The faces flashed by too quickly for her to tell who might be whom, but that didn’t matter as she watched the marvels they wrought. They created towers out of light and darkness, transformed ice into servants to do one’s bidding. And their bodies! As the power of the five grew, they transformed themselves, taking fearsome shapes or those so lovely it made Starbride weep to see them. They cast off sex and could appear as women or men. They shucked their humanity to turn to crystal or smoke.
“Or what you call Fiends,” Yanchasa said, still in dual whispers. “I led Belshreth’s great army and thought it apt to be as fearsome as I could.”
Fiends as people? Not possible. Animal, beast, monster, those she could believe. Fiends infected people like viruses. They did not create miracles. Only humanity could do that for them, and they corrupted whatever they touched.
But they had power she needed.
“If you became Fiends, where did the wild Fiends come from?” she asked. Crowe had told her that greater Fiends had a reputation for manipulation that they did not share with their lesser brethren.
Yanchasa showed her its fearsome form—winged, horned, fanged, scaled—huge as some of the peaks it walked among as it led Belshreth’s army against any invaders. It took chunks of crystal and ice and breathed life into them, remaking them into copies of itself.
Malice molded by human hands, not the other way around. Starbride felt the truth in those visions. Redtrue had been right about one thing: only humans could corrupt, but power did not always equal corruption. Roland’s desire to dominate had been within him the entire time, Fiend or no, based on what she’d heard.
“Show me more.”
“At the pinnacle of Belshreth’s dominion, the council of five discovered the secret to life in the adsna that flowed around us. We ruled for centuries but did not unlock our secrets for the people we led, seeing how that would lead to overpopulation and destruction.”
“And they resented you,” Starbride said.
She watched secret sects and cults meet in dark rooms, jealous of the council’s powers. Rebellion followed. The council of five fell in a long, bloody coup. The jealous and the wrathful imprisoned them, but the city paid a great price. Belshreth crumbled without the power of the five, and the traitorous rebels fled southeast.
“Toward Allusia,” Starbride said. And a thousand years spent in the harsher southern sun had changed them a little.
“And so I name you daughter,” Yanchasa said. “More so than that pale copy who sought to merge with me before.”
But did he mean Katya or Roland? Both names brought rage to Starbride’s mind. The descendants of Fiends had founded Allusia. And wasn’t that good news for her? If Roland was a pale copy, she could take what Yanchasa offered and use it for good. “I need power.” She thought of Roland, of the Fiendish Darren or the mindless Umbriel Fiends. “I won’t become a monster, no matter that it’s one humans created.”
Yanchasa laughed, a sound that skittered around in her mind. “When the Farradains imprisoned me here by stealing some of my essence, I chose what I gave them.”
Starbride thought of what that could mean. The Fiends she’d known were cruel, malicious, barely cunning, seeking only slaughter.
“Any good general shows malice and cunning, daughter.”
Starbride frowned. Had she spoken aloud?
“To share in power, one needn’t be mindless or fanged. I gave the Umbriels the Aspects of myself that I wished. They thought me a monster, so I gave them one.
“When I was first summoned, I was not myself, drowsy from long captivity. I made do with mindless destruction, and so they called me animal, and still do. I hid my true self from them, but I will grant you my wisdom and so much more, daughter.”
She sensed something else. “Well?”
Feminine laughter surrounded her, and a hazy silhouette formed inside the void, hovering in front of the horned, fanged creature that sat motionless inside the great pyramid. A tall woman strode out of the shadows, dressed in silver armor outlined in gold and adorned with tiny pyramids. She held her arms out, her form shifting from female to male and back again as she came closer. Her skin was reddish brown like Starbride’s, her face longer and more angular, and her cheekbones high. Her brown eyes sparkled with knowledge. Her hair was hidden under a tall silver helmet with a gold ribbon cascading back from its peak.
“Embrace me, daughter, and I will show you everything.”
Katya would not want this, Dawnmother either. It was not the way.
But what other way? She could worry what the dead thought of her once the fight was done.
