The thing about long friendships is that you sometimes have to hit someone on the back with wild abandon before they choke to death from laughing.

  “That wasn’t a very nice thing to do,” Air said finally, but she still chuckled. “Breaking the barriers while they were fighting and then running off. For shame!”

  “Seemed the best idea at the time.” It said a lot about the ideas on offer when scrambling down roughly thirty-five floors and evading more miffed skeletons while looking for the service door out was suddenly very high on the list of options.

  Air gradually calmed down. “I know you don’t want to tell me, but why are you doing this? All of this?” She reached out a hand and touched Triand’s cheek. The mage let her head flop into it.

  “A friend of mine turned out to be a homicidal maniac.”

  “Again?”

  “Worse this time. I can live with someone trying to kill me. But other people ...”

  “I know. Too much responsibility.”

  “Get out of my head. I can hardly get a word in edgewise!”

  Air ignored this. “You could be there in a flash.”

  “I could, but I’m very certain he’s tracking me. So if I use any decent magic, I’ll have his entire order dropping on my head. I actually have to restrain myself. Me! At my age!”

  “It was bound to happen eventually.”

  “I feel like I’m about to explode.”

  “Might be useful later on.”

  “What might?” Iwy stepped back into the room. She turned to Triand. “I put the bags away. Aired the room a little. You want to try and get some sleep?”

  “Later,” Triand mumbled into Air’s hand.

  The apprentice tried to gauge the mood in the room. It wasn’t cheerful, though she was sure she had heard someone laugh a minute ago. “Did you tell her?”

  “Hard to keep secrets with her.”

  Iwy sat down in the last empty seat at the table. She tried to catch Air’s eyes, but what with the lack of pupils she had no idea if the strange forest witch was actually looking at her. “Can you, you know ... destroy it?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “But maybe I can do something else.”

  “It’s alright,” Triand began.

  “Let me help you.”

  “Fine, can’t hurt to try ...” Triand pulled a scroll out of her robe. Iwy noticed the seal of the library of Prey on it.

  “I thought those returned automatically.”

  “Not if you break that spell.”

  “When did you do that?” She began to suspect that the mage never truly slept and made up for it by infrequent fifteen hours of complete booze-aided coma.

  “Dunno. Sometime. Why’s it matter? Alright, look” – Triand turned to Air – “this orb, it sort of absorbs power from any magic user, but it needs blood to work, lots of it, which might be because it literally is an eye of some ancient sea creature, anyway, but here ...” Another scroll saw the light of day.

  “How many of these things do you carry around? They can’t all fit in your robe pockets!” Iwy interrupted.

  “They can, if they’re bigger on the inside,” Air said in that slightly mocking tone that was the hallmark of a friend that knew too much.

  “Wait, what?”

  Triand shrugged. “Spell I tried, so far it’s only worked on my own pockets and one very confusing town in the Principality of Ghun. Anyway, here it says it’s been passed down a lot, and no one ever seems to have tried to destroy it, and I can’t find any spells on it.”

  “Have you tried ...”

  “Read my thoughts and ask again.”

  “Wait, she can read thoughts?” Iwy asked and was promptly ignored as Air seemed to do as asked. From the outside, it looked as if nothing happened except for one odd-eyed woman staring at a tired one.

  “Oh.” Air’s fingers drummed thoughtfully on the table for a moment. “I know a thing or two about blood magic. Let me see.”

  Iwy wasn’t sure if she was reading or just staring at the ancient parchment. Her odd eyes didn’t move. She didn’t even blink. The rest of her face gave her away, the tug at the corners of her thin mouth, the deepening crease in her forehead that told Iwy that something was terribly wrong.

  The summer breeze of Air’s voice wavered. “It’s not a hundred, dears. It’s a thousand.”

  “What?”

  “A thousand. Blood of a thousand people. The ink is worn away here, but I can sense the author’s intention.”

  Iwy could feel the palms of her hands growing warm. “We better get to those damn ruins.”

  Triand didn’t look up. “We leave at first light. You should get some rest.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll sleep once this sudden and completely explicable melancholia goes away.”

