Page 189 of Brimstone

“Hey, don’t drag me into this. I don’t know whatbehoovesmeans, either.”

“I know what itmeans,” Lorreth snapped. “I just don’tbelieveyou. There’s a difference.”

“Enough!” These fucking two. It had taken Iseabail a while to start sniping back at the warrior, but she had finally reached the end of her rope with him. I didn’t blame her for it. They just both needed to fuckingstop. “Put the map away, Iseabail. If scrying won’t work, then that’s the end of it. We’ll find another way to track Fisher down.” Ihadto believe that. There was no other option available. “Fisher would want us to help the injuredand make Inishtar safe before we went off on a mission to track him down. We need to provide aid where possible. While we’re doing that,allof us can brainstorm ways to track him. In the meantime, we should discuss what we just walked into.”

“The horde must have broken loose,” Te Léna said.

Around the kitchen, Foley, Lorreth, and I all shook our heads.

“Those feeders were human before they turned,” Lorreth said.

Foley cracked his thumb, staring into the fire. “They didn’t respond to Saeris’s commands.”

“They wereZilvarens,” I added.

Orellis looked around the room, her confusion plain. “An army of feeders just attacked my home. They killed scores of my people. It doesn’t matter where they came from.”

“It does.” I grinned down at Lanny. The little faun was wide-eyed, soft little curls backlit by the fire, staring at me intently as she tried to grab hold of my bottom lip. “It matters a lot. Does Inishtar have a quicksilver pool?”

“Psshhh!”Orellis rolled her eyes. “Of course not. We’re just a little backwater town by the sea. Why wouldwehave a realm portal?”

Realm portal. I hadn’t heard it called that before, but the namewasappropriate. Orellis’s answer was unsurprising. I was hypersensitive to the quicksilver now. I could feel it from miles and miles away, and I’d already reached out, activating the quicksilver rune on the back of my hand to see if I could sense any close by. I hadn’t heard even the faintest whispering in response, but I’d had to ask. “Whereisthe closest pool, then?” I put the question to the room as a whole.

Lorreth answered. “Lissia has one. Gilaria, too. They’re both probably equidistant from Inishtar, but the Shallow Mountainsstand between here and the Gilarians. The shield and an ocean stand between here and the water Fae.”

“It’ll takewaytoo long to travel either of those places without a shadow gate,” Iseabail said.

“I don’t want to use their pools for travel. Not yet, at least,” I explained. “I’m trying to work out how those feedersgothere. Most of them were freshly dead. Some of them hadn’t even fed yet. We can rule out the Lìssian pool. Most of the feeders back at the Darn were terrified of running water. There’s no way the feeders that attacked today crossed a whole channel to reach land. Theycouldhave come from Gilaria, but it would have taken them days to make it down through the mountains. They would have been in much worse shape by the time they reached Inishtar.”

“Which means Madra has found another way to travel between this realm and Zilvaren,” Carrion said.

The occupants of the kitchen all turned to look at him. He arched an eyebrow at us in return. “What,I’mnot allowed to theorize? It makes sense, doesn’t it? The infected feeders that attacked Irrín were Zilvarens too, and they didn’t come through the pool at Cahlish or Ammontraíeth. They had to have found themselves on the banks of the river somehow. And Madra has been controlling magic for centuries in Zilvaren. Who’s to say she hasn’t accumulated enough power to find a way to travel from there to here?”

Itdidmake sense. It was, in fact, thatonlylikely explanation for what had happened. “Is it possible?” I asked Foley. He’d spent the last thousand years reading books and researching in the library at Ammontraíeth. If any of us were going to know the answer to that question, it would be him.

The vampire shifted uncomfortably, casting his eyes up at the soot-marked ceiling. “I never came across any texts that spoke of interrealm travel that didn’t rely on quicksilver. I certainly readabout individuals absorbing the powers of others to bolster their own magic, but . . . the kind of magic it would take to open a portal between realms? Well, that would require an inordinate amount of power.”

“The kind of power that would take a thousand years to steal?” I asked. “The kind of power that would require a wholecityto fuel?”

Carrion stared at me, eyes widening. I saw it happen: We were piecing this whole thing together at the same time. Foley hadn’t quite come to the conclusion that I had yet, though. “I suppose so. That would probably be enough power. Yes. What are you getting at, Saeris?”

“You said it yourself, didn’t you? Back in the library, the second time we met. You said . . .” I tried to remember his exact words. They came back to me, ringing in my ears like a struck bell. “ ‘You cannot eradicate magic from a city. Once it takes root within a community, it never leaves. It will find a way to thrive, one way or another. You just didn’t care to look for it.’ ” Somethingelsehad come back to me, too. My heart started to race. “And what you said about the sigils in that book! ‘The strongest magic is circular. Like a wheel. It is the symbol of forever, the beginning and the end of everything. It carries magic on a loop, amplifying it, giving it strength.’ ”

Foley nodded, though he looked somewhat confused. “I remember.”

“Zilvaren,” I said breathlessly. “The city, fashioned after the shape of a wheel. The walls form the wards, but they aren’t spokes. The whole thing . . .” My head was spinning. “It’s asigil. This entire time, Madra has been using the city itself to siphon the magic of its inhabitants.Zilvarenis the biggest piece of spellwork ever created.”

The revelation sat there like a stone. It might never have mattered to the people of Yvelia that my home was ruled overby a maniacal despot—they had their own to contend with, after all—but the news that Madra might now be in possession ofthiskind of power had stunned everyone to silence. If it was true, then nowhere was safe. She could open a portal and deliver more feeders whenever she liked, wherever she liked. Andthatmade her even more dangerous than Belikon to the people of this realm.

“If we wanted to create a ward against her magic, could it be done?” Te Léna asked at last.

Iseabail seemed startled that all eyes had turned to her. “No. That kind of magic . . .” She hesitated, then looked anxiously around the kitchen, as if she wasn’t sure of what to say next. “You’re talking about warding arealm. That kind of spellwork would require Faeandwitch magic, working side by side. You’d need an entire coven of powerful witches and at least ten strong Fae wielders to build something that monumental. You’d also need something that belonged to Madra. And not just something she touched once. You’d need something far more personal if we were going to block her magic.”

I was already handing Lanny back to Orellis and getting to my feet. “Well, apparently, you’re a member of one of the most powerful witch clans to ever exist,” I said to the witch. “I’m sure if your sisters understood what was at stake here, they’d agree to work with us on something that might just save the realm. And I don’t know ten of the most powerful members of the Fae, but I knowoneof them, and I’m personally going to figure out where the fuck he is and bring him back to us. As for something personal that belongs to Madra? I think I’ve got you covered there, too.”

45

REDEMPTION