by Giles Carwyn
“If they go badly, my assistance will not matter.”
She moved forward to embrace him, but she saw the alarm in his eyes and held back, taking his hand instead.
“We will finish what we started. I pro—”
He snatched his hand from her grasp, held it up in a warding gesture. “No. I don’t want any obligations between us. Go. Do what you must and I will do the same.”
She searched his eyes for one last moment, then turned and ran up the dock toward the silver tower in the distance.
Chapter 9
I’m so glad I found you,” Brophy said, stroking Arefaine’s hair as he held her on the glowing sliver stairs. For the first time she felt right in his arms. “Everything is going to be all right.”
“I thought I killed you,” she murmured into his shoulder.
“I’m not so easy to kill,” he said.
“And after all that…” she began to say, but trailed off. She let go of him, but he still held her. “Brophy,” she said, her voice calm. “Let me go.”
He released her, and she took a half step back. “You came here to stop me, didn’t you?” Her blue eyes were filled with confusion and distrust.
“I’m here because—”
“He came here to kill you,” a man’s voice said.
They both spun around, and Brophy’s lip curled in a sneer. The man from his dreams strode toward them down the stairs. His pale white face was framed by chin-length black curls. Thin eyes, black as night, stared down the short nose. Hatred surged in Brophy’s chest. His arms and legs tensed, and the fear he had come to know so well in his dreams raced through his veins. He crouched and reached for his sword.
“I didn’t come here to kill her,” he said, “I came here to kill you.”
“Fath—” Arefaine started. “No, Efflum. Stop this. Brophy threw down his sword.”
“Well, he’s picked it up again, hasn’t he?”
Brophy’s fingers wrapped around the pommel as he prepared to attack.
“A pathetic gesture, certainly,” the Fiend continued. “You could send him to his grave with a flick of your finger.”
Brophy’s body ached for action, but he knew it wouldn’t work. The man was an illusion. His feet made no impressions on the dusty stairs. Brophy couldn’t win this battle without Arefaine. She must be made to understand.
With effort, Brophy turned his gaze away from the Fiend. “Arefaine, this thing is not your father.”
“I know,” she said, her brow furrowed. “My father is dead, but—”
“This is the man I told you about, from my dreams,” he continued, biting out the words through clenched teeth. “You cannot believe anything he says.”
“Be careful, my child,” Efflum said. “Do not be seduced by this boy’s promises. He came here with his Zelani. His lover waits outside to celebrate with him when we are dead. Look in his eyes and you will see the truth.”
“Yours is the only death I seek, Fiend,” Brophy said. “Just you.”
“Brophy, please—” Arefaine whispered. “That’s enough.”
“How will you kill me, boy?” Efflum snapped, showing his teeth. “With your meaty fists and precious curls?”
“I said enough!” Arefaine shouted, throwing her arms outward.
An invisible weight slammed into Brophy, throwing him down the stairs. He grabbed the railing, barely catching his balance before being thrown over.
Arefaine stood alone on the steps, bent over as though exhausted. Her long dark hair hung on either side of her face. Efflum’s shade was gone, banished by her magic.
“Arefaine, where is he?” Brophy asked softly, regaining his feet.
She looked down at him, her fist clenched. “Is it true, what he said?” she asked in a calm, deadly voice. “Is Shara here?”
“Where is he!?”
“He’s still trapped. Trapped up there in this tree.” She pointed at the thick roots.
“He can’t get out?”
“Not without my help.”
Brophy let out a breath and dropped his sword back on the stairs.
“Is it true, Brophy? Is Shara here?” she asked.
Brophy opened his mouth, but the words didn’t come.
“You hesitate,” she said, and her eyes narrowed. “She is here.” Her tone was dead.
He shook his head. “I lost her. She was with me and now she’s gone. But we came together. To find you.”
“Find me and do what?”
He paused, letting her watch him. “What do you think I came here to do?”
Her face twisted in anguish. Closing her eyes, she put her fists to her forehead. “I don’t know what to believe anymore,” she murmured.
“You know what I want. I’ve told you.”
“You want to kill him. You want to keep Efften buried forever in the past,” she said, her blue eyes searing his.
“I wanted to come here with you. I wanted to stand by your side when you looked in that thing’s eyes for the first time, and decide together what must be done about him.”
“And what do you think should be done?” she spat.
“I want him dead.”
Her eyes widened, and her nostrils flared. Her fist clenched.
“That’s unfortunate, because you can’t kill him.”
He faced her without flinching. “No. But why would you let something like that live? How could you possibly want him free?”
She faced him, stony and unmoving.
“Arefaine,” he said softly. “What can he offer you except power? But you have all the power you need. You can move empires, bring countries to war. Is that who you want to be? Is that the way you want to live your life? Alone with an army of weeping ones at your back?”
Her brows came together, but she remained as tight as a bowstring.
After a long moment he said, “I’m sorry, about what happened in the cave.”
She scoffed. “Sorry that you started, or sorry that you stopped?”
