Maelys

Cold.

It whipped through her hair, clawed at her sweaty skin, trying to tug her down the treacherous slopes below.

Maelys hugged herself tight, forcing one foot in front of the other because she knew that, with year-round snow spotting the mountainside in pockets along her path, stopping would be her end.

Just a little further, she told herself. It had become her mantra. She refused to leave the mountains without finding her people. She could see Ganlin Hall a mountainside away, a towering black mass against the stone rubble of the Slopes. It gleamed in the moonlight, its sinewy curves and spires glossy black against the surrounding rock.

Maelys huddled in on herself as another gust hit her from the front, penetrating the thin tunic she had worn into the mountains that day, whisking away the last of her heat. The cold finally too much to bear, she slumped into a crevice in the rock, her back facing the mountain, and pulled her legs up under her chin, shaking.

Out across the valley, she could see Ganlin Hall mocking her. Inside, she could imagine Rees and Aneirin warm and laughing, drinking mead by the central hearth as his family members congratulated him on becoming an Auld.

I wonder what rank he got, she thought, watching the warm glow of the windows of Ganlin Hall with envy. Though she didn’t know much about the Spyre’s ranking system, she guessed he was strong. All the Ganlins were. It was in their blood...whenever they managed to produce an auldling.

I bet it was a seven, she thought, trying to take her mind off of the way her body could not stop shaking—and the frantic call of the stone touching her elbow. It wanted her to sink into its embrace, to get out of the cold.

Maelys tightened her arms around her legs, breaking contact with the outcropping of stone. The stone’s anxiety disappeared from her mind.

Maybe an eight, she thought, Like Rees.

On the slopes across the valley, she saw fire.

At first, Maelys thought the flashes were someone carrying a torch through the steamy jungle of the vale, but the longer she watched, the more she realized the sizzling colors and sudden gouts of flame had to be veoh.

They’re celebrating, she thought bitterly. She was stuck on a mountain, shivering, and Aneirin and his family were playing with fire, drinking ale. Life was so unfair.

Either that or you’re just an idiot, she thought. Too stupid to bring a coat.

Soon after that, Maelys stopped shivering.

It’s warming up, she thought, excited. When she tried to stand, however, she stumbled. Her legs felt numb, and when she fell to the stony ground, her knees barely felt it. Her hands and arms felt like dead tree stumps that abruptly halted her fall.

Maelys had sampled the Auldheim’s wine stores, once, when the cow was off in another part of the Spyre, debating with the Circle. The odd numbness of her limbs afterwards felt much like her current predicament, though back then Maelys had felt giddy as she re-corked the wine bottles and fled. Now, crawling along the goat path on her hands and knees, she just felt tired. Warm and tired.

Maelys crawled a few more yards, then curled up into a ball on the trail, rocks pressing into her side and shoulder, making the bones there ache where the Auld had knitted them back together. Irritated at the discomfort, Maelys rolled onto her back and stared at the sky.

The moon was big and ivory, its face staring down at her like the face of a skull. Behind it, stars twinkled in the night sky, dancing together like twirling fireflies. As she watched, Maelys felt a tickle of memory before it was gone.

Sighing, she closed her eyes. The rocks digging into her spine didn’t bother her as much anymore, and she felt herself falling asleep.

She was just drifting into unconsciousness when she realized the worried stones were drawing her into them, absorbing her essence as her guard went down.

No, Maelys thought, a spark of terror overcoming her as she felt herself seeping into the ground. She struggled, trying to rise, but the stones held on. She sat up, a human body encrusted with a hundred jagged mountain rocks and pebbles, and immediately the weight of her unwanted passengers dragged her back to the ground.

No, she thought, more forcefully, this time. I don’t want to join with you. She infused the thought with veoh to give it more force.

The stone ignored her, pulling her further into itself.

Maelys awoke to warmth.

True warmth, like that of a hot fire. It was all around her, infusing her very essence.

With the warmth came the stretching feel of sunlight on the delicate tissues of her scarred face. Maelys groaned and shielded her gaze with a hand. All around her, she heard the trickle of water. When she opened her eyes, she was looking up at a steaming waterfall that pounded the stone near her head.

