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PROLOGUE
The goddess stood on the Liminal edge, the boundary of the Whisper-world, a precarious place where guardian angels are appointed and fates are sealed, a space where beautiful or terrible things are set in motion, depending on what is required.
It was time to choose the new Guard. She’d seen the previous Guard onto the field, saw to it that their spirits were happy and at peace. They now rested with their fellows while she stood at a new beginning. This moment was always an important one. A critical one. Yet the past overtook her, wrapping its claws around her throat.
Ah, light! Running across the grass, she laughed. The sound brought spring. Nearby, the Muses frolicked, rejoicing in the sudden newness of life. Her beloved would be here, too, beautiful, winged, and warm. Not cold and horrible like the one who had stolen her away.
In centuries to come, she would curse the day she had been so careless. She would curse the day she failed to look behind her to the cave opening, where burning eyes watched.
The call of a great bird sounded, and a warm wind surrounded her. Strong arms cradled her, and laughter greened the trees. The Muses rushed into the field, delighted. It was a reunion of dearest friends.
Her beloved kissed her deeply, the spring breeze entwining his black hair with her own prismatic tresses. Trailing the line of her body with his fingertips, he pressed against her, aching, desperate. Winged and eternal, the Keeper of Peace, the Balance, the true husband of her heart. Phoenix. He drew back and stared at the woman who should not have become another god’s bride.
His body burst into flame.
She should have foreseen the danger, but she had not. Nor had she heard the growl from the distant shadows, seen the watcher’s eyes grow hard.
Phoenix’s form exploded, his feathers scorched and smoldering. From him came an unforgettable, ungodly shriek of agony. She screamed, too, a noise that rent the heavens.
Her terror made the rain come, dousing Phoenix and muddying the ground with water and blood. But it was too late. Hysterical, she cradled the charred and reeking body of her true love. The Muses watched in horror.
The wind picked up. It lifted a huge feather with gentle hands, consoling, murmuring sweet sympathies; it knew the depth of their love, as did all that was divine. The feather moved as if with a life of its own, seeming to float of its own volition. Five Muses ran toward it. Four ran away.
Her true love’s corpse crumbled to dust. Backing slowly from the body, she felt madness overtake her. Wailing, she beat her fists into the ground until her hands bled.
“This is far from the end!” she shrieked. Gathering up his ashes, she cradled them in her skirts, pieces of bone, feather, and hair; her tears moistened the wretched fragments. “The world will not release you. I do not release you. It will not end this way. We will return.”
She turned to face the cave where the murderer lurked. Behind him stood a host of the restless dead, cackling and shrieking, bloodlust rising in their tortured hearts. These were the wretched dead that she could not reach, could never reach; they were hopeless cases that needed higher, more powerful salvation than her grace and light. These were the dead who tormented the living.
“Come. Home,” Darkness growled.
“You are not home,” she spat.
His red eyes narrowed. Her stomach heaved and she doubled over, helpless. A sickening, rotten pulp flew from her lips, and Darkness snickered. Damn him for tricking her all those years ago. If she’d never eaten those seeds, sickly sweet and insidious, he’d never have gained an advantage.
She stared at him in fury, rising unsteadily to her feet. He might have power over her body, as the Whisper-world had truly infected her, but he couldn’t control her entirely.
The dead rushed out into the field, floating over the earth, gallivanting in their ghoulish fashion, their bones disjointed and their forms horrendous.
“Frolic, friends,” Darkness gurgled. “Feed. Me. Misery.”
But, no. From the still-burning ashes of Phoenix came new flame. The ashes in her hands and skirts stirred, and the bloodred color of the fire shifted to a cerulean blue. From its glow emanated a force that was peaceful and full of music.
The low-burning azure flame took on first the shape of a feather, then a veritable pillar of fire, and the goddess gave a choked cry at the sight. Phoenix was not bested, nor was he alone. Here were the Muses who had stood by him, gossamer and glimmering angels, five beloved companions who were the best of friends. They stared down the restless dead with unforgiving eyes.
“You will feed Darkness nothing” came a ghostly whisper that nonetheless rumbled like thunder, and the undead paused. “Henceforth know to fear me. My friends and I shall turn you back, all of you who terrorize the living. My murderer will pay. We will starve his restless bones until they are dust. Restless dead, meet the guardians of the living. From this day forward we wield righteous justice. We can no longer leave the Balance to the Earth herself. Her children need aid against the likes of Darkness, who seek to enlarge their empire of misery. Tremble in our path, you who seek to grow shadow.”
The host hesitated, unsettled. From deep within the cave, lightning flashed. Darkness seethed.
All light vanished from the sky. In return, blue fire covered the ground like a flood. Two worlds were shifting, creaking, opposing each other in earnest, and only one could be the winner. But the victor would not be proclaimed that day. The barrier pins between life and death shimmered, and the Whisper-world acknowledged that battle was right. Balance would be maintained despite the violence that had been done. Darkness could not reign triumphant. A Guard was necessary.
Darkness gazed about the field and growled.
