Brood of Bones

by A. E. Marling

  I would have to accept the dark replica and begin Feasting.

  I placed a hand over each of my ears, my head trembling from side to side. My eyes were so dry from the heat that my eyelids chafed them. I remembered Tethiel had said he once saved his nation with Feasting, only to later lose it. I reminded myself of the ramifications of using that magic, the disgrace and banishment as well as the anguish and distrust that governed Tethiel.

  I could not take the easy way. It would be too difficult.

  Running toward the fire, I told myself that figments of my mind could not harm me: I was master of all the insubstantial. I plowed into the flame, pressing on even when I felt the agony of my scorched skin peeling from my arms, while the red smoke scarred my lungs and spread toxins into my veins.

  The pain faded in the next instant, the flame disappearing, and I reached the ninetieth step unharmed.

  “Someday, you will need me.” The illusion smiled up at me with my own face, except her teeth bristled like needles. “I am willing to wait.”

  She Lightened herself and leapt, reaching for my face, and her black-gloved fingers gouged my eyes.

  I flinched but continued into what felt as cold as a blizzard gust. A darkness blanketed my vision, and I had to descend the last steps by the feel of my numb toes.

  Believing I had at last gained the hundredth step, I jumped upward and reached behind my back. My frigid hands closed on the oily warmth of the Soultrapper, yet I felt him slipping in my grasp. Sitting on his lap in the waking world, I did not have as complete a contact with him as I normally had with people when bringing them into my laboratory.

  I flexed my arms behind me and caught him by his shoulder. He threaded his arm between mine and wriggled away as I continued my ascent. My hands snapped down on the last available place to grab him: his neck.

  I had to hold on. He must sense something was happening to him; he was struggling. If I entered the dream without him then I would be safe from his magic attacks, yet he could still shove my real body off him. Then Tethiel would see my plan had failed and begin Feasting, to the death of the city.

  The Soultrapper’s hand ran down my spine, pushing me. It was more a mental shove than a physical one; I continued moving upward in the same trajectory, yet he flickered in and out of existence. My grip failed, my hands clamping together with nothing between them.

  I felt as if the city itself had fallen from my grasp, as if Morimound were a glass miniature that would smash onto the floor and spray back up in a gale of shards to cut me in a thousand places.

  Something touched my thigh—his elbow, perhaps—and without thinking I reached my legs around and caught his head between my calves. I crushed my legs together, locking my feet in place under his flabby chin.

  Not the most decorous way to catch a Soultrapper, I thought, while towing him upward into my dream. Yet, it would suffice.

  Only a loincloth and a blindfold covered the Soultrapper as he lay shackled to the basalt operations table. He snapped his head from side to side, trying to see; his lack of a foot allowed him to slip his stump out of a manacle. Missing an arm freed him further, and he thrashed and twisted.

  All twenty-seven of my gowns flowed around me. Wearing clothes after my nakedness surged me with self-assurance, especially with the Soultrapper shivering before me in the thin, laboratory air. My dream had adorned me automatically, yet my amethyst gown seemed most appropriate for this moment of triumph. As I drifted toward the Soultrapper, layers of fabric shed from me and sublimed into glittering vapor.

  He cried out. “What have you done to me?”

  I smiled at my success; now, I was as impervious as a woman carved of enchanted diamond. The illusion on the stair had offered power, yet I needed none.

  One last velvet dress unraveled from me to reveal my innermost gown: The purple silk glistened in waves over my body. Amethysts spiraled down my sleeves and radiated over my chest, their geometric sides flashing with my delight.

  “Welcome to my world, Anlash Niklia.” Burdening my hand, I pinned him to the table. “My, but you are one to squirm.”

  The red diamond drifted out from my embroidered collar, and when my other hand closed on it, the gold chain unclasped behind my neck. I Attracted the blindfold off his face in order for him to see me holding the jewel over his chest.

  The air rippled as the Soultrapper tried to attack me with his magic, his spell affecting me no more than fouling my mouth with a rotten aftertaste. “Release me, you jeweled vulture,” he shouted, “Morimound deserves a strong ruler!”

