Skyfire
Authors: Skye Melki-Wegner
What if you achieve everything you've dreamed of â and it turns into a nightmare?
Danika and her crew of refugees finally reach the Magnetic Valley. Will it be the safe haven they had imagined? When a runaway girl is shot down before their eyes, Danika and her friends realise that this new land is no paradise. They must try to fit in at all costs â even if revealing their secrets will mean a death sentence.
The conclusion to the Chasing the Valley trilogy will reveal explosive surprises and terrifying new dangers.
âThe drama starts on the first page and doesn't let up. Great fun.' THE AGE
âThe ultimate blend of an oppressive rule, a post-apocalyptic landscape, adventure, survival and a touch of romance, beautifully woven into a heart-stopping storyline.' DIVABOOKNERD.COM
For my parents, Chris and John,
who taught me the value of imagination
The sky catches fire at midnight.
Just before it starts, we're huddling in our rowboat in the newly flooded Magnetic Valley. Flecks of starlight reflect on the lake, erased by every slosh of the oars. Here, gone. Here, gone. After a long day on the water, I feel fragile enough to be one of them.
My muscles ache from rowing and hunger gnaws at my gut. We stole a few supply packs from the ruins of the army camp, but we can't afford to fill our bellies. Who knows how long the food will have to last?
Maisy and Clementine Pembroke sit in front of me. They lean into each other, dozing, a tangle of blonde frizz and bruises. They look nothing like the spoilt richie twins who once spent their days in
fancy boutiques, painting their nails and nibbling cupcakes.
Teddy Nort perches beside me, manning the other oar. Every so often he glances behind us, alert for signs of pursuit. His vigilance comes from his past as a burglar: a lifetime of being chased across the Rourton rooftops. But tonight, it might keep us alive.
A day ago, this valley was green: rolling hills, mossy boulders, mountain peaks and empty sky.
Then we blew the dam to smithereens.
We flooded the catacombs beneath the Magnetic Valley, drowning our king's plan to invade the land beyond. And here we are in a stolen rowboat, travelling eastward. An unknown nation lies before us, and the wrath of King Morrigan burns behind.
Our final crewmate is Lukas Morrigan, son of the king. The boy who joined us to stand against his family and seek a new life beyond his father's tyranny. The boy who traded his life to keep us safe. He's nestled down among our packs, eyes closed beneath his dark curls.
I force myself to look away. I'm on rowing duty, and I should be helping Teddy to keep watch. This isn't the time to be distracted by Lukas, even if he â
A roar bellows on the eastern horizon.
The fire glows in the distance, rolling crimson, bloody and low. As it rises, it cascades lighter: a golden
glow that sparks like a campfire. Clementine jerks awake with such force that our boat almost capsizes. Startled cries erupt around me, and I jump like someone's blasted an alchemical jolt down my spine.
âYou all seeing this?' Teddy asks, his voice a little strangled. âOr have I been munching too many of those mouldy mushrooms?'
No one responds.
The fire is far away, but it blazes up to scorch the sky. The grumble of its roar sends a tingle through my bones. It lashes up and down, side to side, an explosion of wild light and violent shine that splinters the dark into shards until â
Nothing. Darkness curls back in, a blanket to smother the flames. The night slathers fire with shadow. Flare, flicker, fade.
Silence.
I grip the oar so tightly that it feels like hot wax in my palms. I steady myself, let out a slow breath and try to quash the quiver in my belly.
Lukas wets his lips. âThat was ⦠strange.'
âStrange?' Teddy's voice is choked. âStrange is when you shimmy through a richie's window and find he's bright enough to stash the silver in the sock drawer. This isn't just
strange
. This is â¦' He shakes his head. âI reckon this is something else.'
I glance at him, taken aback. Usually Teddy's the quickest to adapt to an unknown situation.
He grew up a pickpocket, and he's an expert at slipping out of danger. I'm used to his bluster, his boundless faith in his own ability. I'm not used to his fear.
âWhat exactly are we heading towards?' Clementine says, turning abruptly to face us. âWe can hardly go back, not with the army behind us. If anyone recognises us, if anyone realises we're still alive â¦'
No one responds. The silence feels as solid as a cloak around my limbs.
âIt doesn't matter,' I say. âWe've got to keep moving.'
âBut the fire in the sky â'
âForget the fire.' My voice is firm, even though my insides are squirming. âWe've come this far; we can't quit now. Maybe it's a defence system or something. A new kind of alchemy, to keep King Morrigan away.'
Lukas offers a soft smile. âYou never give up, do you?'
I shrug and look away, not keen to meet his eyes. Lukas gives me too much credit. If only he knew all the times I'd felt tempted by despair.
