Until, when the chorus of light and sound reaches its crescendo, all eyes suddenly turn as one toward the doorway.
The fairies average the size of a human finger; their queen dwarfs them by comparison, though she stands smaller than a Daikini child. Cherlindrea’s hair is gossamer gold, so pale it nearly matches the silver of her gown, her face and form of unhuman perfection. Every aspect of her seems to float, as though she moves through water, her gown layer upon diaphanous layer, creating the sense of what lies beneath without revealing a thing. Her wings are scarcely thicker, neither large nor substantial enough to bear her aloft—yet they do so, and without noticeable effort. As she makes her way along the aisle, Angwyn’s King proudly, handsomely, by her side, all her companions rush to her; they take position behind her, their formation creating the illusion of a vast, glittering train that ripples and flows across the entire spectrum of visible light and color. It is a breathtaking display, beside which even the most magnificent fireworks display pales. When she reaches and takes her seat, it shatters, all its fairy parts spinning off like plasma from a newborn star, circling up and away to their own assigned places.
When the room quiets, and eyes grow once more accustomed to the less dramatic illumination of the candle glow, Thorn beholds Willow Ufgood standing in the doorway.
Through the Demon’s “eyes,” Thorn beheld the most magnificent lie.
The figure is tall in a way Willow has never been, and handsome in a way Willow never dreamed of being. In the main, the features are his, but they’ve been shaped and polished to push him more toward the Daikini, what most men would consider craggy good looks. A ready smile of welcome without a hint of shyness, laughing eyes that view the assemblage with true delight, this is a man whose every move and gesture proclaims a generosity of spirit to go along with his gentle strength. There are more lines than one would expect in a face of his age, testament to the price paid for the knowledge and power that swirl from his shoulders like a greatcloak.
His colors are white and gold, the one so pure, the other so bright, it hurts to look at him. His tunic is cut to emphasize the sweep of his powerful chest, while equally snug-fitting trousers do the same for shapely legs. His boots echo the curve of his calf, one more dynamic element in an ensemble already pushing the outer edges of fashion. Gold thread is worked through the fabric of the garments, apparently for aesthetic effect, in a random display that catches the light and amplifies it so that every movement the sorcerer makes triggers a flashing cascade of micro-sunbursts, a display easily as dazzling as the fireworks prepared to celebrate the conclusion of the Ascension.
As Willow’s stride eats up the distance from entrance to altar, Thorn has a suddenly absurd vision of dust motes scrambling with frantic desperation to get out of his way, lest the slightest contact mar the perfection of his costume.
Thorn can’t watch, can’t bear to. And yet cannot tear his eyes away. This false Willow is too splendid a glory for any living being, mortal or otherwise, to resist.
Were he himself, he would be lost. Fortunately, the Demon defines Its nature by discerning the patterns in everything and then unworking them.
The threads, he realizes, with a thrill of horror, the flashes! It’s how they catch the light when he moves!
It is a variation on the spell that has been used to Cloak the barracks. Again, nothing very sinister, on the face of it. The simplest kind of glamour, used by touring conjurers to place their audience in a more receptive mood, and easily deflected by any sorcerer worth the name. One of the first lessons taught any decent practitioner of the magical arts is how to recognize and protect yourself against such manipulation; it is something done automatically. Yet the web being woven here is such a masterpiece of deception that simply to behold this deceiver—Thorn refuses to think of the impostor as Willow, deciding in that instant that Deceiver is the name he’ll use from then on—is to become ensnared, and once caught, the thought of protecting themselves further nevermore enters anyone’s head. It is as though the Deceiver has access to their most secret souls, that somehow he knows all present more intimately than they know themselves.
Then vision blurred, Thorn’s sense of the chamber high above slipped away and he scrabbled desperately for purchase as both inner and outer reality frayed faster than the threads of that napkin the Aldwyn had showed him so long ago. He was three spirits where there should be only one and rapidly discovering that the strain of maintaining coherence between himself and Elora and Anakerie made riding the whirlwind tiger a picnic by comparison.
