CHAPTER 18
To say that Raven, Peta, and I showing up right behind Talan’s back while he spoke with Cassava was a bit of a shock was more than an understatement. It blew my damn mind.
“She’s not letting me guide her, and killing her Pegasus isn’t going to help!” Talan ran a hand over his head. “How can I train her? I have tried everything from being her friend, to being her mentor, to her enemy now!” He sounded truly upset and I didn’t like that. I wanted him to be painted in black and white, not gray.
Cassava looked past him and her eyes locked on mine. “You don’t train her. That’s what Raven has been trying to tell us.”
Talan whipped around. I didn’t move. Couldn’t at first. Cassava, the bane of my existence, the one who’d hated and treated me like worm shit my entire life, and yet when I’d seen that memory of her with my mother, I’d seen a woman who’d put everything on the line to save more people, even if it meant that she lost her best friend. Even if she was hated by those she was trying to protect.
“You have two seconds to leave, Talan.” I bit the words out. “And then I will kill you.”
He shook his head, but left.
She arched an eyebrow. “You’ve learned a new trick then, Planter girl?”
I took a step and then another, pushed Raven to one side, and stared at Cassava. “Do you hate me?”
Her eyes widened. “You ask that after all this time?”
I drew a breath before speaking so I could gain some control over my emotions, in large part, because seeing Talan and hearing his words had thrown me.
“I saw you with my mother. I saw your love for her and that she asked you to end her life. She asked you to protect me at any cost, to make me hate you. So, my question is, do you hate me now because I cost you so much?”
A tremor rippled through her body as though a miniature earthquake had started in her center. “You are very like her, Lark. It pains me to look at you.”
“Do you hate me?”
Her lips trembled and she slowly shook her head. “I have never hated you, though there were times I wanted to. It would have been far easier to do what I did if there had been true hatred in my heart.”
“You stole the damn stones from me!” The words erupted from me as I shoved her hard, forcing her back from me. “If you didn’t hate me, why would you do that? Why would you give them to Viv?”
Peta let out a hiss but kept herself silent; otherwise, her own emotions only strengthened mine.
Cassava shook her head slowly. “It is a deep game that has been played, Lark. And I know that better than anyone. I did what I had to do for the next step. To keep you safe a little longer. With the stones in hand, Viv thinks of you as less of a threat now. She is wrong, of course, but her belief is what matters.”
Raven grunted, but we both ignored him.
She went on. “We have all lost ones we loved in an effort to find the person who would stop Viv.” That husky voice of hers dropped from the sneering quality that had always been present when I was around to one that sounded truly… pained. “I knew the moment I met Viv that she was not who she said she was, that Ulani had been right about her. Still I found the Spirit stone for her, and protected it from her, because she could not force me to give it to her. I could hide in the madness she believed me to have. We need to find the original elementals; we need them to be free so together they can stop her. That has been the plan all along. Once they are free, then you will stand with them.”
“The prophecy in Olivisha’s book, it said I was to reign freely. So, that matters not now?” I was as confused as a tangle of ivy vines wrapped around a climbing clematis flower.
She shrugged but didn’t look away from me. “What does your heart tell you? You’ve never been one to believe lies easily, not even when Spirit was used on you.”
I frowned. “We find the original elementals and I help them stop Viv.”
“And the only way to find them was to give Viv a reason to go after them. I planted the idea in her head that she needed to check on them. To ensure they weren’t stirring before she made her last big move to take their power.” Cassava frowned and a heavy sigh slid from her. “Only she took it a step further and decided that if they were dead, then the power in the stones would be solely hers. That there would be no turning back for them then. Which would be true.”
“Can you find her?” The question flew from my mouth. “Are you bound to her still?”
I could feel Peta and Raven stiffen behind me. Cassava gave a tired smile. “I am bound to her, yes.”
Raven pushed past me and Cassava went to her knees, her head bowed. Brilliant lines of pink rushed up and down his arms as he put Cassava into a deep sleep. “Shit. I knew she was playing both sides, but for her to have a connection to Viv… that is very bad indeed.”
