by Sam Sykes
My fingers could feel just how many other black bones were under that sand.
“SAL!”
Liette’s hands were on me, but I couldn’t feel them. I couldn’t feel the wind blowing against my skin or her breath hot on my neck as she tried to pull me to my feet. I could only feel my scar, pulsating like it had a heart of its own, from my collarbone to my belly, fresh as the day I got it.
“I knew it,” she whispered. “I fucking knew something was wrong.” She pulled on me again, too damn small to move me but too damn stubborn to realize it. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
I had something to say to that. Didn’t I? I couldn’t think. It was like all the thoughts had left me, swept right out of my head on the wind. What was left behind was a blackness, vast and resonant, into which a voice that I didn’t recognize as mine echoed.
“How can you be surprised? You already knew I was broken.”
It took me a minute to realize I had said that, that those words had leaked out of my mouth on my stale breath. But I had. And she had heard. And she looked at me like I had just put my sword through her.
Maybe it would have hurt less if I had.
“What?” she asked, breathless.
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” I staggered to bloodless feet, swaying in the wind. “No contacts to save, no laws to enforce, no reason to be out here except for me.” I stared at her through eyes I couldn’t blink anymore. “To try to fix me again.”
My mind felt painfully full. Full of the screaming wind. Full of the pleading voices in it. Full of the bones beneath my feet. So full I couldn’t stop the words coming out of my mouth. So full it hurt, and my scars hurt and my body hurt and it all hurt so bad I just… I don’t know.
Maybe I wanted someone else to hurt like that.
“Am I wrong?” I asked.
Silence. Wind. Pain.
“AM I?”
She stared at me, her mouth hanging open, at a loss for words. Her hair whipped about her face in messy strands, torn free from her perfect bun. Her tiny fists curled up, trembling, aching for something to break, something to strike me with, something to hold on to.
“You are.” Her voice was hard and small, a scalpel blade on my skin. “I don’t want to fix you. Not anymore.” Her eyes trembled, water filling them. “Because I don’t fucking know how.”
Her lips quivered, searching for the words. Her eyes swept over the wastes, looking for an answer. Something that would make me understand, something that would make this hurt less.
“Do you know how brilliant I am, Sal?” She snapped her fingers. “It’s that easy for me. To make anything. I can craft alchemics that can take away pain. I can craft a weapon that would sell for enough metal to make us live in comfort for twenty lifetimes. I can be anywhere, make anything, do anything, give you anything. Anything you wanted.”
She threw her hands out, gesturing to the devastation around us: the charred homes, the blackened bricks, the shifting sands from which skeletal fingers reached out toward a sky masked by wailing wind.
“And you chose this. Look at it.” Her voice rose to a scream over the wind. “LOOK. You chose this over me. You chose this over everything I can do for you. You chose a pile of rubble, a list of names, that… that fucking gun over me.” She gritted her teeth, as though she could force the tears back into her face. “And I don’t know what I’m doing wrong that you would do that.”
“It’s not about you,” I snarled back. My words felt strange on my mouth, distant in my own head. “It’s about them. If I don’t stop them—”
“Don’t say ‘if.’ You’ll stop them. Because you want to stop them. And you never let anything get in the way of what you want. I don’t worry that you won’t. I worry that you will.” She wrapped her arms around her, head lowered. “You’ll kill those seven names. You’ll kill every last name on your list. And it still won’t be enough. You’ll keep hunting, keep fighting, keep leaving and I’ll… I’ll…”
She let those words drop. She let her eyes drop. And for a long moment, it seemed like every other part of her might drop and become just one more corpse on this dark earth.
But she didn’t. She looked back up at me. And I’ve had wounds that hurt less than the stare she shot me.
“You make me feel like a fucking idiot, you know?” she asked. “Knowing all of this, I’d still stay. I’d still be with you. If you just told me that someday this would stop.”
She stared at me. I said nothing.
“Sal,” she whispered.
