Gown of Shadow and Flame

by A. E. Marling

  Is it my fault? He supposed he had been wrong about Celaise. Jerani had thought her an exception among Feasters. She had seemed the one tuft of honey grass amid a field of scraggly worm weed. Maybe, he thought, I deserve this.

  The lake heaved at the edges, sunset red and just as bright. Patches of clotted blood covered the rest of the lava, and the orange cracks between them blurred in his vision. Either he could not see through the sweat weeping from his brow, or the fumes from the Angry Mother were cooking his head.

  He seemed to remember someone saying Feasters dealt in illusions, but he could not think of why that mattered, or even what it meant. Each of his charred senses begged for an end. Darkness pulsed through him, and the heat shoved him farther toward unconsciousness, even as he fell faster toward the lava lake.

  He wanted to know why, to shout to Celaise for an answer. She had waited until now to attack him, at the worst moment for them both. He believed he heard himself screaming, but he could not be sure below the crushing-rock roar of the Angry Mother.

  With only seconds left to live, his mind turned to Anza. May her eye heal true.

  Celaise commanded Jerani to drop faster. She wanted this to be over. Once he splashed into the molten rock, he would shed a banquet of fear, and she could ferment enough Black Wine to continue her Feast.

  It's a shame, she thought. The two of them had gone through so much together, faced the same foes, drank the same water, and he had even rescued her from the Bright Palm.

  Black Wine slithered through her insides, siphoning away as she tapped it to maintain Jerani's nightmare. She shuddered and felt bandages pressing against her wound, underneath her true gown.

  Why would he bandage me if he'd returned to kill me? Celaise could see he had ripped the strips of fabric from his own clothes. His torso glistened red as he tumbled downward. The muscles on his chest and the lithe strength of his limbs were lit from below. He had stopped struggling, had let himself go slack, and his fall had taken on the grace of a diving bird.

  The Black Wine turned bitter within her, and a taste of rust and mold coated her tongue. She felt wrong doing this. He had trusted her, and now she was stealing away his life.

  Celaise glanced over his tumbling body, trying to think of a reason why she should hate him. She cared for him too much, she could see that now.

  Her magic bubbled and roiled within her. He'd die soon anyway. The Headless would eat him. She knew that was true, but she still wanted to end the nightmare, to spit out the Black Wine and spare him.

  He would've betrayed you. Eventually.

  But she could not believe that, could not even tell it to herself. I'm the one betraying him. She knew Jerani was blameless.

  His only mistake was to trust.

  The heat tore apart Jerani's world. Orange bursts reached toward him from the lava then splattered down in blobs that singed stone. Thoughts sizzled out of his mind.

  Something I have to remember. Have something left to do.

  A patch of black froth cleared from the center of the lake, leaving a spot of pure yellow. It burned brighter than a grassfire stretching from horizon to horizon, and he fell straight toward it.

  Everything turned white, then black. Jerani waited to feel the lava sear the flesh from his bones.

  Pink and white explosions washed over him. Bright specks stormed all around, and he heard a crashing. It felt like he was thwacked across the chest and lashed across the face. Not as bad as I thought.

  Flipping around, he gasped as something bludgeoned his back and his rear. He had a strange sensation of grasses scratching skin, and he no longer smelled the reek of burning but the sweet scent of growing. A stillness flowed into him.

  “I'm not falling.” He could hear his own voice again.

  As he blinked, pink petals rained down. The sky beamed blue at him through a rent in the broken branches of a tree. He must have fallen through the blooming canopy. He could not remember how he had gotten there, and he had a sense of unease, as if he had woken up after a disturbing dream that he did not want to remember.

  A prickling joy shimmered through him, but a bur of tension remained in his stomach. He did have something he had to do. Now what was it?

  The daylight paled. The tree and its blossoms faded, leaving only the image of a woman in a dress. Celaise loomed over him wearing the night sky. The horns of the moon curved behind her, and they seemed to reach upward from her back in white swooshes.

  He flinched as she ran a glove of stars over his face, but her touch was but a breeze on his warrior marks. Her hands of air tingled the skin of his bare arms as she moved them from his shoulders to grasp his hands.

