On Wings of Bone and Glass

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  Radburn’s arms folded. “No, pray, tell us how you’re going to accomplish this.”

  “Let us guess. You’re going to dash out there and challenge the demon to single combat,” Guy said.

  Since this was very close to what I was planning to do, I said nothing.

  “Fine,” Ivy said. “We’re coming with you.”

  “Are you mad?” I said.

  “We’re asking the same question about you at this very moment,” Radburn said. “For God’s sake, Morgan. How the hell were you even going to get there?”

  “I thought the drake—”

  “Can fly us as well,” Radburn said. “And then we can form a perimeter around the thing and keep the dead off your back while you commit whatever ridiculous feat of heroics you’re planning.”

  “I can’t—” I began.

  “You will,” Ivy said. “You will because you would not dare leave us behind. We came to help you, Morgan. We came to share this peril with you. Don’t you relegate us to the parapets while you take the entirety of this on yourself!”

  Past their faces, I saw Eyre cock an eyebrow at me. Even recalling his lecture, I wavered. In my arms I already carried proof of the price those dear to me might pay if we failed, and the chances of failure if we ventured into the center of the field to confront the demon directly were frankly astronomical. The last thing I wanted was to know I’d endangered my friends. Wasn’t it?

  Wasn’t it the path of a demon to take the choice away from them?

  I glanced at Chester. “Have you nothing to say to this?”

  Chester smiled. “Of course not. They’re right.”

  “But not all of you,” I said. “The drake will not carry an entire army.”

  “I’m coming,” Ivy said. “I’m more use than any of you.” She grinned. “No offense.”

  “Having seen you at work, none taken,” Radburn said. “I’m also coming.”

  Chester nodded. “So am I, and Guy as well, if I read him right.”

  “And we should bring an elf,” Ivy said.

  “Kemses,” Amhric said. To me, in the Gift, “To him I can entrust your safety.”

  “Because you will not go,” I said, and this was command, and also plea.

  “No,” he said. “I would distract you. Would I not?”

  “Yes.”

  He nodded. “Then I will stay.”

  “We’ll stay too,” Carrington said. “And we’ll keep an eye on him for you. Him the king, I mean.”

  Eyre was leaning a little against her, and at her words smiled a little with quirked brow. “Shall we?”

  “Oh, come off it, John. Give me some credit for recognizing truth once it becomes incontrovertible.”

  “And you,” I said to Rose. “Must remain as well, or there will be no one to command the city.”

  She met my eyes for so long I thought she would object, but at last she said, “I know. I will send Kemses to you, with the drake.”

  “Thank you.”

  She nodded. And bowed. “Good luck, my lord. Our hopes go with you.”

  “Thank you,” I said again, and as she left I reflected on how difficult it must be to have prepared all your life for a fight you had to cede to someone else. If I succeeded, we would survive and all of this would be over; if I failed, it would be up to her to take the field against a manifested demon and all the dead he could raise from graveyards all over the continent. There was no winning that war, even with her million knights.

  The drake came quickly, hopping up to join us and curling a protective tail around the entirety of our number; in its wake came a cluster of genets and two of the Church’s knights, who took my burden from me despite the pain it cost me to let it pass into their hands. Seeing Almond’s body disposed in other arms made her death real in a way I’d been able to avoid while holding her, and only the obvious respect and ceremony with which the delegation received her gave me the strength to watch them bear her away.

  Kemses came last, and with him was Tchanu, the darkling blood-flag head of Nudain. How different they looked divested of their curses, and yet how much more themselves!

  “My liege,” he said. “We answer your need at the behest of the priestess. I brought Tchanu, for you will need another woman for your defense.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “The drake is ready. All of you, if you would.”

  I left my friends to begin clambering aboard so that I could approach those who remained. Eyre first, whose look I misliked; his complexion had a wan cast still, though he presented a staunch enough demeanor. I hesitated, and into that hesitation he stepped and embraced me.

  “My student,” he said. “You will find us here when you return victorious.”

