by S. M. Beiko
I clenched my fists so hard my nails bit into the flesh. My spirit eye rumbled, and pasted over Eli’s smug, lean coolness, was the image of Seneca howling and broken, flying through space and smashing into pieces. His light was faded, but not gone. Nearly, though. But from the periphery of his pain, I caught no regret.
“Yeah. He helped me. Because he’s sick of this, just like all the other Denizens you lord over. Seneca wanted to end it, and he did a damn good job until you jumped him. Which is pretty messed, since I heard you were family.”
I caught the uncertainty of Eli’s gathered thugs, especially those down below — exchanged glances, shifting feet. Eli whipped his head in their direction, and there was stillness again.
This time, I spoke more to them than him. “Did you or any of your cronies ever stop to wonder why they’re on your side? That maybe you’re the batshit lunatic in all this, seeing as your solution to keeping the death toll down is more killing? I’m sure no one’s doing your bidding out of loyalty. But lies get the job done, too, I guess.”
No one spoke to defend themselves, and I hadn’t expected them to. I just wanted to hear the rusted cogs in their brainwashed, fear-addled heads turn.
I felt air on my cheek and saw that Eli’s wings were flexing. I cringed against it, which made him smile.
“They’re not loyal to me, no.” He put a hand absently over his chest. His eyes changed; the one that Death had given me twitched. What was I trying to see . . . ?
Then his voice changed, too. “They’re loyal to Ancient. To tradition. To the Narrative. This is the way things are. And they must be carried out for the good of nature’s unfolding story. That’s what the Owls protect; the Ancient knowledge. Deviating will bring our ruin.”
My spirit eye wavered but lost the transmission it’d been searching for. “Oh, blah blah with your bullshit!” I shouted, my skin a warming stove element. “The greater good argument is for fascists and people too stupid to open their eyes. Your fight is with me. Let my friends go, and we duke it out. If you win this time, I’ll do it. I’ll fulfill your little horror story. Everyone will know that I stood here and called you out because I want that water witch gone, and we aren’t going to stand for Owls telling the rest of us how to live or who’s snake chow at the end of winter. After that, you can answer to all your people and the Denizens you pretend to protect when you had a chance to end this, and you didn’t. For the greater good.”
Eli stood still enough that I thought I was talking to a marble likeness instead of a breathing human — though I wouldn’t exaggerate and pretend he had a soul. My spirit eye couldn’t penetrate him, his darkened visage, his chest. I doubt I’d gotten through to him, but . . . gods, at this point, I’d take what I could get.
“You know nothing!” he barked, wings fissuring wide with a thunderclap. “You choose now! Your friends or you. There’s no middle ground!”
My ear twitched. I heard a whisper, familiar now as it was when I was submerged in the river, or when I stood in Natti’s living room as she and Aunty murmured in that watery language. It was faint, a plea. Then a sharp wail sounded, distant enough to be mistaken for a sharp winter wind. Eli and the rest of the Owls collectively swivelled towards the noise, eyes widening as a black fume clouded the windows of the rotunda.
I smiled. “Cavalry’s here.”
The quarterpaned windows crunched inwards. River hunters, hundreds of them, poured in, landing on the marble with wet splorps like raining offal. Some landed on the unfortunate Owls and proceeded to grind through the ranks until they fell back into their own fights. Brother led the charge, ripped-open vertical mouth screeching a battle cry.
I heard shouts and bodies hitting the floor below, the shrieking of the hunters drowning out any doubt I had. Arnas cried, “Barton, now!” and the ground began to quake. Eli nearly dove through the pit after him, but I launched onto him, grabbing him by the wing and hurling him away from the opening. The anguish in his guttural yell fuelled me, and for a second I imagined that my hair was flames and I’d grown as large as a pyre.
Eli looked at me with something like shock, until his face contorted and he lunged for me.
