“Don't,” Anhuset warned.
“I've no intention of touching it,” he assured her. The words no sooner left his lips than a tiny bolt of lightning arced from the stone to jolt his fingertip. Serovek leaped back with a yelp, narrowly avoiding trampling Anhuset.
“I warned you not to touch it,” she snapped.
“And I didn't,” he snapped back.
He glared at her and she at him until a thought occurred to him. Something in his expression must have forewarned her of another one of his uncomfortable questions for the scowl disappeared behind that stoic mask she erected like a shield wall.
“The statue is warded,” Serovek said. “I'm guessing they all are. Human sorcery or not, I'd think a Kai possessing even a drop of Elder magic would sense it, yet you didn't. Again.”
He'd heard rumors in the months following the galla's defeat of Kai unable to capture the mortem lights of their dead. For a people whose history relied on the stored memories of the dead to record their history, such a calamity was catastrophic, unprecedented, and as far as he knew, unexplained.
“You've lost your magic, haven't you, firefly woman?”
Her lips thinned into a mulish line, while her yellow eyes lightened until they were almost white.
Annoyance, he thought. Anger. The hostile emotions paled a Kai's eyes while the benign ones turned them gold.
Her hand clenched on the knife she held before loosening, and her shoulders relaxed. When she spoke, her voice carried nothing of her momentary fury, only a faint thread of sadness. “I have.”
“Will you ever tell me why?”
“No.”
Serovek had expected such an answer. She'd maneuvered around his oblique questions until he'd asked her outright. Still, she only confirmed what he'd already ascertained and nothing more. Sha-Anhuset was a woman judicious with her words and possessive of her secrets. This one he sensed affected far more than a single Kai. “If there's a way I can help you regain it, I hope you'd tell me.”
Her posture slumped a little more, and the hard angles of her faced softened. “Ask me nothing else about it,” she said. “You know enough now to realize the galla was attracted to you, that while I can be an extra sword on the bridge, I can't sense sorcery. I inherited very little Elder magic to begin with, but my sword arm is strong, and I'm enduring. Let that be enough.”
“It's always been enough.” He wanted to gather her in his arms, stroke her silvery hair and apologize for his prying. He bowed to her instead. “No more intrusions,” he promised. “I was wrong to meddle and beg your forgiveness.”
“Done,” she said, eyes darkening once more to their citrine shade.
Quick to bristle and just as quick to pardon, she was a creature of dichotomies in character and appearance: dark and light, harsh and merciful, dour and humorous, secretive and forthright. And he lusted for her mightily, even now as they traveled across an ancient bridge toward a strange and empty city.
They continued methodically weaving toward the opposite side, reaching the deck's center Anhuset stopped to stare down its length. “What malice is this?”
The mists veiling the city suddenly thickened to a dense, roiling mass before spilling like a waterfall onto the bridge, rushing toward them in a gray tide.
A low-hanging cloud did no more damage than get someone wet, but this was far more than weather, and Serovek wanted nothing to do with a repeat of Haradis. “Run!”
He never had a chance to lift a foot. His command acted as a catalyst for invisible listeners. The ivy, wild and thick, turned into a writhing, whipping mass. Vines, slender as threads and stout as broom handles lashed upward and out with serpentine speed. Serovek fell to one knee as several leaf-covered ropes snaked around his ankles and calves, wrapping so tight his feet went numb.
Anhuset's expletives singed his ears as more of the ivy coiled around her as well, even managing to encircle her wrist and yank her knife out of her hand before tossing it into one of the heaving mats of vegetation. The blade sank out of sight, devoured by the feral foliage.
“That was my favorite knife, you pile of pig shit,” she snarled, straining against her bonds.
Shouts behind them made Serovek's heart seize. He twisted enough in his shackles to shout at Erostis who'd mounted his horse to ride toward them. “Stay there, gods damn it!” His shout ricocheted off the cliff walls and echoed back to them. He turned his attention to Anhuset, her lips pulled back from her teeth as she growled and fought against her bonds. The vines climbed higher up her body, twining around her thighs and hips, weaving a cage of greenery around her lower torso.
“Anhuset, stop.” She paused long enough to stare at him. “Stop,” he repeated. “The more you move, the higher they'll go and the tighter they'll get.” His own tethers hadn't traveled any farther up his body than his calves and were loose enough that he regained his footing and stood.
Her eyes rounded at the sight, and she halted her thrashing. The vines stopped their creep as well, though they didn't retreat or loosen on her. “So we're stuck here while whatever that is...” She tilted her head toward the mist only a stone's throw away from them. “Consumes us.”
“Pray that isn't so,” he said. He wouldn't offer any false reassurances. He had no more idea than she what lay in store for them.
The preternatural mist had slowed its rush to a slow lap, dissipating in spots until it no longer resembled a ground-hugging cloud.
Serovek's lips parted in a silent gasp. “Lover of thorns and holy gods,” he breathed in a whisper.
He'd prayed never to see this very sight ever again, yet once more a vast crowd of the dead stood in front of him, their regard far heavier than the vaporous forms they wore.
Icy fingers of panic closed his throat for a
