“I am not ritually prepared to be Tribe-Mother,” Raine said, aghast. “‘Twould be sacrilege.”
“Our ancestors will understand. Do not question me: I am Eldest of our Tribe. I know these things.” Ryver coughed several more times, blood spattering the snow in the stark light of Raine’s beacon Relic. When she spoke again, it was between laboured breaths. “I will not… survive long. Leave me. Let the journey to the Obelisk... be thy vigil of remembrance. For me, and for all the others.”
Raine rose, and turned away so her sister would not see her shameful tears. “I am unworthy.”
“Question not… the Elders’ judgment! If thou hadst been unworthy… They would not have chosen thee to go.” Ryver hacked more blood into the snow. “Thou hast... completed a task... which we had thought… would take five centuries. Thou hast done it... in less than one. Pragh gaghta, I say!”
Raine turned to argue, but Ryver’s head lolled aside, her empty eyes staring into the darkness. Her sister was dead, and her final words had invoked pragh gaghta, the greatest honour an Elder could bestow upon a younger Gigant: the glory of achieving the impossible.
“What will you do now?” Jenna asked from near Raine’s elbow.
Raine turned to glare down at the impertinent little human, and grasped the handle of the club at her side. “I will take my revenge. I will slay every last Mosoleios upon my people’s tundra, or perish in the attempt.”
“What of your sister’s last wish?” Jenna’s tone was a direct challenge. “Even a dagros knows you don’t take a person’s final request lightly. Is this one more thing Gigants don’t consider important unless it’s convenient?”
Raine’s fury nearly drove her to strike the weakling… but Gigants did not kill in anger: they killed only to protect something greater than themselves. “My sister’s last words are more important to me than you know,” she growled.
“Are you refusing to do what she asked because your honour says you have to take revenge? Or because you’re running away from something?” Jenna’s sharp blue eyes bored into Raine with a sting keener than any weapon.
Raine roared her frustration and slammed her fist into the ground with a blast of force which knocked Jenna from her feet again. But the little human stood back up and fixed her cutting stare on Raine once more, refusing to back down. Little by little, the Gigant’s fury subsided under that clear blue gaze, until her rage was replaced with shame.
“I… I have known nothing save this task for eight decades.” Her hand fell from the handle of her club. “I had never considered what I would do once it was complete. It is my shame to admit: I am afraid. Afraid to be Tribe-Mother instead of saviour, and afraid to face my grief without drowning it in the blood of revenge.”
“And what do Gigants do when they’re afraid?” Jenna asked, curiosity in her voice along with the challenge of her tone.
Raine nodded slowly, and a smile came to her face.
“We rush headlong into the teeth of our fears, and break them. You are wise, for such a young and tiny thing.”
“I had some help,” Jenna replied. “And really, everything I said was in your heart already. You just needed to hear it from someone else. Now, go face that fear of yours. Crush it, like you crushed those monsters out there.”
“I shall,” Raine said, and strode away, headed for a distant light which had appeared on the horizon: the Spirit-Obelisk, and a future for her people which would test her resolve more deeply than any army of foes.
Behind Raine, the little human smiled and disappeared from the vision.
Jenna returned to her body, gasping as though she’d just emerged from a particularly long dive in the lake by her grandmother’s home.
The surges of power needed to alter the visions had been painful and exhilarating all at once, and she had a newfound respect for the depth of Aquamarine’s subtle might.
“What... what’s next?” she asked out loud, but she knew the answer before she’d finished asking: a few seconds’ pause for her frail human body to recover from the torrent of Res needed to enter and then alter the visions… and then once more into the fray.
“Right.” Jenna took a deep breath to calm her racing heart. “I’m ready.”
Chapter 18
Pyke stood on an expanse of shattered stone in front of the Last Spellbound House, under a dim and distant sun. The air was still. The last thing he recalled was being struck by the Faerie-lights in the hall of mirrors. Either he was missing some memories, or he’d been transported directly here… or perhaps it was another vision from the book.
