by K. Eason
The wurm bellowed. The remnants of her wings thrashed to keep her upright as she tugged at her leg. Howled when it would not move, and pulled harder. She tore herself loose in a red gout. Wood cracked, and the javelin’s top half spun away. The second half remained where it was, deep in the mountain’s skin. The wurm hopped, one-legged. Caught herself on the wounded limb and staggered. The gusts from her wings pushed Veiko back. Turned the rain into tiny spears and forced him to drop halfway to a crouch, to hold the axe tight against his body and dip his chin and squint. He saw the wurm’s belly scales, pale and heaving and far too close.
“Look out!” A woman’s voice, shredded shrill by volume and fear. Salis, he thought. And a second sound, far louder: the gurgling hiss of the wurm’s indrawn breath.
She was going to spit, oh ancestors.
He dropped a shoulder, threw himself back and sideways. Trusted the mud to spare him broken bones, trusted skill to keep the axe from his own flesh. Turned his face and squeezed his eyes closed. He rolled over his hip and shoulder (and axe, there, the blade safely turned) and got both his feet under him and braced one heel against further skidding. He smelled the venom first, hot metal and sour-sharp. It caught him across the shoulder first, splattered along his upper arm and over his elbow. He felt the impact of it, had a heartbeat to know what came next: this wasn’t his first spitting, but the last one had struck armor, where the leather offered some protection. Mere woven wool sleeves did not; and so, at the end of that heartbeat, Veiko felt his skin blister, and a burn that had little to do with fire. He was prepared for that, and for the sluice of rain that spread the venom and thinned that burn to bearable. He dropped his chin and spared an arm to scrape the mud off his face. Mud, and the remnants of venom, still caught in leather and wool, that ran out with the rain: across his brow, his cheek. Into his left eye.
A moment of realization, before the pain arrived. Then Veiko forgot about the wurm, the axe, about anything except the burning and the red sheet where there should be sight. He reached for his eye. Pawed at it. Curved his fingers and—
“Fuck and damn.” Hands grabbed his wrist. Snow, he wished; but it was the scout, Salis, fingers as hard as her eyes, who pulled his hand off and forced his face up so that the rain washed him clean.
She let him go, finally, after a heartbeat of forever. He shook his head, blinking tears and snot. The left eyelid seemed intact when he touched it. The eye itself, too, round and firm under that lid. But when he opened it, all he saw was a grey haze.
The right eye was clear enough. Showed him Salis peering into his face, concern and impatience mingled. Then she clapped him hard on the shoulder and shifted her grip to haul him to his feet. Behind them, upslope, the wurm howled and thrashed. A man shouted, and Salis grimaced. She thrust Veiko aside and pushed past him, shaking another javelin out of her quiver, readying it in her right fist.
Back into the fight, because the wurm wasn’t dead and her fellows needed her. Because she couldn’t feel the wurm’s panic-sending, because Veiko had sung it silent. That panic beat now on the borders of that song, which was only as strong as its singer. Which weakened in the wake of his panic, at his wounding.
He would need to sing again, or the scouts would break and scatter. That might save their lives, that running. Might save his, too. He had one dog left, and one working eye. A man might reckon he’d spent enough, risked enough. Had too much left to lose.
One dog. One eye. One partner.
Veiko had never been, in his own estimation, a good noidghe. Had not been a good man, either, whatever Snowdenaelikk said to the contrary. But he was good enough with an axe to cleave men’s skulls when his temper took him. To cleave a wurm’s flesh, too, even one-eyed. He found his axe in the mud, picked it up, shook it clean. Then he followed Salis up the slope. And he began to sing.
* * *
Tal’Shik bared her teeth, long and curved and sharp in her woman’s mouth, into a grin. Raised her severed hand. The flesh smoked into liquid to the wrist, drooling into five strands, like wax off a candle. Long, yeah, the length of a forearm. Far more reach than the broken seax. She cracked her former hand like a five-tailed whip, two strands of which Snow caught with her ruined seax. They wrapped the blade, hissing and smoking where they touched metal. Parted, a little, where they clenched the sharp edge. Snow twisted, wrenched to clear the blade. Too late, not fast enough. The remaining three strands found her, licked a triple gash through leather and linen and skin from her shoulder to her hip. It burned like fire, like razors, like dragon venom.
