Faella looked at her and smiled that same seductive smile. "Can you?"
Sela walked to the altar and let the threads spring up between her and Ironfoot and Faella. It would be tricky to connect the two of them to one another, but not impossible.
But before she even began to channel Empathy in order to relate the two of them, Faella picked up on what she was doing and handily did it herself. Sela did her best to hide her feelings of resentment, but knew that they were spinning out from her on the thread and that Faella was receiving them.
Images, thoughts, words, incantations flowed freely between Faella and Ironfoot. It was tiring to channel actual thoughts as opposed to emotions, but each new channeling that Sela opened, Faella expanded. Within a few minutes, Ironfoot had shared everything that needed sharing, and they were ready.
"Thank you, Sela," said Faella. And she meant it. Sela snapped the thread away, feeling stupid and inferior. She wanted to hate Faella, but couldn't. Faella was better than she was. Silverdun's love for her was justified.
"Then let's begin," said Ironfoot. "Just to be clear, I have no idea what we'll find on the other side of this fold. As far as I know, we could all be killed instantly. But if all of this re is being folded there, it must be there for a reason, and there must be something there to contain it. Which means that others have gone before us."
Silverdun looked at her. "Sela, I know you don't want any more missions, but we don't know what we're about to face. We need you."
Sela's heart jumped. If anyone other than Silverdun had asked her, she would have said no.
"Of course I'll go," she said.
"Then let's begin," said Silverdun.
"Yes, please," said Ironfoot. "I have a feeling that any minute now a judge in the Aeropagus is going to send an order for us to clear out of here, war or no war. So by all means, let us begin."
"You know what to do?" said Ironfoot.
"I do," said Faella.
Without warning, the world disappeared.
Sela is finally happy. She has Milla.
They sleep in the same bed. They eat their meals together. They play together on the lawns, weaving the daisy chains that Sela has taught Milla how to make. They put on plays for one another, read aloud (mostly Sela reads and Milla listens), sing each other to sleep. They make rude jokes about the crones and even sometimes about Oca. Sela learns a new word from Milla- "eunuch"-about Oca. They are inseparable. Except for Sela's "special studies" each morning.
After bringing Milla, Lord Tanen went away, and so things at the manor have been breezy and light. The crones watch her and Milla playing together, but say nothing. Their constant ministrations have ceased, replaced only by a curious watching.
Before he left, Lord Tanen took Sela and explained that there are some things Milla can never know. And that if Milla discovers them, that she will have to be taken away. Sela didn't have to be told what he meant: the killing.
Sela enjoys killing, and looks forward to her training in the basement of the manor house each day. She has known for as long as she can remember that the killing is a special secret. The unreal enemies that Lord Tanen has been training her to protect against are ever watchful. Milla has been told that Sela's killing time is her time for "special studies." Milla has no interest in studies, though.
"What is it you do down there all morning?" Milla asked her once.
"I train to use my Gift. I have Empathy."
Milla shrugged. She has no use for the Gifts, possessing none of her own. She smiled. "You're so lucky."
Sela knows that Milla is not very bright. She is sweet and kind and trusting, but she has a very hard time understanding things that are simple to Sela. At first this bothered Sela, but now she's used to it.
Sela makes her very first thread, with Milla, one evening after supper. They are in their bedroom, laughing about the wart on Begina's face. Begina is one of the crones, the coldest one, the one most likely to slap Sela with a ruler.
They are laughing, laughing, and Sela takes Milla in her arms and holds her as tight as she can. Milla tickles her and they fall over laughing; then Milla falls backward and hits her head on the floor.
"Ouch!" says Sela, holding her head.
"Why are you ouching?" says Milla, sitting up, laughing, holding her own head. "I'm the one that fell."
"I don't know," says Sela. She looks at Milla, and there it is: a fat, fluffy, pink-and-gold thread, made of light, extending from her to Milla. It's not a real thread, like in the sewing box. And it's not actually made of light, either. It's a connection of some kind, and Milla's thoughts and feelings mingle with her own along it. Sela has never felt so close to anyone before, believes that it isn't possible to feel so close to anyone.
"What's happening?" says Milla. "I feel very strange."
"I feel like I could just let go and disappear forever," says Sela, her voice soft and airy. She's starting to forget who's who. Is she Sela, or Milla? Is she anyone at all?
She gets a glimpse of something, something that is powerful and true. As Sela slips into Milla and Milla and Sela slip away together, something deeper and more real than either of them begins to appear in its place. Sela is filled with a rush of emotion she can't explain.
"I don't like this," says Milla. Sela looks at her and sees the thread that isn't a thread convulse, thick runnels of purple and green and brown now coursing through, spoiling the pinkness, pulling it taut, making it ugly.
Revulsion. Milla's or hers? Milla is afraid of her: has always been afraid of her. Has always found Sela unsettling.
No, Sela's revulsion. Disgust at Milla's betrayal.
