Steadfast

by Michelle Hauck

Teresa stared at him like he’d lost his wits, then she saw the fog. “What . . . what is that?”

  “Our way through Her Beauty without being seen. The dream world. Your hand.” He held out his left. “I’m sure I can get in. Not so sure about you, but if you hold my hand, we can try.”

  She put her Diviner under her poncho and, he presumed, into her sling, then took his hand. Her face was twisted, as if he’d asked her to jump into quicksand. “It doesn’t hurt,” he told her as much to remind himself as for her benefit. “It’s just strange . . . distant. Like a dream.”

  With his Diviner held before them, he approached the fog, but it pressed back against him like a shield wall during a practice bout, rebuffing his efforts to enter. Rejecting him. Which made no sense. Surely it was here to help them cross Her Beauty. “I can’t—it won’t let me in.”

  “The Diviners,” Teresa said. “What if they’re like magnets?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are opposite kinds of magic: one of creation and the other of darkness. What if they aren’t compatible? They could repel each other like magnets.”

  “Then we have to leave the Diviners.” He was wary to let go such a powerful weapon, and yet couldn’t wait to set the evil thing aside. He tried the fog once again, and this time the resistance vanished. Teresa dropped his hand and removed the other two Diviners from her poncho, depositing them atop his. He pulled her toward the fog, but she held firm.

  “We can’t just leave them here,” she insisted. “And if we do, we’ll have no weapon that won’t draw blood but our hands. Are you sure about this?”

  “How can I be sure about anything?” But he didn’t like using the Diviners and now he had an excuse not to. He pulled free his sword and hacked at the slim rods. They broke but reluctantly, dulling his sword and taking many strikes to come apart. Eventually, however, they lay splintered into dozens of pieces.

  “Best I can do,” he said, getting his breath back from the exertion. Teresa stood well back and he suspected neither of them wanted to find out if splitting the Diviners had removed their magic. Teresa took his hand again and the gray world of the dream soon engulfed them, taking them elsewhere.

  Chapter 33

  The wall or door of fog didn’t part for them as much as allow them to move through it. The fog felt no different from ordinary fog: cooler than the air and with a slight dampness. Two steps and Ramiro pulled Teresa through to where the whiteness thinned. He glanced back to see that the wall of fog remained behind them—a way back to safety. There was nothing about the fog to raise concern, except for the vapor existing inside a building and being the size and shape of a door.

  “Yep. Perfectly normal,” Ramiro said. His eyes tried to take in everything at once.

  “It’s not so bad,” Teresa said. “It’s like being in our world, but not.” Wonder shone on her face. “This is where you go when you dream?”

  “A few times, yes. But I’m asleep then. I’ve never gone there when I was awake before. It’s like this, only a little different.” He didn’t want to put the differences into words. The usually thick, concealing fog had turned to thin streamers that seemed to blur everything without hiding objects, becoming stronger with distance so that nearer objects were the most clear. He could see the floor under his feet plainly, the walls a little less so, and the ceiling not at all. Still, everything felt more like a painting with some of the details washed away, robbing things of their texture and specifics. He could see the floor but couldn’t see the cracks of the flagstones. The colors seemed more muted here, dull, especially things that were normally bright, like the lamps in their brackets.

  No patches of fog opened to reveal glimpses of the future. He searched for Salvador’s figure, but they were alone. The only things that stood out cleanly, as sharp as ever, were himself and Teresa—and the dead body of the Northerner behind them.

  They both stared at it.

  “Excuse me for being juvenile, but that’s just creepy,” Teresa said. She poked Ramiro with her free hand. “Where did the Diviners go?”

  He looked, and sure enough, the pile of white chips that had been the Diviners didn’t exist in this place. Nor did the blankets the dead Northerner lay upon. He didn’t want to know what that meant. He shrugged.

  “Let’s go.”

