by Davis Ashura
Another detonation went off. This one rolled on and on like some terrible hammer of doom. Shouts of abject terror penetrated through Selene’s fury and she could see people outside Mr. Reed’s store gesturing and pointing, clearly horrified by something in the distance.
An Irregular, someone Selene couldn’t recognize through the smoke and soot covering her from head to foot, popped into the store. “Stay inside,” the woman ordered. “We’ll evacuate you if we have to.”
“Evacuate?” Mrs. Karllson stood. “What happened?”
The Irregular’s face went ashen, visible through the soot. “Something terrible. We’re still trying to figure it out. Just stay here. Don’t move.”
Once again, fear for Serena and those she loved filled Selene’s chest.
Mrs. Karllson wore a worried expression, and fearful conversations broke out amongst the grownups. Other than Elliot Dare, Selene was the only child here. She wished she had a girlfriend to talk to.
Mrs. Karllson addressed her. “I need to talk to the others.” She rose. “Stay here. I’ll be back.” Without another word, she marched to the rear of the store where a group of grownups huddled.
Selene understood. Mrs. Karllson’s son and husband were members of the Irregulars. So was Lien. In a lot of ways, she was like Selene since everyone she loved was outside fighting.
Elliot slid into Mrs. Karllson’s seat and pulled out a deck of cards. “Want to see some magic?”
Selene rolled her eyes and made sure Elliot saw it. She wasn’t in the mood to smile or be entertained. “We’re on an island full of magi,” she said, using her best world-weary tone. “Of course I don’t want to see magic. I see it every day.”
Elliot surprised her by not taking offense. Instead, he smiled. “Then how about an illusion?” He spread out the cards and pestered her to pick one.
With a disgusted sigh, Selene did as Elliot asked. King of Hearts.
Elliot handed her a fountain pen, instructed her to write her name across the face of the card, and put it back in the deck. Next, he handed her an envelope and asked her to write her name on it, seal it shut, and leave it on her lap. He did some hand-waving stupidity and shuffling before pulling out a card and setting it face down on his thigh. “Are you ready to be amazed?” he asked.
Selene’s interest piqued in spite of her worry.
Elliot flipped over the card.
Eight of Clubs.
Selene smiled. “That’s not my card.”
He flipped over three more cards in rapid succession. Each one was wrong, and Selene grew smug at his failure.
Elliot scratched his chin, clearly puzzled by his failure. After a few seconds of thought, his face brightened with apparent understanding. “I think I know what I did wrong.” He pointed to the envelope. “Open it.”
Selene lifted her eyebrows in question.
“Trust me.” He smiled, and her heart beat a little faster.
He had a cute smile. She decided to humor him and opened the envelope. She gasped in amazement. Inside was the King of Hearts. “How did you do that?”
Elliot smiled wider, and Selene’s insides did another little somersault. “A magician never reveals his secrets.” He shuffled the cards. “You want to see another trick?”
Selene smiled. “Sure. Why not?” While the fear for her loved ones remained, it eased off a little, and she silently thanked Elliot for distracting her.
Elliot kept her attention focused on his seemingly endless supply of illusions and away from whatever was going on outside. She was grateful to him.
In the middle of a trick involving rings, Elliot paused. “Do you hear that?”
Selene listened. All she heard was the roar of the fires and people shouting. She said so.
He shook his head. “No. There aren’t any more explosions, not even our cannons.”
Selene realized that Elliot was right. The mahavans had stopped firing. She lifted her head, gazed out the front door, and dared to hope. Is it finally over?
Seconds passed, but nothing more came. Selene’s fears eased, and the need to see her family overwhelmed her. She stood, sprinted for the door, and flung it open. For the first time in hours, she stepped outside.
Elliot followed her. “We shouldn’t be out here,” he warned.
Selene disregarded him, but then came Mrs. Karllson’s sharp rebuke to remain inside as well. Other grown-ups shouted at her, too.
Selene hesitated and looked at Mrs. Karllson and the others still inside. She frowned when she noticed her shadow etched on the ground. With all the smoke to cloud the sun, it had been dark as twilight. She puzzled about what her shadow meant.
