Chapter Fourteen

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

W e left for the Unquiet Wood the following day. On foot, since Grimm's family owned no horse or carriage. The sun rose hot and stayed that way—not as suitable for walking as the previous day had been, but at least Grimm was there to cast the charm I wrote to shield us from the worst of the heat.

It was a pity I could think of no spell to make Grimm's presence tolerable in the same way.

He had hardly spoken to me since our dispute, except to inform me he would allow a week to look for the sorcerer, after which we would return to civilization no matter what we found. There were the trials to think of, after all. Then he stormed off to explain to his family he would not be available to help for the rest of the harvest. What excuses he gave, I did not know, only that they must have borne seeds of the truth, for his mother saw us off with an earnest wish that I would "find the cure I was looking for."

I sensed Grimm did not like to lie to her and resented me all the more for forcing him to do so.

For the first hour of our journey, I mimicked his sullen quiet, until I realized this was more punishment for me than Grimm, to whom silence was the natural and preferable option. After that, I decided to amuse myself by the only means available: the sound of my own voice.

"How long until we reach the border town, do you think?" I asked.

Grimm answered without looking at me. "Late in the day, if we walk quickly."

"Is there an inn there?"

"Not that I know of."

I groaned. I'd had to sleep out under the stars a time or two, but I'd hoped to spend at least one more night in a soft bed before we crossed the barrier and left such comforts behind.

We walked a little farther. The sun rose higher in the sky. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck and caused my collar to stick there. The heels of my boots began to rub.

"We should have seen about renting a carriage," I said.

Grimm didn't answer. He stared pointedly ahead and lengthened his stride, as though hoping to leave the sound of my voice swirling behind him like dust in the road.

I quickened my own steps to keep pace.

"Do people use this road often? Maybe we could hitch a ride with someone to save our strength. I'll have a much better chance of convincing this sorcerer to help us if I'm not exhausted and covered in dust."

Grimm finally looked over to glance pointedly at the violin case in my hand. I was beginning to wish I'd found a way to strap it to my back instead of carrying it. It had an unfortunate way of bouncing off my leg every other step.

"You would be less tired if you'd brought less with you," Grimm said.

"I couldn't leave my violin behind. What if I have to sing for our supper?" I took another step and winced. "I swear I've already got at least two blisters on each heel. They sting awfully. Do you think a wagon will come? You never answered, before."

"You have the endurance of a child," Grimm snapped. "I have no idea if a wagon will come, but perhaps you should consider this practice for the Coterie. They demand a level of competence you are sorely lacking."

"That won't matter for me," I said.

A muscle twitched in Grimm's jaw, but he refrained from answering.

I kept up a steady stream of mostly one-sided conversation as the day wore on, commenting on everything from the scenery, to our instructors at the Fount, to the weather. It was revenge of a sort, for the long moments I'd spent locked in place the day before, and I continued for far longer than I would have otherwise. But eventually the aches and pains I'd exaggerated early in the day began to take a real toll, and my words dried up. Occasionally we passed by a stretch of fields with people working, but the only wagons I saw were full to bursting with sheaves of wheat, with no room for extra passengers.

By late afternoon the heat began to fade. The shadows turned lavender and stretched out long over the road.

"How much farther?" I asked again. My stoicism had limits and my feet had long passed from pain to numbness. I thought longingly of writing a basic cushioning charm for the inside of my boots but balked at asking Grimm to cast it.

"Another hour at least," Grimm said. "If we're lucky, we'll reach the last town before dark."

Just as he spoke, the wind shifted, bringing with it an acrid tang that lingered in the back of my throat. Looking around for the source of the smell, I saw the road ahead was darkened by a billowing cloud of smoke hanging low in the sky.

Both Grimm and I paused to stare.

"That looks rather ominous," I said.

The smoke worsened as we got closer, and little licks of flame lit up the gloom. I was afraid we would arrive to find the house or barn of an outlying property in ruins. But when we finally drew near enough to see the source of the smoke, there were no buildings in sight. It was a field that burned.

The destruction of the crop was controlled, systematic, not the raging blaze I'd feared. Most of the wheat had already turned to ash, but at the far corner of the field I could make out a few figures overseeing the burning of what was left.

More people stood in the road, watching.

"What happened here?" I asked the woman standing closest to us.

"Silver rot in the crop," she said. Her eyes were bloodshot from the smoke, and she held a cloth over her face, muffling her voice.

I held my sleeve over my mouth as my own lungs tickled, a cough brewing. "What's silver rot?" I murmured to Grimm. I thought he might know, for his frown had deepened significantly.

"It's a spore," he said. "It drifts in from the Wilderlands and settles in the dirt, withering whatever grows there."

"Fire kills it?"

Grimm and the woman who had spoken exchanged a heavy glance. "No," Grimm answered. "It can sometimes stop it from spreading, if burned in time, but the rot hides too deep in the soil for fire to kill it completely. The only thing that can truly get rid of it is magic."

