Page 12

We don’t run into any soldiers, but we pass groups of Daerosian farmers or merchants who glower and swear at us as we ride by.

The bloodied peace banner hangs plainly from Vil’s saddle, keeping them from hurling anything more harmful than insults and a few unripe apples.

One hits me hard on the arm, and I know I’ll have a bruise to look forward to later.

In the afternoon, the daylight already fading, we glimpse a glittering company riding toward us on the road.

Beside me, Saga’s whole body hardens; ahead of us, Vil curses.

My heart jerks sideways, and I suddenly find it hard to breathe.

Pala and Leifur both draw their swords. I can sense Indridi tremble.

The company is Iljaria, easily identifiable by their white hair.

Their banners are sewn with tiny mirrors that refract the sunlight in every color, making it painful to look at them.

What the hell are they doing here? They’re supposed to be safely on the other side of their magical barrier.

The Iljaria leave their country only rarely, and it seems like more than some sick chance that their path would intersect with ours.

They draw nearer, and panic drums against my breastbone. There are too many of them for us to subdue, especially considering their magic, and in any case it would violate the terms of the peace banner to attack them. I tangle my fingers in my horse’s mane and will myself to be steady.

Saga is a pillar of rage on my left, while Vil sits tense, wary, watching the Iljaria approach.

They rein in a few paces from us, their horses stamping and blowing, dust rising up from their hooves.

The Iljaria themselves regard us with glittering eyes, like we’re of no more consequence to them than worms.

There are ten Iljaria in all, clothed in elegant robes the colors of their patron gods, whom they call Lords: green and blue and violet, bronze and black and yellow, brown and white and gray.

Their leader wears red, the color of the god of fire.

Their skin tones range from light to very dark, with every shade between.

The youngest of them looks hardly fifteen, the eldest no more than fifty, though in reality he could be much older.

They wear their white hair in all different styles, some short, some long, some bound, some loose. Five are men, and five women.

The Iljaria leader doesn’t look much older than me.

He sits tall in his saddle, his long white hair twisted into braids, the ends crimped in metal bands.

His skin is smooth and light, with a spattering of freckles on his nose that somehow hardens instead of softens him.

He teems with magic, and it is so strong I can feel it crawling under my own skin, and I want to be sick in the grass.

“Hail,” says Vil finally, when the Iljaria show no sign of speaking. The word is cold and bitter.

The Iljaria leader raises one pale eyebrow, and the ends of his braids spark with sudden flame.

Behind me, Indridi gasps, but I don’t dare look back at her. The leader’s magic rages through me, and I fight the urge to scream, to flee.

One of the Iljaria, a young woman with dark skin and a blue robe, has a venomous snake wound about her shoulders, kept docile with her magic.

It lifts its head and hisses at us. An older man dressed in green flicks his wrist, and vines burst out of the earth, twisting near us and our horses, who shift uneasily.

“Turn your mounts off the road and let us pass,” Vil grinds out. “You have no right to ride here.”

The Iljaria leader gives an exasperated sigh and waves his hand at the rest of his company. The flames in his hair wink out, the vines retreat back into the ground, the snake lowers its head.

“We ride to the shrine of the Gray Lady to honor our revered dead,” says the Iljaria leader. “Our passage was bought through free trade with the king of Daeros, and by the order of the Prism Master, from whom we hail.”

I draw in a sharp breath, earning a fleeting glance from the Iljaria leader.

Vil holds firm at the mention of the Prism Master, though I know his mind must be wheeling.

The Prism Master is the most powerful of the Iljaria, commanding more magic than even their queen, if not as much authority.

Like the Prism Lady, from whom he claims his magic, he holds a piece of every other god’s power, save for the non-magic of the Ghost God.

The stories say he could level the whole earth with a word, if he wanted.

“What do the Forsaken do here, so far from your chosen home?” asks the Iljaria leader.

Vil clenches his jaw at the Iljaria’s name for Skaandans. “We ride to Tenebris, to treat with the king of Daeros.” He lifts up the peace banner. “Now let us pass.”

The Iljaria leader scoffs. “At last you forsake your violence. I will send an Iljaria envoy to help negotiate peace.”

