Jane screamed. Her wyvern shrieked and reared back, almost unseating her; she lunged for the reins just in time. Still bellowing, the wyvern dipped into a precarious dive as the dragon passed inches above. The dragon looped back around, raised its head toward the sky—

—and blinked out of existence in a puff of green sparkles.

The wyvern stopped short, almost unseating Jane for the second time that day. Jane glanced around frantically, half-expecting the dragon to reappear. It was only when Drazan flew up next to her, looking smug, that she realized what had happened.

"I thought that would get your attention." Drazan's green eyes twinkled, his shoulders near shaking with mirth. "I've been calling your name for the last fifteen minutes, but your mind was clearly on something other than my fine person. I hope you're ready for another lesson in illusion-casting?"

Jane shot him a dignified glare, ignoring the sniggering of the nearby Riders. Her heart still pounded, and her hands were clammy with fright. Curse Nikolay, she thought. Curse Nikolay and that stupid dragon he set after me!

"Can't we practice somewhere that isn't ten thousand feet in the air?" She tried to make her voice sound reasonable and sunny, instead of exhausted and pleading.

"The more you practice under suboptimal conditions—" Drazan began.

Fine, fine, fine!

Letting out a huff through her nostrils, Jane held out her palm. She fixed her eyes on a point just above her fingers and glared at the space, furrowing her brow as she willed the illusion into existence. Green, green, boring green, with slight hairy texture and I think serrated edges, however leaves are supposed to look, and maybe a stem and some veins—

The leaf materialized half-heartedly in her hand. It was certainly very green, but unnervingly amorphous. It seemed torn between deciding if it wanted to be a beech leaf or a palm frond or merely a blade of grass, and its edges rippled as it hovered between the different options, until at last it settled on none of them, becoming instead a massive, splendidly-furnished Balsam fir, which twinkled merrily for a moment before vanishing in a blaze of garlands and Christmas lights.

Drazan seemed to be struggling very hard not to laugh.

"Again," he said. "You're not seeing the leaf well enough in your mind."

"What's the obsession with leaves, anyway? Why can't I practice conjuring dragons? They seem far more useful."

"Leaves," said Drazan reprovingly, "are an extremely important all-purpose form of illusory camouflage. Suppose you are being pursued and attempting to hide yourself in the undergrowth? A leaf screen is the simplest and the most useful disguise."

Jane bit back a sigh.

By the time Olesya called a halt, she would have been ecstatic if she never saw another leaf for the rest of her life. Partly out of fear that Drazan would force her to practice through lunch, she made a point of sitting next to Kir during their lunch break.

This turned out to be a mistake. Kir—predictably—was still not faring well. He kept missing his mouth with his sandwich, and when Olesya's scouts returned, bearing news of Dalnushka, he nearly spilled half his water flask down his shirt. Jane, who was beginning to get exasperated, hopped up behind him on his wyvern as they prepared for takeoff.

"You have to pull yourself together," she hissed at him in an undertone. "People are staring. If you keep this up, they'll find out what you did."

"What I did?" His voice was high. "I don't know what you're talking about! What did I do?"

Jane sighed. "Your brother told me everything. And, much as I hate his methods"—

(Except for the part where he ended up in prison; that was lovely)—"he really did an awful lot to protect you. It would be a waste if your secret got out now."

Kir's hands still trembled. But the mention of Nikolay seemed to do the trick, for he straightened in the saddle, and for the rest of the journey adopted an expression which—though not cheerful—at least didn't make him seem on the verge of tears.

The mood among the Riders was grim, and it only grew grimmer as they neared Dalnushka. Olesya's scouts had reported Dalnushka was deserted, its walls lined with corpses, with no trace of sudok or Kanachskiy soldiers. No survivors either, they'd said, but they had only dared pass over the fortress from high above, looking down upon the ruins from the safety of their wyverns; perhaps any survivors were in hiding; perhaps there were people they had missed.

"Or perhaps it's a trap, and Kanachskiy soldiers lie in wait for us," Olesya had said, her voice brittle. "We won't know until we get there, I suppose."

The fortress started as a speck between two mountains and grew, taller and taller, until it dominated the horizon—a series of towers and concentric walls nestled between two mountain peaks, tinged red by the afternoon sun. Jane remembered her first-ever wyvern flight over the city. Back then, Dalnushka had been a bustling, chaotic metropolis. Now, eerie silence haunted its walls, broken only by the cawing of crows and the snap of a few tattered flags in the wind.