Teddy flashes me a cocky grin â not quite as genuine as usual, perhaps, but at least he's making the attempt.
âOnwards and upwards, good lady!' he says. He pauses to reconsider, before dipping his oar into the
water. âWell, maybe not upwards. Not unless our rowboat sprouts wings.' He brightens. âOr maybe we'll catch some weird new aquatic foxary, and make it pull us along like a horse and carriage â¦'
Clementine rolls her eyes, but I catch a hint of a smile.
âYou might be onto something,' I say, thrusting my own oar downwards in time. âI mean, if the sky catches fire in this strange new land, who's to say rowboats can't sprout wings?'
âExactly.' Teddy dips the oar for another stroke. âI bet we'll find all sorts of new alchemy in this place. Just picture it: plates that magically fill up with pastries, and alchemy charms that turn ice into wine, and â'
âA charm to shut up irritating scruffers?' Clementine suggests. The rest of us snort at Teddy's wounded expression.
âA library full of books of enchantment?' says Maisy.
âYeah, why not?' Teddy brightens again. âAnd rope ladders that unfurl themselves when you're nicking out the treasury window. And a charm to turn guards into walruses, and â'
âAnd peace,' Lukas says.
We turn to look at him, caught off guard. It's strange to hear someone admit what we all truly yearn for.
It feels like years since we left Rourton, a city in northern Taladia walled by stone and ruthless guards. Our crew fled through the wilderness, guided only by a smuggler's song and our own desperation. We've been hunted, we've been betrayed. We've survived mountains and wastelands, rivers and catacombs.
All to reach this place. This place of legend, to which Taladian refugees run when they can no longer bear the horrors of home.
The Magnetic Valley.
I've spent all my life dreaming of the Valley. It's a natural shield: a barrier between Taladia and the land beyond. Its slopes are lined with seams of magnetic stone, which interfere with magic. King Morrigan can't risk sending biplanes or war machines through a magnetic field.
Our destination is the land beyond, where King Morrigan cannot reach. A place of fairy tales and nursery rhymes, sung by weary parents on winter nights. A place to finally be free.
But the legends are centuries old. It's been generations since we had actual word from the land beyond the Valley. We don't even know its name. It's just a land from songs and stories. A land of hope.
A land where fire burns the sky.
They never mentioned that in the fairy tales.
We reach the shore an hour before dawn.
The water grows shallower, inch by inch, until our hull scrapes across the rocks. We sit for a moment, taken aback by this jolting end to our journey. There's no grand procession onto shore, no welcoming party of friendly local villagers. After all this time, it feels anticlimactic.
âYou know,' Teddy says after a while, âI'm all for drinking in the scenery, but I reckon we should get a move on.'
We clamber out of the boat, our limbs cramped and uncooperative. My boots splosh down into cold water and I ease a pack onto my aching shoulders. On the bright side, at least the sky doesn't seem keen to burst into flames again.
Teddy gives our boat one final pat. âFarewell, noble rowboat.' He shoves it back into deeper water with a grand gesture, as though releasing a captive bird into the wild. âBe free!'
Lukas laughs, sharing a brief grin with Teddy. Good. They've spent too long distrusting each other. I glance between them, a small smile on my lips.
It's too dark for details, but the moonlight gives a vague hint of the shape of the landscape. It glints across the nearby foliage, a choke of shrubs and bracken. The mountains have descended into foothills now: broken humps to our left and right. And ahead ⦠blackness.
I could use the star charm on my bracelet, of course, to illuminate our path. But if there's danger nearby, I don't think lighting an alchemical beacon â even a tiny one â would be the smartest way to extend our life expectancy.
Besides, my magical proclivity is Night, marked by a curling black tattoo at the top of my spine. My powers only developed recently, so I don't have full control yet, but I'm beginning to sense the phases of Night as they crawl across my skin.
We must have moved beyond the Valley's magnetic seams, because the magic is slowly ebbing back into my veins. I can feel the breath of encroaching dawn â even with my eyes closed, and no hint of light yet in the sky.
Teddy squints into the dark. âAnyone see what's up ahead?'
The others shake their heads.
âAny owls around?' I say hopefully.
Lukas's proclivity is Bird, and he sometimes borrows their eyes to survey the landscape. But he shakes his head, apologetic. âMight be some in the distance, but â¦' He screws up his face in concentration. âNo, too far away.'
We slosh up onto the shore. I hear a few muffled curses as someone trips, and I jab my shin on a thorny twist of foliage. At least the air smells fresh. After so long tucked onto the boat with four filthy crewmates, it's a pleasant break for my nostrils.
