Children of Magic

by Greenberg, Martin H.

Alya had accepted him. In a way, she too was now a stranger to Arboran, no longer bound by their beliefs. Her emotions churned with recognition of this discovery, with the wild realization that Felora’s death had not been needed. He resonated with her sadness, with her inability to put her jumbled emotions into words. He longed to let her share in his own thoughts, though that road was barred by her own rejection of the Sanri.

  He could not imagine a life without her, but he sensed she would not willingly go with him. This was his challenge.

  Turning back to the Sanrian, Jaryn said, “Let me come learn about the outside world then—” For a moment, he glanced back toward the trees, toward where he knew Arboran stood, its gates now closed to him. Then he turned and looked outward, up into a sky filled with gold and a land where life would no longer be certain. “Prove to me that I have done the right thing.”

  THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT

  Nancy Holder

  Nancy Holder’s work has appeared on the L.A. Times, Amazon.com, Waldenbooks, LOCUS, and other bestseller lists. A four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association, she has also received accolades from the American Library Association, the American Reading Association, the New York Public Library, and The Romantic Times. She has sold approximately five-dozen book-length projects, many of them set in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Smallville universes. Wicked, her recent series for Simon and Schuster, was coauthored with her former Maui Writers Retreat student, Debbie Viguie. She has also sold approximately two hundred short stories, essays, and articles, mostly recently to Hot Blood XI and BTVS: Tales of the Slayer 3.

  WE ARE CREATURES OF such darkness, those of my House. I never knew it until today. They are bringing Annelise down to the courtyard, and the sand in the glass is almost gone. It is diamond dust. We are wealthy, still, despite our defeat.

  I thought I was resolved, but now that I see her, I have no idea if I can go through with it. My heart wants to rip from my chest. My hands are shaking around the hilt of my sword, and tears spring in my eyes at the sight of her. Of course, no one can tell that I am crying, because of the rain.

  Dressed in silvery furs and silks, Annelise descends the last stair, hooded like a falcon in gray leather. The twin plaits of her white hair dangle from beneath the hood. The strands are caught up with gray tassels.

  I am fully armored. I am only thirteen, and she is but nine.

  No one is prepared for what is to come if she should fail. No one can guess.

  I cannot do it.

  I will not do it.

  There is no way Annelise can know that this is her final test. Nor anyone else, of the hundreds who are waiting inside the castle. Scores are straining to peer out the windows. I see their colorless gowns, their cloaks of ebon and metale. Many wear masks, which are the fashion: swans, nymphs, Gorgons. The rain obscures their view, of course. No hardship for those who watch: we are used to obscure vision, and shadows.

  We are unused to treachery.

  But my mother says that it’s not treachery. She wept as she told me what I must do. She would rather cut out her own heart, she said, weeping. But that is not the choice at hand.

  But our kingdom lies in the balance. The world.

  No one suspects a thing. It is not unusual that I should stand inside the Circle with my sword unsheathed. Since the death of my father, I am my family’s Long Arm of the Law. It is I who protects the Circle when the High Priestess casts the magicks. I have battled crimson demons and chartreuse Golems that tried to stop her. There are scars on my face and shoulders. They are marks of distinction. My mother laments that I was born too late: if I had lived when our Enemy attacked, we would have prevailed.

  My mother. She stands beside me, her face unlined, her beauty unparalleled. She comes by it through her magick. She is regal in her black robes and diadem of silver. Her hair is white, like mine. We have been bleached of color, by the rains.

  Where there were dozens in our family, there are now only six of us. The other three—my little sisters, of five, four, and three—remain in the Room of Life, completely oblivious to what is happening. Protected from it, one might say.

  I, too, am protected. Though it is said that in earlier times, our sacred salt was spilled directly onto the earth, a ring of small boxes containing the salt surrounds me. We learned the hard way that if our High Priestess poured it on the bare mud, the rain would leach both salt and magicks away.

