by Morgan Rice
Sophia called down more fire, raining it directly onto part of her enemies’ forces. It was hard to do it, and not just because she suspected that the screams of the dying would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life. The stone she held lent her focus and made it easier to draw on heat, but the power still had to come from somewhere. There was only so much that Sophia could draw from her kingdom. She wasn’t the Master of Crows to use the power of the death around her, and she wasn’t some immortal with infinite power. She couldn’t draw down enough fire to win this directly, and even if she could have, Sophia couldn’t see a way to do it without burning half of her own troops in the process.
Worse, there was a space where nothing seemed to touch the enemy’s forces at all.
“What can we do?” Sophia said to Sienne. Of course, the forest cat had no answer for her. Aia did, though.
“We need to be bold, my queen,” Aia said. “We need to find a strike that will end this.”
“We need more men,” Sophia said, but there were no more men.
And then there were. Not many, but there were. Men came rushing out of the main house to man the defenses that had seemed to spring up from nowhere. They fired muskets down at the rear of the New Army, but Sophia had a greater moment of hope than that. She could see Sebastian there with them, fighting at their head, a part of this sudden burst of reinforcements.
“We strike at the Master of Crows,” Sophia said. “He’s the enemy who counts. He’s the one we can’t negotiate with, can’t force to run. If we kill him, the New Army has no more reason to fight.”
She looked around for him, trying to seek him out amid the chaos of the battlefield. She half expected to see him standing on his hill, reveling in the death and destruction that his forces were wreaking. That was the other problem with this battle: every death fed the monster at the heart of all of this. Every death only added to the power of their foe.
She saw him then, wading down into the battle. She saw him cut down one of the twelve, then start striking left and right with those blades of his. He was as fast as ever; faster than Sophia could hope to fight. She didn’t have Lucas’ skills as a warrior, or those that Kate had built up in the time when she had served as Siobhan’s apprentice.
She couldn’t hope to fight him head on, but there was still something that she could do. Sophia started to gather every scrap of power that she could, feeling how little there was for her kingdom to give right then, but knowing that she had to find something. She took everything she could find and she focused it through the fire stone, building the fire in her hand.
“I only need one clear moment,” Sophia whispered to Sienne, while the forest cat growled at anyone who got too close. She could blast the Master of Crows, and whatever men he had close to him. She could end this.
Then she saw her sister, fighting by his side.
Shock filled Sophia at the sight of Kate there, using her sword like a scalpel to cut through every man and woman who got in her way. She moved with all the unnatural speed that Sophia remembered from her most dangerous days, while around her, tendrils of shadow lashed, killing anyone who got too close. Sophia saw her cut down one of her soldiers and then another.
Kate, Sophia sent, what are you doing?
Kate looked over at her in that moment, in a clear space that held only her and the Master of Crows. If she had been able to bring herself to throw the fire that she held in that moment, Sophia could have ended it then, could have slain the creature that had killed so many for the loss of only one more life. The trouble was who that life was.
Sophia couldn’t kill her sister.
I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago, Kate sent back, and there was a shadowed edge to her sending that was almost painful to touch. I’m coming for you. I’m paying you back for Will, for me, for everything you’ve done.
Sophia stared as Kate continued to fight her way towards her, and in that moment she snuffed out the fire that she held. She couldn’t fight her own sister. She certainly couldn’t strike her down with the agonizing death that the flames promised. What could she do though? Kate was still coming, and it seemed that when she got there, death would come with her.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
In the silence and near dark of the paths of the soul, it took everything Lucas had to keep the soul stone shining. He was the guide here, and he had to trust that he would be able to find the way, whatever it took.
Behind him, Rika continued to play her harp, providing the loudest sound in a land of faint winds and low moans. The sound felt like armor against the fear and the otherworldliness that the place seemed to have at its heart. It was also a string, tying the men who followed to them, letting Lucas lead them through a place that none of them should ever have been able to step into.
“How far now?” Rika asked, without ceasing to play.
“Here, it’s not a question that makes much sense,” Lucas said. “Distance is…”
He didn’t have words for what distance was in a place like this. It was a flutter of a butterfly’s wing, the distance of a last breath, and simultaneously every ocean in the world, all at once. All he could do was walk it, feel the direction that they needed to go, and hope.
“I don’t think it’s far,” he said anyway. It felt as though it wouldn’t be long, when travel here was as much about achieving the perfect state of being as about crossing distance. Lucas could feel the connection to his sisters, and he used that to pull him closer to the spot where they were.
He could feel their power too, and he knew that they’d succeeded in the quests that their parents had sent them on. They had found the magic that they needed, become what this moment required of them.
“Lucas,” Rika said while her fingers continued to trill over the strings. “I think… I think that there are things nearby.”
Lucas could make them out too, the spirits gathering around them. There were spirits shaped like people and like animals, spirits of plants and of stranger things that had never been alive. After all that had happened on the Isle of Spirits, he should have been afraid of them, but he felt as though he understood them.