After twenty minutes of stumbling, we reach the edge of solid footing. I'm the first to realise what's happening; with a gust of wind, the night presses hard against my body and I throw out my arms to hold the others back. âStop!'
They freeze.
My proclivity tingles, sensing an unbroken wall of Night. I let out a slow breath and drop to my knees. Cautiously, I crawl a few paces forward. My palms lift from stone to ⦠nothing. Empty air. I draw my body back, careful to balance myself as I retreat into a crouch.
âIt's a steep drop,' I say. âA cliff, maybe.'
We all stare into the darkness. A little more
moonlight is finally splintering through the clouds, but from this height it's impossible to tell what landscape lies below, or even if we'll be able to descend this cliff to reach it. All we can do is â
Teddy grabs my arm. âLook!'
I whip around to follow his gaze. He's staring behind us, focused on a patch of distant mountain slope. The light is grey and feeble, but there's just enough to suggest the shape of boulders, of rocky outcrops and â
And a man.
If he were standing still, he'd be impossible to see. But he darts across a patch of open slope, and the movement catches my eye. For a moment I think it must be a wild animal â a deer, perhaps â until I catch the tiny spark that moves with him.
An alchemy charm.
âWho â¦?' Clementine whispers.
This can't be a coincidence. The man is sneaking around, hiding in shadows. And he's chosen a charm, not a proper lantern, to light his way. Clearly, he doesn't want to be seen. But if that's true, the fact he's risking any light at all means he must be looking for something.
Or someone.
âHunter,' I say. âIt must be a hunter.'
The hunters are an elite force of killers hired by King Morrigan to track fugitives across Taladia. In
the past, hunters have shot at us, bombed us and chased us on foxaries. It was hunters who tried to drown us in a churning river. It was a hunter who sent Radnor over a waterfall.
âGee,' Teddy whispers. âGuess the king really wants us, huh? Didn't think he'd chase us all the way through the Valley.' He forces a grin. âI reckon I'd be flattered, if I wasn't so busy cacking myself.'
âHow many?' Clementine says.
âJust one, as far as I can see.' Teddy pauses. âMind you, could be a whole damn platoon behind those rocks.'
He doesn't need to mention that one hunter will be enough. Even alone, this man could be deadly. He'll lurk behind us, following our tracks through the wilderness. He'll slink in silence, biding his time. Sooner or later, we'll let our guard down. And then, with either pistol or proclivity, he'll blast us to shreds.
The others turn to me. I know what they're thinking. I'm the only one with a useful proclivity here. I could dissolve into Night, float forward and scope out our position.
But my power's still raw, and I barely have a grip on it yet. If I can't keep control, there's a real risk I might lose myself. I could dissolve forever into darkness, and float away into the night.
I've come close to such a death, and the memory sends a chill through my veins. That unbearable
lightness: its peace, its lure. The summoning of shadow, the fading of my sense of self. Just another tendril of the dark.
âYou up to this, Danika?' Lukas says.
There's a quiet strain of worry in his voice, and I know he doesn't want me to risk my proclivity. But he doesn't try to stop me, either. He knows it's my choice to make.
I force a smile. âHey, I did it down in the catacombs, didn't I?'
âYeah,' Teddy says, âbut that was a real emergency. We were gonna drown anyway, if you couldn't do it. But now â¦' He shakes his head. âI reckon we should wait. He's still a fair way behind us, right? If we head over this cliff as soon as it's light enough, I bet we can give him the slip.'
I wait for Clementine to argue. Surely she'd rather I take the risk than let Maisy stride into danger? Not so long ago, she'd have put her foot down and argued I should be kicked off the crew if I
didn't
take this risk. Yet here she is, nodding in favour of the safer option. Of keeping my soul intact, and my limbs solid.
I swallow back a sting of emotion. I've spent so many years alone: an orphan on the streets of Rourton, no friends and no family. The idea that anyone might care for me â even Clementine Pembroke, of all people â seems as foreign as a boat with wings.
âOkay,' I say. âWe'll have to â'
Lukas lets out a cry. I spin to look at him, my throat frozen tight. What has he seen? Another hunter? A soldier?
His eyes are blank, rolling back to show the whites. He collapses to his knees and stares at an empty patch of stone, his entire body shaking.
I bend beside him, my stomach as cold and solid as a magnet, and clap a hand across his mouth to silence him. âLukas!' I whisper. I yank his chin up and stare into his eyes, trying to snap him out of it.
Lukas just rolls aside again and throws his palms open in front of him. He stares into them with a dizzy gaze, quivering as though a bullet has smashed through his belly.
âWhat â¦?' My eyes travel from his face to his palms and back. Then I realise what's happening.