*
Now Barton is just showing off; he knows it, too, but he can’t help the glee pulsing through him as the stone floor shatters underneath the Owl fighters gunning for them and reshapes into sharpened plinths to form a protective ring around the black star set into the floor. All from one slam of his fist into the ground, turning and tightening as he manipulates the very floor. The spikes leap up, slamming one man aside who’d nearly fallen on top of Phae.
She pivots and pins him with those big beautiful eyes, and he’s suddenly sheepish but proud that this time it’s him saving her. Phae smiles, dark eyes eclipsed by her power, hair braiding upwards as she raises a small shield around them. Barton knows this shield is temporary, though, as Phae scampers off through the melee to see if Natti or Roan need protecting.
“Are you ready for this?” Arnas asks from the opposite end of the Star, on the other side of the stone barricade. There’s nothing he can offer Barton now except encouragement.
Barton looks down at the black shapes under him, feels the rings sending shivers from the earth into his body as he imitates a lotus pose, hands hovering. He grounds himself in those vibrations with his palms, and looks up, barely nodding. This is his time.
He breathes, holding his hands out. “I present this spirit in the hall of the Star, under the gaze of Ancient, as it turns to us all by the grace given to the Five that came before us.” His fingers twitch in the patterns he has memorized, has practised for hours, pulling the whispers of spirits from the crust to perform a dance older than the world. “I call to those loyal to this sphere, to rouse and place yourselves on my name. I command that the Earth be pulled in the four directions, and the Ring of Shadows be open to the living.”
The glow of the golden circles intensifies, hotter than Barton had ever felt in his parents’ summoning chamber, brighter than Arnas warned. His hands quiver, arms exploding into roots as they shoot hard into the star, and he wavers. Arnas reaches out as though he is trying to catch a tipping vase, but Barton grunts, trying to hold it together. There is a fist in his chest, tightening, but he can’t stop now. The plates of the world are shifting.
“To the earth, the element that my house bears! Spirits of mountains, place your wills on my name, as is my right to ask! Open the heart of this Star and reveal the Bloodlands below!”
There is a crack like the bones of the world splitting apart, and the quaking becomes seismic.
*
I heard Barton shouting, but my ears were ringing from the blow I’d just deflected off my ear. I staggered. Everything was chaos; the screams of both Owl and river hunter from the antechamber, the world shaking itself to dust all around us, and Eli Rathgar gunning for me again with death behind his snarled lips. I wheeled and ducked, his rage gradually changing him into the thing Sil called Therion that I’d first faced. I was losing energy, and I tasted blood. This seemed way too familiar. I was distracted — I knew I had it in me, knew I could be a pillar of light. I needed to get back into the fight.
I weaved and threw a fist like a flaming hammer at him, catching him in the gut. He lost loft for a second, but sank his talons into my shoulders and dragged me into the air. With a scream, he spun like a sadistic slingshot and threw me at the dome. I slammed into the shimmering barrier that I’d seen earlier, probably an illusion, but it could’ve been steel for the pain it shot through me. I crumpled, vision sparking, and fell.
Roan, someone whispered. Ignite.
I snapped awake and felt like a shooting star with a grudge. I curled inwards and blasted flames from my pores. They pushed me aloft like rocket fuel and I righted myself, careening meteoric towards Eli.
Crunch. I couldn’t tell whether the sound was Eli’s bones, or the stone we’d slammed into.
There was a roar in my ears — not blood, but heat, and I only caught myself in his large, suddenly golden eyes; me, but not me at all. A Fox. A flame. A comet. A goddess.
A sonic boom and a crash of wind threw me aside, and Eli dragged his bloody wings from the stone, his clothes and feathers burnt and melting as he tried to compose himself. He gripped the busted wall with his talons as I spun like a sparkler to the ground. He launched at me with a predator’s cry, and I leapt backwards, blasting the floor with firepower until I was aloft again. I roared forward and wrapped myself around him.
Eli’s faltering wings beat the air and his fists beat me. He howled, unable to keep his form. His owl-face was flickering in and out, until those golden eyes gave way to the desperate man underneath, burnt and beaten. “You can’t win!” he screamed, wings beating furiously, wind doing nothing to extinguish my fire. “You can’t kill me!”