My mind clicked several times, almost like one of the human machines as they hummed and worked. Raven spoke to me, but his words filtered through in bits and pieces because I could not stop thinking.
Cassava not being loyal. What to do with her. Where was the Spirit stone? That last question brought me out of my own thoughts.
I took a step to one side and held my hand out to Peta. She leapt up into my arms. A dangerous idea had begun to form, but also a truth I’d not considered.
Both Raven and Talan could train me with Spirit, but Raven had pointed out I was better learning things on my own, to not be constrained by things I was told were possible or impossible.
Both had told me the only person who might be able to guide me in how to connect Spirit to the other elements was Cassava, as she was the only one besides Viv who’d done so and was still alive.
I sent a thought to Peta, or more truthfully, a memory. Before my time with her, I’d gone into the springs below the Spiral, the seat of power in my family’s home deep in the redwood forest. I’d gone into the water as the last test of my Ender training. But in doing so, I’d bound myself to Viv who at the time I’d thought was the mother goddess. I was bound to her.
She could find me anywhere.
And that meant I could find her.
Peta sucked in a sharp breath and a single image came back to me. We could grab Cassava and go, leaving Raven behind. Raven… I didn’t truly want to leave him.
I looked at Raven and caught his eye. “Brother, do you trust me?”
“Always,” Raven answered.
Peta tightened her hold on my vest and I didn’t take another moment to consider what I was going to do. I stepped up to Cassava, and put my hand on her arm.
“We’re going for a ride.”
I pulled both Cassava and Spirit close and thought of the one place I’d always call my home, even in my darkest hours.
The Rim. More specifically, the cemetery on the outskirts of the Rim where my mother’s body lay.
The last thing I heard was Raven.
“Good luck, Larkspur.”
And then that place was gone. But like using the Traveling bands and the Traveling room, I was thrust into memories that were Cassava’s. Memories of a woman I didn’t want to know any better than I already did.
I’d not counted on this.
*
Unlike with the Traveling bands, I saw Cassava’s memories in flashes, and pictures instead of through her eyes as though I were in her body.
Snapshots of her past ran in front of me, one after another.
I saw Cassava as a child, rooting in the planting fields, staying long after dark to make the seedlings grow. Saw her run away into the human world to escape the confines of the Rim… and the moment she met my mother. They were both young girls and they connected immediately on the edges of a bustling human city.
“Sisters of spirit,” my mother said to her. “You are the family I’ve been searching for, Cass.”
They traveled the world together, and always my mother looked over her shoulder as if she were being chased. I saw the moment she told Cassava the truth, that the mother goddess was false and she was trying to kill Ulani. One of the last Spirit Walkers… the images flashed long and hard and I saw years of their friendship together. The laughter. The stories. The desire to protect one another and to see each other through the darkness that closed around them.
Cassava had no other family besides my mother.
Orphaned.
Alone.
They’d even shared the same man, willingly.
Her only sister, one not of the same blood, but of the same heart.
And she’d been forced to kill her.
I fell out of the memories as the cemetery of the Rim opened in front of us. I lay in the familiar dirt, the smell of cedar and green things filling my nose, next to my stepmother as tears streamed down my cheeks, her pain becoming my pain. I struggled to think straight through the memories that evoked so much unexpected emotion.
I wanted to tell her I’d seen all those memories, but one look at the tears pooling around her closed eyes told me I hadn’t been the only one to relive the past.
“I can’t control that,” I said. “I’m sorry.” Damn, who’d have ever thought I’d be apologizing to Cassava?
Her eyes slowly opened and she brushed the tears away. She said nothing of the memories we’d both seen. “You brought us to the Rim? Why?”
I sat up, knocked the dirt off my pants, and looked away from her to give her time to pull herself together. “Several reasons.” Which was totally a lie. I’d just taken us to a place where I thought we’d be able to gather ourselves. The Rim had always been the place I’d circled back to.
