Chapter 1: The Emissary

A blackbird lay dying beneath the elderberry. It was sleek, heavier than the normal sort, with a coil in its eyes that put Awen in mind of a serpent. A corbie, the wildborn would call it—but only in a hush, and only then behind closed doors. Because the corbies were all gone; buried in myth, where they spoke in tongues of man and fey and perched on the shoulders of gods. There'd be none here, not amongst the fair lilies of Ilvany School. This was Holy ground.

Why, Awen thought, it's near as lost as I am.

All at once came the peal of the morning bell, bidding the children to worship. Awen's heart leapt to her throat. She dared a glance over her shoulder. Only the lampposts peered back at her, glowing through the morning fog. Nearby, the patter of footsteps on cobblestone mingled with the passing rain—a knot of girls on their way to Chapel, with only a slender hedge between them and the grove where Awen knelt. She counted the blinks of white through the branches. The Lattery sisters, Marta Hengel… four, five—only six. Nali was absent again. Just a cold, she told herself, dropping down before they could see her. She crawled beneath the elderberry, careful not to bruise the flowers.

A wheeze like a torn bellows leaked from the corbie's throat. One wing was splayed, split like a drowning man’s fingers. Awen's stomach clenched. I should never have stopped, she thought; guiltily, of course, but what was she to do? No physician would attend it, not these days—they would say she'd gone mad. Auntie Thea would be mortified. She should just look the other way; it wasn't her fault, after all.

"I'm sorry, honest I am," Awen whispered, moving as if to get up. "You must've been attacked, is that it? I never would've guessed there were any more corbies, you know; I thought they'd all been killed. Tuck'll never believe me when I tell him. He always wanted to see one—not like this, of course..."

The bell tolled above her, every peal both a summons and a judgment. I shouldn't be here. The Oathmaking would begin soon, the vestals inspecting attendance while Chaplain Frye lit his censer—yet here she remained, held by the gaze of a single, yellow eye.

"I am sorry," she insisted, twisting a cord of black hair around her finger. "It’s only—there's nothing I can do, don't you see?"

If it weren't for the ache under her ribs, she may have laughed. Defending her honor to a bird—small wonder you've so many friends.

A few stray raindrops trickled from her hood as she moved to stand; still, that fading eye followed her. And something in it gave her pause. It knows, she realized, mad as it was—the corbie knew she was lying.

Wrong, wrong, pealed the bell.

"No," Awen hissed through her teeth. "Not here. They won't forgive it. I'm thirteen! I'll be expelled—or worse, I'll have to—"

But too late. She could feel it—that unforgivable it—like a molten coin pressed beneath her skin.

She gasped and closed her eyes, clutching her skirt to hide the light in her palm. Nothing there, nothing wrong with her, nothing... only her imagination, which had gotten her in trouble too many a time. She should run to Chapel and not look back. To take the other path, to reach forward, would be—

Unlawful. Chaplain Frye's sermons echoed in her head. Unholy.

Wrong, tolled the bell. 

Wrong, wrong…

Then, like a radio at candlelight, the world went silent. Awen shivered, and opened her eyes.

The corbie lay cold beneath her fingers. 

When she had touched it she couldn’t say, but all at once she felt everything—every dewdrop, every breath of air tickling her nape, even the rain crying upon the lilies. And as she so often did, Awen wondered if she were indeed awake and not adrift in that pale, steady horizon just shy of dreaming.

Agony ripped the thought from her, like a smith’s tongs twisting in her chest. No—the bird’s chest. Its pain beat against her heart, pulling from her a fount as free as rain, warm and healing like a sweet balm. No, something whispered. This wasn’t mere healing. It was needlework.

Not mending, but making.

Her eyes sprang open, quick as from a nightmare. The pain was gone—but so was the corbie. The lilies, too, had vanished, along with the garden, the chapel, all of Ilvany School. 

In their place churned greasy pools of color, raw and formless. Is this fainting? It couldn't be; she knew fainting far too well. This was different—weightless, strange, like being peeled from the world.

A word tried to burrow into her mind, then—a word she dared not think.

