Song of the Dead

by Sarah Glenn Marsh

  I kneel beside Nipper as they continue talking in low voices. “I need you to sing, girl,” I murmur, hoping her uncanny ability to understand what I’ve asked her in the past wasn’t wishful thinking.

  Pointing to the metal soldiers who watch us impassively, with no idea what’s coming, I pet Nipper’s scales and whisper, “Sing for us. Please.”

  Nipper raises her head skyward. Not seeming to open her mouth at all—it’s no wonder I never noticed she was our mystery singer—she begins to fill the air with dragonsong. The soft, eerie wailing swirls around us, drifting toward the palace and the soldiers at the gates. Nipper continues to sing as Valoria hurries forward, a set of ancient, rusted keys in her hand. Danial guards her with his sword as she unlocks the gates.

  Only when she’s a safe distance away does he draw them open with the help of an Ezoran warrior.

  The metal soldiers remain frozen in place as Nipper’s song echoes through the still morning air. They don’t creak or move even the slightest bit when Jax shoves one to the ground and spits on its prone body.

  “We’re good,” he declares. “Let’s do this.”

  “I’m ready,” affirms Ilyra, the Ezoran necromancer. If it weren’t for her willingness to bleed out alongside us, I’m not sure I’d have agreed to try this at all.

  With a last look at Nipper, I join Jax and Simeon in shoving the rest of the soldiers down into the grass, next to their companion.

  Turning back to our friends, I look first to Danial, then Valoria, then Kasmira. “Well? Who’s going to do this?” I spread my arms wide. “Somebody hurry up and stab me.” After all, we don’t know where Hadrien is hiding, or just how long the spirits in these bodies will stay frozen thanks to the dragonsong.

  Valoria steps forward, Jax’s blade in her hand, a determined glint in her eyes. But as she presses the blade against my side, her hands shake so much that all she does is nick my skin. The sword falls to the grass.

  The three of us look to Danial, who shakes his head. “I’ll be on hand to heal you, if this goes too far,” he murmurs. “But don’t ask me to do that.” He mimes stabbing us in the ribs, looking unusually pale.

  “I’ll do it,” an unexpected voice says. Orsa, the Exalted One, steps forward with her blade drawn.

  I’m about to thank her for volunteering when she jabs her sword into me.

  I fall to my knees in the grass beside the metal soldiers, trying to think of Meredy. She always gives me the strength to keep fighting. But all I can think of is how much everything hurts. As I writhe in the grass, I realize I’m on my back now, not my knees. Small gaps of time seem to pass without me noticing as my heart picks up speed, pumping blood out of me faster and faster with each beat like it’s working against me. I touch a hand to my side, and it comes away slick with red. I wonder if I’m about to see Evander again. That, I wouldn’t mind.

  “Sparrow, the spirits!” Valoria’s voice echoes dimly in the swirling darkness of my mind. “Grab the spirits!”

  Oh, right. We have a job to do. I have to stop trying to stanch the life leaking from my skin if this is going to work.

  Gritting my teeth, I take a deep breath and push back the dark and the pain. I manage to crawl on my knees toward the nearest soldier. Either this is getting easier or shock is dulling the worst of the agonizing burn in my side now.

  I’ve never willingly let my spirit leave my body before. But I have to try, for the sake of all the blurry faces gazing worriedly down at me.

  Putting my hand on the metal soldier’s chest, I test the limits of my skin, trying to feel past it. Light-headedness overcomes me, and instead of taking a deep breath to clear my head, I welcome it, letting the feeling lift me up and carry me out of my body.

  My hand—or rather, the filmy fingers of my spirit’s hand—reaches with ease through the metal confines of the soldier and draws out the spirit of a wiry, angry-looking man. Count Rykiel. I don’t like him any more in death than I did in life.

  His spirit sneers at me for a moment before he’s whisked away, toward a faint blue spot near the cliffs overlooking the sea—a gate.

  I release a shaky breath and move to the next soldier, resolving not to look at how much of my blood is staining the grass around me.

  As I place my hand on another metal shell, now understanding exactly how to reach past it, I catch a glimpse of Jax, Simeon, and Commander Ilyra. They’re pale, but they’re still here, just like me. I’m not sure whether they’ve figured out what to do yet.

  Everything’s so blurry.

  Everything but my spirit’s hand, that is, which I push out of my skin and plunge into the metal body before me to draw out another spirit.

  The distant sound of creaking joints tells me more of Hadrien’s soldiers are rushing out of the palace, but they’re all stopped by a loud burst of Nipper’s song before they reach us. As I tear my gaze away from the spirit of a tall woman I’ve just removed from her metal husk, I see the new batch of soldiers got stopped somewhere between the palace’s front entrance and where their fallen companions lie. I wonder if they realize the metal bodies piled on the ground are now nothing more than scraps, as they’ll soon be.

