She raised her spear. I had no time to cut. No time to think.
I was going to die. Just a scratch, Loki had warned. Only a scratch.
The valkyrie looked a lot more stabby than scratchy.
I raised my knife, and she laughed. She didn’t stab. She laughed.
The valkyrie’s laugh ended when I slid the knife blade behind the bridle and slashed outward. I fell, taking the bridle with me. She had enough time to reach for the horse’s mane before my momentum dragged her off its back and into the air.
Her feathered cloak unfurled, and her descent slowed as her horse galloped away. She stared death at me and reeled me in by wrapping the braid around the wrist of her free arm. Christ, she was strong. It felt like she could pull my arm clean off. The spear, she kept leveled.
I raised my knife and she laughed again. Until I severed the braid and dropped.
I bit the knife handle again, willing myself to change.
The transformation came more easily now, as if each time I did it, this unnatural thing became a more natural part of my body. Which concerned me. What if it meant someday I’d transform and forget what it meant to be human? Loki never forgot to be an asshole regardless of his form, so hopefully I’d be okay.
I ran as the valkyrie drifted to the ground, scanning the air for the rest of them. The freed horse ran in the opposite direction of me as fast as possible. Which probably made it the smartest horse in this race.
Two valkyries fought atop the back of a second flying horse. I had to assume one of them was Loki. At least he was still on plan. The third…where was the third?
I felt a shudder. A sensation you’d describe as someone stepping on your grave. But I wasn’t in the grave. Yet. A shadow passed over a cloud beneath me. I looked up and saw a horse flying away.
An explosion hit my back. I’d spotted the third horse. But not the valkyrie, and now she was on my back.
“Not so clever now, are you beastie?” she hissed.
Her fingers tightened in my mane. She jerked my head back. Instinctively, I stopped running. I didn’t want to, I wanted to bolt. But I couldn’t. I reared as the valkyrie’s heels dug into my flanks.
I cried out, and as the neigh of protest escaped, so did my knife.
“I should kill you,” she said. “But we’re already down two steeds. I will settle for breaking you.”
“Go ahead and try.”
The loop of a bridle passed over my neck. Shit. That was a good try. Without hands I couldn’t get it off of me. With hands I’d start falling, and hang myself.
Loki hadn’t said I could turn into anything other than a horse, but he was a shapeshifter, and assuming the god of lies had told the truth this time, his blood was in my veins as much as my horse grandfather’s. Maybe I could do something.
I changed. I fell.
My hands came back first. I slipped them under the loop just before it choked me.
The valkyrie laughed as I swung at the end of her line. My human feet kicking feebly as I gasped and danced on the air.
“Michelle!” Loki cried from somewhere. Somewhere distant, and growing more so.
My vision greyed, and tunneled. My world shrank. I needed my hooves back. If I changed, would my front legs get caught in the noose? Would it kill me? Or break the bridle? It was magic. My heart thudded in my ears as grey turned black.
My first change had come when I was afraid.
I was plenty afraid now.
Afraid to change.
But I needed to.
My feet hit purchase. I stepped up as if climbing a ladder, and felt the braid go slack. Slack enough to loop it over my head and turn around to face the valkyrie. Human arms tugged and jerked. My torso hadn’t changed, just my lower body. The valkyrie was much stronger than me. Without the added mass of being a horse there was no way I could overpower her. I dug my hooved feet in. It slowed the process, but didn’t stop it.
The first valkyrie we’d kicked off her horse glided toward us, spear arm cocked back. She threw.
I looped the braid around one arm and changed to a horse again. I ran down, jerking the valkyrie into the path of the spear.
She cried out and the line went slack. When I whirled around, the valkyrie was gone. Her foggy afterimage glared at me before the wind caught it and dissipated her to nothing.
The valkyrie who threw the spear screamed in protest. She scanned the sky for her last sister. I looked too. I saw Loki, I assumed it was Loki, flying as a hawk beside one of the horses.
“You’re outnumbered, lady,” he said. “Go back to Hel.”
