She's All Thaumaturgy

by A. K. Caggiano

  “Just to the north of Havencourt.” Elayne nudged Rosalind, and the woman cringed at the mention of her home.

  They’d piled in and been sent off with the speed of ten galloping horses. The cart twisted and turned and threw them this way and that, going on forever. It was perhaps better than being on foot, but that was debatable. Only Gramps seemed to be enjoying himself, his disembodied voice shrieking with joy from inside his pipe.

  When she was finally sure they had stopped, Elayne scrambled away from the thing. Bard took them to the mouth of the cave, offering Elayne his hand when they stepped out into the sunlight. When she took it, she thought he might break it with his sturdy shake. “Duchess,” he said, eyeing her, “You have the support of the Blackiron clan. We stand behind the cleansing of the nexus.”

  “Thank you.” She nodded. “I intend to succeed.”

  He pulled her in suddenly, so that she fell close to his face. “You must.” He held her there a moment, his beady eyes severe, then released her, turning to Rosalind. “You know how to reach me, aye?”

  The woman grinned, giving him a thumbs up, and with that, Bard Blackiron returned to the dwarven caves.

  “You know, he wasn’t such a terrible fellow, that dagen.” Gramps’s voice had lost all its brassy vigor.

  “I’m sure the feeling’s mutual,” Neoma sighed.

  “He seemed kind of sneaky.” Rosalind had a hand on her chin as they walked. She may have been daft at times, but Rosalind had her moments of clarity. “But I like Bard. And that Mairah Blackiron.”

  Elayne nodded as they began again on foot. The dwarven dagen was vying for ownership of the range that extended into Heulux. As it stood before Alaion had taken power, the mountains there were largely untouched. She’d negotiated down to a single visit, for the leaders from all three clans, a moon out from the official recognition of Heulux as a proper part of Yavarid again in return for their vocal support. “I think we can trust him.”

  “Do you think?” Frederick more mumbled than spoke.

  “Yes.” Elayne was walking behind him down from the ridge and into the more densely forested area of Mount Sooth. “Do you disagree?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged, still too far ahead to see his face. “This is all getting quite a bit political though.”

  She hurried down to catch up to him, leaving the others behind. “What do you mean?”

  “I just didn’t expect—” He caught himself, shaking his head. “You know what? Don’t worry about it.”

  He picked up his step, and she practically sprinted to keep up. “But I am worried about it.”

  “Don’t be,” he retorted shortly.

  She stomped up to his side. “You certainly seem to disapprove. Why don’t you just say whatever is on your mind?”

  Frederick rounded on her, and she nearly ran into him. “You can’t just make bargains with dwarves in their war rooms, El!”

  Her mouth dropped open. That wasn’t what she had done, was it? “I didn’t!” she decided.

  He screwed up his face. “What do you think that was?”

  “That wasn’t—” She looked up into the sky for an answer, but only found a set of black crows passing overhead. “That wasn’t their war room, Frederick.”

  “Oh, come on, El!”

  She glared back at him. “Okay, fine, whatever. Why can’t I then?”

  “Because…” His eyes bobbed all over as he searched his mind. “Because you’re not the crown! Because you’re not even really the duchess of anyplace! Because you just can’t!” Frederick turned from her and began on again.

  She watched him, her mouth hanging open. Absolutely not, she thought. “But you can defy the crown and ride out into the Trizian Wood and cut down a few centaurs just because you feel like it? That’s how Maw works, is it?”

  Frederick stopped short a few paces ahead and turned. “I did that for you!”

  “You did that for glory!” she spat back at him. “You’re just a show-off!”

  “How?” He threw his hands up. “No one even knew about it!”

  “You brought Legosen back with you, and he was knighted! Someone must have known!” Frederick just stared back at her, and the words kept coming despite herself. “How can you even say you did that for me? For someone you weren’t even speaking to? Someone you hadn’t spoken to for ten years? If you wanted to do something for me you could have just said hello!”