“It isn’t safe here. Viv left a nasty surprise and no doubt it is in play,” Cassava said. Then she seemed to truly notice where we were. “Your mother…” She looked across the graves to where my mother lay buried. “She loved you and your brother fiercely.”
“Where is he?” The question popped out and she was already shaking her head. “Tell me, please. His body isn’t here.”
“No, it’s not.” The pain in her voice told me the truth.
“Please.” I whispered the word.
She drew a breath. “He went to Aria and the Sylphs. They hid him for years, but he found out about… Viv. I don’t know how, but I suspect Talan.”
My heart was beating faster than ever. Then it hit me. Talan’s son wasn’t the one who died going after Vivian. It was Bramley. “He went after her, didn’t he?”
“He was so like you, Lark. Fierce and loyal, and so determined to make things right. He wouldn’t wait, and because he was so strong, Aria couldn’t stop him.” Her eyes locked on mine. “That is why I kept you pinned down here as long as I did. His death… his death was my fault. I should have stopped Viv.”
I wanted to blame her. “His body?”
“Buried near the shoreline of the Deep. Not far from where you caused the tsunami.”
A shudder slid through me. Bramley being gone changed nothing, but that belief he might be alive, for a little while, had given me hope.
I drew several slow breaths and was surprised when Cassava touched my hand and took it in her own. “You have a chance to make it all right, Lark. You are strong enough to stand in for your mother. I believe it.”
My eyes went to hers. She spoke her truth clearly, and there was no hesitation in it.
I pulled my hand from hers. “Let’s go. We should check on this trap Viv set here.”
Cassava nodded and fell into step beside me.
“Any idea what it is?” Peta asked.
Cassava gave a brisk nod. “She’s opened the fire elementals in their connection to their creator. They were not meant to carry so much power, and they are going mad with both that, and their absence from the Pit.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “A double hit on their mental stability.”
“Exactly,” she murmured.
We hurried through the forest, heading for the main section of the Rim where the Spiral was set. We had maybe ten minutes before we reached it. Long enough for a few more questions.
“You connected with all the elements, how?”
Cassava glanced at me, then back to the path. “I begged. I begged Viv to let me have the connection and she could open a small pathway for me, through Spirit. If I hold the pink diamond, I can manipulate the other elements, to a degree.”
“I can’t go begging, Viv,” I said.
“No, but you can beg the elements,” Cassava said. “Viv told me how she did it. She went to each of the original elementals and asked permission to use their power. Of course, this was long before she went hunting them.”
I frowned. “How the hell am I supposed to do that?”
“You aren’t,” she said, her voice clear as a bell, “that is why you must free them. They will deal with Viv, and you will never have to carry all five elements.”
“Why—”
“Because that is the real reason Vivica went wild. Not the power of Spirit, but too much power, period,” Cassava said. “Too much power that was not truly hers. You don’t want that, Lark.”
There was a rumbling under my feet, almost as if the earth was listening. I didn’t think the mother goddess agreed with Cassava, but for now I would let it slide. If I did not have to connect with all the elements, that was fine by me.
As we drew near the Rim’s center, I slowed. Something was out there in the woods.
Peta shook her head and jumped from my shoulder, a snarl rippling through her as she shifted into her snow leopard form. I spun around on my knees, hands raised, and found myself staring at Griffin, the old wolf shifter who lived on the edge of the forest. He was not in his wolf form, at least, but the fact that Peta was protecting me from him said it all. She had no direct reason to not trust him, and from her mind I could feel just a steady uncertainty. Griffin had been the consort to Viv… which meant that he was tied to her too. Peta didn’t trust him based on that alone.
I pointed a finger at him. “Your wife is a fucking pain in my ass.”
He held both hands up in surrender.
“Not my fault, yeah? I tried to stop her. She was my wife a long, long time ago and I didn’t know she was a liar until it was too late.” He let out a heavy sigh. “But I see you have a new friend. Think that’s a good idea, yeah?”
