by Giles Carwyn
Brophy stared at the horizon.
A haze of crackling lightning arced around the growing bubble of swirling colors. It raced toward them, eating the black emmeria as it came.
“What do we do?” Brophy asked, holding the Sword of Autumn up and stepping in front of Shara.
She shook her head, her eyes wide. “I don’t know.”
The rainbow bubble expanded until it reached the clouds, then it faltered. As quickly as it had come, it collapsed, devoured by the howling darkness.
Shara fought to settle her mind and direct her thoughts. Her magic danced around them, but she had no idea what she would do next.
Brophy held the Sword of Autumn in both hands. The howling voices were gone, fled to the far corners of the world. The bright, sizzling light show had passed, but in its wake, sweltering dots remained in his vision.
“Shara?” he murmured.
“I’m here,” she said, and her hand gripped his.
His vision slowly returned, revealing a bleak world. The dock was still slick with black ooze. Trees hunched at the edge of the beach, shivering and fighting to get free of the ground. Gnarled limbs quested out, scrabbling at the sand. One of the trees pulled its roots out of the ground, and it crawled toward them like a giant crab.
“You should have listened to me,” came a high-pitched voice from farther along the shore. Brophy and Shara both spun around.
“Jesheks?” Shara stared at the figure that walked toward them. The man was almost six feet tall with a long mane of white hair and skin as pale as chalk. He wore a Physendrian robe that had been tattered to rags, and his pink eyes squinted in the gloom.
Brophy moved between Shara and the stranger.
“The emmeria’s escaped,” Shara said. “All of it.”
“I know,” the stranger replied.
“We have to stop it,” Shara said.
“We will.” The albino reached a hand toward her face. Shara screamed, clutching at her chest.
“What are you doing?” Brophy shouted.
“Becoming the man she taught me to be,” he said grimly.
Brophy yanked Shara away and leveled his blade at the man’s face. Her eyes had turned black, and thick tears welled in the corners.
With an animal roar, Brophy launched himself at the evil mage.
“Jesheks!” Shara screamed, fighting to protect herself, but the albino wasn’t there.
She gasped for breath. A writhing mass pressed down on her, crushing her from all sides. Stale breath and human sweat assailed her nostrils. A thousand cries of anguish flooded her ears. An elbow slammed into her eye, and she shouted. A knee slammed into her gut, and she twisted. Scant light illuminated an ocean of squirming bodies. Hot, slick flesh pressed against her from above and below. She was drowning, buried in naked human bodies.
Pale skin. Brown skin. Black skin. All fighting, throttling one another. She squirmed, trying to escape, but there was nowhere to go. A meaty hand grabbed her face, pushed her downward. Her neck bent sideways, and she screamed. Other hands grabbed her shoulders and her arms, twisting and pushing.
No!
She fought. They forced her down, but she had to get up, had to get out, to the air above. She shrieked, grabbing hands, pinching, scratching, whatever she could do to claw her way upward. They fought her, but she twisted fingers and broke them. She drew blood with her nails and reveled in the screams that followed.
Someone poked her eye and tried to gouge it out. She turned her head away, and a fingernail raked her scalp. She grabbed the man’s testicles and pulled. He howled, and she climbed past him, higher into the squirming throng of bodies.
She moved toward the top, viciously fighting for every inch. But she never reached it. There was no top. There was no bottom.
“Let me out,” she said. “Let me out!” She scraped at a woman near her, who howled at the pain.
“Let me out!” the woman shouted back, grabbing Shara’s hair and pulling.
“Let me out!” another voice echoed, and a hundred more after.
Jesheks worked his jaw, testing to see if it was broken. He swirled the pain inside his head and added it to his pool of ani.
In front of him, Brophy stood still, panting as the black tears formed on his cheeks. The young man was faster than he’d expected. Much faster.
And stronger, Jesheks thought, feeding off the pain. It had been a wicked punch. But satisfying.
