Memory's Wake Omnibus: The Complete Illustrated YA Fantasy Series

by Selina Fenech

  Bedevere’s eyes sparkled despite the dull expression on his face. “Clever child. You’re right, we used some of the old ways to ward against the fae, methods from before the Pact, methods that don’t require magic.”

  Another councillor perked up, straightening his crumpled black and purple suit. “They were indeed effective. Kenth was chosen because there were only few fae there already but it was our wards that cleared them from the area entirely.”

  “Could they work again here? Do we have what we need to create them?”

  “I’m sure,” Bedevere said. “All we need is refined salt, and common herbs and branches wreathed into the right patterns.”

  Roen called a guard beside the door over to them. “Get down to the kitchens and stores and see what we have on hand. Madoc, please go with him to provide a list.”

  The wizard left, shuffling along at a hurry with the guard. Roen nodded at Eloryn again to continue, confidence in his eyes. It was contagious, and Eloryn felt it straighten her back and strengthen her voice.

  “With these wards, we could make some safe areas, or even perhaps force the fae in the direction we wish,” she said.

  Eloryn closed her eyes, trying to think tactically. If she were Nyneve, she would be using small armies across Avall to herd people up and imprison them in the long term, but would hit the city of Caermaellan first, it being the largest city and the largest concentration of people. They already knew that attack had begun.

  Eloryn called Erec over. “Put out the word to arrange for all civilians in the city to either flee into the countryside or come here to the palace. Anyone who can fight, we want here. Every horse and carriage in the castle, send it out to help. We’re not going to let it be easy for Nyneve, just snatching up people off the streets. If she wants human blood, she will have to come to us. And we will fight her for it.”

  Roen stood up beside them. “The militia that Hayes instituted could actually do some good. Send them a call to arms, too.”

  Bedevere scratched the corner of his eye, his ever dour face solemn. “Even if we find many to fight with us, we have little hope against the fae without magic. Our weapons are but nuisances to them.”

  Eloryn, however, was on a roll, enthusiasm building as she developed her strategy. “We have iron.”

  Bedevere merely raised a bushy eyebrow.

  “Quite a reasonable amount, which strangely enough you can thank Thayl for.” Eloryn raised her voice over the shocked whispers around the table. “We are facing a war against the unseelie fae, with no Pact and no Brandings. Iron is one of our only defenses. Erec, take some men to retrieve it. Roen can show you the way.”

  Bedevere’s eyes were wide, a crooked smile on his mouth. “Full of surprises, you and your sister are. Just how much iron is there?”

  “Not enough. Thirty, forty pieces at most but not any more than that. We might be able to split some larger pieces to spread it around more.”

  “Forty pieces of iron is at least forty dead fae,” Erec replied, then turned to gather his men, delegating a range of orders through the group.

  While he waited, Roen grinned largely up at Eloryn from his chair.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Just you. Don’t mind me, keep going, you’re doing splendidly.”

  Eloryn grinned back, and Clara trotted into the room, holding a thick tome cradled against her chest.

  “I hope this is the right book,” she said, and placed it on the table in front of Eloryn.

  Eloryn ran her fingers over the worn blue-gray fabric of the spine and the embossed gold letters on the cover.

  The Principles and History of Infantry Warfare.

  The pages riffled below her fingers and her heart ached as she thought about the times that Alward had read this and other books with her. She spoke a silent thank you in her heart for all that Alward taught her.

  The pages were a blur, the dim lighting too weak to see any detail on them.

  Eloryn blinked and muttered, “Àlaich las.”

  The words came to her from habit but her behest fell on deaf ears. Eloryn winced. It was so easy to forget her magic was gone, so natural to try and call light to her with a behest.

  Roen chuckled. “Now you know what my life has been like. Still, I got by. Perhaps everyone might have to learn some tricks from me.”

  Extending an arm, Roen flourished his fingers toward an unlit candle in front of him. The harsh whisper of them rubbing against his palm was followed by a loud burst of flame appearing and setting the wick quickly alight.

  Eloryn gasped in surprise and delight, and then her eyes narrowed. “I don’t suppose you could reproduce that effect on a larger scale?”

  “Planning to hire me as the official palace candle lighter? Because you should know my rates are costly.”

  “Actually, I was thinking of something much bigger.” Eloryn smiled, and pulled the newly lit candle close to her book.

  Finding the section she’d been seeking, she spun the book sideways so Bedevere could see the diagrams there. “Here. This is the strategy I think we should use.”

  “Look at this,” Will said as Memory made it back to the computer.

  Shonae’s eyes were wide, leaning back in her chair away from the screen as though it were a poisonous snake. The café was now almost deserted. Everyone had gone out on the sidewalks, staring up at the tumultuous skies. Some were openly weeping, holding onto their loved ones. The air was filled with the scent of blood and tingle of static, as if the air was charged with iron magic.

  A few people snapped pictures on their digital devices, or just stood there, staring, faces caught in an expression of complete confusion.

  Shonae said in a frightened whisper, “This is bad magic.”

  Memory snorted. “A centuries old agreement between the humans and the fae being torn apart? Yeah. It’s bad magic all right… Oh, wait... You mean the computers, don’t you?”

