There: the sorceress, a feathered half monster, dragged herself on long talons, toward Skybreaker in the shape of a bear with horns and scales. He roared and the sorceress screamed. She made an elaborate gesture, and shadows leapt from the mountain, enveloping him.
Nothing climbed toward her.
Skybreaker broke free of the shadows but was stripped to the form of a man. He wore robes, his beard was long and steel gray, and he held a wand the size of a short sword, of vivid purple wood and tipped in silver.
The sorceress charged, beaked mouth open in a shriek.
He cast lightning and it caught her. She shook it off, but her feathers smoked. They vanished and it was only the sorceress standing before the sorcerer, both of them with heaving shoulders, shining with sweat.
“This is the seat of your power and yet you cannot banish me,” Skybreaker said.
“I can,” the sorceress croaked. Feathers bled down her cheeks, and her mouth was full of razor teeth ruining her words. “Your mountain is far from here.”
“Where is your great demon? Where the strength of the Fifth Mountain?”
The sorceress bared her shark’s teeth and clapped her hands: wind and shadows poured at the sorcerer again, but he grasped at them with one hand, spooling them around his wand.
Nothing could see the strain in the sorceress. She had no reserves.
“If we’d known you were alone,” Skybreaker said, “we’d have come sooner. Where is the Heir to the Moon?”
“I don’t have him.”
“He has been seen on your mountain—by spirits and Heaven itself. You should not have let him out under the sky, Sorceress.”
Nothing slipped on the layers of gravel.
The sorceress glanced over, shock on her face, and swept a hand toward Nothing: shadows rose in a wall separating Nothing from them.
“You need me,” Nothing said.
“I don’t have any princes here,” the sorceress said.
Skybreaker laughed. “When I kill you, I will take your familiars for my own. I will have the prince and the mountain.”
“You cannot have me,” the sorceress said in her tooth-garbled voice. “There is nothing here. Nothing to be protected. Nothing, do you hear me?”
Again the sorcerer laughed, wild and cruel, but Nothing understood: the sorceress wanted her to go, to leave with the Selegan, with Kirin, with everyone. Keep them away from Skybreaker. The sorceress would hold him here and give them a chance.
She crept along the wall of shadows, freezing and shaking. Icy wind cut at her, and her fingers and toes were numb to the tiny slicing shards of rock.
Skybreaker called lightning again. It was weaker, but even weak lightning can burn.
The sorceress screamed.
Nothing did not think: she found a sharp stone and tucked it against her ribs, running the final space between herself and Skybreaker. He was an old man, but strong and tall, and he pointed at the sorceress with his wand.
She could not lose the sorceress again—she’d just gotten her back!
Nothing leapt at him, bashing the stone against his head.
It hit with a dull thunk, and Nothing grabbed his shoulder as they both fell.
They slammed to the ground and rolled down the slope. The sorceress cried her name. Nothing tasted blood. Her shoulder hit the ground; his weight crushed her; they rolled and rolled. She gritted her teeth and let go of Skybreaker, skidding away.
Nothing gasped, spat gravel and blood, and pushed herself up to her hands and knees against the rough mountainside. There lay Skybreaker, groaning, bleeding from his head.
The sorceress ran down to them, setting off a small avalanche of rocks. With a ferocious cry, she grasped at the air itself: in her clawed hands formed a sword of raw shadows and pulsing red light. She stabbed down into Skybreaker’s chest.
A low boom sounded, like a single throb of the mountain’s heart. Skybreaker’s back arched, blood spurted, and silence fell.
Nothing panted, holding on to her aching ribs, swallowing again and again. Her throat hurt too, and her eyes streamed. Her cheek was sticky.
The sorceress jerked the sword free and flung it into the sky to dissipate. Then she turned frantically and fell to her knees beside Nothing.
Nothing’s breath scoured her throat as she stared. Her mouth filled with something huge: panic or fear, she thought.
But a laugh burst out of her!
Nothing grinned around it and reached for the sorceress.
