by Giles Carwyn
“Take me home,” she whimpered. “I don’t want to go back. I never want to go back.”
“Shhh, little one. Stay here. Stay with us.”
Baedellin cried, clinging to Shara with all her might
Another man floated up to them. Brophy extended a hand to him and the man joined their embrace. He sighed as the light filled him.
Baedellin looked down again, and she saw a skinny woman start to float toward them, then another man, and another.
“They’re coming,” Baedellin said, fear filling her heart again. “They’ll pull us down.”
“No, sweet Baedellin,” Shara said, stroking her hair. “Let them come. They’ll lift us up.”
The light around them began to grow.
“It’s working,” Shara whispered in Brophy’s ear as more and more souls rose out of the writhing mass and joined them hovering in the air.
“I can feel the joy pulling at me, wanting to take me home,” Brophy replied, grinning at her.
Home, thought Shara, feeling the same.
Brophy’s outline began to blur, the tips of his hair shimmering with multicolored energy.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back.”
“Not yet,” she said, shaking him to bring him back to the moment. “I have to stay until it’s done, until we save all of them.”
Brophy glanced at the bodies below them. They were all crawling toward them, swimming over one another toward the light.
“They’re lost,” Shara insisted. “We have to show them the way home.”
“You’re right,” he said, and her heart soared at his agreement. “This is how we defeat the emmeria. The Ohndarien way.”
“I love you,” she said, watching his entire body glow with an inner light.
Shara turned to the others. The tattooed man who had tried to gouge out her eyes now held her hand, a bewildered smile on his face. She kept an arm around Baedellin and leaned over to rest her chin on the little girl’s head.
The light grew. In moments, they had swelled from a group of ten to a group of twenty, then to a group of a hundred. Glowing, floating souls gathered around Shara, feeding off the love she gave to Brophy, which spread to Baedellin, to the tattooed man, and everyone who touched them.
An elderly man with long black Ohohhim curls faded in a yellow light, smiling as he went. His body shimmered, coalescing into a single golden ball. The brilliant point of light spun around them twice and then disappeared up into the sky.
“Follow him,” Shara insisted. “You have to find Jesheks before he takes me away from you.”
Brophy started to shake his head, but stopped when she put her fingers on his chest. “I can finish here,” she said, “but you have to keep us safe.”
Brophy nodded. He leaned over to kiss her, and his lips slowly faded away as his body shrank into a glowing red ball.
It hovered there for a moment and then shot into the sky, disappearing over the dark horizon.
Baedellin watched the people all around her turning into little balls of light and flying away from this horrible place.
“Shara,” she said, and the Zelani mistress looked down and smiled.
“Yes, Baedellin.”
“I’m not afraid anymore,” she said.
Shara nodded. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
The warm golden light that surrounded them made it hard to see. Multicolored orbs were breaking off from the group, scattering in all directions.
“Shara, am I dying?” Baedellin asked, her voice becoming softer as her body became translucent. “It’s all right if I am. You can tell me the truth. I’m not afraid anymore.”
“Dear Baedellin,” Shara said, hugging the girl. “You’re not dying. You’re…”
But Shara’s fingers slipped through her grip as Baedellin faded away.
Seawater erupted from Brophy’s mouth. He coughed, rolling to his side and tucking into a ball as his lungs spasmed. He coughed again, vomiting onto the wet ground.
His neck ached, and he squirmed to a sitting position, his back against a broken wall.
“Shara!” he whispered, trying to clear his head. His entire body hurt as if he’d fallen down an endless set of stairs.
After a few moments he was able to open his eyes, blinking in the bright sun. Somehow he still held the Sword of Autumn clenched in his cramped, clawlike grip.
“By the Seasons,” he gasped. What had happened?
The city of Efften was devastated. Twisted, blackened trees had been uprooted and swept into piles against collapsed buildings. The streets lay under half a foot of water, packed with sand, seaweed, and other debris. He stood up and looked around. All five of the towers had fallen.
“Shara!” he shouted, casting about him. Vague memories returned to him. His body flailing in the surge of the ocean, slamming into buildings. The water receding around him, dragging him along like a doll.
Forcing his wooden limbs to move, he ran up one street and then another. She could be anywhere. The Kherish albino had taken her away from him as he watched helplessly with darkened eyes. He ran through the streets, checking every pile of debris for a hint of her white dress.
Finally he saw something, a white lump lying beneath a snarl of tangled tree limbs half submerged in a puddle. He ran toward it, fearing what he might find. Drawing closer, he saw the long white hair tangled in the twigs and branches. The dead albino’s skull was caved in, his back and shoulders flayed to the bone. He rolled the man over and found Shara, cradled protectively in his arms.
Brophy pushed the wet hair away from her face. Her skin was ashen, her sightless black eyes unmoving.
“No!” he gasped, pushing on her stomach. Water leaked from her mouth, but she didn’t move. He shoved on her stomach again, forcing more water out. He put his mouth to hers and breathed into her lungs, backed up, and pushed on her again.
She coughed. Her body convulsed, arms pulling in toward her chest.
