by Cait Spivey
They oozed.
“Shall we?” Guerline asked. Eva nodded. Guerline returned the gesture and said, as one last offering to her devout parents, “Lisyne, Great Wolf, Mother of Arido, though I wash this my father, this my mother, of their earthly odors, I beg you will remember their skins. Remember their scents. Their forms are yours and yours alone, from this moment on.”
Eva hefted the jug, and then paused. “Not your brother too?”
Guerline glanced at Alcander’s arm. “Let it be an experiment. See if the witch comes for un-cleansed flesh.”
Evadine gave a huff that was almost a laugh and splashed water onto Johan and Maribel. The water sloshed among the soft bones and jellied organs for a few seconds, then pinged, yellow with bile, into the basin below. Guerline, her lip curling, used the edge of the laundry bat to drag the pooled liquid through the cloth.
“Disgusting,” Guerline muttered. Eva laughed.
After the longest hour of their lives, the two women summoned the rest of the council to assist with the dressing of the corpses. Though they’d opened the chamber’s vents, the pungent smell of rot mixed with the sweet perfumes and astringent oils made the air feel thick. Guerline found she didn’t mind; it certainly motivated the councilors to dress the deceased quickly, which was easy since she’d decided to use only the outer robes. Attempting to dress them fully would only have made them fall completely apart, and no one wanted that.
The councilors used a fresh litter to transfer Johan and Maribel into the Temple’s main room. The sanctuary was circular, and the floor was covered in soft animal pelts of all kinds, meant to represent the breadth of the shifter gods’ personas. The plentiful benches formed concentric half circles, starting at the back of the room. The far wall featured statues of the three gods in their human forms. The farthest to the left was Tirosyne, the Jolly Tiger. He was depicted as large and broad, with abundant hair and beard. The farthest to the right was Seryne, the Lucky Fox. She was small and spritely. In the center was Lisyne, the Great Wolf, Mother of Arido. According to the Book of Skins, it was she who had created the world and populated it with humans, then made the witches to protect them. She was tall and straight-backed, stern and proud. A giant wolf stood behind her.
A plinth had been erected in front of the shifter gods, and upon this her parents were laid. Bare-footed, as was required in the Temple, Guerline stepped from soft fur to coarse hide until she reached the first bench. She and Eva sat together, and the councilors arrayed themselves behind her. The watch began.
Watches never took long—Guerline had never heard of one that lasted more than two hours. The magic of Thiymen clan somehow alerted them whenever a human died, and they came swiftly.
Tiredness plucked at her, attempting to pull her spine out of its straight alignment and curve her into herself like an old woman, barely strong enough to hold herself up. She resisted it, breathing deep into her chest and using each inflation of her lungs to reassert her posture. Beside her, Eva was tall and still and somber.
The chamber was silent, but this time the silence was tinged with fear instead of awkwardness. They all knew who was coming—only one witch of Thiymen was exalted enough to escort the souls of royalty.
Fiona Kavanagh. The Heart of Thiymen.
And the most hated witch in Arido. She was synonymous with death, and as such, was the focus of human fear. The Book of Skins spoke of rebirth through Mother Lisyne, yet the people of Arido clung to the life they knew. Fiona, and the witches who served her, represented the end of that life. It was not hard to understand why she was hated, but Guerline pitied her, even as anxiety rose at the thought of seeing her face to face.
Would she come? As Heart of Thiymen, it was her duty to collect the souls of the emperor, empress, and the heir, but Fiona had not been seen outside her Citadel—as far as Guerline knew—in twenty-five years; not since Guerline’s grandmother had died. That, at least, was a matter of record.
It was said that Fiona was terrible to look upon, swathed in black but bleached bone-white in every part of her flesh from trafficking so much in dead magic.
Guerline barely had time to conjure up an image of the infamous witch before the air went winter-cold. Everyone in the room sat up straighter, and all eyes snapped to the bodies before them. There was a sharp crack, like a whip snapping. A bright purple light appeared in a vertical line behind the corpses. Two hands appeared out of thin air and pushed the light apart like a curtain. Out stepped a tall woman. Fiona.
