There are hundreds of campfires lit but few tents behind which Cook and I can take cover. Most of the men wear leather breeches and fur vests, and I have no sense of which are higher-ranking and which are not. The only Karkauns who stand out are those who wear strange bone-and-steel armor and who carry staffs with human skulls on top. When they walk, they are given a wide berth. But most are gathered around enormous unlit pyres, pouring what looks to be deep scarlet sand in intricate shapes around them.

“Karkaun warlocks,” Cook mutters to me. “Spend all their time terrifying the masses and attempting to raise spirits. They never manage it, but they’re still treated like gods.”

The camp stinks of sweat and rancid vegetables. Huge piles of firewood belie the warm weather, and the Karkauns don’t bother cleaning up all the horse dung. Jugs of some pale alcohol are as ubiquitous as the men, and there’s a stench of sour milk that lingers over everything.

“Bah!” An older Karkaun shoves Cook when she accidently bumps him with her basket. “Tek fidkayad urqin!”

Cook swings her head back and forth, playing the old, confused woman well. The man knocks the basket out of her hands, and his friends laugh as clothes cascade onto the filthy ground. He kicks her in the gut as she tries to gather up the clothes quickly, making lewd gestures.

I quickly help her gather the clothes, trusting that the Karkauns are too drunk to notice an invisible hand helping Cook. But when I crouch, she hisses at me.

“You’re flickering, girl! Move!”

Sure enough, I look down to find my invisibility faltering. The Nightbringer! He must be in Antium—his presence is snuffing out my magic.

Cook bolts swiftly through the knot of men, making her way steadily north.

“You still there, girl?” Tension is thick on her skin, but she doesn’t look back.

“They’re not very organized,” I whisper in return. “But skies, there are so many of them.”

“Long winters in the south,” Cook says. “They’ve got nothing to do but breed.”

“Why strike now?” I ask. “Why here?”

“There’s a famine among their people and a firebrand warlock who has taken advantage of it. Nothing motivates a man like hunger in the bellies of his children. The Karkauns looked north and saw a wealthy, fat empire. Year after year, the Martials had plenty and the Karkauns had nothing. Empire wouldn’t trade fairly with them either. Grímarr, their warlock priest, reminded them of that. And here we are.”

We are nearly through the northern end of the camp now. A flat cliff face stretches ahead of us, but Cook makes her way confidently toward it, shedding the basket of laundry as darkness falls and we get farther from the camp. “They’re depending entirely on sheer numbers to win here. That or they’ve got something nasty up their sleeves—something the Martials can’t fight.”

I glance up at the moon—almost full, but not quite. In three days, it will fatten into the Grain Moon. By the Grain Moon, the forgotten will find their master.

Cook doubles back twice to make sure we aren’t followed before she gestures me close to the cliff face. She nods upward. “There’s a cave about fifty feet up,” she says. “Leads deeper into the mountains. Stay here, and stay invisible, just in case.”

“How the hells are you going to—”

She crooks her fingers. There is something familiar about the motion, and then suddenly she is climbing the sheer rock face with the spryness of a spider. I gape. It is unnatural—no, impossible. She is not flying, exactly, but there is a lightness to her that is distinctly inhuman.

“What the hells—”

A rope falls and smacks me in the head. Cook’s face appears from overhead. “Tie it around you,” she says. “Brace your feet on the wall, in the wedges, in whatever space you can find, and climb.”

When I finally reach her, I am out of breath, and when I ask her how she did it, she hisses at me and starts off through the cave without turning back.

We are deep in the mountains before Cook finally suggests I drop my invisibility.

“It might take me a few minutes to wake up,” I say to her. “I have visions, and I’m not sure—”

“I’ll make sure you don’t die.”

I nod but find myself paralyzed. I do not wish to face the visions—not after what the Nightbringer showed me.

Though my mother cannot see me, she cocks her head, as if she senses my discomfort. My face flushes, and though I search for an explanation, I cannot find one. I’m a coward, I want to say. I always have been. Skies, this is humiliating. If she were just Cook, I would not have cared. But she is my mother. My mother. I have spent years wondering what she would think of me.

She looks around the tunnel and finally sits on the earth floor. “I’m tired,” she says. “Damn Karkauns. Come. Sit next to an old woman, girl.”

I ease down beside her, and for the first time she doesn’t flinch away from me—because she can’t see me.

“These visions,” she says after a time. “They are frightening?”

I think of her in the prison cell. The singing. The crack. Those sounds that meant nothing until they meant everything. And even now, even when I do not comprehend who she has become, I cannot bear to tell her what I saw. I cannot say it, for saying it will make it real.