And then what? Live forever as a Fiend? Shunned by her old family and her new one?
“They will not shun you, daughter,” Yanchasa said. “They will see all the good you may do for them. With your help, they need never suffer, never hunger or want. Be as you wish, leader or helper, protector or god. You will be exactly what they need, and I will show you the way.”
Ultimately, it didn’t matter what else Yanchasa offered. Starbride could take the power, kill Roland, and then perhaps the power could also help her die.
Yanchasa’s face softened, reminding Starbride so much of Dawnmother that her heart ached. “I will never leave you.”
Starbride sobbed and reached out with spiritual arms. Yanchasa’s cold armor chilled her all the way to the heart as his male form wrapped long arms around her, supporting her, lending his strength. His cold breath tickled as he whispered in her ear.
She gasped as knowledge flowed into her mind. The whole basis for Farradain magic was wrong. One didn’t use pyramids but became one with them. Redtrue had been right about that, but the adsnazi were afraid of true potential.
“Work with the adsna,” Yanchasa said, “let it flow through you, become its master, and the pyramid becomes a tool to shape your art.”
As the adsna filled Starbride, she saw that calling anything done with it evil would be like labeling air or fire. It was simply power, and in the right hands, it was power that could raise a civilization or burn it to the ground.
“And only a mind that understands that is worthy of rule,” Yanchasa said.
“Yes.” Starbride saw it now, saw how the world worked and the adsna flowed with it, seasons falling into seasons, life and death, the sun and moon and stars, all of it wheeling together in the most intricate dance of all creation. How could anyone expect to call herself another person’s master if she didn’t understand this? Evil was pulling down the council of five, in laying low the greatest civilization in history. Their teachings would have spread to all corners of the world, to all peoples. They would have united humanity in the harmony of the adsna, as simply as they’d changed their bodies by its powers.
Starbride wept to see it. “Everything is so clear. How in the world did I miss it before?”
“Farradains like to do things the hard way.”
“Roland thought so small.”
“Indeed. Why stop at making his subjects eternally happy when he could make them better than they’d ever dreamed? When he could crush his enemies instead of toying with them?”
“The king of Farraday and the rulers of Allusia, I have to bring this to them,” Starbride said.
“They’ll thank you for it, daughter, I guarantee it.”
There was something she had to do first, if only she could remember.
“Vengeance,” Yanchasa said.
It burned in her again. “He stole my beloved.”
“He will be made to see his error. You will teach him, daughter, so he does not forget.”
“Show me more.” She felt her spirit begin to withdraw from the capstone, but Yanchasa went with her, happy to be her guide. When Starbride opened her eyes, the capstone was alight, washing the cavern in a bright glow. Some corpse Fiends were sprawled on the ground, arms out in worship.
“Pale remnants of my children,” Yanchasa said. He stood to her right, flickering, fading to female and back again.
> “Should I destroy them?” It would be as easy as breathing. She’d turn their pyramids in on themselves.
“They could prove useful.”
Starbride dipped into her satchel. Throwing pyramids, such an archaic practice, a thing for children. She needed only to have the crystal near, and she could shape it with her mind, no more sanding and chipping and carrying on. Yanchasa showed her how to transmute the pyramid to anything she wanted, how to undo its pathways and remake them by letting the adsna flow instead of trying to control it.
She gazed a long time at her suppression pyramid. “We called this Fiend magic.”
“We call it flesh. It is the re-shaper, the most powerful magic that lets one”—she gestured at her body as it shifted to male—“control oneself. I’ll show you.” He pointed to the suppression pyramid. “There you have created anti-flesh. It repels anything created with flesh magic.” He gestured to the corpse Fiends. “Simply tune it so.”
Starbride shifted the pyramid to something more like Roland used. “Though not so crude,” Yanchasa said.
It reminded her again of the pyramid that passed the Fiend from one person to another, dark but powerful. Yanchasa showed her how to focus it inward, to change herself, and she fashioned her hand into one strong enough to crush stone to powder.
