Splendor and Spark

by Mary Taranta

  Perrote stole everything from him.

  He shows no remorse for the theft and no respect for the dead as we pick our way through the graveyard. Chadwick’s former soldiers, on the other hand, wear their questions plainly on their faces as they look from the man leading them to the bones at their feet, wondering how a king they’ve never heard of could share the same banners as a dead Avinean prince.

  The Herald Mountains that were once the walls of my prison in Brindaigel pierce through the fog on our left, craggy and beautiful and already thickly capped with snow. It’s surreal to see them from the outside, against a broader landscape. The mountains don’t look nearly so tall; they don’t stretch nearly so wide. They look passable, not impossible. Waterfalls cascade down the sides of the mountains, kicking up plumes of ash, disappearing into unknown riverbeds. They awaken some intangible longing inside me, some distant need for home.

  “Which way?” Perrote asks.

  Tobek looks worse than I feel, his eyes swollen with exhaustion. The skin on his face is beginning to crack, and ash settles in the edges. He surveys the fields, but there’s nothing to see but death, destruction, and the occasional cairn erected in memory. If one of them is Merlock’s, he’s been gone long enough that the stones have all turned black again, hiding his presence. We’ve missed him. And North as well.

  “Continue through to Kerch,” Tobek says wearily.

  “And then?”

  “I’ll tell you then,” he says, closing his eyes.

  We make a pathetic pair, our hands shackled and our blood turning black. How can we possibly fight anyone, man or monster or Merlock, like this? Tobek’s logic was flawed: In no way will leading an army to North be a benefit. We should have led them into the Burn to die.

  The ruins of Kerch appear just after noon, half-swallowed by ash and rubble. Only one building was spared destruction, and it rises above the rest at the center of the village.

  The abbey.

  The first warning shivers of adrenaline spike down my back; my hands turn clammy. If North isn’t here, he’ll have continued on to the next marker on his map. I’ll never make it that far. But how do I get into the abbey without Perrote following?

  The narrow, clogged streets force us into a single file. The abbey looms above the broken roofline, but Tobek doesn’t know where North was going in Kerch. He’s only guessing now, his head swinging left to right as he scans every possible nook and cranny for some sign that North is still here.

  Ahead of me, a soldier falls from his horse, hitting the ground with a grunt. I assume it’s an accident—exhaustion, no doubt—but then I see the arrow protruding from his throat and the blood spreading beneath him, turning the ash to mud.

  More hellborne?

  Perrote rears his horse and calls for his men to take cover, but nobody can move until the person ahead or behind moves first, which causes a logjam. Some try vaulting the half-walls around us, but others are penned in, and one, two, three more men go down. Perrote’s soldiers fire blindly, heads thrown back to scan the jagged roofline for targets, while Perrote twists in his saddle to find me, eyes narrowed.

  “Get her out of here!” he shouts.

  But there’s nowhere to go. The soldier at my back tries to squeeze his horse between others, but we’re stuck. Swearing, he dismounts and yanks me down between the bucking horses and panicked men, toward a cavernous doorway leading into the remnants of an old shop. I wait until we’re out of sight and then swing my shackles at the soldier’s head, colliding with his face in a rattle of iron. But I’m not nearly strong enough to topple him, and he retaliates with the hilt of his sword struck across my temple. Stars explode and I stagger, breathless, as he spits out a wad of blood at his feet.

  There are no other easy exits, nowhere to run. Straightening, I even my breathing and mentally chalk out the lines of the fighting ring. The soldier’s tired too; Perrote has been riding them for a day and a half straight with barely any rest. I don’t have to be stronger; I just have to last longer.

  The soldier levels his sword in warning, only to recoil in surprise when I call his bluff and launch myself directly at him. Circling my iron shackles around his neck, I twist behind him and pull.

  He struggles to loosen the shackles, dropping his sword as his fingers scramble for purchase at his throat. My heart slams in my ears, sluggish and thick, and I close my eyes, feeling sick with apology—and a more insidious, poison-fueled satisfaction.