  “Death will release you soon enough. You should take the opportunity to appreciate this gem.”

  I felt him activate a different type of spell, one that linked to something outside the dream. He had to be scrounging for more power, thinking to harvest additional Bone Orbs in births of blood and lacerated flesh. With him inside my dream, the spell had to pass through me to reach the women, and I willed his magic into my red diamond, which channeled its own enchantment along his connection to two hundred and fifty women; they would not die but be saved.

  One of the jewel’s facets now shone, throwing a rose-colored beam of light onto the laboratory wall.

  “I predict,” I said, “that over fifteen seconds, the enchantment in this diamond will commandeer your link to fifty-three thousand Bone Orbs.”

  “Let me go!” His limbs thickened with muscle, his skin stretched and reddened as he strained against my arm and the gold shackles. “Or all my sons will be born today!”

  “Incorrect.” I smashed the sharp, pavilion end of the red diamond into his chest.

  He howled as the gem began to appropriate his bond to the women, starting a process that would break apart their unchildren. More facets lit on the diamond, triangular rays lancing outward.

  Two seconds passed, which was a long span of time given the current velocity of my thoughts.

  “I deserve to rule Morimound!” he said. Veins stood out in a tattered web on his oily brows, and in a bout of inhuman vigor, he bent one of his shackles. “I spent ten years of my life learning my magic.”

  “Only ten?”

  Half the diamond’s facets burst with light; in seven more seconds, Morimound would be free. He alarmed me by heaving upward, breaking one shackle and lifting my Burdened arm an inch off his chest. I felt as if a metal wall had shoved me back, and I reminded myself that the Soultrapper had possessed the resolve to cut off his own limbs. He could not harm me in my dream, yet his willpower gave him the strength to resist me.

  I Burdened the diamond to the weight of a boulder, and it cracked through his ribcage and into his heart. His chest cavity blazed with red light; his ribs became black silhouettes. The enchantment needed only three more seconds to free the last of the women.

  His scream turned into a roar, and he bucked me off him, gold shackles snapping into slivers. I allowed myself to be thrown into the air, flipping over his head in a sweep of purple silk.

  Sitting up, he gripped the golden chain leaking out of his chest and pulled. My slippers touched the laboratory wall, and I bent backward at the waist to keep him in my sight.

  He yanked and ripped out the red diamond; the gold chain trailed after it. All but two of its facets beamed, the gem now blindingly bright. One more moment of contact would save the last of the women.

  Calculations of vectors of flight spun through my head, and I aligned my hand with the jewel and the Soultrapper’s skull. Clamping onto the red diamond with all my mental strength, I thought of Faliti and the other women he had killed. Then I Attracted.

  The gold chain whipped around as the gem sped faster than a dragonfly with a backwind of a hurricane. The jewel streaked toward my hand like a bolt of red lightning.

  The Soultrapper may not have even realized the diamond had changed course in the air before it drilled through his forehead, jerking his body forward as it tore through his brain and out the back of his neck.

  I released my spell and Lightened the dia
mond; it held scintillating in place while beads of blood were Burdened to the floor. As the dying Soultrapper slumped onto the black table, I willed the jewel to float forward. It last facets blossomed with light; the women were safe.

  I closed my hands over the red diamond, which glowed between my fingers as if I held the sun. Within me, the warmth of my happiness burned just as bright.

  I awoke.

  Gasping, I untangled myself from the Soultrapper’s corpse.

  Hands of servants lifted me and wiped off the gore. I blinked, focusing on Tethiel as he covered me with a tablecloth.

  “It is over,” I said, grinning. “The pregnancies will reverse, and Morimound is saved.”

  Tethiel shook his head, his face awash in wonderment. “Hiresha, you are truly flawless.”

  I found myself unable to stop smiling, and I did not even care how many in the crowd had seen my undergarments.

  The shadows in the room swelled, and Tethiel stepped back into them. A chill seeped into me, and my smile evaporated.