“That is neither wanted nor needed.”

The Iljaria gives Vil a thin smile. “Our paths will cross again.” For a moment the Iljaria’s gaze roams past Vil and fixes wholly on mine. His eyes narrow, and fear and magic both sear through me, so painful I have to bite my lip to keep from screaming. But then he looks away, and the pain is gone.

The Iljaria ride past us without another word. We’re all rattled and continue our journey in silence as the sun sinks over the rim of the world. Darkness blankets us. The stars come out.

“Bastards,” says Saga hotly. “They claim not to meddle in our wars, and yet they trade freely with Daeros and think to help us negotiate peace ! If they had stepped in, even briefly, they could have ended our war with Daeros years ago!” I hear what she doesn’t say: If the Iljaria had helped us, Hilf and Njala needn’t have died.

“But they’re pacifists,” Indridi puts in unexpectedly. She’s riding beside Saga and me now, her brow creased.

Saga scowls. “That didn’t keep them from slaughtering Skaandans and driving us out of our own land.”

“That was over a millennium ago. Who’s to say it’s even true?”

Saga stares at Indridi, mouth dropping open. “Do you doubt our history? Our people?”

“Of course not.” Indridi worries her lip. “But it seems that histories grow with the telling and the passage of time; it may not have been the genocide we were taught growing up. There are two sides to every story.”

Saga shakes her head, incredulous. “What other side could there possibly be, Ridi?”

Indridi doesn’t answer, just shrugs unhappily.

My stomach clenches. The histories say that, long ago, the Iljaria and the Skaandans were one people.

But when some of their children were born without magic, the Iljaria feared that these powerless had been cursed by the First Ones.

They feared that these children were damned to live a life devoid of magic, robbed of the chance to attain that which all Iljaria seek: to become as the First Ones, immortal, omnipotent.

And they feared that this lack of magic was a disease that might spread to them and bind them to the same fate.

So the Iljaria considered it a mercy to kill their powerless children, thereby giving them the chance to be born anew, this time gifted with the magic of their birthright. But some of the children were hidden and, in time, banded together and fled Iljaria, settling in the far west of the peninsula.

To them, the killing of their powerless brothers and sisters was not mercy but genocide.

They held that magic was not the only form of strength, and they became a kingdom of warriors.

No longer did they claim the First Ones as their ancestors; instead, they worshipped them as gods.

They thanked the gods for taking away the curse of magic, for saving them from the trap of arrogance and false superiority that led the Iljaria to slaughter their own kind.

And so Skaanda was formed.

Indridi is right—that was hundreds of years ago, and it might not be the whole truth. But I still don’t like to think about it.

“The Iljaria are hypocrites,” says Saga. “Heathens. They claim lineage and power from the gods , and yet they pen themselves up in their corner of the world, giving no help to the people who share their own blood, all the while trading goods with godsdamned Daeros .”

“Would Skaanda trade with Iljaria, even if they offered?” Indridi asks.

“Why are you taking their side?” Saga demands.

“I just think it’s rarely as simple as one side being evil and the other righteous. The Iljaria are taught pacifism from the very beginning of their long lives. It’s as close to religion as they come. Isn’t it a good thing, to shun war?”

“Pacifism is a sham,” says Vil tightly from his place in the lead. “If a man raises arms against another man’s daughter, will the second man stand by and let her be slain? Will the daughter shut her eyes and do nothing?”

“If they truly believe in peace,” says Indridi, “then yes, yes they would.”

Vil shakes his head. “What would that accomplish, Indridi?”

She fixes her eyes on him. She fixes her whole being on him, and it makes my gut twist nastily. “Perhaps the first man will see that they do not fight back, and be ashamed, and stop his violence.”

“And if he does not stop? If he kills them?”

“Then he will feel shame at what he has done, and he will stop his violence then.”

Vil laughs. “How very un-Skaandan of you, Indridi. And how little you know of the hearts of men.”

He glances at me as he says this, and I shove my discomfort down into the deepest recesses of my mind so I won’t have to examine what it means.

Indridi, for her part, gnaws on her lip and looks away.