  He followed the corridor. His boots made no thumps on the floor, as if the thin fog cushioned them. Now that he thought about it, their voices had been muted as well. Sound traveled differently here. And unlike the cloying response of his muscles in the real dream, he could move freely here, but his movements seemed slower, more deliberate, the world around him less steady. Like the way you reacted when you were just drunk enough to be concerned about hurting yourself, but not so far gone as to be carefree.

  The corridor they traveled continued to be abandoned; the niches they passed empty except for reliquaries or statues. No Northerners. No humans. No life of any kind, not even a lost bee or a fly.

  “We’re completely safe here,” Teresa said at his back. “There’s nothing to hurt us. A miracle.” She smiled at him as if they went to a picnic in the park.

  He tightened his grip on her hand, surprised she didn’t feel as he did. “This place isn’t meant for the living. The rules aren’t the same.” It came to him suddenly that in addition to their physical movements, time moved differently as well. The distance between niches, which would take them a few minutes to traverse, now passed in half that time, requiring just a few steps. The longer they stayed here, the more convinced he became that this place was dangerous in a way he still couldn’t articulate. It was just clear that wherever they were was not for the dead or the living. Humanity, as they knew it, didn’t exist here, and if they stayed long, he was certain it would take all that made them human.

  “There it is,” Teresa said. “The reflection garden should be that door.” She raised her hand to point, and for an instant his vision doubled, allowing him to see her arm still lifting, yet her hand fixed with the motion completed. She took a step toward him and her foot lifted at the same instant she set it down a pace ahead.

  He blinked and cracked his neck to either side, and avoided looking at himself or Teresa again. Focusing straight ahead on fixed objects, he took them through the doorway. Stone flooring underfoot became pea gravel as they entered the garden, though he could tell more by feel than picking out the pebbles below him. Five or six stone benches were spread throughout the rectangular courtyard. Lanterns on the walls provided light. Shrubs and rare plants, like roses that required extra care and water, grew spaced well apart. Their leaves were a dull and faded green here. Their blooms looked washed out by the fog. No fragrance perfumed the space and the ceiling was only fog where the night sky should have been. As elsewhere the space was empty of life.

  Some urgency pulled him to a back corner of the chamber behind the columns that held up the edge of the roof. Ramiro stumbled, and they burst out of the fog as the world returned to normal. Colors and details sprang back to life. The smell of roses almost overpowered, along with fresh air entering from the open roof. Lichens grew up the columns like spots of green and gray moss as bright to his eyes as the fiercest summer sun. The sound of voices crashed into his head as loudly as a dinner gong being rung against his ears. Everything stood out as it burst with life. The clouds had thickened over the moon, but here and there a star shone through as brilliant as a torch. He reeled for a breathless instant, then the world clicked and become ordinary again.

  Teresa was holding her head. She opened her mouth, and Ramiro put a finger to his lips. He had heard voices when he came out of the fog, and although he was still a bit disoriented, he was pretty sure they weren’t alone. Two columns, set inches apart, concealed them and allowed them to peek between.

  Sure enough, the reflection garden was filled with people. Ramiro spotted two Northern priests with gold in each ear—so elderly he had trouble telling if they were male or female—and nearly a dozen soldiers in bl
ack and yellow. One man had gone to his knees before the two priests with his head bowed. Ramiro recognized the solider from the gate, the general who’d taken control of the army. He also recognized a dressing-down when he saw it. The two priests spat angry words at the kneeling soldier—Rasdid had been the name Father Telo called him—while the other soldiers stood rigid with averted eyes. They showed all the signs of men infuriated but unable to show as much before a superior. They had turned their eyes elsewhere to give their officer a tiny amount of privacy in his embarrassment.

  Ramiro’s insides curled in sympathy before remembering these men were the enemy. Yet, it was hard not to view this Rasdid as a man of honor, obviously commanding his men’s respect but also treating Aveston with fairness. As Ramiro had traded for supplies, the people of the city had all told him that once Rasdid took control of the army, most of the harassment of the civilian population had stopped. He wouldn’t say the Northerners were kindly under Rasdid, but the brutality and rapes had ended. That didn’t excuse them or make the hate any less, but it helped him remember the Northerners were humans and not beasts—and this man, so willing to let them in to try to stop Dal, perhaps even more human than the others.

