by S. M. Beiko
Cecelia was close enough now to see that Deon’s grin bore many sharp, cunning teeth. “And even without the authority I seek to grant you, you think that is your decision still to make?”
Cecelia swallowed. Surely the mother of all Foxes could see reason. “There are others, Deon. Others who might do you credit in bearing your image, your power. Who would lead by your example as I . . . cannot.”
The eyes of blinding gold narrowed. “And what of my example do you not hold with, daughter?”
Cecelia knew better than to go back on the offensive. She was already on thin ice, so she chose her words carefully. “There is such a thing as too much power. And Denizens are no better than humans, despite what they may think.” Cecelia cut a quick glance to the elders standing close by, their faces nearly apoplectic with rage and terror. “The world has changed since you and your sisters ruled and shaped the land. There are old tenets that are no longer relevant in the twentieth century. Approaches and ideologies that need to change. Many may think we need to follow the old ways to keep balance, to follow Ancient’s order, but there is still disorder and chaos despite that. We may be made in Ancient’s image, but we are flawed creatures. I know my limitations and I accept them. And so I could not do you proud.”
Cecelia had been taught much about these old gods, and she knew that the root of fearing them came from their ability to know what was in their Denizens’ hearts. She desperately wanted to turn around, to find Ruo in the crowd, to draw strength from her. But now she bricked up the true reasons for refusing, smothered them before they could give her away. If she bore the stone, she would say goodbye to any life she could have with Ruo. To her own ideals for a just world.
She didn’t know how much longer she could hold Deon’s gaze, though, and she knew it would be easy work for Deon to incinerate Cecelia where she stood.
“I assure you, daughter,” Deon finally murmured after deliberating, “that even my sisters and I bear our flaws. And with that admission, perhaps you are right. Perhaps what my Opal heart saw in you is not fit for the gift.”
Cecelia felt her eyes widen and fought to keep her mouth closed. Her heart sped up. Had she heard mocking in Deon’s words? But the god swept Her mighty hand in an arc, and from the flames that made Her she grasped the enormous bone hilt of Her garnet blade.
“But that leaves my stone inert, which it cannot be as long as the wheel turns. There is little that would please me better than to punish you for your selfish ambition in refusing me. But you are all just children. And children crave nothing so much as a game.”
Cecelia heard someone nearby mutter, “A game?”
The blade arced back above Deon’s head, flashing caustically as it drew down the blaring desert sun. “Your Matriarch will oversee a Sun Trial, and your elders will choose the champions they feel are up to the extraordinary gift I offer. Perhaps those who might be more grateful for the chance to serve Ancient than you clearly are.”
Cecelia took one step backward, eager to bow out now that her scrutiny was over, but the great dark blade came down like a guillotine, and the tip rested threateningly at her breast.
“And you will be my champion, dear daughter. For I do not suffer a challenge lightly. And I fear neither do you. You will participate in the trial, and you will do so to the extent of the gifts I have already given you. Give me any less than that, and it is your flame that will gutter this day with no promise of the Den afterward.”
Cecelia gritted her teeth, fists squeezing tighter. God or not, the screen of her anger made her believe she could fight Deon here and now and damn the consequences. Even if there’d be no room in the afterlife for her.
Deon brought the blade down and rested it at Cecelia’s abdomen, speaking kindly. “If you would not fight for me, then do so in the name of the other life you carry. At least show fealty to her.”
“What?” Cecelia couldn’t help it, and she twisted, looking for Ruo, whose hands were cupping her mouth as she looked on from the amphitheatre’s shadows.
“The trial will begin at sunrise next. And when the stone looks kindly upon any of you, know that its word is mine. And it is final.”
A screeching gasp filled the room as if the fire had consumed every last bit of oxygen, and Deon was gone in the fizzle. The stone remained, though it dimmed and returned to rest in the now flameless bowl.
But something else clattered at Cecelia’s feet, something she hadn’t earned but would be made to use regardless.
