Of the Mortal Realm

by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  This creature wasn’t dead, but nevertheless the bone was stained with all the deaths its owner had caused or witnessed. Abyssi were born from death.

  Setting her teeth, Lydie touched the flat edge of the blade to the back of her forearm. Abyssumancers had ways to keep from bleeding once a ritual was done, but she didn’t trust that magic to help her, so she had chosen a spot where she could make a tiny cut without damaging herself too badly. As soon as her hands stopped shaking.

  She had hoped the blade was sharp enough not to hurt. She had heard people say that in the past—“too sharp to hurt.” This knife wasn’t. Or maybe that was a myth. Or maybe it was the Abyssal power that made it sting like nettles as she dragged it across her skin just enough to draw a fine line of blood to the surface. As she watched, a black ooze of power crept up her arm, sending tendrils out toward her core. Every instinct said to fight them, to raise her mental walls and try to protect herself, but instead she beckoned them in.

  She touched her fingertips to the rising blood, then smeared it through the jar of mined salt Umber had provided, staining the already-pinkish grains with flecks of eerie scarlet.

  She hoped she had her logic right. Short of killing him, she couldn’t force Hansa to see the realm of the dead directly; her only hope was to use his Abyssal power to heighten his awareness of the Abyssal taint on Jenkins’ shade, and let the men share awareness that way. Unfortunately, to do that, she needed to tie herself to the Abyss temporarily.

  There weren’t guidebooks to this kind of sorcery. To any kind of sorcery.

  She had not confided to the others that this whole thing might fail to work. Or worse. There was a slim chance she could do something unfortunate, like drain the life from Hansa when she tried to tie her power to his, or drive him mad, or—

  Don’t think about that. Was that her thought, or the voice of one of the innumerable shades? Sometimes it was hard to tell.

  She walked a circle in the parlor, dropping grains of salt along the way to create a symbolic wall, which she turned into a higher, harder barrier in her mind. She didn’t need such elaborate ritual to speak to the dead—she could have closed her eyes and let herself fall into their level with a single exhaled breath—but without a wall she would be swarmed by shades, some who knew they were dead and some who did not, some who flickered like candle flames as they fought the pull of the Abyss or the Numen and some who lamented that they could not find their way to the next realm. Some who were sane, and some who had been driven mad by their passage out of life.

  She sat comfortably cross-legged in the center of her circle and called, “Jenkins Upsdell.” The use of a second, family name marked him as someone who had been a member of the upper echelon of Kavet society. The tradition to identify by a family name instead of a community name, like of A’hknet or of Napthol, had only come to Kavet in the last few centuries as their nation firmed its ties to the distant, aristocracy-obsessed Silmat.

  A leaf-rustle reply let her know Jenkins had arrived. Once she dropped into the plane of the dead, she would be able to see and hear him more easily, but she didn’t want to do that until she was ready.

  She turned. Her heart pounded as she opened a gap in her salt-and-magic wall with a wave of her hand and a firm image in her mind. She swallowed back her dread. This was where it could all go wrong, but if she focused on the horrible things that might happen next, her power would be just as likely to obey that thought as it did the circled wall.

  “Jenkins Upsdell, enter my circle. Hansa Viridian, enter my circle. All others stay out.”

  She shut her eyes to avoid being distracted by the sight of Hansa, and instead focused on the feel of him—specifically, on the way the slithering black power exploring her blood responded to him, and to a similar taint on Jenkins’ shade. The Abyssal magic felt hot and foul, like a fever-infection. It was unnatural to her; her body recognized it as alien, and wanted to get rid of it.

  She wouldn’t be able to maintain the connection long.

  Holding the threads of Abyssal power tightly, she let out a breath. As the air sighed out of her lungs, she dropped from the world of mortal flesh and into the realm of the dead, dragging Hansa with her like a reluctant dog. He couldn’t help fighting her—he was alive, and so his flesh and spirit protested crossing this veil—but inside this circle, she was stronger than he was.

  Hansa’s choked gasp let her know the exact moment the two men were able to see each other.