  “But ...” Something had just occurred to Iwy. “If we didn’t know it’s a thousand, maybe Acarald doesn’t either ...”

  Triand shot up like a squirrel that had woken up in a peanut field. “And then his ritual won’t work! I mean, a hundred people are still dead ...”

  “Yes, so ...”

  “What does he look like?” Air asked. “Is he tall and bald with a long beard and blue eyes, has a scar on his cheek but you had to know it’s there?”

  Iwy looked cautiously at Triand, who just said, “Why?” It was less a word than a squeak.

  Air’s strange eyes turned a shade opaquer. “A man like that once held this scroll ... I think the writing got damaged while he took notes ...”

  Triand’s face met the table surface with a thud.

  “It was a long time ago, I could be wrong,” Air added.

  “When are you ever wrong?” Triand groaned.

  Air turned to Iwy. “You go on, get some rest. I’ll handle this.”

  “Alright,” Iwy mumbled, deflated, and slunk out of the room.

  Upstairs, she let herself down fully clothed on the leaf mattress, listening to the noise outside. Normally, the sound of wind and rain soothed her. The way the water rushed against the tree made almost the same sound as on thatch. It reminded her of home.

  She had to sleep. They would be walking all day again.

  Just try to ignore that a thousand people could be dead already and try to sleep. It’s only your village nine times over, more people than you’ll ever meet in a lifetime, so try to sleep.

  It must have worked at some point because Iwy woke up as someone gently shook her shoulder. She opened one eye to see Air bent over her.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Is it morning?”

  “No,” Air whispered. Iwy blinked through the near-dark. The sound of Triand’s snoring finally reached her ear from the other end of the room. “You have a long way ahead of you,” Air continued hurriedly. “And I know you miss your family.”

  Iwy sat up, not quite sure where this was going. “So?”

  Air kneaded her hands together like someone doing something they really shouldn’t. “Would you like to see them? Only for a few hours.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I can get you there and back again before dawn. But please… don’t tell Triand.”

  “Why are you offering me this?”

  Air avoided her eyes. “With the way things are going you might not ... see them for a very long time.”

  Iwy recognised the pause as a hastily swallowed “ever again”.

  “But you’ll get me back?”

  “Yes.”

  Air led her out of the room and down the stairs. Outside in the night rain, she laid her hands on Iwy’s head. “Think of home.”

  Iwy had hardly done so when the vortex began to swirl around her. Teleporting on her own was not any more pleasant than with Triand.

  She fell down on the dusty road to Riansfield and began to run before she even had both feet on the ground.

  What would they say? What should she say? Did it even matter? She was home! They were all together again, if only for a while. She wouldn’t even yell at Derek.

  Iwy stopped dead when she saw the smoke.

  No. No, no, no, I wasn’t even here!

  The last intact window shattered under the heat as she dashed through the creaking gate. Without thinking, she ran inside. Her shield rose around her.

  “Ma? Dad?” No one downstairs. “Anyone?” Iwy made for the stairs. She was on the second one when she heard the creak.

  Iwy jumped before the roof caved in over her. Her shield flickered, poised to vanish any second. Coughing, she felt her way outside.

  They were there, right by the road.

  And they were not alone.

  “Let them go!”

  The wizard turned, dropping a struggling Elisia on the ground with the rest of her family. The light from the fire turned his black mask bright red.

  “Iwy, stay back!”

  Iwy wasn’t listening. Between the roar of the house on fire and the roar in her head she couldn’t hear a thing.

  The wizards rushed her. Iwy got one good punch in before they were too many. She felt the warmth in her palms, but nothing else. “Let me through! Not on my land. Get away from my family!”

  All this time she had only wanted to go home. With or without magic, she couldn’t do anything.

  “Let me through!”

  She couldn’t move against the black tide. Her shield crashed like glass. The strange light of spells wove itself around her. The world vanished.

  Iwy opened her eyes and scrambled upwards. This place was dark. She stumbled trying to make out an exit and her knees hit something that rustled like leaves. Her fumbling hand found wood, her ears picked up the sound of rain outside.

