Ivanya, who was turning to look up, slows until she’s stationary, her hair frozen in a peculiar position, like the hair of a woman swimming underwater.
Sigrud looks around, panting. It’s very hard to stay conscious now, but he can see specks of dust hanging in the air, distant Bulikovians frozen in mid-stride as they sprint away, even a nearby moth suspended below a streetlight, its delicate white wings caught in mid-flap.
“Ivanya,” he whispers, choking. “Ivanya, what…what is going on?”
She doesn’t answer. She hangs in space, suspended and still.
Taty’s voice rings out above him, as loud and furious as thunder, “Daughter of the past, do you know me? Do you know me, Tulvos, do you know me? Do you remember when we were one? Do you remember what they did to us? Do you remember who we were?”
And instantly, Sigrud understands.
He understands why Shara was lying to him in the sanctum. He understands why she wished to stay alive, why she wanted to delay her daughter’s elevation.
He understands who the maimed Divine child was, the one whose domain was so vast it threatened all the original Divinities.
He remembers Olvos saying to him: Soon the walls will grow and the dawn will be threatened. And time, as always, will remain our deadliest foe.
Sigrud’s mind whirls. What if the maimed Divine child wasn’t just maimed? He twists his head up, ignoring the brutal, horrible pain, and tries to look at Taty as she grows close to Malwina. What if it was split in two? Split into two different people, who were never permitted to be close to each other, forced to forget about each other, otherwise all of creation would be threatened…
“They’re time,” he says weakly. He blinks, growing faint. “Past and future, each halves of a whole. They’re time itself.”
His head is too heavy. He lets it fall. Then he shuts his eye, and things grow dark.
I keep waking up in the night, panicked, and thinking only—what if they’re just like us?
What if our children aren’t any better? What if they’re just like us?
—FORMER PRIME MINISTER ASHARA KOMAYD, LETTER TO UPPER PARLIAMENT HOUSE MINORITY LEADER TURYIN MULAGHESH, 1734
Malwina recoils as the figure comes shooting up to her, thinking it to be Nokov—but it isn’t. The way this new arrival moves is…strange. They flick across the skies like a bat, and it takes Malwina a moment to realize they’re dancing across the seconds, gracefully hopping from moment to moment—but they’re moments that haven’t happened yet. Which Malwina always thought was impossible. It’s antithetical to her very being.
The figure leaps up and lands on the steps before her. It’s a girl, she sees, about her own age, and she looks…familiar.
Malwina sits up. “T-Tatyana?”
“No,” says the girl. She looks at Malwina, and Malwina sees her eyes have changed. They’re now queerly colorless, yet as she stares into them Malwina gets the strangest feeling: she can’t help but imagine that in this girl’s eyes she’s seeing all the things that will happen in the next few moments.
Malwina watches what she sees in the girl’s eyes. Then she gasps and looks away, horrified.
“You know me, Tulvos,” says the girl slowly. “You know me, daughter of the past. Don’t you?”
“I…Yes,” says Malwina reluctantly. “Yes. I…I think I do.”
The girl’s face is fierce and terrible. “Say it. Say my name.”
“You’re…You’re the future, aren’t you?” says Malwina. “I am the daughter of the things that have been. And you are the daughter of the things that will be.” Malwina shuts her eyes, and slowly understands she knows this girl’s name. “You…You’re Alvos, aren’t you?”
The girl nods. “You remember now. So do I, finally. That was what they named me. But I am more than that. As are you.”
“What?”
“Don’t you remember yet, Tulvos? They made us so that each would always repel the other, and we could never be in the same place at the same time….And now I know why. Because they knew that if we got too close, we would remember. Now that I am myself, now that I am close to you, I remember everything.”
“Remember…what?” asks Malwina.
Alvos steps closer. “You don’t remember because you don’t want to remember. Do you recall the last time you saw your mother? Your true mother—Olvos. Do you remember?”
“What in hells does it matter to you?”
“You were young,” says Alvos. “Very young, in the forest, at night…Olvos was there. She was weeping. And the other Divinities were there, all six in one place. And they took you, and led you away from her, to the darkness….”
Malwina’s eyes widen. “How do you know that?”
“Because I have this same memory,” says Alvos. “Because it is the same memory.” She crouches to look into her face. “Because at that time we were not two people, but one.”
Malwina stares at her for a long time. Then she whispers, “No…”
“Do you remember our name?” asks Alvos. “The name of the person we used to be?”
Malwina shuts her eyes. “Stop. Please stop talking.”
“I do,” says Alvos quietly. “We were Sempros. Past and future melded together. Time itself. All things that have been, all things that will be, and all things that are, in one being, one mind.”
“No.”
“Listen to me, Tulvos. Haven’t you always felt a curious hollowness in you, as if some part of you was empty, or incomplete?”
“No!”
“Do you remember what they did to us? How they split us, tore us apart? Maimed us and remade us in the darkness as we wept and struggled?”
“Stop it!”
“They changed our memories,” says Alvos. “Broke us open and reshaped our personalities….Do you remember our father, Taalhavras, saying that it had to be done, and it had to be done while we were young, and weak? How if we grew up and grew too strong, none of them could resist us?”