Voice?
There was no response, except…
“I took the liberty of locking the meddling construct out of this dream, my love,” Melianne said from behind him. Her voice was gentle and soothing, like a cold compress on a fever-stricken brow.
Pyke turned, calm for a reason he couldn’t define. Perhaps it was the silent majesty of this empty place.
The woman before him was no skeletal apparition risen from the grave: here, her presence was alive and vibrant. Although the Fae was beautiful, it was her strength which struck him: everything about her, from her self-assured posture to the confidence with which she wore the silver circlet at her brow, spoke of a person accustomed to wielding power.
“I’m sorry,” Pyke said. “I’m not the man you love. You must see that by now.”
“Of course you aren’t.” Melianne’s smile was melancholy. “But you hold his Phylactery, which is enough.”
“Phylactery?”
“An old word, which you may recognize from one of the pages you read. You carry an object which used to be a key. It’s made of black metal, about twice the length of your hand.”
Realization struck Pyke, its impact muted by the quiet atmosphere. “The Serpent’s Tongue.”
“What’s left of my love is sealed away in that trinket of yours. If there’s a way to bring him back, it lies within.”
The skin of Pyke’s arms prickled with foreboding. “If I understood the vision you sent me, then with the change Tamelios made to his nature, he vanished when the others of the Dead were sealed away. Your love is gone.”
The Fae Queen’s expression took on the chilly sharpness of icicles and dry winter winds. “Not entirely. I believe the purpose of this manse’s second phase is to Restore Life to Tamelios: to return him to his rightful place at my side. I intend to make sure the Serra-Engine finishes its work.”
“I can’t let you do that. As long as the Engine operates, Res is pulled from the real world to this one. All those innocents will die.”
The harshness of Melianne’s gaze up at the mansion wavered. “And so might I. I know that if you perish, you intend to destroy the book as your last act, for you fear unleashing me on the world. The Engine sustains me, but it may not survive the completion of the Restore Life working, and if the book is lost and you no longer exist to know my tale, then nothing will be left of me.”
To Pyke’s surprise, curiosity rose within him instead of anger. “It sounds like you’re willing to risk sacrificing yourself for him. Were the Ancients really capable of that kind of love?”
“I suspect most of us were too selfish.” The Queen’s expression softened, and she glanced sidelong at Pyke. “Perhaps no Fae or Dead ever experienced such a pure emotion as love until the day I placed a fateful Glamour on a Dead wanderer… a Glamour whose subtlety even I underestimated, for I drew its foundation from the hearts of an unremarkable pair of mortal lovers.”
Pyke stared up at the Last Spellbound House for a long few moments. His heart was full of a strange, quiet calm, and his next words seemed to rise unbidden from the peace at his core. “Please, Melianne. Tamelios wouldn’t have wanted his resurrection to cost all these people their lives. Let him go: he chose your survival over his own existence, and he’s earned his rest.”
The Fae’s features creased into a sad smile. “I think you understand why I can’t do tha
t. As long as there’s still a possibility I could hold him in my arms again, I won’t give up. After all, Pyke… you, too, have one life in particular whose loss would hurt you deeply.”
“Jenna.” Pyke’s heart ached, and he didn’t know whether it was his own pain or a strange sympathy for this sad creature.
“Yes, Jenna. She’s a resourceful girl, my love,” the Queen said. “Even now, with the Seer’s help, she’s unravelling the Glamours holding your friends. Together, you and she have a chance to stop me. Show your resolve, and defeat me… nothing else will prevent me from seeing this through. Even should it prove impossible to bring him back, I’ll pass into oblivion with no regrets at having sacrificed everything in the attempt.”
“Why not join us?” Pyke asked impulsively. “We can make an agreement to revive Tamelios another way, in exchange for your help with deactivating the Restore Life Working. You could have a hand in saving everyone.”