He certainly understood how to control them; the spirit stone let him do that much. Lucas reached out with its power, tying them to Rika’s song, because that felt like the most real thing there.
“Follow us,” Lucas said to them. “Help us.”
“Why should we?” one of the spirits demanded.
“The thing we’re fighting eats death, eats what’s left of the spirit,” Lucas said. “Help us.”
They fell into step with the others then, swelling their ranks and turning an army of Ishjemme’s soldiers into something far more dangerous. The human ones marched next to their fleshly counterparts, while the others flitted or stalked through the ether of the spirit world, moving in ghostly silence.
Ahead, Lucas though that he could see the spot where the battle was waiting for them, marked by the passage of spirit after spirit into the realm that they walked through. The ghosts poured in, some still screaming in anger or fear or pain, others silent in terror.
Beyond them, Lucas saw the world as if through a veil of gauze, able to take in the sight of men tangled in combat now, fighting sword to sword, shield to shield. He saw a man cut down by the sweep of an axe, only for his spirit to pop into place there, staring around as if unsure of what was happening.
He saw Lucas and charged at him.
“No,” Lucas said, holding out a hand. The power that he’d gained on the Spirit Isle was enough to stop the man’s ghost. “The time for fighting is done. You have passed from the world.”
The spirit blinked with a lack of comprehension that Lucas could only sympathize with. How could he explain to this man what had just happened to him? How could he offer even a crumb of consolation for this death in the name of a cause he probably didn’t even believe in?
Somehow, slowly, it seemed to sink in for the spirit that it was dead. It stood there staring
for long seconds, and then it faded. Even Lucas didn’t know where it went to. More came and went as soldier after soldier died the distance of a thought away from them.
“We’re actually here,” Rika whispered beside him.
“Don’t stop playing,” Lucas warned. “I think your men need it.”
Rika nodded. “I won’t.”
Around them, Ishjemme’s soldiers stood waiting with a sense of certainty that Lucas couldn’t imagine having in their place. They seemed so confident that Rika would know what to do; no, that he would know what to do to get them back into the world. Lucas could only hope that they were right.
Beyond the thin gauze leading to the world, Lucas could see the way that the battle was unfolding. He could see the forces of Henry d’Angelica piling into a fight that should have been between the New Army and Sophia’s forces, pushing back formations, changing the shape of things. He could see that his sister needed more soldiers to even have a chance of winning this fight.
More than that, he could see the impossible: Kate fighting on the side of the Master of Crows, clearing the way for him to move forward towards Sophia.
“It’s like the worst things that I saw in my dreams,” Rika said, and for a moment, her music faltered. She took out something that Lucas recognized instantly as the heart stone of Ishjemme, shard-like and crystalline, filled with power. “I know I’m supposed to get this to the house, but I feel… what if we’re already too late?”
“We’re not too late,” Lucas said. “We just have to get through in time.”
That was easier said than done though. From the Isle of Spirits, sliding into the spirit world had been as easy as willing it with the stone in his hand. Now though… now a complex web of power seemed to play around them, emanating from Monthys. Lucas recognized shades of his parents’ handiwork, but also other, older things. Whatever working had been put in place here, it had been waiting for them for a long time, and it made breaking through into the world hard.
Lucas could see how though. He lifted the spirit blade that Elanora had made for him, and he set the spirit stone into its hilt, letting it shine out in misty brilliance as he took it in a two handed grip. He swung it at the veil between worlds, and that veil seemed to fall away, cut in two as easily as one of the paper walls in Official Ko’s garden house.
“Forward!” Lucas yelled, charging through, knowing, hoping that the others would follow. He plunged into the battle beyond, and he heard the cries of the enemy as Rika’s full force of soldiers, plus a contingent of spirits, descended on them as if from nowhere. Lucas cut into a man, his sword passing through armor without a trace, only for the man to fall as dead as if he’d been hit with steel. He parried a blow, and the blade was solid.
He waded into the battle now, not holding back for a moment. Lucas cut his way into Henry d’Angelica’s forces, but his eyes weren’t on the men around him, except to keep himself from falling to their blades. He was too busy cutting a path through them, past them.
“I’m going to make for the house!” Rika called out, above the screaming and the metallic clang of weapons on armor. “I think… I think that’s where I’m supposed to be.”
Lucas nodded. He could understand that as well as anyone. He clasped his cousin’s hand.
“Good luck. I would go with you, but…”
“But you have your own destiny in all this,” Rika said. She ducked under a sword blow, and one of her men cut the attacker down. “Go, Lucas. Do what you have to. Make all of this turn out all right.”
Lucas hoped that it would be that easy as he turned his attention back to the battle. The presence of the Ishjemme contingent was helping to turn the tide, but there were some things that would require far more than that to stop.
One was the Master of Crows, who strode towards Sophia with Kate at his side. Lucas pushed through the hordes of his enemies, trying to get to her, just hoping that he would be in time.
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
Sophia braced herself as Kate and the Master of Crows moved forward across the battlefield, trying to steel herself to fight her sister, and knowing that there was no way that she could. How was she meant to prepare herself to try to kill someone she cared about that much? She couldn’t do it.