I didn’t look at him, only held one hand out to Cassava. She gave a soft inhalation of air that told me everything. That she was as surprised as Griffin that I would choose her over him.
“I don’t know who to trust anymore, Griffin. The fact that Peta immediately took you as a threat does not bode well for you. At least… at least with Cass, here, I understand her motives.”
He glanced at the snow leopard between us, her hackles standing at attention and her tail lashing side to side, her ears pinned to her skull.
“Fair enough. But I’m thinking you might need all the help you can get, yeah? You see the mess Viv has made of the Rim?”
My muscles tensed involuntarily. “That is partly why we are here.”
“There isn’t time,” Cassava said.
I spun on her. “There is always time to save those we love. I refuse, I damn well refuse, to lose anyone else.” I was yelling, and I didn’t care.
Cassava’s eyes closed. “So like your mother. You cannot save them all, Lark. You can’t. I know this better than anyone.”
Nope, I would not fall to those tears. I drew a breath. “We’re going to find out what Viv has done here, and you are going to help me, Cass.” I deliberately used her nickname from my mother. “And then we are going to find the original elementals.”
Griffin barked out a laugh that went on far too long. I looked over my shoulder and glared at him. “What’s so funny, wolf breath?”
“You think you can find elementals that have been missing for thousands of years? Elementals who even Talan, their youngest sibling, can’t find?”
I drew myself up, and the answer deep in my belly was simple. “Yes.”
He stopped laughing and just stared at me, the air tensing around us. “Well, shit. Maybe you of all of us can.”
“Not maybe.” I took a step toward the center of the Rim. “It’s going to happen or our world won’t survive.”
Cassava fell into step beside me. “My daughter… Is Belladonna here?”
I nodded. “She was last time I checked.”
“She is a good queen.”
“Yes.” This was a damn weird conversation. In part because Griffin trailed along behind us like a wayward dog. Peta was close to me, stepping through the ferns and over downed logs with ease, ghosting through the forest as if she’d been born and raised there. “Did you give Viv the Spirit stone?”
“No. I hid it again. I may not always agree with Talan, but she would have direct access to his power and to him. That would be the final blow to our efforts against her.”
I nodded.
She glanced at me as she moved around a sapling redwood. “You don’t want to know where I hid it?”
I shrugged. “No. If she can’t get it, I don’t care.”
Her shoulders relaxed as though she’d been holding something heavy. No more words passed between us. I would never truly be her friend, but I understood a little of where she came from now, and those memories would stay with me a long time.
If she were to Travel with me from here on out, I would see more of her memories whether I wanted to or not. I sighed to myself. “I still want to hate you.”
Cassava laughed. “Yes, I imagine you do.”
“But… I understand all you’ve done. Why you’ve done it. Though, I wish… I wish there had been more honesty. You could have trusted me long ago.” I did look at her then. She was so like Bella in form and coloring, it would be easy to mix them up.
Now was not the time for those kinds of thoughts. A crackle of flames reached my ears.
“Do you hear that?” I put an arm out, barring Cassava from taking another step. “Peta?”
“Yes, something’s on fire,” she said.
A whisper on the wind brought us the sound of shouting, and the distant bite of flames on wet wood. I broke into a run, unable to keep my feet from taking me home.
The trees seemed to close around me and I fought not to give in to the sudden panic that I was going to be too late. That once again, I would fail not only my family but all those I felt the need to protect. No matter how far I went, no matter how long I was away, I was always and forever in the heart of my world, an Ender. A protector.
The Rim proper opened in front of me and I slid to a stop in pure shock.
It was burning, the old redwoods lit up like gigantic candles.
There were Salamanders and Terralings side by side battling the flames, while other Terralings and Salamanders fought behind them. Bodies littered the ground, some still moving, others still.