  A black mist rose from the remains of the Soultrapper, and the tendrils of smoke formed into a spectral monster with three heads: one of an ogre, one of a dragon, and the last of a worm, with a maw of serrated teeth. The guards and servants recoiled, and I heard Alyla scream.

  Tethiel’s voice boomed through my mind. This wine merchant was possessed, and the Lord of the Feast was behind all the horror in this city.

  He was lying, I realized. Men gripped their heads and screamed as if they could also hear his unspoken words.

  “The Lord of the Feast!” All around me, people cowered, ran, or fainted.

  I stood slack-mouthed as the Lord of the Feast gulped their fear from the air, and the three-headed monstrosity grew. He could not intend to continue Feasting, to cause the Seventh Flood anyway and kill the citizens I had just saved. I did not want to believe it, yet as despair gripped me, I knew it to be true.

  Tethiel was betraying me in the worst possible way, and I felt as crushed as an opal between two hard blocks of granite. My defeat of the Soultrapper had been for nothing.

  When the dragon and worm heads opened their mouths to devour two guards, a woman in red undergarments ran in front of me and leapt toward the Lord of the Feast. She had short hair, and a lance of fire swelled from her raised hand.

  I realized the woman was me—an illusion of me he had woven from shadows. A glance down at my own body showed only darkness.

  My clone speared the Lord of the Feast through his chest. He roared and shrank into a man, his face a stranger’s but with a black triangle on his brow. Clutching his chest, he flew out of the room like a ghost that left a trail of black blood.

  I stumbled after him, confused but hopeful. Exiting the manor doors, I saw an eight-legged beast with scales and a spined tail, its eyes frothing with a grey light; a stooped figure sat on the basilisk’s back, and men covered their eyes in fear of its gaze as the creature and its rider loped away between the strangler fig trees.

  Men who had thrown themselves behind hedges and flowerbeds now picked themselves off the ground. Physis approached in her enchantress’s gown, and she shouted.

  “Hiresha the Flawless has driven off the Lord of the Feast and saved Morimound!”

  “I saw her,” a man shouted, “with a spear of light!”

  “She saved us! She’s a paragon!”

  Guards and acolytes flocked out of the tents they had constructed on my property to join a chant. Many prostrated themselves to touch my feet.

  “Paragon Hiresha! Paragon Hiresha!”

  I noticed a Bright Palm gazing down the street where Tethiel had fled, hand on his sword hilt. The veins in his eyes shone with white light as his expressionless face turned toward the crowd. Physis could no longer be seen among the ecstatic masses. I walked through them, and they parted around me. Alyla stood gawking and teetering between the front doors.

  She asked, “What has happened, Mistress Enchantress?”

  Fighting off deluges of disbelief and relief, I managed to speak. “The Lord of the Feast will at last be gone with the dawn. All is well.”

  Feeling weightless, I hugged her to keep myself from floating upward. The red diamond sparkled between us.

  Two Months Later

  The measuring tape wrapped around Sri’s belly, her abdomen scarred with stretch marks but currently no more than plump. Her cheeks crinkled in a smile, her skin a healthy hue of bronze. “I have never felt so slender.”

  Sri stood on a stool while tailors fitted her in a pink wedding dress. Her knobby hands fondled her diamond engagement necklace.

  “Nor,” she said, her eyes soft with delight, “so happy.”

  “My utmost congratulations,” I said. “May you have multiple years of blissful marriage.”

  Beside me, Maid Janny smacked her lips. “May you have good wine at the wedding.”

  “Maid Janny! I am astounded you could think of drinking wine, after it was the cause of so many pregnancies.”

  “Hardly the first time drink has done up a lass.” She winked at me from under her bonnet. “This woman takes her chances.”

  “You are a paragon of impertinence.”

  Although my chin maintained a dignified elevation, my words lacked any disciplinary tone. I was too happy to seriously scold Janny.

  Sri lifted her arms to try on another wedding dress, this one tulip yellow. “Now, Hiresha, you must be the one to give me to the groom. My father would, had he not passed to the Weaver’s side thirty-six years ago.”