“I’ll be back for you, trickster,” the valkyrie snarled. “And your little horse too.”
The valkyrie faded into the clouds the same way her shishkabobbed sister had, and was gone.
“Wow,” Loki said. “I can’t believe that worked.”
I shook my head, panting. “I think you’re exactly the man my mother warned me about.”
***
Chadwick Ginther is the Prix Aurora Award nominated author of the Thunder Road Trilogy (Ravenstone Books) and Graveyard Mind (forthcoming from ChiZine Publications). His short fiction has appeared recently in Tesseracts, Those Who Make Us and Grimdark Magazine. He lives and writes in Winnipeg, Canada, spinning sagas set in the wild spaces of Canada’s western wilderness where surely monsters must exist.
Lightless
K.T. Ivanrest
From the balcony of his prison, Fulsa watched the chariots streak through the sky. At this distance it was impossible to distinguish one from another or guess who might be winning—in fact, it was impossible to see chariots at all. Only balls of light trailing across the darkness, gliding into accidental constellations as teams pulled ahead and fell behind, collided and swerved. It was a simple training run, preparation for the upcoming race, but even so he could sense the energy, the starfire streaming off the horses, the anticipation.
Two days until the festival. He, too, ought to have been out there patterning galaxies with the other drivers. And instead—
“Your Highness?” Phaios’ quiet voice drifted from the shadows, as insubstantial as the speaker. “The empress has arrived.”
Already Fulsa was halfway across the room, nerves coursing around his stomach while he unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it on a nearby chair. Immediately the room grew lighter, and desperate hope fired in his heart. Perhaps he was brightening after all. Perhaps his nightmare was finally over.
He slid a sheer coat across his shoulders and then studied his hands, but could discern no difference in their glow. Here in this secluded tower with only Phaios for company, he had no way to determine whether there had been any further dimming. Beside the lightless slave he always looked radiant, so bright he could almost forget what was happening, and then the empress would visit and he’d see just how quickly his dignity and worth were seeping out of his skin.
A last glance out the window while he clenched his fists and tried to calm his heartbeat. Another last glance toward Phaios, whose silent nod spoke more clearly than any words.
Then he knelt before the door and waited.
Aithra’s footsteps were mere tps on the polished stone, her presence announced instead by the brilliance which preceded her up the staircase, pressing away the shadows with proud disdain and careless ease.
“Your Majesty.”
Her gossamer coat rustled softly, scattering specks of light like jewels for the less fortunate. Even knowing how much of it was unnatural, he envied her splendor. To have so much to shed…
“Fulsa.”
Using only his name, his mother wove an intricate knot of shame, disinterest, and approval, three threads he could always perceive despite their incompatibility, each tightening or loosening at a moment’s notice. He hated how it bound him, the possibility of that last thread, the enduring hope that one day she would look at him with pride.
But when he rose, it was to meet a face painted with practiced neutrality. Her blue eyes examined him a l
ong moment and then she stepped into the room, striding between Fulsa and Phaios and snapping her riding crop at the slave as she passed. Fulsa winced, watched his attendant retreat from her aura, and kept his usual silence—now more than ever he could not afford the empress’ ire, and when she caught him watching Phaios he rolled his shoulders back and raised his chin instinctively.
“And still,” his mother said without preamble, “no improvement. I daresay it’s worse than ever.”
His stomach lurched, his proud posture collapsed, and the last of his foolish, nervous hope trailed away like the very glow that was abandoning him. Worse than ever, less than ever… He swallowed and tried to think of something brave to say, but instead rasped, “Doctor Candas?”
“Nothing.” The empress pulled a small, cream-colored pendant from around her neck and held it out. “She continues to insist there is no explanation. Nor yet,” she added, frown deepening when he did not accept the necklace, “a cure.”
He took it at last, forcing himself not to look at Phaios nor think about the source of the light within the charm. Not a cure, just a temporary solution until the doctor—until anyone—could fix him. Between his fingers the smooth stone grew warm, and a searing heat spread through his limbs. His aura widened into the darkness.