I nodded, understanding. Monsters weren't the only thing that tried to creep over the border into Miendor; they were just the simplest to stop. It was easy to be on guard for three-headed creatures, less so a lone flower growing in a hedge, though both could kill you.

If you ask me, the flower is the more terrifying of the two. At least with monsters, you know what you're getting.

I frowned out over the ruined field. "Shouldn't the Coterie be here to deal with it?"

The woman eyed the red sash at my waist and spat out a scornful little "ha" under her breath. It was second nature for me to wear both coat and sash, but I wondered if it had been a mistake to don them for this journey. I felt out of place standing there in my silk. A dressed-up, useless sorcerer.

"The Coterie will show up eventually," the woman said, "but not in time to save these fields. All we can do is set the fires and hope that it hasn't spread." She nodded to us and walked back to join the rest of the crowd, who folded in around her, forming a contained unit while Grimm and I stood to the side.

The fire was mesmerizing to watch. It ate away the remaining wheat in neat segments, gold stalks turning red and then black before collapsing. The people in charge of burning cast the fire ahead of them in orderly lines, following an unseen grid pattern. Watching them work absorbed my attention so completely I almost didn't notice when Grimm began to walk again.

I hurried to catch up. "Where are you going?"

"This is people's livelihood going up in smoke," he said brusquely. "We needn't watch as though it's entertainment."

"I'm not entertained," I protested. "I'm horrified. Isn't there anything we can do?"

Grimm looked surprised by the question, or perhaps just that I was the one asking it, which was vaguely insulting. He gave it some thought before answering. "I've seen the spell that's used to remove silver rot. I might even be able to recall it. But it requires a group to cast, many sorcerers surrounding the field and weaving a magical net to catch the rot and draw it from the soil and roots. When the Coterie comes, they will make use of it."

I looked past the burning to where another field lay. And another beyond that. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I thought the wheat there looked less golden—grayish in a way that had nothing to do with the smoke in the air.

"But not before the rest of this burns," I said. "Right?"

Grimm, following my gaze, said nothing.

There seemed little choice but to keep walking and let the evening breeze wash our hair and clothes free of the scent of burning. But it didn't sit right. The spell Grimm had described did not seem an ideal solution to me at all.

The Coterie was always stretched thin, sending troops to all corners of Miendor to deal with monster breakthroughs, or flooding when one of the rivers that originated in the Wilderlands suddenly diverted to run through a town, or roads too near the border mysteriously deciding to rearrange themselves. It left them with precious little time to deal with things like diseased crops. It had always seemed strange to me that so many of the spells that fixed problems like this still required a full Coterie party to cast them—inefficient. But then, I'd heard my father complain often enough of the shortage of scrivers working to replace such antiquated magic. Perhaps if there were more of us writing new spells, there would have been magic these people could have called upon to save their land without the Coterie.

We had walked another two minutes or so when I noticed that the field we currently were passing was full of flowers, rather than wheat. Not the neatly planted rows of blooms I had seen back on Grimm's property, but stuffed full to bursting with sunflowers, their heads angled toward the sky.

I stepped off the road to get a closer look, ignoring Grimm's frustrated call of "Loveage!"

The scrub I waded through was thick, and burrs stuck to the legs of my trousers by the time I reached the nearest flower. Acting on instinct, I reached out and flipped over one of the leaves. The back of it was shot through with silver veins that should have been green. The iridescent lines could have been described as pretty, if you didn't know what they meant.

"The plants drink the rot from the dirt," Grimm said, appearing at my shoulder. "If it reaches the leaves, the roots are completely infested." He looked around the field of bright flowers, beautiful but doomed. "Pity that it wasn't contained to this field, where no one would feel the loss."

I was about to chide Grimm for saying such a thing (he was the son of a flower farmer, after all), but then I paused, struck by his words. "That's a very interesting idea, Grimm."

Setting my violin case at my feet, I began to rifle through my coat pockets for quill and paper. "Can you explain to me again how the spell the Coterie uses works?"

Grimm looked mystified by my sudden interest, but told me what he knew. It didn't take long (like many of the Coterie's favorite spells, it relied more on power than intricacy), and by the time he'd finished, I was crouched on the ground, using my instrument case as a makeshift desk. The paper I'd found was wrinkled from being in my pocket, but I smoothed it out as best I could.

"What are you doing?" Grimm asked.

"I have an idea. For a charm that might… do something." I hesitated to say help , since helpful spells were not my specialty. However, by necessity, I was rather good at composing spells that made use of what little I had to work with, and that seemed to fit this situation perfectly.

Grimm glanced up at the smoke cloud hanging in the sky. "You won't be able to fix this with a charm."

I waggled my brows and shook my quill at him. "Not with that attitude, we won't. Have a little faith, Grimm."

"This is about facts, not faith. The spell I described uses Grandmagic and the strength of ten sorcerers. Do you really think you can write a charm that does the same thing?"

"I'm not trying to do the same thing," I said. "That spell works by force. I just want to ask the rot to go someplace different, rather than ripping it from the ground. You don't need ten casters for that, you just need one."

