Grave

by Michelle Sagara

  Helmi stared at Emma’s hand, which was very, very cold. “Point taken. When you leave, when you go to search for the lost, the lost can harm you. Because you have to leave the living to find them. So, in theory, if you leave the land of the living, I can harm you. I wouldn’t because I wouldn’t know where—or when—you were. Death is confusing like that.”

  “And this is supposed to protect me?”

  Helmi nodded. “If you lose your way, if you lose your time or your sense of who you are, you come back to yourself in the circle. You’re probably going to faint or collapse—but you won’t die, and you will recover.”

  Emma nodded. “That’s why I tried to use this one.”

  “This one wouldn’t have saved you, though. All circles are almost the same—but the difference between them is big.” For the first time, she glanced over her shoulder toward the magar.

  Emma’s gaze followed Helmi’s; the magar nodded at them. She said nothing. The nod was enough for Helmi.

  “This symbol is earth.” Helmi pointed with her toes. “It’s the first one that’s drawn, if you draw it with chalk or coal. It’s the simplest—but it’s hard to get exactly right, because wrong is so obvious.

  “This one is air. The position is important,” she added. “It’s to the right of the earth, a quarter turn.”

  “Does the orientation of the symbol matter?”

  Helmi’s expression brightened. “Yes.” As if Emma were a child, and had done something clever. “The symbol for fire is to the left, a quarter turn.”

  Emma nodded.

  “Of the four, the last is the symbol for water. It’s in opposition to earth. Water is birth and life, but it requires earth and air and fire. All circles have these four.” She traced it with fingers that couldn’t feel its carved edges; Emma traced it with fingers that could. Helmi moved on. Emma knew they needed to hurry—but she also felt, in this moment, that she needed what Helmi had to offer.

  Or that Helmi needed to offer it.

  “If those were the only things that mattered, it would be easy to draw a circle.”

  “What else is necessary? There seem to be a lot of other characters embedded in the stone here.”

  Helmi glanced over her shoulder again. The magar nodded, but this time she approached. “There are. They are the ways in which we anchor ourselves; they are runes that describe traits of life that are not always immediately visible. The circles we use change with time. But there are characters that are immutable and unchanging. Those,” she added, “like the elements.”

  “And the others?”

  “I think, child, the others are runes you can use. They are not so different from the ones I would counsel you to consider and write were I your master.”

  Emma turned to Helmi. “What do they say?”

  “This one is sorrow,” she said. “This one is hope. This one is love. This one is peace, I think. This one is strength.”

  “So, spiritual or emotional things?”

  The magar snorted. “Perhaps. They are supposed to describe . . . yourself. They are meant to be honest, Emma Hall. They are meant to be the truth.”

  Emma hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not sure anyone sees themselves clearly enough to write that kind of truth.”

  “No. Is what we see of ourselves a lie, then?”

  “I don’t think so,” was Emma’s slow answer. “But what others see of us isn’t necessarily less true, either. And if I understand what Helmi is telling me, we don’t draw the circles by committee.”

  “No. We write them in truth, Emma Hall. Do you understand why they change with time?”

  “Because we change with time?”

  “Yes. The words that might describe you at three are not these words, although some elements of them remain. The words that Helmi would have used are not applicable to you now.”

  Emma frowned. “Sorrow, hope, love?”

  The magar nodded.

  “Anyone of any age can understand those, surely?”

  “Yes, of course. But at certain ages they are not prized, and in certain frames of mind, they are goals; they are not what you are, but perhaps what you desire.”

  “Sorrow?”

  “There were stone circles,” the magar continued, as if she had never stopped. “But only five characters were engraved there. The four for the elements, the fifth for being. This one,” she added. “We tell our students that it means ‘spirit’ or even ‘soul.’ That is not exact. It is immutable as a character, but it is rooted in the shifting descriptions of self.”

  “Which ones are these?” Emma asked Helmi, pointing to the only runes that hadn’t yet been explained.

  “Those? They’re her name.”

  Emma turned again to the magar. “If I understand what you’re saying correctly, you think I can use this circle. The runes here that I don’t know are runes you think I’d choose.”

  The magar nodded.

  “. . . Except strength. I don’t think I’d ever describe myself as strong.”

  The magar pursed lips; she spoke, but the sound of her voice was lost to the loud rumble beneath Emma’s feet. Beneath all of their feet. It sounded very much like they were standing on thunder. The old woman held out a hand.

  Emma stared at it. She couldn’t remember if she’d ever offered the magar her hand before. She hesitated.

  “I think she wants you to take her hand,” Helmi whispered. Helmi’s expression, when Emma glanced down, was not heavy with sarcasm. Nor was her tone. She had existed for centuries. She could shift her appearance without apparent effort. But she was a child.

  Emma placed her palm, almost gingerly, against the magar’s.

  The world vanished.

  • • •

  Gray gave way to black, the transition slow and seamless. But in the black, Emma could see stars. She held Helmi by one hand and the magar by the other—but she was no longer in the Queen’s chambers.

  No, that was untrue. She was undoubtedly still in those chambers. But she was here, as well.