  When her eyes finally adjusted, she found the room in Air’s house empty, the faint voices of Triand and Air wafting in from downstairs.

  Iwy hoped to all gods she could think of that it had only been a dream. It was still night, not any sign of dawn. She couldn’t have been away.

  Sleep was out of the question now. She should go back down and see if she could help. Come up with ideas or something. Anything.

  “You can’t stay like that forever,” Air said.

  “I can try,” the mage mumbled into the wood. She hadn’t moved from sitting with her face pressed firmly to the tabletop since Iwy had left the room. Damn wizards and their damn rituals and their stupid pointy boots and someone damn their power-hungry behinds ...

  Air manoeuvred Triand back into the vertical world. “You could give this artefact to me. I’ll take it deep into the forest, to the ancient caves where the world grows thin, no one ...”

  “Read my mind.”

  “They’ve tried. I haven’t tried.”

  “I’m not risking you.”

  “I could just take it from you.”

  Triand grabbed her friend’s hand and pressed it hard to her forehead.

  Air sprang up from her seat, suddenly very pale.

  Outside, leaves rustled in the rain, while the silence in the room grew thicker.

  Air sat down again, trying to suppress her trembling. “What have you done to yourself? You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “But I have, so there. You still want to take it from me?”

  “No. We have to destroy it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You can’t ask the girl to do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “She can’t concentrate.”

  Triand sighed. “I did everything I could think of.”

  Her old friend shook her head like someone who could see the problem from fifteen and a half miles away. “You’re too academic. You need to consider people’s inner lives as well.”

  “Oh, right, that exists.”

  Air slapped her arm lightly. She remembered this had always been a problem with Triand, needing to be reminded of things like this. “All she ever thinks about is her family. They’re always there, right on the surface of her mind.”

  Triand shrugged. “She loves them.”

  “She won’t let her power through,” Air continued. “She’s blocking herself. It’s going to explode again, sooner or later.”

  “Hey, you’re not supposed to read people’s thoughts like that!”

  “Your mind said it was a life-or-death situation. You should consider a different solution. Maybe you need to see your rela...”

  “No. Anyway, it’d be too much of a detour.”

  “A potion, then. One that will ...”

  “I’m not giving her anything that will make her forget her family, not even just for three days.”

  “Then maybe you need to consider vision brew. If no one can convince her to use her powers, she has to do it herself.”

  The floor creaked. Both women turned simultaneously to see Iwy frozen in the middle of sneaking out of the main room again.

  Triand cocked an eyebrow at her friend. “Didn’t feel her coming, did you?”

  “I was too busy arguing with you.”

  “If you’re interested, I heard pretty much everything,” Iwy said.

  Triand bit her lip. “And how mad are you?”

  She hadn’t had the best night, and it had left her too exhausted for a good yelling. “Depends. Are you going to give me stuff that could make me forget my family?”

  “No,” Triand said firmly.

  “And this vision brew thing?”

  “It just makes you see clearer,” Air explained.

  “But I don’t think you need any of it,” Triand added.

  “I think you do,” Air said.

  Triand elbowed her slightly. “Not your decision.”

  “Not yours either.”

  Iwy looked from one weird woman to the other. “Do I?”

  “I mean ...” Triand gesticulated vaguely. “You need to deal with this somehow, or it’ll be the barn all over again.”

  “No,” Air said. “It’ll be worse this time.”

  “Potions are a short-term fix, and you know it. And they always stop working at crucial moments. Not a solution.”

  “It would be a solution for now. The so-called sure-fire way you’d choose might take too long.”

  “And that is?” Iwy said, trying not to be ignored in a debate very much about her life.

  “Hoping your powers materialise at the appropriate time, possibly at the last second,” Triand said.

  It was Iwy’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “You really think that works?”

  “Sure, always does. All you need is a personal low point and a sudden revelation regarding your self-worth. We can pick those up on the way.”

  Iwy stared. She pinched herself on the arm just in case the dream was continuing, because none of this made sense. “What?”