Lightning tingles cascaded through Starbride’s body, and she fought a giddy laugh.
Yanchasa showed her that all destruction pyramids came from the same base design, so all she had to do to access them was create that base. She re-tuned a small flash bomb, and Yanchasa guided her through using flesh magic to implant the small pyramid in her palm. In her other hand, she embedded a utility pyramid for disabling other pyramids or casting light. For mind magic, she crafted a tiny replica from a hypnosis pyramid and then pushed it into the thin skin of her forehead, all without pain. They set her nerves jingling, a constant reminder of the adsna that coursed through her. “I can do anything.”
“Soon, daughter. Now you will only need to focus briefly upon each in order to use them.”
“What about the flesh?”
Yanchasa cocked her head. “Where do you think it should go?”
Starbride pressed her small flesh pyramid over her heart. She stared at the soft glows in both her palms, in her chest, felt over the tiny cold patch on her forehead. “Why did the Belshrethen not continue to do wonders after they fled your city? Why do the Allusians not use flesh pyramids now?”
“Fear. They are the descendants of the rebels, after all. Fear rules all that they do.”
She thought of Redtrue. If Katya hadn’t come to the adsnazi, they wouldn’t have learned anti-flesh magic, either. They’d let themselves become weak. She glanced at the corpse Fiends and focused on her flesh pyramid. “Get up.”
They rose as one.
“Why would they obey me instead of Roland? He created them.”
“I created them, daughter. I taught him how.”
Jealousy roared through Starbride, and she rounded on Yanchasa’s shade. “How long have you been talking to him? I’m your chosen one, no? Daughter and descendant?”
Yanchasa threw his head back and laughed. “One uses the tools one is given, daughter. Now that you have come to me, his presence is no longer required.” Yanchasa laid hands on her shoulders, settling on feminine as she whispered in Starbride’s ear. “If these corpse Fiends are remnants of me, he is but a ghost of you. He could not have taken to the pyramids as you have. He is not blood of my blood.”
So that was why Redtrue used anti-flesh magic with such ease. She was also blood of Belshreth and hadn’t had to learn from the Farradains, minds that barely comprehended it. What could she do with such wondrous power, one who’d grown up among it, though her people wouldn’t use it?
“I have felt her,” Yanchasa said, “bursts of power flying above my head, but she would never come to me, daughter. Power is nothing without creativity, without courage.”
“Miss Starbride!” Hugo called from the entrance to the cavern.
The corpse Fiends turned his way and barred their teeth. “No,” Starbride said, and they turned back to her.
Hugo stepped into the chamber, his mouth hanging open. “What happened here?”
Freddie skidded to a stop beside him. “Did you find her?” He quieted as he surveyed the room. When his eyes settled on her, he stared, but at her or Yanchasa?
“They cannot see me, daughter. I dwell within you.”
Yanchasa’s secret presence made her want to beam. Power, calm and confident, flowed through her. Hugo and Freddie would feel it soon enough when she mended their every woe.
As she came closer, Freddie’s eyes fixed on the miniscule pyramid in her forehead. Hugo gawked at her from head to toe. She’d undone the first few laces of her shirt, and she knew the pyramid emitted a faint light, as did the ones in her palms and forehead.
“Starbride?” Hugo asked.
As if she could be anything else. “Where’s Roland?”
“The others are harrying him through the tunnels. We thought he might have run in here,” Freddie said.
“No doubt he intended to,” Starbride said, “but first he wanted to see how many of you he could pick off.”
“Even if he had come,” Yanchasa said, “I wouldn’t have given him what I gave you.”
“What’s happened to you?” Hugo asked.
She gave him a bright smile. “I’ve found the power to do what must be done.” She pushed past him, focusing, feeling for Roland through herself like Redtrue did, as Yanchasa guided her. She detected the way he’d been shaped by the Fiend inside him.
“By the Aspect I gave him,” Yanchasa said. “There are no such things as Fiends.”
