The Black Reckoning

by John Stephens

  “What the…,” he heard King Robbie say.

  And Michael looked and saw something shimmering in the air before him, and then it rose up, vanishing through the roof of the shelter.

  “Beetles…,” said the old man beside him, “was that…”

  “Yes,” replied the other, “it was his spirit.”

  But Michael scarcely heard them; for he’d realized something else.

  “The magic,” he said, still gripping the hands of his mother and father, “it’s gone….”

  —

  Emma stood there, clutching the Reckoning, staring at the boy as he looked skyward, his arms outstretched as if he were beseeching the storm. Emma had already watched as Kate collapsed into the drifts of sodden leaves, and a shimmering had passed from her to the boy. Emma knew what having your spirit pulled from you felt like, and she would have done anything to spare her sister the pain; but there was nothing for it, and she watched as a shimmering she knew was Michael’s spirit floated down into the clearing.

  There was a kind of glow too around the boy, as if the energy and magic he’d absorbed was pulsing at the limits of his skin. She imagined that behind the boy’s face she saw a skull’s head, staring out, and she wondered if it was the Reckoning that allowed her to see that, or if she was just imagining it.

  “Life and time,” he said as Michael’s spirit disappeared into him, and the glow around him became brighter. “And now, death. The Bonding is nearly complete.”

  “No,” Emma said, opening the book so that raindrops splattered against the pages. “This is when you die.”

  He stepped closer, and Emma felt a familiar thickening of the air around her.

  She went on, her voice trembling but determined: “And because the Chronicle and the Atlas are in you, they’ll be destroyed too. Kate’s and Michael’s spirits will go back to their bodies, and this whole thing will be over.”

  “What about you?” the boy said. “The Reckoning’s power will still be in you. Your friends, the people you trust, they’ll hunt you down.”

  “Maybe,” Emma said. “But that’s my problem.”

  For who was to say that Hugo Algernon or some other witch or wizard wouldn’t find some way to destroy the Reckoning without killing her? Or maybe her parents would finally arrive with the secret that solved everything.

  But it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that the moment the Dire Magnus was dead and the Atlas and the Chronicle destroyed, Kate and Michael would be safe. They would get to live their lives. Be reunited with their mother and father. And if it turned out there was no way to destroy the Reckoning without her dying, at least Emma knew that Gabriel would be waiting for her in the next world.

  She placed her hand on the book, the power rose up through her, filling her, and she saw the look in the boy’s face, the understanding, and she imagined she could see the shimmering spirits of each Dire Magnus clustered around him.

  Then, as she reached toward him with her mind, the words of the old white-eyed sorcerer, spoken in the world of the dead, returned. “He wears the spirits of his former selves like armor.” Suddenly, Emma could see in a way she never had before, and in place of the physical boy, she saw a throbbing, glowing mass. It was the spirits of each of his former selves, grafted one onto the other. She could feel the different voices, the different selves, of each Dire Magnus; she could sense too the spirits of Michael and Kate, and how they had been sucked into that terrible, cancerous mass.

  Emma felt the air around her becoming more and more solid, trying to press her spirit from her as it had in the fortress days before. She was running out of time.

  She reached out with her mind, fixing upon one of those former selves, and stripped it away from the others. It was like peeling tar off tar; the spirit fought to stay connected. And as she pulled it free, the life of a Dire Magnus who had existed hundreds of years before passed through her and through the book, and there were no memories of love. It was an empty, cold, hungry thing, and Emma held the spirit for a moment in her mind, then cast it into the world of the dead.

  She went quickly then, scarcely feeling the force pressing against her from the outside, pulling the spirit of each Dire Magnus away from the mass. Some of them fought harder than others, but none had a single memory of love. And Emma could hear, as if from a great distance, the boy screaming for her to stop, vowing to kill her, but she paid him no mind, holding each spirit for a moment, then casting it into the world of the dead. And the magic was still filling her, pulsing through her, and Emma realized how terrified she’d been for so long, and how in the end there was nothing to fear, that the only thing you could control was the love you gave or withheld, and that was all that mattered; and finally there was only Rafe’s spirit and one other, which clung like a spider to his own, and she knew it was the first Dire Magnus, the one who had set it all in motion, and she reached out toward it, but as she did, the magic rose up, stronger than ever, and something inside Emma was torn apart.