He moved toward her, and she watched him coolly.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you needed. If I wasn’t with Shara, I would be with you. But I am with Shara. I will be with her for the rest of my life. It doesn’t mean I don’t care for you. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, or that I won’t fight for you.”
“Fight for me?” she said, raising her eyebrow mockingly. “Is that what you’re doing? I thought you were trying to seduce me, use me for your own purposes.”
“I’m not trying to seduce you.”
“Well, you weren’t doing a very good job if you were. Mentioning your undying love for another woman is not the best pillow talk.”
“Arefaine, I still care—”
“How? How can you still care for me? I tried to kill you, Brophy!” She swallowed, and finally unclenched her fist. “I might still kill you.”
“Why?”
“My kindred are coming. From all over the world. Coming to this place to rebuild it. And you are standing in the way of our dreams.”
“Then bring them. Let them all come. I want you to rebuild Efften. I want you to be reunited with your kin. I want you to have your dream. Not Efflum’s.”
Arefaine paused, her features softening.
“The beauty of this city is staggering. She deserves to be reborn, but you have to face reality first. You can’t make this a paradise until you acknowledge the ruin we’re standing in and how it got this way. The black emmeria must be destroyed. We have to clean up the mess we have made.”
“Oh yes,” she said sardonically, looking down at the Heartstone slung around her waist. She wanted to touch it, but she resisted the urge. “And that will be so simple, I’m sure you know exactly how to go about it.”
“No. I don’t. But together we will find a way.”
“Oh’s way? Are you his new disciple, then? Shall I slit my wrists and lock magic away forever, drain the world of what is truly spectacular?”
“No. I disagree with Oh. I disagre
e with them all.”
“All?”
“Ohohhom, Efften, and the Silver Islands. Each was formed, in its own way, by the black emmeria. They all were presented with the same question: What should one do in the face of evil? They all chose the wrong answer. Efften saw evil as a tool. In their arrogance, they thought to tame the black emmeria, bend it to their will. They failed. The Ohohhim saw evil as an undefeatable foe and chose to run from it. They feared the temptation so much that they became something less than human. The Silver Islanders responded to evil with maniacal hatred. But hate is a part of the very thing they would destroy. Rather than find a way to defeat evil, they threw away their lives in suicidal attacks against it. Three great peoples. Three doomed choices. There has to be a fourth way.”
“An Ohndarien way?” Arefaine asked.
A surge of longing flowed through Brophy at the mention of his beloved city, already lost in this ceaseless war. “Yes,” he said softly. “An Ohndarien way, if you will.”
Her fierce gaze faltered, and she looked at the ground. “What is the Ohndarien way?”
“You build a wall around the evil. And you stand shoulder to shoulder with your family and friends and you make sure that evil never gets out. I want to build that wall with you. I want to stand on it with you. I want you to rebuild Efften. But not as a paradise, as a prison. Ohndarien has been destroyed. So it’s time to move Ohndarien here.”
“So we build our own prison and live within it?”
“No. We build the prison, lock the black emmeria within it, and work together to discover how to destroy it forever.”
“No one knows how to do that.”
“Maybe not, but the first step is killing that thing up there.”
“Killing him won’t destroy the emmeria.”
“No, but it’s a damn good start.”
Arefaine sighed. “I don’t even know if I can kill him.”
“Oh said you could.”
“I won’t do it his way. I won’t kill myself.”
“I wouldn’t let you.”
He closed the scant distance between them and took her hand. Her fingers curled lightly over his. Brophy leaned forward and kissed her very softly on the lips.
“Can you let me love you, even if it’s not the way you wanted?” he asked.
She let out a little breath, and slowly nodded. “I can try.”
“Then that’s a start. Let’s go look this thing in the face.” He tugged her arm lightly, began walking up the steps. She followed him, then stopped. He pulled up short and looked down at her. Silently, with no expression on her face, she slid her arms around his neck and hugged him softly.
He responded, squeezing her to him.
“I was so in love with you,” she whispered breathlessly into his ear. He drew back and kissed her, and she clung to him as though she would draw all of her dreams from his lips. His heart ached that he could give her no more than that.
“How sweet.” The Fiend’s oily voice drifted down the stairs. “The celibate young lovers are going to kill the vile monster locked in a cage.”
Arefaine’s eyes flashed as she withdrew from Brophy. “I’ve had enough of your lies, ‘Father.’”
He shook his head, and his ghostly black curls swished across his silk robes. “Pathetic, child. I had such high hopes for you, but it appears the daughter is just like the father. You are of the lesser race after all.”
“Arrogant words from a wispy husk of a man imprisoned in a tree,” she said. “You are a good liar, but a very bad father. I never should have listened to you. But it’s not too late to fix my error.”
He chuckled, deep and throaty. “But you are mistaken, my child.” He paused, watching her with a smug smile that sent a chill up Brophy’s spine. “All I really needed you to do was to destroy those damnable Silver Islanders. The rest”—he nodded, never breaking eye contact—“can be accomplished by other parties.”
“Other parties?”
“Of course. You don’t think I would rest my entire fate in the hands of a love-starved little girl, did you? My other daughter is knocking at the door as we speak, and you, Daughter of Morgeon, are out of time.”
