by L. Penelope
Jasminda laboriously readied another bolt of Earthsong. Fortunately, each one could take down multiple wraiths. The obelisk pulsed at the back of her senses, reinvigorating her with each beat, like a magical drum.
A wily wraith broke free of the pack of her brethren and came at Jasminda from the side, her movements almost too fast to see. Jasminda had no time to react before she was tackled to the ground, where her bones crunched against the pavement.
Pain bloomed through her arm and she knew it had broken. She whipped the wraith away from her with a blast of air, but its speed was on full display as it raced toward her again.
A dart of crimson energy sizzled into her and the wraith was down. Jasminda looked up gratefully to find Oola standing over her. The woman barely glanced her way before returning to the battle. Jasminda rose, healing her arm with a thought and faced the enemy again, more mindful of her periphery.
A chunk of cement, bigger than she was, flew through the air at her. It had been torn directly from the street. She batted it away with a focused wind and the chunk flew to her left, all the way into the ocean.
Breathing heavily, even with the obelisk’s aid, she began the strenuous task of spinning up another bolt.
“Let’s try doing it together,” Darvyn said. Oola glanced at him and nodded. As one, they faced the opposing force and shot Earthsong energy into the entire crowd. Every wraith within their vision fell, twitching and changing, their features in flux for long moments until they settled back to that of their original host.
Jasminda’s breath heaved, though she felt oddly invigorated. The carnage all around them was devastating, but a smile fought its way to her face. She turned to Oola, wanting to share in the sense of amazement, but terror quickly took its place.
Walking toward them across a rubble-filled lot where a warehouse once stood was a figure oddly clad in animal furs. The Elsiran man had his russet hair pulled back in a short queue. He was thin and of average height, but Jasminda’s heart froze.
“Sister,” the man said to Oola, who turned to face him. “It is good to see you again.”
Jasminda and Darvyn were locked in a state of shock, while Yllis stood to the side. All of them staring in silence at the True Father.
The portable radio at Darvyn’s belt crackled and a voice called out, speaking in Lagrimari. “Hello? If anyone can hear me, stay away from the cemeteries.” It was Kyara and she sounded breathless, exhausted, and terrified. “We assumed the spirits could only take over living bodies. We were wrong.”
A slow smile spread over the True Father’s face and he began to laugh.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
It was once called Sacred Death.
Consecrated, set apart from that which lives.
We’ve forgotten the gift it gives.
For what is Sacred Life without its
antithesis?
—THE HARMONY OF BEING
Kyara and Tana stood, hand in hand, on the edge of the cemetery on the northwest corner of the city. The sight before her was like rain falling, except the dark forms of the spirits were the precipitation, diving like missiles into the ground.
Elsirans did not burn their dead as the Lagrimari did. They buried them and marked the grave with a mirror, embedded near where the head of the deceased would be. Across the field before her, tarnished, cracked, and broken mirrors were dotted through with newer ones of the recently dead. All so that the loved one could look through and view the Living World before they joined the Eternal Flame.
Some of the older mirrors were well-maintained, polished regularly by family members. Others were abandoned to the ravaging of time, in the hopes that the person had crossed over. But now they were all being desecrated. Cracked, broken, and destroyed as bodies clawed their way from the ground.
Instead of corpses, these bodies were whole and healthy, already transformed. The wraiths used their superior strength to break through the caskets and dig their way up through the earth.
Behind her, one of the Raunians who’d been fighting with them gasped. It took a lot to shake one of the stalwart sea-faring people, but this was surely enough to do so.
Tana squeezed Kyara’s hand. Both of them were exhausted. Their physical bodies on the edge of collapse, even if their Songs were still going strong—buoyed by the portal overhead and the death all around them.
Again, Kyara sank into her other sight, as she’d been doing during the fighting. Her wildcat avatar wasn’t tired, and this fact kept her hope high. The creature eagerly leapt in the direction of the wraiths. Tana’s dragon and Mooriah’s raptor swooped in as well, tearing spirits from bodies and gorging on death energy.
Normally the presence of so much Nethersong would energize Kyara, but all of the benefits she would have otherwise experienced were funneled to her avatar, which grew stronger and stronger the longer it fought. Kyara wished she could say the same. But she only had to last long enough to control the thing.
Strong and fast as it was, the wildcat could only dispel one spirit at a time—and though it took less than the blink of an eye to do so, as the forces arrayed against them grew and grew, as the rain of spirits picked up and multiplied, Kyara knew they would be overwhelmed.
The elaborate, mirror-encrusted crypts of the wealthy shattered. Stone and glass sprayed everywhere as wraith after wraith climbed free of the weak encumbrances. Unlike around the rest of the city, however, these stood still, as if awaiting instruction. Kyara had the heavy foreboding that the True Father was nearby and once he gave the command, his army would attack.
With a hand gripping Tana’s, she grabbed for the radio Darvyn had insisted she carry. She wasn’t certain that they would survive this, but the others needed to know what was happening. Even if they couldn’t stop it.