Starbride laughed aloud. She shaped her legs to carry her faster.
“What’s going on?” Hugo asked as he tried to keep pace. “What power?”
“Follow me,” Starbride commanded.
“We are,” Freddie said. “We just want to—”
But it wasn’t him she was talking to. The host of corpse Fiends—no, remnants—slinked in her wake.
“Starbride?” Freddie touched her shoulder. “What have you done?”
She felt along his body with flesh magic. She could make his arms drop from his shoulders with a thought. Why hadn’t she seen how fragile he was before?
His grip tightened. “You did something with the capstone.”
“Miss Starbride would never…” Hugo trailed away as she glanced at him. “Spirits above.”
“Yanchasa is not what you think,” she said.
“A giant monster the ancient Farradains used to conquer this land?” Freddie asked.
“Close,” Yanchasa said.
“And so much more,” Starbride added. “Now hush. I’ve got a Fiend king to find.”
They babbled at her, but she blocked out their words, listening to Yanchasa instead. She turned the corner to the sounds of fighting. Scarra tried to keep a pair of remnants from tearing her to pieces. Beyond her, the tunnel boomed again as Roland threw an explosive pyramid.
Starbride felt for his other pyramids and cleansed them, letting the power of the adsna carry their purpose away. She waved, and the remnants fighting Scarra went still. Scarra used her staff to smash in the pyramid of one. When she turned to the other, she backed away, confusion on her face.
“What the f—” Scarra glanced around the still remnant to where the glow of Starbride’s pyramids filled the tunnel. “Starbride?”
Starbride ignored her. Brutal stumbled around the corner, carrying Maia. She loosed an arrow back the way they’d come. Trickles of red flowed from both of them, and Starbride sensed wounds along Brutal’s entire body. Maia’s left leg hung crooked from the knee, her trousers soaked in blood.
Starbride closed the wounds on Brutal with a thought. He staggered as if she’d struck him, his eyes wide. “What?”
Before he could set Maia down, Starbride yanked her leg straight. As her howls filled the tunne
l, Starbride mended the knee and closed the wound.
Maia gasped and sobbed in Brutal’s arms, and they all gaped at Starbride.
“Wait here,” she said.
Farther down the tunnel, Castelle lay in a pool of blood, unmoving. Starbride rolled her over and found a gaping chest wound, newly opened and still pumping, the edges singed.
“Explosive pyramid,” Yanchasa said as he knelt beside her.
Starbride used flesh magic to knit Castelle’s chest together, but the blood could replenish itself. When Starbride left her, the others rushed in to help as Starbride gathered the remnants in her wake.
Roland hid behind a boulder. Maybe he hoped she would pass him by.
“Come out.”
He stood and tossed a bright white pyramid at her feet. “Is this your doing?”
“Seize him,” she said.
The remnants leapt to do her bidding, but Roland dodged past them. The Aspect Yanchasa had given him bled over his features as he reached for her with the hand remaining to him. Starbride lifted her destructive arm, and the pulse of a flash bomb caught him full in the face.
He shrieked and staggered. The remnants piled on top of him. He thrashed and bit, but there were too many. When they dragged him close, he stared at Starbride with his all-blue eyes. The grating sound of his voice would have bothered her before, but now it was nothing. He was nothing.
“I see you, little fool,” he said. “I know what you’ve done.”
“What you couldn’t.”
“What I resisted! I wanted my people to be happy. You’ve killed them. Do you know that?”
“Take him to the capstone,” Starbride said.
As they hauled him past the others, he shouted, “You’re doomed, already dead. Don’t you see? Farraday will be a pile of ash by the time you’re through.”
His panic sweetened her ears like music. Yanchasa hummed along. The others pressed around her, but she ignored them. “Don’t follow if you don’t want to see.”
The remnants laid Roland on the floor of the great cavern. She took a suppression pyramid, anti-flesh, from her satchel. It burned her skin, but she ignored the pain and held the pyramid over Roland while he squirmed.
The Fiend Queen Page 13
