The Firebird's Vengeance

by Sarah Zettel

  Anna. They were going to find Anna. Anna.

  Questions, too unformed yet for her mind to put into words, rose like mist. She brushed them aside. There was no question that could matter now.

  Anna.

  Bridget pressed her hands against her belly, trying to slow her breathing. Nothing would be helped or hurried if she fainted.

  “Dawn is coming,” said Sakra softly. “There will soon be light to see by.”

  Bridget waved, forgetting Sakra could not see the gesture. “We do not need to wait for dawn.”

  “Your confidence is flattering,” he said in the dry tone he used when making a joke. “But even I must be able to see to work a spell of crossing.”

  “But I can see well enough to get us where we need to go.” She reached out, found his hand, and clasped it. “Come.”

  Anna. Anna, if you are yet living, I will find you. She wanted to shout those words, she wanted the whole world, all the worlds to know that if they had hidden her daughter, she would be found, and those who had taken her … a blaze of anger beyond words shot through Bridget’s mind.

  She found the door, she found the handle, she opened it onto the corridor. She closed her left eye, and it made no difference in the depth of the darkness.

  Snared so easily and you still declare your blessed sight will keep you safe.

  The one who can find your daughter. The one who can call her back from where she has gone.

  None of those voices mattered. Nothing mattered except the way forward. Bridget steeled her mind. She reached within, and she reached without. Holding Sakra’s hand tightly, she began to walk, rapid, confident, loud footsteps, and to the rhythm of their steps, and the rhythm of heart and breath and hope, she raised her magic, and with her true-seeing eye she looked, and she saw …

  She saw the world was a veil, rippling, translucent, only patterns on patterns.

  She saw the path, darker than even the blackness of the corridor, a shimmering of shadow.

  She saw that beyond the veil the world had become shone a pale green light.

  Bridget set her feet on the path to the Land of Death and Spirit, and she began to run.

  To Sakra, the living world melted away as simply as spun sugar in the rain. Darkness faded into the perpetual emerald that was both daylight and moonglow in the Silent Lands. His eyes, adjusted to the dark, flinched and squinted, their nascent tears making fantastic shapes of the changing world around him.

  He could scarce breathe. Never had he made this transition so quickly. He had not realized such a feat was possible, even for Bridget. She had done no more than run. She had woven no pattern, spoken no words. She had simply seen the way, and followed it.

  Mothers All, she has no gauge of her own strength. How much have we underestimated her?

  His blurred vision cleared and the Land of Death and Spirit put on one of its many masks for him. He had expected the evergreen forest he had known before, but instead they walked a well-trodden path through green, grassy hills. Not a tree was to be seen in any direction, only a rolling ocean of knee-high grass waving in the silent wind beneath the sunless sky. Sakra wanted to shrink in on himself. He felt exposed. Anything might see them here. Better to leave the path, to pull Bridget with him, rather than wait here for whatever power might happen by …

  Sakra caught his runaway thoughts and forced them back into order. He’d had no time to compose himself before leaving the living world, but his training did not desert him. To leave the path they now walked would be to lose themselves in the endless illusions of the Silent Lands. He concentrated on the feel of Bridget’s hand around his. Her skin was warm with her excitement and effort. The calluses of her former life had not yet begun to fade. This touch was real. This touch, and the memories he carried in his mind. These things he could trust here. There was nothing else.

  Bridget forged ahead with her long, swinging stride. Did she still have only one eye open? The path was too narrow for them to walk side by side so he could not tell.

  “What do you see?” he asked, unable to restrain his curiosity.

  “Birch trees,” she said shortly. It was always difficult to breathe here, but she did not slow down. “Thorn, and wild apple. Ridiculous. Shouldn’t be growing together like this.” Her palm began to grow clammy. “I feel like I should know this place, but I can’t remember …”

  “Do you see the river?” There was only one river in the Shifting Lands. It was entrance to this place, and it was egress. It encompassed all the living worlds.

  “Ahead. It sparkles in the light.”

