by Morgan Rice
“Back!” Lisare said, as tendrils of darkness snaked for Kate.
Kate leapt back, barely avoiding them in time, her sword already clearing its sheath. She cut at one of the shadows, and although it seemed to lack any substance, it felt real enough as her sword cut through it. Something made a sound of pain, but the tendril of shadow she cut free writhed back to the rest of it and seemed to latch back onto the greater mass.
It lunged again, and now Kate saw a mouth at the heart of it, open and waiting. She cut off another tendril of the darkness, but one wrapped around her leg, so cold that it burned as it started to draw her in.
Kate didn’t wait for it to pull her forward. Instead, she leapt at it, sword first, thrusting up through the mouth of the thing into the space where she assumed its vitals would be. The creature gave another of those piercing shrieks of pain, pulling back and seeming almost to collapse in on itself.
She tore her sword clear of it, black ichor spreading in a stain across the ground. The creature tore apart into shreds of flesh and shadow, and more tendrils came out to grab for what was left, dragging it into other waiting mouths.
“Run!” Lisare called. “The feeding will distract them!”
Kate could see that she was already taking her own advice, sprinting away from the fight. Kate guessed that she should be grateful that the other woman hadn’t run before now. Kate joined her, running as fast as she could while tendrils of darkness reached for her legs. She didn’t stop until she saw Lisare slow, gasping for air.
“We should be safe,” the priestess said. “The watchers rarely move far from their ambush spots.”
She said it as if being attacked by shadowy things were just a normal part of life there.
“Is there anything else that’s likely to jump out at us here?” Kate demanded.
She saw Lisare shrug. “This is an island shaped by death and shadow, Kate. What would you have me say? Every step is likely to be dangerous.”
Kate wished that there had been a more comforting answer than that. Instead, there was only a path that looked slippery smooth, lined with plants that had thorns as long as her fingers, each one seeming to sway hungrily in the breeze.
“If it’s so dangerous,” Kate said, as they set off “why do people bother living here?”
“Because there are things that must be done,” Lisare said. “The dead must be attended, the shadows understood. Besides, some families have lived here so long that they wouldn’t understand the question. Where else would they go?”
As far as Kate could see, the answer was “anywhere but there”. The island looked like one large deathtrap, every plant having spikes or suckers or warnings of poison, every animal looking as though it was only waiting for them to die. Small things scuttled in the shadows, their squeaks cut off occasionally as they ran into something larger.
“We will need to pick our way across this section,” Lisare said, as they came to a hollow where dozens of plants sat at the bottom, forming a kind of carpet. Mist rose up from them, and Kate guessed from the bones of animals partway through it that it wasn’t ordinary. A path of sorts continued through it, but it clearly hadn’t been cut back recently, and now it seemed like islands of open space amid the plants.
“We must hold our breath as we cross,” Lisare said. “In the spots without poison, we can breathe, but if we get it wrong…” she nodded towards the bones.
Kate shrugged. She didn’t care. Even if she died, would it be so bad? It was her only chance at getting to see Will again, and her parents. Maybe dying would be better, put like that. Maybe she should just let herself breathe as she went across…
“We get people here sometimes, who have nothing left to live for,” Lisare said. “They come here hoping that the island will kill them. Often it does. They cheat death out of its due.”
“How does dying cheat death?” Kate demanded.
Lisare shrugged. “Death is the ending to a life. It is owed a life lived until the moment fate declares it done.”
“Maybe being tired of it is fate’s way of telling us,” Kate suggested.
Lisare looked at her pointedly. “Then do it, Kate. Give up on whatever prompted you to seek your strength again. Give up on whoever needs you to seek the stone. Maybe that’s what I was sent to you for: to guide you to the other side, not to the stone of shadows. But tell me now, because I’ll not keep going through a field of poison if you’re a dead woman anyway.”
The sternness of that caught Kate a little by surprise. How dare this stranger judge what she felt like that? How dare she try to demand that Kate give up? Pointedly, Kate held her breath and stormed into the field of poison, not stopping even at the first obvious break in it.
That was a mistake. Kate was expecting the next gap quickly. Instead, she found her lungs burning with the effort of not gulping in air, and she had to run forward in the hope of finding another open space. When it came, she gasped for air, dragging it into her lungs gratefully before plunging on.
It seemed to take forever to cross the field of poison, and every breath Kate dared to take was filled with the fear that she might have misjudged it, and that at any moment, her lungs might fill with the taste of death. Even when she broke free of the gas filled hollow, she staggered a few extra steps before allowing herself to breathe normally. Lisare ran out of the mist a few moments later, her mouth covered with a cloth.
“Are you ready to keep going?” the priestess asked, and Kate suspected that she didn’t just mean on the journey.
Kate nodded. “I have to find the stone. I have to get back my power.”
“Very well,” Lisare said. “Keep your weapon ready.”
Kate did as the other woman instructed, holding her sword in her hand, prepared for any attack. Perhaps that sense of readiness was enough though, because while Kate saw signs of creatures nearby in scratch marks on the trees, and footprints with claws that gouged the turf, nothing else seemed to be willing to attack them. Even the circling birds above didn’t descend for a closer look.