The Ganlin vale, she thought, pushing herself into a seated position. The stone around her gave off ripples of panic that mimed the slosh of water disturbed by her motions. The hot springs. Frowning, she tried to remember walking that far, but the last thing she could recall was the rocks sticking to her as she tried to stand.

That brought her to full awareness. The rocks had swallowed her, unwillingly. The thought left a cold chill in her spine, despite the heat of the hot springs. Had it brought her all the way here, under the trees and dirt of the valley...under the ground?

Feeling queasy, Maelys rolled over in the pool—

—And immediately came face-to-face with a little green-eyed girl.

Her face was floating under the surface of the water, her mouth open wide, a bubble clinging to one nostril.

For a moment, Maelys laughed. Good one. Scare the newcomer.

Then she realized the girl was dead.

Gasping, Maelys lunged out of the water, her body steaming with little rivulets that tinkled back into the pool. Underneath the surface, the girl’s corpse drifted out from under the stone lip that had hidden it, rocking back and forth with the motion of the waves.

Oh gods, Maelys thought. She reached in and grabbed the girl’s wrist, dragging her up out of the water. She was about to pull her over the edge of the rock, onto dry land, when she realized that the back half of the girl’s head was missing. What was left was blackened with a horrible burn.

Maelys released the girl’s arm in a spasm. She lunged onto the lip of the rock, watching in mute horror as the corpse slid back under the water, bobbing like a fishing float.

Her eyes glanced up at the cliff above, where she had seen kids jumping into the pool the day before. She fell, she thought, That’s all. Somehow, she knew that the burn could be explained away by an awkward plunge, a head hitting the wrong part of the pool.

The dead girl gave her no answers. She floated towards deeper water, leaving bits of black swirling in her wake.

Heart thundering, Maelys backed away from the pool. Then she ran for the Hall, jumping over rocks and obstacles like a doe in flight. As she did, unease began to infuse her very bones. No one looked up as she ran past the hot springs. She saw no gleeful children, no relaxing adults, no giggling teenagers. No one. The vale was shrouded in an eerie silence, broken only by the slaps of her bare feet.

They’re all asleep, Maelys thought, her heart slamming in her chest. Sleeping off the drink.

Anger slid into her soul as Maelys considered how the Aulds must have killed the girl by accident in their festivities, then gone back to bed to sleep it off, not even realizing they were one short.

Everybody was right, Maelys thought, furious, now. The Ganlins really are drunkards that leave little girls to hit their heads and drown.

By the time she reached the doors of Ganlin Hall, Maelys was in a rage. She threw them open and stormed inside, ready to scream at the first Ganlin idiot she ran across.

She found no one.

Her anger vanished, deflating her like a spent waterbag as Maelys searched every inch of the Hall and found no one. Not even a dog.

They all went back to the Spyre, she thought, stunned. They just left her.

Her anger returning, she trudged back outside, down the steps, and down the path to the weigh-line. She was stepping up to the platform, preparing to activate it to take her back to the Spyre, when the rock beneath her suddenly grabbed her feet and refused to let go. Grunting, Maelys tried to pull her feet free, infusing the stone with her will, but it was like arguing with the sky. The stone ignored her completely.

Maelys stopped struggling and peered at the weigh-line, unease chilling her, now.

Above her, the big aspen trees swayed in the wind, their line of bodies marching down the hill and over the next rise, creating a passage through the mountains.

You don’t want me to leave just yet, Maelys thought. Fine. I get it.

Still, the rock refused to release her. Maelys began to struggle again, though her efforts were short-lived. One did not fight with stone. She lifted her eyes back to the platform.

Then she saw it.

The first couple trees appeared green and stately, their leaves verdant and full of color. After that, however, the leaves took on a different color, one that was more sinister.

The aspens were diseased. Their pristine white trunks were yellowing, with veins of sickness darkening every leaf.

Quickly, Maelys scanned her memories for what she had been told about the weigh-line.

It was all one tree, Rees had told her. Maintained by the Ganlins for a thousand generations. Once a line had been nurtured away from the parent and into a new area, it was never cut. Residents of an area would build their houses around the aspens rather than cut a line.

Yet, when Maelys looked beyond the yellowing trees, she saw that, further down the hill, something had ravaged the line with streaks of fire. Beyond that, for miles, the trees were burned, their branches black against the mountainside.

