Shadow and Bone

It didn’t take long for them to answer, and a tremor ran up
my spine as I heard the distant beat of leathery wings. I felt
fear spread through the passengers on the skiff and heard the
Fjerdans begin to pray in their lilting tongue. In the flare of
Grisha fire, I saw the dim shapes of dark bodies flying toward
us. The volcras’ shrieks split the air.
The guards reached for their rifles. Someone began to weep.
But still the Darkling waited as the volcra drew closer.
Baghra had claimed that the volcra had once been men and
women, victims of the unnatural power unleashed by the
Darkling’s greed. It might have been my mind playing tricks,
but I thought I heard something not just horrible, but human in
their cries.
When they were almost upon us, the Darkling gripped my
arm and simply said, “Now.”
That invisible hand took hold of the power inside me, and I
felt it stretch, reaching through the darkness of the Fold,
seeking the light. It came to me with a speed and fury that
nearly knocked me from my feet, breaking over me in a
shower of brilliance and warmth.
The Fold was alight, as bright as noon, as if its impenetrable
darkness had never been. I saw a long reach of blanched sand,
hulks of what looked like shipwrecks dotting the dead
landscape, and above it all, a teeming flock of volcra. They
screamed in terror, their writhing gray bodies gruesome in the
bright sunlight. This is the truth of him, I thought as I squinted
in the dazzling light. Like calls to like. This was his soul made
flesh, the truth of him laid bare in the blazing sun, shorn of
mystery and shadow. This was the truth behind the handsome
face and the miraculous powers, the truth that was the dead
and empty space between the stars, a wasteland peopled by
frightened monsters.
Make a path. I wasn’t sure if he spoke or simply thought the
command that reverberated through me. Helpless, I let the
Fold close in around us as I focused the light, making a
channel through which the skiff could pass, bordered on both
sides by walls of rippling darkness. The volcra fled into the