Edge of Pathos (The Conjurors Series Book 4) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Edge of Pathos

  The Conjurors Series

  By

  Kristen Pham

  Copyright © 2015 by Kristen Pham

  Chapter 1

  Valerie and Henry walked together to Babylon, not saying a word. She carried an urn with the ashes of the fallen flowers from her father’s garden, since they couldn’t bury his body.

  Henry’s mind had been shut tightly against her in the three weeks since Oberon had died, but now, for the first time, some of his emotions leaked out. At the taste of his grief, Valerie couldn’t repress a little sob. Henry gripped her hand.

  “He’s with Mom, in the ether,” Valerie said when she was sure her voice wouldn’t shake.

  “If you believe in that stuff,” Henry said.

  Valerie didn’t reply, but she did believe. She had been at her father’s side when a burst of power had been released into the universe at his death. He was somewhere, or everywhere, and that thought was the only thing that kept her grief from crippling her on some days.

  Henry pulled aside a screen of vines, and they stepped into the most stunning spot in the universe. But its beauty was the painful kind, a reminder of times too sweet to last, like when their father had locked this place away from the world so it could be his private Eden with their mother.

  They walked up the tiers of flowers and stopped at the top, where the view overlooked a huge lake. Valerie opened the urn, and the ashes drifted out.

  “He might not have been perfect, but he was ours. He tried,” Henry said, pressing his lips together as if that would stop a deep, unnamed emotion within him from escaping.

  “Goodbye, Daddy,” Valerie whispered, not bothering to wipe her tears.

  Then she let herself sob for the first time since Oberon’s death a few days ago. Henry held her as her body curled in on itself. He shook with tears of his own, and through their connection, Valerie knew that he was reliving the loss of his dad on Earth, Joe.

  Finally, their tears dried up. Valerie was hollowed out, but drained of the poisonous grief that sucked all of the joy out of her soul.

  “We’ll have time to grieve again,” Henry said. “When all this is over.”

  Valerie couldn’t meet his eyes as she replied. “Maybe, if we survive. But for now, back to war.”

  Valerie’s life was barely recognizable from what it had looked like even a month before, when she’d been strategizing and preparing for battle. Now, there was no time for planning, only fighting. Not that she was complaining.

  Fighting was easy, numbing, even with Earth’s rules binding her magic. Lucky for her, there was no shortage of opportunities to wear herself out hitting and slashing through the legions of Fractus who had emerged like cockroaches since the barrier between Earth and the Globe had been shattered, and travel between the two worlds was as easy as breathing, for those who knew how.

  Today, she was in a remote town in Chile, leading a small team of soldiers from her army, the Fist, in a standoff with about a dozen Fractus. Cyrus was by her side, as well, and they fought back-to-back.

  Valerie punched a Fractus in the gut with the speed and grace of a leopard. He fell, smacking his head into the hard asphalt of the road on which they fought, but as he did, he slashed at her leg with a broken piece of glass, and blood ran down her shin. Before he could get another thrust in, she jammed her heel into a sensitive spot in his neck, and he was instantly unconscious.

  Blood ran down her leg into her shoe, and the pain was too sharp to ignore. She could keep going, but she wouldn’t bet her soldiers’ lives on it.

  “Fall back!” she called, struggling to her feet.

  The four soldiers who fought with her today, all ex-Knights who had chosen not to follow Reaper, began to retreat.

  “No, keep fighting! We got this,” Cyrus said, ducking as a tall man slashed at him with a pair of knives. The only reason he didn’t hit his mark was because Cyrus was blinding him by bending light.

  Her soldiers shot her glances, their confusion evident.

  “What’s the call here?” Alex, one of her Knights, asked.

  Before Valerie could answer, one of the Fractus leaped at Alex. With the accuracy born of a thousand throws, Valerie hurled her sword, Pathos, at Alex’s attacker, pinning his shirt to a nearby tree.

  “Fall back!” Valerie commanded.

  She expertly kicked Cyrus’s attacker in the head. As the Fractus fell, she turned to Cyrus. “Not another word from you.”

  “Your mistake,” Cyrus said, his face red, but he followed as Valerie and her soldiers moved together.

  Valerie’s whole body felt like lead now that the adrenaline of the fight was subsiding. Being on Earth brought back her old sickness every time she returned, but with so many Fractus attacks on Earth, she couldn’t afford to stay on the Globe full time.

  Valerie, Cyrus, and the rest of her soldiers were close enough to grip hands. She squeezed a rock in her pocket, and a sensation passed over her like stepping through a bubble.

  When she opened her eyes, she was in the garden outside of her house on the Globe with Cyrus and the Knights. She dropped her rock into the flowerbed next to the door, which was where it had come from in the first place. Now that the Byways had been destroyed, all anyone needed to travel between worlds was something from the planet they were traveling to. It didn’t need to be charmed with magic or even be a special object—any old rock would do.