  “It’s traditional,” Air added.

  “How exactly ...”

  “I dunno, we probably need to have a big argument or something, should be easy enough. Now come on, let’s get at least a few hours shuteye.”

  Once again, Iwy tried to sleep. Triand had rolled herself up and began to snore five minutes after. It reverberated off the walls and mixed with the sound of the wind outside. Every now and again it was replaced by unintelligible mumbling.

  A thousand people. Not for the first time Iwy wondered how this many people could go missing without anyone noticing. Did he have them abducted? But if it needed to be magical blood, why weren’t the wizards doing more? Didn’t they notice their own people missing? Were there so many solitary wizards in the world, much like Vanitor, that no one noticed if they vanished?

  Her mind wandered back to the wizards of Riestra, the few sentences she had overheard outside the door to the Archmage’s study. They had kept themselves covered when she’d asked about the ritual. Now the casual “Some of the students might not enjoy it” made a horrible amount of sense. Did they know it would have to be a thousand? Did the order have that many students? Did Acarald?

  Iwy looked over to Triand, who grumbled with her face to the wall. A thousand people might be dead already and Iwy couldn’t even light a stove. Why couldn’t Triand have picked a better apprentice? It was probably too late to convince her to find someone else. She hardly trusted anyone as it was and Iwy began to see why.

  She needed to get out of the wall-to-wall depression for a moment.

  Iwy crept through the unlit tree into the dripping night. She sat down on a root and stared into black nothing for a while before she noticed she was sitting next to someone. “Oh. I guess you couldn’t sleep either.”

  “No,” Air said. “I’m too busy worrying. You understand.”

  She could hardly make out the other woman in the dark, as if she could only be seen if she wanted to be seen. “Yeah ... Oh, I’m really sorry for the way I acted earlier ... and when we met ... I haven’t apologised for that ...”

  Air turned her strange eyes on her, almost black in the low light. “I accept.”

  “Oh. Thanks. That was fast.”

  “I know it’s not your fault. It’s just your condition.”

  “My condition?”

  “You feel your life is changing too fast to make sense of it and that you’re losing the person you thought you were.”

  “How in the gods’ names did you ...”

  “I’m good with people.” She took Iwy’s hand. “It’s better to go through this sooner than later. But you’ll hurt people in the process. You need to prepare to make amends.”

  “Alright.” This was eerily similar to the talk her mother and Old Woman Marni had given her at thirteen. All that was left was some vague allusion to having new feelings and urges, which hadn’t materialised unless you counted annoyance.

  Air chuckled. “No, your twenties are much worse than that.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. The sun will be up in a few hours. You should at least try to rest. You’ll be walking all day.” Air got up and led her back upstairs. “Try not to think about it too much. They’ll be fine.”

  “What?”

  Air didn’t answer and Iwy had what felt like three seconds of sleep when the sky between the trees turned grey.

  Between the two of them, she and Air managed to convince Triand to have breakfast. When Iwy packed up their bags, she noticed some large green bottles had found their way into Triand’s bundle.

  They said their goodbyes before the sun was up. Iwy fidgeted for a bit before she dared to ask: “Can’t you come with us? We could use another person there.”

  Air gave her a smile that should only be smiled at funerals. “No. I’m sorry, I belong to the forest. And I know Triand. She prefers to do things alone. It’ll kill her one day and I’ll be standing on the other side to say, ‘I told you so.’”

  “I’ll march right back into this world if you do that,” Triand said, taking up her bundle and pulling the other woman in a hug that lasted aeons.

  “Let me take you a bit of the way.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “It’ll save you time. Just to the standing stones. You’ll find a certain elm there. It’s good magical wood.”

  The air around Air glowed green for a moment and whirled itself around them. It didn’t feel like any teleportation Iwy had encountered so far. She felt very sleepy suddenly, and not because of her lack of rest last night.

  Air leaned her head closer to Triand’s ear. “Come back. As soon as you can, come back.”

  Triand didn’t say anything. The green turned to white and they were gone.