So satisfying.
Fingernails raked across Shara’s forehead, going for her eyes again. She grabbed a wrist, but it slipped free. It was the same tattooed man as before. Baring her teeth, she fought her way toward him. He wanted to blind her! She caught hold of his ankle as he tried to get away. He dragged her through arms, torsos, legs. But she wasn’t letting him go. He’d pay for what he’d tried to do.
An arm slid over her breast and hooked under her armpit. It was iron strong, and it yanked her back. She lost her grip on the tattooed man’s ankle.
“No!” she screamed as muscular bronze fingers dug into her skin. She grabbed them and scratched, trying to pry the fingers off her breast. He pulled her to him, his hairy, sweat-slicked chest sliding across her back. Shara turned and sank her teeth into his flesh as blood welled up in her mouth.
He let go and she turned to punch the man, but he had begun attacking someone else. Shara twisted, suddenly without an enemy, and realized that she had fought her way to the surface.
The sky above was a bloody purple, and lightning forked back and forth constantly, thunder booming. The sea of writhing bodies went on forever, stretched into darkness in all directions. Vague memories spun through her mind, overwhelmed and fragmented by the screaming voices and distant thunder.
Shara closed her eyes and fought to block everything out.
Breathe, she thought. Breathe. Regain your wits.
She pulled the thick, putrid air into her lungs and pushed it out, tried to establish a cycle of breathing. The people below her pinched her, grabbed her hair, pulled her down. But she kept breathing through her fear and rage, turning the pain into power.
Lashing out at those around her, Shara fought to stay on the surface. She looked over the struggling sea of humanity. This should be familiar. She should know where she was.
All around her she saw more bodies falling from the dark sky. A large man hit the pile just a few feet away, clubbing anyone within reach.
The thought brought an image to her mind. Pale skin, red eyes. She held on to the image, swimming toward it in her mind, fighting to understand. And then she knew.
I’m lost in the black emmeria, she thought. I’m a weeping one.
She remembered Jesheks reaching for her chest, yanking something out. He sent me here. To hate. To fear.
To her left, the large newcomer fought like a lion. The screams of the wounded surrounded him. Shara watched him, trying to pierce this veil, trying to see the truth.
Despair spread through her heart like winter. For a flickering instant she knew what she had to do, and then it was gone. She clenched her teeth. The thought was so hard to hold. “I hate this place,” she cried.
“I hate this place!” a woman screamed behind her, clutching her head.
“I hate this place!” a man echoed in the distance.
No, she thought. Fight it. Use the pain.
Again she looked at the writhing arms and legs, tried to see true.
The newcomer still maintained his perch atop everyone, clawing and kicking. A mass of people had pushed him up, creating a little mountain. The harder he fought, the more others seemed drawn to him.
And then Shara saw his face.
“Brophy!” she shouted, but he was lost in battle and didn’t hear her.
He punched a burly man in the face again and again until his foe toppled unconscious down the squirming hill. Two women grabbed Brophy’s arms, and he elbowed the first in the face, twisted free of the next. Another man surfaced and grabbed Brophy’s head, pulled him painfully backwar
d. Brophy spun, thrusting both thumbs into the man’s eyes, knocking him away.
She stared at him, knowing he would never give up. He had never quit in his entire life.
Love for him flickered inside her.
Brophy snarled, threw another screaming man off his mountain.
All we wanted was our little cottage. Fresh mornings on the sea. Love-making at night. Candles burning next to our bed.
Her tortured mind eased for one scant moment, thinking of that beautiful possibility.
And suddenly Shara realized that no one was hitting her.
Jesheks stood at the edge of the dock watching the horizon, waiting for the end of the world—or its salvation.
Shara lay across his arms. His new arms. The arms he had sculpted for her.
He looked down at her body. Her dress was filthy, covered with black slime. The black emmeria clung to the fabric, plastering it against the curves of her body. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she panted.