Instead she focused on the colors before her, watched them curl upward, weaving themselves into strands of autumn-colored hair. Droplets of pink and white slipped from above like rose petals, drifting until they met, joined, formed a face. Two eyes lay closed beneath lashes the shade of dried blood.

A girl. Dim and shadowy, like a scrap of fading film. And behind her—beyond that dripping veil—was something less than darkness.

Unformed, unmade. Just as the chaplains warned. That word again—No, don’t think it—

The girl's eyes opened. Her mouth shaped a single, silent word. Desperate lines broke the face as one trembling arm reached out, grasping at the void between them.

Far away, the chapel bell rang out louder than Awen had ever heard.

WRONG, it tolled. With each chime, the vision jolted, convulsed, splintered like stained glass.

WRONG.

WRONG.

WROOOONG.

Who are you? she tried to ask, but her voice drowned in the babel. Head fit to burst, it was all she could do to burn into memory the picture before her, catching the pieces even as they fell into darkness: freckles like cinnamon, lips pale as whispers, and the eyes… Emerald eyes, cracks slithering toward them like black snakes until they, too, were gone.

⚬──────────✧──────────⚬

"And then?"

Awen let out a breath, blowing a loose strand of hair off her lips. "I don't know. I suppose I drifted off." The word fainted wouldn't serve but to add more wrinkles to Auntie Thea's forehead. She had left the vision out of her story altogether.

Auntie Thea sat at her desk, pen drying in hand. "And who was it that found you, dear? Not those dreadful Lattery girls."

"It was blurry." Awen rubbed her eyelids with thumb and forefinger, watching the motes dance behind them. "People were calling my name, shaking me—"

"Yes, but what sorts of people? Students, vestals, teachers?"

"Students, most of them." She couldn’t remember, truth be told, but it sounded right. "Heading 'round to the schoolhouse from Chapel. And a vestal... Sister Farra, maybe? Oh—and Chaplain Frye. But that's all. I think."

Auntie Thea's lips tightened to a pale line. "But none of them saw you—" she made a funny gesture with her pen, as if it were a wand from an elvinrime.

Awen shook her head. "The corbie must have flown away." Because I healed it.

The guildlorist's cheek twitched, as if she'd heard the thought all too well. "Do stop saying that—word, Awen."

"Corbie?"

"The Anglic word is 'raven', as it has always been." Auntie Thea pulled a sharp breath through her nose. "Whatever the wildborn think, there's nothing mystical about them. Even the lorekeeps at Ehrnfeldt can't prove their extinction."

The lorekeeps at Ehrnfeldt proved rather little these days, Awen thought. “Well, no one said anything,” she replied. “And seeing a cor—a raven—would have been worth mentioning, wouldn't it?"

Auntie Thea's face softened a bit. "Yes," she murmured. "Yes, it would have been." She tapped her pen on the desk, letting out a sigh that rustled her parchment. "I suppose they believe you ill?"

"Some of the firstform girls got scared. They thought I might have the Cothe." Awen nearly rolled her eyes.

"Ridiculous." The guildlorist gave a derisive snort. "I trust the adults don't believe that nonsense?"

Awen shrugged. I'd hardly be the first.

"I'll be getting a call soon," Auntie Thea muttered, frowning at the telephone on her desk. She pulled off her spectacles and massaged the bridge of her nose. "Still, better for them to believe nonsense than to have seen—yes, much better." She clacked her nails once, then nodded. "Very well, Awen. Stay home, get your rest. I'll be overnight in Ehrnfeldt for seminar, but I'll ring Chaplain Frye from the lorestead and straighten it out."

"Fine," Awen said. She wasn't keen on going back. In truth, she did feel unwell. But it wasn’t the fainting, nor any ailment of the body; it was that terrible emptiness from when the vision shattered. She could hardly bear to remember, could feel her brain recoiling from the wrongness of it—yet still it lingered, twisting her guts like the scent of old disease.

Auntie Thea gave a final, curt nod before returning to her parchment. Naturally, this meant that the conversation was over.

And yet…

"Auntie Thea?"