  I loosen my hold. The soldier slumps to my feet, choking for air, his hand pressed to his throat. Ropy bile floods out of his mouth, and he tips his head to the floor, a position of defeat.

  The fleeting satisfaction is gone, replaced with repulsion toward myself. Feeling sick to my stomach, I lurch toward the door, to the chaos of the fight still raging outside. Details are shrouded in dust; faces are mostly blurs of light and shadow. I see someone on the rooftop above me, leveling a crossbow toward my heart, before they withdraw the weapon in recognition, pointing behind me instead.

  Tieg, Davik’s brother. Directing me to the abbey.

  North is still here.

  Darting back into the street, I press myself along a rough stone wall, dodging horses and ducking stray arrows. I reach an alley and brace for a run, but rough hands grab me by the arm, holding me back. Rialdo. His dark hair is white with dust, his features strained but determined. He presses something cold against my lower back. A pistol.

  “Where are you going?” he asks.

  The gunshot is like thunder, too close to my head, filling my nose with the acrid smell of smoke and gunpowder. Rialdo’s grip on me slackens, then releases as he falls back. Dead.

  I twist, scanning the rooftops, until I see Cohl.

  In that instant I forgive her for leaving us out in the Burn.

  She quickly turns back to the fight, and I break into an uneven run. A slurry of footsteps mars the snow along the broken stairs of the abbey, and I follow them inside with my blood still pounding like a rhythmic drum of war.

  The footsteps turn to damp water marks and then disappear. I slow, surveying the open nave, my ragged breaths bouncing back from the vaulted ceiling. Rows of pews have been overturned or rearranged into haphazard piles in between stone columns. The tiled floor is cracked and choked with debris and dead bracken. A balcony forms a U above me, the balustrade sagging in places, gone in others. Thick velvet drapery hangs in tatters, hiding the aisles and the banks of arched windows on either side of the nave. The outer structure may have survived the Burn, but its innards have not been spared.

  My attention is captured by a tomb that sits nestled in the apse, raised on a dais atop a rotted carpet with fraying threads of black and silver. A cairn of stones is balanced at its center; there’s a dampness in the air, the smell of rot.

  And then, a voice.

  Merlock kneels at the altar, his hands pressed to the ground. His tone is rushed, furtive, as though he’s running out of time.

  He’s praying, of all the inexplicable things.

  Still breathless, head aching, I pull the gun from my pocket and raise it at his back, striding silently down the nave. Each step is a new rush of poisoned anger, and I welcome it even as I fear it, allowing it to burrow through my blood, to warm the chill from my skin. It’s a mindless, exhausted fury, a simple thought that killing him will end everything. Baedan went down with one bullet. Why shouldn’t a king?

  “Don’t,” a voice says, soft. Broken.

  I stop; the gun wavers. A bullet won’t kill him because the gods protect him with their legendary caveat: Only royalty can kill a king, and my bullet is not forged with North’s blood. And my dagger is with Bryn.

  I’m finally here, and I’m useless.

  Turning, I scan the church for the broken voice, until I see him, propped up by a stone column only a few feet away.

  “North,” I whisper.

  North stares at me, eyes hooded, haunted, his face mapped with blood and bruises. Dirty cloth is bound around his leg
for some unknown wound. A dagger hangs in one hand. The blade trembles, and he tips his head back, swallowing hard.

  He’s been too long in the Burn, I realize with a sickening lurch. The poison has eaten through his defenses and he’s barely holding on.

  “He’s almost done,” North says, eyes turning back to his father.

  Merlock’s prayer continues, uninterrupted, as if we are inconsequential, unimportant, no threat. Magic flickers around him, remnants of some long-ago memory. I catch glimpses of an open tomb, of a young man nestled inside, of a weeping man bent over him, fingers curled against the edge of the tomb. Thin tendrils of poison bleed through the stone, reaching the edges of the young man’s funeral garb and staining the cloth black.

  Corthen.

  The gun is dead weight against my leg, but North has the means to end this. Surely the gods will forgive an unfinished prayer in this instance.