Something exploded overhead, and Selene’s gaze shot skyward. A shimmering, green light blasted out and white flakes fell like snow. They landed on her hair, lashes, and upturned face.
THE WISDOM OF PYRRHUS
“Roll him over.”
William couldn’t tell who was speaking. He couldn’t tell if the words had been said out loud or in his mind. Maybe one of the Kesarins?
His arms and legs flopped like wet noodles. He had no control of them. Pain bloomed in his back. He groaned, but even to his ears, it sounded no louder than a puppy whimpering. Fatigue and savage agony sapped all his strength.
The burning sensation faded, and William discovered his head resting on something soft, furry, and muscular. His eyes slowly came into focus, and a blue sky shaded with veils of black met his blinking, confused gaze. An instant later his vision blurred once again. What happened to me?
He couldn’t recall. His thoughts drifted like an unmoored raft on a slow-moving stream. So did the voices of those around him. They made no sense, and he struggled to piece together his last moments of consciousness. He remembered a battle, and he remembered killing an unformed, a bunch of them. He vaguely realized that maybe he shouldn’t have sourced his lorethasra so deeply, that he should have let the final eight unformed escape.
William sighed and closed his eyes. He wanted nothing more than to sleep for a few weeks. The voices of those around him kept him awake, though. What are they saying?
“An unformed mauled him.”
William didn’t know who said that.
“What about his arms?” a deep, rumbling voice asked.
William realized it was Travail who had spoken the question, and it was also the troll who held him.
“I’ll Heal them later.” That’s Rukh. “His shoulder and back need attention first. We have to stop the bleeding. Now roll him over.”
A patch of torn, grassy field came into view.
“Hold him,” Rukh said. “He’ll jerk, and I need to make sure the Healing goes into his back.”
“Will it leave a scar?”
William wanted to smile. Jake.
“They’ll be thin,” Rukh said. “The one on his shoulder will be uglier.” He paused. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Travail said. His grip tightened, and William grimaced. “He’ll not slip from my grasp.”
Something nosed him, whuffling his hair. Aia spoke in his mind. *Be brave.*
A moment of silence overcame the group.
William knew pain. The color of healing light blazed through him. It etched his arteries and sank into his bones. The light hurt worse than the mauling of the tiger. It seemed to go on and on, but finally, it faded. The terrible pain from the tiger’s claws and teeth no longer burned. Only his arms throbbed where that damn eagle had raked him.
William’s earlier lethargy redoubled.
Jake whistled in apparent appreciation. “Hardly a scar at all.”
“Look at his shoulder,” Travail said.
“Oh.” William could imagine Jake’s face falling in disappointment. “At least the girls might think the scar there is cool.”
Rukh sighed. “I’ve got others to Heal. Can you take care of his arms?”
Jake muttered something that sounded affirmative, and Rukh moved on, his footfalls retreating.
A moment late
r, a cool sensation eased the throbbing in William’s forearms. The pain abated, and while it wasn’t entirely gone, it was much more manageable.
Memories returned. Janaki Valley aflame. Lilith burning. Buildings destroyed. Smoke and ruin.
William shook his head, and willed himself to rouse. His eyes and thoughts cleared, but lethargy still weighed him down like an anchor.
He had to help those in need. He’d rested enough.
“I’m all right,” he said. He shifted out of Travail’s grasp and tried to lever himself upright, but his knees gave out. He would have fallen if not for Shon, who stood nearby. William leaned heavily against the tawny Kesarin. He went light-headed as his vision swooned. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears. He waited for the dizziness to pass, and the world eventually resolved.
Part of him wished it hadn’t.
William found himself upon the enrune fields. Dozens of corpses lay scattered about. Many were animals, but far too many were human. How many had died here?
A coil of smoke drifted close by, and William coughed.
Jake handed him a canteen. “Drink.”
“What happened?” William asked. His memories remained fragmented.
