Memories of Ash (The Sunbolt Chronicles Book 2) by Intisar Khanani

them. Everything else was drained of its essence to power the spells cast by the mages who once lived here.”
    I wrap my arms over my chest. “This wasn’t always a desert.”
    “No. Deserts seem to develop primarily due to human stupidity,” the phoenix says with an edge of contempt. “In this case, the connection is direct.” He shrugs his wings. “I am more concerned with what you have done.”
    Trespassing on the Burnt Lands? I wouldn’t have chosen to if I’d known what awaited me. “That portal should have been destroyed,” I say testily. “I had no idea it would bring me out here.”
    “Yet I am glad it did.”
    Surely I heard wrong . “You’re glad? ”
    “Tell me, what did you do to the spell-beast that trapped you in the building?”
    I hesitate.
    “And how did you find the magic to slow the pack that hunted you?”
    I consider the phoenix, his fire-and-night plumage. He helped me. I would not have made it out without him. So, as simply as I can, I tell him how I unraveled one creature’s magic and used the part of it that I absorbed to attack the others. After all, there’s no reason to tell him I’m not officially a mage.
    The phoenix listens without interrupting, nor does he speak when I am finished. Instead, he studies me in silence and then, just as I am beginning to feel unnerved by his regard, he hops down from the bench and paces away to gaze across the canyon toward the Burnt Lands. “Where do you go from here?”
    “Fidanya.”
    He nods. “To report the mage’s death. And then?”
    I bite my lip. There’s no way I can make such a report without implicating myself. The phoenix hasn’t realized I’m not a traditionally trained student, that I have something to hide. He certainly has no idea I intend to help my unofficial mentor, regardless of what the Council decrees for her. He might not actually care — I have no way of knowing what his relationship is to the Council — but there’s no need to tell him any of that.
    “There’s something else I must do there,” I admit.
    “There is work that must be done here,” the phoenix says, so softly I wonder if he speaks to himself. I hope he does. I have no interest in going anywhere near the Burnt Lands again. But then he turns back to me. “It is time to try again to … unravel the spells that plague these lands.”
    “Try again?” I echo.
    “It has been attempted before, but never with any success. You,” he fixes his bright gaze on me, “ you have succeeded. So I must ask you to return.”
    I shake my head. “I’m not going back in there.”
    “Someone must. A mage such as you, who can break apart the spells that drain the magic from the land and pour it into such creatures as you have seen.”
    I squint at him, as if that will bring his words into greater focus. “I wondered how the spell-creatures could survive without magic. You mean that they’re the reason there is no magic?”
    “Not precisely.” He tilts his head back, studying the barrier from where he stands. “There are spells that stretch across the sky, that root through the earth, spells that have been contained by the boundaries set around the Burnt Lands. Those spells gather the natural magic of all they touch — the sunlight and moonlight falling through them, the wind blowing past — and channel it to the spells that are connected to them. And so, the spell-creatures remain, even after four hundred years.”
    “Why would anyone make such a thing?”
    The bird shrugs his wings as if this were a mystery he has long since given up pondering. “You are human. Perhaps you can understand it.”
    I look away. The answers are simple, in their way: greed, rage, perhaps even vengeance. I don’t know enough of the mages who destroyed the lands at my back to know what passions ruled them, but I don’t doubt they are the same passions that govern humans today. They had wanted to destroy their enemies, to assure that they would never rise again. They