Seraph of Sorrow

by MaryJanice Davidson

  Then she looked up at Lizzy Georges-Scales, who had rushed to her side to try to stop the bleeding, and tried to tell her after all these years how much she loved her. For once, it wasn’t fear that held her back—her throat was filled with blood, and the words could not get through.

  The absence of fear was enough for Wendy Blacktooth. She smiled, then relaxed.

  When Eddie Blacktooth was fifteen, it took him only a few weeks to become an excellent archer. The hands that were so awkward on the hilt of a blade played beautiful music on a bowstring. So it was not much trouble to convince his mother to let him go with her and the Scaleses to Winoka Bridge. It was harder to convince them to let him take up his own position on the east end of the bridge—quite a distance from them—but when he told his mother with proud eyes that he could handle it, she relented. After all, it was possible he would pass a rite of passage today, and do so saving a life, instead of taking one.

  Then Edmund Slider had created his barrier, and Eddie’s blood chilled. He saw right away that he was separated from his family, and from Jennifer. Skip Wilson was now the closest thing to a friend he had out here, which was to say he had no friends at all. He had kept an arrow cocked after that, ready to shoot any one of the four werachnids prowling below. It was almost a relief when Edmund Slider died, since that preoccupied Skip’s aunt. Skip looked distracted as well, which gave Eddie time to consider Andi.

  Of all the people on the bridge that night, only Eddie saw this girl’s complete transformation. It started the moment Glorianna Seabright crippled Catherine Brandfire. While the mayor, Jennifer, and Catherine’s grandmother battled it out on the bridge, Eddie watched a battle of a different sort take place within a single body. Andi spent most of the time on one knee, where Skip Wilson had rudely pushed her before going to check on his teacher. Nothing looked different right away, but a dull sort of throb pounded the air nearby. Skip, distracted by other goings-on, didn’t notice. Nor did he notice the steam and stench that began to rise from her body. It was as if something was pouring over her, sticking to and seeping through her skin.

  She’s in pain. Eddie briefly considered climbing down from his perch to help her, but of course he didn’t. With no knowledge of how to stop this trauma, and no assurance that she would look favorably upon a young beaststalker approaching her, there was no point.

  New arms emerged from her body, and then disappeared, and then reappeared. Back and forth they went, like strange antennae exploring a new environment, and Eddie decided to raise his bow so the tip of his arrow was pointing at the center of her back. He kept the string slack, though, and prayed for something friendly to emerge. Jennifer said Andi was an ally, in that alternate universe . . . didn’t she? The arms receded one last time, and the girl stood up looking almost the same as when she began. Eddie knew better. He was not at all surprised when she leapt twenty feet into the air, came down upon the mayor, and did in seconds what no enemy had managed in over seventy years—ended the reign and life of Glorianna Seabright.

  After that, he noticed his mother and Dr. Georges-Scales tending to the mayor.

  And after that, he saw the black dasher come for the doctor, and take his mother instead.

  “Mom!”

  Throwing his bow and arrow down, he leapt from his hiding place and rolled onto the asphalt, briefly surprised at how little pain there was in the landing. He rushed past a startled Skip and a mournful Andi, toward his mother, crying out and not caring who saw or heard—

  —until he was suddenly facing the wrong way, back at Skip and Andi.

  He looked over his shoulder. There was his mother again, choking on her own fluids. The doctor was ripping pieces of cloth from her sleeves to staunch the bleeding.

  “Mom!” he cried out again. He turned and rushed toward her—

  —and again, he found himself running the wrong way.

  “Mom!” What the hell is going on?

  He tried and failed again. His mother’s limbs were calmer now. Finally, it occurred to him. The barrier. Of course. He had seen Glory do the same thing when Edmund first put it up.

  Thoughts racing, he whirled and faced Andi. “Lower that wall! I need to get through!”

  Andi brought her hands down from her face. Her cheeks were still wet, her magenta hair in confused tangles. “What?”

  “My mom’s in there! I need to get to her. Bring the wall down!”

