“I was taken,” he said. “For my legendary powers. But I was found wanting.”
The words were spoken with an edge of mocking; an old wound continually prodded so that it would not heal.
“We’d like to help you.”
“Is that what you want?” he whispered. “Or do you want to know what my maker is planning?”
His eyes were filled with the feral bitterness of a wild animal taken from its home and trained to the hand but never fully tamed. He opened his mouth, and when the voice came out, it was not the one she knew but the perfect mimicry of a raging woman that made the hair rise at the base of her neck. “What that witch-blooded bitch did is impossible.”
A chill raced through her. That voice. She knew it in her nightmares still, and her brain went instinctively to the memory of the beautiful redhead who had once thrown a knife at her heart. Vanka. Isela fought the bile rising in her throat. The phoenix set down his cup, resting his long, elegant hands on his jean-clad knees.
Isela swallowed her revulsion. “You can imitate voices?”
“We have no voices of our own,” he said. “It’s a simple trick, but one that has caused more trouble than it’s worth.”
Simple or not, it makes them excellent spies, Gold warned.
“She’s right.” The phoenix sighed, glancing at the gold figure finally. “We have been used as such.”
“You can hear her?”
His head rose and fell in that peculiar avian nod. “Everything magic in this world is of them, lady. Even the blood running through your veins is tainted with their presence in this world. It’s all a matter of degrees.”
“The gods.”
“If you insist.” He shrugged.
“What are they then?”
“This was their world first,” he said. “They gave up their physical bodies to become one with the energy of the universe. You call it magic?” He nodded. “But some kept looking back at the world they’d left behind. They watched, first with curiosity and later envy, you primates learning to walk upright and master your environment. They saw too late that evolution is a one-way trip. So they contented themselves with meddling in the lives of things that lived here.”
He continued, “The human need to name things is stronger than the desire to truly understand them. When they appeared briefly in your lives with powers beyond your understanding, you called them gods and worshipped them. Their presence changed your blood when they bred with you. And then you learned to talk to them directly with your dancing. You thought you could simply ask and they would give without taking in return. You thought they wanted to help you become better.”
Using dancers to draw power from the gods for petty human concerns and conflicts had almost destroyed humanity. Though it had only lasted a few weeks, the godswar would have ended in apocalypse if not for the intervention of the Allegiance of Necromancers. They had saved the world, but that too had come at a price.
Isela focused on the present. “And somehow you escaped?”
“I still have a bit of my old magic,” he said before admitting, “Their undead are weak without the presence of their makers. I was able to overpower their command and run.”
“Why did you find me?” Isela asked.
“She spoke of you enough. I thought… your god could help me. If I gave you information, what her plans are… perhaps. But I think I’ve run out of time. This body cannot sustain me.”
“Is he still there, the man?”
He bobbed his head, pausing to blink at her. “What was before has been mostly burned away by what I am. He moves in the back of my mind like an old dream. All I have are these echoes.” The phoenix rubbed his temple angrily, his lips moving in unspoken words.
“I think more than echoes,” Isela said, pitying the mortal trapped within. “I think we can help you, both of you.”
His nostrils flared as his chin rose, desire warring with fear.
“But first,” Isela said, “we must have your assurances.”
Gold nodded. Good, Issy. You’re learning.
He looked between her and the god. Then his eyes hooded and he retreated into his chair, watching them both. “I give you my word that nothing we speak of will be repeated outside this room.”
It was a start, but not enough. Isela swallowed her regret. “You must ask for sanctuary.”
Sanctuary was not a concept native to humanity. She’d gone around and around on the topic with both Dante and Bebe before entering the phoenix’s mind. They insisted formality was the only way to guarantee the phoenix’s loyalty. But the fresh bond with Dory still made her uneasy, and now they wanted her to form another, less equitable one. A person offered a necromancer’s sanctuary was a cross between a political refugee and an involuntarily committed ward of the state. The phoenix would belong to her.
His shoulders rose in a way that made her think of a bird ruffling its feathers warily. “You are prepared to offer it?”
“I will, as both the vessel of a god and Azrael’s consort,” she said formally. Then she rested her hands on the table and leaned forward. “But also as a friend. We are alike, you and I. I promise not to hurt you more than you’ve already been hurt and to do everything I can to restore you to who you were… before.”
The great gold-and-green eyes of the phoenix rose to hers. He set down his teacup, folding his hands in his lap with a resigned air. At last he slipped from his chair to one knee.
“My lady.” He clasped her hand. Nails were trimmed and clean, long fingers that of a teacher or a musician. He pressed her knuckles to his lips and then his forehead. She braced her other hand on his shoulder. For all his thinness, she felt the cords of muscles through his back. Muscles where once wings might have been. His head cocked as his eyes rolled to take in her fingers, his shoulder shivering slightly under her touch. He was like a human parrot.
He dropped his gaze again and took a hard breath. “I seek sanctuary. I swear devotion to your house. My life is yours.”
