by Jeff Hirsch
Kevin leaned in so his forehead touched hers. “Yeah,” he said, his voice husky.
“But you never really did,” Glenn said. “Did you?”
Their eyes met.
“You were stalwart.”
Glenn kissed him again and then her arms fell from his shoulders as she took a step away.
“Glenn.” Kevin reached out to her, but Glenn faded backward and slipped up into the air. “What are you …”
“Take them and go,” she said as she rose into the trees. “I’ll buy what time I can. Just remember what you promised!”
“Glenn!” Kevin shouted. But it was too late. She was gone.
Kevin’s cries faded as Glenn climbed above the trees, lost in the whipping wind and the sounds of battle that seemed closer all the time.
The air was thick with smoke and the million jumbled impressions of the armies and their victims, a maze of feelings all competing for her attention. Glenn had never felt anything like it. Her head spun and she pushed herself higher to get away from it.
She swept the clouds aside and there were the stars, the glittering violence of their explosions turned beautiful and still with distance and time. Glenn traced their patterns, leaping from one to the other, seeing the constellations rise in the pathways. All of the confusion of the place below — the struggle between meaningless distinctions — seemed foreign up in the speckled black, inconsequential.
A line of blue-white stars stood out before Glenn. She settled on them, transfixed with their familiarity. As she watched them, three words, whispers at first, slowly grew louder until Glenn could finally make them out.
“Alnitak. Alnilam. Mintaka.”
Glenn gritted her teeth and fought the urge to rise higher. There was something she had to do and there wasn’t much time. The nightshade was giving her a bit of control, but soon it would be gone.
She had to push Sturges and his people out before she lost herself completely.
The stars slipped away as she descended. Below her was a scene of almost complete devastation. A band of ground extending a mile or more from the border had been bombarded nearly flat by Sturges’s trebuchet and other war machines whose function Glenn could only guess at. It was a wasteland of fallen trees, wrecked homes, and raging fires.
The leading edge of the invasion was now west of the border, marked out in blooms of flame that sprang from the ruins of villages and ate into the forest. Thousands of troops followed behind the fires, dark silhouettes relentlessly pushing forward against the orange flames.
Every now and then they would stop, blocked by some hasty collection of farmers or remnants of the Magisterium’s army. The battles were brief and terrible, screams quickly silenced, and then the Colloquium forces marched on.
The air was choked with the misery and pain of the people of the Magisterium. The incalculable loss. A steady rage began to build within Glenn.
She remembered what Opal had told her. Voices in a crowded
room. She shut her eyes, trying to focus past the din of blood and fear.
Amidst the voices she singled out the gusts of wind that swirled over and through her. She breathed in and out, urging them forward. As she did, the wind built to a low howl, bending the trees and blowing in ranks of thick clouds. Soon the stars and the moon were blocked out and it grew bitterly dark.
The clouds were heavy with the storms brewing inside them.
Glenn left the winds and listened to them instead. A light rain began to fall — finger taps on her shoulders at first, but the more Glenn concentrated, the stronger they grew, from a whisper to a torrent. Soon sheets of water, blown nearly sideways by hurricane-force gales, assaulted the ground. The sky filled with a gray blur of wind and water.
One by one, the fires winked out and then the earth, made unstable by the attacks, began to shift. Mudslides formed all along the Colloquium’s line. Men marched on, nearly blind, to what they thought was solid ground, only to have it vanish in an instant, transformed into waves of mud and fallen trees. An entire company was mounting a lone hillside when it was washed away in a boiling rush of earth, the red-armored bodies tumbling away like ants. Glenn bore down hard, reaching into the earth and shaking it beneath their feet, opening great rents in the rock.
Still, it wasn’t enough. After the initial surprise, more soldiers swarmed across the border and crashed into the first wave, urging them onward. Sturges’s bombardment began again from a line of trebuchets behind the advance. Shards of metal whistled through the air and crashed into the earth in front of the marching soldiers, destroying anything that stood in their way. Glenn looked down at the wind-and rain-swept land and cursed herself for thinking she could be some kind of hero.
