“Welcome, troops!”

Rajah Tarek stands above the crowd on a platform that rings the outpost’s water tower. His dark hair is trimmed short, like his tidy beard. His rather average physique is made regal by the finery of his tunic and trousers. His puffed-out chest and calculating gaze exude an inherent arrogance that demands esteem. Even when he stands on equal ground with others, he has a habit of looking down his nose at people. His charismatic, boyish smile and smooth voice counterbalance his majestic poise, trickeries that convince his subjects they can trust him. A deception I once fell for.

He’s not Tarek, I remind myself. Or his son. Rohan tugs on my jacket, warning me to stay back, but I slip farther into the audience, so we’d better blend in.

“You are a marvelous sight!”

Criers repeat the demon rajah’s pronouncement to the outer reaches of the audience. The soldiers cheer for their leader. But this counterfeit version of Tarek possesses a malevolence to his voice that the tyrant rajah was careful not to exhibit in public.

The demon rajah—Udug—lifts his arms. “Today, we welcomed five hundred men into our ranks! Many of them were run out of Vanhi and their comrades were beheaded by bhutas.” Udug sneers on the word. “They tell me the bhutas’ corrupt leader, the traitorous warlord, sits on my throne. But his rebellion will not prevail! With the gods behind us, we will unseat these vermin from our imperial city and send every last soulless demon back to the Void!”

The men applaud a liar. He is the vermin they need to eradicate.

Udug signals to guards waiting below. Up the ladder, they haul a man wearing a green uniform—a Janardanian soldier. His yellow armband distinguishes him as a bhuta. They throw him onto the platform at the demon rajah’s feet. The prisoner’s wrists bleed from where his captors let his blood.

“This abomination is a Galer,” announces Udug. The spectators boo and spit, and Rohan sidles closer to my side. “This demon can read your thoughts. He can hear your inner fears, even from far away, and use them against you.”

Rohan blanches. Galers can do no such thing.

“Our prisoner told me the warlord is aware of our approach. The rebels are fortifying Vanhi in preparation for our arrival. But the warlord does not know all.” Udug’s smugness drives fear into my gut. “We have contacted four more imperial outposts. All of them have employed their units to join us. By the time we reach Vanhi, we will be ten thousand men strong!”

A hard lump drops in my belly. The army will be more than double the size of the Lestarian Navy.

Rohan’s voice trembles in my ear. “I don’t know how the demon rajah is managing it, but he’s directing sound away from camp.”

“He is the source of the lull?”

“Bhuta powers don’t exist in the evernight. It’s as though the area around him is the Void.”

A frightening deduction, yet Rohan may be onto something. Udug was unharmed by bhuta powers when he conquered Iresh. Even Kali’s fire could not drive him back. Perhaps he wears his connection to the Void like armor. Good Anu, please let us be mistaken. If bhutas cannot harm Udug, no matter how big an army we amass, he will be unstoppable.

“We have allowed this atrocity to live long enough,” the demon rajah calls. “The gods have granted me permission and bestowed upon me the authority to vanquish bhutas from our world. In honoring my duty, I cast this demon out on behalf of myself and all other faithful souls.” He lowers his glowing blue hands to the Galer’s head.

Instead of pouring his cold-fire into the man, he causes light to thread out of his victim. He parches the Janardanian soldier like a Burner can, except Udug does not stop sucking out the Galer’s soul-fire as Kali or Brac would. He feeds off the Galer, gulping down his inner light. I turn Rohan away. He grasps my arm tightly as the Galer’s agony-filled scream distills all sound. Then Udug finishes, and the bhuta crumples.

The demon rajah’s fingers cast an eerie blue glow over the cheering soldiers. I tug on Rohan for us to leave, but someone I recognize climbs onto the platform.

Manas stands at Udug’s right-hand side, dressed in a navy-blue military uniform and carrying a talwar, a single-edged curved sword. When I last saw Manas, I knocked him unconscious. He tried to kill Rohan, Opal, and me, and I thought to do the same to him, but before all that, we were friends. Before his hatred for bhutas warped him. Before he accused me of treason and tried to have me executed. Before he turned me in and I was lashed thirty times.

Manas steps over the dead Janardanian. Two soldiers roll the deceased off the platform. The corpse hits the ground and Rohan’s shoulders jolt at the thud. Manas speaks privately with Udug. Even at a distance, I see the demon’s eyes flash blue. Rohan tips up onto his toes to listen, but he still cannot hear what they are saying.

At last they finish, and the demon rajah makes another announcement to the troops. “General Manas has notified me that our scouts spotted rebel informants close to camp.”

General? Udug entrusted Manas with the highest rank in the imperial army. My position . . . or the one I rejected.

