by Ponce, Jen
“Do not threaten her or her son and she will let you leave.”
That wasn’t as comforting as he seemed to think it was. I dropped the bubble and took the doll, stepping away from him as soon as I had it. He reeked of fish, too, and the sharp, eye-watering scent of fermented cabbage. What the hell did this guy eat? “Thanks. I’ll make sure she gets this.” A thought popped in my head. “You know anything about the Rider parasite?”
He backed away from me. “Why do you wish to know of it?”
“I have a friend who has been infected.” I eyed him, wondering why he was acting like I was about to thrash him.
“You are not the only one who has been asking about the Rider.”
My heart sped. “Who else?”
He shook his head. “I will not say the name. He is crazy.”
I could guess who he meant. The fear in Margolis’ eyes was also understandable. “When was this?”
Margolis shrugged, stepping back another few feet, twitching nervously. “A few moon’s turns ago.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That the Rider had been banished to Ketwer Island, and good riddance.”
Great. He’d told Leon just where to go to pick up the infection, though why the crazy bastard would want it, I didn’t know. “Thanks.”
He kissed his knuckles then pressed them to his forehead. “Please send my regards to my cousin. Despite our different views, I still care for her as I know she cares for me.”
***
Once I stepped onto the path, the wind died. Oh, the twin tornadoes still raged, dust flew, but none of it touched or affected me. To either side of the path, I saw things that made me want to stop and touch or smell; pale purple flowers with black centers that dripped fruit to the ground from their petals, iridescent beetles that shimmered in the lightning flashes, grasses that invited me to touch them, to feel how soft, how sweet.
I kept my hands to myself, unwilling to trust the beauty. Even though Arsinua was no longer in my head, I could almost hear her chiding me, “Stay on the path, don’t touch anything.”
If I made it home, I’d have to tell her she nagged me even when she wasn’t around. I’m sure she’d appreciate that.
The cleft in the rock didn’t get any bigger as I neared it. The glistening stone, so smooth and shiny it looked wet, reared up over my head. It hurt my head looking at it, what with the reflected lightning flashes reflected off its surface, turning it into a giant disco ball ... of doom.
Snickering, I kept my eyes on my toes until the path disappeared into the cleft.
Tiny, skinny cleft.
I turned sideways, hit an edge wrong and sliced an inch long hole in my forearm. “Shit.” I eased out and clapped a hand over the wound, blood slicking my palm. I didn’t have anything on me to cover it, so I applied pressure and studied the entrance with an eye for the sharp parts.
It was all sharp parts.
No wonder Margolis’ clothes were torn to shreds. I didn’t particularly relish fitting myself through there and getting sliced up. I wondered if a bubble would help.
Only one way to find out. I pictured a thick wall of protection around me, imagining something rubbery and slick. Once I had it in my head, I eased back in. I don’t know if it was the extra caution, the bubble, or both, but I managed to pop through to the other side without any more injuries.
The crater was a revelation. Peaceful. Idyllic. Nothing of the raging storm could be seen here.
A woad-covered warrior greeted me, his blond hair in dreadlocks, the tips covered in what looked like mud. He didn’t speak but gestured toward the middle of the paradise. The path here was made from white shells that crunched under my feet as I walked. It didn’t continue in a straight line toward the middle, but curled around the outside, and I could see it would take me a while to get to my destination.
I felt trapped in a Grimm’s fairy tale.
With the doll clutched in my hand I walked, enjoying the sound of the shells as they moved and broke under my feet. At even intervals, more warriors stood. Some looked like the first man, others wore armor or boiled leather, or furs. A few were naked. I tried really hard not to be a perv and to keep my eyes averted from their more interesting bits.
Did I sneak a peek or two? Maybe. Maybe I did.
