On Wings of Bone and Glass

by M. C. A. Hogarth

But Amhric did. He came forth and rested a hand on my shoulder and I looked down at him.

  “Are these our people, my prince?” he asked, his voice carrying on a breeze that seemed to clear the clouds.

  “They are, my king,” I whispered, hoarse.

  “Then we welcome them,” Amhric said.

  To this day I don’t know if he could have done what he did next without channeling the gift through me. I suspect he could have, but chose instead to wipe from my heart and mouth the feel of the deaths I had been forced to inflict. And I am grateful, so grateful. Because he drew all the magic of the world, released by Marne’s passage, and flooded me with it like autumn sunlight, and it spilled through me, out of me, into all the elves before us: those who had tried to fight and given it up; those who had held back out of uncertainty; and those who’d believed from the moment they espied us. All divisions between us were swept away in that gift; we were filled with it, made whole, made kith. Since the curse had bound us the elves had been starving for magic and turning to it in any source they could find, using borrowed demon claws to scratch it into their hollow souls. For the first time since that cup had doomed us, we felt full with a wholesome energy, nourished, well. The chains shackled us still, but we had a king again, and he would free us, and none of us, none of us doubted it.

  The wave that flowed through the crowd now was every elf in it staggering to their feet in an attempt to move toward that bright source. I had quelled all our opposition. But it was Amhric who won their hearts, as he had mine, with the generosity of his spirit and the love that shone so clearly in him, a bright reflection of something divine.

  Would that this episode had concluded with his contribution, but alas when he had done knitting us together in this sacred weave there were three left before us, burning too brightly to be destroyed and yet refusing us all the same: Temeret and Isis, and e Ekadet. Had he thought to heal them of their resentments and pettiness by offering them the generosity of his forgiveness? I hated that I knew better than to believe they would receive it, and be transfigured.

  To speak after the glory of our binding felt sacrilegious, and yet speak I did, because there was no other choice. “You do not repent of your ambitions, I see.”

  “Should we beg for what rightly belongs to us?” Isis asked. They were all kneeling and hating it. How often had I been thrown to my knees by an elf with no consideration for my feelings on the debasement? I wanted to hate them, because it was easy. I forced myself not to because of those who loved me, whose regard I cherished too dearly to give myself over to drowning in my anger.

  “You need not beg,” I said, when I had mastered myself, though I was still breathing too deeply. “You need only ask and we will welcome you. Our best days are before us. You could be part of them.”

  “As your lackeys.” E Ekadet pushed herself upright, staggered to her feet. She shook her golden mane back and said, “I think not.”

  “You would never forgive us, and never trust us,” Temeret said.

  “Whose fault would that be?” I asked, and took myself to task for falling to their level of discourse. “No matter. I will say it again: you need not turn from us. If you swear to your king, you may return to your positions. You may be again the blood-flags to which your families owe their safety and honor. You can take part in the history to come. Surely that is a better alternative to what awaits you if you forsake your vows.”

  “And what alternative is that?” Temeret asked.

  “You die,” I said, quiet. “And I feed you to the fire.”

  Isis laughed. “As if he would. With that mewling pacifist for a ruler? Try us with another line, ‘prince’.”

  I impaled her.

  One quick motion: my muscles remembered. The act that had destroyed Thameis, that they had witnessed on Kesina and should have remembered me capable of... it was too easy. The iron staff slid through her torso as if the ribs were bare interruption to its quest for the earth. She screamed, and hearing it I thought of Carrington. Eyre’s torch had done just this to me, but she’d been incapable of repeating her performance on a living body. What did that make me?

  And that I felt no remorse?

  She lived, of course. The enchantment had gorged on the energy Amhric had so magnanimously granted to the entirety of the elven host. Even now I could sense her flesh knitting around the incised channels carved into the staff’s surface... could tell because it began to resist me when I shifted my weight against it. To kill her, I would have to electrify the metal, the way I had with Thameis, or give her to the fires the way Kemses had his opponents. For now I leaned on the staff, and ignored the hand that was weakly scrabbling at my leg. She was trying to push me off-balance. I wished her luck of that. I was not the disease-raddled invalid she’d fought before.