As always, he watched his mother’s face hungrily, hating himself for his weakness, but there it was: that flash in her eyes, the smoothing of her skin as her frown dissipated. Not quite pride, but recognition. For a beautiful moment everything held promise—the beads woven into his coat threw a glimmering dance across the room, Phaios’ reading lamp seemed absurd again, and even the chill in the air was swallowed up in silver splendor. He was radiant Prince Fulsa once more.
And then Aithra’s carefully schooled composure returned and Fulsa’s heart sank beneath the weight of the truth and the ephemerality of his restored light.
If the empress saw his dismay, she said nothing; instead she nodded like a craftsman satisfied with her work, reclaimed the pendant, and turned.
“I cannot stay.” She never stayed. She came herself only because she trusted no one else with the secret. “I must oversee the final festival preparations.”
“Of course. Thank you, as always, for coming.”
Fulsa bowed to her retreating back, and by the time he rose she was already gone. Trembling all over yet hollow within, he took a single, involuntary step after her. How long before he would accompany her down those stairs?
The race was finished by the time she was gone, and so the only thing left to do was cry.
But Fulsa couldn’t make himself do even that, so instead he returned to the balcony and the darkness, to the pure and absolute silence that filled so much of the desolate northern coast. An abandoned watchtower, an abandoned prince…
High above, a wild horse streaked through the sky, its wings outstretched, radiance in its wake that put even Aithra’s to shame. Further and further it climbed, away from the island and its tame kin, goaded on by nothing more than the joy of flying.
What he wouldn’t give to join it.
Phaios came to stand at his side, as always, and said nothing, as often. Out of the corner of Fulsa’s eye he was merely a dark blur crested with starlight-pale hair, fading into the shadows unless Fulsa looked directly at him. To the Celest nobility, this near-invisibility was the appeal of the lightless, but here in this prison locked only by disgrace, the empress come and gone without a solution yet again, it was no more than another ominous whisper of Fulsa’s fate. For a moment he felt his mother’s shame, and then he simply felt desperate and lost.
“What’s it like?” he whispered, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
Behind the deferential tilt of his head, Phaios’ gaze was as penetrating as ever. “Losing yourself,” he asked, “or being lightless? Your Highness.”
“The second. The…both.” Fulsa slouched against the railing and sighed. Was there a difference?
His attendant traced a dull finger through the air, following the island’s edge where it met the endless span of space. Somewhere beyond lay other islands, other cities and thousands of Celest, bright spots in the sky of Aithra’s domain.
How far he felt from it all.
At last Phaios finished his outline and swept his fingers gracefully through the darkness, balling his hand into a fist as though attempting to contain it. “Like falling into the sky.”
It was so like Phaios, that answer, at once poetic and dangerously real. Fulsa had struggled not to think about what the empress might do to him if he truly lost all of his light, but for a moment he saw himself hurled from the island’s edge, clawing at blackness until he was dragging it within him, the distinction between his body and the sky vanishing, and no matter how loudly he screamed, no one could see him or hear him or save him—
He threw himself back from the railing with a gasp and shoved his sleeve up to his elbow, certain it was already too late, and when a dark spot appeared upon his shoulder he nearly panicked before realizing it was merely Phaios’ hand.
“There has to be something.” He couldn’t let it happen. Three months in this tower and he couldn’t endure another day of waiting. “Anything.”
Everything he wanted was in the city and everything he might become hovered at his side, so instead he sought the sky for the horse. Far in the distance he caught its stream of starfire, and though it was leaving him behind, he felt a breath of comfort. Once, said the legends, everyone had been lightless, but then the horses had come. His people had called them the selphoroi, the light-bringers. They’d filled the sky and islands with their brilliant glow, and in the end, gifted it to those they’d deemed—
“The race!” He whirled and grabbed Phaios’ shirt, pulling him closer and grinning into his startled face. “Phai, I have an idea.”