“Nothing.” The sorceress grasped her hands. Darkness blotted out Nothing’s vision, but she kept laughing, and focused. The sorceress’s white eye was streaked with red and black, her green eye luminous. Her skin was sunken to her bones, and feathers sliced across her cheeks, into her hair. Her black nails were talons. She was still half eagle, half monster, half sorceress—too many halves!—but had she ever been more beautiful?
Nothing continued to laugh. She’d helped kill Skybreaker, the intruder! This was their mountain. This was right.
“Wild thing,” Nothing rasped. “Impetuous creature!”
“Nothing!” the sorceress hissed, her sharp teeth falling from her mouth like pearls.
Nothing pushed forward, trying to catch some of those pearls for her own mouth.
The sorceress stopped her. “Nothing, he’s dead.”
“Yes!”
“You helped me.” The sorceress sounded shocked. “I couldn’t have stopped him without you.”
“He was going to kill you.”
Only plain white teeth filled the sorceress’s mouth now, surrounded by red lips. It was too late to catch the pearls. Nothing blinked. She rubbed her eyes.
The sorceress hugged her tightly, and Nothing leaned in, wrapping herself around her sorceress.
They sank into the stone of the mountain together, falling through granite, held by hard fingers of basalt, and the sorceress’s arms were around her, the sorceress’s breath on her cheek.
Then they were spat out into sunlight again and the sweet-smelling breeze.
“Nothing! Nothing!”
Kirin and Sky called her, and she was surrounded. The sorceress leaned back.
Nothing opened her eyes. She felt… clean. Like she’d run hard or danced fast and all her breath and blood was new. Like she’d laughed herself a new heart.
The mirror lake glittered blue beside them, and the sorceress slumped, one hand pressed to the sand at Nothing’s knee. She stared at Nothing, and Nothing stared back, sort of smiling, sort of dazed.
“You waited for me,” Nothing said, still laughing. Tiny popping giggles bursting into words. “I’m glad you did.”
The feathers withdrew into the sorceress’s skin, leaving only pink and vivid white burns dappling her jaw and neck, streaking down to vanish beneath the tattered, burned remains of her dress. The sorceress’s eyes were massive, her skin almost translucent, bruised.
“What happened?” Kirin demanded.
“Nothing, are you well?” Sky asked, crouching beside her to put a firm hand to her back. It was cool! Sky was always so much warmer than her! He said, “You’re flushed. Are you injured? That’s blood on your dress.”
Nothing tore her gaze from the sorceress and stared at the splatter wonderingly. She touched a finger to it, liking the color contrast.
“Skybreaker is dead,” the sorceress murmured.
“What?” Kirin put one knee on the ground, leaning on the other. “Nothing, what did you do?”
She stared at him, smiling. Her throat felt raw, but good. Or had lava torn up and out of her, spewing into laughter? “He was going to kill the sorceress. And take you.”
“Take me back to the palace, maybe. The sorcerers of the Living Mountains are not our enemies!”
“He was attacking my mountain, Kirin.”
“Your mountain!”
“Kirin,” Sky said in a rumble.
“It is my mountain,” said the sorceress firmly. “And now the others will come, because he’s
dead. His familiar is a great spirit, and they will all know. They know you are here, Kirin Dark-Smile.”
“We can defeat them all,” Nothing said.
“What is happening to you?” Sky asked, sliding his cool hand up her neck to her nape. He gripped her skull, turning her head to him.
“I am so hot, there’s magma inside me,” she said, still smiling. Sky would understand!
“What did you do to her?” Kirin demanded of the sorceress.
The sorceress said, “She’s remembering. Her heart is remembering.”
Nothing laughed. “I don’t remember anything. But I like this feeling!” Her laughter forced her eyes closed. She could feel the heat in her cheeks, in her neck and chest, tingling in her fingers! Suddenly the mountain tilted and Nothing gasped, falling back into Sky’s arm. “Oh…” she moaned softly as her stomach turned over. She was close to something magnificent and massive. It was going to break her.
“It’s too much,” the sorceress murmured. “Too fast. She’s not in control and nobody is.”