That didn’t make the way easy, though. The path ascended, with slopes below now that threatened death with slightest slip, spiked rocks waiting below, and no doubt more than enough scavengers ready to pick clean any remains. After a while, as the slope continued to get more treacherous, Kate had to put her sword away and use her hands to steady herself on the rocky slope. Whenever she put her hand in the wrong spot, it came away bloody, cut by the sharpness of the stones there.
“Be careful,” Lisare said. “Some of the rocks themselves can make a person sick and weak.”
“Even the rocks here are killers?” Kate muttered. Maybe this was a place that she belonged. After all, hadn’t she brought enough death to the world around her? Maybe there was a reason that her parents had sent her here, and not to one of the other places.
“It isn’t far now,” Lisare said. A brief flash of fear crossed her face.
“What is it?” Kate asked. “What else can this island throw at us?”
“The shadow stone protects itself,” Lisare said. “Entry to the cave is… difficult.”
They kept going on their route up the mountain, to the point where the waterfall cascaded down in a roar of dark water. Kate could see the mouth of a cave beyond it, sharp edged enough that she suspected that it was far from natural. The steam that came up from the water as it hit a pool below was like a cloud of darkness rising.
“So we just need to go through there?” Kate said.
“It’s not as easy as that,” Lisare said. “The water brings fear with it. It pushes back those who try to enter.”
“I’ve been afraid of plenty of things,” Kate said. She stepped forward…
The impact of the fear was immediate. Terror filled her, rising up and threatening to overwhelm her. Go into this cave, the fear said, and everything would be ripped away from her. Everything would be taken. Everything would be-
“It’s already gone,” she said. Will was gone. Everything she cared a
bout was gone. What did fear matter, compared with that?
She could hear sounds of terror behind her, and glanced back to see Lisare quivering as she tried to push through the veil of dark water. Kate reached back, her fingers catching hold of a handful of the priestess’s robes, feeling the softness of them for a moment before she yanked Lisare stumbling forward.
As soon as they made it beyond the waterfall, the fear seemed to fall away, leaving them standing in a space cut from the dark rock and lit by reflected light.
“That was… I was…” Lisare began.
Kate shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
All that mattered was getting her powers back. The path was ahead, and she would follow it, whatever it took.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The most difficult part of the journey for Lucas was the need to adjust, over and over, to strange new places. Each time he and Elanora touched a strip of inscribed cloth or paper, and the whole world shifted, he had to find a way to believe in the new place he was in.
“You’re good at this,” Elanora said with a smile as they shifted to a space that looked like a wide orchard, filled with fruit trees of every variety. Of course, she shifted with the effortless grace of someone born to it, while Lucas had to concentrate each time, sinking into the detail of the place. For the orchard, he held onto an apple, feeling its weight, taking in its scent before biting down on it and taking in its taste.
“I have you to thank for that,” Lucas said. Without Elanora there, he doubted that he would have gotten so far. He certainly wouldn’t have found his way so smoothly. It wasn’t as though he could see the way ahead, because the papers and silks gave no clue as to which might be the correct ones to go through. He might have been able to glance ahead through them, but could he have judged just by looking where to go?
“Which way do we go now?” he asked, stepping among the trees.
“We could take our time, you know,” Elanora said. “A place like this is one of the beautiful ones.”
“I wish I could,” Lucas said. “But there isn’t much time. My sisters are searching for stones of their own, and there are people who need me.”
“Do you really wish that you could though?” Elanora said. “You’d spend time here with me if you could?”
There was something playful about the way that she asked it, but there was a serious note to it too.
“Yes,” Lucas admitted, “I would.”
He found himself thinking of the brief kiss that they’d had, the memory of it coming to him as they made their way past the blossoming fruit trees at the farther end of the orchard, to a spot where another strip of paper hung tied to a tree.
“Are you sure you won’t stay a while longer then?” Elanora asked. “This next one is a bad one.”
“The world is in danger,” Lucas said. “I can’t lose any time, even if I want to.”
“I understand,” Elanora said. “Be ready.”
She reached out for the paper, and shimmered out of existence. Lucas did the same, and instantly, he was in a stinking, bone filled place, where glints of metal showed the weapons and armor of fallen warriors. The sheer stench of the place was more than enough to make the place believable.
“What is this place?” Lucas asked.
“This is the approach,” Elanora explained. “It is… a kind of funnel, I guess. There are a bunch of different routes people can take for most places on this island, but to get to the heart stone, you have to pass through here.”
She looked worried. No, more than worried; she looked frightened.
“What is it?” Lucas asked.
He was still waiting for an answer when things burst from the piles of bones, seemingly pulled together from scraps of them. They were the kind of horrors that could never have existed in the world he knew, but here, there seemed to be no rules about what could exist and what could not.
One lunged for Elanora and Lucas leapt to meet it. His blades cleared their sheathes as he jumped forward, the steel singing through the air as he struck out. The creature had no obvious vital points to aim for, no sense of where to strike to stop it, so Lucas had to settle for hacking at the thing’s bony frame, wincing as the impact took the edge from his weapons.