  “Your confidence in me is both inspiring and appalling,” I said, smiling.

  “Only because it is not misplaced. Don’t fear. We’ll see the back of this yet, and go home again to tell the tale.”

  “I so trust,” I said. “Keep yourself in one piece, sir.” I glanced at Carrington. “And you as well.”

  She smiled, a lopsided curve of her mouth that hinted at what Eyre saw in her. “Thank you.”

  My brother, then. This time he took both my hands in his. “Marshal your strength, and warn your friends to do so as well,” he said. “It is in my heart that they will need me too much here for me to watch your back as well.”

  “I know,” I said. “Don’t overextend yourself. Amhric—”

  When I paused, he smiled and said, “Shall I hush you? Would it make it easier?”

  “Yes,” I said, and “No.”

  So rather than press me to speak, he cupped my face and bent it so that he could kiss my brow, both of my closed eyes, my mouth, and finally, my palms. “Clear thoughts,” he said. “Clear sight. Kind words. Right acts. Go with God, brother mine, and come home safely to us.”

  “I shall,” I whispered, and found the words as I hugged him. “And I love you.”

  “And I you. Go, Morgan.”

  I ran to mount and stopped at the slim figure waiting there, arms crossed and ears flattened.

  “I’m coming,” Kelu said.

  How little I wanted to see her die to violence and cruelty when her short life had been so brutal already. It was plain she expected me to deny her request and was girding for an argument, so when I replied, “Up, then, we’re low on time,” she froze, mouth agape.

  “Come on,” Ivy said, reaching down for her arm. “Up!”

  With a leap, Kelu gained the back of the drake and scrabbled until she was between Ivy and Chester. I followed her, and as I settled the genet said past Ivy’s shoulder, “I thought you’d say ‘no’.”

  “One of you should be there with us at the end,” I said. “You were the first genet ever made. It’s meet you should come.” I looked back at my entourage. “Save your strength and fight as smartly as you can. We’ll be too far behind the lines for any aid to reach us.”

  Their nods of assent were enough. I touched my hand to the drake’s neck and then we were aloft.

  Our flight through the uncanny dark was eerily unlike our previous one. The air was dry and empty and when it brushed our skins it left a rash of horripilation behind. The host beneath us was strangely clear to our sight despite the darkness, as if some ghastly inner illumination was emitted from its members… and it was because of this glow that we discerned the worst of those differences. Previously the dead had pressed toward us by way of the shortest distance, even if that distance presented insurmountable obstacles. This time, only part of the army marched toward the southern cliffs of Vigil. The remainder of them poured toward the slope leading to the broken gates on the western side... as if they had been directed by a malevolent power.

  They were doomed, if we did not save them.

  The demon awaited us at the end of the field. As we closed with it I strove to see where the shadow extending from the sky ended and Sedetnet began, and failed. My eyes reported nothing but a maelstrom that I somehow sensed was
equal parts visible darkness and the bitter anguish of a man who had been too long in the suffering. That would be how the demon had found ingress into the soul of a prince: through Sihret’s loneliness, and the sense that he had been wronged.

  But I too had been long in the suffering, and known the bitterness of anguish. That would be my ingress into the soul of a brother, for Sihret had been my twin on that field so long ago; had in fact recognized me, for why else would he have troubled himself with a single elf, no matter how cleverly disguised? He’d known me before I’d known myself. He would engage me, I was certain of it.

  The drake glided in a long curve around the demon, intending to set down on the softly furrowed hills beyond Threnody-Calling-Forward, to place us safely behind the enemy’s lines. It was angling for that landing when it was snatched from the air and thrown down, and all of us would have died there had not Kemses and Tchanu been with us. They had mastered magic generations before we were born, and if they had been barred from its use for too long they still had the reflexes. Kemses wrapped the air around us as we jerked off the drake’s back, and though the false wind battered us he managed to set us down. What few injuries we saw Tchanu sealed with a quickness, for we’d fallen close enough to the dead to attract their attention.