  Sakra resisted the urge to look. He concentrated on calming his mind. Strong desires had bad effects here. They could call down the dangerous, or the simply mischievous. There were so many powers here, so many of them unknown, and so many with uses for beating hearts and the breath of life.

  It was dangerous enough that Bridget’s heart yearning for her daughter was surely crying out loud for all such things to hear.

  The world changed. The hills and knolls faded to a whiteness that reshaped itself into a lacework of ivory and ebony. Slowly, Sakra recognized the corridors of the Palace of the Pearl Throne with their gilding, polished coral and bas reliefs of the Mothers, and their symbols worked over and again. Eyes watched him from behind cunning screens. This was the women’s wing, but the corridors had no end, only shadows flickering in the adjoining corridors, drawing his eye, vying for his attention, only the sensation of hidden eyes watching, judging, silently laughing …

  Silent. No sound. You should hear the soles of your boots on the floor. You are not home. Pay attention.

  He locked his gaze on the auburn waves of Bridget’s hair. She’d had no chance to bind it up for the night and it flowed freely down her shoulders without veil or pin to hinder it. He’d wondered how it would feel to run his hands through her hair, to feel the soft skin of her neck underneath, to hear her sigh as she touched him.

  Stop, stop, he warned himself. Memories. Memories only, not dreams, not desires. There lies the danger.

  But the world had already changed again. Now he saw the forest, a hundred different kinds of flora all jumbled together and tangled by gnarled thorns and bitter green apple trees.

  Bridget’s stride broke for one bare instant. She did not wait for him to ask what she saw.

  “Something’s coming, through the grass …”

  Grass? What place did she see into now?

  Then, he saw the bracken swaying violently, and although he turned his eyes back to Bridget, a sudden flash of motion jerked them away again to see a brown blur streak soundlessly from a screen of fern.

  A rabbit, earth-brown with a white star of a tail, flung itself exhausted at Bridget’s feet. Blood ran down its flanks where claws had mauled it.

  It was not alone. It seemed a red river flowed after it, silent, as everything in this place must be. In an eyeblink, the river resolved itself into a pack of hunting hounds with blind eyes, their jaws open and their teeth glinting in the pale light.

  Bridget let go of Sakra’s hand, scooped the wounded rabbit into her arms.

  “No!” Sakra reached for her, but it was too late. Quicker than thought, the dogs surrounded her, their white eyes shining like their bared teeth and Sakra found himself on the other side of a fence of bloodred bodies although he had felt nothing brush him aside.

  Then two of the dogs lengthened. They reared up onto their hind legs and changed. Their paws grew fingers and skin appeared as the fur pulled itself away. A pair of naked men stood before Bridget with the hounds at their heels.

  “Pretty mistress,” said one in a low, deep voice. “Give us our prey.”

  “Pretty mistress,” said the other. “That is ours by gift and law, mistress. Give us it.”

  “Take care,” said Sakra. She felt a mile away from him. The dogs all bared their teeth, lean and hungry beyond anything a living creature could be. “Look hard. What do you really see?” He wanted to call her name, to bring her mind
fully to him, but he did not dare with all these ears. A hundred possible spells tugged at his mind. Just do this, his own power whispered. Free your magics, save her.

  Lose us both.

  “I see a rabbit,” said Bridget. “I see hounds. I see two men.” She squared her shoulders. “If this is yours by so strong a claim,” she said to the men, “why do you not take it from me?”

  The first of the men, the one with grey hair, walked forward. He reached for the rabbit with long fingers. The rabbit squealed and kicked hard as it tried to burrow deeper into Bridget’s arms. The blow made her shudder, but she held on. The grey-haired man’s hand stopped a full inch from the rabbit, and he let it fall.

  It must be true, if she sees it. Her vision is true sight, granted by the Vixen. It cannot be fooled.

  Except perhaps by the Vixen.

  Sakra’s head spun. Images piled up on top of one another. He was in the tangled woods, in the evergreen forest, in the meadows, in the gardens of Vyshtavos. Only Bridget and the hungry red hounds remained steady.

