Witch's Pyre (Worldwalker #3)(96)

“Ha,” Lily retorted.

“Leto is a good man,” Rowan admitted grudgingly. “He won’t let anything happen to you.”

Lily took a step toward it, and the drake squawked again. “It’s not Leto I’m worried about,” she grumbled.

“Who’s the big baby now?” Rowan said.

Lily forced herself to stride confidently to the drake, even if it did look like a giant dragon with red eyes. She swung herself up behind Leto and found that although the drake’s neck was wider than a horse’s, the feel of it wasn’t so different. The drake’s hide was warm, which surprised her. She was expecting it to feel cold, like a snake’s.

“Hold on tight,” Leto said needlessly.

The drake lurched under her as it clawed its way up the trunks of two of the surrounding trees. She could hear the wood crack as the drake scrabbled with alarming speed up above the canopy of evergreens. Then she felt an undulation in the drake’s neck and heard the billowing sound of a sheet snapping in the wind as the drake’s wings made the first massive downstroke. Her stomach swooped as if she’d left it behind on the rapidly diminishing ground. The wings churned on either side of her, jolting Lily up and down and back up again. Then the pounding stopped abruptly, and they were hanging in the sky as if caught on a hook. Lily felt weightless as they began to soar.

“It’s actually quite enjoyable once you get used to it,” Leto yelled over the whistling wind.

Lily allowed herself to relax and watch the scenery fan out around her. After what seemed like only a few more strokes of the drake’s wings, she saw the mountain peak they were headed for—Mount Mitchell in her world, the tallest peak in the Appalachian Mountains. Somewhere on top of it rested a speaking stone.

Leto had the drake bank, and it spun delicately on a wingtip. They circled the green peak, but the dense red spruce and Fraser firs made it impossible to see the ground. As they came around the hulking shape of the mountain, they saw that the eastern slope had fallen away, leaving sheer cliffs.

“There,” Lily said, pointing toward the top of the ridge. She’d seen a brief glimmer, like a mirror flashing.

The drake came in for a landing, its wings scooping backward and its talons extended to grasp the treetops. It alighted delicately, and then turned to climb down the tree trunk on all fours like a lizard. The huge spruce swayed and cracked under the drake’s massive weight, but thankfully, it did not fall.

Leto dismounted first, and then helped Lily down. She went directly to the emerald-green speaking stone, already feeling the pulse and whisper of the hundreds of thousands of minds that were gathered and amplified inside it.

“Are they haunted?” Leto asked, sounding uncharacteristically unsure of himself.

“No,” Lily replied. She refrained from laughing at what was, to him, a serious question. “Although I can see how calling them haunted would keep them protected from vandals,” she added.

“The voices,” he said, still angling his thick body away from the softly glowing stone. “They say the disgraced dead who didn’t fulfill their witch’s bidding are trapped inside.”

“It isn’t true,” Lily said gently. “Speaking stones are tools for the living, not the dead.” Lily thought of how she’d tried to reach out to Juliet in the overworld after she’d died. “The dead don’t speak. No matter how much you beg them too,” she said in a gravelly voice.

Leto nodded, accepting Lily’s answer. “She doesn’t deserve to die this way,” he said, switching topics. Lily knew he was speaking of Lillian.

“I know,” she replied. She frowned, thinking of the pain she’d felt when she’d possessed Lillian’s body. “No one does.”

“Can Lord Fall help her?”

“She won’t let him.”

“Stubborn,” he said with gruff affection.

“Willful,” Lily suggested instead.

Leto nodded and looked down in thought. “I guess that’s why she’s as good at magic as she is.” He looked back up at Lily, his expression hard. “Are you going to finish what she started?”

“I am,” Lily replied, surprised to be saying it. “I’m just not going to do it the same way she would.”

“Fair enough.” He nodded once, making a decision. “If her time comes before the battle, Walltop will answer your call.”

“Thank you, Captain,” she replied, sensing the gravity of his pledge. She turned to the speaking stone. “But hopefully what I’m about to do will make a battle unnecessary.” And maybe Toshi can save Lillian’s life, she added silently, keeping that thought to herself.

Lily looked into the scintillating center of the speaking stone and placed her hands on its warm surface. Her mind dove into a fast-flowing stream. It raced green over the mountains, into the valley, and across miles of verdant land. Next, a blue haze diffused across her mind’s eye, and she jumped rivers and sped past plains. Yellow light pulled her up sheer, rocky heights, only to drop her down again into the red-tinged light of the baking desert and scrubland. Her mind’s eye sped over chaparral-covered hills buckled by earthquakes, and finally rested inside the milky white glow of the westernmost speaking stone in the chain.

Millions of threads of light were gathered there. Grace had quite an army.