Who is feeling this?
The door slams open and Lord Tanen bolts into the room. He is not supposed to be here!
"Sela!" he shouts. "She is one of their spies! Milla is an assassin of the unreal!" "No!" screams Sela, jerking back, away from Milla.
Milla and Sela are terrified. Milla and Sela want to be away.
Lord Tanen is carrying something, something that shines. Milla and Sela are afraid of it.
No, Milla is afraid of it. Sela wants it. Sela reaches out for it.
Lord Tanen puts the knife in Sela's hand, and the thread between her and Milla goes black, black, black.
"You know what must be done," says Tanen.
Milla skitters backward. Sela can feel her confusion and terror. Terror of Sela. She knows who is who now.
Sela advances on Milla and, with trembling fingers, kills her. It's so easy; the ones that Lord Tanen provides for her lessons have far more fight in them. The thread vanishes not in an instant, not as the knife slices the flesh, but slowly, sluggishly.
"Congratulations," says Lord Tanen. "Today you have completed your training."
Sela turns on Lord Tanen, the knife wet in her grasp. A girl's blood looks just like anyone else's. A real girl? An unreal girl? Sela draws the blade of the knife across her wrist, severing the vein there. The blood is just the same. No difference.
"It's too much for her," comes a voice behind Lord Tanen. One of the crones. She's not sure which one. "You went too far with this one, just like we told you."
"Hush!" shouts Lord Tanen, wheeling on the crone. "She's just fine. She's stronger than any of the others."
Too far. Sela lets go of the knife. It's a meaningless object, a protrusion into space of lines and angles. A weight, nothing more. A minute ago she'd almost seen something, something beyond all of this meaninglessness. She has it in her grasp, but knows that if she looks there again, she will cease to be.
"Come along now," says Lord Tanen. "It's time you and I had a long conversation."
Sela's body is, she realizes, unreal. It too is simply space and lines and angles. Machines moving and humming, insensate, collaborating in the illusion of being. It is coming at her again, the thing she saw, from a different angle. The thing that will consume her.
"What is it?" asks Lord Tanen, looking into her eyes. A thread forms. Very unlike the first. Sela
sees him and knows him. Knows who and what he is and what he wants and why, but it's much too much, and the thing that wants to eat her is reaching up to swallow her into everything, and so she shows it to Lord Tanen instead.
Lord Tanen makes a funny sound. Not just odd, but humorous. Sela almost giggles. Everything is too big and horrid, and this thing that wants to eat her is consuming Lord Tanen and his only response is to make such a silly little noise.
Someone screams. One of the crones, she assumes. She shows the thing to the crone, too. Why not? It will eat everything sooner or later, she knows. Only a matter of time. Might as well save Sela for last.
More screaming, and now running, slamming. Sela has closed her eyes; she doesn't want to see any of this, no thank you.
It goes on like this for quite some time. Hours. Sela is waiting for the thing to return and show itself to her, but instead something hits her from behind, hard, and she bites her tongue.
"Get that accursed thing on her now," comes a frightened voice.
Someone is sliding something up over her wrist. A bracelet? A gift for me? Up over her elbow, and then snug against her arm. The thing she's been showing to everyone loses its teeth, yawns, goes to sleep.
What was that thing? Sela is certain that it was big and dangerous, but can't quite picture it anymore.
That voice again. "We've got her, Lord Everess," it says. "She's secure."
Secure.
Sela saw light. Light, energy, heat, all around her. She was being burned alive. But she wasn't really seeing it; she was experiencing it on some level other than sight. There were no eyes, no body.
A thread erupted out of her. A thick, ropy thread connecting her to a presence larger and more terrifying than any she had ever known. An ancient intelligence, a wisdom beyond eons, beyond stars. It saw her and knew her.
She was being incinerated in flame. She was vanishing. Then her body was jerked to the side-but there was no body, of course-and she dropped, hard, onto stone.
"Sorry about that," came a girl's voice. Faella.
Sela opened her eyes. She was on her knees on a platform of stone. Silverdun, Ironfoot, and Faella were here as well. Faella had landed on her feet, but both Silverdun and Ironfoot were picking themselves off the hard floor of the platform.
The platform was circular, with a stone railing. Beyond the railing was nothingness. Not darkness, not light. Just ... nothing. Sela had no words for it. Emptiness without form or substance, or even absence. It was deeply unsettling.
"I apologize for almost killing all of us," said Faella. "But I'm afraid we didn't take into account that the fold would feed us directly into the receptacle, not into a happy landing spot. So I made an adjustment in midfold. Harder than it sounds, I can assure you."
"Where are we?" asked Sela, her voice shaking.
"Look behind you," said Silverdun.
Sela stood, turning. Behind her was a wide road that ended at a great stair leading up to a massive, black edifice, a squat castle without tower or battlement, streaked reddish orange. It was blocky, unadorned, huge. Larger than the Great Seelie Keep and twice as high.