  As it has leached everything. Sky, stone, moor, mon taña, bog—it is all the same to our sad eyes. Our world is the color of my sword, and has been since our Enemy prevailed in the Last Battle, when my grandmother served as High Priestess.

  In the Last Battle, They killed the sun and enshrouded it. Since then, it has never stopped raining. Ever. This has not always been the case, and we have the Room of Life to prove it. That chamber is an exquisite bower, hung with tapestries of roses and violets and sprays of purple irises. The windows are magnificent colored patterns of magenta, cyan, and amaryllis. The hangings shimmer with morado and chartreuse; the thick warm carpets are vibrant tumblings of blanco, cerise, and noire.

  The Room of Life is where Annelise has lived since the instant of her birth. It is the only place she has ever been, with the exception of the courtyard. She has never stood at a window and looked out across the gray land, drowning beneath the rain. She has never reveled in the feast hall, which rumbles with thunder and startles with lightning.

  She has never seen our catacombs and our crypts. I’m not even certain she understands what death is, despite losing our father three years ago . . . the day after the birth of my youngest sister, Marialuz.

  She envies me because I have had the run of the castle. Now that I know what lies upon her shoulders, I no longer envy my sisters for living in the Room of Life. When I was much younger, I used to wish Annelise would die so that I could live there. I didn’t realize, of course, that I never could have claimed all that color for my own.

  For then the sisters arrived, and I understood that the Room of Life is reserved for the females of my family. My mother spent her girlhood there. She produced a fabulous rosebush when she was six, and then nothing. But she lived there until her marriage. My grandmother was High Priestess then, and she was loath to let her out at all. It was not until the birth of Annelise that she truly forgave my mother for making only the single rosebush . . . or so my mother has told me. I am uncertain if my grandmother ever forgave her.

  But the rosebush is a greater achievement than Annelise has yet managed.

  And today is her last chance.

  Now the drumbeats of my heart sound the alarm. Her four ladies hold poles to which a decorated dragon skin has been stretched above her head, to protect her from the rain. I am likewise protected by skins, as is my lady mother. It is not so much the force as the constancy of the rain that dissolves stone and softens bone. The rivulets of gray long ago melted sight, sound and touch to one silvery sense. I would not have even known that one could touch warmth in a living person, had I not long ago, once touched Annelise. I am not permitted to so much as breathe upon her, my other sisters, or my mother; and as I remember my fingertip upon her baby cheek, I wonder if I am to blame for these past three years of failure. If so, I should fall upon my sword, rather than put her to it.

  I am silently crying as Annelise glides toward me, clasping and unclasping her fists. Her sweet little shoes are gray upon the stone floor of the courtyard. The rain falls steadily on her handmaidens. The youngest one is practically dancing with excitement. The tallest—Bellaclarissa—is so nervous I wonder if she suspects what may come. But that is impossible.

  The courtyard is the only place they have ever lifted her hood, save for the Room of Life. The only spot in the courtyard she may see is the where her rose grew, for a spell.

  And then there is my mother’s vibrant crimson rosebush, which still lives.

  The rosebush was my mother’s greatest achievement, and she managed it when s
he was six. After a lifetime of studying the Room of Life, while troubadours sang the ballads of the world before the rains, Annelise coaxed forth a red rose when she was four. I shall describe it in the High Language, which we of the Blood whisper in our magicks:

  Burgundy, cardinal, carmine, cerise, cherry, chestnut, claret, crimson, flaming, florid, flushed, fuchsia, garnet, magenta, maroon, ruby, sanguine, scarlet, titian, vermilion, wine, rojo, abracadabra, abracadabra.

  Her success was hailed as the end of all our sorrows. We held great feasts. My mother couldn’t stop laughing; and my father wept with joy.

  A second red rose sprouted in the courtyard on her fifth birthday. The parties! The rejoicing!

  But those living things are dead now, and she is nine this dawn. And she has made nothing bloom since then.

  The birth of flowers presaged the cessation of the rains, or so my mother had told us. She had read the auguries, and so the Goddess had told her. But the rains are still with us, and Annelise’s flowers are not. The rosebush still grows, but the rains still come.

