The Last Sun

by K. D. Edwards

  “You’ve already made your point,” Geoffrey said coldly.

  “And I’ll keep making it.” I picked up a blue shop rag that was lying next to a garden trowel. I balled it up and chucked it at Geoffrey. He caught it, unfolded it, stared at the dirt, and tried to fold it back into the cleanest square possible. He didn’t complain, though, which made me think that he was catching on.

  “Let’s get started,” I said. “Pick a corner. Move quickly. We’re standing inside a bloody lightning rod.”

  “They didn’t return my sigils,” Geoffrey said. “I only have this and this.” He tapped his eyeglasses and a tiny diamond earring almost hidden in the folder of his earlobe.

  “Do you have any useful spells in any of your other sigils?” I asked.

  “I have Shield in this,” he said, tapping the earring again.

  “Do you have any useful spells in your other sigils?” I asked again.

  “They are . . . noncombative.”

  Which meant cosmetic or eidetic, knowing Geoffrey. That is what made me give stupid scion speeches. “Empty whatever is in your eyeglasses and fill it with something combative. We’re not going to have time for anything else. Move, Geoff.”

  Geoffrey went into a corner. Literally into the corner—he stood and faced it. I’d forgotten how his method of storing spells reflected his punishing lack of confidence.

  I picked the corner closest to the main building, which at least put a stone wall on one side of me. The area was canopied by giant fern fronds that smelled like fresh dirt and old water. Overhead, a sheet of rain gusted across the panels.

  Addam followed me. His accent thickened the way it did when he was upset. “I am . . . unaccustomed to sigil work under these conditions. I do not want to let you down. It makes me very nervous.”

  “Do you know what happens to your body when you’re afraid?” I asked. “You sweat, your heart rate increases, your adrenaline level spikes. Do you know what happens when you’re angry? Sweat, heart rate, adrenaline. And when you’re exhilarated? Sweat, heart rate, adrenaline. It’s all fuel, Addam. It’s all energy and willpower. Use it. Dance and be afraid. Dance and be angry. Dance with me.”

  “You meditate. You don’t dance.”

  “I can do both,” I said.

  He lifted his eyes to mine. Some of the tension lines went smooth around his mouth.

  I pulled the ancient clay disc out of my pocket, and cupped it in a palm. Addam put his arms around my shoulders. He began to move. It was less a dance than a sway, but rhythmic enough that I was able to fall into the fugue I needed to store spells.

  The world closed in on me in stages: Geoff’s muttered deprecations, then the dancing, and finally just Addam’s closeness. Then I became lost in the gray haze of my meditation. My willpower unfurled and I sent feelers into the disc.

  I’d found the mass sigil years after the fall of my father’s court, when I’d first started making forays onto Sun Estate’s haunted ruins. Rather than sell it for a small fortune, I’d made the decision to bury it in the foundation of Half House, to protect us against invasion. In all that time, I’d never used it for anything else. I had no idea how it would feel to fill it with a more aggressive form of magic.

  For a few seconds, the cavernous potential of the artifact filled me with despair. The close confines I normally associated with sigils were gone. I couldn’t even feel the borders of this empty device. Easier to fill a lake with a fire hose, or build a snowman by catching flakes as they fell from the sky.

  I’d told Addam to make use of emotion. It was good advice. I took my doubt, balled it up, crushed it into a fuel I could use. Normally, to craft Fire, I imagined putting my arms around a bonfire. Now I imagined the bonfire putting its arms around me. I imagined the whiteness of a bomb blast; I imagined floating in the heart of the sun.

  A minute may have passed, or a hundred of them. When I finally returned to a blinking awareness, the mass sigil was ready, and Addam was still holding me.

  Trying not to disturb him, I slipped my cellphone from my pocket. Fifteen minutes had passed. The defense perimeter was still holding strong, which left time for another spell. Excepting Fire, my most common sigil spells were Healing and Shield. I decided on Shield, and spent minutes crafting and storing it. I could have done it quicker, but it was harder to work magic in a strange sanctum.

  When I was done, I noticed that Addam had stopped swaying. “Did you fill a sigil?” I asked.

