The Tattered Lands

by Barbara Ann Wright

  She stood, staring, wondering what awful monster had gotten in there and now wanted in here. It had to be something truly awful to be able to resist the syndrium laced into the bricks of the tower. Maybe one of the tattered seelie had gotten lost in there and was seeking a way inside.

  By scratching at the inner door instead of coming to the front? Maybe they were injured. She took a step toward the door before her rational mind overcame her need to help. If one of the tattered seelie was injured, she wanted them to stay that way. A dark thought, but one she had to force herself to honor.

  And she didn’t want anyone else coming to help, either. She headed up the stairs, wondering who else had heard the noise. Maybe she could stop them with idle conversation, find out if anyone was missing.

  Several seelie sat around the tables in the kitchen. No one spoke to her, and those she passed near the bedrooms didn’t even acknowledge her. She lingered on the stairs, watching where they went, but no one went to the ground floor.

  She kept going up, beginning to think she hadn’t heard an injured seelie but some other creature. As she reached the top floor and Camilla turned from the window, Lilani had another thought: maybe she’d been right all along, and Vandra had come. The idea froze her, and she barely heard Camilla’s words of welcome. Had she just walked away from her chance to escape?

  “Just in time,” Camilla said. “Maruk has some experiments he’s desperate to try.”

  Lilani took a step back, fighting the urge to run. Camilla would only follow her, stop her. Worse, if that was Vandra or some other rescuer behind that door, Camilla would kill them.

  “Don’t worry!” Camilla said, lifting her hands. “I’ll be with you the entire time.”

  Lilani’s mind raced as she tried to come up with some excuse—needing more time to recover from her earlier injuries, something—but Maruk walked into the room. He glared at Lilani, but he seemed to have lost the monstrous rage from before. Maybe since no rescue party had appeared, he’d calmed.

  But the rescue party could be here after all. Lilani held on to that hope as Camilla guided her toward the table. She went with wooden steps. If it was a rescue, what was the plan? How could she help? And if it wasn’t, if it was some tattered creature that could resist the syndrium in the watchtower, maybe she could let it in and escape in the chaos. There were no idle vermin in the tattered lands with nothing to do but scratch at the walls, unless some had bred inside these stones, the last cockroaches in the tattered lands. She was tempted to laugh. Her nerves were getting to her.

  Maruk laid out several items on the table: a large iron box, several jars of powder. “Brace yourself.”

  Lilani tensed, but it was Camilla who nodded, and Maruk lifted the lid off the box. Camilla hissed; Lilani felt a peculiar hum along her skin. She leaned forward and saw the silvery-blue glow of syndrium filling the box. It had to be a piece of a pylon.

  Maruk grimaced, drew on a thick pair of gloves, and lifted the syndrium free. Using a chisel, he sliced off a chunk before throwing the large piece back in the box and slamming the lid.

  Camilla seemed to breathe easier, but she stared at the chunk of syndrium with distaste. Someone called from the stairs, and Camilla yelled, “It’s fine. Stay there.”

  They hadn’t locked the box. If Lilani could grab it…

  “Put your hand here.” Maruk indicated a spot on the table next to where the syndrium chunk rested in a crucible over a small flame. When she touched the table, he said, “No, on the plate.”

  A metal plate sat next to her hand, and a copper wire led from it to the crucible. She hesitated, fearing a shock or some other pain.

  Maruk sighed loudly. “Camilla, please?”

  Camilla took Lilani’s hand in her iron grip. “Now, Lilani dear, do as Maruk says. We all want to get along, don’t we?”

  If Lilani didn’t move, Camilla would only move her. She touched the plate. Camilla took her shoulders and stood behind her, holding her in place. She didn’t have time to ask anything before Maruk began mixing powders and dumping them onto the hunk of syndrium. Sweat dripped down Lilani’s brow. Nerves, maybe, but her palms started to itch, and the feeling radiated throughout her body. Her breath came in gasps.