  “I believe you were making some opinion of yours known?” I said conversationally. Isis’s whimpers underscored the words. “Do go on.”

  The head of Ekadet said nothing.

  “What? No riposte? No scorn?” I canted my head. “I’m shocked.” I looked at Temeret. “And you? No more witty repartee? Will you not call me ‘bait’ again? Please do. Please remind me of what I suffered at the hands of your brother. It will improve my temper magnificently, I assure you. I am already feeling less than merciful, you perceive.”

  “You are a monster,” Temeret whispered.

  “Is that all?” I said. “I was expecting something a little more original.” I turned the staff, breaking it free of the skin that had healed around it and inspiring another scream. “Let me make this plain to the three of you now. Amhric is king over all elves. He is all that is kind and forgiving and gentle and temperate, and you are lucky to have him. But I am his prince, and anyone—anyone who so much as casts an insulting eye on him—I will kill. I came to Serala as a human. I have seen what elves are capable of. That will never happen again, so long as I live... and I will live, you see, a very... very long time. So. Do you swear allegiance to a better man than any of you? Or do you deny him?”

  For a moment I allowed myself to believe that they would yield. Amhric had not won them with love; all that I had left was to demonstrate, irrevocably, that I was a crueler adversary than them, that they could not hope to prevail against me. I wanted... I wanted the ending to this to be a happy one, and later everyone would tell me that it had been, on balance. That we hadn’t had the right to expect a better outcome. That history would remember this day as the one where a man won a nation with a gentle hand, and my part of it would remain a footnote.

  It was a fantasy, but I had treasured it, and did up until the point where Isis managed to hook her hand around my ankle and yank it hard enough to catch my attention. I swayed, and e Ekadet dove for me, and Temeret lunged in her wake. I howled my rage and grief, that they should make such waste necessary, and I stole the energy from them until their enchantments throttled their breath and hearts. And then, as they gasped and rolled on the ground, I took the first by the back of the shirt and dragged. Temeret, I saw. He had hesitated. He might have thrown in with us had his sister not forced his hand. I hated him for making this necessary. I hated that my only emotion, throwing him to the fires beneath Eyre’s watchful eyes, was anger, because I didn’t want to be the kind of person who could pin a man into the heart of a bonfire and ignore his screams as he died. But I did it again with Isis, who fought me in vain. And again, with e Ekadet, and I stared into her cruel and vicious face as she spit her curses down on my head, and Amhric’s.

  I was panting by the end of it and my palms kept blistering where they contacted the iron of the staff, blistering and healing, over and over.

  When the last corpse was a vague black heap in the heart of the fire, I threw the staff from me. I went to Amhric and fell to my knees, bending over a stomach twisted with nausea. Did I have a voice left? I did, though it had gone tense, its edges rasped. “It is done.”

  Perhaps, had I been thinking more clearly, I would have forborn to be seen in distress
following the execution of my duties. If I was to be prince, and the sword arm of the king, then all should believe me implacable, without finer sensibilities: the Red Prince in truth. But I could not be that person, not and live, and all the lies I had grown up repeating to the world so that they would fail to divine the truth of my weaknesses were as nothing compared to the lies I would have to tell to show the world a face that could kill without remorse.

  I had forgiven Mary Carrington. Maybe it was because I understood what had been asked of her.

  The flames hissed and stung the drizzle that fell from the grimy sky. There was mud under me, and it was cold, and the air smelled like burning flesh. I thought I would vomit. I remembered vomiting daily only as a hazy memory, and did not want to reacquaint myself with the act. Swallowing carefully, I waited for the absolution I did not know whether I deserved, and yet when Amhric embraced me I did not turn from him.