  I believe my father died because grief cleaved his heart. Not even our blood holds much color. It is tinged with scarlet, but I am told that in the old days, it was as thick and red as the carpets and tapestries in the Room of Life.

  My heart is breaking now, the only surviving male heart of our house. I am anticipating her failure. I’m certain that speaks of treason. She is the heiress to the legacy of High Priestess. My mother says her death must come if she no longer believes in magicks. She says that is likely. Because the rains have come down so long, only children cling to legends of sunlight and once-upon-a-time. The Room of Life surrounds the females—the holders of magicks—with visions of what was, and what could be again. Only females, who carry the magick of creation, can bring forth the flowers again.

  But the sands rush through the glass, and her death is what I bring forth.

  I am a warrior; I can make it painless. And I will make it happen so fast that she will never know it happened.

  Our dead . . . are their specters as gray as our land? The shrouds we wind them in are colorless. Everything is colorless.

  Except the Room of Life, which is the dreaming chamber of our people, and the monsters of our Enemy.

  I remember shortly before my father died, he clutched my sleeve and whispered, “Are her eyes blue? Are they blue?”

  He was speaking of my baby sister. I told him that I couldn’t really tell. I wasn’t allowed to touch her.

  “I think they might be silver,” I told him.

  He died hours later. I don’t know what he really wanted to know. The eyes of our family are silver. None of us has blue eyes.

  Now they are walking Annelise to the little shrine where her two roses grew. The petals have been placed inside statues of the roses, gray monuments to her faded glory.

  I think it is a mistake to make her look at the statues. The thought is to remind her that she managed to create color and life before. But I believe that her memory is of her failures, since they are fresher. Or so it seemed last year, when we performed this ritual. Bringing her out on her birthday marks the passage of time, as well. Her hands tremble; it is clear, at least to me, that it makes her anxious.

  She is so slight, a reed in the tempest. My mother steps forward, murmuring spells to her; then she lifts up the hood. My heart constricts. She looks so frightened.

  My sister blinks rapidly, then her eyes go wide. She stares at my mother, whom she sees everyday, and then her gaze travels to me.

  She saw me a moon ago, when I came by the Room of Life to watch my sisters dance. They wore their gray shifts, with scarves of silk wrapped around their arms. They were beautiful.

  I didn’t speak to them. But Annelise smiled at me over her shoulder. Then she danced on. I know their reels make magicks.

  She smiles now, fleetingly. I try to smile back, and I am grateful for the faceplate that conceals everything but my eyes. In this rain, she cannot know how hard I am weeping.

  I cannot do it.

  I must do it.

  My mother has explained that the magick flows from female to female in our line. It extends from generation to generation, and there is a finite amount of it. When only one daughter is born, she receives all of it, through her mother. When four are born . . .

  . . . they share it.

  My mother learned that once she is past the age of dreaming, she could no longer grow flowers. No matter the years in trancelike states, staring at the colors in the Room of Life. No matter the pavanes and the spells. Once she can no longer believe, she can no longer bring forth.

  The magick is wasted on her.

  So, to prevent waste . . .

  She is the only sister I truly know. The one I love.

  But I understand my mother. I believe her. And I am the Long Arm of the Law. I protect the Circle.

  They help her kneel. The dragon skin hangs over her head. I imagine for a moment the arc of my sword as I heft it against the back of her neck. My hands tremble. My heart quakes.

  We hold our breaths, she, her maids, my mother, and I. My gaze ticks to the castle windows, filled with steam and shapes.

  My sister holds out her hands. She takes a breath.

  I will her to prevail.

  My mother glances at me, as if reminding me of my duty. How could I forget it?

  Words spill from Annelise’s lips. I do not know the language, much less truly hear the separate sounds. It is an alien, magical language. Nothing that has to do with such as I.

  And everything to do with me. I am the Prince of this house, the son of this world. The rain falls on me just as it falls on every peasant and priestess.