The Demon had no concept of structure and therefore kept trying to warp Thorn to Its way of being. No matter that what the Nelwyn beheld was illusion, a simulacrum of his mind to match the substance of flesh—namely, his body—still standing close by, his perceptions reacted as if this was real. When his trunk was stretched and twisted like molten toffee, a halting, gurgling grunt of agony was likewise wrenched with it. He felt the pain of growing wings, the bones of face and body cracking and reshaping into a myriad of wereforms, Dragon merged with Wyr, with tiny Boggarts and on toward creatures for which he neither had nor desired names. Time rolled him back to its primordial beginnings and cast him howling to its end, flashcasting through every conceivable incarnation in between. He stood at the molten heart of the world and watched it be born, basking in a heat intense enough to vaporize the strongest metal, and likewise saw it die, crumbling underfoot to ancient dust. He saw the Darkness that was at the Beginning of All Things and the Darkness to come at the End. He saw multitudes at every hand, more aspects of himself, his world, than he had numbers to count them.
But only one image of this place, this moment.
In all the countless might-have-beens, and might-yet-bes, there was no other variant on this cell and this woman.
“Why?” he whispered, unable to comprehend, refusing to accept.
Special man, special place, special moment.
“Shut up!” he screamed, terror turning his voice to a child’s shriek. Leave me alone, he wanted to say. I want no more part of this! I deny you, I deny myself, let me go!
He felt something slip within him, as though from his grasp, and made a frantic scramble to regain his hold. It was the Demon’s child. He was losing it.
He had two of his own. There should have been a third. But times were hard, and his wife fell ill. The women of the village pooled their resources as midwives and healers—which were considerable and normally they were well able to cope with almost all manner of ailments—but there was no improvement. A runner was sent for the High Aldwyn, in hope that his magic might succeed where herbs and potions failed, but Thorn knew with sick certainty the old wizard wouldn’t arrive in time. He thought he had fallen ill himself; whenever he looked at Kiaya, his vision of her was smudged, as though she lay beneath a filthy gray veil. He’d always thought of her as a creature of passionate primary colors and wondered what she saw in as monochrome a dullard as he. Yet while he watched, those colors faded, the veil darkened, skin draping itself over too prominent bones as fever stole the flesh beneath away.
He fed her broth, even when she pushed it away, and cleaned her when she threw it up. He sat beside her most of the day and held her close at night, trying to cast warmth from his body to hers by sheer force of will. He offered what prayers he could, to any Bright Power he thought might listen. He knew he was losing her.
He was so absorbed in his battle, he had no sense of its cost on him. All his efforts, the total focus of his being, was on restoring his wife to health, and that battle in turn resolved itself down to casting off the veil that covered her. He had no idea that he was growing as gaunt as she as he stripped himself of all his strength and willingly cast it over to her. He never heard the sorrowing whispers of those who brought food and drink to his door, that the village would be mourning the loss of two instead of one.
It was the dark of the moon, on a night he’d begun to suspect would never
end. The crisis had come for them both. Kiaya’s fever blazed hotter than a smithy furnace, yet she couldn’t stop shivering. Twice he’d placed a leather strap in her mouth so she wouldn’t crack her teeth; the second time she’d near bitten it through. He’d never felt so beaten himself. He moved because he had to, each step harder than the last, to the point where he knew that if he stopped again and sat, he’d never get up.
For all the exhaustion of his body, his mind had never felt so clear. About him, all was acid-etched crystal, and he thought he was surely mad because he had the wild sensation of seeing not only the surface reality of things but the truth of them as well. The bed Kiaya lay on wasn’t just a piece of furniture; he could perceive the sweat and skill it took him to carve it, and beyond that the life of the tree from whence it came. It had been an old, storm-smashed rowan, and his breath caught in wonder as he spied a resonance of the dryad who’d long made it her home.