She was thin, almost a skeleton herself, and wore a long black robe. Her head was covered by a large hood; she reached up with black-gloved hands and pushed it back, revealing a hollow-cheeked face. Her skin was smooth, as was her hair, which hung straight from her scalp. She was indeed white as bone, in all things except her eyes and lips—these were both as black as her clothing.
Those black eyes found Guerline’s, and they were flat and solid, like stone. Guerline’s blood went cold, but she rose anyway and strove not to shake.
“My condolences on your loss, Your Highness,” Fiona said. Her voice was barely more than a whisper. Guerline managed a jerky nod in return.
Fiona continued, “Who is responsible for this man and this woman?” This time, her voice was strong, filling the sanctuary and making Guerline jump. She was surprised, not just by Fiona’s change in tone, but what it implied—had the Heart of Death truly meant to offer her some private comfort? That hardly seemed to match the folk-descriptions of her.
“Guerline,” Eva whispered sharply.
“I am,” Guerline said, fulfilling the script.
Fiona’s mouth twitched. “And do you send them into the care of Thiymen clan, to be taken to the realm of the underworld in which they may receive their appropriate peace or punishment, as determined by the Judges?”
Guerline nodded. “I do.”
“Then I, Fiona of Thiymen, promise to deliver their souls safely thence,” the witch said.
Guerline nodded again and stepped back. Fiona leaned first over Johan’s body, then Maribel’s, and put her hands on their chests. She didn’t seem to mind the condition of the flesh, though of course, they had perfumed it, hadn’t they?
Slowly, Fiona drew her hands up. The bodies glowed with blue light, and as Fiona lifted her hands, the lights rose and took on the likeness of Johan and Maribel respectively. None of the onlookers so much as breathed. Fiona stepped back and righted the souls so that their feet were on the floor. They opened their ghostly eyes and looked at her. Guerline held her breath, but the souls had eyes only for their witch escort.
She could have sworn Fiona smiled as she lifted her hood and turned her back to the mourners. She held a gloved hand out to each soul. They took her offered hands, and she led them through the curtain of purple light. Another crack split the silence, and suddenly, both witch and souls were gone.
Alcander’s arm remained, untouched and unacknowledged.
The mourners released their breath with one collective sigh. Guerline blinked a few times until she no longer saw spots of light, then turned to the councilors seated behind her. She took a deep breath, in no hurry to speak as she gazed at those familiar faces, still marveling that she had just been mere feet from one of the most powerful figures in Arido—indeed, marveling that she was now also considered one of those figures.
That thought sent a chill down her spine. She found Eva’s eyes, and they smiled at each other; she took comfort from that and used it to fuel what she had to say next.
“Burn the bodies,” she said. And she walked out of the chamber, leaving Eva to enforce the dishonor, as planned.
Guerline screamed and vaulted forward in her bed, gasping, struggling against shadows so black they made the darkness of her room seem like daylight, pushing until her hands met warm resistance. Slowly, she became aware of the sound of Eva’s voice, humming in the dark. She felt the mattress shift under her and realized that Eva had joined her on the bed. She hadn’t even known her friend was in the
room.
“Eva, what—”
“It’s all right, Lina, I’m here,” Eva said. “Do you want me to light a lamp?”
Guerline stared, unseeing, though even as she breathed, her eyes began to discern familiar shapes in the night-washed room. One breath, then another, each one deeper than the last. She found herself shaking her head, though she knew Eva couldn’t see it. She swallowed, the motion painful, and found her hoarse voice. “No, no lamp. I thought . . . you promised you’d sleep in your own room tonight.”
Eva’s chuckle was almost like a caress. “I lied.”
Guerline managed a sigh that was more grateful than exasperated. It had been two weeks since the rest of the royal family died, and she was not holding up well. She had barely gotten any sleep thanks to a plague of nightmares—her parents’ rotted faces, blood dripping on her face from Alcander’s stump of a shoulder—and her days were filled to the brim with invitations from the First Families desperate to gauge the strength of their new empress.