  “Pretty mistress,” said Grey Hair again. “This does not concern you. Because you can do this thing does not mean you are free to do this thing. Give us our prey and get you gone.”

  “Give it to them,” Sakra heard himself say, so dizzy now he could barely keep his feet. “Whatever this is, it is no game of ours.”

  But Bridget held her ground as the world swam around her. “It is yours to take if you can.”

  Grey Hair drew his lips back in a sneer. “Oh, clever, oh, caring, oh, mother of hearts and worlds. You say you would claim and protect this thing in your arms?”

  “As you see.”

  “How much may you now keep safe.” Grey Hair sat back on his haunches and was a dog again, and the pack slipped back among the trees, and was gone.

  The world steadied again, and there were the familiar evergreens, and the gravel bank, and thank the Seven Mothers, the river, shallow and brown, sparkling over rounded pebbles.

  Bridget was right beside him again, with the wounded rabbit cradled in her arms. The creature, whatever it truly was, did not seem inclined toward gratitude. Instead, it shook itself and shoved against her forearm with its powerful hind legs. Startled, her hands flew open. The rabbit leapt to the ground and sped away, leaving dark droplets of blood scattered behind it. Biting her lip, Bridget watched it go.

  “You are going to say I should not have done that,” she murmured.

  Not I, he thought, a little sadly. You know it already. “We don’t know what it was you saved.”

  Bridget lifted her chin, a gesture she made when she was trying to convince herself of something. “It owes me a debt, now, whatever it was. I saved its life. I can call in the favor later, if it tries to work mischief.”

  “Yes, that may be done,” agreed Sakra slowly.

  “You told me once that the laws of magic are the laws of debt and doing.” Her gaze stayed on the path the fleeing rabbit had taken. What did she see there? What did she try to see?

  “This is true. There may be good yet in what you have done. But we cannot stay any longer.”

  Bridget shook herself as the rabbit had. “No, you’re right. We’re almost there.” She took his hand again, as if nothing had happened, and led him down the gravel bank, and all the while, Sakra struggled not to look back.

  He did not see a pair of great, yellow eyes watching them as they hurried away, nor did he see the sleek, black body that slipped away into the forest, padding off toward its home.

  The cat moved delicately between the trees, ignoring the flashes of movement that flickered between the branches and the huge trunks. Occasionally, another pair of eyes gleamed in the darkness, but none approached the cat. All knew its mistress. None would dare raise the mistress’s anger by interfering with the progress of her servant.

  A faint path emerged from the floor of the thinning forest. The cat followed it lightly, padding steadily, pausing to clean its fur and then bounding forward to hurry on. Gradually, the evergreens gave way to maples, oaks, and ash, which in turn gave way to birches. The cat passed underneath the branches of one decrepit tree, and those limbs lifted themselves to allow it free passage. Ahead of the cat appeared a rickety fence that looked to have once been made of wood, but it had long since been propped up and mended with bleached bones. Two great, black mastiffs flanked the sagging gate, sitting with heads and ears erect, watching the path. Their gazes did not flicker as the cat leapt onto the gatepost and then jumped down into the rutted yard.

  Beyond the gate waited the house Ishbushka, turning on its scarred and scaled legs, its great talons gouging the dirt beneath it with each movement. The cat stopped before the nightmare house and sat upright, its tail curled around its legs. The house ceased its restless turning and knelt. The cat disdained the worm-eaten stairs and splintered door. It leapt onto the sill of the open window and ducked inside.

  Like the guardian fence, the interior of Ishbushka was framed in bone. Bones curved overhead and gleamed on all sides, holding up the roof and crumbling walls in place of timbers. Human skulls were stacked to make the fireplace and chimney. The bones and skulls of animals hung from the roof beams, left to dry as herbs or onions would have been in a more homely house. Beneath the bones waited a great loom made of grey and ancient ivory and strung with sinew. An old woman wrapped in a tattered black robe sat at the grisly loom, working away with a shuttle made of a jawbone. She did not look up as the cat sauntered over to the hearth.

