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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

SYBIL DELLING

D iviners moved around me, twirling under a watchful moon. They danced upon the world’s grassy tongue, spinning until they were airborne. Pale wings blossomed from their gossamer gowns like petals.

They flew away. I tried to follow, but my feet were pulling me down. The Diviners giggled like sprites in a glen, floating farther away until they were white specks, like stars, upon a violet-blue sky.

I walked alone to Aisling Cathedral. Inside, the abbess waited, a shroud in her hands.

“Well?” she said. “How do you feel?”

“I don’t know.” I looked down at myself. I was naked. “Strange.”

“You are. Sybil Delling is dead. What remains is strange. Special.” The abbess beckoned me forward. She tied the shroud around my eyes, then took my shoulders. Hugged me. “And new.”

She shoved me into the spring.

Water drew over me like the lid of a coffin. The abbess dipped her hand into the spring, grasped my throat and pressed . I cried out, bubbles filling the water. I clawed, thrashed—and was kept down. Pressed and pressed and pressed.

“Benji! Bring her here!”

I heard voices. Not low and steady like the abbess’s, but loud. Rough. Desperate. “Get her out of the fucking armor.”

“It’s bent—I can’t—”

“Pith, she’s blue.”

Someone was crying. Long, aching sobs. “Bartholomew?”

“Give me your axe, Maude.”

“The sprites are coming—”

“Give it to me!”

Pain, greater than I’d ever known, touched my face, my hands, my ribs. I felt something shift—and then an oppressive weight found my chest.

“Come on,” a man’s voice shouted. My mouth was pulled open by an unseen force, hot, torrid breaths filling me. “Breathe, Diviner.”

There were more sobs. “Bartholomew always wakes. Why doesn’t she wake?”

A woman’s voice sounded. “Rory.”

“ No. ” There was more pressure—a pounding sensation over my chest so violent the world quaked. “Wake up, sweetheart. Wake. Up. ”

And the pain, the pain I knew so well from drowning, from dreaming—

Was now the pain of awakening.

I opened my eyes under a new shroud.

Gossamer, fastened too loosely, lay over my eyes. When I peered through it, it was into a darkened room with high ceilings and a tall lancet window that held the night sky.

I wore a long linen tunic and lay in a bed with a pillow and sheets far finer than the ones I’d been afforded at the Diviner’s cottage. I tried to move—to take in the anatomy of the room. But every muscle hurt, and half my bones were arrested in pain. There was a throbbing agony near my temple, and another along my left hip.

But nothing was so painful as my stiff, bandaged neck.

“Hello?” My voice grated up my throat. “Gargoyle?”

No answer.

I sat up. There was red on my linen tunic, too, below my pubis. I’d bled my moon’s blood. I’d been lying there some time, then.

The world was hazy, my mind undulating. I remembered darkness—hands tying fabric around my bleeding neck, then traveling through gales of wind, held in the gargoyle’s stone arms. I was adrift, my body washed and bandaged and put in new clothes. Then, fitful sleep.

It was all so murky. The last clear thing I recalled…

I sat up.

The Ardent Oarsman. His magic oar, calling up waves. Water, crashing into me. Teeth, biting. Blood, pain.

She came barely a week ago, naked and still. I took her into my castle. Placed her upon my throne…

My body seized.

Dead. Your Diviners are all dead.

I leaned over and coughed up bile. Then I was out of my bed, feet slapping against the cold floor.

No fire was lit, the room a dark blotch behind my new shroud. I reached for the iron handle of my door, turned it, and was confronted by a long, twisting corridor with a wine-red carpet that ran down its center like a tongue.

It looked like Aisling. Its ceilings were tall, vaulted, crafted with carefully cut stone. But the cathedral was unadorned but for its ancient pews, its stained-glass windows, and this—wherever this was—

Was opulent in its ornaments.

There were looking glasses taller than me and twice as wide. Tapestries, paintings—landscapes and portraits that, even in the hazy dimness, were vivacious in color. Shelves upon shelves held tomes and glass casings filled with petrified insects, animal pelts—live plants with serpentine stems and black petals I didn’t know the name of.

Artistry, craftmanship, everywhere.

A low creak sounded somewhere ahead, and I limped toward it. When I reached the end of the corridor, I was greeted by three doors.

I don’t know what made me knock on the third door, or why, when no one answered, I opened it.

Hinges groaning, I was confronted by a wide room, lit by moonlight and the dying embers in a hearth. I stepped inside, throwing shadows hither and yon. The room was as the corridor—cluttered with artifacts. I saw a table, strewn with stacks of paper, some aged, some new. “Hello?”