Chapter 10
Issefyn clambered up the marble stairway toward the tower’s entrance. She cradled her containment stone in one fist, clutching it to her chest. She crawled forward, one step at a time, on elbows worn raw and bloody. Her agony had become distant and dull as the emmeria poured through her in a dwindling stream, forcing her mind to endure when her heart had long since ceased beating.
She looked back and saw the wet trail she’d left up the steps. Her bowels trailed ten feet behind her, covered in sticks and leaves.
“You are almost there, Mother,” Victeris said, taking the steps slowly and gracefully next to her. “All will be well when you get inside.”
She clacked her teeth together in anticipation. Soon she would return to her true form. She would tower over her enemies once again. Arefaine would cower before her, begging for mercy. Brophy would writhe in pain as she crushed his chest in her fist. And Shara. She would kill Shara slowly, sending her screaming to the bottom of the ocean, dragged down by the weight of her dead lover. Her son had promised her.
She stopped at the twisted gates clotted shut with roots. One side had been wrenched open, and chunks of severed roots lay scattered across the landing. She peered inside, squinting against the dim interior. A snake pit of monstrous brown roots twisted through the room.
“What is this place?” she rasped, feeling the power warm on her face.
“All the power of Efften, waiting for you to claim it,” Victeris said.
“It is at the center of all those roots. I can feel it.”
“Yes, it is. Destroy the roots and it shall be yours.”
Issefyn hissed. “Those roots are your prison. This is what Darius created to hold you.”
“That fool could never hold me. My prison was created by another. Darius was only the turnkey.”
Issefyn’s wheezing laugh rasped in her raw throat. “And why would I set you free?”
“Because you’ll die if you don’t,” the shade calmly replied as he slowly dissipated.
She reached up, her fingers twining into the filigreed door. There was a gap at the top where the roots had been cut away. She tried to pull herself up with one hand, her severed body dangling below her. It was no use. She was weakening, her life barely sustained by the power of the emmeria. She could not climb without letting go of her stone, and she would not let go of her stone.
The power beneath the roots called to her like a cool oasis in her desert of agony. She needed to get in. She uncurled her arm and pressed her stone against the largest root right in front of her. Breathing out with little more than a feeble grunt, she forced the last of the emmeria out of the stone and into the roots.
They writhed, turning black. The darkness spread outward, consuming the roots like black fire racing up a thread. The entire root structure convulsed, scattering clumps of black ooze as the roots turned to a rancid black mush. The silver doors, no longer held closed, swung inward.
Clutching the empty stone, she crawled forward on her elbows, wading through shards of wood melting into black sludge. She looked up and saw that the roots extended up the glowing tower as far as she could see. The brown roots turned black, the infection rising upwards as the putrefying roots fell apart in ragged clumps.
Issefyn ignored the fetid liquid falling around her like rain and looked to her salvation. In the very center of the tower’s floor sat an oblong shape half buried under the filth from the dying roots. She crawled toward it, reaching out, feeling the inferno of ani within. She lurched closer, grappled with the smooth edges, and climbed on top of it. Her bare skin slipped across the black ooze until it touched the warm metal.
This was the source of everything. This was the breast that Efften suckled through its infancy. This was the source of Efften’s might through all her glory, the seed from which
an empire had sprouted. And that empire would bloom again. Her empire.
Issefyn’s ravaged heart shuddered once and started beating again.
Chapter 11
Your other daughter?” Arefaine asked, feeling a subtle shift in the energy of the tower.
“Yes, the tall queen you took as a disciple.”
Brophy looked back and forth between her and her father’s shade. “What’s happening?” he asked. “What’s he talking about?”
“The tree!” Arefaine said, rushing forward, right through the Fiend’s apparition. Snatching his sword from the ground, Brophy leapt after her, sprinting up the stairs toward Efflum’s prison.
“Come, my children!” the shade called after them. “Come for me!”
Arefaine’s magic boiled in the air around her. It was like a living thing, and it longed for her to use it. She and Brophy flew up the stairs. Warm air rushed past them, and the putrid stench hit Arefaine like a physical blow. Her eyes burned, and she gagged on her last breath.
“What’s happening?” Brophy shouted. “Is he getting loose?”
“Yes,” she screamed back at him.
The cluster of roots started to quiver and then undulate. Shaking the burning tears from her eyes, she looked down and saw the massive column slowly turning black. She threw her magic against it, pushing the vile energy back.
She clenched her teeth in concentration, slowly losing ground as the roots continued to disintegrate. It wasn’t just the emmeria she was fighting. Efflum had joined the struggle, throwing his will against hers.
Brophy paused by her side, uncertain what to do.
“We’ve got to keep going,” she whispered, “up toward the light.”
He grabbed her hand and led her up the stairs, hacking through the roots barring their way. He practically dragged her through the cluster of dying vegetation as she threw her will against Efflum and his black emmeria.
Within moments, Brophy had pulled her through the gap in the roots into the garden above. Arefaine panted uncontrollably, feeling like her skull would crack. She was losing. He was stronger than she was. That had never happened before.