  “They made their choices,” he said into my ear as I clung to him.

  “I could have been merciful.”

  “You gave them every opportunity.” Amhric leaned back, pushed the wet hair from my face and cupped it. “The choice is sacred, if we are to be worthy of God. And they made their choices.”

  He thought his speech would reassure me, but it was his face that convinced me at last: looking on his face, and recalling that those three had seen him imprisoned. I had not extended their torture, had done only the bare minimum necessary to ensure the enchantment would not resurrect them. They, on the other hand, had consigned an innocent man to abuse, rape, and torture for months.

  I had executed them, that was all. I drew in a trembling breath and rested my hands over his. “And I have made mine.”

  “And all of us,” said Kemses behind us, “have made ours. My liege, my king. Welcome back to Vigil.”

  I pushed myself upright, found with resignation that my liegeman was awaiting us with my discarded staff in his hands. Accepting it, I said, “You held the city for us, and I thank you. I presume there were no troubles?”

  “It depends on what kind of trouble you mean,” Radburn said, stomping up behind Kemses. “I’ll have you know, Morgan, that I was adamant that we should spend our time on our investigations, but Guy—”

  “I am right behind you, you know—”

  “But Guy insisted on seducing that girl you left with us—”

  “Wait, are you discussing my student?” Carrington pushed her way through the growing crowd. “You’d better not be discussing my student!”

  “It was consensual,” Guy drawled.

  “It was inappropriate!” Radburn exclaimed.

  “He’s just jealous that I got to her first.”

  I had been suffering from grief and fear and worry for so long that I mistook the ache in my chest for more of the same until the first coughing chuckle burst from me. My fingers flew to my mouth before I could earn more than a minatory glance from Ivy. Composing myself, I said, “Please tell me that you spent at least some of the time on the research I requested. Between conquests.”

  Guy rolled his eyes. “Please. There’s only so much ru—”

  “Language,” Chester muttered, looking down at his feet.

  “—exercising you can do before you get bored,” Guy finished with laudatory aplomb. “Rest assured, we spent most of our time in the library.”

  “Protecting it from the idiots who wanted to burn it.” Radburn pointed at his chest. “That was me, mind you, as Guy was busy for—”

  “Language!” Chester hissed.

  “Fornicating,” Radburn insisted stubbornly. He extended his finger at Carrington and said, “Your colleagues are idiots and I spent all the time you were away wishing for Kelu to bite them.”

  Kelu perked her ears. “You did?”

  “I often missed you,” Radburn said. “Particularly your teeth.”

  “Things have not changed much in our absence,” I said to Chester.

  “We weren’t gone that long.”

  “We could have been gone a lifetime and it wouldn’t have been long enough,” Ivy said.

  And oh, I was glad, so glad to have them all with me again. But there was a face missing. “Where is Rose? Has the Church fared well? And did anyone come from Evertrue?”

  “We’ve seen no one from your human enclaves,” Kemses said. “Your knights are impressive, Morgan. Even before the magic came back, they were adept at its usage. We’ve been training with them underground, and they’ve had patrols out since the day you left. I’m surprised, in fact, that the Vessel isn’t here to greet you.” He paused. “I trust you’ll tell us how it happened—that the magic returned. We’ve all wondered.”

  “I promise,” I said. “But I’d like to see to the elves now that they’ve sworn themselves to Amhric, and release the genets. Perhaps—”

  A horn sounded, and everyone above the ground halted, and in silence turned to it, for we had never heard it and yet we knew it. A clarion, calling warning, ending our reprieve.

  “But it’s from the north,” Eyre murmured. “Not the south.”

  In the distance, on one of the broken buildings facing the northern plains, I could just see the blower of the horn, silhouetted against a sullen sunset stained with storm clouds. Again, she sounded it, a great, falling sound, like a moan.

  “Mother’s Stand,” I said. “The remaining dead have caught up to us.”

