But the possibility of a trap loomed in her mind. And unfortunately, the more Imogen thought about it, the more likely that possibility seemed. She could easily envision what the Sul’toral wanted—to force the sacred sword masters toward the Heart and remove those with any ability to resist.

  But for what reason? That was what Imogen still struggled to uncover.

  “I don’t know,” she finally answered. “Regardless, we need to be careful. And we need to move. If you are not going to fight, then I’m asking you to do this. Not for me but for your people. They need us.”

  Lilah held Imogen’s gaze for a moment and then nodded.

  Imogen reached into her pouch, pulled out a pair of enchantments. They were renral. Rebecca herself had made them, so Imogen knew that the enchantments would carry Lilah well and would likely withstand any dangers. She tapped on one, and then helped Lilah to climb onto the enchantment while Zealar made a point of slowing enough that Lilah could do so without any danger of plummeting to her death.

  “Find them. Tell them to join me.”

  “And what if they don’t listen?”

  “Then they will have followed their path,” Imogen said.

  Lilah held her gaze for a moment before heading off, the enchantment somehow knowing where to go.

  Imogen leaned forward on Zealar. She could see the activity straight ahead, and though she wasn’t sure what she might encounter, she had a suspicion that it was tied to the Toral—or worse.

  The renral began to circle more rapidly. As he did, she began to feel energy crackling along his feathers, seeming to come from someplace buried within him, but it also seemed to connect to something beyond. It was as if Zealar was reaching for some external power, and it was that power that streaked along his feathers, leaving Imogen thinking that if there was some answer to the kind of power that he possessed, she could find it. She didn’t know how, and she didn’t know what she might uncover, only that she could feel it coursing through him. When she focused on the sacred pattern that she knew connected her to the renral, she felt that power building even more.

  And then she used it.

  Imogen launched herself forward, shooting off the side of the renral, then coming to land on the ground. There was movement all around her, but that movement seemed designed to mask anything else. She was ready, though. Imogen detected the activity around her and then began to form her sacred patterns, bracing herself. She immediately began to slide through the enchantments. They were of all different kinds. Strangely twisted grasses. Rocks that seemed to have come alive. Even mud mixed with water and air. Some that seemed to be of metal, though those were far less common. Imogen cut through all of them. It took her a moment to realize how she did. It was not just her power that permitted her to do so. She was borrowing from Zealar, that energy coursing through her in a way that flowed easily, spilling from her blade and slamming into each of the enchantments.

  The power that coursed through her was considerable. Imogen found herself uninhibited, using the energy that she detected, combined with her sacred patterns, and she found herself quickly carving through all the enchantments. She was getting to the point where there was nothing that slowed her.

  Perhaps it was simply a matter of her experience with these enchantments now, or perhaps some part of her had begun to change, though Imogen doubted that was the case. She did not know what it was.

  And then she felt something else. She knew the sense of sorcery quite well. Imogen had learned to detect it with exquisite control while on her bond quest. It was something that she had permitted herself to forget over time, as eventually she had not needed to detect sorcery, and she had found herself not fighting sorcerers. When she had been in Yoran, surrounded by enchanters, there had been a sense of magic almost continuously. She had never revealed that fact to the others in Yoran, who had believed that magic had been exiled from the city, as it would only put in danger those who had done nothing.

  That didn’t mean that Imogen could not still use that connection. And it didn’t mean that she didn’t know how to find that power within herself.

  She blasted through a pair of stone monster enchantments that tried to get in her way, drawing through Zealar just a little bit as she did, feeling his power flowing into her. She came face-to-face with three sorcerers.

  That there were three sorcerers here suggested that they were only Toral. Imogen didn’t give them a chance to prepare, and she slid toward the first, driving her blade through his belly, twisting and disrupting the spell that was starting to build near her. She cleaved the arm off the next woman and then hurriedly paused, formed Tree Stands in the Forest as she blocked another attack. When that one had passed, she didn’t even move. She used Lightning Strikes in the Storm, and the energy of her blast caught the sorcerer and tossed him back.

  Their absence revealed another.

  A Sul’toral.

  She stood almost casually behind the fallen sorcerers, seemingly unconcerned about the fact that Imogen had cut down her soldiers, if that was what they had been. She regarded Imogen’s blade before looking up and meeting her eyes. The woman carried a slender rod of metal, a staff that Imogen had taken to believing the Sul’toral kept on them to defend themselves against those like Imogen.

  “We’ve taken care of all the sword masters, so who are you?”

  “I am Imogen Inaratha, First of the Blade.”

  The woman regarded Imogen and then started to smile. “The First. And you managed to bring down three of my Toral? A shame, really. Then again, I didn’t have much time to prepare them. We’ve been so focused on getting to your lands and cleansing them of a taint that we have not had the opportunity to train them as we once did. Or perhaps you Leier have learned a few tricks in the time since I last was here.”

  “You will find that our land does not fall easily.”