Keeping her eyes closed was the only way to calm her stomach. She pressed her hands against it, woozy. She swallowed, trying to cool the hot rock in her throat.
“Set us free,” Kirin commanded. “Now. Before she hurts herself. We will return to the palace, to the Empress with the Moon in Her Mouth, and all will know I am safe. You will no longer be a target.”
“I have two more days with her.”
“Is that worth your mountain? It is in danger, Sorceress. You said yourself, they will come.”
Nothing pried her eyes open as the sorceress lowered her chin stubbornly. Her green eye burned greener than anything against the vibrant crimson blood of burst capillaries. “I can hold the mountain.”
“You’re weak and injured,” Kirin said.
Nothing touched a burn blister near the sorceress’s chin, and the sorceress hissed in shock.
She said, “I will heal. I have the power of the Fifth Mountain still.”
“It’s weak too, without its demon.” Kirin grasped the sorceress’s shoulder, digging his fingers in. “Do you want to survive? Can you, against the other Living Mountains and their masters?”
The sorceress looked only at Nothing. “With my demon, I could.”
Nothing’s eyes closed in a wave of dizziness, and she saw fire, flicking distant and blue, like butterflies. Terrible, beautiful blue-fire butterflies. Everything that was left of a volcano heart, pieced out, fluttering desperately away. She needed to collect them again, cup them in her palms and breathe them back into a conflagration.
“Look at her,” Kirin murmured. “Your demon is a barely-seventeen-year-old girl now and doesn’t know how to help without killing herself. Is your pride worth her life?”
Silence.
“Nothing,” said the prince.
She opened her eyes again, but it seemed to take a hundred years.
Kirin stared at her. He didn’t say any more, but Nothing felt the urgency in him, in herself. From the warmth of Sky’s embrace, she met the sorceress’s gaze. She did not want to speak, but she did. She looked at the sorceress. “You have to let us go.”
“I do not.”
“I have to go with Kirin,” Nothing said slowly, through a hundred days.
The sorceress said, “He doesn’t need you to see him safely home.”
“I need it. He’s mine. I need this, and I need my name…,” Nothing said, though this time it took only a hundred hours. The roar of thunder in her ears softened to a hissing. “Let me go. Let the three of us go home.”
“You are home.”
Nothing grinned. It was weak but real. She felt like her skin was solidifying. A hundred heartbeats and she’d be herself again. She was starving. “Not yet. It’s not my home yet. But maybe it will be, if I get to choose it. If I get to choose you.”
The sorceress took a deep breath, and as she released it carefully, the burns on her neck and face faded to pink, then shining scars, and then they were gone. She licked her lips. “Very well. For a price,” she said.
Nothing giggled. Always a bargain. “Of course.”
For a long moment silence ruled the valley. The sun pressed down, warm in the still afternoon. There were no clouds left whatsoever, only harsh blue sky, jagged black peaks, and strangely still alders. Not even their leaves shook.
Sky squeezed his cool fingers around the base of Nothing’s skull.
The sorceress said, “A kiss. You can leave, all three of you, for a kiss.”
Kirin scoffed, but Nothing laughed. A springtime laugh, eager as bumblebees dancing against daisies. “Yes!” she cried.
TWENTY-EIGHT
THE SORCERESS STOOD AND bent again to take Nothing’s hands and pull her to her feet.
Nothing’s body ached, not from injury, but as if she had a fever; her heartbeat filled her up, tingling in the tips of her fingers as the sorceress stepped near. She brought their folded hands together, clasped between their hearts.
The sorceress tilted her face down, and Nothing parted her lips with anticipation.
Then she closed her eyes as the sorceress’s lips touched hers.
The world was cold and dark, but the kiss pinned Nothing in place.
She was a butterfly embroidered on gauzy silk, bright and fluttering and alive, yet unable to move for the touch of lips to lips.
Nothing breathed in, tasting the air around the sorceress’s mouth, and the sorceress kissed more firmly, opening her mouth to taste Nothing, to lick gently against Nothing’s bottom lip.