  “Gods, you’re impossible!” he exploded back at her and stomped off into the woods.

  Elayne felt her breath catch in her chest. Her throat burned, and tears sprung to her eyes. She wiped them away harshly with the back of her hand and sniffed, shaking her head. Crying wouldn’t help anything, it never did.

  She could feel Rosalind’s figure standing just beside her while Neoma and Bix silently continued on after the knight. “Did I screw up, Ro?”

  “Oh, I don’t know if I should be giving you tips on diplomacy.” The woman put a hand on her shoulder. “Or boys, for that matter.”

  “Just tell me the truth.”

  Rosalind groaned in the back of her throat. “That was a bit of a screw up, yeah.”

  He hadn’t run off, she was surprised to see, but he did refuse to talk to her for an entire day and night into the next morning. After waking, Rosalind was doing push-ups with Bix sitting on her back reading A History of Hallowmarch. Neoma was re-braiding Elayne’s hair as Gramps told them all about a time when he’d scaled Mount Sooth years prior with a small band of human mages who needed passage into Apos’phia. He was just getting to the most perilous part where one of the mages—a woman, the most beautiful—had been struck down by a griffin, and how he had used his unmatched healing skills to bring her back from the brink of death when Frederick interrupted them with exasperated urgency that they needed to keep moving.

  His anger was nothing if not persistent as the day went on. “I think we need to head down this part of the mountain. It’ll take the rest of the day and then another day or two west to Bizgain,” he said as the sun was high in the sky. “It’d be faster just to head west here, but I don’t know if the ladies can handle the terrain of that ridge, and I wouldn’t want to run into anyone who we might accidentally make promises to that we can’t keep. What do you think, Bix?”

  The kobold twiddled his thumbs and made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat.

  “I’m feeling particularly good today, Ro,” Elayne announced, louder than she needed to. “Want to race to the peak of the mountain and back? I can show off how fast I can run, and we don’t even have to talk about it!”

  “Gods, you two,” Gramps grumbled from his pipe. “We’re heading straight west and that’s that!”

  Elayne would have walked with her arms tightly crossed over her chest and a permanent pout if she could have kept her balance that way.

  As the sun began to descend for the evening, everyone was a bit more weary than normal. Elayne had especially tired herself out coming up with jabs in response to Frederick’s passive aggression. He was getting lazy, and had nearly given up, but she realized if she didn’t egg him on, he’d simply give her the silent treatment again, and somehow that was worse. “Ro, did you notice how—”

  “Quiet,” Frederick addressed her directly for the first time, and she was stunned into following the command. Her pride told her to yell at him, but her good sense realized there was an urgent reason behind how sharp he had suddenly sounded.

  “What’s the matter?” Rosalind puffed out her chest though her voice was at a whisper. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “That’s the problem.” Neoma was gripping the pipe with both hands, looking up into the trees. She had felt it too. “Everything is just…gone.”

  They stood in the silence of the forest like frightened deer, ears twitching, looking but not really seeing. On the gradual sloping side of Mount Sooth, the woods were busy with scrub brushes, lanky trees, and a patchwork of dark leaves. Elayne remembered how even in the dens
est parts of the Trizian Wood, she could still feel the wind and hear the call of birds. Now, that was all gone, even the breeze, and she didn’t like it. She reached out for the closest tree as if on instinct, pressing her hand into the bark like she was an elf who knew what she was doing, and her eyelids fluttered down.

  The nothingness was looming somewhere just ahead of them. Elayne tilted her head to see it better with eyes closed. It moved then too, mimicking her, but stood just as still. How it did this, she had no idea: it didn’t have a presence, not like herself, not like her friends, not even like Gramps in his copper pipe. It was a void, like a hole cut out of Maw. She should say something, she thought, but her mouth couldn’t move, her eyes stuck closed, and she could only observe the sense of nothingness before them somewhere out in the trees, mirroring her. If they continued on, they would come upon it, and she wanted to turn back, but before she could tell the others, she felt the nothing move again, this time on its own.

