Choking for breath, Jemma called upon her Stone’s Power and managed to pry Shade’s hands apart.
“Very well, have it your way, Jem-mah!” Shade’s diamond birthmark was almost black with rage. “Revenge can still be sweet!” She ripped Jemma’s Stone from her throat, then dropped it with a roar of pain, her hand red and blistered. She blew on her palm, and the red faded. Then she blew on Jemma’s face. Jemma felt her whole body freeze.
“And that,” said Shade, “is the last breath I’ll ever waste on you!” She stood, shaking off the triplets and rats, then kicked Jemma hard, in the stomach. Jemma doubled up, groaning, and reached for her Stone, but Shade kicked it away as she grabbed Flora by the hair and hauled her toward the fireplace.
“Let me go! Pleeeeease! Jemma—help!” Flora’s cries ripped Jemma’s heart. Simon and Tiny lay on the floor, trembling. Digby was on his back now, with Feo on top of him, holding the halberd’s handle across his throat.
The Agromonds were winning.
Don’t despair. Two snouts nudged Jemma’s hand, and dropped her Stone into her palm. Warmth trickled through her.
“Morda, Morda, Mordalay …” Shade’s strident voice now joined with her parents’.
“Feo!” Shade yelled, holding Flora around the neck with one arm. “Stop squandering precious energy on that scab and get over here! It’s time for the Sacrifice!”
Flora screamed. Digby roared, held down by Feo. Simon and Tiny wailed.
“No …” Jemma clasped her Stone and struggled to her knees. Noodle and Pie leapt onto her shoulders and rippled energy into her, but still the pain from Shade’s kick was intense, and she let out a moan, clutching her belly.
Feo looked at her. His face softened. He loosened his hold on Digby and mouthed her name. Jemma … The pinkish aura she had seen the night before flared around him.
“It’s not too late, Feo,” Jemma rasped. “You can still change your mind.” The aura moved toward her, hesitated, then moved again. “Please, Feo, think of what you said last night.”
“Bring to us on this your day—”
“Feo!” Shade shrieked. “Your family needs you—now!”
Suddenly, Feo’s pink aura withered and disappeared. His mouth set. He spat at Digby and released the halberd, then stood and backed away. The Agromonds’ protective shield shimmered like dark water as he stepped back into it and took his place next to Shade. Both his eyes and Shade’s glazed, and they joined in the chant.
“Your darkest demon, Scagavay!”
Flora, still gripped by Shade, was choking on the smoke, tears streaming down her face. Digby hauled himself to his feet and charged toward her, but the force field around the Agromonds was even stronger now, and he slashed and clawed at it in vain. Jemma crawled over to him, clutching her Stone, the rats on her shoulders. Tiny and Simon followed close behind. Her lungs seared from the stinking black cloud spewing from the fireplace. Her light shield was all but gone. Digby helped her stand, the light around him strong again now that Feo was no longer attacking him.
“Morda-Morda-Mordalay …” Nocturna slowly stepped away from the group and turned to face Flora. Wind whisked from the fireplace, spiraling all the grayness in the room into one dense mass above her head, where it hovered, pulsing like a monstrous dark heart. Nocturna gripped the sword with both hands and slowly began to raise it.
Jemma summoned all her strength and concentration. “The Light be called,” she yelled. “Scagavay, be gone, now!”
Nocturna wavered; the sword wobbled. Scagavay’s dark mass shrank slightly.
“The Light be called!” Jemma shouted a second time, as loudly as she could. “Scagavay, be gone—now!”
Scagavay shrank again. The black candles sputtered. Nocturna’s sword clanged to the ground. Nox and Feo stopped chanting. For a second, their gray protective shield wavered. Seizing his chance, Digby rushed into it and wrenched Flora from Shade’s grip.
“Got you!” He picked her up and carried her back to Jemma’s side.
“The Light be called!” Jemma yelled as Noodle and Pie sent a burst of energy through her shoulders. “Scagavay, be—”
An arrow of blackness shot out from Scagavay, puncturing her light shield and twining around her throat. Her words choked. Noodle and Pie fell to the ground.
“Bring to us on this Your day …” The Agromond voices strengthened again. The ever-growing mass above their heads swelled. “Your darkest demon—SCAGAVAY!”