She glanced back at the trees in front of her, wondering why the two at the front would be green when the rest were so obviously sick.

Then she remembered Aneirin sitting in the lunchroom, his grinning face morphing into Rees’s furious visage as he grabbed her arm. As he did, the rest of the diners had simply melted away, as if they had never been.

Then, stark in her mind, she remembered Rees saying that a dying weigh-line would kill anyone that tried to enter it, ensnaring their souls and bodies as it died.

It’s a trap, she thought, stunned. To lure people in.

With that thought, the stone released her. Maelys stumbled away from the weigh-line, peering up at the two beautiful, green trees, wishing she could feel the veoh of spells like Aneirin.

Aneirin, she thought, suddenly worried for him. A memory of the little girl floating in the pool came back to her with vivid clarity and she sank her consciousness into the stone. It greeted her solemnly.

Where is my friend? she asked.

For the longest time, the stone did not reply. It radiated sadness and sorrow...and regret.

Where is he, Maelys insisted, biting down her anxiety.

After a moment, though, Maelys felt the mountainside soften beneath her. It waited, wanting to take her within its bosom once more.

Steeling herself, Maelys let it.

The journey was long—much too long to be returning to Ganlin Hall. By the time it finally released her, Maelys was on the verge of panic, the dragonsilk cocoon dampening the back of her mind.

Emerging from the stone, Maelys righted herself and looked around.

She was in an abandoned mine-shaft, the daylight of the Slopes flooding the place from the entrance behind her. Tentatively, Maelys stepped deeper into the shaft. “Hello?” she called.

She received no response, so she walked further.

Soft dirt between her toes where before the floor had been packed hard suddenly drew Maelys’s attention to her feet.

A long row of rectangles of disturbed earth began at her feet and led deeper into the bowels of the mine, fading out of sight in the darkness beyond.

Frowning, Maelys squatted before the first rectangle. She ran her fingers across the soil. It was light, still moist. It had dozens of footprints in it treading deeper into the tunnel, packing it down.

Maelys began to scrape away at the dirt with her hand. It folded away easily under her fingers, loose and crumbly under her touch. She dug deeper, using both hands, now, a part of her desperate to reach whatever had been hidden below.

It was that part of her that burst into tears when the jawline appeared in the soil. Above it, an ear, filled with dirt. Trembling, now, Maelys brushed away the rest of the dirt.

Dirty eyes open and staring, Aneirin Ganlin’s face emerged from his grave.

Maelys shuddered and lurched back, whimpering as tears ran down her cheeks. She thrust her shoulder blades against the side of the mine, staring down at her friend in agony. She collapsed upon the floor, quaking with sobs, unable to tear her eyes from his dirty face.

It was her fault.

Aneirin was dead because of her.

He had saved her from Laelia, and now he was dead. Maelys looked up slowly, her gaze catching upon the endless rectangles of disturbed earth, and then she understood. Aneirin wasn’t the only one. They were all dead. Every Ganlin had died that night. Every child that she had seen playing in the pools, every Auld, every babe...

All of them were right here, buried a few inches beneath the earth, forgotten.

In that moment, Maelys found true hatred. She found it and caressed it, bringing it out into the open. It grew with the attention, flourishing into something that filled her veins with every beat of her heart. As Maelys stared at the line of graves, her vision blurred, though it was not with tears. It was something else, something that burned her soul.

Turning on the graves, Maelys walked back to the surface. She padded out into the sunlight, her bare feet connecting her to the mountainside. It mourned with her, shared her pain, comforted her.

Then, unexpectedly, it pushed dozens of faces into her consciousness. Images of strangers with white-blue eyes and blond hair, strangers that had killed her friends. The stone, Maelys realized, had loved the Ganlins. It had lived with them for a dozen generations, sheltering them, comforting them, receiving their essences into its being. The Ganlins had become a part of the mountains, and the mountains wanted vengeance.

“You’ll get it,” Maelys whispered.

Behind her, she felt a rush of air and a deep whomp as the mines collapsed at her back, followed by a wave of approval that pushed up through her toes. More images burned into her mind, images of fire and death.

Maelys was shaking as she bent down to pick up a stone from the mountainside. “Every one of them who was here today.”

Clenching the rough, triangular stone in her fist, Maelys eyed the sky and decided she still had enough time to travel.