  I think, Troubadours will sing of this. I am not naive; I know there will be consequences. My mother has sworn I shall be unharmed, even celebrated. I cannot let that decide me. Unless I am sure of my actions, I cannot . . . act.

  Annelise continues to cast her spell, and I wish I could pray to her Goddess, too. But my God lives in my sword, and He is already listening to me. The strength and skill to make a clean cut. That is all I should be asking for.

  But in the spaces between my heartbeats—which are narrow, and few—I plead, Tell me what to do. I beg of you. Although it is not His province.

  The rain spatters the stones at Annelise’s feet. The little shrine is dark inside. I do not see the stone flowers. I see the tension in her shoulders as she chants, and nothing happens.

  I sob in silence. I grieve. When our father died, I thought I would stop living. I was suddenly, surely aware that I was the only male in a house of magical women, and I thought for a moment that I might die, too.

  I have asked myself is that is why I am here, in the rain beside the High Priestess, preparing myself to slay her heiress. Not for the sake of the kingdom, or the world, but to save myself.

  It is clear that our High Priestess will sacrifice her children for the greater good.

  Annelise falters; perhaps she has forgotten the next word. Perhaps she knows it is futile.

  My mother gives me a sharp nod.

  I remember the scent of her cheek when I touched it. It was not dull and gray. It smelled of sweetness, and loveliness.

  I can feel a fissure in my heart; the blood is pumping out of it into my chest. I will drown in it soon, unless I do what I must.

  And so I take a slow, steadying breath, and swallow hard. My world pinpricks to the back of Annelise’s neck, and I tighten my grip around the sword hilt.

  Adieu, mi hermosa, I whisper to her. Well met in heaven.

  It happens in a clang of thunder and a flash of lightning.

  Annelise leaps to her feet, whirls around, and grabs my sword. I am a warrior; I am the Long Arm of the Law. But she yanks it from me, barely able to lift it—but she does—

  —thunder clangs; lightning flashes—

  —and she takes a step forward, staggering beneath its weight. Her face is white. Her silver eyes stare at me.

  I c
an take it from her, but I do not.

  I do not.

  It happens so quickly; everything is happening so quickly; she has the sword and she steps forward and tip, blade, hilt

  She runs my mother through.

  The blood is astonishing, though I know what a sword can do. It is a brilliant red. It is burgundy, cardinal, carmine, cerise, cherry, chestnut, claret, crimson, flaming, florid, flushed, fuchsia, garnet, magenta, maroon, ruby, sanguine, scarlet, titian, vermilion, wine, rojo, abracadabra, abracadabra.

  My mother does not scream. She does not gasp as the blood pumps from her chest onto her gown. She looks neither at Annelise nor at me. As she crumples to the wet stones, Annelise’s ladies are screaming and running toward us.

  But we are in the Circle and none can enter.

  The courtiers are flooding out of the castle. The uproar is deafening. Voices are crying for death, for suc cor, for—

  The sun.

  The sun.

  I fall to my knees and cover my head from the blinding heat.

  The rain stops. Immediately.

  It is not raining.

  No one speaks. No one moves. Our kingdom holds its breath, gazes in wonder.

  I close my eyes, overcome. I sway, and then I retch, hard.

  I fall forward.

  I swoon.

  When I awaken, Annelise lifts me up with a touch of her hand. I stand and sway, and she holds me in place with a pointed finger.

  She wears a blue gown and scarlet robes and a crown of gems that sparkle and glitter. Her fingers are covered with rings and her eyes are blue.

  Her eyes are blue.

  She is not the High Priestess. She is the Goddess.

  There is no rain, none. And the earth is dry beneath my feet. I cannot fathom it. I would fall, if she did not hold me up. I take no breaths; is my heart beating?

  The earth is sand. The wind is howling. All around me . . . it is brown. The gray is gone, but the colors are not here.

  “Not yet,” she says, as if she can read my mind.

  What if they do not come, for her? What will she do? What will she command me to do?