I wrapped my legs around him and grabbed either side of his head. We’d been whirling around the rotunda like a dervish, but now we were above the Pool. Stricken, he looked into my eyes as the fire peeled away from me like petals.
“I’m not here to kill you,” my fire whispered. “We’re going down together.”
Before he could snarl, I slammed my skull into his, and his wings folded. We tipped over, plummeting headfirst past the balustrade, black feathers exploding around our bodies as we careened into a net of golden strands, through the bones of the Earth, and into the Bloodlands.
Part V
Ash
The Gardener and the Targe
Eli was a boy, once. His thoughts were his own. They were not partitioned from the hundred thousand thoughts of everyone around him. They were free to weave in and out with the whispers of the world. His mother taught him everything, despite her illness. Despite how sometimes she was not herself. He learned much, and he loved her for it. They only had each other to rely on, after all.
But the whispers of the minds among which he grew up were alien to him now, for all he’d heard for so long were the voices of his ancestors, beating raging wings against his better judgment. He’d lost himself to their bidding. He had known cruelty, swore never to give it, and yet he dealt it so easily now.
These strange, furious minds had been guiding him all this time, because of his willingness to obey and serve. Because he was told it would help save everyone from a terrible danger. In return, they’d given him a conduit for his incredible, frightening power that he barely understood, even now, at twenty-five. But he’d lost himself in the deluge of power. He had forgotten what it was to love or dream or desire.
Now he can’t hear them at all.
For the first time in years, Eli feels relief. And he falls willingly into the arms of shadows, grateful for silence.
*
I smelled burning. Can’t be the coffee, Deedee wouldn’t leave it until it was done. Maybe breakfast? But I don’t hear anyone downstairs . . . I pressed my eyes hard into my skull to cease the pounding. I didn’t want to wake up just yet. I’d been having weird dreams lately, which didn’t exactly leave me feeling rested. And I couldn’t remember if I had homework due today. Probably just essay prep. I could ask Phae when I got to school, though I know she’d make fun of me for being out of it. Lately I’d had a penchant for rereading Game of Thrones until the wee hours — my fantasy dramas Phae called them — and now my dreams were saturated with me in the hero-role, blood in my mouth and death on my heels at every turn.
Death . . .
My stomach churned, and I bolted up in time to vomit down my front.
My eyes opened. No coffee. No Deedee. Not Kansas anymore. Just the stench of burning, and an ashy haze blocking any discernible feature that could tell me where I was. Any life I had outside of here seemed as far away as a dream.
I spat and wiped my mouth, trying to stabilize as I shuddered through another impulse to heave, but thankfully nothing came. Ugh, my head. I massaged my scalp, trying to fight off each wave of nausea. Maybe I’d hit my head, and I was coming out of a concussion? I had no idea how I’d ended up unconscious, though. I kept having mental flickers that I was in my bed, and then not, the disorientation growing heavier the longer I thought about it. I tried to cup my skull in both hands, but when I pulled my left wrist up, I realized there was something heavy attached to it — another arm. Another person.
It was a boy — no, a man. Couldn’t tell his age, but older than me. He was still out, but his face was relaxed, eyes completely still beneath their lids. He seemed serene enough, even though his face had been recently burned, and there was blood splattered across a cheek. He’d just been in a fight, then, which meant he might be dangerous. And I was tied to him.
I examined the rope binding us together. It looked and felt like a fine chain, golden and radiating in the ashy air. It was twined tight around us, and when I yanked it up, I heard the faint tinkling of another chain behind us. I squinted, trying to ascertain where it ended, but it seemed to curve up off the ground and disappear into the haze.
With my pal knocked out, I wasn’t going anywhere to investigate, though. I brought my free hand around and touched his chest to make sure he was still breathing, but rather than warmth, I felt something hard under his tattered shirt. I pushed it aside and saw a rough, glinting stone embedded in the flesh of his sternum like a geode, white with flecks of black.