The candles in the circle flared. Flames in the fireplace leapt up. Scagavay started to emit a sound, high at first, like a distant scream, which rapidly crescendoed as a deep roar rose up behind it, overpowering it and filling the room with one deafening howl. The wind renewed its assault, whipping up the debris around Jemma, Digby, and the triplets. Noodle and Pie clawed their way up to her pockets.
“Come on, Jem,” Digby yelled. “We can do it!” He took her hand. Her light shield intensified. The strand around her throat fell to the floor in sooty fragments, and together, they shouted at the top of their lungs:
“SCAGAVAY, BE GONE NOW!”
The flagstones around their feet seemed to melt. Wisps of light, hundreds of them, gold, green, pink, and blue, poured up from below and swirled toward Scagavay.
“Jem!” Digby gasped. “Look—Luminals!” The Luminals wove through Scagavay’s thick mass, separating it into strands, which began to shrink and dissipate. Several candles went out.
“No!” Nocturna shrieked. She picked up the sword and grabbed one of her weasels by the scruff of its neck. “Mord Ancestors,” she shouted, holding up the writhing creature, “witness my Offering!” With one deft move, she sliced its throat and dropped it, then snatched up a second one and repeated the slaughter. Scagavay dipped smoky tendrils through the sacrificial blood pooling at Nocturna’s feet, and expanded again.
The triplets screamed. Luminals kept coming, but as fast as they materialized, they were absorbed by Scagavay’s darkness. The surviving two weasels slithered toward Jemma, teeth bared, then leapt for her throat. But Digby was quick. He grabbed them by their tails and flung them, screeching, into a pillar.
“Jem!” he yelled. “The Song!”
The Song. Jemma fought to remember its melody, but it muddled in her mind. Then she heard it—the heavenly sound that had poured into her through Drudge’s arms the day before, winding through her head, gathering force.
“Jem—that’s beautiful!”
“It’s not me, Dig—”
The melody was coming from the back of the room. Jemma wheeled around, and there, emerging from the shadows, was Drudge. He stood for a second, teetering. A blue aura flickered around him, stronger than Jemma had seen surrounding him before; and then a younger, luminous body began shimmering through his wizened exterior as he walked slowly toward them. The song flowed from his mouth, but seemed to be swirling around him also, growing louder with every step he took.
The Agromonds’ voices trailed off. Clumps of ceiling plaster rained around them. One of the pews cracked. In a far corner of the room, a beam crashed to the floor.
Drudge’s hair blew back in the wind, his gait steady and purposeful. Layers of aging dissolved, as if being peeled away by his warrior spirit. It was Gudred who stepped up beside Jemma.
“Three hundred years I have tarried,” he said, his voice strong and clear. “Now it is your voice they await. Sing, Jemma. Sing with me, and with the Song!”
He took her hand. Suddenly, the glorious sound was somehow rising from the ground, rushing up through her feet and out of her mouth with a crystal clarity that felt utterly new and familiar at the same time. It was as if a whole choir was pouring out from her and into the room. The voices of Majem, and all my ancestors, she thought. But it was so much more: an army of Light Beings, of souls who had come to add their voices to the Song. They were the Song. And as they sang, Luminals appeared again, increasing in number and intensity. Scagavay pulled back, fragmenting, then coalesced again into a trembling cloud a
bove the Agromonds’ heads. Stunned into silence, Nox and Feo were ashen. Shade clamped onto Nocturna, whose sword now hung limp in her hand as Luminals came thick and fast, flying through Scagavay’s cloudy sinews, breaking them apart.
“Jem,” said Digby, “it’s working! Scagavay’s shrinking!”
Jemma’s heart lifted, then fell again when she turned to Gudred. His light was dimming.
“You must go on,” he rasped. “Finish it.…”
She held his hand tighter, as if doing so could keep him there, and continued to sing. The glorious chorus grew. Scagavay’s roar died down; the wind dropped. The black globe was shrinking. The Agromonds stood stupefied, their protective shield gone. A stone arm fell from Mordana’s statue. With a loud crack! a fissure zigzagged across the hearth.
The invisible choir stopped its melody, hanging on one heavenly chord as if every note in the universe were hovering on the edge of some momentous event.
“Now,” Gudred whispered, “the Releasing Rime … Say it!”