He heard his name and turned to the bed, feeling his heart stutter-step through a handsclap of beats at the realization that it wasn’t his Kiaya who called. A child, so wee and helpless a bit, hands outstretched to both of them. Not the baby as it was, for it wasn’t even halfway through its term, but the Nelwyn it might have been. And Thorn felt its grip—at first so ferociously tight—slacken on his fingers. He closed his own hand, and felt Kiaya do the same, but they’d have done better trying to tackle a greased pig. The child was going, there was nothing they could do to stop it, save wish it well with a final good-bye.
There was a moment when its lifelight faded and the bedroom was plunged into a preternatural shadow, when Thorn wanted nothing more than to hurl himself into Oblivion after it. The ache of loss made a sham of the phrase “more than he could bear.” Then, though, he felt a similar slippage from the figure by his side, and knew that his wife was starting to fade as well.
“No,” he cried, and repeated himself with a full-voiced bellow, “No!”
He rounded on her, in such a state he didn’t notice what was happening—good thing, actually, for the shock might have stopped his own heart right then and there—as streams of colored fire erupted from eyes and hands, twisting in and around themselves like eels as they descended on the bed to rend the veil. Fingers splayed and curled and the Power that burst from them was instantly cast as razor-edged claws. The veil tore, with the puffed and soggy sound of rotted cloth, and from it came a stench of unbelievable foulness. Thorn didn’t care; the intensity of the contagion only made him redouble his attack. He took her hand in both of his and anchored himself to the floor as if he were the tree their bed had been; come whatever may, as wild energies ripped through the pair of them, he would not let her go, he would not let her die.
She didn’t.
That had been the night the sorceress Queen Bavmorda had claimed the fortress of Nockmaar for her own.
The child—like many other innocents across the shires—had sickened because it had been touched and tainted by the darkling energies of those abominable conjurations; their souls were to merge with the mortar that bound the walls and battlements together, to armor them against every form of mystical assault. In Thorn’s family, the spell found an especially fertile field to take root in, for he was Power mainly ignorant of itself—existing more as untapped potential than actuality—and therefore defenseless. His wife had none, but the baby had, in full measure. Had he not stood firm, all three of them would have been lost. Instead, two survived and the third was blessed with a clean passing.
That long-ago night had been a test of strength; this, he realized, was one of control, to judge whether he was master of his passions and terrors—and through them, his powers—or their slave.
He felt another slippage within himself, and knew he faced another crisis, as grave and crucial as the first.
He embraced the Demon, full-hearted and with all his strength and in that dreadful moment…
…became the Demon.
His sight splinters, a corner of his vision revealing the Deceiver taking the hero’s post at the altar, slight of stature compared with any Daikini yet conveying the impression that he dwarfs them all. Awaiting Elora more like a bridegroom than the celebrant, with no color whatsoever to his aura—as if he’s been bleached of every human aspect—and a disturbing hunger to his eyes.
At the very same moment another aspect of the Demon’s awareness presents Thorn with a view of the rest of the crowded chamber and the difference between what was and is becomes plain. Where Thorn the Nelwyn beheld men and women, recognizable shapes regardless of species, Thorn the Demon perceives skirling filigrees of energy, patterns of life interwoven with those of power great and small, some wholly self-contained (these mostly confined to the Daikini) while others burst forth to tangle with those around them. A common denominator binds them all, a fundamental faith in the Light.
Winding through the assemblage, however, are the delicate strands of the Deceiver’s glamour, a continuous thread reaching outward from where he stands, the spider at the heart of its web, awaiting a final fly.
Thorn cast himself toward the doorway of Elora’s great hall as the final fanfare sounded.
He feels Anakerie in the courtyard, pacing afoot because her horse—affected by the Princess’s apprehension as she is by Thorn’s—can no longer stand to have her on its back. The hackles on Anakerie’s neck stand stiff as the bristles on a wire brush, the patterns of her being blazing hot with an anxiety neither logic nor action can quiet. Her focus is on the eastern horizon, already brightening with the approach of the full moon. When it rises fully into view, the Rite of Ascension will begin.