  Her eyes flew open just in time to see a dark flash coming at them. Tall and spindly, the being had a sword raised above its head. It moved gracefully, dancing over leaves, fallen branches, and stones as if they weren’t even there, its black cape trailing behind it like a long tail, mesmerizing and eerie and too odd to act against. But then Frederick woke himself of his paralysis and pulled his own sword as he sprinted forward, and the two met with a metallic crash.

  The knight was down on his knees instantly, the being looming over him. Elayne yelled his name, her voice cracking, and the thing looked at her. It was like a man, at least the shadow of a man, but too gaunt, its elongated skull, blue-black skin, and piercing white eyes that of a nightmare. But there it stood, silver hair falling over its shoulders in long, greasy locks, and its ears—Elayne touched the tip of her own—they were the very same.

  Elayne brought her hands together. They were shaking. She needed to conjure the purple flame again, she knew, but when she dove into her own mind, it was too chaotic. There was anger there again, annoyance, but more than those things was fear, and it screamed over all the other voices, distracting and condescending. She couldn’t do it if she tried, she was disgusted with herself, but she could conjure a small, orange flame. Just enough to throw at the being.

  It cast off her attack with the swipe of its arm, then threw Frederick to the ground. Rosalind ran up to the thing, swinging her staff, but the creature grabbed its end and cast it and her in the opposite direction. All the while, Bix scooped up stones to slingshot at it, but it didn’t even acknowledge when they hit its temple.

  Again, Elayne called up the orange flame, stronger this time, and let it alight her hand fully. If this thing would cast away fire that she threw at it, she just wouldn’t throw it. Everything burned, she reasoned in the midst of the confusion in her mind, and she started toward the creature with rigid, frightened steps.

  The thing rushed up to meet her in a dark flash. Elayne gasped as its boney fingers suddenly wrapped around her neck. How was it so fast? She felt bark splinter off the tree her body was slammed into as she wrapped her hands, still alight with flame, around its cloaked arm, her last defense even as her throat closed under its palm.

  This close, Elayne could see its face, a long slender nose so pinched that it couldn’t possibly breathe, a mouth that was wide and lipless, a freakishly pointed jaw and chin. It turned white eyes on the fire that had yet to burn through its cloak. Seconds ticked by like hours as Elayne’s breath failed to return, then the creature’s brow narrowed, and she felt it. The heat in her hands changed into an impossible burning.

  She tried to scream, but no sound came. The heat went out but was replaced by something that was somehow worse. A freezing chill ran through her, and the fire changed, dropping to a deep violet. She hadn’t made the change, she hadn’t tried to command the aether, but it had found her. Hadn’t it? No, not the aether, the being. This creature, this shell of an elf, had pulled it out of her. Its smile widened.

  Then it screamed, and the feeling at Elayne’s throat gave way. Her breath came back at once as she slid down the tree, gasping for air. The flames were gone, the cold lingering but nothing like the ice that had been there, and she clawed at her own neck, trying to catch her breath.

  Frederick was there, and he had plunged his gleaming green sword into the creature’s side. Elayne looked up to see them inches away from her and watched as the elven abomination pulled itself off the blade. Its flesh slid over the metal with a wet, sickening sound, and even Frederick stared on in horror.

  As if it hadn’t been wounded at all, the creature raised its own sword and came down on the knight. It moved with its same inhuman swiftness and ease, but black blood began to drip from it, falling to the ground with a sizzle, and pooling just at her feet. It was weaker now, grunting nasally as it fended off Frederick, and the knight finally had the upper hand. He pushed it back and away from Elayne until finally the knight’s blade pierced it once more.

  Frederick led the thing to the ground, burying his blade deeper into its chest as it fought against him. Like the corrupted goat, the dark elf continued on, even when its body was not responding in kind, straining to push him off, to rise up once again. Frederick was red-faced and sweating, his hair falling into his face as he pushed down on the thing, dropping his whole body over the creature, until finally it could only twitch beneath him. The knight let out a heavy sigh as his arms went slack.