Jake explained how his unit had tracked down the breakaway group of mahavans. He pointed to Lilith, where smoke continued to pile skyward. Fires burned, the heat extending all the way to the enrune fields.
“The mahavans had cannons,” Jake explained. “They got in a lucky shot. It collapsed a building and a bunch more around it.” He hesitated. “They also had something like napalm. That’s what’s burning.”
William took in Jake’s drone-flat mien. His friend was trying to hide his pain.
“How many died?” William asked.
Travail moved to his elbow. “We don’t know.” His tone was soft and filled with sorrow. “We’re still trying to find out.”
It wasn’t enough of an answer. William faced Jake. “How many?” he demanded.
“At least three hundred,” Jake said. His drone-flatness broke beneath the weight of the number. “And we probably lost more than a hundred Irregulars fighting the mahavans. Ward’s gone.”
More than four hundred dead. William’s light-headedness returned as grief hollowed his heart, and he stared at the ruin of his home.
Serena stood beside Jessira as the two of them watched Demolition slowly exit the bay. The lowering sun etched the lines of the great, black vessel, highlighting it and casting it as a deep, long shadow aimed at Lilith. Serena imagined she could see her father standing in the ship’s stern, smiling in pleasure at the carnage he had wrought, at the village glowing orange and red from the many fires burning on terraces and Clifftop.
Serena scowled.
Too many Irregulars had died to repel the mahavan invasion, and too much of Lilith had been destroyed. It would take months, possibly years, to repair all the damage. On top of that, they’d have to train a new group of warriors for the inevitable invasion of Sinskrill.
At least her father’s fleet had been mauled. It would be a long time before he could mount another sea-based assault on Arylyn. The mahavan ships lay wrecked in Lilith Bay, broken and burning. Their carcasses were nothing more than charred beams, torn sails, and ruined ropes. Their annihilation carried a revolting stink, a combination of burning wood, oil, and pitch, along with acrid columns of pluming smoke and the iron-sharp tang of blood.
The latter arose from the dead mahavans on the beach and the ones who had leapt overboard when their vessels caught fire. Most of those hadn’t made it to shore, and their corpses floated amidst the debris of their ships. A dozen, however, had managed to straggle to Lilith Beach. They should have surrendered, but they hadn’t. They’d fought on in a short, vicious battle.
By then, Jessira had recovered enough from her injuries to lead the cannon crews against the mahavans, but even with her help, they’d lost four Irregulars, and several more had been critically injured. None of the mahavans had survived the battle, and the bodies of those killed still lay where they’d fallen. With the blood soaking the sand, the horrific wounds marring their bodies, and the near-identical rictuses of pain upon their features, Serena couldn’t tell foe from friend.
Serena sighed. She was tired of thinking of death. She looked away from the beach and her eyes went to Clifftop. Clouds of smoke bloomed and people shouted, their cries audible all the way to the beach. Some shrieked as if in heart-wrenching pain.
A pit of fear opened in Serena’s stomach. She couldn’t get anyone on the phone. Something bad had happened up there, and that didn’t include that last shell from Demolition. She only hoped Selene, William, and all those she loved had somehow survived the violence. She closed her eyes. Let them live, she silently prayed.
Diana Mangold approached. Dried vomit crusted her chin. Most of the magi had retched after the brief battle on the beach. Until today, none of them had ever killed another person, and Serena figured that today’s events would spawn nightmares that they would have to live with for years to come, maybe the rest of their lives. As Serena reckoned matters, it was as it should be. Good people should grieve over something as horrible as killing.
Then why don’t I feel anything more? She had actually known the mahavans she’d killed. She’d grown up with some of them and been taught by others.
Diana addressed Jessira. “What should we do with all the bodies?”
Jessira had a large bandage wrapped around her forehead and seemed to be holding herself upright by sheer force of will. She closed her lids for a moment, possibly reaching for a last vestige of strength. She exhaled softly and opened her eyes. “Gather the mahavans. When we can, we’ll build them a floating pyre and set them out on the water. It’s the Sinskrill way.”