  He leaned his head back so that we made eye contact. His eyes glinted with satisfaction.

  “Nice work, Saint Nicholas,” I said. “Geoff! We need to head back to the others.”

  I stepped past the giant ferns and into the center of the greenhouse, just as the wall exploded.

  It happened in gunfire-fast movement. Something vaulted toward us in a glitter of water and glass. Geoffrey screamed. Hot rain splashed across my face.

  Then adrenaline slowed my reaction time, allowing me to put the images into a narrative. One wall of the greenhouse had cracked and shattered. A horned deer had jumped inside and clipped Geoffrey with a hoof. Its jugular had been severed, and it was covered in circular, lamprey-like bite marks. The beast thrashed on the tile and sprayed us with arterial blood.

  I held up my forearm to keep the splatter away. Addam ran over to Geoffrey, who scrambled backward on elbows and feet.

  “What did that!” Geoffrey cried over the wet roar of the storm, staring in horror at the bite marks on the deer.

  I transmuted my sabre from its wrist-guard form. It glowed a dull garnet as I rotated and aimed—ceiling, waist, floor—in a stop-start motion like Brand had taught me.

  “Move to the hallway,” I said. The deer trembled with slowing spasms. The bite marks had a bigger spread them my splayed palm. “Addam, get him up!”

  Geoffrey grabbed at Addam’s arm and was pulled to his feet. His hand reached for his eyeglasses, and I yelled, “No! Save your spells! The deer can’t hurt us—and whatever hurt it can’t pass the defense barrier.” I think. “Just get to the hallway.”

  I covered them while they stumbled from the sanctum, then slid around them, aiming my sabre at the darkened end of the loggia outside. A stuttering flash of lightning turned my shadow into a marionette against the wall.

  After a few seconds, I let my shooting arm drop but kept the elbow loose.

  Geoff said, “Which way should we go? We should avoid Lord Strength’s wing.”

  “Agreed,” Addam said. “Rune, the main hallways will take longer, if we want to rejoin the others, but we’ll have more space to react.”

  “Let’s check with Brand first,” I said. I turned up the volume on the two-way radio. For a second I thought I’d caught someone mid-conversation, until realizing that Brand was repeating my name.

  “I’m here,” I said, pressing the button.

  “What the fuck happened?” Brand demanded, because of course he’d have felt my alarm when the glass broke.

  “A deer jumped into the sanctum. It looks like something attacked it. I’m pulling us out of here.”

  “You fucking think?”

  His sarcasm was a front, but . . . something else. Something else was wrong. I could feel it, through our bond. “Brand, what is it? Are you okay?”

  “Two units aren’t reporting in,” Brand said after a pause. “The defense perimeter is still active, right?”

  “Yes. But we could have been breached in the minutes before it went up.”

  “I sent a patrol your way. Ciaran’s with them.”

  I looked unsurely at the loggia’s window-wall. “That’s fine, but we’re not in a safe area. I want to move into an interior room. I’ll call when I know where.”

  “Patrols are on channel five—I’ll try to raise Ciaran for you.”

  “I’ll switch over as soon as we’re clear,” I said, and then I hooked the radio on my belt. “Geoff, can you alter the shape of that?” I pointed at the squirming light cantrip that he’d manifested above his
head.

  “I . . . think so. Into what?”

  “A big glowing bull’s-eye?”

  Geoffrey actually started to transmute the cantrip, before scowling at me and extinguishing it.

  I sighed. I felt like I’d been sighing a lot these last few days. “If the compound has been breached, we need to assume ambush. Throw the light ahead of you. It’ll reveal or flush out ambushers. Like this.” I blended words and willpower, and tossed them away. A ball of pale amber light appeared at the far end of the corridor, illuminating an additional length of exposed hallway. “Addam, what are our routes? We need to get away from these windows.”

  Addam pointed as he spoke. “That corridor leads to a solarium. Over there is the servant hallway we entered from. That opens into some sitting rooms.”

  “Sitting rooms,” I said, moving toward a double door gilded in lacelike silver. I waited until the next round of thunder masked any noise, then spun into the room at a crouch. I ran my sabre in a semicircle over sitting chairs and a floral-print fainting sofa. When nothing stirred, I sent a light cantrip across the room and edged along the wall, to make sure nothing was using the furniture as cover.