* * *
You stare at your sister from across a stretch of cracked and broken pavement. She gazes at you as if she no longer knows you. Ha! The secret is she never truly did.
Yllis is here, too, something that strikes you as odd, but then everything about this place is a bit odd.
Elsira. You breathe in its rarified air. It has taken you lifetimes to reach this land again. To stand by this ocean in which you played and swam in your youth. But this city is unrecognizable to you now. So different. So crowded and dirty. Perhaps that is why you instructed your wraiths to tear it down. Brick by brick if needed. In preparation for you to replace it with something new.
You carry the jar—the empty jar now. The final spell used up the last of Dahlia’s flesh, leaving the jar full of naught but ashes. Oola stares at it, grasped in your embrace like a lover, and you toss it aside, shattering it against the cobblestone walkway behind you.
The Songs you liberated from the Wailers before they died have been drained nearly to empty husks inside you. That’s the problem with taking Songs, they run out so quickly. Inside a born Singer they would rejuvenate, but within you, they stagnate.
You will need more. Luckily, there are more to be had here. Hunger strikes a deep chord within you.
Oola’s Song is bright and blooming. It would definitely satiate you. And the girl standing next to her—the new queen—along with the boy calling himself the Shadowfox … What a meal you shall have. The strongest Songs in the land all together, ripe for the plucking.
The radio crackles again, the words on it too inconsequential for you to listen to again, but the boy’s face ripples with anguish.
“Go to her,” the girl-queen says. He glares at you once more before taking off to the north. His escape makes little difference, it simply prolongs the inevitable. You will track him down and finally have his Song, before long.
The music of destruction sings in your ears. The crashes of buildings collapsing, fire licking against wood, burst pipes flooding the streets. It is all there, sounds on the breeze.
“Will you embrace me one last time, brother?” Oola says. Her expression is stoic as a placid sea. Then again, she was always the patient one.
“T
hat is my line, sister.” You step toward her, knife in hand. You can almost taste her power on your lips, she’s so near. Her dark eyes shine, they remind you of Father’s.
You startle. You hadn’t thought of him in quite a while. But the memory is implanted within your mind now. Father and Mother teaching you and Oola to swim in the ocean. You were but tots then. Young and fresh and innocent.
You shake off the memory and regard her again. She has not moved, but you have taken another step forward.
“How does it feel?” she asks, voice low.
“How does what feel? Victory? I know it is not something you are much acquainted with.” You are not trying to be smug. Much.
“No. Freedom.”
You pause at that, at the wistful quality in her voice. Yllis, standing just next to her, is grim as ever. “My old friend,” you call out warmly. What are grudges when victory is at hand?
He nods in acknowledgement, wary. Perhaps he has not forgiven you for killing him, but that is all water under the bridge as far as you are concerned.
“Freedom is the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted. I shall not be imprisoned again.” There is a warning in your voice.
Oola inclines her head slightly. “No, I should think not.”
You step toward her, prodding at her shield, curious to know what she is feeling. All you want is a taste of her regret, her sadness, her disappointment at being bested. You do not remember her as a sore loser.
“My sister. There will be no hard feelings between us in the new kingdom I will create. There is even room for you.”
“There is?” she asks, an eyebrow quirked.
“Of course. The bulk of my force stands now, awaiting my command. I do not have to destroy this city and everyone in it. I realize you are quite fond of them. I will give you them—the non-Singers—as a gift if you will just accept my rule.”
You ready the knife. There is nothing she can do against your army once you give them the order to charge. You are obviously the victor here.
“Do you promise no hard feelings?” she whispers. Movement in your periphery catches your attention. The girl-queen. You will not make the same mistake twice where she is concerned.
“I promise.”
A blast of Earthsong shoots toward you from the side. Potent but clumsy. You bat away the charge and give the girl-queen a withering glare.
“Your protégé could use some manners.”
Oola lifts a shoulder. “She is young. And headstrong.”
You sigh, and deflect new blasts from the child coming in a swift stream. The glint of a knife peeks out from Oola’s fist. You can no longer read the expressions on her implacable face, but disappointment fills you. Her emotions are still well shielded, but—there. A glimpse of remorse in her eyes.
A vein in her neck pops forward as she tightens her fist.
“I will give you some more time to think on my offer,” you say, taking a step back.
Surprise registers on her face. She expected you to strike.
And so you do, but not in the way she expects. A mental direction calls forth the regiment of waiting wraiths. They pour from their hiding places, racing down the gangplanks of ships and out of the shadows of destroyed buildings. Nearly one hundred strong, overwhelming the tiny force before you. Two Singers, Yllis—whose wraith form you cannot control, interestingly enough—and a handful of swarthy foreigners carrying oil canisters.
Pathetic.
As the wraiths converge, you lift yourself into the air on a controlled current of wind. Your sister spares you a glance before returning her focus to the battle before her.
Family has often been disappointing. But she will come around.
Once you are king again, she will have no other choice.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
If Harmony were tangible, would you
embrace it?
Hold it to your bosom, safe and secure?
What we value, we protect,
and yet we continue to neglect
that which needs so much care and nurturing.