  Camilla’s grip increased. Lilani put her free hand on the table to steady herself. She couldn’t lift her other hand from the plate. Her hair whipped around her as her magic rose, but instead of covering her like a soft blanket, it rushed to her chest, pooling there before it crawled down her arm, rippling the cloth on her sleeve, and scattering crumbs of powder.

  “It’s working,” Maruk said, triumph in his voice.

  Lilani gasped for air. Her head spun. She tried to speak, but she could only groan, fighting for words. Spittle flecked her lips, and her eyes felt as if they were on fire. Her chest ached, and she knew her heart couldn’t take it. Any moment it would burst. Vandra would break in here in a daring rescue and find her corpse.

  “Oh, Van,” she wanted to say. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Look, lovely Lilani,” Camilla said in Lilani’s ear. She turned Lilani’s chin toward the chunk of syndrium. Lilani watched the magic in it die, the silver sheen and blue glow fading to the dull gray of ordinary rock.

  So, that was how they’d drained the magic from the pylon. They’d used seelie magic to pull it out. She wanted to be happy that she finally had an answer or horrified at the implications, but she couldn’t feel anything except misery.

  The pounding in her chest stopped with a jolt. She had no feeling in her legs, and her face still burned; the sweat still dripped. She was powerless as Camilla lowered her to the floor and stepped past her to look over Maruk’s shoulder.

  “That went more quickly than the others,” Maruk said. “And she’s still alive! I don’t think we even came close to killing her.”

  “I told you. It’s the magic of Awith. We don’t need blood when we have this much power.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Vandra felt a shock from her jacket pocket. She almost shot to her feet, thinking something had stung her, but Fieta clapped a hand on her shoulder, and Pietyr put a finger to his lips. Vandra reached in her pocket and took out one of the stones. It tingled under her touch, and the hair on her neck stood up.

  “What in the gods’ names?” She touched the other stones; they tingled, too, but the feeling was fading. “Did you feel that?”

  Fieta frowned, but Pietyr nodded. “A shock?”

  “I didn’t feel anything,” Fieta said.

  “Maybe your skin’s too thick,” Pietyr said.

  She frowned as if she might retort, then stopped as if she wasn’t certain whether she’d been insulted or not. “What does it mean?”

  Vandra shook her head. She wanted to think it was a good sign, but nothing that had happened recently led her to expect random good luck. She’d spotted the syndrium laced into the watchtower’s stones, but it wasn’t the same as the syndrium that made up the pylons. The blue glow wasn’t strong enough. Maybe the proximity of so much syndrium had done something to her stones?

  No, then they would’ve been reacting to it the entire time she’d been here. She looked up and down the tower, but the mist hid the very top floor. Maybe Faelyn had done something? She glanced at the doorway, then into the mist behind them. The creatures of the tattered lands stayed away from this place because of the syndrium, but it hadn’t been enough to stop the taint from spreading around it. Now that she wasn’t moving, Vandra felt the tattered lands sliding around their bubble, probing, trying to get in. The very air felt heavier, and it took effort not to let her thoughts turn to despair. Not even her curiosity could break through the miasma of sadness.

  She put her stone away. She didn’t have enough data to figure out what had happened anyway. “What’s keeping Faelyn?”

  “I can go look,” Pietyr said.

  “No,” Fieta and Vandra said at the same time.

  “If anyone is going, it’s me,” Fieta added as Vandra said, “I
f we go, we go together.”

  Pietyr rolled his eyes. “Which is it?”

  “I’ll go with going together,” Fieta said. “I don’t trust your moony love-eyes to watch for danger.”

  He glared at her. “I do not have—”

  “Children,” Vandra said, pitching her voice low. “Enough. The tattered lands are fraying your tempers. Fight it.”

  She didn’t know if it was the tattered lands or nerves, but the idea shut them up. “We give Faelyn another five minutes, then we go in after him.”

  They nodded, and Vandra could almost feel the seconds tick by, thick as the fog around them. After she’d judged that enough time had passed, she nodded to the twins, and they crept out of their hiding spot.

  “Slowly,” Fieta said. “Until we clear the fog, then dash for the door.”

