by Rachel Lee
“We birthed you for slavery!” Fetzza shouted at her. “Your kind are sheep and were always to be thus. Your illusion of freedom will not long last. Your army will be crushed. And you will wipe the pus from my bedsores as I serve the one, true Power.”
“Step back, Cilla,” Sara said. “She seeks to goad us into rage. She wants us to fall with her.”
“And you,” Fetzza said, fixing Sara in her icy gaze. “Your mother was pathetic, a village cow whose udders could nurse no one better than Lantav Glassidor. You thought you won a victory when you freed her. But look now at what lies in the north.”
Suddenly Tess’s mind was flooded with images. In the town of Derda, famine still ruled the land, the frozen dead were stacked like cordwood outside the city gates, their bodies raided in the night by those who could find no other sustenance. And in Whitewater, the Deepwell Inn filled to bursting with the cold and the needy under a shoulder-deep layer of snow. Bandylegs withered as he parsed out the last of his food with eyes that knew there was not enough.
“He’s dying!” Sara said, hands quaking.
“By his own weakness,” Fetzza said. “If he were to care for his own needs, he might have enough to endure. But no. His own kindness will kill him.”
“Enough!” Tess said, now restraining Sara.
The woman was playing on their anger, tempting them one by one to fall into the abyss that was her home. Tess tried to probe the woman’s mind, to search out the identity of Fetzza’s tempter, but it was like battering herself against a wall.
“And there is the Weaver,” Fetzza said, turning to Tess. “Trying to learn who seduced me? No one! I merely see the truth, and I am not such a fool as to align myself and my son with the weak and the sheep. And I certainly will not bow to the nameless spawn of a whore.”
“I do not fear your lies,” Tess said, meeting her gaze, unflinching.
“Then fear the truth!” Fetzza said.
The bitter waves of memory crashed through Tess like the surge of a raging storm. Watching her mother dress for the evening in a short leather skirt and obscenely high heels. Sitting in their filthy apartment, with nothing but the scent of decay and the wails of sirens to rock her to sleep, until her mother came home in the wee hours, reeking of sweat and men. The sound of her mother showering, furiously scrubbing herself, trying to wash away the stain on her soul. And then her mother slipping into the small bed that they shared, Tess’s tears falling as she tried not to let her mother know she was awake, her mother whispering to whatever gods might care that soon, soon, she would get them out of here.
Tess saw clearly the day when her mother moved them into the new, clean house. The day her mother walked with her to the new school and signed the papers and explained that she and Tess did not have the same last name, handing over Tess’s birth certificate as proof that she was in fact her daughter. That night Tess had asked why her last name was Birdsong when her mother’s name was Palmer. She was born in early spring, and her mother had listened to the birds singing as she had made her way to the hospital to give birth. Only years later had Tess learned that her mother never knew which of her tricks had spawned her.
In all of these months, Tess had never remembered a father, and now she knew why. She had never had one.
Fetzza was no longer broadcasting the memories. There was no need to, for now they flooded unbidden. Her mother had worked as a receptionist after she had gotten off the streets. The table had been spare and the larder lean, but her mother had scraped every dime to hold on to the house and keep Tess in a school where everyone else seemed to despise her because she was from the wrong side of town. Tess had taken their spite and turned it into a fiercely competitive nature, throwing herself into her schoolwork with a fanaticism that even her teachers sometimes found daunting. She had been determined to exceed everyone’s expectations, to prove her worth in the world.
All of that had changed on the cold autumn day that her only friend, Gail, had undressed to shower after gym class. Tess had seen the cigarette burns on her belly, and had immediately known what they were. Her mother had more than once come home with bruises and burns, back when she had been on the streets, and a tiny Tess had helped to tend them. Tess had not quailed from the horror as a child, and she had not quailed from it as an adolescent.
She had pressed Gail for answers, long into the evening as they sat in the grass on a hill outside of town, looking up into the sky, watching the clouds redden as the story poured out. She had taken Gail home with her that night. The next day she and her mother had walked Gail to the police station, where Gail had begun to describe the horror of her life at home.
Gail had been inside, telling her story to the young female detective, when Tess’s mother had suggested that she and Tess get lunch at the small diner across the street. The diner was a special treat, a place Tess had always looked forward to, for they could only afford to eat there once a month.
She had not eaten there that day.
She had never eaten there again.
For they had never reached the far side of the street. The truck had come out of nowhere, and in the time it took to hear the screech of tires and the blare of the horn and the sickening thud, Tess had found herself looking at her mother’s limp body, then kneeling beside it, trying to tend wounds that could never be tended.
Instead, she could only hold her mother’s hand as she died, tears falling onto her mother’s bloodstained face, a face that finally knew peace.
Tess came out of the reverie slowly, realizing she had sagged against her sisters, tears once again rolling down her face. She was Tess because her mother had once prayed to Saint Theresa. She was Birdsong because the birds had been singing as her mother walked to the hospital. She had no father, save for whatever man had paid to deposit his seed in her mother’s body.