As her wyvern edged closer, she began to make out the bodies of the fallen. They littered the ground, dense and decaying, some in armor, some without, most unrecognizable, their faces torn and slashed. The walls were smeared brown with dried blood. She flinched as the stink hit her, rotting and sweet, the odor of festering corpses and pecked-over flesh.

Olesya's face was blank as she surveyed the damage. As they dismounted, one of the Riders strode up to her and spoke softly, but Olesya shrugged him away. Her spine had a kind of stiffness, as though if she allowed her spine to curve for even a second, everything would be over. Jane wondered what she must be feeling, surrounded by dead bodies in the place she once called home.

"Split up to look for survivors," said Olesya.

The Riders divided, clearly following some sort of previously-established hierarchy. Drazan held out a hand to help Jane down from her wyvern. "You all right?" he said, his voice low.

She nodded and hugged her cloak, trying not to look at the decomposing bodies.

"You'll say close to me. We'll be one of the parties searching the castle for survivors. You see a sudok, no heroics—just run."

She nodded again, wondering if she should be chagrined or flattered that Drazan thought she might be brave enough to try something heroic.

Riders coalesced around them. Jane recognized Alexei, but not the others. She thought the one with the braids and snaggletooth was called Inessa. There was a blonde woman whose name Jane managed to forget as soon as she heard it, and another man—Yefim?—whose sole mode of communication seemed to be grunting and the occasional monosyllabic response.

Jane did a quick check over her shoulder to make sure Olesya was out of earshot. "Do you think there are survivors?"

"We'll know soon." Drazan strode through the remains of what had probably once been a very sturdy door and beckoned the others to follow him. "We'll start with the lowest levels and work our way up. Dalnushka's an old fortress, older even than Sengilach. Its lower level is a maze. I was stationed here four months, and there were a few places where civilians and children could be sent during a raid. Some of them are magically warded." Drazan's mouth twisted. "I suppose they might have survived the sudok attack."

The castle was dark; even the light from their collective magefire couldn't fully illuminate its main halls. Jane found herself jumping at shadows, at the pale, dead corpses of bodies scattered through the halls. Some of the faces they passed were a rictus of agony; some looked to have been slashed by massive claws. The stench of rot only grew worse as they made their way farther below ground. Jane's skin crawled with a mixture of fear and dread. It occurred to her that she should probably have asked whether zombies existed in Somita before coming down here. Because this was beginning to look an awful lot like a scene from a horror movie, right before a giant ambush—

As if to add to her unease, the azdaja chose that moment to poke her head out of her sack. (Yefim, a few paces away, jumped and cursed under his breath).

"Don't like thisss," she hissed, winding herself in anxious circles around Jane's shoulders until Jane had to pull the snake away to keep from being strangled. "Sssmellsss like death."

Jane would have liked to point out the obvious—they were surrounded by dead bodies, so this wasn't exactly a surprise—but it seemed a bit insensitive.

The staircases narrowed, with ceilings so low they were barely tall enough for some of the lankier Riders to pass. Jane lost count of the number of levels they had descended. All she knew was that the farther they went, the more hopeless she became. Doom seemed to press in on all sides, weighing her down like an anchor. She shouldn't be here—she couldn't go on much longer—surely Drazan had made some mistake bringing her down here. If the Kanachskiy had left any sudok at Dalnushka, surely they would find them here—in the dark, dank bowels of the castle, shielded from light and fresh air, agents of death with long claws and foul bodies... They had to turn around... they had to turn back...

"Almost there, folks!" said Drazan.

Even his usually cheerful voice sounded strained. Jane wanted to scream. Perhaps she could turn now and run, back up to the surface; they might think her a coward, but what did it matter, better to turn back than die—

"Um," said Alexei's whisper, "Do you think—I mean—that is—not to question—but erm—should we—"

"Just a bit more!" said Drazan through gritted teeth.

There was an awful, popping, pressure, and then—

Jane shook her head to clear it. The pressure and terrible sense of doom had vanished, so suddenly she felt almost dizzy with its absence. The azdaja was hissing.

"Sorry," said Drazan. "That spell was intended to discourage enemies from coming down here. "

"You couldn't have warned us?" said Inessa indignantly.

Yefim grunted.