  Geoffrey invoked another Mobius of light above his head. I was about to call him an asshole when he snuffed it out, saying, “I can’t make it move like you can.”

  “Maybe now isn’t the best time to practice,” I said. There were two other doors leading from this room. I realized, uncomfortably, that I was going to be wholly dependent on someone else’s sense of direction.

  I switched over to channel five. “Brand, we’re in the sitting room closest to the sanctum. We’ll give Ciaran a few minutes, but I don’t want to wait.”

  “Just fucking wait. He’s close.”

  “Copy,” I said.

  I lowered my arm, and Geoffrey stepped up to me. He said, “What if Ashton is inside the house? Brand said people are missing. Maybe they’ve been attacked. We should find somewhere nearby and barricade ourselves. I have the Shield, I can help.”

  “Barricade ourselves,” I repeated.

  “And a Frost spell. I have a Frost spell in my glasses. I could use that for a barricade as well, I think.”

  “That’s just brilliant, Geoffrey,” I said, and my nervousness flipped over to show a belly of dark anger. “That’s just great. Screw everyone else upstairs.”

  “They’re building their own barricade!” Geoffrey said.

  “We went to the sanctum because we’re their best defense. You know what? Let’s forget the fact that we have a responsibility to stand between them and harm. Let’s forget that they’re your people. Instead, let’s just remember who pulled the fucking lich out of the ether and started all this in motion in the first place.”

  “Ashton did that! He fooled me just as easily as he did you!”

  “Not as easily,” Addam said quietly. He walked over to an ornamental fireplace, and hefted a brass poker. “I was fooled most of all. Go ahead and stay here if you like, Geoff. I’ll find you afterward.”

  Geoffrey’s face went pale around the purpling hoofprint on his forehead. He crossed his arms over his chest and turned away from us—right into Ciaran, who dropped his Camouflage. Geoffrey screamed and fell over a footstool. The principality’s upturned lips were bright in the scarce light.

  “Made you flinch,” he said.

  “Camouflage spells still cast shadows,” I said. I wiggled my sabre at him; I’d lifted it to aim even before he’d materialized.

  Ciaran tutted. “You’re always so stingy with compliments.”

  “Did you see anything on your way here?” Addam asked.

  Ciaran wore a necklace made of knucklebones, each one a sigil. It was an old magical device, from the days when magic’s packaging needed to be as grim as the magic itself.

  There was fresh blood across the bones. Ciaran said, “Indeed.”

  “Were they recarnates?” I asked. “Inside the manor?”

  “They were. We were surprised, but we handled it. Boys?”

  From the corridor, three armed servants stepped into the doorway. That drew my attention to the windows behind them; the sky was a sinkhole of spinning grays.

  My ears popped.

  “Your hair,” Addam said. Wisps of his own hair—whatever wasn’t bound into a sandy braid—lifted off his forehead.

  Ciaran began yelling for everyone to move just as I grabbed Addam and threw us across the room. We went down in a tangle as lightning struck the side of the mansion.

  My senses got scrambled for a second—screamingly loud whiteness; a yellow clap of thunder—and then one of the guards was on fire. He windmilled around in a tight circle, which only fanned the flames. I ripped a wall tapestry off its hangers and tried to smother the man in a hug. Bright points of heat bled through the fabric under my fingers. Finally, the man’s knees gave way, and I was able to roll the flames out.

  I pulled the tapestry aside long enough to see that most of the man’s face was gone, and his life with it. I yanked the cloth back.

  “We . . . need to get away from these windows,” I said over the wind. Most of the nearby loggia windows were gone, and rain whipped across my bowed head. “Addam, find us another way.”

  “There. Down the corridor on the other side of that door,” Addam said numbly.

  We moved out in shocked silence. The two remaining guards took the rear. They whispered to each other in fear, and, really, I didn’t blame them. If they’d thought nothing could go wrong because they were surrounded by scions, they were mistaken. We were one-trick ponies. Our power was limited by the very instruments of our magic. How the hell was I supposed to protect anyone, if we had enemies both outside the barrier and within it?