—THE HARMONY OF BEING
The new wraiths were motionless; the only sound coming from the cemetery was the whistle of a chilling wind. Goose bumps pebbled on Kyara’s flesh.
Mooriah stepped up to her side. “The spirits are leaving other hosts to converge here,” the woman said. “The Earthsingers will have no effect on these new things as they are not alive.”
As if called by her words, Darvyn arrived, running with the wind at his back so he glided across the ground, nearly flying. He punched his arm forward, toward the waiting horde, and a red lightning strike shot out into a wraith standing fifty paces away. The thing did not react at all. It stood stone-faced, still waiting.
Darvyn attacked again and again, shooting blasts of energy into more of the creatures. Kyara sank into her other sight and redirected her avatar. It tore spirits from the unmoving bodies, releasing them from possession only to have the corpses retaken again and transform.
She opened her eyes again in the real world. “The selakki oil?”
Darvyn nodded and turned to grab a canister from a Raunian warrior, who led the group accompanying the Nethersingers. Kyara ejected another spirit and Darvyn let a stream of oil fly through the air to coat the body. The hovering spirit just darted away, toward the back of the cemetery to find another host.
“We don’t have enough oil,” the young man said. “Not for every corpse in that cemetery.” The graves stretched out for thousands of paces. He was right.
The wraiths began to move, shuffling into a cluster at the edge of the burial ground. Whereas up until now, they’d all been foreign—Yalyish they’d assumed—now there were a startling number of Elsiran faces along with some Lagrimari.
“He’s using our dead as well,” she whispered, aghast. “Taking fresh spirits, not just ones waiting in the World After.” For the True Father to control and manipulate their own dead—Kyara’s heart dropped like a stone.
Darvyn took her hand. Fear welled deep in his eyes, mirroring her own.
“It’s time to use the death stone,” Mooriah said. “We cannot fight them. We need—” Her voice cut off, strangled as her face screwed up tight with pain. She wrapped her arms around her middle and moaned.
“What’s happening?” Tana cried, reaching for the woman.
Kyara shook her head and used her other sight to find out. Mooriah’s raptor shuddered, changing into its tiny bird form before it faded away to nothing.
In Kyara’s normal vision, Mooriah’s body fell to the ground and transformed. The dark cloud of the woman’s spirit escaped with a whoosh and appeared to shiver.
Neither Kyara nor Tana had expelled Mooriah—one of the wraiths must have done this. Kyara’s gaze darted to the amassing enemy, but each face was blank. She had no idea which one had targeted Mooriah, but that was the only explanation.
As the woman’s spirit lunged for the body it had just vacated, a giant mirror hurtled through the air toward them. Kyara dragged Tana out of the way just in time. Glass cracked and splintered, hitting its intended target—the body Mooriah had just vacated.
The aged form of Kyara’s former mistress and tormentor, Ydaris, lay crushed beneath the wreckage. Nethersong filled the woman immediately. She was dead.
More mirrors were vaulted their way by unseen hands in the midst of the crowd of wraiths, but this time Darvyn batted them away with winds.
Writhing with anger, Kyara struggled to focus, pointing her wildcat avatar into the opposing army, ejecting spirits left and right only to have them find hosts again almost immediately.
Her throat closed up. Her skin grew too tight against her muscles. She let go of her tight hold on Darvyn’s hand and tried to catch her breath.
The Breath Father’s words echoed in her head. The Song of an ancient Nethersinger—it is mighty indeed … that power has grown beyond anyone’s imagining. Her vision swam and she stumbled in place. Once you unleash what it holds, there i
s no going back. You have only to touch it to release its fearsome force into this world and become a goddess of death.
The death stone was warm in her pocket and pulsing with purpose, like it wanted to be used. She fished the wrapped caldera from her pocket and held it in her shaking hand.
“That’s it?” Darvyn said. She nodded, unable to speak.
Gingerly, she unwrapped the cloth from around the stone while not touching it. It was just a dull, red rock in her hand. Small and harmless in appearance. All she had to do was touch it, but she couldn’t bring herself to.
Kyara’s and Tana’s avatars were still expelling spirits. Darvyn and the Raunians were manipulating the selakki oil, but a tiny corner of Kyara’s mind was frozen. Immobilized by the decision before her.
She had no wish to be a goddess of death. But did she have a choice?
Tana’s scream brought her back to the present.
“Papa!” the girl cried, sounding as though she was being murdered. “Papa!” She pointed a skinny, scarred arm toward one of the Elsiran wraiths who had moved to the front of the line.
“Benn?” Darvyn whispered with horror. “What? How?”
The man was as the other wraiths, impassive, sightless, waiting for instruction from their unseen master. Kyara’s heart broke at the misery and grief coming from Darvyn and Tana.
Distracted as she was by the sight before her and the panic taking up all the space inside, she did not see Tana turn toward the stone. By the time she recognized the girl’s intent it was too late.
Tana slapped her hand onto the death stone, which vibrated in response. Her small body convulsed in a seizure. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she started to fall.