The winds howled.
“Please,” she rasped.
My ears were filled with voices not my own. My head was empty of thoughts, things I could say to make this right. I could have found them, if I really tried. I could have told her something sweet, that she was all I ever wanted, that I wanted nothing more than to stop this.
But I couldn’t lie to her. Not about this.
And I couldn’t tell her that I knew when this day would stop.
She didn’t say anything, either. She turned away from me. The winds kicked up, howling in my ears, burying the sounds of her footsteps. The sands became sheets of grit, painting her as a shadow against the wastes, steadily growing smaller.
I watched her, silent.
As she walked away.
As she disappeared.
And, even as the wind howled, I could hear something else. Coming from the distant mountain, cutting through the winds and earth alike, seeping into my skin and my skull. I heard a single, beautiful note of a song in a language meant only for me.
The Lady Merchant’s song rang out, answering a mage’s call.
And I followed it.
THIRTY-ONE
VIGIL
In the darkness of the mountain, I knew only sound.
My own breathing, ragged and full of dirt through my scarf. My heart pounding steadily beneath my scar. The Lady Merchant’s song, unbearably distant and painfully close.
And through it all: him.
The sizzle of his brass, burning through the leather of his sheath. The rattle of his metal as I walked through the tunnels. The faint, rasping sound of his burning, seething in such a way that, if I didn’t know better, I would have sworn was his laughter.
The Cacophony was pleased.
Pleased to be following the sound of the Lady’s song. Pleased to know that, at the end of it, we would find Vraki. Pleased to be rid of distractions, of Cavric, of Liette…
Liette.
I could hear the thoughts, too. The ones in the back of my head that told me I shouldn’t have left her, that I should go back for her, that I’d never find anything in the dark that would ever be as good as her. But those thoughts were muffled, smothered beneath the dark and buried beneath the sound.
Breath, ragged. Heart, beating. The Cacophony, laughing.
I was too close now to turn back. For Liette. For Cavric. For anything. Everything I needed was down here. In the stone under my feet. In the walls closing in. In the light dying behind me and the song of magic beckoning me forward.
By the last traces of light that doggedly followed me in, I could make out withered support beams, rusted-out tracks, discarded picks and hammers. Vigil’s mountain had been a mine once. Back when there had been people instead of corpses.
Another sound hit me. Wind wailing. Earth moving. A scream. A plea for mercy. A voice meant solely for me.
Sound took shape before me in a pillar of wind and dust, pulling itself out of the shadows and dust of the tunnel. Loose rocks and grit whipped themselves about into columns, pulled themselves together into a body, smoothed themselves into a body and a face to go with them.
An Echo.
Damn thing followed me in. It took shape in an instant, its body growing more distinct with every staggering step it took toward me. From a shapeless cloud of dust and grime, it became a person, wrapped in a thick coat, a military saber at its hip and an expression of horror painted across its dusty face.
A Revolut
ionary. Or… was it? The uniform fit, but the face didn’t. Its visage was twisted into a mask of panic. Its cheeks sunken to the bone and its lips peeled back to the gum. Its eyes were empty of anything but fear, a corpse learned to walk. And instead of a scream, its mouth gaped open in a raspy, dust-choked moan.
“Help me.”
It shambled toward me. I drew Jeff.
“I can’t find my family.”
It raised its arms. I could see its pupils carved out of sand.
“What’s happening to us? My skin is—”
I thrust. Sand exploded out the back of its head. It collapsed into a heap of dust and rocks. Its scream rattled in the confines of the tunnel, seeped into my ears.
I shut my eyes tightly, trying to force out the pain in my ears. Eventually, the ringing abated. My head cleared just a little. I opened my eyes.
I shouldn’t have.
There were more. Pulling themselves out of the dust, pulling bodies out of the stone and the stagnant air, polishing sand into limbs and gravel into faces. Women. Men. Children. Soldiers. Merchants. Mothers. Elders. All of them with sunken faces, fear in their eyes, limbs withered and twisted.