  Her eyes betrayed confusion. “I—”

  “We can’t.” Skip put a protective hand on her.

  Eddie looked at his mother again. The pool of blood around her was seeping outward; Jennifer’s mom was kneeling in it, crying as snow settled upon the back of her ripped jacket; his father was unconscious a little farther away. “What do you mean, you can’t? She just went through it twice herself! Help me do it, before she dies! Mom!” He tried to race toward her again, hoping he could maybe surprise the barrier. It was no use.

  “We can’t” was all Skip would say.

  “Can’t? Or won’t?”

  Skip said nothing. Eddie looked past him. “Andi, whatever Skip’s told you about me, that’s my mother in there and she’s dying and you have to let me through! I don’t care if you don’t let me back out! I know you can do it! Let me through! MOM!”

  He put a fist into the barrier. It sunk several feet in, before its reflection threatened his own face. Pushing back, he marched toward his enemies, face reddening and spittle spraying. “Damn you, Skip! You think you’re getting back at me for Jennifer or whatever the fuck motivates you, but you don’t get it. This is my mom! This is forever!”

  “I get it fine.” Skip’s features were dark and calm. “I get ‘Mom.’ I get ‘forever.’ ”

  He turned and dragged Andi away by the wrist.

  Most of what happened next, Eddie could only remember through tears. He knew he tackled Skip to the asphalt and pounded on him with bony fists. He knew his tears were still falling, that somewhere behind him Jennifer kept shouting at him to stop, and that he continued to pound Skip and call for his mother. Finally, he knew he was more relieved than anything else, when Andi put a gentle palm on the back of his head and covered him in a blanket of sleep.

  When Xavier Longtail was fi fteen, he liked to watch Pinegrove sleep from a distance.

  His brother, Charles, told him this was dangerous and that the beaststalkers who lived there now would kill him if they spotted him, but Xavier couldn’t help himself. What other memories did he have of his mother and father, beyond those in Pinegrove? Where else could he possibly be safe, if not in the last stronghold of his kind?

  “No,” Charles corrected him as they looked down the twilit hill at the twinkling lights of what was now called Winoka. “This is not ours anymore, Xavier. Nor is it the last stronghold. Let me show you.”

  Xavier had discovered Crescent Valley that night, and like many dragons before and after him, he fell in love with it. Drawn in by the eternal crescent moon, he forsook the old world and returned only rarely, to visit the farm of his friend Crawford Scales.

  So the night Winona Brandfire died was the first time in almost fifty years that Xavier saw Winoka. He wasn’t going to go at first. He felt Winona, Ember, and most of the Blaze were indulging in a selfish, destructive impulse. He couldn’t blame them, but he wouldn’t join them.

  It was only after he discovered his great-nephew Gautierre was missing that he felt compelled to follow the Blaze. Since he and his lizard, Geddy (riding on his nose), trailed them by miles, they did not arrive at Winoka until it was already encased in a shimmering blue dome.

  You really can’t go home again, he mused while skirting the curved outline. It took him less than a minute of flying over the town, observing growing panic in the streets, to assure himself that this was not some mysterious beaststalker defense. What would happen if he flew into it? He had no desire to find out. He scouted the perimeter, until he heard roars from the southeast and spotted tongues of flame by the bridge.

  The scene u
pon his arrival was ugly. Winona, their Eldest, was dead. Her granddaughter, Catherine, looked nearly so. Beaststalkers and dragons, including Jonathan Scales, battled to the west, well beyond where Xavier could help or stop anything. Gautierre was nowhere in sight.

  Worst of all, his niece, Ember, was extracting one of her tail spikes from the throat of Jonathan’s friend Wendy.

  Helpless, he could only watch as Jennifer Scales chased Ember away before any more damage was done. Ember, sensibly, flew away—despite the woman’s bluster and training, she had little experience with actual combat, whereas the legend of the Ancient Furnace was growing daily. Watching the two of them disappear in the distance, he couldn’t decide for whom to root. Ember was dear to him, but she had lost all perspective. Xavier had come to know this Wendy Blacktooth a little during their time together on the Scales farm. She was a good person. Had Ember been there with them, wouldn’t she have seen that?