Thus far, she had refused them all, taking full advantage of the mourning traditions set in place by the Temple of the Shifter Gods. Her time was almost up, though. She would soon have to rejoin the world—as its leader, not merely its sometime observer. She reached for Eva and was immediately comforted by the other woman’s embrace.
“Wait,” she said. Eva froze. “If you’re going to stay, you may as well get comfortable.”
That earned her another small laugh from Eva. Guerline watched her silhouette as she stood and removed her linen overdress, leaving only a sheer chemise that Guerline remembered rather than saw. Eva climbed back onto the bed, slipping under the covers this time, and returned to Guerline’s side. Guerline curled up against her, settling comfortably against the taller woman’s torso. Eva’s hand found a resting place on Guerline’s cheek, and her thumb moved slowly back and forth over her skin.
“Was it like the others?” Eva asked.
“Yes,” Guerline replied.
The nightmares followed the same pattern, taking some of her worst memories and exaggerating them, forming a horrible pageant of her life. First would be the time Alcander had locked her in the sewing room, except the fabric was water and it slowly drowned her. Next she’d relive the night she saved a starving dog from a stable hand, only this time, there were no guards to hear her cry. And then, invariably, inevitably, the night just three weeks ago when Alcander had come to her chamber—
She stiffened and glanced instinctively at the knife on the bedside table behind her.
“Shh,” Eva said, as if she’d known what was going through Guerline’s mind. She pressed her lips to Guerline’s brow once, then again, soft kisses soothing the panic welling up inside Guerline. “I’m here. I’ll always be here, from now on. Sleep.”
The pervasive exhaustion of the past two weeks tugged at her, and Eva’s words made Guerline feel safe enough to give into them. Perhaps she could steal just a few moments of restful sleep before the cycle began again. Moved and feeling brave, she kissed Eva’s neck and closed her eyes.
She smelled bitter smoke, and opened her eyes—all she could scent was Eva’s lingering perfume. She shut her eyes again and gave way to sleep, but not to rest. The nightmare picked up where it had left off, with her brother murdering her in the cleanest way possible, his body a weapon to crush her without breaking a single bone.
Chapter Three
The caves were pitch black, but the darkness didn’t deter the Heart of Thiymen. She could find her way through a more total darkness than the natural world could ever provide. Her stride into the bowels of the Zaide Mountains was as firm as ever, as slow and determined as the steady approach of death.
Kanika Asenath walked slightly behind her mistress, watching the back of Fiona’s white-haired head carefully.
“Fiona, please. I beg you, leave this to the Guard,” she said. “Moira lives to do her duty for you, and I know she will not want to be deprived of the privilege—”
“Moira will do what I ask, even if I ask her to step aside,” Fiona said, her voice low and resonant. “And that is what I must do now. This thing is too strong, too strange for them.”
They had all noticed the weakness in the barrier between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Each time a Thiymen witch crossed the boundary, it was torn, but the rules of repair were extremely firm. Any witch who didn’t immediately close her gap was severely punished. Lately, the Guard had noticed several sloppy gaps, tears which had clearly been made by no Thiymen witch; they were wobbly, indefinite, unwarded, and vulnerable. Someone from another clan was doing dark magic and not cleaning up after themselves. All the extra gaps were weakening the ancient separation of worlds faster than the Guard could repair it—and something was pushing through, aiding this decline from the other side.
They were all anxious. If the boundary were to suffer a severe tear, or—Lisyne forbid—fall completely, all the unnatural darkness of the underworld would be unleashed upon them.
When Kanika and Fiona reached the great cavern, the seven witches of the Guard were standing in front of the massive sheet of black rock that served as a physical door between the two planes. Such a door was not necessary to travel between the worlds, but it was the place where the boundary was thinnest, which meant that Fiona wouldn’t have as much miasma to push through to get to the other side.
“Fiona!”
Moira’s voice echoed sharply in the cavern. As the Hand of Thiymen and Fiona’s second in command, Moira had served as Captain of the Guard for three hundred years. Her skin was pale and her hair was grey, which showed how much time she spent on the boundary; color meant life, and Moira was virtually colorless.