She hung there, helpless. It was all so much and moving so fast.
The voices grew louder and more confused. Glenn couldn’t keep them separate any longer. A projectile ripped through the air only feet from Glenn’s shoulder before smashing to earth. At the moment of its crash, there was a brief burst of greenish light amidst the destruction. It was a pulse and then it was gone, but there was something in it. Something familiar.
Glenn scanned the area below and saw more and more of them: bursts of green light appearing across the entire face of the landscape like a net. Glenn lowered herself and reached out to them. The light moved through the air and flowed across her. There was a presence buried within the light. And then it hit her.
These were created by my mother.
Her essence was coursing through them. It was as clear as if she had signed her name on them. But what were they?
Another projectile crashed through the sky but Glenn ignored it, concentrating on the web of lights she saw, crisscrossed like the bars of a cell. Everything in Glenn went still.
We’re prisoners….
The soldiers were pushing even farther into the Magisterium. A string of villages lay just within their reach. Glenn could feel the people cowering inside them.
Glenn shut everything else out and opened herself up to the complex of lights. They pulsed around her and through her, unbearably heavy, eager to drag her down out of the sky. Glenn fought them as hard as she could, wrestling against their exhausting weight. Still, she fell. The sounds of the soldiers and explosions were louder now. The smell of smoke and blood was nauseating. Glenn was above the treetops and sinking fast when she felt the power in the lights slip. She landed hard in a small forest clearing. There was movement in the trees around her. A swarm of soldiers emerged and surrounded her. Their malice and the thrill that rose in their chests, knowing they were so close to victory, washed over Glenn.
Glenn struggled to stay focused. She pushed again, and the
complex of power that coursed across the land began to give way. The walls of the prison were cracking. Glenn threw all of herself into it, and in one immense tear, it was ripped apart. There was a howl of pain and rage, and when Glenn opened her eyes, she and the soldiers were not the only ones standing amongst the trees.
The forest was alight with the Miel Pan, their glittering bodies cutting through the darkness like daggers. There were three to Glenn’s right: a man and two women. To her left were five more. The lightning flashed, shadowing the lean muscles of their nearly naked bodies.
Surrounding all of them were their animals, glowing wolves and birds of prey and strange and enormous things that Glenn had no names for.
One of the Miel Pan women, with skin the color of tree bark and shimmering green eyes, turned to Glenn.
“You’ve freed us, Glennora Amantine,” she said, revealing rows and rows of needlelike teeth. “What do you ask in return?”
One of the soldiers at the head of the company turned the shaft of the spear she carried in her hand, ready to throw. The soldier to her left drew an arrow into his bow and leveled it at the Miel Pan woman.
Glenn turned to the woman with the green eyes.
“Remove the invaders,” she said.
The woman’s barbed smile rose impossibl
y wide and then, with a scream, the Miel Pan launched themselves at the soldiers.
29
Battles raged everywhere Glenn looked as she flew over the borderlands. The Magisterium came alive as hordes of Miel Pan appeared from every rock, tree, and hillside and threw themselves, with years of bottled-up rage, into the fight. Glenn wished she could close herself off to it, the cries and violence and the sudden darkness that rolled over the land when the soldiers died, but there was no stopping it.
Every death, every injury, every prayer to be back home and away from this rose up and hung from her like a chain.
It was getting harder to stay in the air. The effort to break her mother’s spell and release the Miel Pan almost finished her. She had to end this as fast as possible. And she knew only one way to do it. Glenn reached out, searching, until she felt a familiar presence miles away on a strip of ruined earth. He was alone and out in the open.
Michael Sturges.
Lightning crackled around her, dancing over her fingertips. The hunger to release it was undeniable. She could destroy him with a thought and end all of this.