  “This,” the magar said quietly, “is where I reside. It is all of the home left to me.”

  As homes went, it was impressive. But there was no house. There was no tenting. There was no landscape other than the distant stars. As Emma tilted her head skyward, she saw the faint outline of the low-hanging moon. She wondered why it hadn’t been the first thing she’d seen.

  Helmi did not look around. Her head, like Emma’s, was tilted, and moonlight seemed to be reflected in her widened eyes.

  “Your daughter couldn’t find you here.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “She was taught how to search for the lost. She learned. But the lost exist in a world of their own creation—and it is a pale shadow of the world in which they lived. This is not. I am not lost. I am well aware that I am dead. I have never suffered the confusion that governs the lost.”

  “Why did you not go to her?”

  “I could not take that risk,” the magar replied.

  Helmi, however, said, “She did. She tried to talk to my sister. My sister wanted to know where the lantern was; my mother wouldn’t tell her. They argued. I hid.”

  The magar didn’t acknowledge Helmi’s statement. “She was a fragile child, in ways Helmi was not. And she knew, then and now, how to hold on to pain. You have come to the seat of her power, Emma Hall. What will you do?”

  “Open the door,” Emma said.

  “And how, exactly, do you intend to achieve this?”

  “I opened it once before.”

  “That is not an answer.”

  Emma nodded. It wasn’t. “I intend to free the dead trapped here.”

  “Better. You avoid the question I have avoided asking. I cannot do what must be done.” Having spoken, sh
e waited, her eyes unnaturally bright and sharp.

  “Could you do what Scoros’ mother attempted?”

  It was Helmi who answered. “No, she couldn’t. Scoros—and his mother—learned the arts of Necromancy from the Queen. The magar didn’t. None of the people had the knowledge or the power to stand against my sister. To do it, they would have had to do what she did.”

  “I can’t.”

  Helmi nodded. “I’m not sure what she expects from you. She doesn’t have time to teach you what you need to know.”

  “I have time here,” the magar replied. “Time does not touch this realm.”

  “It touches the one I’m actually breathing in,” Emma pointed out.

  “Yes. It is why we are here. You walked for Scoros. It was a long walk, a harsh one—and very, very unsafe. I would say your own ignorance is likely to kill you—but you have not died yet. Perhaps you will not die today. Perhaps you will. I think it likely that you will, and I have brought you here because you must remember this place. It is to here you must travel—and in haste; she cannot follow.”

  “She can go wherever I can go,” Emma said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Almost. You have one thing she lacks. You have the lantern. You are here because you carry it. And I am here because you are here, and you are carrying me. It is not so easy to find this place without it; the darkness is more . . . absolute.”

  “What, exactly, does the lantern do? Why does she want it so badly?”

  The magar said nothing. It was Helmi who answered. “She thinks it should have been hers by right. She was the magar’s daughter. She was supposed to be the successor—and the magar was dead. She expected my mother to give it to her when she was still alive—my mother, I mean. But she wouldn’t. She kept saying my sister wasn’t ready yet.

  “My sister was always powerful. Always. She saw the dead on her own. She didn’t even need the circle; they came to her, spoke to her. She could find the lost far more quickly than any other student. More quickly than our mother. She knew she was powerful. Our mother acknowledged her power.”

  Emma waited.

  Helmi turned to face the magar. “She wouldn’t acknowledge her as magar.”

  “I was not wrong,” the magar said. “Look at what she has done since then. I had the raising of her. I had the training.” Her lips twisted. “The failure is mine. Had I given her what she desired, that failure would be complete.”

  “Why did you give the lantern to Emma?” Helmi asked. “You didn’t raise her. You didn’t train her. The only thing you could know about her is that she’s powerful. What was the difference?”

  “You are thinking that if Reyna were happy, she would not have become what she has become.”

  Helmi shrugged.

  “I gave the lantern to Emma because of Eric.”

  Helmi’s expression tightened. “He told you to do it?”

  “No, of course not. But he could not kill her. Or rather, he did not want to kill her. What he saw in her—”

  “He didn’t want to kill my sister either. He thought he loved her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what’s the difference?”

  “If Eric could, now, go back in time—and he cannot—he would kill my Reyna. I think he would be content to die with her. He would not argue with his friends and his colleagues to preserve her life. But he did, for Emma. He was not in love with her. He could see her clearly. And I could see him clearly.”

  “She hasn’t been trained!”

  “If you had trained the Queen of the Dead, would you be eager to train someone who has as much power, and as much potential? I failed the people. I failed my daughter. I could not take the risk of failing again. The cost would be too high.”

  “She can’t go out there without—”

  “She has found two of the lost, without training. One could have easily killed her; it is by the slimmest of margins that he did not. She has opened the closed door. The only dead to escape since your death—and mine—she freed. I did not train her. No one did. She accomplished these things on her own.”

  “I didn’t,” Emma said quietly. “I couldn’t have opened the door—at all—without the lantern.”

  The magar shook her head. “You could not have done any of it without the lantern. You could have seen the dead and spoken with them. You could do as you are now doing for my youngest daughter. The lantern has power, whether or not you choose to evoke it consciously, as you did to truly set that child free. You have used its power.