Malwina buries her face in her hands, weeping.
“Taalhavras,” says Alvos. “And Kolkan. And Ahanas. And Jukov, and Voortya. And Olvos, our mother…She just wept. Wept and watched. Watched as they brutalized her child, all so that they could rule unthreatened….”
“What do you want?” shouts Malwina. “What do you want from me?”
Alvos sticks out her hand, her face grim. Malwina stares at it for a moment before she realizes what she’s suggesting.
“No,” says Malwina softly.
Alvos’s stare is fierce, but her cheeks are wet with tears. “You know you must.”
“No, I won’t….I won’t do that, not that.”
“It wasn’t right, what they did to us,” says Alvos. “It wasn’t right, what Jukov did to us. Wasn’t right that we lived and loved as mortals, and then lost those that we loved so dearly. Me, my mother, Shara…And you, Tavaan. None of this was right. These people, they keep hurting us, taking things from us…And now we can do something. Take my hand. Take my hand, and become one again with me.”
“And then do what?”
“Fix this,” says Alvos. Her face is a mask of grief and despair. “Fix what has been done to us.”
“You sound like Nokov.”
“Take my hand,” says Alvos, “and we can defeat him. No one else can. That’s why they cut us in two, because together we could grow stronger than all the gods combined. Don’t you remember why they feared us so?”
Malwina bows her head. “Because…Because all things are subservient to time.”
“Yes,” whispers Alvos. “Yes. All these plots, all these schemes. See what sort of world the powerful few have built. See how they fought to retain that world. So much pain, so much sorrow, all so they could rule for a handful more years.”
“And what would you do about that?” asks Malwina.
Alvos leans close. “I would wipe it clean,” she says savagely. “Wipe away all that sorrow, all that pain, all that history, and start over again.”
/> Malwina sits in silence.
“The only way to truly clean a slate,” Alvos says, “is with blood. Many have tried to convince me otherwise. But now I know it is true.”
Malwina slowly turns to look out at Bulikov below. She sees that the world has recognized the two of them coming together: as the past and future grow close, the present is unsure how to advance, and simply waits. She can see Nokov suspended in the air below them, his face twisted in fear and fury.
She likes it. She likes seeing him afraid and weak. After what he did to Tavaan and the other children, this sight is maybe the one last thing she could enjoy.
“He deserves it, doesn’t he?” she says quietly.
“Yes,” says Alvos. “He took away my mother. He took away the love of your life. And all because he was angry and frightened. He deserves it. And we deserved none of this pain. No one in this world has deserved any of the pain that it has brought them. No one.”
Malwina turns to look at Alvos’s outstretched hand. She is silent for a long while. Then she says softly, “I never liked being me much, anyway.”
She takes her hand.
Several hundred feet above Bulikov, Nokov is very aware that something is very wrong.
For one thing, he can’t move. But it’s more than that.
He’s powerful enough to understand that something has gone wrong with time. He keeps reliving the same split second over and over and over again, a piece of time so small that it’s almost insignificant. To the outside observer—if someone could resist these effects, that is—he would appear frozen.
But he’s not. Nokov is powerful enough to know that—and he should be powerful enough to overcome what’s happening. He really should. Yet for some reason he can’t resist.
I am the strongest Divinity to have ever lived, he says in vain. What is wrong? What is happening?
And then he begins to move.
He is pulled upward, up toward the far edge of the tower, where someone, he sees, is now walking down the stairs.
It’s a woman. Tall and noble, bloodless and alien-looking, arrayed in…
Moments. Seconds. Bands of fate, streams of time. From her arms hang all the tides and all the storms of all the seas, and all the dawns and sunsets; from her back there hangs a cape of all the births and all the deaths, both those that have come and those that have yet to be; and about her waist is a skirt composed of all the frantic desires that time would not pass by, the wish that all these moments, however beautiful or brutal, would persist, and linger, and continue. And at the bottom of this skirt is a broad, black hem, cutting all these wishes short.
The woman turns to face him, and he understands she is pulling him to her.
A familiar sensation floods Nokov’s mind: the old terror of being trapped by a very dangerous and very pitiless woman.
He wants to say, “Who are you?” but the words will not escape his lips.
Yet the woman responds as if she heard him. “You know me, Nokov,” she says. “You know me, son of darkness, son of night.”
When she speaks, it’s as if he knew what she was going to say, as if she had already said it.
“I don’t,” he tries to say. “I don’t know.”
She pulls him closer. Her eyes are filled with dying stars.
“You do,” she says. “I am the sea in which the night swims. I am the country in which all other Divinities frolic and play their little games. All things you do, all things you have been, they have all happened in my shadow. I am time, Nokov. I am every dawn and every dusk. And so your will and wish means nothing to me.”
She pulls him yet closer. Her eyes are now filled with graves and forest fires and babies born bereft of breath.
“But I am also the woman whose mother you slaughtered,” she whispers. “I am the woman whose love you devoured. You stole everything from me. You stole my brothers and sisters from me.”
“I…I had to!” Nokov tries to say. “I had to! It wasn’t right, it wasn’t right what they did to me!”