“Pick it up,” said the elder just behind her, her mouth a grim line. “You can only say no to a god so many times.”
For once in her life, Cecelia didn’t argue. She bent and grasped the bladeless hilt of Deon’s sword, and as Cecelia held it in front of her, a geyser of flame ribboned outward, and there was the bruise-purple garnet blade, deadly and heavy.
Her other hand came up to her stomach, aware now of the tiny fluttering spark beneath it. Her.
She looked up to find Ruo again, but she was gone.
~
I heard the sound then — the distinct crackle and sigh of a fire extinguishing. When I opened my eyes, the memory had faded, and so had the flames. Flames I’d conjured. And in my shaking hand was the same hilt Cecelia had only just picked up. This hilt was cracked down the centre and still stained with the dried, dark blood that had been Zabor’s. I had brought it here with me, all the way from Winnipeg, but I couldn’t get it to generate a new blade. I thought it was broken beyond repair, like me. Until now.
I watched the crack under my hand fill with red light like a newly lit forge, saw it fuse together, and leave behind the barest scar. The flame I’d heard extinguish must have been the sword, because a fresh purple blade shone in front of me in the moonlight.
That’s when I panicked, checking my surroundings for the first time, because I wasn’t in the flat. I was in a park . . . no, the Middle Walk to the Meadows. It was nighttime now, the sky clearer than it had any business being.
And I wasn’t alone.
The little barefoot girl standing on the path in front of me mustn’t have been more than eight or nine. Her clothes looked slightly ragged and faded, like she had been living rough for months. Her hair was short-cropped, her small eyes dark and blank. As dark as the creeping black stains on her pale skin, enflamed at the edges with an eerie glow, like she was burning from the inside.
“Please,” she said. “I can’t find my family.”
I held the sword in front of me, needing both hands because I was shaking so badly. “Stay away from me,” I warned, though she hadn’t moved at all.
“Please,” she said again, this time in a low hiss. For a second, I was almost convinced the plea was genuine.
I jerked aside as I caught sight of more of them, seeming to materialize out of the dark. Different skin colours, different ages. But still the black marks, the red underlighting sunken cheekbones and hollow mouths.
“Please,” said the teenaged boy on my right, but he was smiling sickly, and I could see the ashy marks covering his arms as he reached.
I twisted, more boys and girls and teens hopping the chainlink fence and ringing me in a defiant circle. My jaw tensed at the sound of their crackling laughter.
“Don’t be scared,” said a familiar voice, and I turned back to the first little girl. Standing behind her, with a hand on the girl’s arm, was Athika. Ben stood beside her.
I felt my stomach flip and shook my head, sweat beading off it. “It’s not you,” I said out loud, more for myself than them. “You’re infected. I just . . . need to get you help.” But I knew, just as they did, that no help was coming.
“Don’t be scared,” Ben repeated. And the circle started to close. “We know you’ve lost your family, too. But you can join ours.”
The beading sweat hissed away as I felt myself getting hotter, saw my hands and the blade in them sparking. “Don’
t come near me!” Now my arm spit arcing flames. My chest hurt so much, and I knew the terror was because of the stone. The stone that was alive and awake — the stone I couldn’t control.
“We wouldn’t have found this family if it weren’t for you,” Athika was saying. Were all their eyes, at once so black, now glowing as red as my sword had? “You saved us by destroying us. We can show you. Show you what it was all for.”
The images before me wavered — just the kids at first, then the deeper darkness my spirit eye could perceive, and the voice beneath the one belonging to my former friend, whom I’d condemned just by knowing her. It was that other voice that shook me loose — the voice of that demon in a hellscape I couldn’t ever leave.
“This isn’t the Bloodlands, you overgrown pet rock,” I seethed. “It’s me you want. Let them go, Urka.”