Fulsa slid the bit into the mare’s mouth and waited for Phaios to question his judgment again.
It was amazing, really, how the slave could say absolutely nothing and still convey a sky of meaning. He’d spent their harried journey to the city filling a vast expanse of starry darkness with nothing, and now he stood guard outside the stall, attempting a galaxy.
It was supremely irritating, but to be fair, everything was a disaster.
Shaking with nerves, Fulsa surveyed his progress, confident he’d done Lun’s bridle properly but at a complete loss regarding the rest. It didn’t matter that he’d already harnessed Sona—he had no idea whether it was correct and still less how to repeat the process. For all he knew, he’d used too many straps on Sona and would not have enough left for Lun. Was there really a line trailing down the horse’s back? How had he never noticed?
Again he cursed their timing. The Right of Eos allowed anyone to vie for light by completing the annual race, but required that he or she drive the imperial horses, and so the plan had seemed simple: hide in the royal stables while Aithra performed the opening ceremony, wait until she returned with her chariot, then intercept it from the stablehands once she’d gone. One pair of selphoroi, harnessed and ready to race.
Instead they’d shouldered their way through a city bustling with festival-goers of every rank and brightness to find the ceremony complete, Aithra’s mares already unharnessed, and the race looming scant hours away.
Their only luck was that the stables were deserted. A horse’s soft glow marked each occupied stall; the rest sat lightless like Fulsa, who’d disguised himself in Phaios’ thick-woven clothing and was trying not to think about the day he’d no longer have any aura to conceal. The empress had been right—it was getting worse. Already the pendant’s store was nearly gone, and their progress through the city, past so many lighted in their cheerful gauzes and glittering robes, had left him more frantic than ever.
With trembling hands, he snatched one of the straps from the pile at his feet; the buckles clinked with every anxious jolt, then clattered loudly as the entire thing slithered from his grip and hit the sand with a defeated thud.
“Shut up,” he snapped at Phaios, who’d said nothing and continued to do so. “Useless…”
The retort died on his lips—he couldn’t berate a lightless for keeping well away from the selphoroi, not when his own hands were already throbbing. Even a brush against Lun’s star-white coat sent heat searing through his skin, and her beautifully soft forelock all but singed his fingers when he pulled it over the browband. And this from a tame selphoros, far paler than her wild kin owing to the gift of light she’d given long ago.
Just one more horrible reminder how far he’d faded, and one more reason to abandon this plan before it killed him.
But he couldn’t. Every time he considered quitting, the consequences seemed worse, the loss more devastating. He would regain his worth, and this was the only answer he had.
Retrieving the strap, he brushed it clean and took a deep, steadying breath, catching scents of hay and manure, leather oil and freshly groomed horses. Through the bars at the back of Lun’s stall he could see one of the city’s many statues honoring the selphoroi, mounted high on a pedestal at the far end of the arena—some artist’s representation of a horse in flight, its surface tiled over with the same shimmering white stones that lined the island’s shores. Fulsa remembered hurling them from the edge as a child and shouting “Shooting star!” until his voice grew hoarse. He recalled time and again threatening to shove Phaios over the edge, too, and how with each threat his attendant had looked a little less alarmed and a little more quietly amused.
The memories sustained him strap after strap, until at last Lun stood in full harness, or so he hoped. He slid the stall door back, wincing when it rumbled into the silence, and thrust the reins at Phaios, guilty but more nervous and impatient than ever. So far, so good, but who knew how long it would take to harness them to the chariot…
“Hold her while I get Sona.”
Phaios raised his eyebrows.
“I know. Look, just half a minute, all right?”
His attendant compressed a great deal of silence into the next moment, then took several steps back, withdrew his hands inside his sleeves, and accepted the very end of the reins between two misshapen pads of dark fabric, as if afraid Lun’s heat might somehow work its way to him through her tack. Ears lazing back, the mare dipped her head and eyed her reluctant handler without concern. Well-trained, everyone said. Fulsa suspected otherwise, but he didn’t have time for that right now.
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