No, she thought, wrestling with that dark, mindless part of her as she pushed forward.
She found Michael Sturges on a flat expanse of mud, his blue suit soaked and heavy, his hair plastered to his skull.
Glenn touched down a few steps away from him.
“Glenn,” he said with a smile. “I honestly didn’t think you had it in you. I — ”
With a sweep of her hand, Glenn lifted Sturges into the air by his throat, squeezing hard enough to shut him up. She let him dangle there before her, his eyes wide. His face was creased with old burns.
“Tell your people to go,” she said.
“Wait,” he rasped, clawing at his throat. “Glenn. Listen to me. I want what you want. To have things back the way they were. We can work together. Put me down and we’ll talk. I know you don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
Glenn clenched her fist tighter and his words cut out in an instant.
She could end this now. Twist one way or another and his neck would snap like a twig. Sturges hung in the air, his face red and bloated, panic coming off him in steely waves.
“There are things you can never take back….”
The strength rushed out of Glenn. She slackened her grip on Michael’s throat and he gasped and tumbled to the ground.
“Just go,” Glenn stuttered, feeling as if she were speaking from the bottom of a dark hole. “Leave and don’t come back.”
“If I do, they’ll send another just like me,” Sturges said. “This won’t end until they have what they want, Glenn.”
“I can stop them.”
“And live like your mother did?” he said. “Alone. Spending
every thought on us. Eaten up by power. It’s happening already, isn’t it, Glenn? You can feel it happening. You’re slipping away.”
Sturges drew himself up and crossed the muddy ground toward her. Glenn tried to push him away and stop him from talking, but it was getting harder. Affinity was pounding at her from every direction. It wanted to devour her. The effort to control it brought Glenn to her knees.
“I think you just want to go home.”
The next thing she knew, Michael was standing in front of her, his hand resting on her shoulder with a kindly weight.
“Isn’t that right?”
Glenn nodded. She was so tired. Michael smiled, then nodded to someone behind her and walked away. Glenn turned and there, standing at the edge of a muddy crater, was the black-draped figure of Abbe Daniel.
“Hello, Glennora.”
A column of fire materialized at the end of Abbe’s fingertips.
Glenn grasped a reserve of strength and leapt up into the sky to avoid it.
She didn’t make it three feet before something grabbed her ankle and yanked her back down again. Glenn crashed through the mud and hit solid earth beneath it. The air shot out of Glenn’s lungs and she rolled over, coughing. She tried to get her hands under her chest, tried to get up, but before she could, what felt like an immense hand pushed her down farther, filling her mouth with muck.
In the next instant, she was in the air again. Abbe flipped her upside down and let her hang there, admiring her as if she was a prize catch.
“What are you doing?” Glenn asked, gasping for air. “The
Magisterium is your home.”
Abbe laughed. “I think you need a better sense of which way the tide is turning, Glenn.”
The blood was rushing to Glenn’s head. She tried to strike back, but Abbe laughed again and spun her around in the air so fast that Glenn couldn’t concentrate. She went limp. The earth turned faster below her, a brown and black swirl. Glenn reached down into it.
The ground beneath Glenn was vast and hard, miles of rock
stretching into darkness. Glenn prayed — Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka -
and let the earth flow up into her, stiffening her joints and weighing her down. She became more and more dense until her spinning slowly stopped and she felt herself lowering to the ground. Abbe strained against her, only now she was losing. Glenn touched down, iron, rock, and the molten heart of the earth coursing through her. The earth trembled as she moved toward Abbe. The girl in black called down a flash of lightning, but Glenn shrugged it off and kept coming.
Abbe tried to fly but it was nothing for Glenn to thicken the air and pull the witch back down. Abbe plummeted face-first into the mud.
Her hands were splayed out on the ground beside her.
“We don’t have to do this,” Glenn said as she approached the girl.
“We should be working together.”