“And my asylum is yours,” Isela said thickly, speaking the words Bebe had drilled into her. “No other claim on you will be honored.” She hesitated. “And it’s Issy. Or Isela. Please, sit down.”
The phoenix smiled for the first time, and her heart broke a little.
“How about Nix,” she asked.
Be careful, Issy, Gold said. To name something is to claim it.
“It’s just temporary,” Isela said. “Phoenixes don’t need names, remember?”
“Nix,” he said.
She met the phoenix’s eyes. “Are you ready?”
“What choice do I have?”
Isela felt herself smiling against all reason. “Someone once told me there is always a choice.”
Gold nodded once. Isela reached out and took his hand in hers. This time she felt the power surge against her sternum. It was a peculiar fullness of opposites, like distant relations seeing themselves in one another.
That’s the necromancers and witches working together, Gold said. See how powerful they can be united? They are halves of a whole. It will take much to overcome what was done in the name of the Allegiance, but someday, Isela, they will need each other again. They will need us to be the conduit, see?
Isela felt the edges of her own body being becoming a funnel. As the magic churned from necromancers and witches, it entered her. It took shape, and she focused on maintaining the edges, keeping it directed at the man in front of her. When she turned her gaze outward, there were two beings. A crumpled, emaciated human male, the shadow of the image she’d just spoken with, curled on the floor. On the chair rested a creature that would have put the most beautiful peacock to shame. A crest of fire and feathers sprang from the back of his head, and a savagely curved beak glittered.
It gazed down at the man, and its feathers shivered.
Isela remembered her first dancing lesson with Gold and how exhausted the god had been after the short time of being in control of a physical form. She crouched on the floor b
eside the man. Pale, thin skin marked with freckles stretched over his bones and frame.
“Why is he so emaciated here?” Isela asked Gold.
It was the phoenix that answered. She recognized the pattern of its speech but realized the tone and the voice she’d associated with it must belong to the man. The bird was musical and entirely inhuman. This is all that is left of him, I’m afraid. It took me many weeks to learn to manage and care for his body. I’ve tried. But I failed.
Isela stretched out a hand. The man on the floor started and stared up at her with wide, blinking eyes. Doubt crept into her. Their plan depended on her being able to negotiate between them, get a settlement that would allow both beings to share a body as she and Gold did. But looking into his vacant, blank gaze, she wondered if there was enough of a personality there to negotiate with. And how could she possibly help someone who didn’t even seem to recognize another human face?
“Pretty.” The word came out in a long slur, trailed by a line of spittle that rolled out of the corner of his mouth. “Sun and stars and pretty coins in the fountain.”
Isela gasped as the hand reached out to her. No longer smooth, unblemished fingers, these were the coarse, work-roughened hands she remembered from the square. She kept her palm outstretched, and his settled into it. The grip was soft and unfocused, like his gaze.
“Can you hear me?” she asked.
A long sound, between a groan and a grunt. Tears softened her vision. This had been what she feared when Gold first offered their arrangement. To be left nothing but an empty, shambling shell of a human, a host of a parasitic power. Maybe it would be best if they failed and the phoenix died if it gave this man peace.
She snatched a cloth from the table and dabbed the spit from his lips. A wide, childlike smile stretched his mouth, and he snuggled his face into her hand. She glanced up at Gold and the phoenix. Both supernatural beings’ expressions were impassive. Her anger flared.
How quickly you judge us for something that was not our doing, Gold said. If you lose control of that power, you will do far more damage than either of us have done to that poor beast.
Isela took a few long breaths, soothing the emotion that threatened to pluck the threads of her control loose. She needed to help if for no other reason than he suffered as she had managed to avoid through a twist of fate.
“Do you want to live? Do you want to be here?”
The phoenix squawked in agitation. Your word.
“I promised to try to help,” she snapped. “Both of you. And if his suffering can’t be eased, then I will not help you continue to use him as a body. I’d let you die first, no matter how powerful you are and what you know.”
The phoenix flapped its wings, feathers flared as it screamed like nails on glass. Gold stepped between it and Isela. The god shook her head once in warning, and the bird settled onto its perch.
The man groaned again, voice a rasp in his throat.
She retrieved tea, placed the cup to his mouth and wiped the spilled liquid from his cheeks and lips. “I can help you. But you have to accept it. The bird, permanently. I don’t think either of you will survive without each other. Do you understand?”
Great heaving noises broke from the man’s chest as his eyes flickered up to the bird and the golden woman. Bubbles of snot flared under his nostrils as wet rivers fled his eyes. Isela maneuvered his head and chest into her lap as best she could, cradling him like a small child and rocking.
“I am like you,” she whispered. “The gold one, she lives in me. And it’s a life worth living. You’ll find you can benefit one another. And most importantly, a part of you”—she paused, taking in the quiet beauty of the room around them—“a good part, will survive.”
Isela, we should do this now, Gold said.
Not until he’s ready, Isela insisted.
