“The king is bound to a prince. There is no recanting. That elf, and that elf only, is forever his shield or sword, and he forever will be that prince’s king. Neither can cleave to a new one. They are meant to be entwined. It is a sacred bond.” A flex of her mouth, just the corner, a smile so tiny and mirthless I almost missed it though I could not look away from her face. “They maintain one another’s sanity.”
“And Marne’s prince is gone,” Ivy murmured.
“The battle was dire,” my mother said. “They both made sacrifices.”
“For hundreds of years,” Chester murmured, staring down at the bier. “For hundreds of years these corpses have been here, trying to reach him. How many of them are there? A thousand?”
Last joined him, studying the tableau, and said, “At least thrice that.”
“And all trapped here!” Chester said. “Forever?”
“Until that light dies,” my mother said. “They will remain here. They are drawn to all that is good and living, and the stronger the source, the quicker they come and the faster they are held.” She nodded once, the curls around her waist bobbing. “The soldier is correct. The dead have been greatly winnowed since the battle, but there are at least so many left.”
Kelu sounded subdued. “What killed them?”
“The light does, eventually. It wears them down, until there is nothing left and a new rank takes their place.”
“And he volunteered for this?” Ivy sounded aghast.
“The angel came when he cried out. It was the choice he made.”
“The choice that saved us,” Amhric said, so soft I almost didn’t hear it.
As if hearing the thought he could not voice, the elf said, “You will be a worthy successor. Had I not seen it in dreams, I would not have chosen my own path. But we have made our choices, Marne and I. And you have as well, and it has brought you here.”
“Is there... is there a path down?” I asked.
“You must be crazy,” Chester said.
“There is. It leads behind the altar. The dead cannot reach you there... the light bars them.” She lifted her brows. “You wish to pay your respects.”
What I wished to do was wait, because as quickly as we had come, I knew Sedetnet was not far behind us. What he could do when presented with this scenario I couldn’t begin to guess, but all of it distressed. “I must.”
“If you go, we all go,” Chester said stubbornly. And added to the woman, “If there’s room.”
“There is,” she replied. “You will have to go single-file down the path at its end, however.”
“Then we will.” I glanced at my companions. “Though not everyone need come.”
“Need you ask?” Eyre said, quiet. “We will bear you company wherever you go, my student.”
I drew in a breath, settling it, then nodded to him. To the woman who had borne me, I said, “Lead the way.”
The path rose from the overlook and circled the altar, and if it had been difficult not to look at what awaited us below before, now it was nearly impossible. In folklore it was usually the woman who slept the enchanted sleep—but she slept, awaiting someone to quicken her.
I knew without being told there would be no quickening Marne. The woman guiding us down the trail had begotten me on him, somehow, and that had not raised him. How she’d found the strength to do so... was he even warm, or had it been like mounting a corpse? Or had there been some magic involved, as there had been with the genets and their sire? I could hope; the alternative was appalling and piteous, and I did all in my power to keep from imagining it.
This cold woman—I could imagine her doing all that she’d said. There was no malice or cruelty in her, but a great and ancient reserve. Having met Sedetnet I could tell that she was not like him. Nor was she like Thameis and the other elves like him I’d met on the Archipelago, who would have thought me some pawn in a game she wanted the elves to win. But she expressed for me none of the affection my foster mother had showered on me, and though I recognized her in every sinew still she was alien to me.
“Here,” she said. “From here you go one by one. I will remain and wait.”
I passed her then, and went to meet my father.
I would have thought, this close, that the presence of the dead would overwhelm all my other sensibilities; that the hundreds of vultures presiding from their perches and the wall of soldiers straining toward us would necessarily dominate all other impressions of the scene. And yet, when I stepped into the glade they faded from significance, receded like nightmares glimpsed from the distance of a waking mind. The only real thing before me was the altar, and the shining. The sacrifice made manifest.
Lifting a hand, I touched the light, and it was warm and tangible, and poured from my palm when I tilted it, and I shuddered. There was no disbelieving this. God was here, and I felt the promise of Love on my shoulders as I stepped to the side of the table.
