Corvus obliged but made no effort to be pleasant about it. He waited just long enough for Honorine and Francis to climb aboard before launching into the air and up through the storm clouds.
The lightning was blinding and the thunder deafening until they emerged above the clouds into a clear, cold night, and a scene of complete chaos.
The peak of the mountain, rising up above the clouds, was ripping apart. Everything was a smoldering mess of jagged gashes and smoke, topped with the ruins of buildings and the stone palace and the withered, old ironwood tree.
The beasts below had completely broken through the shell and swarmed over the crumbling mountain. They were huge, dark, impossible shapes. Their legs were too long and too many, their eyes shone black and red and sometimes blank, horrible white. Their teeth were too long, their jaws too wide. Everything about them was destruction and evil and death.
The Mordant circled in the sky and stood guard on the land, fighting them back, keeping the Bellua from leaving the island.
“That doesn’t look good,” Francis said, staring down at the glimpses of apocalypse between the beats of Corvus’s wings.
Corvus swept up to the Carina, sailing through the branches to land in the redwood forest near the base of the mast tree.
Honorine hopped down at once, landing on the sandy deck. Francis followed more slowly, looking about in awe as Lord Vidalia struggled to make his way up from his study to see what the commotion was all about.
“Honorine!” he said, struggling over the roots with his crooked, old cane. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, things went a bit sideways down there,” she said. “I need a place to keep Francis safe… and I have this.”
She pulled the sash over her head, opened the silk, and held up the Mapmaker in his globe.
“He needs to be here until this is all settled,” she said. “If Nautilus finds him trapped…”
Honorine had a flash of the Mapmaker’s prediction, but instead of herself throwing the Mapmaker to the Bellua, it was Nautilus, tossing his rival down into the pits of Hades, to be rid of him forever.
Lord Vidalia nodded. “He’ll be safe up here,” he said.
“And him, too?” Honorine asked, pushing Francis forward.
The reunited Vidalias stared quietly at each other for a moment.
“Francis, this is your father,” she said. “Lord Vidalia, this is your Francis.”
Lord Vidalia, unable to find the words, waved his son closer. Francis reached out tentatively, putting one arm over his father’s frail shoulder, before grabbing him in a long, joyful hug.
“You’re alive,” Francis said as he took a step to the side, keeping Lord Vidalia’s arm over his shoulder to help support the elderly man.
“Indeed,” he said. “And you look well.”
“Where are Lux and the archer?” Honorine asked.
“They thought they would be of more help down on the ground,” Lord Vidalia explained. “And I rather agreed.”
Honorine ran to the railing of the ship and looked down at the island ringed with storm clouds and speckled with fire. It was quite a sight with the Mordant climbing and soaring and swimming about. There didn’t seem to be a lot of them, but the Bellua were huge and wild, and it was clear that the Mordant could not hold them back forever.
Then, through the flashing green lights and billowing smoke, came the silhouette of the Nightmare in flight, accompanied by a handful of Mordant, all herding it back toward the island. Honorine spotted a swan, an eagle, and a chariot pulled by four winged horses. There were others as well, on the ground and in the water, obscured by the dense smoke but visible by their trails of colorful sparks. Andromeda and Pegasus landed on the beach.
Almost at the peak of the mountain, the archer was battling through plumes of steam and around scuttling monsters, with Lux galloping along beside him, making their way toward the summit and the still-standing ironwood tree.
“They need my help,” Honorine said, to the immediate protests of Lord Vidalia and Francis. But she was already swinging herself up onto Corvus’s back and whispering for him to fly. She didn’t wait to say good-bye to Francis or Lord Vidalia, or give them a chance to try to talk her out of leaving. She had promised herself and many others that they would all get out of this alive. And now it was time to be true to her word, not sit back and hope that everyone else fulfilled that promise for her.
Corvus was obliging and swooped back down toward the island at a ferocious speed, headed straight for the peak of the mountain, where the archer stood with a raised bow.