  Which was why Reaper was having no trouble sending his army to Earth in droves.

  “Good work,” Valerie said to her soldiers. “They won’t be attacking that city again today. I’ll have Chisisi send a team back tonight to make sure.”

  “But we don’t know what those Fractus were there for! We should have captured one and made him talk,” Cyrus insisted.

  “You can go home,” Valerie said to the Knights, choosing not to respond to Cyrus’s words.

  Alex raised an eyebrow before following her fellow Knights into the woods. When they were out of earshot, Valerie turned to Cyrus, forcing herself to suck in a calming breath so she didn’t start yelling at him.

  “Never do that again,” Valerie said.

  “Admit it, you made the wrong call,” Cyrus said.

  “Alex could have been killed! You confused my soldiers. Don’t make me pull you off of active fighting duty.”

  “Fine, maybe I shouldn’t have disagreed with you
right on the field,” Cyrus huffed. “But we could have taken those guys. I think they were out in the middle of nowhere for a reason.”

  “Do you think the charm that binds magic on Earth was nearby?” Valerie asked, unable to keep the disbelief out of her voice. “Wouldn’t it be somewhere a little more impressive, like the Great Wall of China?”

  “It makes more sense for it to be somewhere out of the way,” Cyrus argued, his tone defensive.

  Henry’s mind connected with hers, and he burst out the front door.

  “You’re hurt!” Henry said, his eyes roving over her, looking for an injury.

  Cyrus stepped back, scanning her until he saw her bleeding leg. “You never said—I didn’t know!”

  “It’s nothing,” Valerie said, pulling up her pant leg.

  Cyrus knelt beside her, and his touch was gentle as he probed the wound.

  “At least it wasn’t made using one of the Fractus’s new black weapons,” he said. He looked up, and all of the arrogance was wiped from his expression. “This was why you had us fall back. You did make the right call.”

  Valerie nodded. “It was a piece of glass. It’ll be fine.”

  “It can still get infected,” Henry said.

  Valerie fought the urge to snap at them both that their attention was making her claustrophobic, but she bit the inside of her cheek. Her father would have told her that she needed to behave like a leader at all times, and leaders don’t whine.

  “I’m going to go clean it,” she said, shrugging off their attention as subtly as she could.

  “I know you’re tired, but Skye wants to see you tonight. He says it’s important,” Henry said, and his worry for her seeped through their mental connection.

  She nodded, shutting her mind to his anxiety. She’d been doing that a lot lately, because adding Henry’s stress and grief to her own was overpowering.

  An hour later, Valerie left her house and began walking to The Horseshoe, mercifully alone. Cyrus had returned home to shower and rest.

  The woods around her, once lush, were now brittle and brown. The closer she got to The Horseshoe, the worse it became. Al, the Grand Master of the Stewardship Guild and a member of the Fractus, had used his Guild’s power to send a massive drought to Silva, the capital city in Arden.

  The result was that everything that had once been alive and green was dying. Water was hard to come by, as lakes that had once glittered now receded. It was an effective attack, because for the first time, Conjurors across the country were forced to make sacrifices.

  It had always been a land of plenty—magic made accessing food, water, and every kind of necessity a given. No one knew what it was to go without, but they were discovering it now. Every person in Arden had a daily water ration, enough for a shower and drinking water. And if they didn’t find a way to make it rain soon, even those rations would have to be cut back.

  Going without something that most people considered a requirement for survival wasn’t new to Valerie, but it hurt to see the cracked lips of the kids playing in the dusty streets. If she’d done a better job of convincing the Grand Masters not to follow Reaper, none of this would be happening.

  She was distracted from her guilt as a tall centaur trotted out of the Relations Guild in her direction. Skye’s mane looked like it needed a good wash, but his bearing was as regal as ever. Her friend and mentor, Gideon, jogged beside him.

  “We’re losing ground to the Fractus in the fringes of Silva,” Skye said, skipping the pleasantries and getting straight to the point. “What’s slowing us down is your policy of avoiding kill attacks. I’m not saying we should unnecessarily slaughter the Fractus, but we can’t always take them prisoner.”

  “I know that,” Valerie said, her mind spinning as she remembered the faces of the soldiers in her army who had died in the recent battles. “I wouldn’t ask anyone to die rather than fight back.”

  “Sometimes, we must be willing to kill our enemies even when it is not in immediate self-defense,” Skye said.

  “That’s not the policy that we agreed on when we formed the Fist,” Gideon said, naming Valerie’s army of supporters from around the Globe. Valerie could see from the stiffness of his stance that this was an argument he’d had with Skye before.

  “You have to look at the broader perspective,” Skye said, ignoring Gideon and speaking directly to Valerie. “They’re shooting lightning at us from a mile away and people are dying. We need to combat them with an equally effective weapon.”