  Vandra nodded and moved as stealthily as she could until she reached the cleared space around the watchtower. Then it was time to run, hoping no one was looking.

  Darkness reigned inside the abandoned building, and Vandra staggered to a stop, waiting for her eyes to adjust. Pietyr pulled her out of the doorway, and she breathed hard. What she’d thought were windows seemed irregular from this side, as if they were holes in the wall. The only true windows were too high to see out, but they provided soft light, enough to see piles of splintered wood heaped over the floor. There might have been a second or third story at one time, but the flooring had collapsed, leaving the ground a sea of jagged planks and splinters. Inside, the entire structure creaked and moaned as the mist drifted through the many holes like scudding clouds.

  Fieta took a step forward, beckoning. Vandra followed her, stepping lightly as Fieta picked her way through the tortured wood. As they passed through a beam of meager light, Vandra noticed that the wood seemed spongy, rather like the ground outside, and some patches had turned green. Vandra leaned close to one patch, intrigued by the idea that moss could flourish in such a place, but the green mess wriggled, and she nearly leaped away. She hoped anything larger would be kept away by the stones in their pockets.

  She glanced around at the dim space, comparing it to the footprint of the building from outside. It was huge. They didn’t have time to search every nook, and they wouldn’t be able to see Faelyn anyway, though he should be able to see them. Unless he was hurt. Or dead.

  Vandra curled her hands into fists. That was the tattered lands talking. Maybe they should light a lantern? It probably didn’t matter. If any of the enemy seelie were hiding in here, they were going to spot a group of humans sooner or later.

  Pietyr leaned past Vandra and tugged on Fieta’s jacket. When she turned, he held up an unlit lantern. So, he’d had the same idea. Vandra imagined her sister frowning as she weighed the pros and cons of a light, but she must have not had any better ideas. She pulled a box of matches and lit the lantern before giving it to Vandra.

  There wasn’t much room to move in the tangle of wood and brick. The light shone off several things that seemed slimy or shiny, and tiny patches of movement caught Vandra’s eye, though they seemed to be moving away from the light, a good sign.

  Several cleared paths led in different directions; someone besides Faelyn had been in here since the collapse. One path led to a door that connected to the watchtower. The seelie no doubt knew about it, but Vandra pointed that way. They approached the door warily, and Fieta gave it a gentle push. It held fast, locked or barred.

  “Look.” Pietyr pointed to a jumble of wood beside the door.

  Vandra held the light closer and saw another gleam of wetness, red this time. Blood. Fresh blood.

  She exchanged a glance with Pietyr, not bothering to reassure him that it might not be Faelyn’s. She’d already come to the conclusion that any luck they found in this place was bound to be bad.

  Vandra ran a hand through her hair. Whether the blood was Faelyn’s or not, something had happened here recently. Maybe Faelyn had gotten into a scuffle. Maybe he’d been captured. Maybe he’d managed to wound his opponent. Or kill them? No, she would have seen a body. Maybe Faelyn had been wounded and was now somewhere in this building, waiting for help.

  Then why not come out? If he’d been captured, the seelie in the watchtower now knew someone had come looking for Lilani. Faelyn wouldn’t talk willingly, but anyone smart enough to survive in the tattered lands wouldn’t believe he’d come alone.

  “Can you break open the door?” Vandra whispered.

  “It’d be noisy,” Fieta said. “And even with the element of surprise, we three can’t take on a tower full of armed seelie.”

  “Who have hostages,” Pietyr said.

  Vandra smiled. If the seelie left the tower, the hostages could easily be rescued. “Let’s go outside and gather some peat,” she said. “It’s time we made someone come to us.”

  * * *

  Lilani struggled to move. Camilla and Maruk had said they’d used seelie blood as part of some alchemical process to warp the first pylon, and she bet they hadn’t used their own. Then whose? The Court would have noticed if hordes of seelie had gone missing.

  Unless it hadn’t taken hordes but only a few, those whose disappearances could be covered up by traitors like Burani. An overdue scout, someone who preferred camping alone on the Highpeak, an older seelie who liked to visit the elders: any absences like that could be easy to explain away. She had to stop it, but her body wouldn’t move.