Honorine expected him to fire at the Nightmare when it sailed past, but instead he fired a single silver shot straight toward the ancient ironwood tree, just as Corvus reached his claws out to land.
At that exact moment, the Rhectae rooted a tremendous heap of rock from the hillside, and the entire mountain heaved. Everyone was thrown to the ground as a jagged crack wrenched the remains of the terrace in half. Honorine slipped from the crow’s back and hit the stony ground. She struggled to her feet immediately, only to find herself on the far side of a gulf of smoke and steam and licking fire.
She was alone on the scrap of terrace along with the ancient tree—and the shining silver arrow, which had missed its mark and sunk into a pocked chunk of hardened lava stone.
“The arrow!” called the archer from the other side of the divide as the ground shivered and heaved again. Honorine planted her legs and managed to stay upright until the shaking stopped. “Do you see the arrow?”
“Yes!” Honorine called back. “It’s stuck in a rock!”
“Get to it!” Lux shouted. “Use it to cut into the ironwood tree!”
Overhead, the Nightmare was circling back, surrounded by a swarm of Mordant. It ducked and soared just under the hull of the Carina, its whipping tail striking the ship. The Carina listed sharply to starboard, sending a cascade of white sand over the side, shimmering as it fell. And in the middle was a single glowing golden orb.
The Mapmaker. Falling toward the open chasm, just as he had predicted.
“Hurry!” Lux shouted.
Honorine ran for the arrow and plucked it out of the rock. Just as she approached the ironwood tree and lifted the arrow to plunge it into the twisted bark, a rush of black raced past her.
Corvus!
She watched the giant crow swoop across the sky and grab the golden orb in his beak just before it plunged into the fiery mountain. Then, in a single wingbeat, he was off into the clouds, and Honorine felt her hand stop hard as the tip of the arrow sank into the dry bark of the ironwood tree.
A single drop of glowing blue sap oozed from the sharp gash in the rusty orange bark. The drop swelled and trembled, and then fell with a splash onto the terrace stones below.
All around the darkened island, the once dead trees began to bloom leaves of shimmering light in every color. The illuminated leaves burst open in a wave moving quickly up the hillside, skipping among the taller trees, pouring down onto the shorter ones beneath, and finally building to a rush that swept up to the crown of the island, where the ancient ironwood tree erupted with hundreds of thousands of needles made entirely of blue light.
The light coursed through the branches and down into the trunk of the tree, where a thick, glowing sap began to ooze and flow, spilling onto the stones. The liquid rushed toward Honorine, and she climbed quickly onto a flat obsidian boulder, letting the sap flow around her and down the mountain. It poured through the crevices and trenches, soaking and dripping like glowing blue honey.
Above the island, stars began to brighten and send out trails of golden sparks that pooled together and created a web of flowing gold that draped like a dome over the entire island.
“Our last defense against the Bellua,” Lux said, coming up behind Honorine. “The net will close over the mountain and pull them back down. We have to hurry, or we’ll be drawn in along with them!”
Honorine looked up at the great golden net, dripping
shimmering embers over the island. The Nightmare was caught on the inside, skimming through the air and searching for a way out. Already, the golden snare was beginning to shrink, to close down over the entire island like a fishing net being drawn up by a trawling boat. The Leviathan squirmed and struggled, pulling itself toward the water, even though the net was closing in rapidly.
Andromeda, finally making her way to the summit of the mountain, leaped across the divide and landed on the terrace beside the tree. She sent out trails of fire that pushed back the Bellua still on land, away from Honorine.
“Run,” Andromeda commanded. “Get as far down the hill as you can while the net is still large.”
“But what about you?” Honorine asked. “Aren’t you coming with us?”
“I wait until the end. I am the last to leave.”
The golden net was drawing ever closer in the sky. The Nightmare thrashed against it. He made a great clatter of noise and explosions of sparks, but the net held strong and began to close even faster.