  “You keep some interesting company these days,” Jenkins asserted as a greeting. “My best friend, an Abyss-tainted pervert. That takes some getting used to.”

  Lydie flinched at the casually used epithet despite the shade’s light tone. She understood that he wanted to get the topic out in the open as fast as possible, but couldn’t he have found a less coarse way to do so?

  “Jenkins—”

  “Well, not all of it,” Jenkins continued thoughtfully, cutting Hansa off when he tried to choke out a greeting. “I always suspected you were . . . oh the Tamari have a great word for it, what was it? Aft, I think. Someone who’s into both men and women is ‘fore and aft.’ I think they have a word for someone who doesn’t like either, too, but—”

  Lydie’s circle shuddered around her, bucking against the strange magics within it. Lydie opened her eyes and pressed her hands to the ground to brace herself and keep her walls from tumbling down on them all.

  When Jenkins paused, watching Lydie with concern, Hansa drew a shuddering breath and asked in a tone he couldn’t quite keep level, “You came back from the dead to tell me Tamari words for sexual deviance?” Hansa was staring at Jenkins with his lips pressed together rightly, a slight quirk in them as if he almost wanted to laugh at his dead friend’s chatter, but couldn’t bear to do so. Jenkins’ energy was wild and confused, and Lydie knew the rambling was born of his fear to address his friend more frankly.

  The shade’s form was semi-solid, and a red-black aura rippled around him. He looked at Lydie a moment more, then sighed, “I’m not back, Hansa. I’m just here. While you’ve been doing . . . whatever you’ve been doing the last few weeks . . . I’ve been taking a hard look at Kavet, and at my life. I—”

  His voice choked off and he shuddered as Lydie’s grip on the Abyssal power slipped again; the force slapped against her walls, cracking them. Hansa’s life-force burned like a star, and it took a physical effort for Lydie to resist its song and the instinct to draw it into herself to fuel this work.

  Both men responded to her control’s momentary wavering. Hansa grimaced, and Lydie saw him tense. Jenkins’ form became paler and more transparent.

  “We don’t have much time, so I’m going to skip the small talk and apologies and all of that,” Jenkins decided aloud. His sudden focus tamed his energy and helped Lydie pull the spell tighter. “I know you, and I trust you, no matter who or what you’re in bed with. I don’t trust Terre Verte. He’s promising the mancers who flock to him a better life, free of persecution and fear, and I don’t see how he can hope to accomplish that without bloodshed.” Jenkins looked at Lydie, and his gaze met hers sadly as he said, “There has already been bloodshed. No one knows that better than Hansa and I do. I’m sorry, so sorry . . .”

  Guilt. Damn it, Lydie hated guilt. For the dead, guilt was a predator; it devoured their essence, and made them impossible for even her to hold. As Jenkins turned toward her, considering his role in the arrest and execution of so many sorcerers who had probably just been trying to survive, he started to flicker and fade.

  “Jenkins?” Hansa asked in alarm, reaching for his friend.

  Lydie pressed her hands harder against the floor and imagined the ground below. She anchored herself and the shade to it, holding him fast. Her body trembled at the effort. She wanted to tell the men to hurry this along and say whatever else they desperately needed to say, but didn’t trust herself to open her mouth without devouring the defenseless mortal trapped in her magical walls.

  As Hansa’s hand pas
sed through Jenkins’ insubstantial arm, Jenkins gathered himself. His form flowed back together like mist. “When I—” This time, the force that tried to pull the shade apart was remembered fear and pain. “I hear the Abyssi sometimes. Because—” He had to stop again, unable to refer so explicitly to his own death. “They talk about Terre Verte, but not just about his power. They also talk about the things they did to him in the decades he’s been trapped among them. I don’t see how anyone could have survived that without going mad. He talks to the dead and the living about wanting to protect Kavet and heal it, but I don’t think we can trust him to be logical or predictable. Someone needs to watch him, and be ready to control him.”

  Hansa started to shake his head, but Jenkins declared, “I know you. I know you’re going to want to stay here and see what happens before you step in, but you can’t. You need to get involved preemptively, and you need to fix things.”