  Teresa nudged him, and Ramiro noticed the rest of the garden. Just behind the soldiers and the priests, the plants had been stripped away, a bench overturned and moved, and a heavy carpet of red laid on the gravel. A single table and chair sat upon it and the table had been piled high with Diviners—the bone-white ones—as if in anticipation.

  Teresa inclined her head toward the table. He caught her eye. “Wait,” he mouthed to her. They could do nothing with so many soldiers in the garden. Luckily such scenes couldn’t last long. Screaming at your subordinates was a tiring business.

  Then to his surprise, Rasdid spoke in their language.

  “And my men? You will kill them as well.”

  The priest on the right let his lip curl. From their voices Ramiro had concluded they were male. “The army is safe. The undeserving pass to . . . nig via. It be Dal’s will. Some die. Be glad it’s not you.”

  “Just the men I send into the city or to your ritual.”

  “You obey or we see your family is named Disgraced, and you sent to the ritual.”

  “Some must pass to the nig via to keep this via for others,” the first priest said. “You priat. You understand honor. If not, you die and we find another.”

  “You may be ready to kill your priests, but I don’t care to give my men.” Rasdid spat into the gravel. “Without me, you lose the army again.”

  The priests bristled at this threat, bent backs going straight. The men behind them stirred uneasily, though they obviously understood nothing being said. The priests pulled Diviners from their belts, and one slid forward to hold the white rod under Rasdid’s chin.

  The two priests reverted back to their language, and two of the soldiers pulled out swords, while a third and fourth man grabbed Rasdid and stretched out his arm. Rasdid did not resist, and his men kept looking at each other in the way of people unsure of whether to act. The ones with swords drawn let them droop toward the ground. The soldiers holding Rasdid did so without conviction.

  The priest spoke again and five of the soldiers knelt on the ground. Their faces were stricken with fear before their bowed heads hid their expressions. The men holding Rasdid left him to hold one of these soldiers instead—a fresh victim. Tension ran like lightning through the room. For the space of an instant, Ramiro believed the soldiers would resist and turn on the priests, then the priests spoke again in harsh voices and defiance fled. A sword was raised over the first victim to lop off his hand at the wrist. Ramiro held his breath—

  “I comply,” Rasdid said. “Stop. I comply.” He said more that Ramiro couldn’t understand, but the priests appeared satisfied. The soldiers with swords sheathed them and the kneeling men got to their feet.

  “Resistance,” Teresa hissed in his ear.

  If this had been resistance, it had failed. Ramiro waited as the priests talked some more while the soldiers listened with their faces blank and unresponsive. Then Rasdid said something and they all turned and double-marched from the garden, leaving the priests.

  Ramiro tensed. They wouldn’t get a better chance.

  He pointed at the table of Diviners, then at Teresa, and she replied with a nod. He moved from the columns, pulling free his sword and letting it ring from the sheath. It wasn’t in him to attack a man from behind without warning, especially not an elderly one. When the priests turned toward him, he stepped away from the columns to draw their eyes from Teresa and moved as if circling for the doorway. They reminded him of dried-up old lizards who had sat in the sun too long, but even old lizards could react surprisingly fast and with a septic bite.

  They moved with him to keep between him and the door, putting their backs to Teresa. Each held his Diviner outward in arms almost as thin as his weapon, and Ramiro saw they each wore a red Diviner as well at his waist. Mottled and frail, they couldn’t match Ramiro’s strength or speed, but when they could kill with a touch, they didn’t have to.

  “You’re planning quite a party for the city,” Ramiro said. “I’m here to stop it.”

  Lips pulled back from yellowed teeth. “You’ll fail.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe you will. Shall we find out?”