Hands-not-hands slipped again and Thorn hesitated, torn between two demands of equal weight: Elora’s danger on the one hand, the Demon child’s on the other.
The doors begin to open. He knows as certainly as he knows anything that Elora is doomed if she steps inside that chamber.
He knew as well that the Demon’s child was doomed if he didn’t act at once to complete the Spell of Resurrection.
Silence within the hall, a greater silence on the streets without, as the entire populace seems to hold its collective breath.
Silence far below, save for the hammering of Thorn’s heart, beat after deliberate beat, as though some brute was urging the blood through his veins as a shipmaster would galley slaves, by beating a mallet on the drum of his chest.
It was no choice, really.
He cleaved himself, child from Demon, and then did the same again, to cast the Demon from himself.
He bent over the woman’s body, his lips to hers, and let his spirit pass over to all the hollow places within her.
A final division, and with it he loosed his grip on the child. Not so easy on the child’s part, he felt it hold as his own babies had, as any small thing would, desperate not to be cast aside from that which gave it life.
“It’s all right,” he tried to say, “you’re all right, you’re safe.” But the words wouldn’t come, because for all his efforts he wasn’t yet sure they were true.
Her lips moved beneath his, a hand of flesh lifted to echo the action of the spirit and take tight hold. There were tears in his eyes, tears in hers.
“It’s all right,” he breathed, pulling away just enough to break the contact, their breaths still one. “You’re all right, you’re safe.” And this time he believed it.
“Well now, Peck, look who’s been having himself a righteous good time?”
His mind told him how to react, but his body lacked the coordination to pull it off. He was still too much the Demon, with no innate comprehension of the nature of flesh and bone and sinew, much less any sense of how to make them properly work. And so, a swift turn became a stumbling collapse that left him sprawled on hands and knees; worse, he’d given so much of himself that his weight alone was enough to set his arms immediately to trembling. He seemed to have forgotten how to breathe, he worked his lungs like a bellows, each inhalati
on and exhalation the result of a conscious command, desperate for air, only to find his best efforts reduced completely to naught as spiked bands tightened on chest and brain. He heard aspirate bubbles from under his breastbone and thought he might be drowning.
He couldn’t lift his head to see the doorway and then didn’t have to as a Death Dog—the Castellan’s “puppy”—leaped from the top of the steps to send him tumbling head over heels.
Two Maizan, one with crossbow tucked underarm, the other holding an ax already scored with blood.
“The Castellan will be impressed, Peck,” the Maizan continued. “Didn’t think it possible for any man—or mage—to beat a ChangeSpell. Mayhap next time he’ll use it on the Princess, teach Anakerie to mind her place.” A rough, appreciative laugh from his fellow, a sight he looked forward to. “Pity you won’t be there to see it. Whatever you are, little bit, you’re too dangerous to live.”
He snapped his fingers and the Death Dog charged.
Inhumanly fast as it was, the woman was that much faster, with strength to match as her arm swept round to catch the creature by its collar and hurl it at the entryway. One Maizan stumbled back through the door in a reflexive attempt to stay out of its way, as it struck the stone jamb with such force that all knew at once the beast was dead; the other lost his balance and pitched to the floor. Bad landing, left him sprawled and bleeding, ax skittering to the woman as if she’d called it to her.
She knew which end to hold it by, but that seemed about all as she struggled to her feet, body swaying with a constant series of minor adjustments as she tried to get used to standing on two feet, giving her the appearance of someone right off a boat after a long voyage. The Maizan grinned nastily as he recovered his feet and wiped his eyes clear, saber already in hand.
He lunged. She fell away before his assault, ax coming up in a twisting motion that snagged the blade at midpoint and broke it from his hold. She swept around, always giving the impression of someone on the brink of a fatal loss of balance, casting the sword out of the Maizan’s reach. She had him, he knew it.
Shadow Moon Page 25