  “Promise me...” A sludge dribbled from her lips. “…if you live, you'll never scar your children.”

  Her flowing hair sagged into a black tangle, and the calmness melted from her face, her lips sinking into a toothless mouth. Celaise slumped over him in a mess of bloody rags.

  He caught her, and he was alarmed when her arm shifted into an unnatural angle. Lifting her, Jerani remembered what he had to do, what he had meant to do before...before…

  The memory of his fall toward the lava lake slammed back into him. The smoke. The torture of the heat. He staggered, and Celaise slid in his grasp.

  Leave her, he thought. Better yet, kill her. No one should have that much power.

  He held on, gripping Celaise as far away as the strength in his arms allowed, but he still held her. Jerani knew he needed her, that his tribe needed her. He would never forget what the Feaster had done to him. It may have all been his head, but he felt no better for having only his mind roasted.

  She had stopped before the end. She had changed her mind, had spared him, and that gave him some comfort. Jerani forced himself to beat back his bonfire of feelings for her and do what had to be done.

  The Bright Palm shone in the distance. Rock-Backs crowded the ground between them. Jerani shuffled forward.

  He did not relish his chances, but he had to reach the Bright Palm and convince him to heal Celaise. No person with any other options would try something with so little hope.

  A fall into a lava lake had not killed Jerani. He did not fear the Rock-Backs, and he did not fear the Bright Palm. Not anymore.

  “Hold onto me,” he said to Celaise.

  Her eyes stayed shut.

  Jerani dashed between the Rock-Backs, whirling around their lumbering charges. Celaise was swung about in his arms, her twig legs knocking against his thigh. He thought he heard her whimper. He liked to think he did because he could not slow to check if she still lived.

  Claws flashed above his ducking head, and round hulks loped behind him. He drove himself to stay ahead of their crushing feet. His heart beat stronger in his chest than ever before, and carrying Celaise, he felt lighter of foot than he did with hands free.

  The giant rock snake reared above Jerani, its many rib cages stretching and contracting to snap jaws with wet slaps. Its moon shadow fell over him, and Jerani threw himself and Celaise forward to avoid it landing on him fangs first.

  A wall of rocky plates and clawed legs blocked his way to the Bright Palm. The snaked monster began to circle him, to close his escape. Panic screeched around Jerani's head on skeletal wings, and he expected to turn and see more Rock-Backs bearing down on him to complete the trap.

  Instead, horn spears strove against the crystal-speckled domes of monsters. Tall Tachamwa led the Greathearts to Jerani.

  “Get back!” Tachamwa pulled Jerani away from the giant rock snake that curved its way toward them. “Don't want to break our horns on that.”

  Jerani shrugged him off. “Have to reach the Bright Palm.”

  “You can't get to him through those teeth.”

  “We need the Feaster, need Celaise,” Jerani said. “The Bright Palm has to heal her.”

  “Er, will he?” Tachamwa gulped, backing away from the onrush of linked Rock-Backs. “And a Feaster is our best hope?”

  Jerani screamed over
the din that she was. He tried to see if Celaise still breathed, but the ground trembled too much to tell.

  “Then the Sky Bull save us!” The tall warrior braced himself, knuckled his brows, then sprinted, spear first, toward the giant rock snake. “This is a horrible idea—aaaahh!”

  Tachamwa slid away from the monstrosity's pounce. In a burst of activity that Jerani would never have expected from him, Tachamwa leaped onto the flank of the giant rock snake and began running along its segmented back.

  “Go! Get with the other tribes!” Tachamwa shouted back at the warriors as he bounded over the plated lumps. “C'mon you ugly crocodile-toothed wildebeest, try to catch me!”

  The giant rock snake looped around, but Tachamwa changed directions, running back to the front end and dropping down to cling for dear life as the linked beast bucked upward in booming ripples. He jumped to his feet and knocked on the sides of the Rock-Backs with his spear.

  “Your mother was a hippo,” he said, “and your father wasn't the smartest boulder!”

  By the time Jerani and the Greathearts passed the monstrosity, it had begun climbing over itself to chase Tachamwa.