“Our enemies are hiding in the forest not far from here. I will personally reward a bottle of apong and three hundred coins to the first soldiers who find them and bring them back, dead or alive.”

Great skies. Natesa and Yatin.

Countless soldiers are motivated by the reward, which is four times their annual wage. The throng snatches up weapons and torches and sets off into the forest.

“What do we do now?” Rohan’s last word pinches off in a squeak.

I pluck a torch from a post and start for the woodland. “We find Natesa and Yatin before they do.”

11

KALINDA

I sway in the creaky rocking chair, the view before me dipping and rising. Out the casement, a sea of frosted evergreens dominates the lower mountain ridges. Above them, sharp slopes and craggy apexes thrust into the clouds. The mountains are so familiar they are like gazing at a friend’s face.

The early cold almost dampens the scent of shedding pine needles. Beside me, the north tower beacon radiates warmth, shielding me from the night, and its light furthers my view across the forest. Bits of white lay along the shadowy landscape and lakeshore. Cupped in the mountain trenches, the lake is capped by a hard sheen of glittering ice. Even in the summer, the crystalline waters are too cold for swimming. Some say monsters lurk in the frigid depths, but I am more inclined to fear the Alpana Mountains’ mighty summit, Wolf’s Peak, the land-goddess’s foremost monument to her domain.

Jaya believed Wolf’s Peak was Ekur, the hallowed location where the mortals’ realm intersects with the gods’. No one knows the actual whereabouts of their mountain house, except that it is somewhere in the Alpanas. Looking up at the pointed apex, I can easily trust that Wolf’s Peak pierces the sky-god’s vast realm. I am less comfortable with the notion that the gate to the Void, supposedly a cavern to the underground, is hidden in these knolls.

Snowflakes drift in through the open casement. I huddle deeper into the wool blanket that I borrowed from the infirmary, and I rock in the lookout chair. I came directly to the secluded tower upon leaving Healer Baka. The salve she rubbed into my knee eased the aching, but even though the beacon emanates warmth, the Voider’s poison still gnaws into my bones.

A fire dragon crouches in the beacon’s flame. I do not send the manifestation of my soul’s reflection away, nor does it snap or hiss to gain my attention. The fire dragon waits patiently for my command, a pup sitting dutifully alongside its master.

A wolf howls in the far-off hills. The lonely call sends my gaze to the road. Hastin will arrive that way; it is the only thoroughfare in or out of Samiya. I will watch for him and meet him outside the temple gate. He will not come any closer to my home until we have an alliance.

As night dawdles on, the snow on the casement ledge deepens. I burrow into my blanket, and the folded parchment in my pocket rustles. While Healer Baka prepared the salve for my leg, I sketched a picture. Though it had been a while since I indulged in drawing, I labored over the details.

I open the drawing and examine Ashwin’s face. In my rendition of the prince, shadows obscure half of his profile. Remorse and blame draw down his mouth, and in his eyes, sorrow coils. He has worn this precise expression every day since he unleashed Udug. Ashwin’s self-blame troubles me. Every day Udug roams free and unchallenged, Ashwin’s regret intensifies. The only good to come of it is that he looks less and less like his father.

Tarek never regretted any of his actions. My deepest, most painful memories originate from him—not only what he did to me but what I was led to do to him. I smothered and poisoned his soul-fire, just as Udug is doing to me. Tarek deserved to die, not only for killing Jaya, but I loathe being his monster, just as he is mine.

A sudden wind sweeps through the tower. The strong gust extinguishes the beacon and my loyal fire dragon. Cast into the dark, I feel my neck hairs prickle.

“Your drawing flatters me, love.”

I draw my daggers and jump up. My sketch of Ashwin falls to my feet. Tarek manifests in the darkness at the rear of the tower, away from the reflecting snow. More shadow than man, his grainy shape is like a pillar of sand.

Tarek evaluates the sketch, now ruined by the damp floor. “You’ve missed me.”

“That isn’t you.”

“My son, then . . .” He tips his head back, thinking over that coupling. “You’ll tire of him. Ashwin doesn’t have the same fire inside him to mold the world with as we do.”

I raise my blades higher. “How did you find me?” He must have traveled by shadows. The evernight exists beyond the light, confined to the dark. But that is little comfort at midnight.

“You summoned me, my wife.” At my instant protest, he says, “You thought of me, did you not?” I did think of Tarek, though only in relation to his son. Then again, when Tarek visited me in the Pearl Palace, it was after I thought of the demon rajah disguised as him . . . “Put away your daggers. Your blades cannot harm me.” He slides forward to the fringe of the shadows but comes no farther. “You were boorish that last time I visited. I could have chosen to ignore your summons, but as I said before, I must warn you.”