Before them, at the start of the road, was a tall stone arch, and on the arch was inscribed a line of script in a language that Sela didn't recognize.
"What is that?" she asked.
Ironfoot looked up at the arch, puzzling out the characters.
"This is Thule Fae," he said. "I studied it at Queensbridge. But it's an odd dialect. Give me a moment."
"What does it say?" asked Silverdun.
"It says `Beyond This Arch Lies Death."'
"Not very welcoming," said Silverdun.
"Great. So what's the plan, boss?" asked Ironfoot.
Silverdun scowled. "We go inside and look around," he said.
"And that sign?"
"Pray it's a bit of hyperbole."
"I hate to bring this up," said Faella. "Because you may find it a bit dispiriting, but there's something I need to tell you."
"What now?" asked Silverdun.
"While we were in the fold, I'm afraid some time may have passed. Rather longer than you might have expected."
"How long?" asked Ironfoot.
"I think it was about four days," said Faella.
Silverdun swore. "Then the war's already begun!"
Morale is worth its weight in gold. Given the choice between a hopeful soldier with a club and a disheartened soldier with a sword, I will take the one with the club every time. After the Battle of Coldwood, General Ameus was asked how he prevailed despite being heavily outnumbered. He famously answered, "We were less interested in dying than they were."
-CmdrTae Filarete, Observations on Battle
auritane didn't agree with the invasion, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to do it properly.
He stood outside his tent facing north, reviewing his Seelie Army troops as they marched west along the Border Road toward the ruins of Selafae, where they would amass and cross into the Unseelie at dawn. The Border Wall itself was a hundred yards farther north, separated from the road by a swath of swampy ground.
A seemingly unending line of soldiers, wagons, and horses flowed past, kicking up dust along the road. The air smelled of dirt, horse dung, sweat, and the spiced preparations of the battle mages.
The battle plans for this invasion had been drawn up a week earlier and had been distributed to all of his generals, as well as to the Foreign Ministry and the office of the secretary of states. A copy had also been sent, encrypted, to Jem-Aleth, the Unseelie Ambassador, signed by Baron Glennet. That plan was probably even now circulating among Mab's commanders on the opposite side of the border. At least, he hoped it was.
The plan was a fiction, of course. They would not be attacking from Selafae. They would be going over the Border Wall. The soldiers weren't marching; they were taking their positions. At his signal, they would turn to the north and march directly to Elenth.
Six months ago, Mauritane and a pair of trusted battle mages had traveled to this very spot, miles from any village or city on either side of the border, carrying a unique spellbomb. No Einswrath this; it was specifically crafted to disrupt the bindings that kept the Border Wall impassable. It had performed its task perfectly, flattening down the barrier of Motion, allowing Mauritane and his mages to hop easily over the border. Two days ago, under cover of night, Mauritane's mages had strung identical bombs along a threemile section of the wall.
Mauritane looked at the sun. It was time. He called his head support mage, Captain Eland, to his side.
"It's time," he said.
Eland nodded and gathered up his mages. Across the border, a company of Unseelie cavalry stood, watching but doing nothing. The Seelie men hurled good-natured insults at them as they went, though the cavalrymen certainly couldn't hear them from this distance. They were in for quite a surprise.
One of Eland's men raised his hand, and a flare of witchlight shot up, flashing bright red in the sky. It made a small pop as it exploded. Across the border, one of the Unseelie cavalry pointed to it, talking to the man next to him.
A series of closely timed explosions ripped across the Border Wall. Even at a hundred yards, they were loud enough to hurt Mauritane's ears.
Mauritane's troops required no other signal, but he gave one anyway.
"The Seelie Heart!" he called, his voice magically amplified.
"The Seelie Heart!" answered the voices of a thousand men. The battle cry echoed up and down the lines.
The army turned as one and began marching north toward the curtain of black smoke that was now rising where the Border Wall had been. About a mile farther north, they would meet a very unprepared column of Unseelie troops, and the battle would begin in earnest.
The Unseelie cavalry turned and fled, but they were too late. Percussives fired from the lead battle mages blew them to bits within seconds.
Thus began the Third Unseelie War.
It took a few hours, but to their credit, the Unseelie rea
lized quickly what had happened and altered their own plans in response. There were a number of small skirmishes-during which Unseelie forces, caught utterly off guard, were slaughtered handily-but those were few.
The first battle was just south of the Unseelie village of Claret. Mab's forces were waiting for them in the village and struck as Mauritane was advancing up the hill toward it.
The first spells began to clash overhead as the battle mages unleashed their opening salvos. Streamers of smoke intertwined in a riot of color, percussives and incendiaries canceling each other out in the sky. Those percussives that struck among Mauritane's troops, however, were devastating in their capacity.
Midwinter 02: The Office of Shadow Page 41