  “You are using its power now. Bring it out. Illuminate the darkness.”

  “I don’t think we’re ready to face the Queen yet.”

  “She will not see its light here. Raise it, if you can.”

  “But—”

  “It is here that its light is strongest.”

  • • •

  Emma didn’t ask the magar what the purpose of that light was in this place. She didn’t ask how it was that the lantern’s light would be felt anywhere but here. She didn’t even ask why the magar had brought her here, although she would have, had she been allowed one question.

  Her hands were not cold here. They were still clasped by Helmi on the one side and the magar on the other, but they weren’t cold. She could feel the palms and fingers pressed against her own as if they were flesh.

  “I have to let your hand go,” she said, to Helmi.

  “No,” the magar said, “you do not.”

  “The lantern—”

  “The lantern is not a physical object. It becomes physical at your discretion. You think of it as an object that must be lifted—and in the end, that is true. But it does not need to be lifted in your hands.” She paused. “Neither do the dead. You offer your hand because it is what is natural to you, but it is not necessary.

  “Helmi is not yours; she accepts what you offer but is wise enough to offer little of herself in return. That will have to stop.”

  Helmi frowned. Emma froze. “I don’t want to use her. I don’t want to use any of the dead.”

  “Oh? Did you not use the dead—as you put it—when you opened the door?”

  “That—that was different.”

  “How?”

  “For one, I had their permission. I had the permission of every single person there.”

  “Ah. Yes. Yes, you did. Do the bound dead not grant permission to their Queen?”

  Did they? “I don’t know.”

  “In a fashion, they do. It is the consent of the terrified, the consent of the terrorized, the consent of the lost. That is what she has created: a world in which all of the dead are lost.” Her lined, weathered face compressed slightly. “The lantern, Emma Hall.”

  Nothing about the magar was comforting or encouraging. Emma, not used to being treated like an idiot, flinched and wished—not for the first time—that she were Amy.

  “Helmi.” The magar’s use of the name was a command.

  Helmi looked as rebellious as Emma felt. But she compromised; she transferred her grip on Emma’s hand to Emma’s elbow. In theory, this shouldn’t have worked, because in theory, there was no contact between Helmi’s skin and Emma’s; the child was attached to sleeve. But she didn’t disappear.

  Emma lifted her hand.

  She’d never really concentrated on summoning the lantern. When she wanted it, it appeared. She’d never stopped to think about how little sense this made; seeing the dead made little inconsistencies seem irrelevant.

  The wire at the top of the lantern cut across her palm, tracing part of her lifeline as she lifted it. Its light was orange. Orange and blue. It was dense, much smaller than moonlight or the distant tickle of light at the corner of the eyes that implied pale stars. Her eyes acclimatized themselves to the brighter light as she looked around.

  The magar remained by her side, as did Helmi.<
br />
  They were not alone.

  Emma wanted to ask the magar if she had made the lantern or if she had inherited it; the words did not come; she forgot them.

  She wasn’t standing in a field. She wasn’t standing on a road or on a sidewalk. She wasn’t standing anywhere; there was nothing beneath her feet. It was a solid nothing, like glass but without the texture. She didn’t fall. Or rather, she hadn’t fallen yet.

  Neither had the people who lay arrayed around them. Some were curled on their sides, some flat on their backs, one or two rested on their stomachs, heads cradled in the crooks of folded arms. Some were entwined. They had no beds, but they didn’t appear to need them; they slept. There was no rhyme or reason to their clothing, their ages, their appearances; there were both men and women, boys and girls.

  Emma started to count, but gave up. There were too many.

  “Why are they here?”

  “They followed the lantern you now hold. I could not take them to freedom, as I might once have done while I lived. I could bring them to safety, of a kind. This is not a path that the circle can reach. Had it been—” She shook her head. “It was created by the lantern you bear.”

  Emma began to walk. There was room between the sleepers to place her feet, but she had to move with care. She didn’t want to disturb them; they looked peaceful.

  “There are no dreams or nightmares here,” the old woman said, trailing behind Emma but above the forms of the sleepers. “They will wake only if you choose to wake them.”

  Emma continued to walk. The light that bobbed just ahead of her seemed, to her eyes, to brighten. “The lantern doesn’t hurt them?”

  “No, Emma Hall. It is one of the few things that brings them comfort when they wake. It is a sliver of the world to which the dead should belong. They can reach out for it, touch it, and find the promise of peace in its light.”

  Emma continued to walk; she wasn’t even certain why. She trusted the magar’s previous words—here, she had time. And maybe she should be using that time to learn what she could before she confronted the Queen. The internal voice that came to her courtesy of Amy Snitman was pretty much screaming that advice in her ear.

  She wished that Amy had been the Necromancer. Amy would have been a better choice. Amy didn’t dither. She was almost fearless, and the fear that did get past her natural self-confidence got stomped flat. She wouldn’t be flailing here, terrified by her own uselessness. She wouldn’t be wandering aimlessly through an almost endless field of sleeping people.