Honorine looked to the sky, where anything with wings or the power to fly began to gather over the peak of the volcano, racing toward the net while they could still fit through the gaps in the golden threads.
Several of the Mordant hung back, snaring the Nightmare with hooks and lines made of shimmering light, binding it like an insect wrapped in spider silk, and dragging the beast back toward the ground. Farther down the mountain, another group drove back the Rhectae, pushing it toward a gaping chasm of red light.
Andromeda stood proudly and boldly, her dogs at her sides.
The net was drawing closer. The light from the golden threads burned as hot as the noon sun, and sparks began to fall onto the hard stone ground, and into the illuminated forest below.
“Honorine, you must go,” Andromeda said quietly but firmly. “I will see you on the other side.”
Andromeda turned to look at Honorine, and for a moment, there was no exploding mountain, or monsters, or Mapmaker screaming for their destruction. There was just Honorine and her mother.
“We must go now,” Lux said, nudging Honorine’s hand with his nose.
The net was already half its initial size. Some of the larger Mordant had escaped through the shrinking gaps to the outside. The Bellua fought and strained against it.
“Honorine?” Lux insisted, not shouting or commanding, but asking.
“I know,” she said with a nod, and turned with him to begin their descent off the mountain.
They stumbled down the mountainside as quickly as they could manage, hopping over stones, sliding on melting ice, dodging falling sparks as they raced toward the rapidly closing net.
“Duck!” Lux cried, and Honorine looked up to see the net before them, like a spider’s web drawing closed.
Honorine was right behind him, but the hole had closed almost by half, and she had to pull her legs up nearly to her chest to get through. Lux took a mighty leap, tucking himself into a slender arc of white light, and still he singed the tip of his tail off.
The golden net shrank more quickly, pulling the Bellua back down into the earth, growing brighter and brighter as the threads drew together, until it was a golden shell writhing with angry beasts. Then the shell itself shrank and dove into the very stone of the mountain, fading until it disappeared completely.
The blue sap of the ironwood tree instantly began to cool over the volcano’s red-hot molten lava, sealing the caverns below once again under a layer of impenetrable, solidified light. Then the whole shimmering forest began to fade out, one tree at a time, until all was finally calm, dark, and silent.
Honorine and Lux stood on the beach, where the bones were now covered with a dusting of coarse black sand.
Down at the farthest end of the beach, before it curved out of sight around the slope of the mountain, sat the wreck of the Gaslight. Her hull rested at a sharp angle, the bow cracked nearly down to the sand, the greenhouse dome shattered. Gray steam trickled from one bent smokestack, and rattled sailors were slowly assembling outside. The figures were too small and far away to identify.
“Look what you’ve done, Honorine,” Lux said, and for a moment, she thought he’d meant the shipwreck. “Over there.”
She turned to look down the beach in the other direction.
From the ground, the air, and even the sea, the Mordant were gathering. The archer, the ram, the lynx, the swan, the eagle, and so many others. The collected light of their shimmering bodies lit up the dark island as if it were morning.
“They are free,” Lux said.
“Except for her,” Honorine said, looking up at the mountain. They had barely made it out before the golden net collapsed. There was little chance Andromeda had been able to. Honorine sat down on the sand, feeling a bit dizzy and a bit nauseated as the excitement began to wear off. For a moment, between the crushed shell of the Gaslight strewn on the beach and the cold, still mountain above, Honorine feared she had just lost both of her parents in one night. Again.
Then a shimmering cloud of silver and gold crossed Honorine’s view and drifted around the slope of the mountain, sinking slowly and gracefully toward the beach.
It was a patch of forest.
“That’s the Carina,” Honorine said, rising to her feet as the ship touched down on the black sand. “And Francis!”
He was waving from the railing. Lord Vidalia stepped up beside him, stooped but waving joyfully as well. And then there was a third figure.