  The woman started to smile. “It doesn’t? Well, then how do you explain what has already happened? You see, I’ve seen how quickly your land falls. So many of your people think they can stand before us. So many fall so quickly.” She smiled, flicking her gaze past Imogen, and Imogen knew where she was looking. Toward the fallen village. “But these were not your people. Which begs the question as to why you are here.”

  “I would ask you the same. There is no reason for you to risk your lives coming to these lands.”

  She started to laugh. “Risk our lives? I’m afraid you have it wrong. We risk nothing. We only gain.”

  Imogen held on to Tree Stands in the Forest. As far as she could tell, this woman didn’t even know who she was. Could Aneadaz not have shared that with the other Sul’toral?

  Her mind worked through those possibilities. The Sul’toral had come to face the Leier and Koral, and they had targeted the sacred temples, the villages, and pitted themselves against those who were trained to fight magic. Was it simply a matter of trying to remove a threat to them, or could they have come because they truly believed that they needed to accomplish something in coming here?

  Imogen did not have those answers.

  What was worse was that she felt that Aneadaz had some plan and had seen something that Imogen did not yet understand.

  The woman took a step toward Imogen and finally met the protection of Tree Stands in the Forest. Her demeanor shifted.

  “Not simply a First.”

  “Do you think you are the first of your kind that I’ve faced? I do not fear cutting down the Sul’toral.”

  The woman started to laugh. “Then perhaps I have you to thank for my increase in power. We didn’t know that it worked quite like that. At least, most of us didn’t. I wonder if he knew.” There was a bit of darkness in her words.

  Imogen suspected that he was Aneadaz.

  At least that answered one question that she’d had. By cutting down one Sul’toral, the others had access to more power. It made sense. The more Sul’toral there were, the more power the remaining had access to.

  But what didn’t fit was why they would permit somebody like Timo to become one of them. He would only dilute their power.

  “Now. You are quite troublesome, and I’m tired.”

  The woman moved her hands in a quick pattern, and she whipped her staff forward. The power building from it was considerable, but Imogen was ready. She drew upon her own power, from Tree Stands in the Forest, and called upon the connection that she shared with Zealar, and that energy poured out of her. She blasted the Sul’toral.

  The Sul’toral was tossed back.

  Imogen darted forward, Lightning Strikes in the Storm, and drove her blade into the woman’s throat.

  The woman’s eyes widened as she began to fade.

  Imogen held her blade in place, keeping Tree Stands in the Forest surrounding them so that the woman could not use whatever power the Sul’toral had to disappear.

  Imogen might be empowering Aneadaz, but she would also not leave one of the Sul’toral alive, especially not one who was responsible for the destruction of the villages.

  When the woman finally perished, Imogen withdrew her blade. Zealar flew overhead, power crackling along his wings. He had been summoning more energy. Imogen could feel it. It was as if Zealar was readying for the possibility that Imogen would need to draw upon even more power.

  Not yet. Not against a Sul’toral like this. But against Aneadaz?

  She would need more. Imogen knew that.

  She looked up at him. “Are you ready to keep hunting?”

  The renral shrieked, his voice bouncing off the mountainside, echoing with a painful cry. A battle cry.

  It was time for them to fight.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Imogen wasn’t prepared for what she saw spread out before her.

  There was power. That much was clear, and how she sighed, but she could not make out anything more than the steady, undulating flow of monsters and creatures of magic that worked before her.

  And she was alone.

  She had Zealar, but even he might not be enough with what she had to deal with. She could feel the energy from the renral, and the power that continued to flow through her, but anything more than that was too much for her. It built within her, and it seemed like it could be enough, but with each passing moment, Imogen could not feel anything more than what she had already.

  Just power.

  And that power was not going to be enough for this fight.

  She stared down. She tried to think about what it had taken to get her to this point, and whether there would be any way for her to come out of this on the right side, but she wasn’t sure if there was going to be a way. She had come here thinking that she could stop Aneadaz, but even that may not be possible.

  He was powerful.

  And she had helped make him that way.

  It had taken her a while to realize that, but now that she understood the truth of it, Imogen couldn’t help but feel she had made some mistake. She had taken power from others, destroying them and, in effect, concentrating power within Aneadaz. It was the very thing that he had wanted. He hadn’t been able to steal power from the others on his own, at least not easily, and without having them retaliate, but as Imogen had cut down other Sul’toral, she had felt he had begun to grow stronger.

  The renral shrieked, and she looked over at Zealar.

  He was perched on the edge of a rock, looking down the valley at the creatures that were flowing through there.

  His shriek bounced off the walls and reverberated back to her.

  She had to defeat Aneadaz, but she wasn’t sure how to do that. It would be like stopping a Porapeth. Imogen would not have been able to stop Benji on her own, and Abigail had essentially abandoned the fight, which had made it easier for her.

  This was something different.