He kept striking out, using their weight and his strength to splinter bone even if it would not cut cleanly. Another of the things came in from his side, and Lucas leapt away, striking down at it.
He felt his sword shatter.
The splinters of metal flew around him, and he heard Elanora cry out as one struck her. Lucas had to focus on the bone creatures, striking out with hands and feet, lashing out with enough power to snap the bones as he connected with them.
Somewhere in the violence, his other sword gave way, but by now, it didn’t matter. His hands and feet broke bones and splintered them away from the whole, and when Lucas saw a mace among the mass of abandoned equipment he grabbed for it, laying about himself with the weapon and hearing the crunches as he connected.
The bone creatures weren’t easy to stop though. They kept coming, even as Lucas struck at them, and they seemed to shift as they came forward, fragments of bone extending the way another opponent might have thrust out a spear or a dagger. Lucas barely swayed aside from one thrust in time, then parried another clumsily with his club as he found himself caught off balance. He managed to spin round to crush more bones, but the thing just kept coming…
Fire leapt from Elanora’s hands, engulfing the bone creatures and burning hot enough to reduce them to ashes. The flames kept burning until there was nothing left of them, save for a scorch mark on the ground.
Lucas looked over at Elanora in surprise. “You never said that you could do that.”
“You didn’t ask,” Elanora replied. “Besides, I can only do it here. Reshaping the world is easy, when it is the layers of this island. Outside…” she shrugged. “I am made of spirit. I couldn’t even get outside.”
There seemed to be a small note of regret in her voice at that, but it only lasted for a moment or two.
“We need to keep going deeper,” Elanora said. “But you need to be able to fight. I can’t just throw fire at everything here. It’s hard work, and some of it will see past that; they won’t believe in it enough to burn.”
“Believe in it?” Lucas said.
“It’s a fire of the spirit,” Elanora said. “You would think of it as an illusion, but you have felt how real such things can be, Lucas.”
He could have thought of the ground under his feet, or the impact of his fists against the bone creatures. Instead, Lucas found himself thinking of Elanora’s kiss.
“We need to find you a new sword,” Elanora said. “Before you go deeper, you need a weapon that can actually defeat the guardian.”
“A weapon that only exists here?” Lucas asked.
“Reality can be lent or given,” Elanora explained. “Enough of it can let a thing exist beyond this place, and a sword like that might strike at an enemy’s spirit, through their armor, or despite their power.”
Lucas found himself thinking about the Master of Crows then. What if this was a weapon that could cut him dead?
“What will it take?” Lucas asked.
Elanora seemed to think for a moment. “Find me bone and rusted iron. In this place, it won’t be hard. Find me wood and find me leather. I will prepare things here.”
“Prepare them how?” Lucas asked.
“Do you trust me?” Elanora asked.
To his surprise, Lucas did. He nodded.
“Then trust me,” Elanora said with a smile. “You do your part and I’ll do mine.”
Lucas nodded again and headed off among the bone piles, searching for the ruined weapons and armor of those who had come before. He took fragments of bone, and cut leather from the tunics of the dead. He lifted rusted chainmail, and the wooden hafts of spears. He hoped that they were the kinds of things that Elanora wanted, although to him they looked broken and useless.
H
e came back to find that there was a forge sitting on the spot where he had left Elanora, and the fires were just starting to heat up.
“That all looks perfect,” she said. “Come and help me. Work the bellows for me.”
“If this is a magic forge, can’t you make the fire hot enough by wanting it to be hotter?” Lucas asked.
“Maybe I just want to see you sweat,” she suggested, then laughed. “No, Lucas, as you work the bellows, it won’t be air that you push into the fire, but a fraction of your reality. Just a fraction, you’ll have plenty left, but it will go into the sword as I shape it.”
“All right,” Lucas said. “Although when it comes to working a forge, it’s my sister you want.”
“No, it’s definitely you I want,” Elanora assured him.
Lucas kept his head down, working on the bellows. It was hard work, at least as difficult as it might have been in the world of the flesh. In minutes, Lucas could feel himself sweating, the flames of the forge glowing with heat.
Elanora brought the materials forward, and she started to sing to them.
She sang the sword into shape, not beating the metal with hammers, but stretching it with notes, not working it with tongs, but with the melody of her voice. The rusted iron reshaped itself under the weight of a song of pure spirit, while the wood formed itself into a guard, and the bone fragments became a part of the whole. The blade became something long, and curved, and sharp enough that it seemed to cut the sound itself, severing it into dissonance as Elanora continued to sing. She hummed gently as she started to wrap leather around its grip, pulling it tight so that it would not slip or give.
“You can stop now,” she said. Lucas let go of the bellows. It was a relief to be able to do so. The effort of it seemed to have drained something out of him, left him breathing hard.
Elanora held out the sword. It was, Lucas had to admit, perfect. It seemed almost translucent, there and not there at the same time, while the balance in his hand while he lifted it was superb. Its blade shone in the sunlight, in a rainbow of colors that seemed to suggest it was cutting the light itself.
