A Breach in the Heavens

by NS Dolkart

  “Myma!” Goodweather shouted. “Myma! Myma! Bring me back to Myma!” Tears were streaming down her face now. She didn’t want to die. Oh please, please Father, she didn’t want to die.

  “Criton!” Vella shouted, flying near. “Give her to me!”

  The air seemed to crystalize. The Yarek stopped swinging at them – the world stood still. At last Goodweather could hear her Ma Bandu’s voice, rippling through the ground and air.

  Spare my wife and daughter. They don’t come to fight you. Please, let them live. If you hurt them, you kill me. You are from Goodweather’s seed – I grow you in this place because you are not wicked like the Gods. You are not wicked. Let them go.

  The Yarek did not move. “Please,” Goodweather’s Myma said to Criton. “Please, give her back.”

  Goodweather could feel her father stiffen. He had heard Ma’s words too. He knew she had not begged for his life.

  “Please,” Goodweather sobbed. She needed this to be over so badly. “Please, give me to Myma.”

  At last, Father nodded. “I’ve been just like the dragons,” he said, flying her back toward her mothers. “Arrogant in the face of God Most High. Phaedra was right – this task was not for us. I’m sorry, Goodweather. I’m so sorry I brought you here.”

  “Give me back to them,” Goodweather repeated, shutting her eyes.

  She opened them again when she felt her Myma’s arm reaching to hug her around the torso, lifting her off her father and into her arms. Ma still had her face to the ground far below, begging the Yarek to spare them, to let Goodweather’s mothers have her back. Goodweather wiped tears from her eyes and turned in her Myma’s arms to thank Father for letting her go.

  A writhing mass of vines had risen behind him, and as she watched in horror the Yarek caught Father and broke him, slammed him against its trunk and then, at a leisurely, sickening pace, pulled his body down into the ground. He barely had time to grunt.

  Goodweather lost track of what happened after that.

  Somehow her mothers were on either side of her now, wrapping their arms around her from both directions as all three of them stood on solid ground, weeping from the horror and the relief.

  “It’s all my fault,” Goodweather heard herself say. “If I’d known how to talk to it, it wouldn’t have attacked us. I could have…”

  “It’s not your fault,” Myma said. “Let’s go home, Bandu. I have to tell my father his son is dead.”

  Ma nodded and kissed Goodweather on the temple. “Thank you for saving her.”

  “You saved her. Phaedra was right – the Yarek listens to you.”

  “It listens to Phaedra too.”

  Goodweather looked back at the great tree, so deceptively, fiendishly calm and still. All those men, those handsome men that she had wanted to be like, dead. And Father, and Uncle Malkon…

  “You don’t want to stay here, do you?” Myma asked Ma. “To help Phaedra if she gets here after us?”

  Ma shook her head. “When she comes, she doesn’t need me. You need me.”

  “That’s true. We both do.”

  “Please,” Goodweather whispered, her voice weak and hoarse. “Please take me home.”

  “Don’t worry, honey. That’s where we’re going.”

  38

  Dessa

  Dessa stumbled down the road for hours, growing weaker and weaker, until she came across an abbey of Atellan friars. They were good to her. They let her stay with them for weeks, recovering from her injuries at the hands of the sailor who’d wanted her blood. If they didn’t believe her story of self-defense, at least they didn’t say so. But they did take the knife away.

  She never told them she was Dragon Touched. Atel had never been kind to her on the roads, and she didn’t trust His friars to stay this kind if they knew. As it was, the head friar still woke up one morning with the sky shuddering and crackling above them and kicked her out.

  Dessa stood outside the abbey, sobbing. She could not go back to Atuna, lest they try her for murder. She would have no way to know when Phaedra returned, if she ever did. Her remaining money – the sailor’s money, really – was hardly enough to keep her from starving for a week or two, if she could even find someone to feed her. She could go to Parakas from here, but what good would that do? It was just a smaller, angrier Atuna. A powerful witch like Phaedra would never go there.