  Hansa’s attempted protest creaked from his tight throat, incoherent.

  Jenkins spoke over him once again. “That’s the same look you gave me when I first suggested you apply for a position with the Quinacridone guard. I won that argument. It’s the same look you gave me when I suggested you should ask Ruby out. I won that argument. It’s the same look—”

  “You’ve made your point,” Hansa choked out. “But you might look how all those things turned out before you keep giving advice.”

  Jenkins shrugged dismissively. “How is Ruby? Was she the one who called off the engagement, or were you? I know you’re too honest to cheat on—”

  Jenkins might have said more, but neither of them heard it. Hansa’s sudden guilt and horror, combined with a frigid wind that could only have been the echo of a shade that had already passed into the Numen, stormed Lydie’s awareness and sliced through her, severing her link to the Abyssal power and shattering her carefully-crafted walls. Any attempt Jenkins might have made to further communicate drowned in the cascade of other shades who mobbed her, screaming their woes, and the ringing of Numen ice.

  Lydie curled her body, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She rocked, trying desperately to ignore Hansa’s blazing life, the wailing of the dead, and the rhythmic pounding of wings that eclipsed even her own heartbeat. She slapped vaguely in Hansa’s direction and he backed away.

  There were mortal voices talking to her, too, but she couldn’t understand them.

  “Salt water,” she managed to say aloud. Her voice seemed the barest whisper in the din. “Ocean water. Please. And my doll.”

  Someone pushed the doll into her hands, someone whose form shone darkly, mortal power wrapped tightly in a protective shell like the carapace of a lobster. Lydie clutched the doll to her chest, triggering the spells stored inside it. The chaos and noise faded a little, enough that she could start to think, try to reform her walls—and curse herself for an idiot for trying this.

  A few more minutes passed, and then the same person returned, this time with a bucket of cold ocean water still frigid from the sea beyond. To Lydie’s power, it felt like an empty void—exactly what she wanted. She plunged her hands into it and felt the shock through her body as all the power she had raised rushed into the sea.

  As the voices of the dead and the shining auras around her faded, Lydie looked up gratefully at Cadmia, who was standing a few feet away and watching warily.

  “Are you all right?” Cadmia asked.

  Lydie half nodded, each tiny move of her head requiring a fantastic effort. As she pulled her hands out of the bucket of ocean water, the muscles in her arms twitched and trembled.

  “Can you help me get to my room?” Lydie asked. “I need to lie down.” She would be helpless for a while as she recovered both physically and magically; she wouldn’t even have the energy to ward the door before she slept. She could only hope she had chosen the right allies.

  Chapter 13

  Cadmia

  Lydie leaned heavily on Cadmia’s arm as they walked up the stairs together. The young woman’s body felt frail and bony, and she was shivering hard enough that Cadmia struggled to keep her balance.

  “If-f you don’t mind my asking,” Lydie asked as they climbed the tightly winding stairs, “what are you?”

  The question caught Cadmia off guard. “What am I?”

  Lydie flinched. “Sorry. Mama says I’m too curious.”

  Cadmia noticed the present tense, and made a mental note to ask the girl about her mother later.

  “I understand. I’ve been told the same thing about myself,” she said, as they reached the upstairs landing. As a case in point, Cadmia was grateful to have an excuse to peek at Umber’s study, which she had resisted looking at earlier in deference to both Umber’s and Lydie’s privacy. The couch Umber had mentioned was indeed deep and long, upholstered in plush damask, where gray-blue and chestnut birds cavorted against a bronze sky. As Lydie dropped onto it, it sank invitingly around her small body. “But I’m not sure how to answer. I’m human. I’m not a mancer, or spawn, or even naturally have the sight.”

  “You have power,” Lydie said, “but it isn’t the same as Hansa’s or Umber’s.”

  Cadmia cleared her throat, feeling unaccountably awkward. To cover the moment, she picked up a sable-colored throw blanket whose perfect softness reminded her of Alizarin’s fur, and tucked it around Lydie’s shoulders.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said at last, deciding it was best to be simple and forthright. “Alizarin is the father. That’s the power you sense.”