“Fiona, I really must protest,” Moira said. “There are seven of us. Let us seal the gate. It is much safer.”
Fiona replied calmly. “Moira, you know I trust in your experience and judgment, but you must also know that this is beyond you.”
Moira stood rigid, her expression stony. She did not dispute Fiona’s words. Everyone understood that Fiona’s power was greater, greater even than the full power of the Guard. But that was what made Fiona’s involvement so dangerous; she would die younger than they would. She had become so powerful so young—it was certain. She could exhaust herself in this effort. Fiona knew this too, but she was immovable, as always. Moira glanced at Kanika, and Kanika frowned. Fiona had only gotten more stubborn in the two months since the deaths of the emperor, empress, and crown prince. More stubborn . . . and more secretive. Fiona had gone to collect the souls of the departed monarchs, but she had barely mentioned the lost soul of Prince Alcander. She’d only said that she would handle it, and that neither Moira nor Kanika were to involve themselves.
“At least let us support you, Fiona. Let us stand with you,” Moira said helplessly.
“This I will allow,” she said. “You may form a reserve line behind me.”
“A reserve line? Fiona, no. Let us share our power—”
“No. I must have total concentration, and you will distract me,” the Thiymen leader said.
Kanika’s frown deepened. Fiona’s voice was not one to ever be called comforting, but the edge in her tone was more pronounced than usual. Her jaw twitched, just under her ear, and her fists were clenched at her sides. Her face was as impassive as ever, but now that Kanika had perceived it, she was nearly knocked down by her leader’s anxiety.
Was Fiona . . . afraid?
Moira nodded and stepped aside to let Fiona pass. The Thiymen leader walked right up to the wall, something that still would have made Kanika flinch. The Guard fell in behind her. Kanika positioned herself in a corner where she could see Fiona and watched; she was the Memory of the Clan and would make a record of this later.
Fiona studied the wall carefully, her white brow furrowed. She flicked back her black sleeves and in a slow, deliberate motion, put her hands on the rippled stone, her long white fingers splayed. For several moments, she remained still, her dark eye
s fixed on something beyond. Her fingers twitched slightly every now and then as she manipulated the magical curtain that hung past the rock. All was silent, unnaturally still.
Fiona froze, her eyes wide with shock. She shuddered and began to sink to the ground. Her frame shook as she pushed back against the force of her unseen enemy. Kanika was close enough to hear Fiona’s bones cracking, and she winced. The Guard cried out as one and ran forward.
“Stay back!” Fiona shouted.
They halted immediately. She regained her position, spreading her feet.
Kanika’s gut twisted with panic as she watched. Fiona leaned into the wall, almost nose to nose with it. Her thin mouth curled slowly up into a scowl of frustration, then a grimace of pain. She dug her fingers into the thick rock to grapple physically with whatever was on the other side. Slowly, her fingers bent into a grotesque, claw-like shape. Fiona screamed in fury as she pushed whatever it was back, forcing it further into the underworld. Kanika and the Guard could only watch helplessly.
At last, she gave an unearthly shriek and slammed her hands flat against the wall. A shockwave rippled through the black rock. Fiona’s hands fell heavily to her sides. She swayed, trembling before the great barrier. Immediately, the other witches in the cave ran to her and caught her.
“My lady? Fiona!” Kanika cradled Fiona’s unresponsive head.
“She lives,” Moira said, crouching on the other side of their fallen leader.
“What was it, Moira-lami?” asked Sempra, another of the Guard. The newest, Kanika remembered; her skin was the color of a tree’s inner bark.
Moira met Kanika’s eyes, glanced at Sempra, then looked down at Fiona once more. “Believe it or not, child, even I do not know all the secrets of the world under the mountain, nor every thing that resides there,” she said. “I daresay there’s but one who does.”
Kanika brushed a pale strand of hair from Fiona’s white brow. Her eyelids fluttered. “Quickly,” Kanika said, “let’s take her back to her room. Before anyone else sees.”