Serena nodded in agreement. She would have hated to see the magi disrespect, or worse, desecrate, the mahavan corpses. Showing them respect was better, more humane and civilized.
“What about our own?” Diana asked.
“We’ll carry our own up the Main Stairs,” Jessira said. She swayed, and Serena reached out to steady her. Jessira had stumbled a few times now, a surprisingly ungainly movement for such a graceful woman.
“I think you should let us carry you, too,” Serena said.
Jessira smiled wryly. “Please don’t tell Rukh what happened here,” she said. “He’ll think I rushed into danger like he always does.”
“Don’t you think he already knows?” Serena asked.
Jessira blinked in confusion.
“That weird way you two have of always knowing what the other one is thinking.”
Jessira grimaced. “I forgot about that,” she muttered. “Sometimes it’s a blessing, and other times it’s an annoyance.”
Serena forced a smile. “Well, Rukh won’t hear anything from me.”
“Too late for secrets,” Jessira said with a yawn. “Shon’s up there, too. He’s probably already told them everything.”
Serena’s curiosity awoke. “Shon’s your Kesarin, right? You told us about him.”
Jessira nodded and gestured vaguely toward Clifftop. “He and Aia are with Rukh.” Her words slurred, and she slumped again.
Serena reached to catch her, struggling to hold her up. Mercy, Jessira is heavy. Serena’s knees buckled, and her eyes flitted about as she searched for a place to cushion her fall.
Diana stepped in and took the weight. “I’ll carry her.” She grunted as she took over. “She’s a big girl, isn’t she?” She glanced about and called to Josh Cormier, one of the cannon crew. “Help me out, would you?”
Serena stepped out from Jessira’s limp form. “Thank you.”
As Diana and Josh helped Jessira back toward Lilith, Serena eyed her in fresh concern. Does she have a simple concussion or is it something worse?
“What now, ma’am?” Diana asked. “What do we do about him?” She gestured to Brandon Thrum.
It took Serena several seconds to realize that Diana was speaking to her, and the notion su
rprised her. Who am I to lead anyone? Then she recalled Jessira’s conversation on that long ago bike ride home to Lilith. “Everyone believes you can lead. You should believe it, too.”
Brandon had survived the battle, choosing to surrender rather than fight to the bitter end. He sat on his knees, ankles and wrists tied and with a lock on his ability to source lorethasra. He glared at her.
“We’ll leave three of our own to watch him down here,” Serena said. “It’s probably where he’ll be safest. Our people might kill him if we take him to Clifftop.” As she considered matters, it was a reasonable fear. Many magi had been killed today, and they might seek vengeance on their tormenters by killing Brandon.
She chose the three to guard the mahavan and turned to Lilith’s ruin, the crumbled stairways, the crushed homes, and the bridges with missing spans that gaped like wounds. She tried to imagine her home restored, Lilith made whole, but in this, her imagination failed her. “As for the rest of us, we go up and hope it’s not as bad as it looks.”
It took an hour for Serena and the others to make the climb to Clifftop. It was a long, hard ascent made worse, not because they carried their dead with them—they left them at the base of the Cliffs with plans to bring them up for a proper funeral pyre later on. Nor was it because they had to support their injured—Jessira roused during the hike up to Clifftop but still needed assistance the rest of the way. It was because so many stairs and bridges had been destroyed. They frequently had to backtrack and find another way.
They reached Clifftop as the sun set, arriving to find a weary and wary group of Irregulars manning Cliff Fire’s Main Stairs.
Serena found herself facing a phalanx of spears and aimed arrows. “Please point your weapons toward someone else,” she said in annoyance. We’re the ones who destroyed the Sinskrill fleet.
The Irregulars relaxed when they heard her voice, and Karla Logan, who was apparently in charge, stepped forward and took in their battered, disheveled garb. She addressed Serena. “You look like you had it rough down there.” She gestured to some of the Irregulars alongside her, and they took over the injured, leading Diana and the cannon crews away. “We’ve set up a triage near Linchpin Knoll. It was the only place the mahavans didn’t tear up.”