Tal’Shik’s venom. Oh, fuck and damn.
Snow tried to retreat and fell down instead. She dropped the broken seax. It skidded across the bank. Teetered, for a heartbeat, on the river’s edge. Then a bloated hand reached up and claimed it. A dead hand. River-dead.
Ask what the dead would do with a weapon. Probably carve her corpse up with it when Tal’Shik threw her into the river. Snow had nothing left but daggers. She was well and truly poisoned, too: the chirurgeon knew the wound was deep but not lethal, all mess and drama and treatable with needle and thread; but the apothecary’s daughter knew deadly when it caught fire in her blood.
These were the ghost roads. And she was still
half
a conjuror. She couldn’t wait anymore for Bel and the adepts’ conjuring to work. She’d make do with her own little talent, same as ever.
Snow dragged a witchfire into being, clenched it in the palm of her hand. Imagination, yeah, that the world turned a little greyer. That the dead in the river snarled and thrashed a little harder.
Tal’Shik saw that witchfire and laughed and shot Snow a look of pure sneering triumph. Like a hundred highborn women, like the Adept Council, like Ari and Tsabrak and the old Laughing God.
Snow made a ball of the witchfire, and she threw it.
It hit Tal’Shik and burst like a clay pot. Where the blue sparks touched sand, they guttered and died. But where they touched Tal’Shik, they caught and bloomed and spread.
Tal’Shik howled. Bent herself into the dragon shape and leaped, burning, into the air. The swollen sky warped and withdrew a respectable distance, where it roiled and sulked black and sprinkled blood like an afterthought, which found its way in strands and rivulets to the river.
Belaery’s spell was still working, then. Tal’Shik was still bleeding out whatever it was gods bled, even from her refuge in the sky.
Small comfort.
Snow looked down at herself. The venom-burn had eased with Tal’Shik’s retreat. That was a good thing. But the blood running out of her wasn’t. Those wounds were real, and the river was damn near boiling. Visible hands reaching up, clawing at the banks. Voices, wet and thick, rising out of the water. The river-dead loved blood.
Fuck and damn.
* * *
The battle washed up the Jokki, threatened to spill into Illharek proper. There were skirmishes on the Riverwalk, Talir against Dvergir. The reserves had come down from the garrison. They were the dry troops, the ones whose boots still showed leather, the ones not plastered with mud and worse wetness.
And still the Taliri came. Ragged fucking raiders threatening Illharek, which hadn’t happened since the Republic’s founding. It was godmagic helping them. That toadlicking dragon. Snow had warned her. Snow had said bring up the city’s own godsworn, use everything, every weapon.
Her pride had said otherwise. She had said Illharek would die before it used godmagic in its defense. That everything depended on Veiko, and the adepts’ ritual, and on Snow.
Please, foremothers, let her not be too late.
Dekklis felt the conjuring first, like a buzzing under her skin, as she came up to the river bank. Heard Belaery’s chant next, sharp and clear. And then there, in the river, she saw it. The adepts’ platform had taken some damage. Blackened edges, one of the braziers tipped and smoking. Belaery had a fistful of glowing threads in her hand, witchfire winding through her fingers from each of the other adepts still st
anding. The old woman was still on her feet, and the half-blood man, and Belaery herself. The other Adept was pinned to the wood with a Taliri arrow. Not dead, not yet, but the sigils on her quarter of the circle were dim and flickering. Of Snow, there was no sign at all. But in the center of the barge, above a nexus of complicated scribbles on the wood, hung a ribbon of quicksilver. It writhed like a worm in a bird’s beak, twisting and knotting in on itself, stretching and curling. Bleeding, oh foremothers. A silver slash in the very air, dripping what looked like actual blood. Not much more than a trickle that collected in a silver-chased bowl on the deck, thick and dark and undiluted by rain.
Dekklis jumped the small gap from bank to barge. She knew enough about wards not to cross the glowing lines, but she could shout just fine. “Belaery! Where’s Snow?”
Belaery shot her a glare without losing a syllable. The other Adepts—the ones still on their feet—ignored Dekklis completely.
