The Orphan Queen (The Orphan Queen #1)(63)



Once, a tree began to nibble at my shoulder in the middle of the night, and I tumbled to the ground. No, the trees weren’t safe.

My sixth day out of West Pass Watch, I reached the village I’d set out to find. Or what was left of it.

The buildings rose out of the dust like a giant’s toys. They stood haphazardly, where they stood at all. Bricks had toppled over under the siege of storms, or something worse. If scorpions and cats grew to horrendous proportions when affected by wraith, what about larger predators?

I swallowed hard as Ferguson clip-clopped over the dry dirt road and stopped. The road ahead lifted into the air, curling around like a ribbon, with nothing supporting it before it dove back into the earth. It didn’t look safe, and if my horse didn’t want to put his hooves on it, I wouldn’t make him.

Still, I needed to look, because according to my map, the mysterious lake was nearby. Indeed, a liquid glimmer shone beyond the shops and houses, near the high brick walls of a nobleman’s country estate.

This was what I’d come to see.

Gathering my nerves, I nudged Ferguson to walk closer to the shops and houses, away from the road.

The buildings were stone, but many had the texture of wood. They’d been petrified. Glass windows had melted and run down the walls like tears, freezing that way.

I peered inside the first building we reached.

Faces stared back out at me: grotesque, horrified faces of the dead, like insects in amber. They grasped for windows and doorways, never reaching safety. Whatever they were trapped in, it was transparent, so every detail of their death was unsettlingly preserved, but it was also solid and hard, and sheered off at the windows or doors, as though it had known where it reached the boundary of the building.

One of the women trapped inside blinked.

I yelped, causing Ferguson to scramble away, but when I guided him toward the window again, the woman looked as dead as ever. I’d imagined it. Maybe.

Trying not to heave, I moved on, following the gleam of the lake behind the far buildings. My goal was so close; if there was anything out here that might give insight to a way to stop the wraith rather than simply mitigate the effects, I would find it.

Unseasonably bright green leaves sprouted from a tree in the center of the village, but its trunk was twisted and bent so that the top branches dug into the ground; the roots reached up through the earth to touch the pale sunlight. It was strange; even though there were no clouds, a thick haze obscured everything. Even the mountains in the distance were lost to the fog of wraith.

It was as though the world ended with that fog. There was nothing beyond. I was alone on an island of wraith and horror.

But the lake was close by.

Halfway through the village, I dismounted Ferguson and collected my weapons and writing utensils. It was hard to say what information might turn out useful when I returned to Skyvale, especially information from around the rumor-rich Mirror Lake.

I grabbed a snack and left some oats for Ferguson, and headed toward the lake and the large country manor beyond, keeping clear of the levitating road.

Several times, I paused and balanced my notebook on my knee in order to sketch and make notes on the state of the village. How far was I from the lake? Not very far, so if there were any unusual properties to the water, they didn’t extend into the village.

A low, metal wall ran along the western side of the village, curving around the lakeshore and manor. Once, it had been pieced together in scales, giving the illusion of an immense snake. After the wraith had broken through, huge sections had been flattened against the earth, while others had been pulled off as if by giant hands. Several sections were just gone—tossed into the lake.

My heart pounded as I made my way toward the lake. Bare, scraggly trees grew around its still surface, though there was something odd about their branches hanging over the water.

I stepped over rocks and rubble, around brush with twigs that reached like fingers. This shore was covered with brown, brittle grass that crunched under my boots as though coated with frost. The lake spread out before me, motionless even with the breeze that rustled across the rest of the world.

“How strange,” I whispered as I moved along the edge of the lake.

Palm-sized scales of metal gleamed in the weak light. I plucked one off the ground. It was silver, tarnished with time, and warm, though not from sunlight. Haze still obscured the sky.

But when I glanced up, there was a hole in the haze, the exact shape of the lake beneath it.

The lake was blue, reflecting bright sky. The branches that hung over the water looked healthier—more alive in spite of the oncoming winter. I couldn’t even say what exactly looked different about them, just that they did.

I pocketed several scales and wandered over to the barrier to inspect it more closely.

Where it was still intact, the wall was only waist-high and a few scales thick. Most of this area of the barrier lay scattered across the lakeshore, though, or beneath the water. I could almost hear echoes of the panic the refugee maid had described, with people trampling one another to escape the flood of wraith.

This part of Liadia must have been hit first, and the hardest. It was on the western edge of the country, and right on the barrier. When the barrier failed, there’d have been no warning.

Some had been trapped. Others had gone mad. Most had likely died.

Precious few had escaped across the terrifying remains of their kingdom and into the neighboring mountains, only to be forced into refugee camps in the Indigo Kingdom. Dirty. Hungry. But alive.

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