Abbe squeezed the earth in her fist, and there was a deep rumble.
A rip in the ground appeared at Abbe’s fingertips, widening as it shot out across the space between them. Glenn went to escape it, but she was too heavy, too slow. By the time the tear in the ground reached her, it was a chasm several feet across. Glenn tried to dodge away, too late.
The ground disappeared beneath her and she tumbled helplessly into the dark.
Glenn tried to grab on to something, or pull in a gust of wind to lift her up, but she was moving too fast and was too depleted. It was deadly quiet as she fell, careening through the dark, and then it all came to an end in one body-shaking crash. Glenn slammed into an
outcropping of rock, her right side first, ribs taking the impact. There was a snap and a firecracker burst of pain in her midsection.
When Glenn tried to sit up the pain exploded again and she fell back, her body buzzing with shock. Glenn moved her hands along her side, looking for wounds. There was a deep gash in her arm that was slick with blood, and what felt like a snapped rib. She nearly screamed when her fingers found it.
She must have fallen a hundred feet. To her left was the edge of the gorge, falling hundreds of feet into the darkness. To her right was an opening in the rock wall, the mouth of a cave.
Above her the darkness she had fallen through began to lighten.
Had morning come already? No. It wasn’t the sun. It was a single light, hazy at first, illuminating the lip of the gorge. Glenn stared up at it, transfixed, as it moved along the edge. She thought she heard a voice calling down to her. She wanted to cry out, “I’m here!” and even managed to open her mouth, but no sound came out, just a strained whisper.
The light left the edge of the gap, floated there for a moment, and then began to fall toward her, slow at first, and then with increasing speed.
“We’re not finished, Glennora!”
Abbe Daniel was coming for her, her way illuminated by a yellow orb of light centered around her right hand. At the rate Abbe was falling, Glenn didn’t have much time. She nearly screamed with pain as she forced herself up and stumbled into the dark cave beside her.
She took a couple steps then crashed into rock.
Glenn took a deep breath and concentrated, imagining the earth’s fiery core flowing to one spot in t
he center of her hand. The air above her palm wavered and a single small flame appeared, illuminating the walls of the cave. Glenn ran, hunched over and wincing in pain, down a narrow stone corridor.
“Glennora!”
Abbe had made it to the ledge and was following close behind.
The path wound through the rock until finally Glenn ran straight into a large cavern. In front of her was a pond and columns of rock that rose nearly a hundred feet above her head. The air was cooler here and felt fresh for the first time. Glenn raised her hand and urged the flame higher. There! At the top of the far wall was a hole in the rock. Glenn could feel fresh air pouring down into the cavern from its mouth. It was easily big enough for her to squeeze through and escape. All she had to do was get to it.
Glenn ran into the water and then jumped up toward the hole, summoning every scrap of will she had in her and hoping it was enough to lift her to freedom. Glenn’s fingers brushed the wet stone and she scrambled upward. There was a splash behind her.
“Glenn!”
Glenn grabbed hold of the ledge and started to pull herself up but watched in horror as the rock surrounding the hole grew until it closed off completely. She was ripped away from the wall, and sent flying across the room and into the icy water of the pool. The cold lanced into her, every scrap of energy she had drained out of her. Glenn went limp, sinking down into the murk, but then a hand seized the back of her shirt and pulled her toward the surface.
Glenn sucked in a desperate breath. Her feet kicked at the rock as she tried to stand, but Abbe yanked her forward, dragging her out of the water and tossing her like an empty sack onto the stone shore. Glenn barely even felt the pain anymore. Her body was like a lump of clay.
Useless. Lifeless. If there was any Affinity left in her now, it was too far away and too small to touch.
Abbe towered over her, one hand lit up like a lantern. Her face was twisted into a horrible mix of hatred and glee. With the other hand she reached into her robe and pulled out a silver-bladed dagger. The way the light from her hand reflected off the mirrorlike edge was almost blinding.