She whom many called Persephone approached her husband slowly. Those red eyes retreated into the cave, widening in apprehension as a great light began to emanate from her: white like a dove. Persephone gazed upon the new force that had gathered, at the five friends who had in that moment pledged to fight an eternity at her lover’s side. She blew the fiery ghost of her lover a kiss and bowed her head to the attendant Muses, knowing now was not the day of their triumph, knowing many days of sadness lay ahead.
She turned back to Darkness and narrowed her eyes. “In time dawn will come, and you’ll bow to our light,” she declared. Clutching the ash, feathers, and bone of her beloved, she lifted her diaphanous robes and stepped back into her Whisper-world prison.
* * *
That had been long, long ago, but the Guard still fought the good fight.
“It’s time, my love,” called a whisper at Persephone’s cheek.
Blinking back tears, she stared into a floating orb
of blue fire; all that remained of her one true love. “You are a ghost. Dust and vapor,” she murmured.
“Yes, darling, I know,” he replied, all too accustomed to this exchange. “But it’s time. Time for a new Guard.”
“Yes,” she echoed, her voice hollow. She did not want to go through this again. And again. For such as her, fate was a wheel that turned too slowly. “Where do you and the Muses wish to fly this time?”
“Cairo, I believe. Let them confer.”
The ghost of great Phoenix hovered beside her at the Liminal edge and directed her attention beyond. Here, upon this unique threshold, a window upon a great proscenium with curtain lifted onto the world, anything could happen.
At the crest of the proscenium arch, a vast clock of mortal time ticked musically, the movements of its intricate metal hands and barrel of numbers denoting the year, ever changing but slow and subtle. This place had been born near the dawn of humanity, back when the purgatorial Whisper-world first separated from the mortal one, leaving a single, flexible portal between. The Whisper-world was a dank, gray empire born from the misery of humankind, Darkness its incarnate lord—but the Liminal edge was always vested in the needs of the living.
Because of that, the place favored the work of the Guard, so from this precipice of possibility, the Guard were chosen time and again by Phoenix and his Muse attendants.
The Muses in their timeless forms, iridescent and beautiful, vaguely humanoid shapes floating luminous as one might imagine angels, each a whirling wind of song and stars, joined the two divinities. They flew across the Liminal border in a dizzying, sparkling display of light and beauty, and Persephone smiled. She could not help but smile whenever she looked upon such good friends, and her oft-labored breathing eased. But there were only four of them.
“The Heart was overeager,” the Muse of Intuition cooed, its iridescent form neither male nor female. “Heart found a perfect soul in Ahmed Basri and has already gone ahead. The rest of us must catch up.”
“Great One, Our Lady,” acknowledged the Muse called Memory, nodding a shining head first at Phoenix, then Persephone. “We come wearied from war and yearn for less burdened soil.”
The cerulean fire of Phoenix shifted to entwine his Muse friends in a wide embrace, a binding circle. His voice held regret. “Show me, friends, one ounce of soil turned by mortal hands that is not somehow burdened. I will gladly send us there.”
Intuition spoke: “Would that such soil existed. But, no, Heart has fallen for Ahmed and his visions and was off to Cairo in a shot. I daresay Cairo’s a good choice, with its grave-robbing and such. There’s great unrest around the tombs of that ancient civilization, which long ago worshipped you, Great One,” it informed Phoenix. “We’ve found powerful mortals who match our need. And their myriad backgrounds will make our Grand Work … quite a challenge.”
The four Muses chuckled. Truth be told, they enjoyed unsettling mortal lives. There was a bit of playfulness in each that enabled them to hold on to humor and heart, lest they fall to Darkness’s traps.
“I’ve already touched my chosen,” Intuition continued. “He would have died in a fire this morning if not for me. We are known for cursing mortal lives, perhaps, but so should we be known for saving them.”
The fiery form of Phoenix gestured with an armlike appendage. “Precede me, friends, and I shall follow in a moment to seize my own host.”
“The Power and the Light,” the four Muses murmured in reply.
As Persephone watched her friends leave, tumbling into a blue sky spread vast before them, she remembered how they’d all once lived less troubled lives. She remembered bitterly how she’d sworn to be again with her beloved in the flesh—but that had not yet happened. And now they were off once again to fight the good fight, leaving her behind. This was their chosen task, one that might last for all eternity. She knew that it was necessary, but she wondered when her own time would come.
The Liminal, ever mercurial, ever mysterious, perhaps sensed her mood. Above, on the Liminal’s proscenium arch, the clock that gently ticked away mortal life whirred, and its intricate metal arms spun. The numbers on the barrel shifted, and the wide window suddenly revealed a scene from the past. Persephone and Phoenix saw no longer the sparkling Muses careening toward their chosen ones in Egypt, but a gaslit street at dusk, homes and town houses full of Romanesque details with candles burning welcome in windows.
Outside one town house, German-speaking servants readied two carriages. Phoenix did not need Persephone’s language gifts to translate, for the Liminal made all comprehensible. A well-to-do family turned to gaze fondly at the house before entering the carriages, one of which was loaded with their trunks and other belongings. The mother and father ushered their dark-haired daughter into one of the fine conveyances, but two persons lingered on the pavement.
