“Aaron —”
“I’m sorry,” Aaron said, and ran toward them, skidding across pine needles. Tamara looked up from her fireball and screamed.
“Aaron, duck!”
He ducked. She threw the fire. It arced over Aaron’s head, landed among the mass of the Chaos-ridden, and exploded. Some of the Chaos-ridden caught fire, but they kept coming. Their expressions didn’t change, even when they fell down, still burning.
Now Call was more afraid than he could remember being. Aaron was nearing the first line of the enemy army. He held his hand up, chaos beginning to whirl and grow in his palm like a tiny hurricane. It swirled upward —
The Chaos-ridden reached Aaron. They seemed to swallow him up among them for a moment, and Call’s stomach dropped into his shoes.
Call started to stumble toward them — and halted. He could see Aaron again, standing stock-still, looking bewildered. The Chaos-ridden were walking around him, making no move to touch him at all, like water parting around a rock in a stream.
They marched past Aaron, and Call could hear Jasper and Tamara breathing harshly, because the Chaos-ridden were moving in their direction now. Maybe they wanted to take out the weak ones before starting on Aaron. Call was the only one with a knife, although he wasn’t sure how much Miri would help. He wondered if he’d die here, protecting Tamara and Jasper — and Aaron. It was a heroic way to go, at least. Maybe it would prove he wasn’t what his father thought.
The Chaos-ridden had reached them. Aaron was trying to push his way through, trying to reach his friends. The first of the Chaos-ridden, the huge man with the spiked wristbands, came to a stop in front of Call.
Call tightened his grip on Miri. Whatever else, he would go down fighting.
The Chaos-ridden spoke. Its voice sounded like a croak, rusty from disuse. “Master,” it said, fixing its whirling eyes on Call. “We have waited for you for so long.”
The first Chaos-ridden knelt down in front of Call. And then the next Chaos-ridden knelt, and the next, until they were all on their knees and Aaron was standing among them, staring at Call across the clearing with a look of disbelief.
MASTER,” SAID THE leader of the Chaos-ridden (or at least that’s what Call assumed he was). “Shall we kill the Makar for you?”
“No,” Call said quickly, horrified. “No, just — stay where you are. Stay,” he added, as if he were talking to Havoc.
None of the Chaos-ridden moved. Aaron began walking toward Call, boots crunching on pine needles. He navigated his way gingerly among the kneeling army.
“What,” said Jasper, “is going on?”
Call felt a hand on his shoulder. Whirling around, he saw it was Tamara. She was staring at the Chaos-ridden; she ripped her gaze away from them and fastened it on Call. “Tell us what this all means,” she said. “Tell us what you are to them.”
It was there in her voice — even if she didn’t know the answer already, she strongly suspected it. Call had thought Tamara would look angry, figuring this out. But she didn’t. She looked incredibly sad, which was worse.
“Call?” Aaron asked. He was standing only a couple of feet from Call now, but it felt like a long way away. He stood there uncertainly, trying not to look around him at the Chaos-ridden, who remained on their knees, awaiting a command. Call looked over them, some of their bodies young and some old, but none of them beneath fourteen years of age. None of them younger than he was.
Tamara shook her head. “You were mad at me for lying to you. Don’t lie to us now.”
There was a torturously terrible pause. Jasper was staring (and still grasping his stick, as if that would protect him). But Aaron was looking at Call hopefully, as if he expected Call to be able to clear all of this up, and that was the worst.