  “Go, my prince!” Kemses said. When I hesitated, he said, “Go!”

  I ran, then, toward the column of darkness.

  17

  Sedetnet would know me. Welcome me—perhaps not. But recognize me, enough to exchange words—that I believed, had to or I would never have had the courage to rush the nexus of wrongness that was the demon touched to earth. The closer I came, the more I quailed. My doubts and fears clouded my thoughts, slowed my limbs; the conviction that I was neither worthy nor capable of this fight, my unexpected title, my brother, my beloved, or all of my friends—of this world entire—made me clumsy. Momentum propelled me, and this served to bring me to the edge of his mantle. The moment I stumbled through the mist that hedged him ‘round, the pain of my warring enchantments revisited me and my limbs shook. That I didn’t fall was accidental: my knees locked and all my body wrenched, petrified into a twisted shape.

  I remembered hopelessness so profound it colored every word that issued from my lips. Despair... despair so bleak I woke only because to kill myself was to invite pain on top of too much pain. Joylessness and envy and bitterness at the society of friends who went on blithely unaware of my infirmities and limitations. I remembered rage. I became the past, and it paralyzed me, and I heard the whispers of demons.

  Red Prince, Red Prince. Did we not say you would bring demons into the world?

  No, I thought.

  Red Prince, let us in.

  No, I thought again. Not in response to the demand. In my state I could not deny that there were roads into my soul, and those roads were vast and well-trodden. This faint negation had nothing to do with that and everything to do with the same commitment to truth that had prompted me to make unnecessary distinctions in a chocolate parlor while barely competent. That the demons could enter was of less importance than the fact that I was not the Red Prince.

  I was not the Red Prince... Sihret was. I had come for Sihret.

  The demons lost their grip on me. I stood upright again and found the fog had evanesced, and I was congratulating myself on having survived their blandishments when the pain revisited me, sharp and sudden and violent. I was thrown to my knees as I grabbed for my midriff, and when I looked down bright blood had welled against my arm. Stunned, I looked up and found Sedetnet wielding a shard of glass he’d plucked from one of his own unnatural wings.

  “You didn’t expect to be physically repulsed, did you. More fool you. Prince-Engaged, who serves the King-Reclusive... if it is a fight you want, you will meet it here.”

  This made no sense to me—that he should prefer a duel? Why? But I leaped to my feet to escape the next blow, and raised my staff against the third, expecting it to shatter on the iron. Instead it cut a chunk from the staff. I backpedaled.

  “This is all you have?”

  “Sihret,” I began.

  “Am I?” He prowled around me and I forced myself to watch. As if to evoke the very name the demons had whispered, he wore a copper-skinned body with a mane only a few shades more crimson. The eyes, though... the eyes were wrong. They were black, like the tendrils that extended into his heart, his ears, that seemed to seep into his mouth when he spoke. My stomach curdled at this violation, one Sedetnet himself seemed not to notice. “Am I Sihret?”

  “Shall I call you by the name you took so that no one would know you?”

  “That name pleased you well enough when you writhed in my arms.” Another thrust and I barely put myself out of its way. I was no duelist, and the wound he’d already dealt me continued to bleed freely. “Or so I seem to recall.”

  “It was a good night,” I said, hoping to bring forth some finer feeling in him.

  “Was it.”

  What had I said wrong? All my vaunted intelligence, and I floundered. There was no way to best him with a staff; he was no longer a prince and had never been a sorcerer, but the enchantment’s dissolution had freed the powers inherent in every elf to his hand and he would know how to deploy them to devastating effect. The only reason that first blow hadn’t killed me was because he wanted to toy with me. Was still toying with me.

  “Sihret,” I said. “Sedetnet. You’ve done what you came to do.”

  “Oh have I!” He paused, brows lifting over blank black eyes. “You fancy you know what it is I was charged with? And that I am done! My, such perspicacity. By all means, O Prince. Enlighten me. What exactly is it that I came to do?”

  Tightening my grip on the staff, I said, “You came to bring a demon, so that we could draw down an angel and set the elves free.”