Nothing sighed; the sorceress clutched at her hands, black nails cutting, and she pushed Nothing’s mouth open even more.
She tasted a little like blood, and Nothing wondered if she tasted like blood too, because it was smeared on her cheek, because they’d killed the sorcerer of the Third Living Mountain. Together. And Nothing had laughed.
The sorceress let go of Nothing’s hands and put hers on Nothing’s jaw, tilted her head, and kissed her harder, deliberately stroking at Nothing’s lips, at her teeth, and then her tongue.
It did not feel like the sorceress was taking anything. She gave and gave, trying to prove something to Nothing, that they’d known each other for a hundred years, that they used to be married, that their hearts were two pieces of a single heart, that the sorceress would do anything, say anything, to keep Nothing, except actually keep her.
All of it poured into Nothing, and she was holding on to the sorceress too, hands on that slender neck, pulling, tangled in fine hairs, and Nothing whimpered a little bit. There was no need to prove anything—Nothing understood love. It was hot and alive and pulsing. It was a heart. Her teeth sank into the sorceress’s lip and she let go immediately, but the sorceress kissed her back, holding her close.
They slowed, their lips and tongues slowed, their breathing slowed, and the pulse that ricocheted between them.
Nothing did not feel tired any longer. She was filled with this kiss, with goodbye and memories of fire. Tendrils of darkness lapped at her mind, trailing along her scalp, until she shivered in pleasure.
The sorceress let her go.
Nothing dragged her eyes open, swaying as if drunk.
The sorceress was whole, and beautiful.
One evergreen eye and one perfect bone-white eye stared back at her, hungry, from that pale copper face, high cheeks and thin, bowed lips. Her black-brown-lava-red hair piled in rolls and curls on her head, dripping with tiny pink and orange orchids. She had on a lavish black and dark-green dress made of silk and feathers and scales and even wisps of smoke.
“Goodbye, Nothing,” said the Sorceress Who Eats Girls.
Nothing, barefoot in a ragged pink slip, stumbled back into the waiting arms of Sky and Kirin Dark-Smile.
TWENTY-NINE
THE MOMENT THEY WERE alone, Sky leading from a few paces ahead, Kirin took Nothing’s shoulders in both hands and drew her to him.
Softly in her ear, he whispered her true name.
&
nbsp; Then he said, “Forget your feelings for the sorceress. And then forget what I just said, including your name.”
Nothing gave the prince an annoyed little frown. “What are you doing?”
He released her. “I’m glad you’re going with us.”
“Of course I’m going with you,” she said, suddenly a little bit cold. She shrugged him away and dashed after Sky.
THIRTY
THEY LEFT THE FIFTH Mountain before the sun set, on a slender barge cradled in the gentle, lapping fingers of the Selegan River.
The sorceress had given them clothing and blankets, food, water, and the boat itself, promising the river would see them south fast. They needed only follow the right fork twice, and at the third, some week hence, disembark on the eastern bank. Beyond there, the Selegan poured over waterfalls no ship could survive. But the travelers could join up with the Way of King-Trees and walk the remaining week to the capital city. More than a month’s journey shortened by half.
Nothing found herself eager to be back home. She missed the quiet smoke ways and Whisper, and the purr of the great demon of the palace.
Esrithalan offered to visit the Court of the Moon immediately and inform the empress her son was safe and shortly to be returning, thus preventing more sorcerers or even an army from being dispatched to the Fifth Mountain in a rescue attempt. Kirin, smiling his dark smile, thanked the unicorn with an air that Nothing understood to mean the favor was more the result of the prince’s conversation with the unicorn than any loyalty to the sorceress.
That was fine: unicorns were avatars of the gods, and nobody’s familiar.
To each of the trio, the sorceress gave a gift:
For Sky she offered a sword. He tried to decline, but she smiled with all the humor of the god of ducklings and insisted. “The Selegan tossed yours into the river, I understand, and this is a magical blade, light as a feather and never in need of sharpening.”
“Light as a feather will throw off my balance,” Sky said plainly.
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