But if she was the nameless daughter of a whore, she was also the daughter of a mother who had fought her way out of a depth Tess had never imagined, and who had chosen for her names that captured the few good memories she had.
And it was the memory of that woman that had caused Tess to get the tattoo of the white rose on her ankle. Roses had been her mother’s favorite flower, and white represented purity.
But there was more, much more. Tess understood with blinding clarity that her mother had chosen that life to protect her daughter. Had chosen, as an Ilduin, to raise Tess in the comparative safety of a different world until the moment came for Tess to assume the prophesied burden. Her mother had chosen that hardscrabble life for no other reason than to ensure that Tess would not be discovered by Ardred.
Tess lifted her head and looked at Fetzza. “If you think that memories of a mother’s love will enrage me, you know nothing, old woman. My mother was more worthy than you could ever be.”
Fetzza’s eyes flared with the knowledge that she could not win this battle of wills, and her hand reached beneath her pillow for the dagger. Ilduin Bane dripped from the blade as she drew it back, taking aim for Tess’s chest.
“Sha non!” Tess cried, glaring at the woman.
The woman’s hand froze in midair, the dagger slipping from weakened fingers, tumbling once before falling blade down through her nightclothes and pricking her pale belly. A scream rose from her throat as the poison went to work, her skin peeling back in gray ash, blackness spreading through her innards.
“No!” Maluzza said, bursting into the room, rushing to his mother’s bed.
“Touch her not!” Tess said. “Let not her poison work on anyone but herself.”
He froze, hands pressed to his ears to close out her screams, eyes squeezed shut to keep away the horror of her body rotting right before them. Only when the last scream had echoed through the palace halls could he bear to look up at the sooty stain that had once been his mother.
“She…she…” he stammered.
“She was once your mother,” Tess said. “But that was long ago. For far too long she was the Enemy’s mistress.”
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�Perhaps,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “But I cannot remember her thus.”
“No,” Tess said. “You cannot.”
“Let us leave here,” he said. “I will close up this room. No one will enter it, ever again.”
Tess nodded. It was a grander crypt than the woman she had seen deserved, but a fitting resting place for the woman who had been Maluzza’s mother.
“Aye, let us leave here,” she said. “The Enemy must be stopped. No other mother should bear this stain.”
“We must find Lozzi,” Cilla said. “She will now come into her powers and will need guidance.”
“And there is another in the palace,” Sara announced. “I sensed her earlier. She was not the focus of the hive, but she was most certainly part of it.”
Cilla answered angrily. “She will certainly become the focus now.”
But Tess, who had given up trying to measure her powers or the growth of them, or to even figure out how she was using them, closed her eyes a moment and pointed toward the left. “She is that way. And she has been struggling.”
She reached out and dared to touch the emperor. He did not appear to mind. “Go to your daughter. You and Nona keep her safe, for now that your mother has died, the Ilduin power in her will begin to emerge. If she was a target before, she will be even more so now.”
He nodded, looking almost relieved to have someone tell him what to do. The shock of his mother’s horrific death, and possibly of her betrayal, had shaken him to his core. When he walked away toward the audience chamber, his posture lacked some of its earlier confidence.
“Can we find our way through this warren?” Sara asked. “The corridors are a maze and I doubt I could find my way back out the same way I came in.”
“Can you not sense her?” Tess asked. “We have merely to follow that trail.”
“I get only a general feeling.”
“I, too,” Cilla said.
“Then follow me.” Because, in some corner of her mind, Tess had seen the warp and woof underlying reality, and on the fabric she could not only see the blackened area to the northwest where Ardred awaited them, but much closer, she could see the frail light of another Ilduin, a light that was surrounded by distorted threads of reality like a trap.
She needed little else to guide her. Striding down the corridor, she heard her sisters follow.
Even in its interior, the palace sacrificed none of its security. Corridors wound, then turned sharply, branching off into other winding corridors. Yet somehow there was a plan to this seeming madness or no one would ever be able to navigate this place.
Reaching for the pouch at her neck, Tess poured the stones into her palm. The amethyst one glowed brightly. Returning the others to the bag, Tess held the amethyst out before her. Each time she prepared to take a turn, it acted like a guide, fading when she started to go the wrong way, brightening when she chose the right path.
Her unknown sister was aiding her. Tess’s heart beat more strongly with hope. “She is not utterly lost. She calls us.”
“Or is being used to call us,” Cilla cautioned.
The warning weighed heavily on Tess as she followed the beacon in her palm. With her sisters beside her, she ought to be able to withstand a single Ilduin. And it certainly seemed that whatever powers Ardred might retain he still needed Ilduin to work his worst.
At least for now.
Finally they reached a door.
“She is here,” Sara said. “I can feel her.”
“As can I,” Cilla agreed.
The amethyst in Tess’s palm shone brightly with the same message. Slowly she closed her fingers around it, concealing it.
Sara reached out and rapped on the door. There was no answer. Glancing at the other two as if in question, she then reached out and pushed the door open.
They saw a middle-aged woman rocking rapidly in a rocking chair beside a narrow bed. She stared blindly into space, her face contorted.