  It didn’t matter. He saw a boy below running into the barrier, trying to reach Wendy.

  “Her son, Eddie,” he mused aloud to Geddy. It did not take long before this child turned to violence as well, attacking another boy, for reasons Xavier didn’t understand at this distance. The girl with the other boy mercifully subdued Eddie—Werachnid, Xavier guessed—and then those two left Eddie’s body behind and disappeared into the brush by the bridge’s eastern end.

  Gently descending to where Eddie lay, he checked the boy’s condition (still alive) and then looked back through the barrier. Jonathan’s wife, Elizabeth, the woman who had killed his brother so many years ago, was still at her friend’s side, frantically trying to save her life.

  “Dr. Scales.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Dr. Scales,” he repeated more loudly.

  “Xavier,” she answered without turning from her patient, “unless you have a crash cart and a way of getting through that wall, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me do my job.”

  “She’s gone, Doctor.”

  “Stow it.” Another bloody rag got tossed to the street, replaced by a fresh one.

  “You need to get up. Your family and friends will need you. The fight continues.”

  “And I’ll bet you’re just thrilled about that.”

  The venom in the words unsettled Xavier. “Doctor?”

  “I’ll ask again: Do you have a crash cart and a way to get through that wall?”

  “She was a good person. A good friend. I learned that about her, in a short time.”

  The doctor began to press on the patient’s chest, alternating sets with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Occasionally, she would mutter instructions to Jennifer to check a pulse, press on some bleeding somewhere, or conduct some other exercise in futility. Xavier stopped trying to talk to them and instead focused on what was happening beyond. There were still a few dozen of the Blaze aloft, but the sirens blared on, and the beaststalkers would soon have an advantage in numbers. Already, he could make out a thickening crowd under the distant streetlights.

  Of all the dragons, Jonathan was closest. He was fighting efficiently and well, Xavier noticed, but the creeper’s job was complicated by the fact that he was trying not to kill anybody. No one in the Blaze was helping him; they were picking fights with random beaststalkers farther away. The beaststalkers, meanwhile, were working together better . . . and had no issues with lethal force.

  Geddy scrambled down his nose far enough to get his attention. Looking at where the gecko’s head was pointed, he spotted a familiar figure on the western edge of the bridge. He was surprised to see this person there, and even more surprised when he saw his great-nephew Gautierre next to her . . .

  When he saw Ember reappear in the sky, his surprise turned to deep concern for the girl’s life, and those near her.

  “I hope my great-nephew knows what he’s doing,” he whispered to Geddy, who flicked his tail in agreement. “I hope he and I chose the right path, after all.”

  Gautierre Longtail was still fourteen tonight. When he turned fifteen months later, he looked back on this fateful night as the point where he truly fell in love. Unfortunately, it was also the night he disobeyed both his mother and his great-uncle, albeit in different ways.

  From his exposure to the world beyond Crescent Valley, he’d come to the conclusion that Ember Longtail was obsessed about the wrong things. Why could she talk of nothing except his late grandpa Charles and the woman who killed him? Wasn’t there anything else to care about? Wasn’t there anyone else? He had found someone, and it did not take long for him to fall for her. She was beautiful, funny, interesting, brave, and kind. She was, in a word, special.

  Shortly after his great-uncle began training with the Scales family, he conspired with her. She felt the world needed to learn about dragons, that the secrets in this town had been held for long enough, and that they had the power to do something about it. He agreed. When he learned Winona Brandfire had called the Blaze, he informed her right away. She then had learned from Eddie Blacktooth that Glory Seabright was conducting mysterious business on the bridge.

  “This is our opportunity,” she had told him with shining eyes. “If we get there early enough, we can make a difference.”

  So they had come quietly in the darkness, without telling anyone else, to the western edge of the bridge. No one saw them slip close enough to observe everything that night.

