Spirit's End by Rachel Aaron

Author:Rachel Aaron [Aaron, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Folk Tales, Fiction / Fantasy - Epic, Fiction / Action & Adventure, Legends & Mythology, Fiction / Fairy Tales
ISBN: 9780316198363
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Miranda stood in the courtyard where the League man had left her, leaning on Gin and trying not to look as wobbly as she felt. Though she’d never admit it, she was vaguely disappointed. She’d always thought flying would be more freeing, or at least more fun. But after a night and a morning spent hurtling through the air, she’d never been happier to be on solid ground. From the way Gin had pressed himself into the stone the second they touched down, she knew he felt the same. Her stomach certainly did, though this particular stretch of ground wasn’t helping much on that account.

Against her better judgment, her eyes drifted up again. The League’s fortress was perched on a lonely jut of land in the far, far northwest corner of the continent, a desolate country well beyond the Council maps. The sea, iron gray and choppy beneath the cloud-heavy sky, surrounded them on three sides, and the land wasn’t any more hospitable with its wet stone and wild nettles.

The fortress itself looked as though it had been pushed up from the rock during some great argument among the lava flows and then forgotten completely. Its surface was black and pitted save for the sea-facing walls that had been worn smooth by the endless wind. The stern black battlements, the sharp, jutting towers, the harsh military efficiency of it all was dreadful to look on and even worse to stand under. Already, after less than five minutes of waiting for Alric, her stomach was a quivering mess of nerves far worse than the man deserved.

Miranda closed her eyes, missing Mellinor terribly. Diminished or not, he had still been a Great Spirit, and his presence, not to mention his advice, would have been very welcome now. As it was, all she could do was clutch Gin’s fur and try to keep her mind calm, for her other spirits if nothing else.

She could feel them shaking in their rings, even Eril, and the wind spirit was usually the cockiest of them all. Miranda couldn’t blame them. The longer she waited, the more she realized that it wasn’t the fortress or the anticipation of meeting Alric that made her uneasy. The League’s Fortress was just a building, and she’d dealt with the Deputy Commander before, but the growing dread that gnawed at her resolve was something greater. She could feel it rising in her throat even now, an icy bile of fear, completely irrational and so omnipresent it seemed to radiate from the black stone itself.

“It’s the vault,” Gin whispered.

Miranda jumped and looked down to see her ghosthound was crouched low on the ground, his pointed ears pressed flat against his skull. “It must be right below us,” he whispered again, softer this time.

“What?” Miranda whispered back.

“The vault of the demonseeds,” a strong voice answered.

Miranda whirled around to see the tall, dark League man who’d been there when the wind had dropped her into the courtyard. The one who’d told her to wait. He’d been gone awhile, but now he was back, standing only a few feet from her.

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