  Memory snorted and rolled another chair over, straddling it backwards. She looked over Will’s shoulder at the screen which showed current news. Half the world seemed to be experiencing the tremors, which were increasing in frequency and strength. Wild electrical storms, tornadoes and rising tides were striking all over, all apparently caused by a strange landmass appearing and disappearing in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Avall.

  “I saw Nyneve talk to Mina at the palace. I bet she had something to do with persuading Mina to take me away to Tearnan Ogh. I was just a distraction for you, a tool to lure you there. I'm so sorry,” Will said. “We have to get back to Avall and stop Nyneve.”

  “You mean kill her,” Shonae said. “The only way to stop this is to kill her and hope her successor will want to restore the Pact and Avall’s place in the Veil.”

  “I don’t want to kill her,” Memory said. “Killing can’t be the only option. I want peace and you don’t get to peace by walking over the bodies of people you kill.”

  “Good luck with that,” Shonae said, sounding as human as she looked. “We are all going to die.”

  Memory stared at the people on the street. What could she do to fix this? The flicker of an idea kept taunting her, but nothing was locking into place. She needed to know more.

  Memory rolled her office style chair forward, bumping into Will. “Squidge over. I’ve got to check something.”

  He slid across and she took control of the keyboard, tapping in her search string.

  She talked as she typed and skimmed text on the pages that came up. “We already know that legends of King Arthur tie into Avall. Well, I’ve been thinking a lot about Caliburn, or Excalibur. I think it could help us.”

  Memory pointed at the screen to an image of a man throwing a sword into a lake. “And I think I know where it is.”

  Will only frowned. “Isn’t that a bit like saying you know where to find a talking harp based on reading Jack and the Beanstalk? I mean, how did the stories of Arthur continue on over here after Avall was separated off? How would anyone know?
”

  “Because some people crossed over. The fae kept doing their little import and export thing until the amount of iron over here became too much for them, and some wizards toying with Veil door magic tried to come through as well. People like….” Memory rolled the scroll button on the mouse, scanning her eyes over the words on the screen. “This guy. Galfridus Arturus. I know his name from my Avall history book. He’s a wizard who went missing maybe a century or two after Avall was pocketed away into the Veil.”

  “And he stayed here, in this horrible place? Why didn’t he return to Avall?” Shonae asked.

  “Unlike Thayl, nobody kept a door open for him,” Memory said.

  “We don’t have anyone keeping a door open for us either,” Will pointed out. “And if I’m thinking what you’re thinking, Caliburn is back in Avall.”

  “Yeah, it would have been almost impossible to get back before. With all the magic running out of Avall to here, trying to go back to Avall is like swimming against the tide. But since Avall is shifting through the Veil back into this world already, I don’t have to punch all the way through the Veil by myself. We might be able to just slip through.”

  “Then we get Caliburn, and then what?”

  “I… don’t know,” Memory admitted.

  Memory turned back to the screen, but the words were blurring in her eyes. She turned away, staring down the city street as she took deep breaths.

  Will took over on the computer again. She could hear his fingers gingerly pressing the keys, one slowly after another. Sixteen years was a long time away from technology after all.

  I owe him so much. Now I owe everyone so much. What can I do?

  The thought of the dire hatred Nyneve must hold against humans made Memory’s stomach contract into a tight ball. Memory couldn’t stop asking why. Why was she doing all of this? Did she hate humans so much she would do something so destructive, or was she truly insane? Inside her mind, Memory laughed wryly. No, Nyneve wasn’t insane. She had planned so carefully and so cleverly for so long. She never seemed insane. If anything she just seemed deeply sad, and hurt.

  Memory closed her eyes to the chaos around her, trying to think.

  “I know how horrible it feels,” said Hope. “The pain of having someone choose somebody else over you.”

  “You never did agree with the Pact, angered that your lover chose the humans over you.”

  “Myrddin allowed the humans to include Branding into our Pact, and what did he get for it? Branded and killed by the very humans he loved too much!”

  Myrddin. His name was different here, and so was Nyneve’s. Merlin and Nimue, she’d seen these names reading over the Arthurian legends just now.

  In those legends, Merlin disappeared, and from the play she saw in the pub on her night out with Clara, as far as those in Avall knew he’d just disappeared as well. But Nyneve had definitely said Branded and killed. She loved him, but he chose Arthur and the humans over her, and then was Branded and killed. It hurt in Memory’s heart just thinking about it. That could be the kind of pain to twist someone forever.

  Across the street, a man stood on top of a truck whose bed held a round tank. A water reservoir. People lined up down the side walk, holding metal cooking pots, buckets, and jugs. One woman came out of her house holding a tall glass vase.

  The water is off, Memory recalled. Such a simple thing, but something humans couldn’t live without. Memory wondered if living without magic for the fae was like humans living without water.

  The man on the truck took a long hose and dipped it into the tank, filling the length of the hose with water. Keeping one end twisted closed in a tight grip, he pulled the hose back out of the water, with the other end still in the tank and lowered the closed end down to the waiting vessels.