The elder, an exceedingly severe woman in an elegant black dress, her black hair streaked with silver and wound tight upon her head, clamped one hand firmly upon the shoulder of a young boy who looked older than his age in his fine, dark suit. His black hair hung loose around his face, his dark eyes shone uncannily sharp.
“Once we’re in London, child, you’ll see. A great future will unfold,” the woman promised in a thick accent. “Alexi,” she said sharply when the boy did not respond.
“Yes, Babyshka?” He looked up at the woman he’d called grandmother, his face impassive, his voice strong.
“What symbol crowns the alchemical pyramid?” she demanded.
“The firebird,” he replied.
“Exactly. And what will you do with him?”
“I shall harness him in my hand.”
“So you shall,” she promised. “There is more to our folklore than mere stories, my dear child. There are two worlds, the mundane and the mystical, and I’ve called them both down upon your head.” The woman brushed a lock of hair from his face, then cupped his cheek in a gesture more authoritative than kind. “You’d best do something with them.”
The boy looked at her, unflinching, in unspoken agreement.
“Who is that?” Persephone breathed. The Liminal window had changed texture with the time shift, so she could see her own form reflected as if on a pane of glass. Every color of her was shifting subtly, as if her body were a prism held to the light and turned by a gentle hand.
“I’m not sure,” Phoenix murmured warily.
The older woman spoke again: “Someday, my boy, you’ll light the darkness with your fire, and all the world will bow before it. I’d stake my life on that.” She helped the boy into the carriage, then turned and stared directly into the Liminal, though that was of course impossible. She stared as if she could see Phoenix and Persephone, as if she was daring them. Then she held out an arm, deigning to allow a footman to help her into the carriage.
As Persephone gasped, the scene faded to black, and the timepiece of the Liminal stirred, whirred away from the boy’s childhood scene to present the current mortal year of 1867.
Persephone felt her excitement rise. Her multicolored form cycled through its hues more quickly, as it always did when her emotions were high.
“Phoenix, my love. That boy … I’ve never seen a mortal so like you, an elegant young king of wisdom. Why, his grandmother even called you down to his hand. Surely that’s a sign. He’ll be your Leader!”
“No. He’s too young,” Phoenix protested, his fiery form floating upward to the Liminal clock and doing the math of the elapsed years. “It doesn’t add up. We take our mortals as late teens. Doing the Grand Work at his age would break him. Besides, we’ve already chosen Cairo, and the Taking has begun. He will be in London, and there can only be one Guard at a time.”
Persephone stared at the Liminal window. The Germany of years prior had faded, replaced by a metropolis of towers and domed temples. The morning call from muezzins lifted prayer into the bright sky from the slender spines of pearlescent minarets. She squinted at the brightness, her eyes having not quite adjusted from t
he shadows she hated, though she rejoiced at the feeling of the sun upon her face.
“Soon you’ve an annunciation to make with the Muses and their new Guard,” Phoenix urged gently. “And I must find my Leader—one of appropriate age. I believe I know just the one, and she has little inkling how her mortal life is about to change.” He wreathed phantom tendrils of flame around his love—the limited interaction they were allowed. “But first, I must know how you fare.”
How did she fare? She worsened every year. The corner of her diaphanous robe was stained with blood and pomegranate juice, a sickly, rotting combination she’d been coughing up for centuries.
“The pain comes and goes,” she murmured, giving a valiant smile and suppressing the rattle in her lungs. “I always feel better when I meet my new Guard.”
Stepping to the threshold, as if she were a bird ready to fly from a branch, she added, “But you must find out about that boy.” Then she stepped through the portal and disappeared in a blaze of light.
After a moment, Phoenix set off behind her.
CHAPTER
ONE
Cairo, 1867
Eighteen-year-old Beatrice Smith Stared into Jean’s deep blue eyes and really, truly wanted to be in love. Wholly in love. It was a fitting time for it: The breeze was warm, the Egyptian sun was bright, and the ties of her bonnet were undone. She had stolen a few moments away from the ever-present eye of the housekeeper—who, Beatrice knew, had been hired by her father not only to clean their rooms but to keep watch over his daughter. For the moment, Beatrice was gloriously without scrutiny, on her own and able to make her own decisions.
“Will you ever go back to England?” Jean asked, his French accent as delightful as the lock of his sandy-brown hair as it bounced in the breeze. “Do you even remember England? I’ll bet you don’t remember it like I remember Paris.”
Beatrice looked out over the city. They’d hidden themselves above it all, sitting on the anterior ledge of a tower at the Church of Abu Serga. Old Cairo’s minarets pierced the uneven skyline, spires calling to heaven, cupolas and spherical forms above intermittent brick complexes, graceful curves among rectangular blocks, a feast of shapes and varying heights. Along the stones far below strode both the wealthy and poor, robed and suited, veiled and open-faced; bronze and pale, the native and the foreigner.
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