  I’m not sure how many spirits the four of us necromancers pull from their metal hosts—not enough, or someone would have told us to stop, and Danial would be healing us. But I don’t mind. I hardly feel anything now, except a nagging urge to follow the spirits I’m freeing toward the hazy blue glow.

  My spirit pushes against the walls of my skin, restless in its cage.

  I don’t think I can hold it in much longer.

  I’m about to call for Danial. But before I can shout his name, Valoria screams.

  Glancing up, my eyes find the palace doors, but no one new emerges.

  It’s only when I glance at Valoria that I realize her scream was one of rage, not fright. And only when I follow her gaze do I realize that Hadrien is running along the cliffs in Karston’s body, Valoria’s crown on his head sparkling in the sun as he flees down toward the city.

  Someone has to stop him.

  A necromancer has to stop him.

  Dragonsong won’t work on him any more than blades will, not when he’s inside flesh and blood. But I can’t stand the thought of him wearing Karston’s skin for another moment. I’m going to draw him out like poison from a snake bite.

  I stagger to my feet, fighting now to stay inside my body, to keep myself standing. With one hand, I apply pressure to the stab wound Orsa created. With the other, I cast aside my useless blade. It’ll only slow me down, and I don’t want him to use it against me.

  “Go get him, Sparrow!” Simeon calls weakly as he pulls another spirit from a fallen metal soldier with Ilyra’s help. “We’re almost done here!”

  Valoria grabs my wrist, but I shake her off. “I have to do this,” I grit out, already stumbling after Hadrien. I don’t know if she can hear me or not. “It has to be me.”

  I take a path he won’t expect, one where he won’t see me coming until I’m right in front of him. I think the bleeding from my wound is slowing on its own, but I hope it doesn’t slow too much. I don’t want to have to reopen it again to let my spirit grab hold of Hadrien’s.

  I trip over something in my path as I hurry down the hillside—a body, I think. There’s no time to check, no time to lament. As what little life I have left seeps from between my fingers, I run as fast as my weakened legs can manage to get to Hadrien.

  We meet on one of the lower cliffs, just out of view of the palace itself.

  Stars dance before my eyes as I try to focus. I had to outrun him and circle back, to surprise him like this.

  He doesn’t retrace his steps, or try to push past me, even though I’m clearly weak. Instead, he blinks calmly at me with deep brown eyes—brown, though they should be violet—and bounds to the very edge of the cliff, where a strong gust of a sea br
eeze tugs the cloak from his shoulders.

  I may be out of it, but I know what this is. He’s daring me to join him out there, where he can murder me with his bare hands. A choke, a punch, a push.

  But the moment his hands are on me, I’ll be able to draw his spirit out.

  I take the bait.

  “You don’t look well, Sparrow.” Hadrien’s mouth twists in a sort of grin as I stagger my way to the cliff’s edge, my head spinning more with every step. “Missing Evander too much to go on living?”

  I shake my head, not in answer, but at the way he calmly closes the distance between us. But then, I shouldn’t be too surprised—pride is what killed him the last time, too.

  He swipes a hand toward me, and I let him, trying to feel the boundaries of my skin again and push past them like I did to reach inside the metal soldiers. Something clatters to the ground, blue stones that glitter in the sun. My necromancer’s pin. He’s ripped it from my tunic, and as he follows my gaze, he stomps the pin into the ground.

  “You won’t need that where you’re going—or rather, not going,” he murmurs.

  I gasp as he grabs me by the shoulders and pushes me to the very edge of the cliff. I dig in with my heels, as the toes of my boots are over the open air, still trying to make my spirit grab hold of his.

  “Enjoy your last breath,” he hisses, using my friend’s face to sneer at me. “After this moment, you’ll be nothing. You are nothing.”

  There was a time when I believed that, too, I realize as we struggle on the cliff’s edge, each trying to push the other over. But it’s not the pin that makes me who I am. I’ve always been, always will be, a necromancer. Even when I ran off to sea, even when I turned my back on everything I am—I could never outrun myself. Without the pin, without even my name, I’d still be a fighter. I’d still be a commander of the dead. I’d still be a girl too in love with life to commit to death, even when it’s calling to me more strongly than ever before.

  Laughing, Hadrien breaks our strange embrace to land a blow to my side, right where Orsa stabbed me.

  He has no idea he’s given me just what I need.

  A shove closer to death.

  I latch on to his forearm. My flesh-and-blood hands dig their nails into him while I plunge my spirit’s hands through layers of cloth and skin to reach his stubborn spirit.