  This place may look like a crossroads, it may even be named that, but that wasn’t what it was. It was the end of the road.

  It was time to go home.

  She chose the road that she figured led toward Hagardis most directly, for all that it was a bit overgrown. The woods it led her through were thicker and deeper than they had been on the road from Atuna, the path just barely discernable among the brambles. When in the evening she came to a village on the forest’s edge, she found that it was more of an ex-village – long abandoned, rotting, overrun with weeds. The water in the well looked murky, and when she tried to pull some up anyway, the rusted chain disintegrated and the bucket plummeted back to the bottom.

  The Yarek was clearly visible from here, nearby and enormous. If she left for it tomorrow, she could probably get there before noon. But she had no interest in going there – God Most High may have abandoned her, but that didn’t mean she should go to His enemy. God Most High’s enemies had still done her more harm than He had.

  Anyway, the road avoided the Yarek too. She followed it northward for another day, feeling weak for lack of water, and was relieved when she came to a populated village. They didn’t look too pleased with her arrival, but they took her money and fed her, and she left the following day with a full belly and a skin of water.

  What would her mother say when she came home at last, after so many years? What would she think of her broken daughter, who had left so long ago in search of magic and her dead father, and come home with nothing but scars? She desperately wished she wasn’t going home.

  But it was too late now. She had tried surviving on nothing but raw determination, and it hadn’t worked. It was time to admit that she had failed.

  She was walking too slowly, her reluctance impeding her progress. By the time she reached another village, the sun had already set and twilight was stealing across the sky. She knocked on one door after another, but nobody answered. It might be too late – people often didn’t open their doors at night, probably fearing desperate vagrants like her, and the more urgently you knocked, the less likely they were to open up. If they found her asleep in a barn, they might well beat her, but she didn’t have much choice. It was too frightening, these days, to sleep under the open sky.

  When she approached one, though, there were voices coming from inside. Dessa stopped at the half-open door, afraid to enter and interrupt. If villagers were unkind, fellow vagrants were often worse. She had far too much experience to believe otherwise.

  The next words she heard instantly changed her mind. “Phaedra,” a man’s voice said. “You know how much I respect you.”

  She’d found her! Dessa almost couldn’t believe her luck. It was so typical of life that you only found what you were looking for once you had given up looking.

  What could Dessa say to her? She had never really gotten as far as thinking about that. Why should Phaedra take her on as a student, when she had nothing at all to offer? People weren’t selfless.

  Then she heard the scream. It made her jump, but she was soon less startled than terrified. What if she was too late? What if the one woman who could help her was dying? Dessa flung the door open and charged inside.

  The man with the knife had his back to her. Dessa didn’t hesitate: she snatched a broom from its place against a stall and ran at him. When she struck him over the back of the head, it was hard enough that the broom handle cracked near the top. The man dropped his knife and collapsed into the dirt. Dessa kicked the knife out of his reach and beat him with the broom over and over again, screaming a battle cry she’d never known was in her. The man curled up against he
r blows, grunting as each one struck.

  “Stop!” a woman’s voice cried.

  Dessa stopped swinging and looked up.

  There she was, holding the knife in one hand and a book in the other: Phaedra, the wizard. She was more beautiful than anything Dessa had remembered or imagined, her eyes shining, her skin black and flawless. A lamp had fallen to the ground beside her and set the straw there alight, but the blaze wasn’t spreading. Phaedra had done something to it, something amazing. As Dessa watched, the fire consumed its first and only strands and died right there, not a hair away from piles of straw and stacked bales of hay. When the light died with it, a ghostly blue one appeared over Phaedra’s head.

  “Who are you?” Phaedra asked.

  The man on the ground was moaning. “You should kill him,” Dessa said. “He might try to hurt you again.”

  “Leave him alone,” the wizard said. Even her voice was beautiful. “Tell me who you are.”

  “I’m Dessa. I’m… just Dessa.”

  The man on the ground uncurled halfway and looked up at her through one eye. “She’s Dragon Touched. Damn. God Most High must have known I was coming.”