Andromeda.
“She made it,” Honorine whispered.
“It seems I still know how to sail,” Lord Vidalia said, shuffling down to the beach with his son’s assistance. “And we found someone we thought you’d like returned to you.”
Andromeda followed, walking slowly to accommodate Lord Vidalia’s careful pace.
“You’re free!” Honorine said. “And so are the rest of the Mordant!”
“Yes,” she replied. “And there’s just one more bit of business to attend to now.”
The rest of the Mordant, Francis, and Lord Vidalia all waited on the beach as Andromeda and Honorine walked toward the Gaslight. The sailors and scientists gathered around the broken hull stepped back as they approached.
“Is anyone hurt?” Andromeda asked, and the crowd went completely silent. “Sirona and Serpens will help anyone who needs medical attention.”
There were a few nods and even fewer murmurs of thanks, barely loud enough to hear over the roll of waves onto the shore.
Inside the Gaslight was not quite as bad as Honorine had expected. It was a mess of broken furniture and sputtering electrical wires, but they were able to find the laboratory, which was flooded up to Honorine’s knees and dark except for a single flame burning gently from a crack in a copper gas line.
Nautilus stood in the middle of the room among the wreckage of his masterpiece, the great machine that had made him more powerful than even the Mapmaker for a short while.
“I’m glad to see you made it through,” Andromeda said, stopping just a few steps inside the laboratory.
“You two, as well,” he said. “And I believe I owe you an apology. I know you may not believe it, but I built this ship for you. So we could all be together again.”
Andromeda’s jaw clenched, and her light brightened. Tiny drops of white fire dripped from her gown and floated across the water. “And you succeeded. Here we all are, together.”
They were quiet for a long moment, and in the silence, Honorine understood that there was more Andromeda should have said. They were together again for the moment. But the moment would not last.
“What are you going to do now?” Andromeda asked. Nautilus waded a few steps toward them.
“I suppose I don’t know,” he said. “Start over again.”
“Why don’t you stay here?” Honorine asked quietly, but her voice echoed in the hollow bowl of a room.
Nautilus was silent for a moment.
“I don’t think the rest of the Mordant would appreciate tha
t very much,” he said. “I still have one airship. It’s probably best to leave now.”
Honorine crossed her arms angrily until Andromeda put a hand on her shoulder.
“He’s right,” she said. “No one is going to be able to stay on this island, after all.”
“And why not?” Honorine replied.
“It’s too dangerous,” Andromeda said.
“But there used to be a city here, and libraries, and people came from all over the world to study here. You could build that again,” Honorine said, imagining the city of Possideo full of Mordant and people alike. It was the kind of place Francis would want to live. And Lord and Lady Vidalia. And Lux, and even Astraea. Somewhere they could be together.
“Not on top of the gates,” Andromeda said. “It will be many years before the forests have regrown and the gates are at their strongest again.”
Honorine felt a nervous panic rising in her gut. It was all going away, and she’d barely even put it together.
“What if we don’t need the forest?” she said, looking around the room at the plates of iron and rivets and the half-submerged wreckage of the Sidus Apparatus control panel. “What if we can build a new gate? Even stronger.”
“No one could build such a thing,” Andromeda said. But Nautilus slowly nodded.
“She could,” he said, pointing at his daughter. Honorine, despite being furious with him for the damage he had caused, smiled.
“Take the ship,” Nautilus said, gesturing at the broken hull around them. “There should be everything you need here. Then you won’t have to wait for your forest. You can start rebuilding Possideo at once.”
“It will be a tremendous amount of work,” said Andromeda.
“I have a crew,” Nautilus said. “I’m sure many of them would stay.”
“And what about the Mapmaker?” Andromeda asked.
“I don’t know,” Nautilus said. “What even became of him?”
“He… escaped, with Corvus,” Honorine said.
The Star Thief Page 23