“Don’t distract her. She’s only thing holding the ritual together.” Istel followed Dekklis onto the platform. “Snow’s caught on the other side of that rift. In the ghost roads.”
The silver thread. Right. That was supposed to be an opening.
“I want to talk to Istel.”
“He’s here. We’re all here.” Flames licked across Istel’s eyes. “The adepts are draining Tal’Shik, but it’s too slow. Snow’s alone over there. She’s going to lose this fight. She needs you, Szanys Dekklis. She needs me. I can help reopen the rift. But I can’t cross the wards.”
Snow had said the God would not fight Tal’Shik directly, that he would wait for a chance to strike. Then his chance, now, was her. And her chance, too, to end this, to take Illharek back from Tal’Shik and make the Illhari into what they should be.
“All right,” Dekklis said to the God. And to Belaery, “Do it! Let the God through!”
Belaery scowled. Then she jerked her chin at the fallen adept. Tossed the God a strand of the witchfire as he crossed the platform. The God caught it, wrapped it once around his wrist. Smiled, slip-sided and cocky and cruel. Then he stepped across the glowing lines and wrapped his hands around the silver thread. Wedged his fingers into the quicksilver and tore it wide.
The wounded adept screamed, faintly. The half-blood adept swore. The dragon on the hill bellowed and the whole sky turned a blood-violet.
But the rift to the ghost roads opened and stayed open.
“Go,” said the Laughing God; and Dekklis did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The first of the river-dead was a woman, though she was too leached and swollen to identify as Dvergir or Talir or Alvir. A great hole tunneled through her, crotch to collar, dripping black water. The ghost paused, swaying—sniffing, dear Laughing God, like Snow was fresh bread and roast meat together.
Snow raised the witchfire like a brand, and the river-dead shied back. The second one had arrived by now, and the third. The fourth. Fuck and damn, every corpse in the river was crawling out, coming to her. Circling, surrounding her. She swung herself around, the witchfire thrust out like a blade. It flared blue and blinding, trailing sparks that caught and burned any river-dead they touched. The woman with the hole through her, and the man next to her, the ones crowded too close behind her, the ones reaching for her unguarded back.
They didn’t scream. Burned and made no noise at all. Columns of blue fire, then columns of ash, then drifting dust. The witchfire circle burned whiter, brighter than Snow’d ever managed before.
Veiko wouldn’t approve this wholesale murder of spirits. And if she ever got to tell him what she’d done, she’d let him scold her as long as he wanted.
Please, Laughing God.
The dead were still coming. Dripping. Crawling out of the river and surrounding her. It would be a race to see which of them killed her first, or if the witchfire could burn them fast enough.
Then a blast of
real
wind that smelled like rain and river and expensive incense hit Snow like a mallet. She staggered. Kept her feet, somehow, while the ground pitched and heaved like a barge on a river.
No. Not like. That was actual wood under her boots. She was back on the river, on the platform. For an eyeblink she saw Belaery and Kalle where the river-dead had been.
Then the ghost roads crashed back around her, a throng of hungry river-dead and her own blood running into the sand and the witchfire guttering out, casualty of her distraction.
“Snow!”
The owner of that voice could not be here, and was, somehow: Szanys Dekklis, dripping rain all over the sand and the rocks and the platform, stepping out of
nowhere
the rift and laying into the nearest river-dead with a legion sword. The river-dead seemed unhappy with wounding. Made half-swipes at Dekklis and yielded ground. Then Snow summoned enough wit to call the witchfire back. She intended to make a circle this time, a border to hold the dead back. But the witchfire defied her and made its own path, not quite circular. Odd angles and apexes, yeah, and little sigils that sprang up blue and hot. The river-dead caught on the inside were no match for Dekklis; the ones on the outside showed no inclination to cross the blue flames.
Then Snow recognized the shape of it. This was Belaery’s spell, Bel’s wards, shaping her witchfire from the raft on the Jokki. She saw, out of the corner of her eye, the braziers burning. Felt the tingle of cold rain on her face. Caught a stray breath of incense. Heard Belaery’s chant like a heartbeat, holding it together. But look square at anything, and it was all blasted stone and black rivers and ghosts.