  But when Gautierre saw his mother kill and flee, he realized the true stakes here. She’s wrong, he concluded as Eddie’s mom collapsed and Jennifer’s mom tried to save her. I have to be better than Ember Longtail. I have to pick the right side. If Uncle X can do it, so can I. Tonight, he had the opportunity to do the right thing . . . and even a young woman to fight for.

  He had talked about her with Jonathan Scales earlier. She’s likely to get herself in trouble someday, the man had told him with a severe look on his face. You’ve probably learned that about her already. I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to her, and I doubt her mother would either. You’ve got to help me keep an eye on her. Can you do that?

  Can I! He could hardly believe his luck.

  Now, thinking back on that conversation with Mr. Scales, Gautierre realized it was time for him to hold up his end of the bargain. He turned to say they should leave—but she chose that moment to go out in the open and reveal her presence.

  She almost died that night. But as it turned out, he saved her life. And true love lived on.

  CHAPTER 22

  The Seraph

  At the age of fifteen, Jennifer Scales cried for the first time over a dead woman’s body.

  The fresh corpse of Wendy Blacktooth was already beginning to gray and chill. Her eyelids were relaxed, her hair splayed around unhearing ears. A graceful, hollow throat bore the only imperfection on the body: a large puncture wound above the collarbone.

  Jennifer squeezed the tears from her eyes. She had seen death before, to be sure. But those deaths had been among the elderly . . . or among those she would deem evil.

  But this woman was young. Not evil. And not coming back.

  And I’m responsible, Jennifer thought.

  Hadn’t she enlisted Eddie and his mother as allies? Hadn’t she sent Eddie to his own murderous father to learn what he could about the rumors of beaststalker mutiny, and then encouraged the Blacktooths to help her intervene once he learned about this meeting? Hadn’t she had a responsibility to help Winona or Glory see reason? Hadn’t she known Ember Longtail would probably be among the dragons . . . and still failed to spot the dasher in time to help Wendy?

  After Wendy fell, Jennifer had managed to chase away Ember—but the dasher had vanished, demonstrating superior speed. Jennifer had returned to the bridge to help her mother, but it was hopeless. Even Elizabeth Georges-Scales had to stop trying to save her friend’s life eventually, but neither of them would leave the woman’s side.

  I’m sorry, Ms. Blacktooth.

  Her tears fell upon a cold, motionless hand. Then Jennifer saw some
thing incredible, something marvelous. Something that reflected all the sorrows Jennifer felt, and more besides.

  How does something like this happen? Jennifer wondered as she shielded her face. Where does it come from?

  What rose from Wendy Blacktooth’s body was too large to be mortal, and too bright to be sunlight. It had wings of blue fire, and robes of incandescent silver. It surveyed Jennifer and everything around her with two burning, sapphire coals. The air was filled with the scent of burning lavender. Though it made no sound, Jennifer could barely hear anything else.

  “Mom . . .”

  “I see it, Jennifer. I can’t believe I see it, but I do.”

  “What is it? Is it . . . Ms. Blacktooth?”

  “It’s not Wendy. I’ve seen this before . . . in Glory’s private papers. It’s called a seraph.”

  “What is . . .” Jennifer trailed off in awe, then recalled her question. “What is it here for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jennifer looked across the bridge, at the crippled, the unconscious, and the dead. There wasn’t one of these over Glory. Why here, over Eddie’s mother?

  Before she could ask, Elizabeth reached across Wendy’s body and held her daughter’s chin. “Have you been crying?”

  “What . . . what kind of question is that? Of course I’m crying!”

  Elizabeth wiped her daughter’s cheek, whispering something.

  “What’s that?”

  “Something Glory taught me, from her papers. The seraph’s mother is death, its father an enemy’s tears. Glory thought . . .” She wiped her own face. “It doesn’t matter what she thought. She was wrong. Charles Longtail was right. He tried to tell me about a world where an enemy will weep upon our dead. I ignored him and lost my chance. But you, Jennifer . . .”