The shells changed to sand and slogging up the hill made my calves burn. Sand to stone, stone to wood, wood to gravel. When I was one circle away from the center, the gravel turned to shiny bits of obsidian. I stopped at the edge, cursing inwardly. I’d worn my tennis shoes but I wasn’t confident at all the soles wouldn’t be shredded before I’d finished my round. I glanced toward the middle where it appeared only a tree stood, a gorgeous willow with impossibly lavish yellow and pink flowers gracing its limbs. The air was strangely empty of smells here, though. For that I was grateful, for when I placed my foot on the knife-like obsidian, the last warrior appeared.
He was a charred, blackened ruin. Smoke rose from him, ash swirled around him, and a labored breathing hurt my ears.
Zech had burned in front of me. I’d saved him but I would never forget the smell. Or his screams.
This man was beyond screams. Remarkably, his eyes remained intact and they tracked me as I made my cautious way over the rocks. One speared me in the side of the foot when I put it down wrong and my ankle twisted. I yelped, cursed. Decided that my pain had nothing on his and went on. My stomach hurt, though, to think of him.
I stopped again. Turned to him. What the hell would I say? Sorry? Hope you get to feeling better?
His eyes, a deep, beautiful brown, rested on mine. They said that nothing would help him. Nothing I could do. Go.
Had I heard him in my head?
I turned away before I did something foolish. I didn’t know the rules here, I told myself. I couldn’t help him. I wasn’t a doctor.
His eyes stuck with me, though.
When I topped the rise, the hill, the tree vanished. Nothing remained but a wind-blasted volcanic crater and a woman holding a child. Her face was a gaunt brown mask. Before I could speak, she asked, “Did you see him?”
***
I thought back over the men and women I’d seen, warriors all. Only I knew which man she meant, of course I did. “Yes.”
Her look was terrifying to behold. The muscles in my legs shook, and not just from the onerous climb. Lightning struck the ground behind her, touching off black spots in my vision, the blast so loud it made my ears ring.
“Why are you here?”
My ears hummed with the remainder of the noise and I had to lean in, asking her to repeat herself. She did, in a voice that was almost as terrible as the expression on her face.
“Why are you here?”
I quailed under her gaze. “I need help.”
She laughed and her baby whimpered. I saw its leg poking from the blanket she had it wrapped in. Shining lights danced under the skin. She tucked the foot back in and smiled down at it. Him? Ellisi had said they’d had a son. If this was Sephony. If the story was true. “What do you bring me in return?”
I held out the doll.
She reached for it and I resisted yanking my hand back before she could touch me. Her skin flaked like ash and glowed like lava under a crust of rock. “Margolis.” Affection warmed her tone, though it chilled soon enough. “This is from my most devoted follower. Not you. What do you bring?”
Again I did an inventory. Clothes. Emergency twenties in my pocket. Keys. Phone. Would she want a phone? I eyed her and decided no. Not in the least. Then I remembered the necklace Marantha had sent me with her message. I unhooked the clasp and slipped it from my neck. “This.” I injected all the confidence I had into it. Since. You know, she could probably fry me on the spot with a bolt of death from the sky.
She took the necklace but didn’t look at it. “You are one of them.” The words were thunder in her throat.
I saw my death rushing at me. The hairs on my arms stood on end as if I were in contact wit
h a giant plasma ball. I threw my arms over my face and screamed, “I have children too!”
Why I did that and not put up a bubble, I’ll never know. It was stupid. Stupid!
But I wasn’t dead.
I lowered my arms, bracing for my death. She wasn’t moving and it gave me hope. “I know I smell like a Skriven. Or feel like one or whatever. But I’m not. Not just. Not exactly.” For some reason, I pulled up a memory of Kroshtuka and I, in each other’s embrace. The possibilities dancing around us as we made love.
Her throat worked.
“I’m also human,” I went on. “And I have chythraul in me. And witch. And fleshcrawler.” I didn’t know why I was babbling on but I was still alive. Scheherazade, redux.
She stepped closer. Where my bravado had fled, I didn’t know. Maybe I’d sloughed it off in my squeeze through the cleft. Or left it behind on my journey up the hill. I couldn’t do anything but stand and shiver and—ohgodohgod, she was going to touch me—let her.