“Shara,” he breathed, giving her space. She sputtered, and began breathing.
“Thank the Seasons.” He leaned over and hugged her.
He had barely caught his breath when he heard a gravelly purring in the tangle of trees above him. He picked Shara up and backed away.
A sleek black panther with bulging eyes crept to the top of the tangled trees. Its paws were larger than its head, with wicked, hooked claws as long as Brophy’s fingers. It purred again, revealing a long, wormlike tongue.
He pointed the tip of his sword at the creature’s teeth, waiting for it to spring. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another corrupted creature, some sort of ape, shuffling toward him. Others drew in all around him. Sea creatures, flightless birds, a lizard the size of a horse.
The panther twitched, then hesitated. It looked up at Brophy, and crouched, then twitched again.
A sparkling light appeared at its shoulder and floated up into the air. The panther thrashed sideways, creeping a few paces away. Behind it, the trees shook, and sparkling lights emerged from the corrupted branches, floating up into the sky.
Dozens of little lights appeared along the panther’s skin, then engulfed it in a cloud of light. It transformed. Paws shrank. Bulging eyes receded.
A blaze of sparkling, rainbow lights emerged from within all of the corrupted beasts surrounding Brophy, obscuring them in bright clouds of light.
In seconds, the panther shrank to its normal size. It looked bewildered and slunk away from Brophy. It dodged around the other creatures, loped between the buildings, and disappeared.
Everything became what it had been before the black emmeria had tainted it. Animals ran off into the jungle. Fish flopped on the wet ground, seeking water.
Brophy shielded his eyes from the blinding color of all the lights, laughing at the joy that coursed through him and thinking of his beloved Shara.
Chapter 16
Shara hovered alone in the air as the last of the glowing balls drifted over the horizon. The sea of writhing peop
le had disappeared, revealing a pale blue haze that seemed to stretch on forever. The purple clouds had gone. There was no more red lightning. The screams of the tortured no longer filled the air. It was silent, serene.
They had done it.
She was just about to leave when she saw one last soul, a pure white light, hovering in the distance.
“Jesheks,” she breathed, knowing him in an instant.
She floated toward him, seeing his red eyes glowing within the white light that encased his insubstantial body. He was beautiful. His silver hair flowed down behind his white shoulders and muscled torso. For the first time she saw a gentle smile on his face.
“Once again, you surpass my every expectation,” he said as she drifted up to him.
“This was your theory,” she asked. “This is what you wanted to do all along?”
He lowered his eyes. “Yes, except I wanted it to be me, not Brophy, by your side.” He shook his head. “But that was never meant to be.”
“You made us weeping ones to send us here.”
“It was a gamble,” he admitted. “But I am happy to see that you succeeded. Somehow, I knew you would.”
“Perhaps you understand love better than the rest of us,” she said.
He smiled. “Who would have thought it?”
She took his hands and held them. They were warm, but she could barely feel them.
“This may have been my idea,” he said, “but I could never have done what you and Brophy did. I knew what to do, but only you knew how to do it.”
She opened her mouth to speak and paused, searching his face for some sign of anger or regret. She couldn’t find it. “Where will you go now?” she asked.
His smile turned wry, and his eyes narrowed, reminding her of when she’d first met him. “I don’t know,” he said.
“You will always have a home in Ohndarien.”
He gave her a strange look. “I would have liked that, I think.”
She looked at him curiously, then realized what he was saying.
“I am dead, Shara. Drowned. I escaped my body just before the end.” He smiled. “I had to come see if you succeeded. When you leave, I’ll be moving on.” He shrugged. “To whatever comes next.”
Shara reached out and placed her hand upon his chest. No heart beat beneath the ivory skin.
He laughed and took her hand, bringing it back down. “Ah, the lovely maiden cries for me. At last my life is complete.”
“Don’t mock yourself. Not now, not after what you’ve done.”
He began to fade into a white light.
“Jesheks!” she cried.
“Your pain is so lovely,” he murmured. “So very lovely.”
She held his hands until she couldn’t feel them anymore. The white light slowly drifted away from her, heading toward the blue haze far above.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “You are a beautiful man. So beautiful.”
She closed her eyes against her sorrow and thought of Brophy.
Chapter 17
Brophy cradled Shara’s limp body in his arms, watching the glowing balls spreading outward across the ocean, rushing toward the horizons.
He looked down at his lover. She was sleeping peacefully, cradled against his chest. With a deep sigh, he kissed the top of her head and began walking toward the center of the city.
Trudging through puddles of seawater, he returned to the ruins of the central tower. The silver stones lay in a heap thirty feet high. The shattered remains of the garden lay amid rubble, the only thing still green in this blackened and shattered city.
Brophy pulled Shara closer to his chest and climbed the shifting blocks to the top of the pile. At its center lay a gaping hole like a volcanic caldera where the black emmeria had exploded out of Oh’s coffin. Sliding down the steep slope, he found the mangled remains of the silver sarcophagus at the bottom of the pit.