Bird
. Lukas must have sensed a bird nearby. He's locked into its mind, using his palms as a mirror to reflect what the creature is seeing. But I've never seen such a violent reaction. Lukas always blanks out when he borrows a bird's eyes, but he doesn't normally shake, or moan, or â
âTeddy!' Clementine hisses.
I look up at the others. With a cold shock, I realise that Teddy has collapsed to his knees. He trembles, his eyes blank and glassy, focused upon a
smooth patch of dirt. But Teddy's proclivity is Beast, not Bird, and his power is limited to mammals.
What could possibly �
Lukas lets out a sharp cry: the shriek of a hawk on the hunt. There's a long moment of silence. Then he gives a strange little gasp and collapses sideways, like a newspaper flopping in the breeze.
I cup my hands gently beneath Lukas's head, trying to support him. I'm vaguely aware of the twins gasping and fussing over Teddy. Lukas's skin is warm and clammy, and his dark curls ruffle between my fingers. He releases a few ragged breaths. Then he finds the strength to push himself up onto his elbows, and finally into a sitting position. His eyes are overly bright in the darkness, but I let my hands slip away as he regains control over his body.
âAre you all right?' I fight to hide the anxiety in my voice. âWhat happened?'
Lukas takes another breath, then shakes his head. When he speaks, his voice is as coarse as dry sand. âHawk. Somewhere out there, in the dark.'
He tilts his head towards the abyss before us, and the shadowed landscape beyond.
I glance across at Teddy. He's still on his knees, his face strained. âI felt it too,' he says. âA tightness in your chest, yeah? Like you can't breathe, and there's something dodgy curling up into your brain?'
Lukas wets his lips. âIt wasn't ⦠it wasn't a natural hawk. There was something strange about it, something wrong with the connection â¦'
Teddy nods. âI reckon the magical breeding does something weird to 'em. Messes with the magic in their bones. First time you hook up to a new alchemical species, it takes a while to adjust. Same thing happened the first time I met a foxary.'
I stare between them, bewildered. Foxaries are beasts of burden in Taladia: enormous foxes, ridden like horses. They're alchemically twisted creatures, capable of surviving on tree-bark if need be, and tough enough to trek for days through the roughest wilderness. Teddy can link into their magic because his proclivity is Beast.
But Lukas's proclivity isn't Beast. It's Bird.
âI was looking down into the darkness,' Lukas says, his voice still dry. âHigh up in the clouds, with shadow all around me. I couldn't see much â not up there, in the night. But I could feel my wings, as huge as branches, and I could feel â¦' He shakes his head. âI don't know. Maybe I just imagined it. But I thought I could feel a weight on my back, and something on my face. And a kind of metallic cage, digging into my tongue â¦'
âLike a bridle?'
âYeah, I think so. And a rider.'
I hesitate, stunned. Back home, the royal alchemists have been trying to create hawkaries: enormous birds of prey, reshaped and restructured by alchemical serums. So far, their experiments have failed because alchemical creatures store magic in their bones. The bones of birds are too hollow and brittle to sustain much magic, and alchemy isn't advanced enough to keep such heavy creatures airborne. At least, not in Taladia.
I turn to Teddy. âYou felt it too?'
âYeah, I reckon so. Felt like when I first connected with a foxary â and the shape of its body felt the same, too. But I could see down into the sky, and there was wind, and feathers, and â¦' Teddy trails off. âI've gone all dizzy, though. Feels like someone's jumped into my skull and taken my brain for a waltz.'
âBut that doesn't make sense!' Clementine says, frustrated. âYou have different proclivities â Bird and Beast. You can't both connect with the same creature.'
Teddy throws up his hands. âHey, I'm not arguing. Just telling you what I felt.'
âUnless â¦' says Maisy.
We all turn to look at her.
âWhat?' I say.
Maisy bites her lip. âWell, if the bones of birds are too hollow to sustain alchemy, perhaps the people here had a different idea for a winged creature.'
âSome kind of hybrid, you reckon?' Teddy says. âPart hawk, part foxary?'
Maisy nods. âIt's difficult to create a new alchemical species â it takes decades of experimentation. It would be much easier to take a creature that's already been tainted with magic, I imagine, and twist it a little.'
I think of the foxaries, with their claws, their teeth, their vicious eyes. I think of the metal blades on their bridles, used to keep the beasts under control. A scrabble of claws. A flash of feathers. Death from the sky.
âBut if you're right,' I say, then hesitate. âI mean, if the people here have managed to breed winged foxaries ⦠they'd need alchemy way more advanced than anything in Taladia, wouldn't they?'
âYes,' Maisy says quietly. âThey would.'
And as one, we turn to face the dark.