Electricity poured into my body, shooting needle-thin daggers of pain throughout. It lasted only a second, thank heavens, though it’d been long enough to drop me to a knee, trembling. Neutria filled my limbs with her strength and I managed to straighten once more. “Don’t do that again.”
“You are like my son.”
“I—” what?
There was wonder in her voice, an uplifting of the storm inside her. “I knew when I pushed him from my womb and the midwife placed him in my arms that he was different. Gifted, but also touched by that great evil who walked between the worlds. His energy speared me through.
“As yours did, just now, when I touched you.”
Head still ringing with pain, I said, “Listen. I’m not like your son. I’m not a Wylding, witch mixture. I’m human. Trust me.”
She thrust the bundle at me and I took him without thought, regretting it almost at the same time. No pain, just a fierce, impossible joy. I looked down into his face and felt the heavy, thudding pull of recognition.
“Like speaks to like,” she said, as if from far away.
The baby, dancing lights under his skin, smiled up at me. Tears welled but I blinked them away, my head swimming. He cooed at me. And I did, I knew him.
“Tytan?”
EIGHT
I was holding Tytan. I was holding Tytan’s soul. His true soul. Whose soul had he murdered back at the Nightflower camp? Did it matter? God, Devany. Of course it mattered. “I don’t understand this,” I murmured, not able to take my eyes from Tytan as he blew raspberries and drool bubbles popped on his lips. “I came here to ask you about Riders.” I sniffed, feeling like my nose was running.
“Riders?”
“Parasites. They ride around in the brain and hitchhike in Dreams.” I took a swipe at my upper lip with my hand, hoping she didn’t think I was being rude, and came away with a red smear. “Um.” A plop of blood fell to Tytan’s blanket. Another drop followed the first. “Maybe you should take him back.”
She ignored me. “Dear gods, I hope that you don’t mean what I think you do.”
Tytan’s soul reached out a chubby baby arm and touched my nose. I grabbed his hand to move it before he got himself dirty but the moment he touched me, a soft wash of calm rolled over me. “My … mate and I were together and it tore apart our Dreamscape. Put him into a coma and left slime in my head. It infected my son, too.”
She shook her head. “No. We drove them back, over the waters. The sick, the infected. Rounded them up whether elder, warrior, or babe and marooned them on Ketwer Island. It was supposed to have been the end.” I heard her shaky intake of breath that sounded like the patter of rain on a rooftop. “We couldn’t kill them and we should have. They were our people and we were so few in number as it was. It’s why my father sent us to the witch king. To request aid in keeping the parasite at bay, to allow them to die off.”
“And the witch king needed help with the chythraul, right?” I looked up in time to see her catch a ball of lightning in her hand. She studied it for a moment and her lips moved. Was she talking to it?
“Chythraul? They were always a threat but more to the witches than the People.”
Always threat. Even you, goddess in hiding.
The woman hissed. Electricity crackled.
“Shut up, Neutria,” I murmured.
“What sorcery is this, to have a chythraul talking through you?”
I kissed the baby on his forehead. It both was and wasn’t satisfying. He didn’t smell like a baby, missing as he was the scent of powder and sweet-sour milk. His skin didn’t feel like baby skin, either. He tasted of static electricity, if that was a thing. “She’s part of who I am. I told you I had chythraul inside me. A magical accident that turned out not so bad.”
The spider’s amusement filled me. Together we are strong.
‘Strong enough to kick a crazy goddess’ ass?’
She sent me a memory of Ravana’s neck breaking by my hand. Something I could have done without—the sight of it fresh and bright in my head, not even dusty the way older memories often were. Yes.
“Why should I help you? Why shouldn’t I let these Riders, as you call them, overtake and destroy this world? What did it ever give to me?”
“Him.”
Her eyes went to her child as if she’d forgotten I held him or worse, that she’d forgotten he was hers.