A woman’s mind could split, trying to balance all this. She wondered how Dekklis was managing—grim-eyed and grey-lipped, all her focus on Snow’s face.
“The God said you needed help,” she said. “Looks about right.”
“The Laughing God? My God?”
“Or Istel. You pick.” Dekklis dared a look around. “Where’s Tal’Shik?”
“Up,” Snow began to say.
But then the sky creaked like old timbers and a shape appeared, woman twisted with dragon, violet and void and lightning and thrashing as she fell. Blood ran off her in threads, ropes, as Belaery’s spell did its work. And now, with the rift open again, those threads found an anchor, and sank through the portal, and pulled.
Tal’Shik crashed into the barren earth. Crashed through it. The ground ripped loose: first the sand, slithering, then the rocks, rolling and rattling together. The river-dead turned as one. Their heads lifted, blind eyes fixed on Tal’Shik. Then they rushed the crater, adding their weight to the slipping earth. There was black oblivion at the bottom of the crater, roiling clouds and lightning waves, pulling all the light into itself. And in the center of it, a dragon-shape. Broken-winged oblivion, thrashing among the river-dead.
Snow started to smile. Then she felt the ground under her feet tilt. Felt it tear, fuck and damn, like rotting cloth. Then she and Dekklis were sliding toward the crater, toward Tal’Shik and all the dead.
Then something grabbed her by the shoulder. Talons, she thought first, claws, some other dragon, some rogue river-dead or a horror she hadn’t thought of yet. She twisted in the grip, dragging a knife out of her belt, right-handed, as her feet came off the ground. Whatever it was, see how it liked metal stuck into it, see if it could bleed—
The Laughing God cast her down like a sack of meal, one-handed. Cast Dekklis beside her, on a single patch of earth held level and floating on—nothing, fuck and damn, except the God’s own will.
Tsabrak’s chiseled beauty ebbed and flowed under Istel’s plain bones. “I heard you,” he said to Snow. “And I came. You’re hurt.”
“Mostly mess, except the venom.” Which was starting to burn again, first spark on its way to bonfire. “Godmagic toadshit. —No. Don’t,” as the God reached for her. “No more favors from you.”
Dekklis shouldered past the God. Took Snow’s arm and pulled her standing. “All right. Now what?” But Dekklis was not looking at her. Looking past
her, at the God.
Who said, “Now you do your part, Szanys Dekklis. Save Illharek.”
“Wait,” Snow said, because Dek was already waving her sword like an idiot, ready to jump over the toadfucking wards and into the crater. “Don’t you fucking dare. Listen, Szanys. In this one thing, you listen. You kill Tal’Shik, she becomes part of you, yeah? Just like the God and Tsabrak. That’s why he won’t do it himself. That’s why he’s using you as the weapon.”
Dekklis looked at her. “Same thing happens if she kills me? I’m inside her?”
“Yes. Except you stop being you. She takes everything you are. So you can’t let her kill you, yeah?”
“So what, we stand here?”
“Patience, Dictator. Fuck and damn.” Snow coaxed another witchfire into her hands. Tossed it up, grew it wide as an Illhari road. Then she cast it down into the chasm, onto river-dead and Tal’Shik, where it spread like oil across dead and dragon alike. “Give it time. That, and what Bel’s doing, should finish her.”
“Unless it doesn’t. Unless something happens—one of the adepts dies, the dragon kills Veiko. Can’t take that chance. We didn’t finish the Purge the first time, and look what happened.”
“Tal’Shik’s Illharek.”
“No. I’m Illharek. What we should be.” Dekklis looked at her. “You listen to me, Snow. Saving Illharek’s my oath. Not yours. You’ve done your part.”
The God winced. Closed his eyes and shook his head, hard. Opened plain Istel eyes, dark and alive. “It isn’t only your oath, Dek. I’ll come with you. We will.”
It was exactly like some fucking tavern ballad, with the highborn fucking hero and her faithful companion.
“Oh hell,” Snow muttered. “I’m as Illhari as you are. I’m with you.”
Veiko wouldn’t forgive her for this. But he’d never understood what Illhari meant, either.
Dekklis grimaced. Nodded. But Istel turned toward Snow, and his eyes caught fire again.