  The first charged at a surprising pace, and Ramiro met his Diviner with the flat of his blade. An electric shock rode up his sword into his hand. Unlike his first encounter with this weapon, though, he was expecting it. Before he lost feeling, he twisted the sword and thrust upward, tearing the Diviner out of the priest’s grip and sending it tumbling away. His hand went numb a second later. The sword dropped from fingers that wouldn’t grip. He caught the sword hilt in his other hand and kicked out. His foot hit the priest’s unprotected chest, flinging the Northerner backward into a bush and out of the fight.

  The other priest was already swinging at him. Ramiro struggled to regain his balance while diving away from the Diviner. His right arm had gone numb to the elbow and hung useless. A calculated sacrifice to even the odds, though he didn’t dare attempt it again and lose the use of both arms. He avoided the first strike, but the priests had had years of training also. Somehow, he didn’t think priests got to this age in the Children of Dal without being ruthless and effective at killing.

  Ramiro jumped back yet again. This Northerner didn’t take big swings, but short ones that didn’t overbalance the priest, and it enabled him to strike often and keep coming. The short swings meant Ramiro couldn’t run in under them. Ramiro was kept too off balance to use his sword. He danced out of the way again and again and gave ground, while all the priest had to do was press ahead.

  He prepared to give ground yet again when the priest jabbed instead of swinging overhand. Reflexes took over and Ramiro’s left arm shot out to deflect, catching the blow just above the elbow. The Diviner landed against the armor in a thunk of metal. The priest smiled in victory, waiting for Ramiro to topple.

  The skin of Ramiro’s arm prickled underneath the mirror-like armor, similar to the effect of having stinging nettles rubbed there, but nothing else happened.

  No agony. No paralysis.

  No death.

  When he’d been hit before in his other armor the Diviner had been debilitating—like being struck by lightning—though not deadly. This time Ramiro hardly even felt the magic.

  The old priest’s eyes widened in surprise. He recovered and swung again. Ramiro caught that blow on his forearm, shrugging off the mild nettle sting and taking a step forward. The priest aimed for his head, but Ramiro stopped that strike with his arm, too.

  Before the priest could attack again, Ramiro said, “You lose. Look behind you.”

  Teresa had thrown oil from the lanterns all over the table. The priest had been so busy he hadn’t even noticed the light dimming. Now she plucked another lantern from the wall, flinging it at the table of Diviners, where it burst in a spray of oil and fl
ame. The table caught fire in a flair of heat and was engulfed in an instant. The pile of Diviners smoked and turned brown.

  The priest wailed in a cry of mortal grief and struck out with his Diviner again. The weapon pinged off Ramiro’s hip. He cuffed the old man in the head with his sword hilt and the priest folded to the ground, going silent.

  “I didn’t want to do that.” It went against all his upbringing to harm the elderly, even one trying to kill him. However, the Northerner would live, and Ramiro had to silence the noise before it brought more of them. They had made enough noise as it was.

  And soon there was more as whistles and cracks came from the fire as the table collapsed, catching the carpet on fire. The chair followed the carpet’s example. Sparks flew upward. Smoke was sucked out of the opening in the roof. Ramiro tossed the Diviner of the unconscious elderly priest onto the pile, feeling satisfaction as it browned like the others.

  Teresa tossed the other priest’s Diviner into the bonfire and came to stand next to him as they watched. There must have been hundreds of the Northern weapons on the pile. All the Diviners the Northerners hoped to turn red to repel Dal. Hopefully, this left them as vulnerable as the rest of Aveston and would prevent a massacre.

  The flames licked around the Diviners, but Ramiro waited in vain for the weapons to turn to ash. Already the wood of the table fell in on itself as it was consumed. Though the Diviners turned a brownish yellow, they looked otherwise unharmed. Was the fire not hot enough?

  Teresa wore a frown. “I read that ivory can take weeks to burn, but I didn’t think these were ivory. What should we do?”

  Ramiro glanced at the doorway, but it remained empty. The smell of smoke would bring their enemies soon enough. He braved the heat to step to the pile and strike the closest of the Diviners with his sword. The Diviner on top cracked. He struck again and it crumbled into fragments like a piece of pottery, along with the weapon just below it. Two destroyed, but it was an inefficient process. Getting all the rest would take much time.