No one answered.

I came to the desk, looking for a seal—some indicator of where I might be. The Harried Scribe’s stone inkwell was there. My stomach twisted. So was the Ardent Oarsman’s oar. I ignored both, my fingers scraping over parchment, stirring dust. There were leaflets, letters, and—

My breath stilled.

Benji’s grandfather’s notebook.

A more obedient version of me would have left it alone. It wasn’t mine to look at. But that version of me belonged to Aisling Cathedral, and I had fled that place, intruding upon the strange, perilous land of Traum.

What was one more trespass?

I opened it, the smells of aged leather and parchment filling my nose. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Something to challenge the horrible things the Ardent Oarsman had spewed before his death. Proof of Diviners past. Reassurance, in all of King Castor’s scholarly learnings, that daughters of Aisling had never been treated as anything but holy.

I saw his art instead. Beautiful drawings, some in dark ink, others in faded color. He’d drawn sprites, a few I recognized, many I didn’t. Some looked like monsters—twisted bodies, hollowed-out eyes, jagged teeth and claws—while others were strange amalgamations of birds and reptiles and mammals.

He’d drawn gargoyles, too, the detail striking, particularly their wide stone eyes.

Beneath them, in slanted script, was writ: The gargoyle sprite has no discernable home, save the tor, for their bodies are composed of the same limestone as the spring in which the Diviners dream.

I shoved the page aside, accosted by maps—dozens of them, with scribbles in the margins. King Castor had charted all the hamlets, and I could make out the rows of merchant tents at Coulson Faire, the cobbled streets and reaching buildings of the Seacht—the jagged contours of the Fervent Peaks. There was faded yellow paint where he’d painted the birch trees of the Chiming Wood, and pink where he’d rendered the dawn, rising over the sea along the Cliffs of Bellidine. Then, near the end of the notebook—

A cathedral atop a hill. A long stone wall.

And six shrouded figures.

I leaned in—traced a finger over the ink. The art was faded, but I knew exactly who the six figures were. They weren’t Omens.

They were Diviners.

Above each of them, drawn in careful detail, was a moth.

King Castor’s slanted script returned. I have traveled Traum, this land we have settled into the Stonewater Kingdom; known her hamlets like the fingers of my hand. Yet I have never met a Diviner after her service at Aisling Cathedral has passed. There are no records of them in the Seacht libraries, no mention of their names or even their numbers. Indeed—how does the abbess choose them? Where do they go after ten years? I seek them, but they remain hidden. They are saints and martyrs, as venerated, as significant—as unknown—as the Omens themselves.

I turned to the last page of the notebook, where a single line was written.

But ever, I wonder. What horrible thing do they hide behind their shrouds?

“Six?”

I whirled.

Benji stood behind me, holding a cup of wine and a candle.

My voice was an ugly rasp. “Where am I?”

“The Chiming Wood. This is Petula Hall—Maude’s house.” His eyes were wide. “We arrived yesterday. You’ve been unconscious. Are you—do you feel any better?”

His eyes fell to his desk. To the notebook, sprawled open upon it.

I stabbed my finger over the final page. “What is this?”

He didn’t seem to understand. “My grandfather’s notebook.”

“He’s written about Diviners.” The bite marks in my neck seared with every word. “You told me he hadn’t.”

The king fiddled with his wineglass. “Yes, well, what he wrote wasn’t exactly relevant to taking up the—”

I came before him like a dark shadow. “This was never about taking up the mantle for me, boy-king. It was about finding my friends.”

He nodded so quickly he looked like he was shaking. “I thought you might not come with us if you knew what my grandfather had written—that no Diviner had ever been heard from after her service at Aisling. I thought—” He looked to his wine for courage, upending it into his mouth. “I thought it would pain you.”

I put a hand to my bandaged neck. “So the king decides when I should bear pain and when I shouldn’t, so long as it serves him best?” I said it with the tastelessness it was due. “Not so different from the abbess, are you? From an Omen .”

Benji flinched. “It sounds horrible when you put it like that.”

“True things often do.”

Shoulders slumping, mouth struck down, the king looked helpless. “I’m sorry, Six. It is very difficult for me, with all of Traum’s opposing stories, to know what to say, or what is right. I usually ask Maude or Rory to tell me what to do, because most of the time I simply don’t know. I should have just been honest.” His chin began to tremble. “There is a very good chance we will not find your Diviners.”