“It’s the only way I knew to save you,” he told her unblinking black eyes. “The only way for you to save us all.”
Jesheks had seen the distant explosion. He’d known what it meant, and what was coming.
The Kherish mage closed his eyes, not wanting to see Shara this way. Slowly, painfully, he let the last vestiges of hope drain from his body and float away.
Ever since he’d drunk the Siren’s Blood, he had known the part Shara had to play. For far too long he had lied to himself, pretending that he was the one meant to stand by her side on this darkest of days. But Shara was not meant for him.
The pain of knowing that he was not the one whom she loved burned within him. But it was a sweet pain. The sweetest pain of all. That was all one could ask for.
Jesheks opened his eyes and looked out into the harbor. The water was lowering. It was slow at first, then quicker, as if something were sucking it away. Slimy seaweed clung to the sand as the ocean pulled back. In moments, a vast complex of black, corrupted coral appeared, its twisting structure glistening in the sun. Jesheks flicked a gaze upward, squinting.
Then he saw the wave.
Fear blossomed within him, and he breathed through it, tasting his own death at long last. The Islanders’ light emmeria had exploded, and the ocean had responded in the only way it knew.
The wave drew closer, cresting as it rose over the horizon. A gale-force wind rushed before it, sweeping into the harbor and nearly knocking him backward.
The wave, ten times the height of a man, would only be a few minutes behind it.
Setting Shara on her feet, he touched his forehead to hers. Her horrid panting breath was hot on his cheek.
“Good-bye, my love,” he said. “You are the best and worst thing that ever happened to me.”
Chapter 14
Vinghelt clutched the wheel, limping his vessel eastward. Something had gone horribly wrong. His Fessa-blessed kinsmen had suddenly stopped obeying his commands. They all stood still on the deck and stared at nothing, useless as cordwood.
The goddess had abandoned him. He kept calling her, but she would not answer. He had nearly reached Ohndarien to begin his new life in her service when all of his men suddenly stopped moving. Just an hour ago he’d been ready to reclaim the walled city and then push south to solidify control of the Summer Deserts. And then he would look to the west, return to his native Efften, and continue his reign from the City of Dreams. But then everything had come crashing down.
Fessa had abandoned her children.
A sudden wind slammed into the side of the ship, nearly sweeping him overboard. Vinghelt clung to the wheel as the vessel listed hard to port. Sails were ripped from their moorings and fluttered madly in the breeze. Heart in his throat, he spun the wheel, turning away from the wind before the ship capsized.
When the ship had righted herself, Vinghelt spun around. His jaw dropped. His bladder let loose, and warm urine seeped down his breeches.
“Fessa, no!” he cried.
A tidal wave was growing on the horizon, the crest of it higher than his mast. “I did nothing but serve you!” he cried. “It was all for your glory! All for the love of your children!”
He closed his eyes and the wave engulfed him.
Chapter 15
Shara looked down, astonished to find that she was slowly rising above the mass of writhing bodies. Someone leapt out of the sea of tormented souls and grabbed her foot, but his grip slipped and he fell back with all the others.
She held on to her thoughts of Brophy and their little island, their cabin completed, the door closing slowly as they fell into each other’s arms.
She looked around for Brophy and saw him just below her. His arms rose and fell as he laid about him. He fought more furiously than anyone. Such passion. Such strength. Such fire.
“Brophy,” she called to him, knowing he couldn’t hear her above the wailing, the thunder. She floated toward him, her soul-body obeying the commands of her will.
She reached out to touch him lightly on the shoulder.
He turned and slugged her in the face.
Pain exploded, and she fell back, sucked down into the mass of flesh. Blood streamed down her face.
“No,” she whispered, fighting the arms dragging her under. They pulled harder, pushing her underneath them. “No,” she said again, fighting the fear bubbling up within her.
This is the realm of spirit, she reminded herself. What you think becomes real.