“Bella!” I screamed my sister’s name, and put the power of Spirit behind the word. Those elementals close to me fell away, their hands clutching at either their chests or their ears. I knew they weren’t hurt badly or I would have stopped. I broke into a run, heading for the center of the Rim where the most smoke billowed. Bella would be there, fighting the fire.
My heart thumped harder and harder as the Spiral—the seat of my family’s power—slowly came into view.
I’d watched it come into existence in the memories Talan had allowed me see, and now I was here at its end. The entire Spiral burned; the flames were hot and multicolored from the palest yellow to the brightest blues and greens.
A dozen Salamanders stood around the Spiral with their hands raised, the intent on their arms as their power raged clear to me. Terralings tried to pull them away, and if I did not have the sight of their power and understanding what they were doing, I would have thought the same thing. That they were burning the Spiral.
But they were trying to stop the flames and failing.
“They are helping!” I yelled as I ran forward. “Help them, give them your strength.” I stepped beside Flint—Bella’s intended—the only Salamander I knew in the circle. I put my hand on his forearm and pushed the power of Spirit into him.
He gasped and his arms shook as the red lines brightened and the power raged across his skin. I held on as my hand heated, my skin tingling with what was going to happen if I kept holding on. For the Spiral, and those still within it, I would burn with him. I closed my eyes as the pain intensified in and around me. The other Salamanders backed off, I could feel them go, stepping away. It was only Flint and me now standing between the flames and the Spiral’s total destruction. My power fed his as we fought a flame that was anything but natural.
I knew who had done it. I could taste her power on the flames, the same dark decay that had been on the gargoyles.
Viv. Viv had started this fire with the ruby stone in her hands… but how, when it was sure to hurt those who lived here?
Unless she had found the pink stone. I looked over my shoulder, searching for Cassava.
“The pink diamond, could she have found it?”
Cassava touched a hand to her throat. “Goddess, she must have.”
Well, that changed things.
I could almost see Viv standing in the dark of the night as she set fires that would never be quenched. Fires that would rage for years before finally being gutted because of their unnatural power. There had to be a way to stop her, to stop this flame.
“Flint, I’m going to try and weave the power,” I spoke softly.
“Do whatever you must. Bella is in there.” His voice broke on the words. I’d already known in my heart she was. There was no way Viv would have set this fire for no reason. She did it deliberately to draw me here, to hurt me. She had to have found the Spirit stone. The one Cassava had hidden.
None of that mattered, though. Right now, we had to stop the flames that would kill my sister if I did nothing.
I tightened my hold on Flint and instead of giving him strength, reached deeply within him with Spirit and brushed against the living flame in his soul. The flame that connected him to the original fire elemental. I beckoned it to me, begged it to listen to my plea to weave itself with my power of Earth and the power of Spirit to be the dampener that would put out the flame.
I was thrown away from Flint with the force of an explosion. I hit the dirt, rolled, and sat up. “Cassava, she is in there. Help me!”
Cassava was at my side in a flash. “This is your first true test then, Lark. The flames, you have to bring them into you. It is the only way to make them a part of you.”
I looked to her. “What are you saying?”
She shuddered. “You have to burn, Lark. That is what she,” I had no doubt she meant Vivica, “told me. That she burned to find the original Salamander. The flames must find you strong enough. It is the only way to take on another element: you must willingly give yourself to it and trust that Spirit and the strength of your heart will protect you.”
“Viv told you this?”
She shook her head. “Ulani told me.”
I was on my feet and running, trusting her word and my life with it. Peta was beside me even though I wanted her to stay behind. I knew she wouldn’t listen, so I didn’t bother to tell her to stay back.
Together to the end.
The heat intensified as I drew closer with each step closer to the Spiral. The air I could breathe disappeared faster and faster as the flames ate the oxygen. The wall of fire grew with each step and I didn’t slow, though my instincts were screaming at me to dive away, to save myself. I took one last gasping breath, trusted that my mother had indeed given Cassava the information I was staking not only my life on, but Peta’s too, and dove into the flames.