  The only hope she had was that he did not have the power of all the Sul’toral. There were still some remaining, but there was still enough power within him to make it difficult.

  She was tired, too. She had been awake for the better part of several days, sleeping when she could, and that rest had not been as restorative as it needed to be. She took a deep breath, and as she looked down upon the ground, watching the rolling of the creatures as they spread through, she didn’t even know how many of them were real and how many of them were manifestations of magic, power that was not meant to do anything other than terrify and waste the energy that was coming. When she had been attacked with Abigail, Imogen had seen something similar, and had seen how quickly that power had dissipated once she had overpowered it.

  Now…

  Now she couldn’t help but question.

  She climbed over to Zealar and slipped onto his back.

  There was no point in delaying any longer.

  She had to find Aneadaz.

  And if she could find him, and if she could face him, then she had to believe that he could be stopped.

  Even if it meant her using her own power.

  She sat upon Zealar, and she focused for a moment. The flood of creatures moving through the valley was impossible to overlook. As it swept through, eventually it would reach the Leier homeland, and eventually it would destroy everything and everyone. It might be partially an illusion, but there was enough magic there, and enough power there, that she believed some aspect of it was real. And in that, she knew that she wouldn’t be strong enough to overwhelm it.

  Taking a deep breath, Imogen turned and closed her eyes.

  The wind whipped past her. She was perched high enough that she could feel the wind touching deep within her, as if there was some aspect of it flowing in her mind. As the wind whistled through the back of her mind, and as she could hear it, Imogen couldn’t help but feel that perhaps there was something more that she needed to find. She could concentrate, and within that concentration, she thought that she might see just what it was that Benji had lodged within her. He had gifted her some aspect of power, hadn’t he? She just had to unlock it. Imogen did not know what it was going to take for her to unlock it.

  “I know you’re back there,” Imogen said. “And I know that you have gifted yourself to me, but I don’t know how to stop him.”

  “Always doubting yourself, First?”

  Benji’s voice came through crisply, and she wasn’t sure if it was imagined or if it was really there.

  “It’s not doubting me,” Imogen said.

  “I suppose that was never your real challenge, was it? You never lacked confidence. At least, you never did when you were younger. As you’ve gotten older, though, you’ve started to act a little waffly, if you ask me. I don’t like a woman like that. I like mine confident. Strong.”

  “Like Abigail?”

  Benji went silent.

  “I understand what happened between the two of you, and I understand that you were trying to help her all along. And I even think that I understand why you did it that way. You wanted to protect somebody you cared about. Perhaps somebody you still care about.”

  “I never stopped caring, even if I couldn’t save her any longer,” Benji said.

  “She thinks this is the end,” Imogen said.

  “And I told her that she had to stop thinking of this as a linear journey. Just because we can’t see what’s beyond doesn’t mean that it isn’t something.”

  In her mind, Imogen felt as if she were sitting with Benji. This reminded her of the conversation they had had during her journey after she had left Yoran. He brought her peace in a way that she found herself surprised by. This foulmouthed Porapeth was somebody who had become something more than a friend. He had become a mentor in a way that Master Liu never had been.

  “It’s not going to be your end, either,” Benji said. “You have much before you.”

  “Is that something you can see?”

  “If I could see anything when it comes to you, First, I wouldn’t have gone down this path, would I?” He fell silent. “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you about Sarenoth before.”

  “Because he was a Porapeth or because his followers stole his power?”

  “We never really understood. He taught them how to harness power. He trained the very first of the Society, and from there, they used what he had taught in order to trap and confine, and eventually subdue and overtake. That power became something different and greater. It became something worse. And unfortunately, in that time, it began to devolve. It was nothing like what it should have been.”

  “Like the patterns that you wanted me to learn?”

  “I did nothing,” he said.

  Imogen laughed to herself, and she couldn’t help but feel as if he were truly sitting in front of her, as if they were actually having this conversation, rather than his awareness being in the back of her mind. “I know that you did something. You might have denied it, but you were the reason that the sacred temples existed. Weren’t you?”

  “Others needed to understand the possibilities,” he said.

  “And with those possibilities…”

  “With those possibilities, they could find a truth for themselves.”

  Imogen focused on the sacred patterns she had learned when she had still been at the sacred temple. “Why did you withhold others?”

  “I have not withheld them from you.”

  “You withheld them from anyone else who might have tried to learn them. Why?”

  “Because they were not ready.”

  “And I was?”

  “If I’d had another hundred years, perhaps, but unfortunately, we didn’t have that time, and so I was forced to share with you what you did not have the time to learn naturally. And I can only hope that you have the wisdom to use that knowledge, and to take what I have given you and understand it in ways that others could not.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “If you don’t, then perhaps there is nothing that we can do about it.” He smiled. “I have given you all that I can, and perhaps now it’s time for you to go and see what you might be able to find. It’s time that you end all of this, Imogen.”

  He so rarely called her by her first name that it felt jarring when he did.