  Sedetnet pursed his lips. “You do surprise me, Morgan Locke.”

  “That I might have guessed at your purpose?” I kept a wary distance, my arm pressed to the wound. “It seems only fair. You guessed at mine.”

  That made him laugh, a startled sound. “Oh, very good! And before you knew it.”

  “Yes.” I hesitated. “Sedetnet. We have a problem. You’ll have perceived it.”

  “Will I have? No, do go on.”

  “You’ve drawn down a demon,” I said. “And it is no longer necessary. But you still carry it.”

  “I thought that’s why we were fighting.” Sedetnet darted for me and I fear I ran. “Oh come now. We can hardly fight if you flee. And then where will the world be? You’ll have saved the elves but destroyed the world.”

  I said, “I didn’t save the elves.”

  “Didn’t you,” Sedetnet said.

  “No,” I said. “You did. You, and Almond.” I smiled a little. “I have been a well-intentioned bystander.”

  “I saved the world,” he murmured.

  “Yes.”

  “And Almond. A genet?”

  “Yes,” I said again, forcing myself to meet his eyes. “And we know the provenance of the genets, do we not.”

  “Ah! So you know who sold Suleris that little spell.”

  “A sorcerer,” I repeated. “Traded them the enchantment.”

  “Yes, that worked out rather well, didn’t it.” Sedetnet nodded, still prowling after me. “All it cost was a king. Do you wonder how I knew to do it? Do you wonder why I did it?”

  “No,” I said. “No, the one thing I don’t wonder is how people might be intelligent enough to have thoughts more complex than whether they would like to have chocolate with their morning correspondence.”

  That won me another laugh, and I was glad of it for I feared the glass blade. Sedetnet padded closer. “Yes. You had potential.”

  “Dare I ask if I have lived up to it?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Would it matter to you what I thought?”

  I said, quiet, “I am your successor. And you have been my mentor.”

  “Your mentor!”

  I managed a
smile. “A most unconventional one, I’ll own. But in every encounter, you have pushed me toward my own growth.”

  A pause, one of those feet set lightly on the ground, dimpling the grass. “Oh, very clever. You mean to appeal to both my pride and what you erroneously believe to be any lingering goodness.”

  “Also your duty,” I said.

  “Duty!” He drew his fingers along the edge of the glass, bloodying his fingers. “No, do go on.”

  Now I dared much, but I had to find my footing somehow. How long had my friends been pressed by the dead? How long could they last? “Your duty, to Marne, as the prince who loved him.”

  “Yes, you would say that. As if you knew what I suffered.”

  “I do,” I said. “I have a king of my own, Sedetnet. I will remind you that it was your doing that saw him imprisoned and abused. How long did Suleris have him? How many months did he spend in that chamber? At least Marne chose his fate. Amhric was betrayed.”

  “And that is why you don’t understand me at all,” Sedetnet snarled, and lunged.

  That wound I took, an enormous gash on the forearm I lifted, stupidly, to deflect it. I had grown too used to immortality. With a cry, I stumbled back and managed to bring my staff before me with my non-dominant hand. Chester’s fond amusement came back to me: “I trained with both.” Would that I had! “What is it like?” I asked, desperate to distract him. “To have been a woman? You could have healed this wound, I imagine.”

  “Who said I was a woman?”

  Before I’d asked, I’d had no idea that I’d known... but everything had come together with awing clarity. There could be no other answer. “Sirél. That was your name before. I have seen you change shape, and that is a woman’s power. And Last told me there are elves that choose to re-shape their bodies. You did it for love of Marne, did you not? What was he like?” Having said it, I desperately wanted to know. “Sihret, what was it like? How did you… were you ever worthy of him?”

  I thought in that moment that I’d secured my own death, for Sedetnet rushed me. Every motion seemed absurdly slow, which gave me ample opportunity to question my sanity when I let the staff drop from my fingers. I did not meet him with it. I did not meet him with my crossed arms or my turned back.