  Two hunting packs of Rock-Backs still prowled between Jerani and the Bright Palm. Isafo and the other warriors whooped and charged after one pack, holding them off. The second circled around, toward where Jerani had been trying to sneak.

  He prepared himself for a mad dash to the Light Hoof tribe. More Rock-Backs hurled themselves against the ring of cows, and he doubted he could carry Celaise through without being savaged.

  Clopping sounds approached from behind, heavy but too graceful to be a Rock-Back. A crescent encircled Jerani, as if the moon had descended to protect him, but it was only Hero.

  Jerani ducked under a horn and walked beside the bull. “Ready for another adventure, Hero?”

  A notched ear twitched under the trunk of a horn. The bull growled.

  “Let's go! Have to hurry for Celaise.”

  The bull trotted forward, and Jerani lifted Celaise onto Hero's back, then climbed behind her to steady her. The bull stopped when three Rock-Backs arrayed themselves in front of him. Hero tossed his head, eyes rolling white.

  “Be bold, Hero.” Jerani washed his hands back and forth on the bull's bristling hide, afraid because the glitter eyes of Rock-Backs crept in from either side. “They're just small ones. You can charge through 'em.”

  Muscles rolled and stiffened under the furry hide. Hero blew air, lowered his horns, and roared in challenge.

  The bull raced forward, and Jerani had to clamp down with his thighs while holding onto Celaise. The Rock-Backs dropped forward to angle their plated domes at Hero, and this close they looked larger than Jerani had hoped. He thought of Hero's beautiful horns fracturing and the gentle animal being attacked on all sides by claws.

  Jerani clung to the bull with his legs, fearing he would fly off on impact. The Rock-Backs were as tall as men and only small compared to rhinos. Hero charged straight at them. Jerani clutched Celaise, feeling the grinding pressure of dread as Hero gained speed.

  Jerani blinked before the collision, but he felt a sensation of lifting. Hero did not jump so much as sail upward, his four legs tucked back to his sides like a crane in flight. The majesty of the leap took away Jerani's breath, and he wished Celaise were conscious to see this.

  The Rock-Backs whisked underneath them, and the bull landed running. With crashing sweeps of his horns, Hero knocked aside two surprised monsters that were facing the Light Hoof tribe. Cows with white patches above their hooves mooed to see Hero, and the warriors cried out.

  “A flying bull!”

  “Long live the Greathearts!”

  “He's Hero.” Jerani thumped the bull's flank then slid off, Celaise in arms.

  “Very good,” the Bright Palm said. A bronze spike jutted from each of his fists, and blood splattered him from wrists to neck. “You have brought the Feaster.”

  Jerani dodged the bloody nail, gripping Celaise around her chest and waist. “We need her. Stop!”

  The Bright Palm lunged, stabbing toward her dangling legs with both spikes.

  Hopping back, Jerani thumped into Hero's side. Jerani slid under horns and shuffled around the bull. “She can beat the rock snakes. You have to heal her.”

  A glowing hand clutching a nail rested on Hero's back as the Bright Palm swung himself over the bull, legs a sweeping blur. A bronze spike was held by the man's smallest fingers, and he reached out with the rest to seize Celaise.

  Jerani twisted away again, not yet trusting the Bright Palm to hold her. “She never hurt one of us, cow or man.”

  “You shall seek out Feasters and abolish them, for they prey on the Innocent.” The Bright Palm crept forward, spikes held low. “Fifth tenet.”

  “She could've killed me, but she didn't.” Jerani leaned back from an upward sweep of bronze. “Don't you see? She's good.”

  “Feasters are never Innocent. Twelfth tenet, stanza eight.” The glowing man punched with bronze. “She faked her goodness.”

  Jerani let go of her with one hand to smack aside the Bright Palm's arm. “Maybe that's good enough.”

  He dropped one nail and dove forward to catch Celaise by her fragile wrist. The remaining spike lifted for a crushing stab.

  Pulling back would tear her in two. Jerani could not run, and he could not let this fight go on. Celaise could bleed her life out, if she had not already. His own heart strained, and his head hurt with his focus.