His hand shot up and crushed my wrist. Before I could feel relieved that he was awake, he had rolled on top of me and was trying to choke me.
“The hell!” I gargled, bucking until I managed to knee him in the gut and kick him aside. I didn’t get far from him before the chain yanked my arm back.
He recovered quickly and attacked again. I caught his incoming hand and held ground. “Who are you?” he screamed.
“Calm down, okay?” I grunted. “I don’t want to fight you. I have as little intel on what’s going on as you do. You think I’d deliberately chain myself to some psycho?” I nodded to our bonded arms, and he seemed to relent, but barely.
“I’ll ask you again: Who are you?” He hissed the words through his teeth, his inability to back off frustrating him more.
“I’m —” I caught myself, touching my head. I felt sick again and staggered forward to one knee, heaving up a mouthful of bile.
“What’s the matter with you?” He pulled our arms up, which actually managed to get me to my feet again, except I bumped into him and had to rely on being steadied by the hands that had just tried to choke me.
“I don’t . . . I don’t know.” I shuddered and pushed myself away from him. “I just . . . I tried to think of my name and —” I swallowed and gagged.
He was silent as I composed myself, surveying our surroundings. “I can’t remember my name, either,” he remarked absently, like losing his identity was a footnote. “Do you know where we are?”
“Yeah, I come here all the time, my kind of place,” I replied dryly. The air seemed to be growing hotter and thicker, and I coughed. “You?”
Rather than offering insight, I tripped as he started off to investigate, dragging me with him. “Hey!” I brought him up short by yanking on my arm. “A little warning before you go traipsing into the wilderness? We’re not exactly independent units here.”
Startled, he looked over our arms. “Fine. Try to keep up.” But we soon found that the harder he pulled, the tighter the chain became, and we both winced. “What kind of sorcery is this?” he muttered, crossing our arms to grab the length trailing behind us, as we followed it awkwardly through the gloom.
“Sorcery?” I couldn’t help but snort. “Like what? We fell into someone’s D&D campaign in their parents’ basement?”
“Is sarcasm your native language?” my cohort snapped. “What I’d give to be chained to someone useful.”
I felt sheepish and bit the inside of my mouth. He had an educated brogue, full of condescension and entitlement. I kne
w I should be annoyed, but it just made me feel like a dumb Canadian nobody.
“Sorry. I get weird when I’m stressed. Besides, a little humour doesn’t hurt in a situation like this.”
He snorted, the chain sliding through his free hand as we trudged. “So you routinely find yourself in situations like this?”
I shrugged, no immediate recollections swimming to the surface to prove him wrong. “To be honest, I don’t know. But I feel like I probably do.”
I could hear the eye roll without looking at him. “Comforting.”
We suddenly reached the end of the chain, which seemed to continue upwards and disappear into the fog. Our little quest had hit a wall. Literally.
I didn’t have any clever quips this time, just chewed my mouth hard enough to break the skin. Because this meant we were trapped, and unarmed, and in a valley of some kind, with no clue as to what else could be down here with us. I tried to swallow my rising panic.
My fellow prisoner silently felt the rock face for climbable notches. Then he turned to me with what might have been an attempt at good-natured sarcasm. “We’re in a pit.”
My chest tightened. “Ugh.”
He touched the wall again. “Look, there’s no sense getting hysterical.”
“I wasn’t!” I shouted, but I was heading there.
He lifted his arm and shook it at me. “Well, if one of us goes down, the other is fairly screwed. We’ll need to have our heads if we’re going to get out of this.”
He’d literally just tried to choke me, and now it was about teamwork? Even if he was trying to reassure me —
“Wait, shh,” I hissed, wrapping my bound hand around his wrist and jerking him back. I flexed my feet, testing the ground beneath us. It was hard to tell in the gloom, and it had felt soft when we woke up — soft enough for me to mistake it for my bed — but . . .