  But ever the gentleman, North will not kill a mourning man whose back is turned to him. I love him, but Bryn was right: His nobility may condemn this entire kingdom.

  Bryn. I search the abbey again for some sign of her or my sister. Or are they with Davik’s brothers, hidden away on the roofs?

  “You came back,” North says in a voice full of broken glass. Then, with a weak smile, “How did you get here?”

  My eyes return to him. “It doesn’t matter. I’m here.”

  His smile fades and he nods, closing his eyes. “You’re here,” he repeats, sliding an inch lower down the column.

  The gunshots outside sound louder, closer; we don’t have much time. I shift the pistol to my opposite hand and wipe my palm dry against my trouser leg. The iron shackles rattle with every move I make, and the sound echoes back from the walls. Merlock has to know we’re standing here, waiting.

  He finally finishes his prayer, kissing the backs of his hands before he sits back on his heels. He’s a portrait of Avinea, framed at the altar: The craggy Herald Mountains are his knotted spine through his coat; the Burn is the ash-gray tangles of his hair; the birch tree forests we passed in North’s wagon are his slender frame, skin mottled by poison and age.

  And even the heartbreaking hope that remains in Avinea is momentarily there in his eyes as he turns away from the tomb, still mourning his brother. Then hope fades and his expression hardens as he looks at us.

  “You do not learn from your mistakes,” he says.

  “Nor do you,” I say. “You can’t change the past, no matter how much you try.”

  He half-smiles in acknowledgment before he steps up onto the dais to press his hand against the tomb. It cracks beneath the pressure, as though made of flimsy paper instead of solid stone, weakened by too many years absorbing the Burn. As he turns back, my pistol is torn from my hand by an unseen force and skates up the nave to his feet. The abbey doors slam shut behind me, and pews fly back, hitting the walls and columns and splintering apart. I duck, hands over my head, but he strides toward me, calm and unruffled, his demeanor contradicting the sorrow still carved in his face.

  North staggers forward, but Merlock locks him in place with one raised hand. North’s fingers peel apart, one by one, until his dagger is released. It flies toward me, hovering an inch above my heart.

  “I can’t change the past, but I can alter your future,” Merlock says. “So what do I? Do I show mercy, or do I cut out your heart?”

  North edges forward. “Your fight is with me.”

  Merlock flicks his hand, and I’m thrown aside. North’s dagger clatters to the ground. “You mistake me,” Merlock says. “I have no fight with you, my son. Only every possible hope.”

  I can’t breathe; I can’t think. My heart is slowing down, but my lungs are gasping for air, and I suck in shallow, rattling breaths that don’t satisfy my need.

  North stares at his father. Trembling. “What do you mean?”

  Merlock spreads his hands and cocks his head with a chilling smile. “I want you to continue our legacy,” he says. “Give our people the future they deserve. The future that they’ve earned but that I have so selfishly cheated them of. Not destroying this kingdom entirely is the one mistake I can still correct. Through you.”

  North shakes his head, battered features twisting into a look of absolute loathing. “You are a coward,” he says. “You were too weak to find another way, but I am not.”

  Merlock’s smile vanishes, and he lowers his hands. “Do not presume that I’m weak. I am still the king, and you are the bastard son of a whore. You cannot kill me unless I allow myself to die. And I will not die until I see this kingdom in hell, where it belongs.”

  North strikes with precision, finesse—no showmanship, only efficiency. His magic collides with his father, who loses a fraction of his footing. With a growl, Merlock casts a spell that calls shadows from the floor. They emerge like spindled demons that separate and race toward North. More shadows drip from the walls and the vaulted ceiling, as viscous as poison as they congeal into monstrous forms, with serrated spines and sharpened claws and heads too heavy for their malformed bodies.

  I lunge for the dagger as North casts a spell that ignites every candle left in the iron brackets along the nave, on the altar, in the balcony. The shadows recoil from the bright light, but he’s already weak and getting weaker. Merlock easily knocks him onto his back and pins him to the ground with magic. Shadows wind around North’s arms and legs, holding him hostage.