Marne had long ago laid down his sword. It rested alongside the hand near his hip, clean and bright, like something eternally perfect. So too his face: tranquil, all its burdens addressed. He had gone willingly to this duty, and if it had been a durance one could not read it now on his brow. He did not breathe, but he was. He abided. And kept his faith and his word and all of us safe. Here was a king out of legend, and I wept in silence at the sight, not knowing whether for joy or heartbreak. But when I felt Amhric’s hand on my shoulder, I covered it with mine and was glad for company, because to be here alone was past bearing. That we should have made such mistakes, and that in the greatness of one heart, someone had chosen to pay for them!
“We will make it right,” Amhric said, low.
The others were behind me now. They spoke not at all, but their respectful attention was like a mantle, warming me. And there was a gift for their witness, for there was power here, and it lapped their hollowed spaces. Even Amhric seemed to exhale.
And then Almond squeaked, and it was not happiness but terror. I looked at her, followed her gaze... and found the sorcerer floating above us. Today he was a male, or perhaps an androgyne—impossible to tell since he wore robes that streamed like flags—but he’d chosen to wrap himself in golden skin and hair, as if in mockery of the king beneath him, and his eyes... his eyes were not mad this time. His eyes were very much present, and they were cold with a terrifying anger.
“Touching scene, isn’t it,” Sedetnet said. “The eternal martyr. I often wonder when he will decide he is done paying for our sins. Mm? What do you suppose, youth who would be prince?”
Behind me, Chester and Last drew their swords.
“Oh, no, that won’t do. This is between us, yes?” Sedetnet flicked a wrist and that was sufficient to raise a barrier between me and the others. They immediately flung themselves against it, but what would have sufficed against an elf of normal strength was nothing to a sorcerer. As they shouted, their voices dilute and distant, I stood with my king behind me, so close his rising chest brushed my back, and again, I was powerless.
And yet... and yet...
Stories whispered in my mind, reaching, raveling. All the secrets and hints, like treasure glinting, begging for light.
“It was kind of you to send a note warning me of your intentions,” I said, not knowing where the words hailed from but knowing they were the right ones. “I had not expected such courtesy.”
“Ah well. You have such promise, Morgan Locke.” Sedetnet lit on the opposite side of the altar and smiled at me over it, eyes hooding. The answer I had barely begun to apprehend drained away beneath the brunt of that gaze, leaving nothing I could understand. “I thought the game would be more interesting if you had a chance to win it.”
“And do I still?”
He laughed. “Don’t you?” He leaned forward, baring his teeth. “You know what I am here to do.”
There was an urgency to the workings of my mind now, as if I chased the rim of gold on the horizon of sunrise. “To summon demons. You said it yourself.”
“Mmm, yes. Because I am mad, of course.”
“You might have rolled a die,” I agreed.
He laughed. “I might have. Tell me, dear unkindled prince. Did I?”
Hearing him ask it, I knew: “No.”
“Good. So far you have not disappointed me, and I assure you, this situation is rare.” Sedetnet sat on the altar beside the king’s shoulders, stroked his hair back. I felt more than heard Amhric’s hiss, and yet in that touch I saw nothing but tenderness, remembered a time when a sorcerer had tumbled a virgin. He could have been cruel, but he hadn’t been. His hands had been gentle, until I had wanted them to be rough.
The knife was such a surprise that I didn’t lunge for it in time. Sedetnet had it at Marne’s throat and drew it across before I knew even to move. Blood sprayed, fine as lace, hung suspended in the air, in time, so that every separate bead glowed incarnadine in the divine light. Then it fell, hard and ugly, hot spatters that steamed.
The light around us flickered.
“What have you done!” Amhric cried.
“Yes,” Sedetnet said. “What have I done?” He looked at me. “Precisely what I said I would... yes?”
As the light around us began to fade, I saw what it had hidden before. The sorcerer, seen through my spectacles... was glowing.
And then I understood everything.