Dead. Your Diviners are all dead.

“Because of Aisling’s spring water. Because the Omens crave it, and we have spent our service drowning in it. So when our ten years are up, the abbess—” But I couldn’t say the rest. “Where is my gargoyle?”

“He’s with Maude in the village. Pith, I’m sorry, Six. It’s—oh. You are…” Benji’s gaze lowered to my tunic. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine.”

“We thought you were dead, you know. We got the oar off the platform before it sank. Kicked the Ardent Oarsman’s corpse for good measure. We pulled you out of the water and Rory beat your chest, but we thought—” Benji’s voice was small. Frayed. “You should rest. I’ll send for some fresh clothes.”

He left me the way he’d found me. Alone with the unbearable truth.

I didn’t go back to my room. I didn’t know where I was going—but I went.

Bare feet slapping against stone, I took to the stairs. When I reached the entry, the punctures in my neck swelled as I hauled open the great wood door.

The stormy skies I’d known in the Fervent Peaks were gone. The Chiming Wood’s night was still, with blue heavens and a glowing moon that hung over a dense forest of birch trees.

I limped away from Petula Hall down the drive until I stood at the edge of a vast wall of trees. Slipped into the arms of the Wood.

And screamed.

My feet couldn’t take me where I needed to go, because my feet were bleeding. Just as well. I had nowhere to go. I tripped over rocks, roots, brambles.

Fell.

I lay utterly still upon dirt, bleeding moon’s blood, praying for a way to sink my teeth into earth and stone and flesh and rip Traum open until the entire world was a gaping wound. To wipe Aisling Cathedral from existence. Obliterate the Omens from lore, from memory, from the annals of time.

I lay there and lay there, and my prayers weren’t answered. Nothing answered, save the wind.

It wasn’t a mournful note like it was upon the tor. The wind in the Wood was a chime, dissonant, discombobulating, flinging itself near and far. It reverberated through the trees, the leaves, the thorny vines that lay over the road.

The Wood suddenly felt tighter, the air closer, as if the spaces between the birch trees had narrowed. I looked up. Studied them. Their pale bark wasn’t translucent or papery, but mottled. Heavy. Like old flesh. And the knots in the trunks—gashes of darkness in all that pale, sloughing bark—

The knots were eyes. Hundreds of black, lidless eyes, watching me.

I jerked back, my hands, my feet scraping over thorns, scoring the road red.

There was a noise. The groan of wooden wheels.

Yellow light split the darkness. I blinked against it, and saw that there was a cart on the road, drawn by a gray horse, coming toward me. Driving the cart was a man with a gray beard, stooped over the reins. Next to him, lantern light catching along the angles of his face, his black hair, the rings in his ear—

Rory.

When I looked back to the birch trees, they were eyeless once more. Just wood and bark and branches and leaves.

I slipped into their gaping shadows.

From between thorns, I watched the cart roll past. Then—

“Whoa.”

The horse whickered a complaint, and the cart groaned to a halt.

“Go ahead, Victor.” Rory’s boots hit the ground. “I’ll be there shortly.”

The cart resumed its journey, but those boots stayed firmly in my line of sight, rocking back and forth onto their heels. “Whoever you are who’s bled onto the road,” Rory called, “I hope you’re enjoying your night.”

When I stepped from my hiding place, Rory’s eyes widened, roaming over my clothes—and the blood upon them. “What the fuck, Diviner.”

I touched my new shroud. “Did you put this over my eyes?”

He blinked confoundedly, like he’d been thrown into a horse race with no horse. “Did I—yes, I put that there. I’d thought you’d—” He shook himself. “The Wood is dangerous after dark. What the hell are you doing, bleeding out here in the middle of the night?” He hissed out a sigh. “And would you look at that. You’re not wearing shoes.”

“I’ve spoken to Benji. He told me what his grandfather knew. That there are no records of Diviners after they leave the tor. That’s why”—I spoke too fast, rushing through the atrociousness of it all—“the Ardent Oarsman bit me, because he’s put his teeth in Diviners before. Lapped up their blood. They’re—” I forced myself to say it. “They’re dead .”

Warmth fled his face, silence taking us in its fist. Rory did nothing to dispel it, then—“The Artful Brigand always wanted the spring water. But the rest—” He was too anxious, too furious to even fidget, standing perfectly still. “I didn’t know.”