“Sister,” Sara said quietly, and stepped into the room. “Sister, can you hear me?”
The woman’s head turned, her eyes seeming to reflect the blackness of evil. “Help me,” she whispered.
As soon the words escaped her, she contorted with pain and screamed. Ardred’s attempt to fully possess her threatened to tear her apart.
Sara, Cilla and Tess quickly gathered round her and linked hands. With heads bowed and eyes closed, they sought the power their birthright had given them.
But this time was not as easy as before. Before they had been dealing first with a child who had not attained her powers and then with an old woman who, Tess suspected, had been on her way to being discarded by Ardred.
This time Ardred didn’t want to let go, and the Ilduin who controlled his hives for him fought hard to retain control over this woman.
This struggle, Tess realized with dawning horror, as she felt chill, oily fingers in her mind, could entrap any one of them.
Or it could end in death.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Ardred leaned near the ear of the old crone, crooning softly. Ignoring the stench of rot that forever rose from her was difficult, but he had far more important things in mind.
“Do you see her?” he asked quietly. “My Tess? Can you pick her out?”
The Ilduin who had spent much of her adult life honing her powers under the boot and prodding of Ardred, nodded slowly, her sightless eyes seeing what he could not.
“She stands with the others around Yazzi. They have joined as one to fight me.”
“All you need to do is make a little distraction,” he murmured softly in her ear, almost like a lover. “Enough that you can slip into Tess and command her.”
“She already resists my touch.”
“She is joining with other Ilduin,” he said more sharply. “That leaves her open to you.”
“It would,” the crone said bitterly, “if your stamp weren’t all over my touch.”
Enraged, Ardred reared back and slapped the woman on the side of her head. “Find a way! Disguise yourself! Invite yourself into the circle she creates! Do it.”
“Or what?” the crone demanded. “What will you do? Kill me? Then who will you have to do this work for you?”
“There are others.”
“Oh, aye, there are others,” she retorted. “But none as powerful as I. No other could do what I do for you.”
“My Tess could.”
She laughed, a sound as dry and brittle as old leaves tossed by the wind. “You need me to control her. No other can.”
“Defy me, old woman, and I may decide to wait to correct the evils of the past. After all, I have all eternity. You have only as long as I choose to give you.”
“I pity you,” she said. “Nothing could induce me to live forever.”
He raised his hand to hit her again, then thought better of it. Reining his temper, he gentled his voice, turning on every bit of the charm that had swayed thousands.
“You forget,” he said softly, “why we do this.”
“Do I? I have created blight at your behest, and thousands have died. How will that reunite the world and restore the glory and beauty of the Firstborn?”
Gently, gently, he touched her bony shoulder. “I have told you,” he said patiently. “Many died because of my brother. ’Twere there any other way, I would use it. But the gods exact their due, Hesta. They are still angry over my brother’s arrogance. And they are still angry that I failed to deal with him in time to save the first world. I need to flush him out, bring him to me on the plain of glass. I need to face him on the ground he destroyed, on the graves of the thousands he killed. A balance must be maintained.”
The crone lowered her head. “Balance is always needed.”
“What we do now restores balance. And it brings my brother to me that I may smite him as I should have done so long ago. He must come to me to defend the people of this world, in order to atone for his past evils. And I must exact the penalties set by the gods.”
“It is ordained.”
“And you will take control of the Weaver.”
“That is also ordained.”
“And you will kill me.”
“Not if you help me.”
The old woman sighed. “Kill me,” she said. “I have no desire to live. Promise me that when this is done, you will set me free.”
He agreed, his tone leaden with reluctance he did not feel. He had every intention of ridding himself of this Ilduin as soon as Tess, the Weaver, belonged to him in mind as well as body.
“As you wish,” he said. “But ’twere a pity if you miss seeing her reknit the worlds.”
“I have known only one world, and ’tis bitter enough.” She sighed, then bowed her head. “Leave me. I cannot bear distraction while I do this thing for you.”
Ardred hesitated only briefly, then took himself from the room. Outside he had other matters to occupy his attention, including overseeing the final distribution of Ilduin Bane to his hives who were gathering for the confrontation before his keep. This poison alone could kill Ilduin, but his armies were quite clear on its use. The poison-dipped daggers were only to be drawn if Ardred himself ordered it.
And that, he thought with a smile, would depend on who decided life under his control was better than death.
As for Tess…he knew in his heart that the gods were at last granting him the gift of which he had been deprived so long ago. Theriel had refused to come to him. But Tess would not.
No, Tess was his, and with him she would rule over the reunited world.
The future, he thought with pleasure, would be as glorious as the distant past.
For those who agreed with him.
The cold dark touch recoiled, and Tess drew a long, relieved breath before plunging herself into the circle she was creating with her sisters.
Sara and Cilla became comforting presences within her once again. In these moments, they ceased to be three distinct entities, but instead melded into a place somewhere between three and one. And in their midst now, surrounded by them, lay the tortured mind and heart of the Ilduin they sought to free.