  “Indubitably, I will.”

  Flawless Kishala strode into the room with the bearing of a woman whom nothing could surprise. Her poise was remarkable, given that she had been brought up in a locked cell. I had passed the position of city arbiter to her because I felt she deserved it, and I planned to be far too preoccupied to govern.

  “Lady Sri,” Flawless Kishala said, “I would appreciate your guidance on a multifaceted case.”

  “Very well, my lovely girl, in return for your guidance as to which flowers I must wear with this dress.”

  I left the room, and between yawns, I touched the purple silk at my chest, which concealed my own jeweled necklace. I simply had to find a more suitable way to carry the red diamond. Tethiel had not returned, which was well because otherwise I would have choice words for him. Reports had come of two villages ransacked in the night, one in Morimound’s protection, the other in a neighboring state.

  Nonetheless, I seemed to recollect with unexplainable frequency how he had referred to me as “flawless.” I could not help but think that if he were not a Feaster, I would wish for his company.

  In a parlor, I found Alyla sitting beside her brother, who had returned for the funerals of his parents. Harend Chandur had fallen from the top of the Flood Wall and died, likely from a slip during the frenzy of deconstruction. The news had sickened me and driven me to heal Priest Abwar of the infected cut on his hand, as there had been entirely too much death in Morimound.

  The brother bowed and left the room when I asked Alyla after her health. Despite the warmth of summer, she wore a full blouse to cover the stretch marks that had remained on her petite frame as a sobering reminder of the disintegrated unchild.

  She gazed after her brother. “I worry about my Fosapam. We haven’t the money for him to return to the military university.”

  “I will offer to sponsor his training as a Spellsword,” I said, “an honorable profession practiced only by the best of men. And, Alyla, when I eventually return to the Mindvault Academy, I hope you will accompany me as a novice.”

  She bowed her head, hands folded across her lap. “Might I stay close to my brother?”

  “The Spellsword dormitories are below the Academy, and you would find enchantment a wondrous and empowering magic.”

  Leaving Alyla alone to consider, I suffered a poke in the ribs from Maid Janny. “Making plans to keep her brother close, are you? He’s an eyeful, isn’t he? A bundle of shivers, a real pain
ting, a sing-song, a lamp lighter.”

  “I certainly do not know what you mean. He merely exemplifies physical aptitude.”

  Janny’s chortling only quieted when Mister Obenji strode into the hall, his gait livelier than that of many men one-third his age. He informed me that mistress Deepmand and her children had arrived.

  Deepmand’s sons wore small turbans, and one of his daughters had the most precious gap-toothed smile. I hugged them all, a gesture I had discovered most gratifying and expedient when wearing a single gown.

  After lavishing the children with presents, I escorted them all to the manor’s east wing. “You will live in my finest rooms, my bright stars.”

  The mother protested when she saw the master bedroom.

  I insisted, saying how I had grown attached to my own guest room. Maid Janny muttered something about “slave to habit.”

  The children squealed with delight as they explored four sunlit rooms, all exquisitely furnished with small chairs and beds. Hopping up and down, one girl tried to reach a carnelian embedded into one of the four, jeweled doors. I held her up so she could touch it.

  “So red!” She covered her chubby smile with one hand. “What it doing here?”

  “My little luminary,” I said, hugging the child closer, “this is Carnelian’s Room.”

  “Why?”

  “Never mind the name. If the jewel pleases you, that is enough for now.”

  The laughter of children rang down the halls of my manor, yet even amid the excitement of their play, I began to droop with fatigue. Despite my attempts to stay conscious, I found myself sitting on a miniature bed, leaning against the wall.

  The gap-toothed girl climbed up to count the amethysts on my gown. I followed her finger amid the sparkling designs, trying to help her with the numbers past seven, yet my voice faded. At the same time, her lashes slid downward, her eyes closing. My purple-gloved thumb brushed a lock of brown hair from her peaceful face, and then I saw no more.