  “What did you see?” asked the witch. The treadles clicked and clacked as she worked, shuttling the jawbone back and forth and back again.

  “I saw the Vixen’s favorite daughter take the Vixen’s favorite prey.” The cat sprawled in front of the fire, stretching its belly out to catch the warmth of the flames. “I do not think she knows what she has done.”

  “No.” The witch sprawled her bony hands across the pattern she wove, touching it gently here and there. “She cannot bring herself to doubt her eyes, although she has been warned.”

  “So.” The cat twitched its whiskers.

  “So.” The Old Witch grinned, displaying all her iron teeth. “The Vixen began this game of daughters. We shall see how she likes this new player.”

  The rabbit ran through the trees. It skimmed the ground between its great bounds, speeding along like flight or flame. All it truly knew was that its pursuers were no longer there, waiting for its exhaustion so they could bring it down. It was free.

  Free, free! The word beat in its mind like the heart that had once beat in its breast.

  In the manner of things in that land, the rabbit shifted and changed, and it was no longer a beast, but a black-haired man, naked as a babe.

  Valin Kalami huddled exhausted in the shallows of the thousand-named river that ran through the Land of Death and Spirit. Its one true name was Life. Life flowed in its brown waters, life and all the worlds there were, but he could not even manage to wet his skin with it. He must have died, somewhere, sometime. How strange not to know when he had died. But it must be so, because otherwise he could have walked the river and found his life again. If he had been alive still, he would not have heard the voices. Mumbling, whispering, whimpering, wailing, the thousands of voices of the Shifting Lands engulfed him. They were the voices of ghosts, powers, demons, memories, lost souls, the fae and the fearful. They were voices of the place itself that swaddled all the worlds there were, that would disgorge them as they were born and absorb them as they died.

  He could not remember when he had begun to hear the voices. All he knew was that they had become his constant companions in his endless flight, and that they threatened, mocked, cajoled, and distracted as he ran. For all he knew, they even now led the Vixen and her sons back to him. Terror lanced through him at the thought of that terrible hunt, of the gleaming, joyful eyes and the yellow teeth that sank deep into his neck and tossed him high to break back, and let him be still only long enough for panic to grow greater than pain so
he would try to run again with all the voices laughing around him. They would find him again, had already found him again, it mattered little. There was no single current of time for the dead as there was for the living. The Vixen had, would, did, find him and she renewed the chase, and there was no power that could protect him from her.

  Kalami lifted his head. No power, perhaps, but one.

  As a living man he would not have considered this, but he was a shade now and had only eternity surrounding him. At least this slavery — if slavery it became — would be his choice, and he had turned such slavery to his advantage before.

  Steeling his nerve, Kalami focused all his will on a single name and as he had so many times before, he began to run.

  Chapter Twelve

  The road out of T’ien was hot, dusty, and crowded. People overflowed the track, jostling each other with elbows and handcarts. Some cried as they went, others hurried by in stunned silence, unable to believe that behind them the Heart of the World was being burned hollow.

  Mae Shan led Chen and Kyun off the road and into the high green hills as soon as she could. She carried Tsan Nu against her chest. Despite the noise and the motion, the girl did not wake, or even stir. They were not by any means the only ones who fled across the countryside, but the open ground was nothing like as crowded as the road they left behind.

  At sunset, Mae Shan called a halt. She laid Tsan Nu on the cool grass under a linden tree. Chen and Kyun collapsed unceremoniously beside them, but Mae Shan let that pass. The touch of the grass seemed to revive Tsan Nu somewhat and her eyes fluttered open. Mae Shan uncapped one of the water bottles and dribbled some into the child’s mouth. She drank it neatly enough, and Mae Shan gave her some more, glancing up to signal the trainees that they could take their share as well. They did not hesitate, but uncorked one of the bottles and drank greedily.

  Tsan Nu focused her eyes briefly on Mae Shan. Her mouth moved as if to smile or speak, but she drifted back into sleep before she could do either. However, Mae Shan was sure she saw recognition in Tsan Nu’s brief glance, and was reassured.