“I appreciate the offer. Truly, I do.” Melianne’s posture spoke of the unyielding rigidity of ice: the cold strength needed to sustain an empire. Her imperious bearing held no room for compromise or risk-taking. “I have only one chance to resurrect my Tamelios. The knowledge of how to configure Restore Life died with him. If the Working is stopped, it will be impossible to begin it again.”
Pyke met her eyes. Just as the book had said, her irises were the white of newly fallen snow, with faint tinges of gold gleaming like sunlight on their surface. “How can you know so little about the Working? You and he built this place together.”
“Ah, but Antiquarian,” she said, with a brief grin which echoed the mischievous nature he had read about, “I’m no longer what I was. Am I not, in your words, a living story? How can I remember a part of my tale which is known by none who live?”
The import of her words took a moment to sink in.
“Then… you, all of you…” Pyke’s shoulders tensed with the impact of a crucial realization. “Everything, from your appearance to your powers to even your motivations… it’s born of the pages I read and the visions I’ve seen, filled in with what I imagine a Fae Queen must be like.”
Melianne nodded. “Who’s to say how I would change, were you to read more of the book?”
“And who’s to say I’d think the change an improvement?” Pyke asked sharply. “You want me to read it. What if your goal with these trials is to make me desperate enough to read the book?”
“Perhaps it is. But keep this in mind, Antiquarian: the contents of the story are just as mysterious to me as they are to you. The only difference seems to be that I’m not afraid to find out. Perhaps I’d become an ally to you, as you suggested. After all, I fell in love with a being who, for all his flaws, sacrificed himself to save a single mortal child.”
Pyke fell silent again for a long moment, during which time the Fae seemed content to stand beside him, regarding the façade of the Last Spellbound House.
“I suppose your hunger and malice are my fault, in a way. I think of the Fae as distant, haughty rulers with little care for the well-being of mortals, and so you are.”
“Who’s to say you aren’t right?” Melianne replied with a coy smile. “Those who know and share our stories live fewer days. Through a mortal lens, you wouldn’t be wrong to consider us nothing but parasites.”
“Are you trying to convince me I’m correct?”
“No. But I’m showing you I know a few things about you, Pyke. I’ve seen your heart.”
Pyke sighed. “So you already know I’ll use every last tool I can to stop the deaths of the people in that House, even if it means playing into your hands.”
“Yes.”
“If I’m going to do what you want anyhow, why talk to me at all?”
Melianne’s smile didn’t abate. “Because I felt you might have something of Tamelios to you. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking, but there are some resemblances: I suppose his Phylactery wouldn’t have chosen a host without at least a passing similarity. Read my book, Pyke. It might help.”
Pyke turned to face Melianne directly. “Swear an oath to work with me to stop this manse’s heart, and I’ll read it.”
The Queen laughed, a pure sound filled with genuine amusement.
“Goodbye for now, my dear,” she said, and vanished.
Pyke stood staring up at the Last Spellbound House, struggling with the risk he knew he must take.
Vino sat alone in a basement room, sipping wine by the dying light of a spent lantern.
They were dead. They were all dead, and it was his fault.
He’d tried. The mechanisms of the manse had held secrets he’d needed to stop the Phoenix Kingdom from being consumed… but he’d been unable to figure them out in time, unable to find the controls at the manse’s heart.
The Antiquarian had been the first to fall. Pyke had been everyone’s best hope… but the Fae had dragged him screaming into a fiery fissure in the floor. The Phoenix Kingdom’s would-be hero had vanished amid a chorus of damned voices, never to return, as Vino watched helplessly.
The others had followed, one by one, while Vino struggled to figure out how to open the way forward. Then he had realized he was the only one left. Knowing he was no match, he had turned back, returning to the Viewing Chamber and watching hopelessly on the screens as the cities of the Phoenix Kingdom grew still and lifeless. Finally, he had come to this room to drown his sorrows.
Someone stepped out of the shadows in the small ground-level room he’d chosen for his last drink.