“The story I heard may or may not be true. I’m sure it’s been changed, embellished, ‘fixed’ as it’s been passed down. But this baby is real, isn’t he? I mean, this soul. He’s yours. You gave birth to him. From all appearances, you gave up everything to try to keep him safe. This world gave him to you, because you are a citizen on its surface.” I tipped him so she could see his face. Who could resist his chubby cheeks and dimples? Of course he’d had dimples when he’d been a baby. “I have a son too. A son and daughter. I love them and I know I would do anything in my power to keep them safe. Like you. And my son has Rider taint inside his head, taint that will turn to a parasite if I don’t find the original host who’s infecting people. Kroshtuka is in a coma because of it. An Elder is putting herself at risk to find the host. All these people in danger.” I took a step toward her, pausing to gauge her reaction before continuing. “But it’s for my son’s life that I ask for your help. Please.” I held the baby to her and she took him, her face softening as she held him once more in her arms.
She stayed silent long enough that my mind wandered—it wasn’t like I could throw my hands up in the air and say, “Fuck it, then, I’m leaving.” The tormented warrior’s eyes insisted I think about them, so think about them I did. Was he the witch king? What was it like to be alive for thousands of years, trapped in a body burnt almost to ash, constantly aware of what had led him to that moment?
“I will help you.”
Baby Tytan laughed, which made me smile. “Thank you.”
“Not without a return of favors.”
My smile vanished. Figured. “Okay. Let’s make a deal. What do you want?”
“For you to return my son’s body to his soul.”
Oh. Crap. “You must know he’s not a baby anymore. Time, years. Centuries, even, have passed.” And I had no idea what would happen if I brought Ty here. If he’d come. If he’d believe me.
“You know him.” The assurance in her voice made me want to kick myself. Why hadn’t I hedged? Damn it. Where were my lying skills when I needed them?
“Yeah. Sort of.” I was his mother too. Or had told him that, once. He’d been Ravana’s spawn. I killed Ravana, ergo, he was my spawn, at least the way the Originators figured it. Then my mind did that thing, where it went and found the most horrible part of the situation and brought it to my attention. “Oh god.” I felt sick. I staggered back a foot or two. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?
Because it was too awful to think about, that’s why.
“Are you all right?”
“No.” I pressed a hand to my chest though it did nothing to ease the ac
he there. “Oh god. Please don’t tell me she took him as a baby.”
The baby, Tytan, began to wail.
“Perhaps it is time for you to see what happened for yourself.” And she took my arm in her hand, though I tried to push her away. She took my arm and she made me see it all.
***
We ended up on the ground, my head in her lap as she fed her life into my head. It only faintly resembled the story Ellisi told me in the Dreaming Caves. My head, already pounding from being in this place of torment, felt heavy and swollen. My eyes ached. I wished I’d never come, never found this place or this woman and her child, that she’d never placed the burden of her story on me.
Her fingers brushed at my hair as she crooned to her son, a song that made chill bumps spread across my skin. The sky spun above me, stars too large and bright against the deep navy blue of the night. I saw the reds, golds, blues, yellows of space, in colors so vivid they hurt to see. I was talking, my lips were moving but I couldn’t connect my brain to those words. What was I telling her? What was I explaining in such serious tones? Or was that Neutria, talking for me?
I waited for her to say something but she did not and I knew, as I knew that the beauty above me might well kill me, that I wasn’t all the way in my body. My soul had become detached from my physical self and floated far above. I wasn’t looking at space, I was in space.
But I could feel her hand in my hair.
She touched my forehead. “Come back.”
That I heard. The prick of sadness on my skin and at the back of my eyes returned. “Where did I go? What was I saying?”
“I took away the taint. It needed to happen without you here. It tried to negotiate with me.” The timber of her voice dropped. “I don’t negotiate.”
“It’s gone?” I dropped down into my imaginary control room. Sure enough, the black gook was gone. Neutria was gone too, or at least my mental construct of her. Parts of the wall looked like it had been eaten at by a virulent acid. Her venom, soaked through the potential into the panel? I hoped it wasn’t permanent damage. Coming free of my mini-trance I said, “Thank you. Did it say where the host is or who it is?”