I was struggling to breathe. Underwater. Drowning all over again. “The abbess never told us how the spring works. How the dreams come. But it’s fearsome magic. When I Divined for you, when the gargoyle drowned me, I didn’t dream of the five Omens… I dreamed of the sixth. The moth. The Diviners vanished after that.” I put my hand to my chest. “Maybe I’ve known this entire time that something horrible had happened. That I’d never see them again.”

Rory shook his head. “If the spring upon the tor truly grants its dreamers signs, then it is cruel magic. Why show you something and give you no power to change it? There was nothing you could have done, Diviner.” Rory cusped the nape of his neck. “But you can do something now. Put the other Omens down. Destroy Aisling.” When I looked up, I saw fear in his eyes. “Just don’t give up.”

“I can’t keep going.”

“Yes, you can.”

I felt the truth in all my bruised and broken skin. “I always had strength—and ever just enough. Being a Diviner, being one of six… I loved it and hated it and bore both so well. And now that it’s all gone…” A great agony pressed behind my eyes. “Everything is too heavy.”

My vision blurred. Sorrow, I realized. That was the agony behind my eyes. Sorrow, who came like a shepherdess, leading a flock of tears. “I wish I was still a girl, made special for dreaming upon the tor.”

For the first time since before I could remember, I cried.

It hurt more than drowning.

Rory’s hand moved from my neck and hovered just at my face, not touching the tears that fell from beneath my shroud but guarding them against the breeze, as if they deserved their own tender pilgrimage down my cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for the Diviners. I’m sorry the people who best understood what you’ve endured were taken from you, and that so much of living without them feels like dying. But if you hadn’t left that tor—”

He said it with a deep familiarity. Like he’d thought to say it a million times, and the thinking of it had worn down all the sharp edges of saying it aloud. “I’d have come for you. I’d have killed or stolen or done any ignoble thing to see you free of that place. You are more special than you realize. I don’t even know your name”—he drew in a breath—“and I would do anything for you.”

I cried in front of him and hated myself for it. But the tears were hurried, as though they’d waited lifetimes to come. I cried and cried and then… I don’t know why I did what I did next. Maybe because my darling One—Two and Three and Four and Five—were gone, and I had never learned their names. Maybe because the Divination ceremony at Aisling meant something to me yet, or maybe I was merely forgetting my faith in dreams, in the Omens, in faith itself. And maybe, in all the forgetting…

I wanted to remember who had come before.

I put my thumb in my mouth and bit down.

A line drew between Rory’s brows. Blood, hot and viscous, pooled around my canine teeth. I let out a pained exhale. Held my hand out to him.

He knew. He always seemed to open a door to himself the moment I needed somewhere to go. Rory brought my bloodied thumb to his lips and said what I’d said to him—to thousands of others—from Aisling’s spring. “What name, with blood, would you give me?”

I put my thumb to his lips. “My name is Sybil Delling.”

His face broke open, as if I’d taken my chisel to his derision and shattered it. Rory ran the grooves of my thumb over his crooked bottom teeth, over his tongue, taking my blood into his mouth like it was something holy.

Crimson washed away. When Rory withdrew my thumb from his mouth, he pressed a kiss over it. “How was it, saying it aloud after all this time?”

I wiped my tears with the back of my hand. “Years in the making—and over in a moment.”

We walked back to Petula Hall together.

The old man on the cart was parked in the drive, asleep on his perch. Next to the cart, a figure spoke to the horse, wagging a stone finger in the animal’s face.

The gargoyle.

He startled when he saw us. “Where on earth did you come from, Bartholomew?” He cast his gaze over my shoulder, wrinkling his nose at the Chiming Wood. “Not in there, I hope. Such an unpleasant forest.”

Rory approached the wagon. Thumped it with an open palm, jolting the old man—Victor—awake. “Lucky for her, this just arrived.”

I peered into the wagon. In a bed of hay, something lay still. A silver exoskeleton that caught the torchlight.

“My armor?”

“The breastplate at least.” When Rory brushed an errant tear from my cheek, black hair fell over his brow. “First, you heal.” His gaze fell over my bandaged neck, and he frowned. “By the time the knighthood gets here, you should be ready to wear it.”

“The knighthood isn’t here?”

“Some of us left in a rush to get out of the Peaks. They’ll be here soon. Until then”—he nodded back at the looming house—“get some rest. No more late-night sojourns into the Wood.”

“Agreed,” the gargoyle said, yawning. “You look quite a mess.” He took my arm. Led me to the door.

I looked over my shoulder at Rory, standing by the cart. His legs were planted, hands clasped behind his back, like a good soldier.

“Good night.”

“Good night,” he murmured. “Sybil.”