  Then there was a sickly tear, a slice Elayne could have sworn came from Frederick’s blade, but the knight had not moved. Frederick coughed, his body jerking forward as his grip tightened on his own hilt buried in the allegedly dead elf. He pulled away, staggering back onto his knees and leaving his sword jutting out of the thing, his eyes wide and searching. The creature had finally gone completely limp, but its face twisted into an even wider smile. Its hand fell to the side wrapped around a bloodied dagger.

  Elayne propelled herself off the tree and grabbed Frederick just before his head slammed backwards into the ground. He was clutching where the dagger had impaled him, and when she tried to move his hand away it was just blood. So much blood.

  “Freddie!” She pressed her hand hard against the wound in his chest. “Oh, you idiot!”

  Neoma was there suddenly, pushing away both of their hands. The elf expertly slipped fingers through the tear the dagger had made in his tunic and ripped it open in one quick movement. Frederick’s chest rose and fell rapidly, the blood thick and pooling so that they could not see from where it came. She searched with her fingers a moment, her jaw set, eyes focused. “Shit,” she grumbled, closing her eyes. “Give me your hands.”

  Neoma blindly grabbed Elayne and pushed her palms into the red pool, pressing her own on top of them. “Now, help me.”

  The elf began speaking in a tongue Elayne did not recognize, the words like hissing, breathy and rhythmic. She had her eyes closed as she chanted, but her voice shifted to a command in the middle of it, “I said, help me,” and then returned.

  “I don’t know how!” Elayne croaked, peering down at Frederick’s face, his head tilted back, eyes glassy and open, pupils rolled back.

  Neoma’s hand jerked Elayne’s face back to hers, forcing her to meet her eyes, the blood on her fingers hot and slick. “Yes you do—you’re an elf, aren’t you?”

  Again, Neoma closed her eyes and replaced her hands on top of Elayne’s. She began the chant once more.

  Elayne closed her own eyes. There was something like a spark that shot through Neoma, banging at the top of Elayne’s hands. She let it in, and it moved through her, entering her right hand, traveling up her arm, across her chest, and back down through her left. She felt a thump, quiet and far off, but then she heard it again, and again. It was something she hadn’t heard for a long time, not since very early childhood.

  She saw her mother then, in her mind’s eye, and she felt the woman’s arms around her. She was cuddled up onto her lap, her head on her chest, her heartbeat in her ear.

  Frederick co
ughed, and Elayne’s eyes popped open to see blood spurting from his mouth, but the life in his eyes had returned. He took quick, shallow breaths, panicked, and Elayne could feel it in his erratic heart. It was thumping harder, faster, and she narrowed her eyes. She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly, then again, and in her mind she whispered, Breathe with me.

  His breaths came more fully then, almost normal, and she allowed herself to look on his face once more. His eyelids were fluttering down, but he saw her. She could feel his hand move and his fingers graze her knee before his arm went limp.

  His eyes were closed, but his heart—she could still feel it—was beating normally. Neoma raised her head, her eyes cloudy, and she swayed to the side before righting herself and shaking her head. She gently removed Elayne’s hands and wiped at the blood on Frederick’s chest. Beneath, the wound persisted, but it did not bleed. Instead there was a swirling blackness, like staring into the chaotic aether hiding behind a dinky.

  Elayne swallowed back tears. “What did we do?”

  Neoma frowned. “We put him to sleep. All of him. He’s still injured, but we’ve slowed everything down. This is very bad. The things I need…” She looked out to the woods helplessly. “They would fill an entire apothecary. I don’t know where we would find something like that.”

  Elayne brushed the hair off Frederick’s forehead with bloodied fingers, then marveled at just how covered her hands were. How he breathed at all, she did not know. She looked out at the others, but Rosalind was already gazing down the mountain. The woman turned back to them. “I know of an apothecary.”