But before Jemma could take a breath, Nocturna’s voice pierced the Ceremony Chamber. “Mordrake, Mordana,” she shrieked. “I hear your promise and accept your demand!” She grabbed Feo, threw him onto the hearth, stomped one foot onto his neck, and raised her sword.
“Mama, no!” Feo screamed. “Please, no!”
Nox stepped toward them, but Shade pushed him back and wrapped him in dark energy bands, holding him fast. Her face quivered with glee. Scagavay hovered above them, taking the form of a huge open mouth, ready, waiting.…
“Stop!” Jemma shrieked. She leapt forward and shot out a light sphere to protect Feo, but Nocturna parried it and swung her sword at her, forcing her back. Shade shot a Dromfell at her. She ducked, but it grazed her shoulder, its impact knocking her backward to the floor. “Stop—you can’t! He has the Mark—he’s one of you!”
“Yes, he has the Mark,” Shade sneered, “just as you do! It seems meaningless, does it not, Jem-mah?” She turned to her mother. “Do it, Mama—do it!”
Nocturna raised her sword again, and drove its long blade into Feo’s heart. He shuddered, groaned once, and was still.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Saeweldar
A silver-gray wisp rose from Feo’s body and was sucked into Scagavay. The triplets’ screams melded with Scagavay’s roar, with Nox’s cries of disbelief, and with Shade’s banshee whoop of victory, drowning out the thin thread of song still trickling from Gudred’s mouth.
“And now, in accordance with Twin Lore,” Shade cried, grabbing Feo’s amulet from around his neck, “I take possession of my full Powers!” Darkness thickened around her as if paying her homage, then Scagavay’s murky grayness leapt outward again, filling the room.
Jemma crawled toward Gudred. He was aging with every second, lines gathering on his face, his body shrinking.
“The Releasing Rime,” he wheezed. “Sssay!”
She opened her mouth. But Scagavay was upon her again, spinning mercilessly, and she was lifted off the ground, spiraling upward with the dust and debris. The Bell Tower began booming, each toll juddering through her as she was engulfed in a demonic hiss: At last, I have you! You are mine, all mine!
Jemma sent a grounding cord earthward, which steadied her slightly. Fighting for breath, she tried to utter the Rime, but the words buffeted back into her throat. Claws of wind whipped into her pockets, siphoning out Noodle and Pie and whisking them beyond her reach. They slammed against the ceiling, their tiny limbs spreadeagled, her amulet wrapped around Noodle’s neck. She shot a beam of Light around them just in time to prevent them being pulverized by a carved demon head that had been ripped from the vaulting. Then, with a sharp jerk, the grounding cord broke, and she was whisked up and pinned against the ceiling next to the rats, the breath being sucked from her lungs.
You’re mine! The hiss crescendoed to a roar. Mine, my sweet thirteen!
Jemma’s thoughts sputtered as her lungs strained for air. Releasing Rhyme … must say it …
Far below, through Scagavay’s swirling gray, the black globe pulsed back to life. Firelight leapt up, illuminating Shade and Nocturna, who were waving the black altar cloth like a victory flag and dancing together on a lake of red, Rook’s dark wings sailing above them. Nox was lying facedown across Feo’s blood-soaked chest. Digby was holding the triplets’ faces to him so that they shouldn’t see the horror unfolding. Gudred, years galloping upon him again, was on all fours, any remains of the Song coming from him inaudible above Scagavay’s roar. Every word of the Releasing Rime was obliterated from Jemma’s head, whirled and deafened into oblivion, and at any moment she, the rats, Digby, and the triplets would all be whirled into oblivion with it.
Help me, Majem, she pleaded. What am I to do?
A soundless voice welled up from the depths of her being. Scagavay is like the Mist. You know what to do. Blank … counter.… Blank. For the Mist, that had meant embodying its dampness, its whiteness, to become one with it, but this …
Summoning every ounce of concentration, Jemma closed her eyes, filling her mind with Scagavay’s tarry evil. Every foul thought she had ever had flooded her, every word of anger, every judgment, and she embraced them all until she was one with the darkness. A vile stillness settled around her. Into it, she threw the full force of her intent. The words of the Rime unjumbled from the chaos, merging with the Song’s Power as she shouted with all her might—
“All Orbs held here in Captivitee,
Release thy Bondes, be thou free!”