The true face beneath Athika’s, Ben’s, the little girl’s, all of them, shone through with its sickening grin and six triangular eyes. “All of my masters’ children are sacred. And you will help them meet their makers.”
Something clicked inside me — a great furnace, a gold inferno like the one I’d seen in Cecelia’s memory. “I’ll show you a maker,” I said, and the fire took me.
But this time, I took hold of it, too. I sharpened myself as I had on that battlefield with Zabor, and I felt my body changing around my own insistence for justice. The kids staggered back, shielding their eyes as I grew before them, and I saw my own light reflected back at me.
I looked down at my hands — broad, claw-tipped, still clutching the blade. My feet felt different, like they’d been stretched, all my weight on the balls of them. And I felt the pressure and heat behind me spinning right up my spine: a wheel of nine tails.
I was the fox warrior now. And I was in control.
Whatever apprehension these creatures had seemed to dissipate as quickly as they’d shown it. They hissed, snarled, and snapped, mouths wide with rows of barbed teeth, but the first one to burst towards me was Ben. The impact of his body against my raised arm made me stagger, and though I’d burned him on impact — cratering his side in an explosion of ash — this wasn’t Table Five. The ash reconstituted around my arm, pinning him to me as his clawing fists rained down.
I pivoted, lifting him off the ground, and threw him into three more preteens coming in for the next charge. One caught the other on the face, and his skull shattered, but with one bitter look back at me I watched the ashy flesh and bone knit back and solidify with only the faintest cracks remaining.
The garnet blade pulsed. “No,” I said under my breath. I wasn’t here to kill anyone. These weren’t river hunters. They still looked human, and maybe they could be human again. I defended, blocked, threw them aside. Leapt and spun, avoiding their desperate reach. Whatever the plague was, it was an infection. They were victims. I just needed to get out of here, but the more I deflected, the more came after me.
Pain like a bullet cleanly exiting my eye socket brought me down suddenly. I looked at my hands, still clutching the blade, but they weren’t mine. They were Cecelia’s, nails long and red, and the night-stained grass of the Meadows was now the sandy terrain of the desert at sunrise.
My body was pulled up out of my own accord, as those fighting me — still children, yes, but healthy, well trained, and, I recognized immediately, Foxes — came back around for another go.
I — Cecelia — parried and shook them off, flipped into the air by the blast of fire kicking up under my heels. We were in an arena, under the glow of the morning sky. The Sun Trial. Cecelia’s thoughts grabbed hold of mine. I was back in the stone’s memory. But I was also in the Meadows —
Then the boy, whom I’d recognized from the crowd of Foxes at the stone choosing, was suddenly a wiry girl, and it was night again, and I crossed my arms in front of myself to smash her off me.
She had been reaching for the stone.
“My masters don’t need you,” said a young boy, who had latched onto my leg with his teeth. I kicked him off in one smooth movement. But the voice carried to the girl who yanked back on my flaming tails, despite her hands being incinerated for her effort. “Give us the stone. We will set you free.”
With a yowl I turned on her, smashing her to the ground with the butt of my blade, sending my leg in a spinning kick to the tightening knot of bodies that rushed me with the next breath.
With the crack of impact, it was sunrise in the desert once more, and I stood over the boy, getting back to his feet, his small arm rocketing towards me like a guided missile. The other challengers had fallen — it was just us now.
I turned the blow aside, but they kept coming. I knew — Cecelia knew — we could have come down on him and ended this, but there was this war inside. I have to lose. If I’m given the stone, I’m trapped here forever. If I don’t, then that’s it for me. And for this child inside me. My own thoughts twined around hers like a briar. I can’t kill them. But I can’t keep holding back. I can’t let them take the stone. I can save them all. The sun seemed to be climbing quickly, like it was Deon’s eye, watching the both of us eagerly beyond time. I’ve been given a choice but I have none. Our thoughts were the same. And with each blow, the world changed. A fist, the desert; a kick, the Meadows. On and on, blow for blow.