"Yes, thank you, dear," Auntie Thea said, waving toward the door. "My train leaves in an hour; if you please—"

Awen stood. By now, she ought to be gone. But something held her.

"Auntie Thea."

The parchment crinkled once, then stilled. The hush swelled as if the dust itself had stopped to listen. Auntie Thea was rigid, her pen bent against the desk, face set in that manner that said be very, very careful.

Awen fought the need to turn and run. She wasn't that child anymore, that frightened little orphan in this strange, green land. I've been patient long enough. She took a deep breath—

And lost her nerve halfway in.

"Why am I—the way that I am?"

It was the stupidest thing she'd ever said, and she hated herself instantly. The blush creeping up her neck was almost enough to distract from the snap; she tried not to glance at the splintered pen in Auntie Thea's hand.

"We've been over this before." Auntie Thea bit off each word in a hiss.

Blood singed Awen’s cheeks, thundered in her ears. The words erupted before she could stop them. "Auntie Thea, what's wrong with me?"

Her lungs had gone empty and her knees weak, yet still she forced her chin up before those cold, glassy eyes—until, at last, something went out of the guildlorist.

“I don’t know.” Her shoulders sagged, and her hand loosened on the broken pen, letting it drop to the desk. Only then did she appear to notice the damage; indeed, her eyes seemed unwilling to move from it. "I don't know,” she whispered again.

One question had aged Auntie Thea seventy-five years. A pit formed in Awen's stomach—but she had to press on, she had to.

"Can the magi do these things? The ones in Mesembria?"

"The arcanists... some of the same, perhaps. But those are men, Awen—men of proper blood, in the Prophet’s own image.”

"What about the druids? The Free Magi, can they—"

The way Auntie Thea raised silence with her finger was almost magic in itself. She rose from the chair, for all her age still a head above her charge.

"Awen." It was a delicate voice, Auntie Thea's; like a fine paring knife. "Do you like living in Myddvai?"

"I—of course I do." The question took her unawares, and her eyes burned at the thought of the highlands at twilight, the farming folk making their way home to the songs of the forest, the whistle of the train on its way to Ehrnfeldt. She wanted to stay in Myddvai forever, and she said so.

"Then heed me now. Let this—all of it—go." Auntie Thea made as if to speak on, but stopped; her eyes flickered toward the door, and a phantom softness fell over her. "You think the worst thing that could happen is punishment, don't you? You never—" But the rest of the words stuck in her throat. Instead, the guildlorist stepped around the desk, arms raised as if to embrace Awen, though she only took her hands. "It will pass," she said. "Have you been reciting your prayers?"

"Yes," Awen lied.

"Good." Auntie Thea put Awen's hands between her own, then gave them an awkward pat. "Though the Heart unfettered is death..." She paused, waiting.

Through clenched teeth, Awen finished the verse. "No sin may break the Spirit's chains."

Auntie Thea patted her hands once more, and nodded at the door.

⚬──────────✧──────────⚬

A Garden of Prayers: The Child's Hallothegn lay open on the bed, the five o'clock sun swimming through its gold lettering. Awen's gaze drifted out her second-story window, following that glow across the wood toward the western highlands. Not for the first time, she wondered how the sunlight appeared on the other side of those mountains. Maybe there was none—why else would they be called the Darklands? Or maybe it was like no light she'd ever seen, tangled and deep as the wilds that bound it…

But they were dangerous, too, those lands. Godless, they said, and feral—there were warlords, and skyreavers, and whole abominations sunk from the lost ages. And if that weren’t enough, the Breach was out there, too—just waiting to gobble her up.

Breach.

A chill tiptoed up Awen’s spine. The word conjured up the vision, that vast emptiness she feared to name… but it had numbed already, somehow. She could almost pretend she hadn’t seen it at all, any more than she had ever seen the Breach itself.

She yawned and rolled over, her fingers falling on the wispy vellum of her prayerbook. Auntie Thea was right, of course. Try as she might to keep a routine, the recitations in these children's waybooks could be so—God forgive her, but they could be so dull. The other girls at school took to the prayers as if they'd been born hearing them—which they likely had, she reminded herself. Most of the students at Ilvany were Faithborn. That was no excuse for Awen, though; she may not have been born into the Faith, but she'd been well enough reared in it.