The black globe pulsed once, twice, and then shattered, scattering gray ash everywhere. Scagavay’s howl ceased. For a split second, Jemma heard the celestial chord of voices ringing out again. Then everything went silent in her head.
She was suspended in mid-air, the scene below her slowing as if immersed in syrupwater. The candles went out. Nocturna and Shade released hands and circled to a halt. Digby let go of the triplets. Nox, still lying on Feo’s chest, was shaking with sobs. Gudred, his light now a mere flicker, looked up at her. Again! said the voice from within, so again she yelled the words at the top of her lungs, though she couldn’t hear them. All around, the blackness separated into strands, then into particles, releasing hundreds of light orbs as it did so—golden orbs and silver-blue, pink-tinged ones, all sailing through the Ceremony Chamber air and sprinkling the silence with children’s voices, whispering, chattering, laughing. Then one small, particularly bright orb appeared in front of Jemma’s eyes.
Jem-Jem, said a tiny voice in her head, Jem-Jem—
“Jamem …” She reached out and touched the orb. It lingered for several seconds, sparkling with the color of flame, and she felt as though it were dissolving her palm, flowing into her with an airy rush that made her gasp. “Jamem!” she said again. Then the orb spun away and joined the others. They began to combine into larger orbs, and larger still, prismatic colors glinting off them as they rose and gathered into one breathtaking sphere of shimmering, multicolored fire. In an explosion of light, Scagavay was sucked into it.
The darkness was gone.
Jemma felt a surge of pure joy. The celestial voices rang out again, hanging in mid-chord as a cushion of warm air floated her down through tumbling dust motes. Noodle and Pie were floating down too, her Stone scintillating around Noodle’s neck. The three of them were gently deposited next to Digby. His face was ecstatic and he was saying something, but all she could hear was the crystal choir. Slowly, it faded, and other sounds began filtering through, Digby’s words mixing with the triplets’ excited babble and the rats’ squeals.
“Jem!” He let go of the triplets and threw his arms around her. “You done it—look!”
Translucent light filled the room. The triplets, standing behind Digby, stood in wide-eyed amazement. Behind them, Nocturna and Shade cowered into the altar cloth, shielding themselves from the brightness. Nox, now kneeling next to Feo’s body, gaped. And containing them all, almost filling the room, was one enormous Luminal, throbbing
gently like a giant heartbeat. Its brilliance sparkled off the walls in all colors of the rainbow, and reflected in the faces it illuminated.
“We’ve done it, Dig,” Jemma whispered, vaguely aware of small paws clambering up her leg and a small muzzle nudging something smooth and cool into her hand. She opened her palm. Her Stone lay there, its aquamarine glow pulsing in time with the Luminal. She tied it around her neck by its broken chain.
“Sssae … Sssaewel …,” a voice croaked behind her. She turned. Drudge was on the floor, reaching for her. She ran to him and knelt by his side.
“Oh, Drudge … Gudred … Thank you.”
He smiled his yellow-toothed smile and laid a chilly hand against her cheek. His touch communicated what his voice no longer had strength for: this was Saeweldar, the combined soul of every child who had been slain at Agromond Castle. Including Jamem. And Feo. And Nox’s sister, Malaena. Each was now released from the darkness—the monster—and united in one glorious sphere of Light, one powerful Luminal. Scagavay was gone. Forever.
The flow of images ebbed from Drudge’s hand. He touched Jemma’s Stone. “Mjjjem,” he muttered. “Hers. Yours.” The furrows on his face softened. “You … ssso like her …”
Jemma could feel Drudge’s heart—Gudred’s—straining toward the one it had missed for all these years. Love welled up in her: hers, Drudge’s, Gudred’s, and Majem’s. “But she was married to your brother,” she whispered, blinking back tears, “so you made this your mission. To come here. For her. For me. For all of Anglavia—”
“Jem!” Digby yelled. “Watch out!”
Jemma looked up. Nox was lunging toward her, his face and clothes streaked with Feo’s blood. Digby tried to grab him but missed. Nox threw his full weight against her, propelling her backward. As she landed, one end of a huge beam crashed onto his back, pinning him to the flagstones and knocking him unconscious. If he hadn’t pushed her, she would have been crushed beneath it. He had saved her—
The Flame in the Mist Page 34