I couldn’t keep this up much longer. Neither could Cecelia. We had to do something. For my part, I knew the stone, felt it wanting to intervene, to end this here and now. For Cecelia’s part, I could feel her embracing the inevitable. For a moment she’d thought that maybe, just maybe, the boy could best her. He was Chartrand’s second pick, after all. But he was young, and angry, and flagging.
“Fight back!” the children and the boy and the stone screamed, and they all came at me as one, hands reaching for the prize lodged in the centre of my chest.
The blade flourished and came down in an electrifying wave of heat, and the world was filled with light and fire — so much fire — and I collapsed in a heap.
The desert was gone. The powerful armour of the fox warrior’s body gone. And so were the children, though the shadows hissed and burned and glowed as they receded. Not from me — for once I’d managed to keep the stone in check, and the garnet blade had only come down on the now empty pavement of the Meadows path. But standing in front of me, his back to me, was a man, his arm aflame and body rigid. Flanking him were others, similarly poised and ready, dressed in the black and red and gold uniform I’d only just seen through a window into the past.
They were Foxes.
The children, as they retreated, snapped at the air, but they didn’t come any closer, because in the man’s flaming hand was Ben, held by the throat, and he was bucking and snarling like a spitting rabid dog.
“No!” I rushed forward, but the man’s hand had squeezed, and there was nothing left of Ben but a pile of disparate ash, unable to become anything but dirt.
I let out my last breath and let the night swallow me.
Part II
Quake
The Ice and the Inua
“Have you ever seen these before?”
Eli knew that the tree, and the stone, had swallowed him into another dream. Why it was choosing these particular memories, forcing him to relive them, he didn’t know. And by his own estimation, time was running out. He wouldn’t have enough time to understand.
He was a boy again but grave and old inside, struggling with these two co-existing states. He looked up at the man standing over him — Solomon, the man his mother’s cousin had called before her body was cold in the ground. The man called to quench the inconsolable storm Eli had conjured that day, wreaking havoc on the island and the sea. Apparently Eli had great power. Apparently that made him useful.
Apparently Solomon was his father — but he had left his mother to die, and for that Eli would never forgive him.
“No,” Eli said. His current knowledge waged war against his past, an
d he knew the picture well that Solomon was pointing to in the old book, here in the Archives, the vast sanctum of knowledge the Owls kept.
“These are the Calamity Stones,” Solomon lectured, and he paced behind Eli’s chair. “They are the physical embodiments of the First Matriarchs of the Five Families. They can be borne only by the Paramounts of each Family, for they are conduits of great power. They are the gods’ souls, the core of their powers, and those Denizens who are chosen to bear them can tap into that strength. That influence. Contained within are the spiritual memories of each Paramount that has come before . . .”
Eli studied the drawing as he had as a boy — this time with a peculiar sense he was looking for something deeper. He touched the page, reading each stone’s label, “The Dragon Opal. The Tradewind Moonstone. The Serenity Emerald. The Abyssal Sapphire. The Horned Quartz.”
Solomon had come back around from the other side of the room. He nodded. “To be chosen by one of these stones is a great honour. And also a great burden. Once the stone has chosen its bearer, that person becomes the leader of the Family. And that person and the stone cannot be separated. Until death.”
Eli’s eyes flicked up to Solomon’s. He seemed to be waiting for something, so he asked the burning question. “And where is this Family’s Paramount? Why don’t we have a stone?”
The corner of Solomon’s mouth twitched, perhaps in delight that Eli had called this Family, the Owls, his for the first time. Before this, his only family was his mother. They looked out for each other. To learn now that he had another family, a different kind — one that raised him up for the powers he thought he’d pretended to have to make his dark life seem more palatable — had been hard enough to navigate as a boy. Now at twenty-five, he still wasn’t sure where he belonged.
Solomon avoided the question and asked instead, “Do you know what the Owl Family’s key duty is to this realm?”