  —

  Kate lay without moving, having woken to the sound of Emma’s voice. She knew her spirit had been taken from her and that the magic of the Atlas was gone. She knew because she had never felt so empty and desolate and weak. Finally, calling upon all her strength, she had managed to open her eyes and see Emma place her hand on the book and the Dire Magnus fall to his knees.

  Then Emma cried out and collapsed.

  For a time, nothing happened. Then she watched as the boy, their enemy—she couldn’t see his face—slowly pushed himself up and walked to where Emma lay. He seemed to be moving stiffly, as if in pain. Emma had fallen forward, on top of the book, and he rolled her over and picked it up.

  Then he knelt, holding his hand just above her body, and after a moment, Kate saw a shimmering rise out of her sister and begin to pass into him.

  She was on her feet before she knew it, seizing the sword still planted in the ground, and racing toward the dark figure crouched over her sister. Unlike with the Imp on the beach, her hand did not tremble. There was no hesitation. The sound of the rain muffled her footsteps, but perhaps he sensed her approach, for he rose and turned just as Kate reached him, having time only to hold out his hand, for her to meet his eyes, and hear him say—

  “Kate—”

  —and she drove the sword through his chest.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  A Promise Kept, a Promise Made

  Michael stood on the jetty, waving at the ship that was carrying away the last of the expanded army, in this case a clan of burly Bavarian cave dwarves, several of whom, Michael had noticed, had thick green moss growing from their beards.

  Well, that’s it, Michael thought. So much for my military career.

  It had not taken the army long to disperse; it had only been a day since the battle had ended, a day since the Dire Magnus’s forces had scattered and been destroyed, and already all the various factions and clans and races had drifted away, and the first of Loris’s displaced families had begun to return. Even now, boats laden with homeward-bound refugees were maneuvering past the two giants who stood waist-deep in the harbor, clearing away the ships that had been sunk during the battle.

  Behind him, King Robbie’s dwarves were busy rebuilding the blasted-out sections of the city wall. The dwarves were providing their work and masonry expertise free of charge, which Michael thought was very generous of them, though he’d privately cautioned King Robbie that if you simply gave away high-quality craftsmanship, people would start to take it for granted. “Well, lad,” the dwarf king had said, “I think this time we’ll let that pass.”

  Fair enough, Michael thought, I warned him.

  Michael knew too that Wilamena, having been returned to perfect, glowing health by a team of elfish physicians, was going around the damaged city on a personal “beautification program,” which basically entailed her walking around and smiling at people.

  The air was warm, and Michael took a deep breath, grateful that the towers of black smoke
from the fires that morning, when the army had incinerated the bodies of the dead Imps and trolls (apparently necessary for public health reasons), had been carried away by the sea breeze.

  A new day. People were getting on with their lives.

  It was probably good, Michael thought, that so few of them were aware of the truth.

  “Michael!”

  He turned, knowing whom he would see coming down the jetty. But it made no difference; the earth still seemed to shift under his feet. It was the same every time he saw his father, or his mother, for that matter. Like Wilamena, they were both fully recovered from their wounds—the two old wizards, Jake and Beetles, despite spending most of their time insulting each other, had turned out to be remarkably capable healers. But it wasn’t his parents’ magically restored health that so unmoored Michael; it was the simple fact that they were here with them, that this was real and not a dream.

  “She’s awake,” his father said. “Emma’s awake.”

  —

  Emma had woken to find herself in a bed with cool, clean sheets, in a light-filled room, and her first realization had been that she was alive, and the way she had known this was that her entire body was one giant, aching bruise.