  He stepped between Celaise and the bronze point. “If you don't heal her, all of us will die. All the 'Innocents' will be crunched between ribcage jaws.”

  The spike hung in the air. The Bright Palm's face gave no sign of thinking. His brows did not crease in consideration, but his bone-white gaze shifted over the tribes, each surrounded by bumping swarms of Rock-Backs.

  “She may be a Feaster,” Jerani said, “but on the inside she's gentle.”

  As he said the words, he realized they were true. Jerani still believed in Celaise. She had shown kindness to his sister, and to his tribe. A drip of red fell from the bronze point onto Jerani's brow. He remembered something the Bright Palm had told him.

  “'Judge not the coat but the core.'“

  The Bright Palm's gaze shifted from Celaise to the warriors battling the Rock-Backs. The men staggered, and some had to be dragged away, their spear horns broken.

  “First tenet,” he said. “You shall protect the Innocent.”

  Celaise was ripped from Jerani's grasp. The second bronze nail landed in the dirt from the Bright Palm letting go to hold her under her shoulders. While her arms sagged outward, the hands that gripped her pulsed and gleamed.

  Jerani gripped the man's shoulder, worried he might heave her into the Rock-Backs.

  Light seeped into Celaise's chest, and her heart shone through her ribs and began beating. Branches of white spread from it, as if shining vines grew out from her center. Jerani stood in awe as tangles in her veins straightened, and her intake of breath sounded to him like a high note on a hornpipe.

  By the Sky Bull's burning tail, she'll live! Jerani could not believe he had done it, had convinced the Bright Palm and given the tribes a chance at survival. Jerani felt more elated than after receiving his warrior marks, when his face had screamed with the burning pain of triumph.

  Her eyes opened, pupils shimmering like the Bright Palm's, and for a wretched moment Jerani worried she had turned into one of them, the soulless shape-stealers. Then the light faded in her, and her eyes dropped from Jerani to the Bright Palm. She winced, lips curling in a sunken snarl.

  “Feaster,” the Bright Palm said. The light in him had dimmed, though it had not gone out. He trembled as he knelt, breathing in gulps. “You must protect the Innocent, for I cannot.”

  Celaise backed away from him, stumbling on her twisted foot. Her stiff arms clicked and jerked as she began to tumble. Her crutch had been lost sometime during the night.

  Jerani caught her, an
d she wrapped her claw hand around his neck, shying behind him. Part of Jerani was sorry to see the Bright Palm's magic had not healed her old wounds, only the most recent. She doesn't deserve this battered body. A new web of pink scars etched her chest.

  “You're safe.” Jerani wrapped her again in warrior robes. “He healed you. You're not dying anymore.”

  “He healed me?”

  “So you can fight the Rock-Backs.”

  “My trial…” Her black eyes darted from the lifting coils of a giant rock snake to the nearest warriors. A yellowish tongue ran over her lips, and then she swallowed. “Yes, I'll Feast on the Headless. Set me on the bull.”

  As Jerani lifted her onto Hero's back, she gripped his left arm where he had worn the bracer. Is she angry at me for throwing it away? If she was, he could see no sign of it in the moonlight.

  She gazed down at him with eyes shadowed. “You made him heal me, so I could save your people. Is that it? That's why you couldn't leave me to die.” Celaise dipped her chin away from him, and a mesh of black hair hid her face. “Even if you wanted to.”

  Jerani wrapped both his hands around hers and felt her trembling. “I came back to you because I think you deserve to live. Same as the rest of us.”

  Her eyes whipped around to him, and they shone with a deep orange light. Her hair turned as clear as spider silk and billowed upward, and her body shifted from crooked to beautiful. How quick to change, he thought, and how little it matters.

  Her dress boomed, the Angry Mother erupting inside her.

  Flakes of ash sifted from her gloves as she lifted her arm from Jerani, brushing his face with warmth before reaching toward the Rock-Backs. “I am ready,” she said.

  Jerani slapped Hero's flank, and the bull charged with an echoing moo.

  Within her dress, the black-scabbed lava lake pulsed and cracked with furious heat. A cape of ash flapped from her shoulders, wobbling up and down in a spout of grey as she leaped into the crush of Rock-Backs.