  Lydie nodded thoughtfully, clutching the blanket around her shoulders. “I always thought the spawn were myths. Cautionary tales for Abyssumancers and Numenmancers. I should have known better.” She yawned widely.

  “Do you need anything else?” Cadmia asked. Lydie shook her head, and Cadmia ventured, “Is there someone you want us to contact for you, to let them know you’re safe? Your mother maybe?”

  Lydie shook her head sleepily. “She died when I was six.” She yawned. “I was a sunset baby. That’s what everyone called it. It’s hard enough for a Silmari woman to be respected as a sailor—that’s what my mother did for almost thirty years—so she didn’t have me until after everyone thought she was too old to have more children. She blamed that for my oddness when I was little, that she and my father settled here and had me when she was past bearing ages.”

  “Oddness?”

  “I saw things, heard things no one else saw or heard. I would spend hours staring at nothing, unresponsive, or suddenly start screaming.” She shrugged. “After my mother’s fever, I saw her at her funeral, and she saw me, and she realized what I was. She helped me control my power.”

  “And your father?” Lydie looked ready to drop from exhaustion, but she also seemed to want to talk.

  “My father became very devout. He moved us to the city and wanted to give me to the Order of the Napthol as an apprentice. I ran away. That was two years ago, when I was twelve, around the same time Mama moved on.”

  Cadmia bit her lip and resisted the urge to say something sympathetic or comforting, because Lydie’s no-nonsense tone asked for none of it. Instead, Cadmia considered Umber’s story about his mother, about all the individuals who had been investigated, branded, and executed because of whispers of mancer leanings.

  “It’s kind of nice,” Lydie said in a small voice, “being able to have conversations like this. It’s been a long time since I’ve actually really talked to anyone who isn’t dead.”

  Just hormones, Cadmia told herself, but the words brought tears to her eyes, and she couldn’t resist the urge to pull the necromancer into a hug. Lydie tensed at first, and Cadmia had started to pull back, started to apologize for the unwanted contact, before Lydie’s arms wrapped around her. The young woman’s body relaxed by inches and her breathing slowed.

  Only seconds later, she realized Lydie’s form had slumped into a deep, exhausted sleep.

  We’ll fix it, Cadmia thought, fiercely. My child will not grow up in a world
like this.

  She eased Lydie down onto the couch and tucked her in with the throw blanket and a second, down-filled coverlet before slipping quietly out of the room and back downstairs, where she found Hansa and Umber sitting together on the window-seat, Hansa leaning against Umber’s chest. Two glasses of wine sat nearby at hand, one half-empty and the other apparently untouched.

  “How is our necromancer?” Umber asked, the usual lilt in his voice notably depressed.

  “Exhausted,” Cadmia said. “The spell clearly wore her out, but she didn’t seem hurt. She says she just needs rest. What happened?”

  When the spell collapsed, both Hansa and Lydie had ended up on the floor. Cadmia had trusted Umber to see to Hansa, and had gone to Lydie herself.

  “Jenkins didn’t know about Ruby,” Hansa said hollowly. “He didn’t know she’s dead. How could he know so much, but not know that?”

  Umber snugged Hansa closer to himself and leaned a cheek down against his hair with a sigh, as if they had already discussed this point and he wished he could find a better answer for his lover’s distress. He explained, “Jenkins shared his thoughts about Verte’s meeting, and the promises he’s making to mancers in the city. He believes Verte means to fight, and that he might be mad from his long captivity in the Abyss. Beyond that . . .” He looked at Hansa with an expression too soft to be simple lust. “They didn’t get to talk long.”

  “Jenkins is right, though,” Hansa said hoarsely. He looked worn and ragged. “You were right,” he added, focusing on Cadmia. “I can’t wait here to see what Verte does, or what the Quin do. If he is gathering mancers for a war, the best defense Kavet has is the One-Twenty-Six. They need to be prepared.”

  “And if he isn’t planning to fight?” Cadmia asked. She agreed that Hansa should go, but not if he only intended to use the guards to fight Verte. As far as Cadmia was concerned, the 126 was just as much a threat to this household.