Chapter 21
Naelin lay on the floor of the late queen's bedchambers in a puddle of muck. It was nice on the floor, without spirits around her. She breathed in and out and didn't taste the odd mix of salt and pine and moss and ash. All of the spirits were outside, flitting around the palace. They'd stayed close but they weren't right here, which was what made it nice.
This isn't working, she thought.
She wasn't used to them. She wasn't less afraid of them. She wasn't becoming inured to them. She was simply having more nightmares, including ones that sometimes hit when she was awake. Naelin hadn't told Ven about those-about the moments when her rib cage felt tight, her lungs felt squeezed, her skin dampened with sweat, and her vision seemed to collapse to only what was right in front of her.
The problem was she could sense them all. Every little last vicious one of them. She felt their antipathy like a sore on her skin, constantly raw. Before her training began, she'd no idea there were so many of them. They clogged the trees. They filled the air. They permeated the water, always near, always watching, always listening, always hating. Shutting down her mind, she tried not to sense them. All she wanted was a moment. Just one-
A scream broke through her thoughts.
She sat bolt upright. Outside. It was from beyond the room, the hallway, just outside. As Ven had taught her, she thrust her mind beyond herself, and she felt-a spirit? It seemed like a spirit, but one that had been torn apart or inside out. It writhed and twisted as if in pain, except it wasn't pain, it was . . . ecstasy, brutal joy that poured out of it and flooded into Naelin. She felt as if she were choking on it. Stop! she thought at it.
It didn't hear her. She stumbled to her feet. Preparing to broadcast the command louder, she opened her mind wider, and from every direction, she felt spirits spinning wildly, as if they were about to explode in a thousand pieces.
She couldn't see. Everything dripped red in front of her, and the world tilted. Feeling her way across the room, she hit one of the posts of the bed. She clung to it, feeling the solid wood, trying to draw her mind back from the whirlpool.
It would suck her in. It would drown her.
Clinging to the post, she tried to pull out of the rush of pain-joy-need.
Blood, the taste of blood. She tasted coppery saltiness on her tongue and realized she'd bitten through her lip.
Stop.
This time the command was to herself.
She was human, not spirit. She could control her emotions. Drawing in tight to herself, Naelin concentrated on her own breath, feeling it enter her lungs and fill her. She focused on her skin, the limits of where her body was-she was here in the room, not split and sprawled across the palace.
Another scream, and more. Naelin ran across the room to the balcony doors and threw them open. Outside, it was as if a storm had hit the palace. The bodies of spirits darkened the sky, blocking the sun. They were twisting and cackling.
Below, she saw people running as the spirits dove for them.
They're attacking! Why are they attacking?
The spirits couldn't attack here, not in the presence of the queen. The palace should be the safest place in all Aratay. "Erian. Llor." She spoke their names out loud as if that would work as a talisman, and then she ran for the door to the bedchambers. She had to reach them. She had to-
There was blood in the hallway, streaked down the wall.
A woman was huddled on the side. Her head was bent to her chest, and she was motionless. One arm was wrapped in vines that grew from the wall. The other arm had been shredded, and the bone gleamed through the red of her muscles. Blood pooled around her, seeping into the carpet. Naelin ran to her and then stopped. The woman was dead, no question.
A spirit had killed her. Here, in the palace.
This can't be happening! This shouldn't be possible!
And then something worse hit her:
What did I do . . . ?
She'd summoned the spirits here. What if . . .
She heard more screams ahead of her, from the stairwell. Erian and Llor were five flights down. Naelin ran toward the stairs. She thrust her mind ahead of her and felt a knot of spirits. They were caught in the same frenzied whirlwind of joy and pain. One, a water spirit, was causing water to spill through a window and cascade down the stairs in a waterfall. An ice spirit followed in its wake, freezing the water, while a tree spirit caused the ceiling of the stairwell to sprout thorns.
She plowed her mind into them. STOP!
For an instant, they paused, but they were vibrating, as if she were holding them steady through sheer force of will, and she was certain that if she stopped broadcasting the command, they'd break free. She wasn't going to let them. I drew them all here; this is my fault. She broadcast the command as she ran down the stairs and through a pack of three fire spirits. Past them, she released them and threw her mind to the next spirit.