And all of them shambling toward me.
And even though my ears were ringing, I could still hear them.
“What are they doing? We’re civilians! We’ve done nothing!”
No. I could feel them.
“They’re coming! Get the children to the bunkers! Get them out!”
In my ears. In my head. In my skin.
“What’s happening to me? I’m… I’m falling apart! My hands… Look at my hands!”
Crawling over me, through me, whispers on spider legs.
“Why are they doing this? What did we do wrong? We surrender! WE SURRENDER!”
Their voices became one long, loud screaming sound of crunching dust and grinding stone. They became a wall of dust and horrified faces, of withered limbs and rotted hands, reaching for me.
Had to run. Had to get free. The voice at the back of my head was howling, pounding at the walls of my skull, trying to be heard over the endless drone of their agony.
I started backing up. I held my blade out defensively. I took another step backward.
And I fell.
I expected to hit the stone and feel the bite of rock tearing through my clothes, my skin. But I didn’t. I felt the great yawn of nothingness beneath me as I plummeted through darkness, a cold wind whipping about me as I fell faster and faster toward a bottom that didn’t exist.
A pinprick of light blossomed in the distance. In another second, it exploded into a blinding burst. The darkness was swallowed up by an endless white light I had to shield my eyes against. I blinked my eyes and, when the blindness cleared…
I was surrounded by eternal blue.
A sky. Wide and clear and as azure as an ocean, it opened up around me. No earth rushing up to greet me. No water rising up around me. Nothing but an endless expanse of blue sky and cold, clear air.
I breathed it in. It hurt my lungs like I used to love. Clouds crawled lazily around me in beautiful patterns and shapes I recognized from long ago. Birds soared through the sky, paying me no mind. I was just like them, after all.
I belonged up here.
I couldn’t hear the ringing in my ears or the screams of the dead or anything but the rush of wind. I couldn’t feel my scars ache as a smile pulled itself onto my face. I couldn’t feel the chill as tears came, unbidden, to my eyes. I could barely feel my lips move as the words came to me, without me even thinking them.
“Eres va atali…”
Then, the world changed.
The sky became purple, then orange, as though some massive hands somewhere started strangling it, trying to choke the air from the sky itself. And then, as though those same hands had grown impatient and decided simply to cut the sky’s throat and be done with it, everything turned red. It bled into the sky, crimson stains blossoming across the expanse. The birds became black, ashen shadows. The cold air became choked with the scent of smoke and flame. And the clouds…
All the clouds were red.
I hit the earth, felt the sand explode beneath me. It didn’t kill me. But it should have.
I clambered to my feet. Before I saw anything else, I saw the red sky, licked by tongues of flame rising from the houses, choked with smoke and cinders swirling in columns like swarms of insects. I saw the walls of Vigil, the holes punched in them still smoking. I saw the people.
And they were dying.
Children sobbed, mothers dragging them along by their hands as they dropped toys in their wake. Soldiers dropped their gunpikes and ran, screaming before their bodies blackened and twisted and became like dead trees. Officers bellowed orders before bright silver flashed across their throats and sent their heads tumbling from their shoulders.
I saw Vraki, standing at the center of it, his black coat whipping about him, his hair long and wild and his face alight with delighted awe at his own strength. He wove his hands and portals opened. Great hands clawed out of nothingness. Baying nith hounds leapt into existence to pursue those too stupid to know there was no escape.
I saw Jindu, rushing about, sword in hand, darting between bullets and spears thrust at him. His face was empty, emotionless, barely registering the bodies falling around him or the blood spattering his cheeks.
But it wasn’t them that the people ran from. Their eyes were skyward, locked on the red shadow looming over them, a bloodstain upon the soot-kissed sky. It extended its hands. It made a noise that sounded like a song. And from its fingers, flame poured out in great, roaring gouts.
In the moments before their voices were snuffed out beneath the laughter of fire, they spoke its name.
