The Impostor Queen (The Impostor Queen, #1)(95)
I sit straighter in the saddle behind Raimo, even though my fear is making it hard to breathe. His cold hand closes over mine, and I feel the pulse of his power magnified by my own. “Very well,” I say in a high, quavering voice.
“Gates,” Raimo breathes.
I lift my left hand and point at the gates.
They glow and crackle. I can feel Raimo tugging more power from within me, and I don’t fight it. The councilmen dive away from the solid copper slabs as they undulate with heat. And then a sudden burst of ferocious, icy air whooshes forward. The gates explode inward.
The crowd cheers. “She’s returned! We’re saved!” the councilmen shout.
“Nice work, Valtia,” Raimo says, looking over his shoulder at me.
He turns to the front in time to be hit in the face with a blast of ice. As councilmen scatter in panic, Raimo collapses against me, giving me a view of the white plaza through the shattered gates.
It’s filled with at least a hundred black-robed acolytes, hands outstretched, ready to defend the temple to their last breath.
CHAPTER 24
I catch a glimpse of the priests and apprentices pouring from the temple entrance before Sig yanks me from the saddle. I grab for Raimo—the old man is so fragile that the fall could kill him—but he’s already disappeared over the other side of our horse.
“Oskar has him,” Sig says, then holds my hand tightly and sends a horrific blast of flame straight through the gates. The screams of the acolytes jitter down my spine as Sig drags me to the side, behind a marble pillar on one side of the destroyed gateway. A terrible, gut-wrenching noise behind me signals that at least one of our horses has been hit by ice or fire. The wielders who came with us are on either side of the gates, their backs against the low stone walls. Aira’s pale-green eyes are alight with fear. Veikko’s hands are shaking. Oskar presses in next to me a moment later, panting, Raimo in his arms. “Elli,” he says, but I’m already reaching for the old man. I grab his limp hands to siphon the excess cold.
Raimo’s pale eyes flutter open. “You’ll have to get through them. Or convince them to join us.”
The acolytes are battling for the very men who plan to drink their blood. It’s so twisted, but as the blasts of fire and ice come shooting out from the white plaza, I’m not sure how to make them listen to us.
“We have to show them the Valtia’s power,” Oskar says, looking down at me. “If we want to get through without killing, you have to make them believe.”
“I’m all right with killing a few,” snarls Sig, but I jerk my hand away as he reaches for it, unwilling to let him use me until I have a chance to figure this out.
“You’d rather eliminate our one advantage?” he asks. “That’s what happens if we’re separated. Raimo said we were supposed to fight together!”
I peer around the pillar and watch a small acolyte stumble over his own too-long robe at the bottom of the steps. And when he throws back his hood, I see that it’s Niklas, the little boy Aleksi brought to the temple all those weeks ago. “Maybe this isn’t the war Raimo prophesied. I’m not sure fighting is what we’re supposed to do right now.”
Sig lets out a sound of pure frustration. “Go on, then. Just remember—you might be immune to magic, but that doesn’t mean they can’t hurt you.”
Oskar touches my sleeve. “He’s right.”
I let out a long, slow breath. “It’s worth the risk. If we shock them, maybe they’ll stop long enough to hear us out. And if they won’t, I trust you to get to me in time.”
“Oskar, use the fountains. Can you?” Raimo asks.
Oskar, strands of his dark hair skimming along his cheeks, looks toward the two massive fountains in the plaza, each burbling with water year-round because the temple is heated with magic. The twin statues of the Valtia tower above them. “I can try,” he says quietly, tossing me an anxious glance. “My control—”
“I’ll help you,” says Raimo wearily. “You have the power, but I have the technique.”
Oskar nods, but he looks worried, and I can’t blame him—Raimo’s breaths are shallow and unsteady, and he can barely hold his head up. “We can do this, but then you’re staying back,” Oskar says to him. “If you go in there, you’ll die.”
Raimo seems too weak to argue.
“I’ll cap it off,” says Sig, as if he already senses what they’re going to do. “They need to see both ice and fire together.”
“And I’ll look the part,” I mumble.
“Move your hands,” says Oskar, “so they think it’s coming from you.”
“Sig could sense that the magic wasn’t coming from Mim. Will they—”
“We don’t want to give them time to,” says Raimo. “Make this quick.”
Sig gives me a little push, and I step from behind the pillar. The acolytes grit their teeth and the air warps around me. Sig curses, and I walk forward quickly to draw the heat away from him. The acolytes’ eyes go wide as I stride into the white plaza, my arms rising from my sides, my coppery hair flying about my face. The water in the fountains glitters with ice that suddenly spirals into the air. It’s as if the frozen column is drawing the liquid straight up from the Motherlake, growing thicker and whiter as it builds on itself, forming an arch over the marble slabs of this plaza, higher than the towering statues, nearly as high as the dome of the temple. The acolytes around me and the priests and apprentices on the steps stare as the ice shifts and shimmers, creating an intricate lattice over my head.