  Camilla and Maruk stepped over her as they tinkered with the equipment. She caught snippets of conversation in between trying to get her limbs to move.

  “Can you use this formula to produce a cascade effect on the other pylons?” Camilla asked.

  He muttered something, and Lilani heard the clink of glass. “Now I know why all our previous attempts failed. I thought that disabling the pylon that Awith imbued with her life would cause the rest of the pylons to fail, just as absorbing her life had caused the rest of them to activate, but now that I know we need the magic of Awith’s line instead of the actual blood…”

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “Yes! I think it will work. If we suck the magic out of one of the pylons using someone with Awith’s magic, that should dim all the pylons because they are connected, and Lilani has a powerful magical field.”

  Cold spread through Lilani’s body. They were planning to take all her magic, which would probably kill her. Constructing the pylons had taken Awith’s life, but she’d given it freely to save those she loved. Now these seelie were going to use her to destroy her cousin’s legacy.

  “So, do you think it will work, or do you know?” Camilla asked.

  Lilani heard the threat in those words, but there was something else, too, a cruel bit of thoughtfulness, the same Camilla had used with Burani before she’d had him killed. If Maruk knew his device would work, Camilla might not need him anymore, but if there was a chance it might fail…

  Maruk shifted toward the stairs as if thinking of running. Lilani hoped with every heartbeat that he would. Then Camilla would kill him. Whether his formula worked or not, that’d be one less person to get away from.

  Maruk cleared his throat. “I…think it will work. When we get to the pylon, it might need some tinkering.”

  “Ah.” Camilla’s voice went back to normal. “Hear that, lovely Lilani? You’re going home!” She winked. “For a little while, at least, long enough to see the pylons fail.” She bent over, tweaked Lilani’s nose, and laughed. “Let me know when you’re ready to go, Maruk.” She walked away, whistling.

  Were they going to leave her on the floor? Maruk didn’t seem to be paying her any attention. She willed her limbs to move again and nearly wept with joy when her hands twitched. Now for her feet…

  The seconds seemed to crawl by before she could get every part of her body to obey. She could still feel her magic, but it flowed as sluggishly as when she’d been exhausted. If destroying the pylons took all her magic, could she live without it, dead to the feeling of the world around her? Would she want
to? She knew what Faelyn would say: anything was survivable except death.

  And to survive any of it, she had to get up off the elders-cursed floor!

  Lilani strained and propped herself up on her elbows. Her muscles ached as if she’d run for miles. She pushed, trying not to groan, not wanting to attract Maruk’s attention. Voices came from the stairs, Camilla calling for the seelie to be ready to march soon. Lilani forced herself to sit up, then rolled onto her knees.

  Maruk faced away from her, digging through a large chest. The iron box containing the pylon piece rested where it had been, shut but not locked. Lilani put a hand on the table and pulled to her feet. She was shaky, swaying, but she knew what she had to do. She took one step, then another, keeping hold of the table.

  Maruk turned. His eyes widened. “Oh, you’re up. That was a lot faster—”

  Lilani lunged for the box. He reached for her, but she flung the lid open, and he shied away from the glow, his hands rising to protect his face.

  Lilani grasped the pylon piece and pulled it free. Nearly as long and slightly thicker than her forearm, it was heavy, but not as much as she expected. She hugged it to her chest, still holding herself up on the table.

  “Put that away!” Maruk yelled.

  Lilani backed away. Her steps grew lighter as if the pylon piece helped repair her magical field. She hurried for the staircase as Maruk followed, bellowing for help. A seelie poked his head up, then hissed as if Lilani was carrying a burning brand. She followed, the pylon piece humming against her skin, fortifying her courage. Other seelie stepped from their rooms, asking questions, but as she advanced, they darted out of her way. Still, she felt them gathering around her, saw the weapons in their hands, but they didn’t attack, not while they needed her. She hurried on, desperate to get to Lucian before they could use him against her.