She pushed away her anger. She took their gouges and scrapes. She let the hands and feet, elbows and teeth do what they wanted, and she focused on Brophy.
Again she rose. Out of the human sea, floating alongside him. She came up softly behind him and wrapped her arms around his great chest.
Calm, she thought.
His hands scrabbled behind himself, grabbed her arm, twisted. Pain fired through her, and she took it, using the Necani Jesheks had taught her. The more he tore at her, the stronger she became, holding him tight.
The other lost souls latched onto the two of them, dragging them down.
Remember me, she thought, weaving her magic around them like an embrace. Remember the wind blowing through our hair. Remember the feathers we caught, high on the mast of that Kherish ship so long ago.
He head-butted her, grabbed her breast, and twisted viciously. She gasped, held him tighter. Howls and screams filled her ears.
Brophy clubbed her over the head. His fist smashed into her jaw, and stars exploded in her vision. She grabbed the sides of his face, trying to see into his wild, sightless eyes. “Brophy,” she whispered, “Brophy, come back to me.”
Slowly, his face turned to hers. He blinked twice, and his eyes focused.
“Remember us,” she said over and over. “Remember.”
“Shara?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, it’s me.”
He looked around as if for the first time. The two of them were floating above the sea of filthy bodies.
“What’s happening?” he asked. “Are we—”
“No,” she said. “It’s the black emmeria. We’re still alive. We’re weeping ones.”
He shook his head, and they began to sink. “What do we do?” Someone grabbed his leg and tried to climb him like a tree. He growled, kicked her off.
“No!” Shara said, turning his gaze back to her. “Stay with me. Think of me.”
“But they—”
“Don’t look at them, Brophy. Look at me. Think of me. Of us.”
He clenched his teeth, but he didn’t turn back to the fray. They clung to each other.
“Is this how it ends?” he murmured in her ear, pressing himself against her. “I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want to fight anymore.”
“Don’t fight. Don’t fight.”
She looked into his green eyes, and soon she couldn’t feel the kicking or the scratching. It was her and Brophy, and she laughed at the joy that bubbled up inside her. She kept her eyes locked on his, smelling th
e scent of him, feeling his skin on hers.
Baedellin wept bitterly, curled into a little ball. She wanted her mother. She wanted her mother more than anything, but Mother wasn’t here.
She covered her head in her hands as they bit her, kicked her, pushed her down into the suffocating depths over and over again.
Someone grabbed her legs, pulled them apart. She kicked him, squirming over wet bodies to get away. She scrambled away as far as she could until she fell exhausted on the wrinkled thighs of an old man who couldn’t stop sobbing.
“Look,” he said. “Look. It’s so beautiful.”
Baedellin twisted around to see what he was pointing at. Somewhere above, through the tangle of limbs and hair, calves and feet, a light shone. It was a warm yellow light, like she remembered from some time long ago.
Many of those around her fled from it, burrowing past her, but she pushed toward it. Others, like her, did the same, fighting one another to get to it. Somehow, Baedellin crawled to the surface and saw the most glorious thing.
A man and a woman, wrapped in a tight embrace, floated above her, shining like a small sun. But the light didn’t hurt her eyes. She felt like a flower seeing the dawn for the first time. She thought of her mother, her father. She remembered her brother Astor, his broad shoulders, his kind features.
She reached her hand toward them and suddenly she was floating. Below her, a mound of bodies grew out of the teeming ocean. They rose as a pillar, trying to reach that strange sun and the beautiful people within.
Shara! Baedellin thought as she drew close and recognized the Zelani mistress. And Astor! Had he come for her? Had someone finally come for her?
No, not Astor. It was Brophy, the Sleeping Warden.
Shara turned as Baedellin neared, and a smile spread across her face.
“Baedellin,” she said, holding out her arms to the girl. Baedellin rushed into the embrace. A great empty space in her was suddenly filled.