Yet I still can’t change.

She glanced out the other window, where the dirt road wound its way north into the little baketin village. Twilight crept along the clouds overhead. Any minute now the power would cut until morning, and both the wildborn and the Faithful would turn to the same god to bring them through the night.

Candlelight, they called it; Awen's favorite time of day, when the quiet town became a mural etched by fire. She hugged her prayerbook, eyes shut tight. She loved it—all of it—as she loved the smell of rain yet to fall, or a drink from a clear spring. They were gifts of God, of the earth, that gave her life… the very life that longed so faithlessly for the stars.

Tap, tap, tap.

Awen rolled over just in time to see a black smudge disappear from the window. She blinked. Dreaming again? She jumped up, threw open the glass, and leaned out.

Nothing but the cobblestone lum and oaken shingles. But she could have sworn she had seen—

"You looking for angels in the clouds, Awen Fetherlinge, or would you be trying to come a-riding with us?"Awen jerked upward, where the frame greeted her skull to a chorus of laughter from below.

She rubbed her head, squinting down at a band of patchy children hauling two rickety carts westward by horse. Shaggy tarps covered their wares, but Awen knew these children well enough to know what they might be up to. Their families were common folk, half-citizens with hardly a bothy between them. Wildborn, though they didn't much like the word. They were the sort that kept the arts of embroidery and woolwork, as Awen knew well, for it was many a summer now she'd kept their till at the river market.

"And where would we be a-riding, Elias Tucker?" Awen drew out the boy's full name, knowing how he hated it.

"Off with the last of the goods," Tuck called with a yellow grin. "To the Sombrien, if you must know—but I suppose you wouldn't know much about that now, would you?" The boy's friends jeered, turning to Awen for the next blow.

But Awen was less interested in teasing now. The Sombrien Festival—Saint Connla's Eve—it was tonight!

But she mustn't seem surprised. "And why shouldn't I know about the Sombrien?"

"Ever been?"

Awen huffed, glancing westward over the honey-crowned sycamores. "I know where it is, at least," she said, hoping she was right. "And should I choose to go, I'd prefer taking a steam carriage." She nodded toward the two shaggy cart-horses, one of whom wanted a good brushing.

"Poor, pampered Awen," Tuck drawled, ignoring his friends' protests. "But best listen to your elders when there's druids about. Don't want to sully your soul, do we?”

"Druids?" Awen leaned out another inch. "From the Darklands, you mean?"

"What else would I mean, so?"

Awen opened her mouth, only to swallow the words before they came. Always the same temptation…

When she didn't reply, Tuck shook back his head with a laugh, and snatched his horse's bridle. "Told you, didn't I? Too scared to sneeze without blessing it first, this one. Ah, well. As you will, Awen." He gave a final wave as he turned. "Come along next year, hey? When you can keep up."

As she watched them dwindle down the path like a feyrie host in their patched clothes, Awen remembered the old, magical elvinrimes that Auntie Thea used to read to her, back when the world was simpler.

But she was older now.

All she had to do was let them go… Let this—all of it—go…

Awen’s fingers clenched on the windowsill. She filled her lungs with autumn air, daring herself to say the words no saint nor sermon had ever taught her.

But what if I didn’t?

In the closet was an old pair of boys' breeks and a cross-string shirt she saved for riding. She threw it all on—then, for good measure, a dark woolen shawl with a hood wide enough to shadow her face.

At the stable behind the house, her scarlet mare trotted over at the sound of her voice. Awen held up a fresh carrot.

"There's more where that came from, Tully," she promised, fastening the bridle. "Get us past the barley fields safe and secret-like, and I'll plant a new garden all for you."

And swift as starlight, they were off—leaving behind chapels and trains, schools and loresteads, like remnants of a half-forgotten dream. Toward the setting sun they rode, into the land that Faith forgot: a land of living shadow, hills brushed with gold, and the edge of the world that lay beyond.