Drazan grinned. "Where's the fun in that? Welcome to Dalnushka's catacombs, by the way."

The stairs had widened out into a vast underground hall that reminded Jane of the catacombs where she had hidden in the enemy territory of Kanach, during her first godstest. Unlike the Kanachskiy catacombs, which had been dank with mildew, this hall was dry, dusty, and warm. Silvery spellwork flickered gently over the rows of coffins, illuminating names.

Jane paused at one of the caskets, slightly more well-adorned than its neighbors. A silvery illusion danced around it—flowers, grass, and fiddleheads, all flickering, delicate, against its marbled walls.

Vitalya Morozova, 866-881, the tomb said.

"Why..." began Alexei, looking uneasy.

"Sengilach an' most of Somita buries dead above ground, in the light. But them who practice the old ways think buryin' the bodies deeper helps souls reach the afterlife more quickly." It was probably the largest number of words Jane had heard Yefim string together so far. He touched a finger against his head and touched the casket.

"This level hold not just tombs, but secret living spaces guarded with magic," said Drazan. "If we had kept going down those stairs, we would've found Dalnushka's caverns, which hold the Runes and ancient spells that keep the fortress safe. Kept, I suppose I should say. We'll visit there next, but first..."

He strode to the nearest wall and tapped a pattern on the stone. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, just as Jane was about to turn back to exploring the tombs, the wall vanished, revealing a cave the size of a small dining hall.

"Whoa!" said Alexei, looking impressed.

People had obviously been here recently. There were reminders of life: the remains of small fires, scuff-marks on the ground, what appeared to be bread crumbs and small drops of pudding. But there were no people. On the plus side, there were also no dead bodies. The secret hiding spot was just... empty.

Drazan, looking disheartened, strode to the next wall and tapped it. It vanished, just like the first, revealing a similar cave—with nobody inside.

"See if you can find any clues," Drazan told Alexei and Jane, turning to the next cave.

Jane bent down. The bread crumbs looked recent; she was pretty certain they would have been eaten by mice if they had been sitting there too long. Unless, of course, the magic wards didn't allow mice to pass through them.

She was just starting to think about how her dorm room at college could really have benefitted from some anti-mouse warding spells, when her eyes caught something she'd missed on first glance.

A small drawing, hastily sketched, was visible on the rock: a winged creature that looked vaguely like a bird, and a mountain range next to it. An arrow pointed toward both of them. Jane searched the rocks nearby for any sign of words or writing, but found nothing.

"Good eyes," said Drazan, when she showed him the drawing.

"What does it mean?"

"Great question."

She frowned at the picture. "If they're not dead, that means they must have survived, right? Maybe they decided that since the sudok are gone, they'd be safe moving to some other part of the fortress?"

"That would be the happiest explanation." Drazan rubbed his forehead.

Yefim grunted.

"You think the Kanachskiy took them all captive? But wouldn't that just make a lot of mouths for them to feed?"

Drazan patted her shoulder. "This world needs more willfully optimistic people."

Cave after cave, Drazan opened, and cave after cave revealed the same thing. Scuff marks on the ground, evidence of recent occupancy—but not a single live person to tell them what had transpired.

As they continued to explore the caves, Jane fell behind the others. She opened her satchel and the azdaja slithered out again. The winged snake perched on Jane's shoulders, sniffing the air.

"Smell anyone?" Jane asked.

"None living." The azdaja fluttered off her shoulder, tasting the air with her tongue. "Cavessss are fasccinating. Old magicsss. And many, many passagesss unexplored. Tantalissing. I smell—"

She cocked her head and froze, her eyes going wide, and then—without warning, before Jane could do any more than blink and open her mouth—the azdaja darted away into the darkness.

"Hey!" Jane said. "Get back here!"

She glanced toward the Riders, who were getting farther and farther ahead. Then, gritting her teeth, she called up a ball of magefire and edged toward the passage where she thought the azdaja had gone.

"Um... azdaja?"

No answer.

Sooo Nikolay... your azdaja went wandering around in some creepy passages under Dalnushka, and I miiight have lost track of her...

That was bound to go over well.

Jane studied the passageways, trying to guess where the azdaja might be. The passage ahead was dark, but Jane thought—if she squinted just so—she could make out something shimmering ahead. Light? Water? Crystals on the rocks?

She stepped forward and froze.

A whisper floated toward her through the darkness.