  11

  If we could have chosen a less advantageous time to meet the enemy for the first time in centuries—or at all, for my human companions—we would have been hard pressed to find a situation worse than the one we faced now. Nightfall was encroaching, and what little visibility we might have made from torches and lanterns was greatly diminished by the rain, which had thickened. The elves who’d just sworn themselves to Amhric had come expecting conquest, not challenge, and they were still bound by the enchantments that stole the magic from them that would have made them effective. The humans who could bear that challenge had never been tested in battle, and were about to be thrown into it in the mud, in the dark, and outnumbered. Vastly outnumbered. I had not expected Last or my mother to attrit almost any of them, so I was stunned at how many they’d accounted for. But at least two-thirds the host had survived to flow south in search of life to feed their numbers, and they had found us.

  Rose met us on the northern edge of the city. “My lord. My king. The enemy will be upon us within no more than two hours. What is the plan?”

  “To stop them,” I said. At her look, I said, “I am not a military strategist, Vessel. The Church has trained for this for centuries. I hope you have a plan, and that it can use several hundred elves.”

  “Is that all?” she asked, and then flinched. “Pardon me, my lord, I only expected—”

  I grieved briefly for the many I had to kill. “It is what we have, lady.”

  “Then I will make do. Send me their leaders, and quickly. It won’t be long before they’re climbing the bridge.”

  “Will they even bother coming into the city?” Ivy wondered. “Why not keeping going south?”

  “They’ll bother,” Rose said. “We’re a beacon in the dark. They won’t be able to see any of the towns south of us until they’ve extinguished us.”

  “And the elves blaze brightly,” Kemses said. “They will want us most of all.”

  “We have time,” she said. “Not much, but enough to guide them onto the field of our choosing. You say I have several hundred elves, my lord—that is no small thing, if used well.”

  “Then I pray you use them well,” I said.

  I sent a runner for the blood-flags, left them with Rose to their planning. Much as I wanted to pretend to some knowledge that might help them, I knew there would be no profit in it. I would be in their way. I joined my friends instead, embraced Radburn and Guy, and little Emily and Serendipity. To my great relief, Ivy slid under my arm as if she had not seen me kill three people in the most gruesome manner imaginable, and with her at my side I felt stronger.


  “And now what?” Guy said. “We fight, I presume?”

  “We’ll have to,” I said. “Everyone will have to.”

  “That means you’re not going to try to stop me from coming,” Ivy said. When I hesitated, she narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re wearing my grandmother’s ring.”

  “And you will be a better battlefield healer than her.” I smiled, wry. “No, I won’t try to stop you. But I’ll want you mounted behind Chester. Unlike me, he can take wounds that will kill him; he’ll need your skills more.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, then thought better of it.

  “And us?” Emily asked. “Do we go too?”

  “We’re useless out there unless they kill us for food,” Kelu said. “Don’t get ideas. They built us fragile on purpose.”

  “She’s right,” I said. “I want you nowhere near those who might hurt you. But you will have work enough to keep you busy.”

  Emily’s ears straightened. “We will?”

  I nodded. “Come.”

  I led them, inevitably, to the cages. The elves we passed bowed or touched their hands to their hearts and removed themselves from our path with an alacrity that bordered on the comical. Amhric they loved. I thought the best they could say of me was that they respected my power. I was glad of my human friends, who loved me and were willing to call me a lying weasel if I disappointed them.

  Now that I knew the trick of it, unlocking the doors was the work of moments. Ivy watched me, then began helping, and then all of them were at work. Predictably, the genets did not spring forth from their prisons to join us; for the most part, they cowered far from the doors and watched, wary, their ears plastered to their wet heads.

  Once we’d opened all of them, I drew in a breath and said to my Pearls, and Almond and Kelu, “Now I need your help. We must convince all your sisters to come down and go with you underground, to wait out the battle.”

  “So far from you, Master!” Almond said, pained.