  When he released his grip and opened the hose, the water started to flow, rushing through the hose, starting a syphon, bringing more water with it.

  This world, filled with iron, is draining away all the magic from Avall. I’ve seen it in the Veil, rushing out like a tide, taking with it the life of all the fae. Without that magic, without the spark of connection within humans they need to defend themselves against the unseelie fae, they will all die. And yet I have so much magic inside me, so much it burns me up.

  “I can be the hose,” Memory said in a whisper.

  “What? Mem, are you okay?” Will asked.

  Memory just nodded silently. A plan was forming in her mind and with it, peace was settling on her. The feeling was like what she’d experienced when she’d once decided to end her own life, that same sense of calm and closure, but this one came with a sense of determination. She would fix this, no matter the cost.

  Memory turned around and looked at Will and Shonae. Shonae still had her human appearance, but her eyes had shifted back to all black, her glamour fading along with her strength in this world of iron. “It’s okay. We’re going back to Avall,” Memory told her, and then looked into Will’s eyes, her newfound calm almost breaking under their cool blue gaze.

  “I have a plan,” she said.

  Will looked back at her for a long moment, a frown growing deeper as the moment dragged on. “Your mouth is saying you have a plan, so why am I hearing you say goodbye?”

  Memory’s mouth smiled, but her eyes were sad. Will always did know her too well. She didn’t want to say it, but everything told her that it was goodbye. Goodbye to everything good she had found in her life, in herself. Goodbye to Will and their love for each other. Goodbye to her sister, and Roen, and all her new friends. Goodbye to everything she knew.

  I don’t want to go, not again, a tiny voice cried inside her.

  Memory closed the voice away. She didn’t have the luxury of selfishness or weakness anymore. “I have a plan,” she said again, studying Will’s features, the earthy shade of his tangled hair and the way his dark brows made his blue eyes flash like lightning, trying to capture and lock them in her mind forever. “And I know you won’t like it. I know it might be goodbye. But I have the power to do this so I have to do it. I can save the humans, the fae, and Avall.”

  Will reached for her and held both of her hands in his. He spoke slowly, his voice crackly with emotion. “I don't want to lose you, but I understand. You've always been my hero, but as much as I want to, I can't keep you for myself. I know it's time for you to be a hero to the whole world.”

  Memory leaned forward in her chair, wrapping her arms up around Will’s neck and shoulders, holding him tight.

  He kissed her once on the space between her cheek and ear, then whispered, “Just know, no matter what happens, you’ll never lose me. I’ll always be there for you. I’ll always wait for you. Always.”

  The lights began to flicker off and on and more tremors hit. The floor buckled, splitting the linoleum, and every computer screen went black.

  “I think that’s our cue to go,” Memory said. “If my plan doesn’t work we’ll need a backup. Plan B is using Caliburn to stop Nyneve. The sword should be powerful enough to work against her even with her iron resistance, since it’s made of magically dense iron. Fingers crossed, anyway.”

  Memory cast the man on top of the water tank one last glance. Her fingers tingled with adrenaline as she stood up and said, “It's time this vessel spilled.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Only half of the horses and carriages sent out into the city to bring back civilians returned. The last horse that returned, returned without a rider, followed by a sea of monsters. Unseelie knights led them, mounted on their huge black griffons.

  Eloryn watched from the grand balcony that fronted the palace, her hands clutching at the icy marble balustrade, a cold wind blowing in her face.

  The plan was simple, force the larger unseelie numbers into a small space so that their best fighters could take them on armed with iron. Alward’s book had spoken of three hundred men holding off an army of thousands by doing that and she was hoping to make that work for them too. It had to work. If it did n
ot they were lost and Eloryn knew it.

  Even if it did work, it was only a short term solution.

  The throne room would be their battle ground. The balcony stood at the front of it and Eloryn looked behind her, assessing the preparations. The space was part of the old inner keep, directly below the Round Room, built of solid stone that had lasted a millennium. The two back entrances had been blocked off, hiding and protecting the people of Caermaellan where they sheltered in the servant quarters within the ancient fortified walls. Wards against the fae had been carefully placed out of sight through the large entry hall in a way to channel the fae without being too obvious. The wards would not hold forever, and once the fae worked out what they were doing, the wards could be found and destroyed. The fae could only move in a certain direction thanks to those wards, blocking all other entries and leading them straight to the fighters with iron. Erec stood there, shoulder to shoulder with his best men. Behind the first row of fighters stood more soldiers, prepared to take up the iron of any who fell, and keep fighting. Behind that were doctors and wizards, ready to care for the injured.

  Roen placed his hand over Eloryn’s. “It’s ready. We only had time for one, but it is ready to go when you are.”

  Eloryn nodded. She looked down at the people in the hall. They were all ready and willing, but could she really give the order that would send so many of them to their deaths? Eloryn exhaled slowly, feeling the breath warm her cold lips. She had to.

  She faced the army of unseelie fae before her. A mix of twisted creatures filled the palace courtyard, giants standing out between them, looming over the rest. Higher still, those that could fly hovered and swooped in the air, ready to attack. Eloryn glanced at the window beside her, double checking the glazing of salt that had been applied.