  “We don’t have anything like that, even if I were willing to use it,” Valerie said.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Leo and Cyrus have an idea for a weapon that could send bursts of magic at the speed of light that would kill enemies instantly,” Skye said.

  “They said it was possible when you asked, not that they recommended using such a weapon,” Gideon added, his lips forming a hard line.

  Cyrus had been working with the Weapons Guild on creating weapons infused with light, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about new ways to kill Fractus at a distance. Was that why he’d vanished instead of accompanying her to meet with Skye? He had to know what her reaction would be.

  Valerie’s face hardened as she met Skye’s eyes. “We’re not changing our policy. We take prisoners when possible and kill only when absolutely necessary. Otherwise, what makes us different from Reaper? He thinks he’s doing the right thing, too, sacrificing a few to save the many.”

  Gideon’s eyes connected with hers, and he gave her a small nod of approval. The tension in Valerie’s shoulders eased a notch.

  “Don’t compare me to that madman,” Skye snapped, and Valerie could see that his nerves were as frayed as her own.

  She took a breath and shook her head. “Of course not. Excuse the insult. But there must be a better way. What if Cyrus and the lightweavers create arrows of light that can be shot into enemy lines? That wouldn’t be fatal, but it might weaken their weapons.”

  Skye nodded slowly. “That would be something.”

  “And how about the work that the Glamour Guild is doing to disguise our army?” Valerie continued.

  Skye launched into an overview of the effectiveness of various tactics they were employing, and Valerie nearly sighed with relief that the argument over new weapons to kill the Fractus was over—for now.

  Chapter 2

  It was night by the time that Valerie and Gideon turned their steps homeward. In the moonlight, everything seemed less like a wasteland and more like the city that she’d fallen in love with when she’d first come to the Globe.

  “Oberon would be proud of how you are leading this war,” Gideon said after they had walked silently for a ways. There was no bitterness in his voice, even though Gideon and her father had not been friends.

  Valerie released a laugh that was also a sob. “He’d probably tell me to listen to Skye and kill as many Fractus as I can.”

  Gideon flashed her a brief smile. “You might be right. But he’d support you when you told him no.”

  They reached the garden in front of her house, and Valerie shut her eyes, letting herself remember her father—the taste of his awful pancakes, the effortless grace of his movements when he fought in battle, and, best of all, the pride in his stormy eyes whenever he looked at her.

  Gideon’s sharp breath brought her back to reality, and she opened her eyes and saw why he’d been startled. In the waning light, in the middle of a drought, her father’s garden had bloomed. He had filled it with hundreds of white poppies. It was the flower that he said symbolized her, and it was the only kind he’d planted in his garden, apparently.

  Had he somehow known that he would die, and had left this as a gift to her? It didn’t matter. As the delicate scent of the flowers reached her, she laughed. Beside her, Gideon was smiling, too.

  “I’m starting to see why your mother loved him,” he admitted.

  Valerie asked him the question she’d never had the guts to before. “You loved
her, too, didn’t you?”

  He nodded once, and then squeezed her shoulder.

  “And like Oberon, I am proud of you,” he said. “I see her in you, next to the best parts of your father.”

  The lump in Valerie’s throat made it impossible to speak, so she gave Gideon a hug instead. Finally, she cleared her throat.

  “I promised someone the first bloom from my garden,” she said. “I’ll be back before dawn.”

  Valerie raced through the forest to one of the trees that led up to Arbor Aurum, the capital city for the People of the Woods, and also the location where Elden, their former leader, was healing.

  She climbed the tree effortlessly, because she’d had a lot of practice. The People were on the front lines of the fight with the Fractus, with a contingent on Earth and another on the Globe. They fought the Fractus guerrilla-style, hiding in the trees and leaping out to attack the army when they tried to advance into Silva. Valerie talked battle tactics with them several times a week.

  When she reached the platform, it was full dark, but the stars were brighter up there. The wounded were all located in an enormous hollow tree deep in the city, where they could be protected.

  Elden’s alcove was usually attended by his wife, daughter, or one of his many friends, but at this time of night, he was alone. He slept fitfully, his fingers obsessively twining and untwining. He hadn’t regained consciousness since he’d been almost fatally attacked with one of the black weapons wielded by the Fractus.

  “I brought you a poppy, the first bloom of my garden, like I promised,” Valerie said, speaking quietly so as not to awaken the other patients.

  Elden’s hands stilled at the sound of her voice.

  “I wish you’d wake up,” she continued, and let her body slump a little. For the first time in a while, she wasn’t thinking like a leader, wishing that one of her most trusted generals would get back into the action. She was just a girl who missed her friend.

  “Valerie, you’re back,” Cara said.

  She turned and gave Cyrus’s sister a smile. “You’re still helping give the sick light treatments?”

  Cara had fully embraced her potential as a lightweaver, and Cyrus was helping her develop her magic.