“It’s not all terrible,” Isela whispered to the man in her lap. “Maybe someday… if you have anyone left. Maybe someday you can find them. But it’s your choice.”
She glared at the phoenix.
I will not let your memory be lost, the phoenix offered finally. I will… help you.
The man groaned again, and after long moments of his relentless, broken sobs, he took a shuddering breath. He turned his face into her stomach, and his voice vibrated against her core. “Sanctuaaarrr.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Isela sighed. She looked up, feeling the tears on her own face, and into the eyes of the god waiting patiently for her. Now we do this.
Gold nodded.
She reached out a hand and Nix alighted on her wrist. For a bird so large, it weighed nothing. With her other hand, she took the man’s fingers. She remembered Dante’s words. It’s a like a puzzle. Find the pieces that match one another. Make them fit.
The power demanded her attention. It wanted entry, so she bade it, feeling Gold form a dense, protective shell around the flow. The two powers pooled and collected, swirling around each other until they were indistinguishable. A virtual chaos of beginning and ending on infinite repeat. As it gathered strength, it acquired a sound, like a chorus of disparate voices coming into harmony. It was rhythmic and continuous, alternating sound and silence. In the combination, she could hear the heart of the universe itself.
If she only listened a little harder, she was sure she could find the path that would lead her to its source.
Focus. Gold, calling her back.
Reluctantly Isela turned away from pursuit of the sound, felt her own heart crack at the loss of union with that mighty force. The merging forces had almost entirely filled the vessel she and Gold created. Pressing from within, it strained at the very seams of her, and for the first time she felt the beginnings of discomfort. Her instinct was to shut down the link.
But she must be an opening, a path from one to the other.
She returned to the image of the phoenix. She opened a channel to him through their linked hands, and immediately the commingling forces inside her found their work. The discomfort eased. The silk of something like feathers brushed her palms. She gasped with anticipated joy. She opened the conduit a bit more, let the power flow more freely into him, hoping to speed the transition.
As the phoenix faded, the man began to resemble what she’d seen when she first entered the room. As they merged, both became less solid and more—a double image resolving before her eyes.
The vast, harmonic heartbeat returned, and she felt herself slipping, her attention wavering.
And then everything went wrong.
His physical body arched, rejecting the transformation. Influx from both the spellcasters and the resistance in Nix made her waver. Her body stretched taut. The power mingling inside her recoiled, doubling back like water expanding as it froze. She knew that it would not simply return to the space that once contained it.
She focused on holding herself together, knowing that if she gave up now, the feedback would hit the witches and necromancers. The necromancers might survive. Correction—Tariq might. But witches were subject to the laws of mortality.
Forced to her breaking point, she felt her ears ring as the sound of screaming reached them. It echoed off the walls—two voices, rising in distorted harmony echoing with pain. One sounded almost birdlike. The other was her own. The power began to leak from her skin, drawn off into the wards Azrael had imprinted on the walls. They brightened as they grew close to the point of saturation. She redoubled her effort, feeling Gold tighten around her.
She flung open her eyes. Bright blue light filled the room, mingling with green where Azrael’s wards were aflame in their attempt to contain the outpouring of power. Dante had fallen. Gus was at his side, her mouth still moving with incantation and her eyes on the cracks forming in the walls. The witches were clustered and being brought down as if under an enormous weight. Tariq stood apart, arms and legs splayed. His whole body shook, and his eyes rolled white with effort.
The color of the light in the room was explained when she looked at Nix. He w
as engulfed in blue flames.
She had to hold it in. She would lose them all if she let it go. Her will was strong, but the rest of her lacked the training and the endurance she needed. She slipped, and a bolt of power shot across the wall, leaving a crack the size of her arm. She was going to fail.
Azrael!
Part III
Chapter Eighteen
The truth was, an eternity could be awfully boring. Unless one knew how to occupy oneself.
A sudden jolt scattered his current distraction across a vast expanse of space, knocking two galaxies out of their regular orbits and sending a cascading burst of light and sparks as stars collided and masses skittered through dust like so many marbles.
He swore in languages older than both celestial formations and cast his gaze over the mess his little experiment had become. A rock skating through one of those misted star fields bobbed curiously. He paused to watch it gather dust and particles as it spun, forming a new orbit around a remaining dwarf star. He considered the distance from the star to the rock and the gathering particles and chunks of ice. Interesting. A few hundred thousand years and this might prove to be quite a happy accident indeed.
He turned his attention back to the sensation that had caused the distraction. Hello?
Like the tug of a fingertip on the string of an instrument, it thrummed through the fibers of his being.
That made it no less difficult to suss out. He’d been around so long there were parts of him all over—and not just in space. Time was its own miasma. He went still, calling the scattered bits of himself back, summoning and gathering himself as the sensation echoed through him. He was patient and he was old, and since time didn’t matter that much, he waited.
Aha! His attention settled on a part of himself he’d released so long ago he’d forgotten. An old experiment. Back when he was still playing on a small scale. Curious.
Dancer's Flame (Grace Bloods Book 2) Page 22