Brophy didn’t know what he had expected to find here. He knew that Arefaine was gone. Darius was gone. Jazryth and Oh were gone. But he felt the need to touch the silver, to give his quiet thanks for the sacrifices made in this place.
Moving closer, he rested his palm on the warm silver. It was empty, nothing more than a misshapen metal box.
For a moment he thought of taking it back to Ohndarien, placing it in his old gazebo atop the Hall of Windows. But Arefaine was a child of Efften, not Ohndarien. She deserved to be buried here.
No, not buried. Burned.
She’d once told him she wanted her flames to soar into the sky, and the smoke to carry her up to the heavens.
Brophy pulled a shattered branch from the rubble and tossed it onto the coffin. It was soaked with seawater like all the others, but he would wait here till they dried. He would build a pyre worthy of Arefaine Morgeon, worthy of her father, her sister the Heartstone, worthy of Oh, the first emperor, father of them all. He would light that pyre under the stars, so all the world would know that a queen had died here and saved them all from oblivion.
Brophy headed for another branch, and Shara stirred in his arms. She murmured and her hands grasped the back of his neck, pulling herself closer to him.
“Brophy?” she whispered.
“Yes,” he whispered back, kissing the side of her face.
“I feel horrible.”
“But you smell good,” he said.
She raised her head, looking up at him.
“It’s over, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s over.”
He pulled her closer to him, feeling her body for the first time without the howling voices screaming in the back of his head. He had never felt anything so good.
“I’m all right,” she said, wiggling her legs. “You can put me down.”
Brophy shook his head. “No, I’m never letting you go. Not for the rest of my life.”
Chapter 18
Astor stood on the edge of the Windmill Wall, looking into one of the rifts left by the tsunami. The wall had saved most of the city, but it had taken that damage on itself. Giant cracks ran through almost every part of it, and three sections had crumbled away to the waterline. All of the windmills were destroyed, along with the Sunset Gate. It would take hundreds of men dozens of years to put it right.
He breathed in deeply, trying to control his despair. Below him, the splinted and waterlogged timbers floated amid the rubble of Ohndarien’s wall. Only the ocean was unchanged, drawing back and pushing forward the same as ever.
A warm hand touched his arm, and he turned to look into Galliana’s blue eyes.
“You shouldn’t stand so close to the edge,” she said. “The stones are no longer stable. How silly would you feel if you fell off and died after all we’ve been through?”
“Would anyone notice if I did?” he asked.
“I would.”
He sighed. “I don’t even know what we’re doing here anymore. I’m as empty as the weeping ones standing around in the Citadel, staring at the walls. Should we—” He choked on the words, then gritted his teeth. “Should we kill them? Put them out of their misery and move on?”
“Maybe. But not yet. I’m not ready to give up on Shara. Something happened out there, Astor. That wave was not natural.”
“Yes, but what caused it? The shattering of the Heartstone? The release of the black emmeria?”
“Or maybe its destruction. Either way, I’d feel better if you weren’t so close to this edge.”
Astor shook his head and stepped back. A few chips of stone fell away from his feet and tumbled into the ocean. He looked over at Galliana, and suddenly thought about how he used to look at her just a few months ago, back when he was still a child. Not so long ago he would lie awake at night thinking about her, longing to touch her smooth skin, aching to have her by his side alone in the dark.
He looked down at his boots. He’d not thought about such things in a long time. He wondered why he did so now.
“You’re very beautiful,” he said, turning to look at her.
> She raised an eyebrow.
“I just thought I should say it.”
“Are you prepared to back that up?”
He smiled.
“Ah. A smile. Well, my work here is done.” She took his hand. “Come on, Astor, take a walk with me. Through the city. Into the Citadel. Into—” She stopped, her expression changing. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she stared out to sea. Astor turned.
“Look,” she said, pointing.
“What is it?” He didn’t see anything.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Something headed this way. A storm?” She paused, watching intently. “Some kind of magic storm.”
He saw it now. It seemed like a bright haze. A cloud filled with sunlight, traveling much lower than a cloud, and much faster. He tensed. “It’ll be on us in moments.”
“Let’s get off this wall!” She pulled him away. They were a hundred paces from the stairs, even farther from the Citadel. He ran with her, but they hadn’t gone a dozen steps when the shimmering cloud swept over them. A thousand tiny colored lights whipped past them, and Astor felt a rush of joy. The surge of emotion came and went with the sparkling lights, which turned toward the Citadel, sweeping over the walls and into the courtyard in a steady stream.
“I know what they are,” Astor said, daring to hope. “I know!”
Astor burst into Baedellin’s room. The door slammed against the wall and shuddered as he rushed inside.
His father cradled Baedellin’s skinny body, sobbing.
“Dad?” Astor said, sinking to his knees next to the bed.
“Astor?” Baedellin said in a voice rough with disuse. “Is that you?”
“Bae!” He leaned over and hugged them both. Tears ran down his face as he cried with his father.
“I thought I saw you,” Baedellin croaked. “In my nightmare. I thought it was you that saved me, but it was the Sleeping Warden. And Shara-lani. She came into that horrible place for us, and she set us free.”