  I pushed through a swinging door. I pumped willpower into my light cantrip and sent it flying ahead, lining a stretch of glossy, dark parquet.

  “This way,” Addam said, pushing ahead and opening a door on one side of the hall.

  I got a glimpse of moss-colored carpet and then Addam’s boot was squishing down on something wet. I yanked him back just as spores, firefly-bright, puffed into the space he’d been standing.

  “Gods’ love,” Addam hissed as I lit up the room with a light cantrip.

  From the shin up, it was a richly-appointed reading area; but the carpeting seethed with mushrooms. They were slick and fawn-colored, their gills fleshy and swollen.

  “We were open to the Westlands.” I turned and looked at everyone else, almost angrily. “It was only for a minute, but we were open to the Westlands, and there’s no telling what the hell got in before the barrier went up. Don’t touch anything; I don’t care how normal it seems. If you lean against a desk and it eats you, I’m not fucking responsible. Any questions?”

  “They’ll be in oilskins,” Ciaran whispered.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I can see some beasties,” he said, and shook his head. His eyes—always a bit shimmery—now glowed. “I’m afraid we’re running out of time, Sun.”

  “We can go that way,” Addam said, pointing to a door farther down the galley.

  We passed through it into a library, and from there into a musical conservatory. Decorative glass doors faced another dark hallway, which Addam urged us into.

  My light cantrip, thrown ahead of us, drew the first ambush.

  Dead men leapt from a corner. Two of them dropped to their knees, rifles braced against shoulders. I jerked my hand. My light cantrip split and flew into their eyes. The recarnates were startled; one stumbled sideways into the path of the second rifle.

  Ciaran swept in front of me and barked, “Remember!”

  One of the dead men staggered back from the others and shouted a woman’s name—an actual voice, something that shouldn’t have been possible. Another began to tear at the funeral stitching on his face. A third pulled a knife from its belt and stabbed it into its neighbor’s chest.

  “Not in the heart. Here. Here.” Ciaran touched the back of his head.
“It can end.”

  The recarnate reversed the knife and stabbed the other recarnates in the brain stem. None resisted. In the end, the dead man turned the knife on its own neck.

  Like most types of violence, it was over before your brain had time to add in the subtitles. Someone dry-heaved. Addam was breathing fast.

  I had no idea what Ciaran had done. I’d felt no sigil release.

  “You forget that I traffic,” Ciaran reminded me, “in dreams.”

  “The fuck kind of dreams you have?” one of the guards blurted.

  “Not mine,” Ciaran said. “Theirs. I gave them back their dreams, so they’d remember they’d once been alive. Don’t forget that, in their own way, they are victims of your Ashton as well.”

  In the distance, a woman screamed.

  The armed servants looked at us. On a normal day, they’d have gone running. This was not a normal day. These were no longer familiar hallways.

  The screaming stopped.

  “Jesus,” one of the servants whimpered. “What’s happening to us?”

  I said, “We still need to get to the others. Just focus on that. Let’s go.”

  We moved. Up a narrow stairway to the second floor. Through an open archway, into the residential part of the mansion. I wasn’t sure which Arcana claimed this area, but it was spartan. Wooden boards were covered with rushes from fir trees. Petrified berries crunches under my feet, cracking into a swirl of resin.

  Somewhere close by, a man began yelling. One of the guards shouted “Peter!,” and took off like a shot. I ran after him. The man disappeared around a corner. Bright jugular blood arced back in his wake. No scream, no sound of struggle, just the heavy patter of blood as it hit the white walls.

  I ducked low, roared a battle cry, and brought up my sabre hilt. There were two bodies on the ground, one of them moving but bleeding badly. A man stood over him, wearing dull-green oilskins. He had the slack, bloated features of a drowned man.

  Wide-spaced eyes, flesh as gray as sharkskin. Teeth like hypodermic needles. Draug. A godsdamn draug—a water spirit, a riptide vampire.

  I roared again and fired. My firebolt took it in the shoulder. It shoved its victim away and stumbled over the prone body of my own guard. The guard’s throat was torn, his life seeping out in spit-bubbles of blood.