“My God,” I whispered, swaying. “My God!”
“Ahhhhh,” Sedetnet said, closing his eyes. There were droplets of blood on one of his cheeks, bright as garnets. “Yes. At last.” Opening them revealed that they had turned different colors, one gold, the other red as a cardinal’s wing. “Now you know. So go, before it’s too late.”
“Yes!” I cried, and flung myself around, grabbing Amhric by the arm. “God, oh God, we flee! To the horses, while we can!”
“Morgan!” Chester lunged toward the altar but I stayed him with my voice.
“To me, Chester! I need you now! Last, the rear! We have no time!”
We ran then, my mother before us, her gown a banner flowing, pale as pearls. My mind raced faster than our feet. How could I have not seen? I had been thrust into an alien society, certainly, but not so alien that my mind should just shut off, deny the evidence of my senses. I had gone to the Archipelago as student folklorist and collected accounts as if they were truth, forgetting that they were not equivalent. Had I apprehended the picture too late? But there were so many uncertainties yet!
Sedetnet had given us our best hope but we had to live to grasp it. I glanced over my shoulder once, saw the golden head bent against the dark, and wept for him, and even as I did I feared. Marne was a king of elves, and could not die quickly, but I had no idea how his bespelled sleep had affected him. How long could Sedetnet give us? Breaking the enchantment had begun the process, and the process was inexorable, but how much time did we have?
The overlook before us. Our restive mounts. My friends knew not why we fled, but they were clambering astride without taxing me for reasons, for explanations I could not yet give them. Amhric I guided up onto the drake, for I feared we would need one another when Marne finally slipped his shell and returned home. I glanced quickly at my people, saw them all together. Saw my mother, alone on foot.
“You,” I said.
“It is the Mother’s Stand,” she said. “Today. It has not yet been so.”
I swallowed. “There are thrice a thousand of the dead, Milady.”
“And one can hold them for longer than you believe, if she chooses her ground well.” Her chin went up. “I must finish what I began.”
“I will never know you,” I whispered.
“You were not meant to know me. But now, perhaps, you will remember me well.” She met my gaze with steady eyes. “Remember this, when you one day bear young, Prince of Elves. For our children we give everything, because in them is our hope of a future. Whether or not we see that future ourselves, it is our duty to be its guardians.”
“Mother,” I said, voice hoarse. “God with you.”
“My son.” She turned from us to her shrine, and I urged the drake on, blinking tears I hadn’t expected and yet knew would come. Carrington would have her place of legend at the last, and the blood of a woman would be its initiation.
I had no doubt she would die. An elf could withstand much, but they would eventually rend her limb from limb, and those pieces would be trampled. It would not be the fire, but it would be as permanent.
We sped down the high road and I begrudged every moment of it, even knowing we dare not urge the beasts faster until we reached someplace easier for the horses to find their footing. I heard the heaving of their breath in their long throats as they strove to equal the drake’s agility and surefootedness, the jingle of harnesses and bits, sensed the agitation of my friends and their speechlessness at the amputation of Marne’s life and my mother’s loss. But we reached the surface at last, and there Last reined back. I stopped the drake to face him, dread closing my throat.
“I, too, have dreamed,” said he. “It was from that dream that I took my name.”
My heart twisted in my chest. “Last—”
“Yes.” He drew his sword and waited for my blessing, and what could I do?
“Come back to us if you can,” I said, hoarse. “But if you cannot—I will return myself, and find your body, and take it home for the honors you will have earned.”
“My prince,” he said. “Morgan Locke.” To my brother: “And my King.” He inclined his head, then turned the horse and galloped into the defile.
One woman to hold the inner lock. One man to hold the outer. Sedetnet to nurse the king through his final failure.
Through tears, I said, “Fly!”