  So that was the first thing. The second realization was that someone was sleeping in the chair beside her bed, and she’d almost said Kate’s name before she saw that the person was not, in fact, her sister. Not unless Kate had suddenly aged twenty-five years.

  This had led to her third realization, of who the woman in the chair had to be.

  Then her mother had opened her eyes.

  Throughout her childhood, Emma had imagined, just as Kate and Michael had imagined, what the reunion with their parents would be like. As Emma had had no memory of her parents, her mother and father had always presented themselves as generic, loving blobs. But she’d imagined what they would say. The various gifts they would bring. How she would wring from them the promise of a dog. There were a million different scenarios, most involving cake, tears, and a mountain of presents.

  In the end, what happened was that she and her mother had simply lunged for each other at the same moment, sobbing. And then her mother called, “Richard!” and her father ran in from the balcony and joined the hugging. After a few moments, and after all the expected exclamations and queries—“It’s really you!” “We were so worried!” “Are you sure you’re okay?”—and her mother explaining how Jake and someone else (Bug? Was that right?), a pair of old wizards they’d befriended, had fixed the wound in her hand—there were only faint, matching scars on Emma’s palm and the back of her hand as evidence—her father had kissed her and hurried out to find Michael.

  Alone with her mother—who continued to alternate between hugging Emma and holding her back to look at her—Emma had finally been able to register the fact that the magic of the Reckoning was gone. On some level, she’d known it the moment she’d woken, but the appearance of her mother and father had pushed the knowledge to the edges of her mind. Only, something about it didn’t make sense. But before Emma could put her finger on what that something was, her father returned with Michael.

  Emma was sitting there, letting her mother hold her hand, and she almost laughed, seeing her father and brother together, they looked so much alike.

  “Michael!” she cried, and ran and threw her arms around his neck. “Look! It’s…” And though she couldn’t quite say “Mom and Dad,” he understood.

  “But where’s Kate?” she asked. “Why isn’t she here?”

  Emma saw Michael glance at their mother, who shook her head.

  “You’d better sit down,” Michael said. “I can tell you the whole story.”

  —

  Michael began at the moment of their parents’ appearance on the beach, saying how he’d seen them both struck down by arrows. They’d been carried to the convalescent tent, and Michael explained how he’d followed them there and had been about to use the Chronicle’s magic to heal them, only before he could, both his spirit and the magic were taken from him.

  “I know,” Emma said. “I mean, I know why.”

  “You do? That’s great. I was hoping you would.”

  “But tell your side first.”

  So he went on, saying how he was there in the tent, their parents both unconscious, and how everyone, King Robbie, King Bernard, everyone was yelling and arguing about what to do, when he’d felt his spirit return.

  “It was like I was all empty and cold inside; I’d never felt so awful. And then, I don’t know, I was filled almost with light or something.”

  “Yeah,” Emma said. “I know that feeling.”

  And there’d been a great cry from near the city wall, and King Robbie had shouted that all the Imps and trolls were fleeing, while the morum cadi were simply dissolving where they stood, as if the power that had fed them was cut off. And Michael said he had known, instantly, that Emma was back. Michael had left their mother and father with Jake and Beetles and told King Robbie that he had to get to the Citadel, and the dwarf king had shouted for guards and they had joined the army that was streaming through the hole in the city wall, the Dire Magnus’s army evaporating before them, and Haraald and Captain Anton had been at his side as well, and together, they had run from the harbor all the way to the Rose Citadel, and they hadn’t stopped running until they’d reached the center of the Garden.

  “And that was where we found you. Just lying there, unconscious.”

  “Can you tell us what happened, honey?” Clare said. “Or are you hungry? Do you need to eat something first?”

  “I’m okay. But didn’t Kate already tell you everything?”

  “We’d like to hear it from you,” Richard said.

  “Sure,” Emma said, though she was now wishing she’d asked for a cheeseburger or something; she was starving. “I probably can tell it pretty good, leave out the boring bits. But when did you get here?”