  “Agreed. That’s a good sign. If God Most High thinks I’m worth protecting, it means He trusts me to convince the Yarek after all.”

  “He doesn’t know, though.” The man sat up, wincing and holding his head. “Even God Most High doesn’t control the Yarek, Phaedra, or He wouldn’t have had to fight it to begin with.”

  “That’s true, but He must know its nature better than you do, Narky.”

  “Ravennis knows its nature too – He knows everything. He knows what’s coming if you do this, and He sent me to kill you. Damn. I was this close.”

  Phaedra shook her head. “I can’t believe you were going to do it. How could you, Narky?”

  Dessa stood, looking from one of them to the other. They were talking as if Dessa wasn’t even there, like she had only briefly interrupted a conversation they were having, a conversation that had been about to end with Phaedra’s death but which was once again cordial.

  “You always knew I could, Phaedra, if it came to it. Ravennis spoke to me Himself – I couldn’t disobey. He said you were deluded, and you were about to sacrifice the underworld to the Yarek for a plan that couldn’t possibly work. He’s the Keeper of Fates. He knows. If you let the Yarek combine with its other parts, it’ll destroy the underworld and this world, and then our souls will be gone too. If I killed you we’d all die anyway, but the underworld would stay. I was trying to save you, and my family. I should have just done it. He told me not to try to convince you, but I thought I knew better.”

  Phaedra nodded once. “I understand. I should have known, really – I’ve read the Ravennian eschatology. He was bound to see it this way. I just… no, I see what you were trying to do. But you’re wrong and thank God you didn’t stop me. I’m glad He saw through Ravennis’ plan. He ejected you from the priesthood so that God Most High wouldn’t notice you, didn’t He?”

  Narky bowed his head. He looked more ashamed of her good guess than he had been about his attempt to kill her. “Yeah. Please, Phaedra. He’s the Keeper of Fates.”

  “He’s only the Keeper,” Phaedra answered. “He sees what God Most High lets Him see.”

  “You think God Most High would choose not to let Him see a future where the Yarek repents?”

  “If God Most High believes the Yarek’s repentance is possible, then it’s possible. That’s all I know.”

  “Please,” Dessa interjected at last, “what are you two talking about? I just saved your life, Phaedra. What’s going on?”

  “God Most High sent you here,” Narky sighed. “You saved Phaedra so she could help the Yarek get its full power back and just hope that it chooses not to use that power to kill the Gods and destroy the world.”

  Dessa folded her arms. “God Most High didn’t send me. Nobody sent me.”

  “That might be how it feels,” Phaedra said, “but it’s very unlikely.”

  Narky squinted up at Dessa through his one eye. “Who did you say you were?”

  “Dessa.”

  “Dessa what?”

  “Daughter of Iona and Belkos.”

  He grunted in confirmation. “Your pa killed Criton. You’re not a damn coincidence.”

  Dessa wilted at the recognition. She would never escape her father’s legacy.

  But Phaedra was beaming at her. “Family redemption. That’s a good omen, Narky.”

  “I dunno, she almost killed me.”

  “Well, you did deserve it.”

  “For trying to save your soul?”

  “I bet Belkos thought he was doing the right thing too.”

  Narky grunted again, sulkily.

  Dessa let her broom fall to the ground. “You’re going to let him live, aren’t you? They killed my father and you didn’t stop them, but you’re going to let Narky live because he’s your friend.”

  “Yes. But I won’t let my guard down again.”

  “That’s not justice.”

  “Narky didn’t kill me. You stopped him.”

  “So you’re just going to let him go?”

  Phaedra considered that. “No, I think I should keep an eye on him. If you’ll help me bind him, I can keep the ropes from coming undone without my permission.”

  “Great,” Narky said, “thanks a lot. Why don’t you go ahead and kill me? That’d be just as good, really; it’s basically the same thing. Ravennis gave me a job, and I failed Him because I didn’t trust His word. I may as well be dead. He might kill me Himself, if He feels like it. And when I die, if there’s still an underworld to go to, He’ll torture me there. There’s no way out.”

