mahogany stood before us. Her eyes were silver-flecked gold. Her tightly curled hair looked to have been tied back quickly into a messy bun atop her head, from which loose strands corkscrewed down, framing her face. She wore a black sleeveless shirt that displayed the extensive tattoos on her arms, and loose-fitting black pants that cinched tight three quarters of the way down her legs, revealing shaggy dappled gray and black fur and cloven black hooves.

She put her hands on her hips, regarding us in a very displeased manner. “Forget it. You can bunk back in the town center with the other troops. There’s no more room here.” Her voice was warm. Her tone was not.

“Orellis, it’s okay! They’re friends.” Te Léna appeared behind the female. Soot stained the healer’s left cheek. Her bottom lip was split open, though the blood had congealed and dried. She was alive. I pushed past the satyr and threw my arms around the female, hugging her just as tightly as Lorreth had hugged me. She returned the embrace, her heartbeat pounding in my ears, her body trembling. “We were so worried about you,” she whispered. “All of you.”

“Likewise. The others?”

Te Léna retreated, sniffing, her emotions getting the better of her as she gestured behind her. Iseabail was there, back pressed against the granite hearth that dominated the cozy kitchenbeyond. The witch smiled at me briefly, the slight upward tilt of her mouth faltering when she saw Lorreth. Maynir sat at a table in the center of the kitchen, elbows on the table, interlaced fingers propping his chin up as if he wouldn’t be able to hold his head up otherwise.

“Layne’s upstairs,” Te Léna said. “Still unconscious.”

I scanned the room, searching for the one person I didn’t see. “Zovena?”

Maynir shook his head. “She darted off into the crowd as soon as we realized we were leaving the battlefield. She couldn’t be reasoned with, and I wasn’t leaving my mate to go chasing after her.”

Zovena was gone, then. And Tal had bolted into the fray as well. Half of me had hoped he’d be here, with the others. The other half of me had known he wouldn’t be. Maybe later there would be time to pick apart what that meant. For now, I could only focus on what was right in front of me.

“Fisher didn’t make it through the shadow gate.”

Maynir sat up very straight. Te Léna held a hand nervously to the base of her throat. “What do you mean,he didn’t make it through?”

“I’m aware that my house isn’t exactly weatherproof right now, but I’d rather not stand here with the front door wide open if it’s all the same to you people,” the satyr, Orellis, said. She was less angry and more resigned to the fact that she had more guests than she wanted, it seemed. Stepping aside, she gestured for us all to come in.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Foley hammered nails into the planks of driftwood he and Carrion had scavenged from outside, blocking off the windows.The night rested heavy over Inishtar, a mournful weight pressing down on all of us.

A cup of earthy tea sat on the table in front of me, long cold. Orellis’s faun, Lanny—only two years old—squirmed in my lap, her tiny hooves leaving bruises on my thighs as she pulled on my braids and sucked on her plump fists.

“The forge was destroyed by the blast. Our blacksmith, Jaymes, was killed, too. There’s the old forge, though, on the outskirts of town. It isn’t much, but you could set up there?” Orellis said.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I told her, “but without access to a large amount of quicksilver, I can’t make the relics anyway. I was supposed to make them at Cahlish. That way I could have used some of the pool there to imbue the rings with, but now . . .”

Now we wereveryfar away from Cahlish, and the one person who could have transported me back there was missing. As if that point had been made out loud, all eyes turned to Iseabail. She was bent over the map spread out over the other side of the table, frowning deeply at the scrying pendulum that hung, stubbornly still, from her hand. “I’m sorry. I really am. There’s no sign of RenorKingfisher now. It’s not as if they’re just very far away, either. I’d still get some kind of reading if that were the case, but there’s nothing.”

By the fire, Lorreth scrubbed his face with his hands. “We have to find them. And wehaveto get those relics made. We need them now more than ever. The infected are spreading like wildfire. Something tells me the attack last night was just the first of many. If more infected hit the smaller towns between here and the Gilarian foothills, they’ll be wiped out. With relics, we could evacuate the smallholdings, at least. The warrior had been honing Avisiéth’s edge for well over an hour before Orellis had begged him to quit the incessant metallic grinding sound. She didn’t want him waking the baby. Lanny had woken upshortly after anyway, but Lorreth had refrained from resuming his sharpening. His jaw worked as he looked at Iseabail. “Are you sure you’re notpurposefullystruggling to locate them?” he asked, the question measured and flat.

The witch carefully set the brass pendulum down on top of the map and faced the warrior. “How many leagues is it between Inishtar and Nevercross, Lorreth of the Broken Spire?”

Lorreth shrugged. “I don’t know. Two, three thousand?”

“And how long would it take to cover that distance?”

“A week or two on horseback if the beast was sound.”

Iseabail’s words might have clouded the air with frost had so many warm bodies not crowded the kitchen. “I don’thavea horse, Lorreth,” she snapped. “Nor do I have two weeks to get back to Nevercross. I need to get back to my covennow, and Kingfisher is the only person I know who can make that happen. It behooves me to find him as quickly as possible, and—”

“Itbehoovesyou, does it?” The warrior glowered at her.

The witch reddened. She turned and speared Carrion to the armchair he sat in with eyes full of glittering rage. She pointed at Lorreth. “Were any of those books you carted here from Cahlish dictionaries? Thismaledoesn’t seem to understand the meaning of simple words.”