“But the thing I most despise about you,” says the woman, “was that you made me the thing I am now. I was happy being mortal. I was happy being in love. I was happy being small. But you have forced my hand, and made me shed all the things I love like a snake shedding its skin.”
She draws him closer. In her eyes are all the seconds that have passed in between the stars, the limitless stretches of time that unspool in the vast abysses of the world.
“No one saved me!” Nokov tries to scream. “No one helped me! I was alone, I was alone!”
“I will relieve you of your burden,” says the woman. He’s now so close she can whisper into his ear. “All things end, Nokov. I have seen it. I have seen the end of everything.”
She extends a single finger to his face.
Nokov tries to writhe and scream and sob, but he cannot.
“And yours,” she says, “hides behind the next second…”
Her finger grows closer.
“…like an insect below a stone.”
She brushes his cheek.
Instantly, Nokov vanishes.
Sempros, goddess of time, stands alone upon the stairs.
She looks around. If she wanted to she could bat away all the miracles Nokov left behind him: the walls, the stairs, the dead seneschal and its spear below. But she doesn’t.
Because it doesn’t matter. She’s going to shut it all down.
She closes her eyes and begins.
In one sense, Sempros still stands upon the stairs. But in another, she expands and grows and slips behind reality, ascending it like a vast bird, until she finds the sea of moments upon which all things float, a near-limitless ocean of things that have happened, things that are happening, and things that are waiting to happen.
Sempros stands upon the sea of time, her pale feet firm upon the gentle waves.
She crouches. The seconds are tiny, but her eyes are sharp. She can see them all.
She reaches out and brushes one with her finger. It unspools, unscrolls, and there is a tiny, wordless cry—a cry of pain, a cry of sorrow, a cry as this second suddenly simply never was.
She looks up at all the other seconds. And then she starts her work.
On the stairs above Bulikov, Sempros clenches her fists and walks across the air to float above the city—a city that both brought and lived through indescribable pain, a gorgeous capital founded upon slavery and misery, a city plunged into holocaust and bloodshed in a half-second.
Time is frozen below her. It’s frozen everywhere, in all things. Yet she still wants them to hear her, to hear her sorrow, to hear her grievances.
Sempros cries out, “I have been in this world since before its birth! And I will be here after it fades from this reality! And I say to you now, now at the end of all things, that this world is unjust! That it was born in chaos and inequality and pain, and every second after was shaped by that pain! And I say no more! I will not allow it to continue any longer! I will not allow this injustice anymore! I shall wipe it clean! I shall wipe it clean, wipe it away, and relieve you from this punishment that none of us deserve!”
The world stands still below her. Bulikov stands frozen, as does Ahanashtan, and Voortyashtan, and far across the seas, even Ghaladesh. Every molecule, every atom, every speck of light and dust, all of it stands in attention as Sempros begins her terrible work, dissolving the supports upon which reality stands, dissolving reality itself. The world is her frozen audience to her first, last, and greatest act.
Except.
Except, except, except.
In the streets of Bulikov, a single hand trembles.
The hand is bruised and bloody. Its fingernails are cracked, its knuckles raw. And on its palm is a lurid scar.
Two scales, waiting to weigh and judge.
Sigrud je Harkvaldsson takes a rattling, painful breath.
In his ears he hears the seas. They beckon to him, asking him to walk away from the shores of his life, and be swept away. But
for some reason he just…He just…
I told her I would stay.
His eyelid flutters. The spear is a lump of ice in his shoulder.
I told her I would remind her of who she was.
His left hand, still trembling, slowly rises.
Shall I fail her as well?
He opens his eye, focuses, and stares at his left palm and the gleaming scar upon its flesh.
The words of Olvos echo in his ears: You defy time…
Sigrud takes another breath. His ribs scream in pain at the effort, but he does so anyway, filling every available part of his body with air. Then he exhales, and in doing so says a single, whispered word:
“Tatyana.”
Sigrud grabs the spear with his left hand and begins to pull. Then he plants his feet on the ground and leans forward, pushing away from the wall.
The agony is unlike anything he has ever known. He can feel the queer metal grinding against him, against some tendon or bone inside his body. He can feel the flow of his breath quake and shiver with each effort.
But he keeps pushing. Until…
With a crack, the spear is free.
He nearly falls forward into the street, which would be disastrous, but despite the agony thrumming through his body he manages to stay upright. The spear is still lodged in him, huge and heavy, putting downward pressure on his wound.
He stands there in the street, whimpering, quaking, the spear in his breast, his left hand gripping its shaft. His right arm, he knows, is useless. So this will not be easy.
He takes a breath. Then he begins to pull the spear up.
The torment is indescribable. He can feel every ripple in the shaft of the spear, every bend and buckle in its dark surface. He feels it twitch and shift, grinding his bones and tissues and muscles throughout his body.
He screams, long and loud, a ragged scream he didn’t know he was capable of. But he keeps pulling, sliding inch after inch of the spear shaft out of his shoulder. He feels the weight of the spear change and shift, feels it bobbing as he pulls the tip close.
City of Miracles Page 47