“Are you the Fae, come to finish me off?” he asked.
“No, my name’s Jenna, and I’m the furthest thing there is from Fae,” said the newcomer, moving to sit across from him in the second of the three chairs surrounding the squat table. “It all came down to you, in the end, did it?”
“They died protecting me.” Vino found it strangely easy to accept the presence of someone else in his private hell. “I wasn’t worth a drop of their spilled blood.”
“You did everything you could.”
Vino surged to his feet in response, his face flushed with wine and fury. “That’s just it! I did everything I could… but as usual, ‘everything I could’ wasn’t enough. It’s never been enough!”
His voice rose as he paced back and forth. “I let them die because I wasn’t a real expert. I was supposed to be the right person in the right place at the right time, but I wasn’t! I was just some pretender, full of big ideas and not enough skills or evidence to back them up!”
Jenna stood, placing a hand on Vino’s shoulder. In a completely new cadence, as though some other being spoke through her lips, she asked, “Pray, what are you going to do about that? Will you give up and prove your own prophecy?”
Vino turned, his eyes wide and his pupils dilating to miniscule points with pent-up rage. “And why not? It’s too late!”
“Not so. Look.”
Jenna indicated one of the walls of Vino’s dark room with one hand. Her body trembled and her pointing hand convulsed as a jarring torrent of power rushed through her in a coruscating blue stream of raw Essence which Vino felt in his bones. The river of magical energy struck the wall, and a secret compartment opened to reveal a viewing screen. It showed Raine, Eiten and Merana fighting desperately against a pale, imposing woman in a circlet and a white dress, with limbs of skin and bone.
“The Fae has given you false memories,” Jenna said in that hollow, familiar cadence Vino still couldn’t quite place. “This room hides the secret controls of the manse.”
Vino’s half-crazed, wondering stare turned from the viewing-screen to Jenna. As he began to realize the truth, his perspective shifted, and the dim room faded away to reveal banks upon banks of gleaming metal switches and dials. This was exactly what he’d imagined the manse’s control chamber would look like. He glanced back to the fight taking place on the viewing-screen, and knew who was missing.
“Aquamarine. You sent this Jenna… an illusory per
son, to free me.” Vino’s heart leapt at the thought that he had been worth such a display of magic… that he was the one who could decipher these controls, the only one who could do what was needed.
“The Fae fears your skills, so she sought to trap you here and make you think you had already failed. It is all up to you now: will you swim swiftly to end this, and prove even to yourself your expertise, Vino?”
The Risker grinned.
“Bet silver on it.”
Jenna smiled. “Good,” she said, and vanished, leaving Vino cracking his knuckles eagerly in preparation for his task.
Merana stood on a wooden platform, surrounded on all sides by a mob chanting for her death.
The rope bindings chafed cruelly at her wrists and forearms as she strained against them, but the posts to which they were tied were far too sturdy for her to dislodge. The ropes were just long enough that if she allowed them to go slack, she would fall almost to her knees.
The crowd had gathered in the square of her hometown of Snowfall, not far from Void’s Rim. They carried torches and sacks full of overripe vegetables. One particularly mouldy tomato splattered across the bruises mottling Merana’s forehead, and she flinched.
“Thief!”
“Liar!”
“Homewrecker!”
“Brute!”
The shouts grew louder, more raucous and frenzied. Merana lowered her head against a hail of rot and invective, unable and unwilling to argue. Behind her, a man with a makeshift spear fashioned from a damaged carving-knife and a headless shovel stood waiting for the crowd to be finished with their mockery.
“Kill her!”
“Carve her up!”
“Feed her entrails ta the pigs!”
“What’s ruffled their feathers?” asked a voice Merana found vaguely familiar. She looked up and to her right: a younger woman stood on the platform, just far enough away that she wasn’t being pelted with stray projectiles. Nobody else seemed to notice her.
The Last Spellbound House: A Steampunk Dark Fantasy Thriller Page 33