  “It’s a long story,” her mother said. “Gabriel found us. He told us where you were. But he—this will be hard to hear—”

  “He’s dead,” Emma said quietly. “I know.”

  “He died defending us,” her father said, “while we were hunting down the end of the prophecy.”

  “That’s what we were bringing here,” Clare said. “Pym thought it was the secret to saving your lives.”

  “But we didn’t need it! We did it on our own! We killed the Dire Magnus!” Emma paused, struggling to recall exactly what had happened in the Garden. “I mean—it’s over, right? The Reckoning isn’t in me anymore! Is the Chronicle in you?”

  Michael shook his head. “No.”

  “Without a doubt, what you all did was incredible,” her father said. “But we’re still putting together the pieces. We need to hear your story. From the beginning.”

  Emma gave in; she didn’t want to fight. Indeed, she didn’t think she wanted to fight ever again, and she started telling them how she had returned from the world of the dead, carrying the Reckoning with her—“What was it like?” Michael said. “The world of the dead?”

  Emma opened her mouth to answer, to tell him about the walkers, about Dr. Pym, about the carriadin and the cave in the cliff, how the Dire Magnus had been consuming the souls of the dead, about Gabriel, and found she couldn’t. She wasn’t ready.

  “It’s okay,” their mother said. “Just tell the parts you can.”

  So Emma told about finding Kate in the Garden, and how the boy, the Dire Magnus, had come upon them, and he’d offered her a chance to save her and her brother’s and sister’s lives by taking on their spirits, and she’d agreed, but once he’d taken Kate’s and Michael’s—

  “That’s what I felt,” Michael said. “That’s what happened.”

  —she had tried to kill him with the Reckoning, which she guessed made her kind of a liar, but you’re allowed to lie to totally evil people, right? And she’d started peeling away the spirits from all the other incarnations of the Dire Magnus and sending them back t
o the world of the dead, and then…

  “What?” Michael prompted.

  “I don’t know; it all went black. But I must’ve killed him. I mean, we won the battle. And now everything’s fine!”

  “Not exactly,” her mother said. “You see, the Books—”

  “Were tearing apart the world! But we destroyed them! I destroyed them! They were in him, and I—”

  Emma fell silent. It had occurred to her why the magic of the Reckoning being gone didn’t make sense. While it was logical that Michael wouldn’t have the Chronicle, as both it and the Atlas had been transferred to the Dire Magnus, the Reckoning had stayed in her. She’d held on to her spirit. So what had happened? Where had the magic gone?

  “That’s the thing,” her father said. “It seems that whatever the Books were doing, it’s just gotten worse. I hate telling you this after everything you’ve done, but Hugo Algernon, Magda von Klappen, all the magicians assure us it’s so. They feel the tearing in a way that we don’t.”

  “You can see the effects,” Michael said. “Down by the water, there’ve been dead fish washing up all morning. Dozens of them. People think it’s because of the battle, but Dr. Algernon said it’s the Books.”

  “But I killed the Dire Magnus!” Emma cried, clinging to the idea that this should’ve somehow fixed everything, even though it didn’t explain what had happened to the Reckoning. “I know I did! I killed him!”

  “Well,” Richard said slowly, “we’re not completely sure he is dead.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “He’s gone,” Michael said. “Vanished.”

  Emma stood up. She had a terrible, awful, sick feeling. “Where’s Kate? I want to see her now. Where is she?”

  “Emma”—her mother took her hand—“when Michael found you in the Garden, you were alone. Kate and the Dire Magnus, they’re both missing.”

  —

  Kate knelt beside the stream and tilted the bucket till it was full, the gurgling of the water the only sound to be heard on the mountainside. Then she leaned down and drank, mouthful after mouthful of cold, clean water. When she was done, she stood and looked out over the mountains. The sun was setting. Soon, it would be dark, and much colder; she would make a fire. She hadn’t during the day for fear that someone might see the smoke.