"You want me to ask the rot to move."

"Invite? Perhaps invite is more accurate. And more polite."

Now Grimm looked truly flummoxed. "You think something like that could work?"

"Well, it won't make it worse. These flowers are already dying, poor things. A failed charm won't hurt anything except my pride, which I assure you has taken harsher blows."

I expected Grimm to keep arguing simply because I was the one who'd suggested it. That was how this sort of thing usually went. However, after casting one more look at the darkened skyline, Grimm turned to me and said, "Very well. Write your song."

I was so surprised that I nearly dropped my quill. "My song ?"

"You said putting spells to music gave you more power when casting them. If I am to do this alone, would it not be useful for me to benefit from that?"

"Well, yes, in theory," I said. "But I've never had much luck writing them for anyone else." Admittedly, one of the only people who'd been willing to try was Agnes, and she couldn't carry a tune to save her life. But my brother had been the other, and he'd had the same musical education as I had growing up. Our mother had taught us both how to read music and play the violin, but the spellsongs I'd given to him never caught. I thought this failure was similar to the way many spells couldn't be re-created by another scriver. Just as no other person's hand was capable of writing Titus's healing spells, it seemed that no other voice or instrument could cast using my spellsongs. Or so it had always been.

Grimm made an imperious motion with his fingers as though brushing away the thought of failure. "If you teach me the words and tune, I will cast it."

I put the parchment back in my pocket. Then, because it felt right, I grabbed Grimm's wrist. He startled slightly and perhaps would have shaken me off, but I took advantage of his surprise and firmly towed him toward the center of the field. Once we were surrounded by golden petals and silver-threaded leaves on all sides I let go of Grimm's arm and opened my violin case.

I took my time with tuning, and then ran through a few scales and arpeggios in order to organize my thoughts. Composing music came more naturally to me than scriving onto paper, but I wasn't used to creating spellsongs for another person, least of all Grimm.

I settled on a simple melody, one that evoked the sense of invitation I had spoken of earlier. This was a request for the thing living in the ground to move—backed up by magic, but still a request. A transfer, rather than the eviction the Coterie's net spell would have been. Next, I added lyrics, choosing words from the old language and laying them over the music the same way I would have scratched ink across paper.

"Listen," I told Grimm, and played the song once all the way through. Then I looked at him and said, "Now you sing along. Don't cast yet, just sing."

Grimm's eyes flickered toward the road where a small crowd of people had gathered, drawn away from the burning field by the sound of music. I happily angled myself so they would have a better view. Grimm, on the other hand, hunched his shoulders and tried to hide behind one of the taller sunflowers.

"I did not realize there would be an audience," he grumbled.

"Come now, Grimm," I said. "What is magic if not a performance?"

I launched into the song for a third time. My fingertips began to tingle and the words felt heavy on my tongue, even without the weight of casting behind them. I sang and stared at Grimm until he straightened his shoulders and joined in. He had no difficulty remembering the words, but sang them so quietly I could not tell if he was even in tune.

"Louder, Grimm," I complained, starting the song again.

Grimm was an unpracticed singer, but not a bad one. He was more of a true baritone than I was, voice turning slightly raspy on the high notes in a way that was nearly charming.

"Good," I said, surprised to find that I meant it. There was a held-breath quality to the air around us, as though magic were waiting to taste the words I'd written. That had never happened before when my brother or Agnes had sung. "Do you want to run through it again?"

"No," Grimm said. "We can begin."

He waited for the melody to come round again and then, between one breath and the next, he began to cast.

The quality of the music changed. The resonance grew greater, until I felt the hum of it in my bones. This didn't happen when I was the one casting a spellsong. I shivered and focused on not fumbling my bow, keeping the tune steady for Grimm to sing over.

Grimm's voice was still slightly hesitant but no longer quiet. It rang out over the field and beyond, amplified by the spell. It was a little strange, to watch him be so wholly absorbed in a casting built entirely of sound, when he was known for being able to cast without speaking a word.

I would not be so impressed by his silence after this, I thought. Not now that I'd heard him call magic with a song. The listening of it hollowed something inside my chest and filled it back up with bittersweet longing.

Grimm was casting my spellsong the way I'd always wanted to and could not.

In his mouth, the words took on new meaning, and the melody gained urgency. The song was alive. It made me feel alive too, in a different way than I had a moment before. I was not casting the spell, but my playing made me a part of it, and I wanted it to last forever.

It couldn't, of course. The moment ended and the spell broke. It was only a charm, after all.

With the last note lingering, Grimm and I stood staring at each other. Even when the magic ate that last bit of sound, something seemed to hang in the air between us.

I tucked my violin under one arm and asked, "Do you think it worked?"

Grimm finally looked away. "Yes," he said after a moment. "I think it did."

I turned my head to follow his gaze.

Where before there had been a sea of golden flowers, now there was only silver everywhere I looked. The petals around us glowed, each flower head a shining, shriveled version of its former self, home to the rot that had made its way up from the dirt and could now be cut away like a rotten limb.