  “I’m not going to kill you,” Phaedra snapped. “You’re my friend, and I’m not a person who kills her friends. However Ravennis treats you is between you and Him at this point – it’s really none of my business. If I were you, though, I’d remind Him to repent to God Most High. Ravennis has a lot to answer for.”

  Narky’s mouth twisted skeptically. “If Criton’s God weren’t so damn secretive about what He wanted, it would save everyone a lot of trouble. And don’t you give me any of that stuff about Him giving us free will that way; I’ve never been free.”

  “If there were no free will,” Phaedra said, “there’d be no point in repentance. Dessa, is that a rope over there?”

  It was. Narky did not resist as they bound him, but kept talking even while Phaedra cast her spell on the rope. “So how’s Hunter doing? Ravennis told me you came here from the elves’ world.”

  Phaedra didn’t answer, only kept her eyes on her work. Dessa had never met Hunter, but she could read body language well enough to know that this was an embarrassing question. Narky’s other questions all met with similar silence until finally Phaedra turned to Dessa and said, “I can’t thank you enough for saving my life. I’d like to pay you, but nothing can ever repay that. If our world survives, it’ll have been your doing.”

  Dessa froze. This was Phaedra’s way of parting with her. “I– I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

  “No,” Phaedra said, “but I’ll be leaving at dawn, for the Yarek. There won’t be another chance.”

  “I’m coming too, then.”

  Phaedra smiled, but Dessa could see that she was looking for a polite way to turn her down.

  “Your part in this is over,” Narky said bluntly, before Phaedra could be more tactful about it. “Phaedra doesn’t need you getting in her way. It’s bad enough that she thinks she’s got to keep an eye on me.”

  “I can keep an eye on you,” Dessa said. “I’ve been looking for Phaedra for months now; I’m not letting her get away again.”

  The polite smile faded from Phaedra’s face. “You’ve been looking for me? Why?”

  “I…”

  Dessa stopped. How could she tell Phaedra that she was here for her own selfish reasons, not as a messenger of her God, not because she’d been sent to save Phaed
ra’s life? How could she even explain what she wanted from this woman, this wizard with the perfect skin who was leaving tomorrow to save the world?

  Hadn’t Dessa already resigned herself to going home? Her mother would be happy to see her, however shameful her return. Was it right to keep that happiness from her?

  “I’ve been looking for someone to teach me magic.”

  Phaedra’s face was pure astonishment. After that, her expression turned to wonder, and recognition. “You’ve come to the right person, then.”

  39

  Phaedra

  They left the following morning, Phaedra riding her horse while Narky and Dessa walked alongside. Narky made no further attempts to convince Phaedra that it was best to let the world end but spent much of his time worrying aloud that the Yarek would destroy the underworld, and Ravennis with it.

  “It was bad enough when we thought Magor had killed Him,” he said. “I can’t go through this twice.”

  “How is Grace?” Phaedra asked, to change the subject.

  “He’s beautiful,” Narky answered vehemently. “He’s a beautiful boy. He’s generous and kind, and he knows how much we love him. He deserves a God who’ll watch over him when this life is over.”

  “He deserves a full life too.”

  Narky nodded. “He deserves everything.”

  It was a strange sort of catching up they did, all in fits and starts, mixing a long friendship’s warmth and curiosity with confrontation. Narky told her of the Sephan prophecy, and Phaedra could not praise his response to it. For all that she appreciated the wisdom of his interpretation, and the clever way he had turned a blasphemous tract into a tool of his God, she could also see how his interpretation had led to the attempt on her life. Narky, for his part, could only nod in muted satisfaction when she told him how she had defeated Mura the sorcerer pirate. Most horrifyingly, he expressed no shock at Psander’s poisoning of the villagers.

  “Sounds like her,” he said. “Did she get them all? The queen and all of them?”