“Red Cloud.”
Its fire swept over the mothers and their children. It swept over the soldiers and their officers. It swept over the elders and the sick and the weeping and the begging and the bleeding. And when I opened my mouth to scream, I couldn’t hear it, because the fire swept over me, too.
An instant of bright red heat.
And then darkness.
And cold, stagnant air. And stone under my knees and above my head and all around me.
Back in the tunnels, I told myself. I’m back in the tunnels.
And I tried to slow my breathing, but it didn’t work. And through my gasping, I could hear footsteps.
I looked up. I saw her come to me. She emerged from the darkness, radiant and pale and pristine in her nice clothes and her eyes bright and keen behind her big spectacles. Her smile was softer now, and sad. She stood before me and knelt beside me and reached up a finger to dry a tear from my eye.
“I was… gone, Liette,” I whispered to her, my voice too weak to carry its own weight. “I was back in Vigil, under the red sky. I saw everyone dying and I… and I…”
“And you did nothing.” Liette lay a hand on my shoulder. “I know, Sal.”
“You don’t,” I said. “I made sure you didn’t.”
“But I always did,” she said. “When you cried out in your sleep, when you stared off as I was talking to you, when you whispered curses you thought I couldn’t hear… I knew. I know you were there when they died. I know you couldn’t stop it.”
My head felt like someone had driven a dozen iron spikes into it, like it was too heavy for my neck. I turned my gaze to the ground, to my hands groping at the dirt under me. I spoke through the foul, sour taste in my mouth.
“How?” I asked. “How can you even look at me?”
“The same way I always have.”
She reached down and she took my hand. I looked up into her smile, her bright eyes behind those spectacles. She helped me to my feet and she smoothed a lock of my hair over my ear.
“I forgive you, Sal.”
The word hit me like a fist.
“I forgive you,” she said. “For everything.”
And the tears stopped coming. And my heart slowed down. And my head didn’t feel so heavy.
And my scars ached as I closed my eyes.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. She turned and she began walking. “Now, come. It’s only a little farther. Once we’re—”
I didn’t hear her.
Not over the sound of metal on leather as I pulled Jeff from his sheath. Not over the whisper of steel as I swung. Not over the sound of flesh parting and blood pattering on the ground.
I won’t tell you what it felt like.
But I’ll tell you what happened once she hit the ground.
She started curling at the edges, at her fingers and toes. Her boots shriveled up. Her gloves withered away. Her skin turned black as coal, then became dust, blowing away in a cloud of dried ink. It spread across her body, up her limbs and over her torso and over the mess where her eyes had been until she became a black cloud that hissed into the air. Just a few more flecks of dust, swallowed up by the wind.
And then she was gone.
She wasn’t a body anymore. She wasn’t real. She never had been, no matter how badly I wished she was. She was just a dream torn out of my head and made real. Those last words had confirmed it to me.
I could believe in a lot of crazy shit. I could believe in dead people made out of dirt. I could believe an eternal, endless sky. I could believe in red shadows flying overhead and fire falling from a red cloud and I could believe in thousands dying in pain and fear.
But I could never believe that she would ever forgive me.
The sound of her hissing into dust filled the stale air of the tunnel, the last gasp of sound before the tunnel plunged into a cold, quiet dark, silent but for my breath.
And my voice.
“That was pretty good,” I said to the darkness. “You almost got me.”
I looked out into the gloom. The void stretched out endlessly before me, so thick that it swallowed my words just as soon as I threw them out into it.
“You read my mind for that one, didn’t you?” I shook my head. “Serves me right, I suppose, for thinking you wouldn’t use her against me.” I slid Jeff into his sheath. “That bit with the sky was new, though. How long did you spend thinking that up?”
I suppose, to you, I would have looked crazy, talking into the darkness like that. I suppose I would have looked even crazier as I drew the Cacophony and checked his chamber to make sure I had something painful loaded. But you weren’t there.