The trees and napped earth that gave us surcease on our way to the Stand now bedeviled us on the way out, for we could not ride through them at speed. I cared nothing for the concerns that had so fretted me then: whether we would have fire to warm us at night, or fresh food, or shelter from spying eyes. All that mattered was that we might break onto the plains and leave behind our danger. There was Vigil to warn, and beyond it, Troth... for the demon would come, and with it bring all the dead, not just those trammeling the shrine at Mother’s Stand, but all those waiting, sleeping in the earth at Threnody-Calling-Forward. And perhaps my own understood, for Chester surged ahead of me and went seeking quicker ways, and through providence or luck uncovered a route oblique to the one we’d used to enter. The slopes here were sparsely wooded, and seeing more clearly we made better time.
Now and then I looked behind us and sensed the flicker that attended a king’s decline. All the magic of the continent, my mother had said. What would it be to my beloveds when it was loosed? Amhric and I would not gain any of that bounty, for we were bound by the curse—for now—but they would be washed in the flood of it. They would burn with its brightness.
“Morgan, we have to stop,” Chester said at last. “The horses will founder.”
And to lose them... we would arrive too late. Stilling the drake I looked south toward the horizon, wondered if I should take the chance to ride ahead of them. But if they died, how would I manage with my heart lamed? How could I bear an angel with such bitterness trammeling my spirit?
“Even the drake needs rest,” Ivy said, drawing up alongside me. She rested a hand on its fevered side. “We don’t have to sleep all night. A few hours, then we can keep going.”
“And you can tell us,” Carrington said, subdued, “what the hell just happened.”
They needed to know. And they were right. A few hours I could countenance. I slid from the saddle, helped my brother dismount. “A few hours,” I said. “No more.”
The camp they made was a rude one, with neither fire nor shelter; rather they sat in a circle they sanctified with water passed from hand to hand, and dried meat. So they pledged their solidarity to one another, and to the cause.
They waited on me. I settled, reaching down into the land, sensed the wrongness in it still, and distantly, the f
ading light.
“There are no elven sorcerers,” I said without preamble. “Sedetnet is Sihret. Marne’s prince.”
Silence. Amhric inhaled, shuddered.
“Fine,” Chester said. “He’s the prince. He also killed Marne.”
“If you could call that alive,” Carrington murmured. When she won some arch looks at that, she said, “How else would you describe an enchantment like that? From which you can never wake? Would you want to be doomed to that forever?”
“If it saved a world!” Ivy cried.
“But it hasn’t,” Eyre murmured. “Has it.”
Another silence. Into it, tentatively, Almond said, “Master? Why did Sedetnet kill the king?”
“To summon a demon,” I said. “Or to allow a demon ingress by freeing the magic, and setting the elves and humans again at odds over its disposition. Either one suits. Because...” I halted, trembling, pushed my glasses up my nose and remembered the bright fire I’d seen in the heart of a madman. “Check me, please. When have there ever been angels, when there have not first been demons?”
“Oh,” Ivy whispered. “Oh... no.”
“You suggest there is no possibility of their summoning until the worst is already upon us?” Eyre was frowning, contemplative.
“Marne and Winifred received their visitations only after a human had called down a demon,” I said. “Before that, the book we saw in Vigil. This world was touched by demons first, before the angels were said to have made elvenkind as its guardian. This curse is made by demons, and if it can only be undone by angels—”
“Then you think we need to bring the demons first, and then the angels can come?” Carrington said.
I nodded.
“But... why? Why kill Marne at all?” Ivy asked.
“Because,” Kelu muttered. “All the magic here is bound up there. Along with the walking dead. You need an enemy, and a chance to win without help.”
“That makes it sound so... manipulative,” Ivy muttered.
“No.” Amhric roused himself, pulled the cloak I’d draped over his shoulder close by. He looked diminished; he had been weeping. We had seen our father, and lost him, and he had seen his king and lost him, and in him was all the grief and forgiveness I found so difficult to invoke in myself. “No. Ours is the destiny we create. If we create it so that demons may enter in, ours is the responsibility of attempting the resolution. Who invites demons can set them aside again. Only this time... it is not our chance.” He met Chester’s eyes. “Now it is for humanity to set their swords against the dead.”
On Wings of Bone and Glass Page 10