  North struggles against their grip. His own magic collects into his fingertips, but shadows envelop them, blocking any attempt at attack. More shadows ring his chest, inching higher, toward his face.

  Frantic, I rush for Merlock, dagger raised, but before I even reach him, I fly back, into a broken pew. Pain brightens my vision as I roll onto my stomach, gasping.

  “Stop fighting it,” Merlock says. “Accept your fate, my son; accept your death so that you may truly live. Claim your sins and bear them with honor. You are human and you are fragile, and you,” he breathes, crouching beside North, “are broken beyond repair. Like me.”

  “Not yet,” a cold voice says.

  Bryn steps out from behind a column, Cadence at her side, both of them clutching candles dripping with wax. Merlock sits back, head cocked, but Bryn wastes no time, burning the shadows wrapped around North’s hand before her fingers thread through his.

  It is a moment of beautiful despair as the shadows retract and North’s magic surges with Bryn there to amplify it. Merlock is bowled back, and North rises to his feet, hand in hand with Bryn: the prince and his wife.

  They will be legend after this day, if they survive.

  But I won’t survive, not at this rate. North’s infection transfers through Bryn into me, stronger than ever. My head ignites, and I double over, retching, fingers splayed against the broken tile floor. My heart beats once and waits forever before it beats again.

  “Faris!” Cadence runs for me, diverting North’s attention. He releases Bryn’s hand to spare me, and Merlock presses his advantage, shoving North to his knees as Bryn is cast aside in a tumble of skirts.

  “Our people are parasites. They crave magic and they crave power, and nothing you do or say will ever satiate their greed. So give them what they want.” He cradles North’s face, a temporary image of paternal affection. “Let them rot with desire and bleed with hunger and starve to death by their own wicked hearts.” He tightens his hold on North’s face, poison-stained fingers digging furrows into North’s cheeks. “We can’t save anyone. We never could. Surely you see that.”

  North cries out, teeth bared in agony as his father’s poison rips through his flesh. Dark blood drips from his nose, but his eyes shift past Merlock, to me. Trembling hands reach up and grab Merlock by the forearms. A gesture of subservience, of submission—but I know better, because he did this once before. He’s holding Merlock in place, using the last of his power, the last of his strength: all or nothing, no second chances.

  But unlike the first time he did this, this time I’m ready.

/>   “Having a heart is not a weakness,” North says, the words heavily slurred. “You didn’t save your brother, and you can’t save yourself.” His eyes shift to me again as shadows crawl down Merlock’s back, around his arms, over North’s skin. “I’m willing to die for this kingdom, which is far more than you ever would.”

  “Now!” Bryn shouts, placing her hand on North’s exposed arm, doubling his power—and the poison inside me.

  I strike.

  The dagger sinks between Merlock’s shoulder blades, and he twists, incredulous, releasing North to face me fully. North collapses against Bryn as Merlock takes a step toward me, then another, only to falter, hesitate, stop. His eyes widen as the blood forged in the blade begins to eat through his skin and the magic threaded through it. He laughs in disbelief before sagging to his knees. Breathlessly I wrench the dagger out of his back, dizzy as I stare him down.

  He rattles with laughter, eyes watering as they focus on me. His skin is almost completely gone, and with it, every spell protecting his heart.

  “He will regret this,” he wheezes, “and he will resent you for burdening him with the impossible task of hope.”

  “He’ll survive,” I say, and drive the dagger through his throat before he can say one more poisoned word.

  There’s not much time before Merlock’s heart will stop, and yet I spare a second for North, who lies, unresponsive, in Bryn’s arms.

  “Don’t touch his skin!” I say, waving her away. “You’ll only make it worse!”

  She doesn’t argue, easing him onto the tile floor. She stands and backs away, staring at him with a strange, unreadable expression. Cadence joins me as I pocket the dagger and wipe North’s sweat-stained face with the sleeve of my coat, then press my ear to his chest, listening for a heartbeat.

  Slow and getting slower. He’s alive, but only barely.

  “Don’t you dare, not again,” I whisper to him. “I need you, North. Do you understand me?”

  His eyelids flutter, but there’s no response.