It seemed that Kate had no such limits, though. She cut through the men trying to keep her from Sophia, bringing them down with both her sword and with spikes of shadow that lashed out to impale those who approached her. She saw Kate step into one man’s shadow, only to reappear in another’s stabbing him from behind before he could react.
Sophia used the fire stone to cast a glow around her strong enough to dispel all the shadows there. She wanted to believe that Kate wouldn’t try the same thing with her, but she knew better than to leave it to chance.
“Betrayer!” Kate yelled as she continued to cut her way towards Sophia. She jabbed a finger in her sister’s direction. “Murderer!”
I haven’t murdered anyone, Sophia sent back at her sister, but the sending bounced off her like rain from a soldier’s shield.
Kate lunged forward, and for a moment, Sophia was sure that she was going to die. She had none of the speed and power that her sister possessed; her talent was all about using magic. Then Aia slammed into Kate from the side, interrupting her charge and smashing her away.
“I’ll kill you too, if you’re helping her,” Kate promised, her sabre flashing high and low. Sophia heard the clang of steel on enchanted armor, Aia moving almost as fast as Kate as the two exchanged blows. She was doing well until the Master of Crows leapt into the fight, joining in with slender thrusting blades. Now though, faced with two opponents at once, she started to fall back towards Sophia.
Sophia let out a blast of fire towards the Master of Crows. He laughed and absorbed it with a veil that seemed crow black and feathered. At least the distraction gave Aia enough time to barge into him, cutting at close range as they traded blows with grim determination.
That left the way free for Kate to rush at Sophia again though. She charged at Sophia, disappeared into a shadow, and charged from another all in one movement. Only Sophia’s precaution with the fire stone saved her, forcing Kate to come at her from further away. It gave Sophia a moment in which to turn and throw herself back, and even then she felt Kate’s blade score across her skin.
“Kate, why are you doing this?” she demanded, as Kate came at her again. Sienne leapt at her sister, snapping and growling, swiping with paws and trying to use her bulk to pin her. Kate wheeled away.
“You know why! You set all of this up! Will is dead because of the choices you made.”
“Kate,” Sophia said, backing away. “That’s not true.”
“Don’t lie to me!”
Sienne leapt to get in the way again, and Sophia heard her give out a yelp of agony as Kate cut at the forest cat with her blade. Sophia had never thought that her sister would do something like that, but then, she’d done it before, hadn’t she?
“Kate, you’re being controlled somehow. This is all some kind of lie, like it was when Siobhan took over your body. You need to fight this, Kate.”
Kate shook her head though. “I’m not being controlled. The shadow stone just showed me a few things. It showed me all the connections that you didn’t want me to see. It showed me you trying to kill me!”
She lunged for Sophia, and the only thing Sophia could think of to do was to try to clamp down around her sister’s mind, trying to stop her from doing any more harm. From the corner of her eye, Sophia could see Aia on the ground, injured or dead, with the Master of Crows stepping past her to rejoin the fight.
“That won’t work!” Kate yelled. “I won’t be controlled by you. I won’t be second to you anymore! I won’t be abandoned by you, and our parents, and everyone else!”
She seemed to ball up shadow like cloth, but Sophia suspected that it would be far more dangerous than any cloth where it struck. Sophia summoned fire, and the fire met Kate’s shadow as her sister flung it at h
er. For a moment, they stood there, streams of fire and shadow perfectly matched, steam rising where they touched one another.
“Please, Kate,” Sophia said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Do you think I don’t know all the ways that you’ve already tried?” Kate demanded. “You sent me off alone when we first left the orphanage.”
“You wanted to go,” Sophia pointed out, still holding the power of her magic.
“You put me at the front of battle after battle.”
Sophia shook her head. “I was terrified for you each time, but I knew that war was your talent, and that you wouldn’t have wanted me to hold you back.”
“You made me leave when I could have saved Will!”
“I didn’t do any of this,” Sophia insisted. “I’m not in control of everything that happens.”
“Yes you are!” Kate snapped back, and Sophia could feel the hurt behind the words even if she couldn’t break through the barriers her sister had up. “You can see the future. You can see what’s going to happen, so you know where to throw the stones to get the ripples you want.”
“I’m not Siobhan,” Sophia said. “I get dreams and glimpses of things, that’s all.”
“So you say,” Kate insisted, redoubling her efforts to push shadow towards Sophia.
Sophia couldn’t think of anything to say to stop her for a moment, but then, horribly, she could. She stepped to the side, letting her burst of flame fall. “Violet is dead.”
“What?” Kate said.
“I saw him chasing her,” Sophia said, pointing at the Master of Crows. “Then I saw the power of her magic wink out. She’s gone.”
Telling her sister hurt almost as much as experiencing it for the first time. It brought fresh tears to her eyes, and Sophia knew that she couldn’t fight Kate anymore. She stepped back.
“Kate, if I could manipulate things the way you say, do you think that I would have done it in a way that got my daughter killed?”