  The spirit tenses, jerking in my grasp as I try to pull Hadrien from Karston’s body.

  He’s figured out what I’m trying to do. He’s fighting me with all his strength, clinging to Karston’s skin.

  Suddenly, he sucks in a breath as Karston’s body begins to fall backward off the cliff, an arrow sprouting from his chest. Hadrien’s spirit, momentarily confused, clings to my hands, and I rip him out of his shell as Karston’s body tumbles into the sea far below, crown and all.

  I fight back a sob, even though I know Karston is long past caring.

  Hadrien’s spirit thrashes in my hold, but getting him out of my friend’s body has momentarily renewed my strength, and I hold him in place as I try to figure out what to do with him. I don’t want him returning to the Deadlands, poisoning more spirits against necromancers. I don’t want him to hurt anyone ever again.

  Blackness crowds the corners of my eyes, but I take a deep breath, willing myself to stay conscious just a little while longer.

  Hadrien’s blow to my wound caused it to bleed again, and this time, it’s not slowing.

  If it’s the last thing I do, I have to put his spirit someplace where he can’t do any more harm. Holding fast to him with one hand, I grab a large rock with the other. I must be delirious for even thinking it’s possible, but what if I can do with this ordinary rock what Karston did with the metal soldiers? What if necromancers are capable of far more than I ever dreamed was possible?

  Tightening my grip on Hadrien’s thrashing spirit with one hand, I wipe some of my blood on the rock with the other. Spirits can’t resist a taste of life. I guide his filmy hand toward the rock, prepared to watch his spirit simply drift toward the Deadlands gate nearby. But instead, he vanishes into the unremarkable grayish-brown stone.

  Briefly, I consider kicking the rock into the sea. It’s what he deserves, all things considered. But I still my foot. Better to let him sit here and watch the world pass him by until these cliffs fall into the sea, under guard and utterly helpless.

  For the rest of time, he’ll be trapped in silence, bound to something so ordinary, he would never have deigned to so much as glance at it.

  “There now,” I mumble at the rock, slurring my words. Not a good sign. “You’ve gotten what you wanted most—eternity in the living world.”

  My head spins again, bringing me to my knees. As the cliffs and distant palace begin to fade before my eyes, I’m able to catch a glimpse of Meredy running toward me from several hundred paces away, her bow still in hand, with Lysander and Elibeth at her back.

  I smile.

  I can go now. I can slip out of this skin and be free. This is how I wanted it to end, when it was my turn. Seeing Meredy’s face one last time.

  But death doesn’t come quickly. Too tired to speak, I watch Danial and another healer sprint onto the cliff and work together to heal me as though I’m a spectator, not a part of this moment at all. Meredy sobs into Lysander’s fur while her sister, Elibeth, keeps a hand on her arm as if to prevent her from rushing to my side and interrupting the healing. Simeon and Jax hurry onto the cliff next, their wounds already mended judging by their speed.

  Warmth envelopes me as Danial and the other healer work. I’m going to make it through this, but I’m still too tired to move or talk.

  Valoria, seemingly unable to watch, walks to the edge of the cliff and looks down. I wonder if she can see anything—a body? Her crown?—but it isn’t until Kasmira arrives and lets Nipper off-lead to lick me in the face that I find my voice.

  “What do you see?” I call weakly to Valoria as the healers work.

  “Sea foam,” she calls back, walking slowly to my side and kneeling.

  “All right,” Danial relents, raising his hands in defeat and rising with the other healer. “You’re good as new, Sparrow. But rest here a moment. It might take a while before you feel up to walking around again.”

  I barely get a chance to thank him before Lysander and Meredy are on top of me, vying with Nipper and Valoria for a chance to embrace me. Still a little numb, I smile to reassure them, keeping them all as close as I can while having enough room to breathe.

  “Maybe Devran and the others were right, and I wanted too much change too fast,” Valoria says suddenly, glancing between me and Meredy. “I suppose . . . new magical gifts like Karston’s will require a lot more guidance and research before they’re unleashed on Karthia. I’ll have to close the school, at least for a while.”

  I nod my agreement as Meredy helps me sit up straighter. I lean against her and squeeze her hand in thanks. “I’m sure you’ll have to introduce some new things,” I tell Valoria, “but what if you brought back some old ones, too? Festival days were so much fun—at least, when Hadrien wasn’t asking me to dance . . .”

  My voice trails away as I catch sight of Hadrien’s rock. The plain chunk of stone is just out of my reach, but I point to it and begin to explain what I did and how I did it.

  The look of astonishment on Simeon’s face would usually make me laugh, but nothing seems very funny when my body still feels like Lysander stomped all over it.

  Slowly, Valoria moves toward the rock and nudges it with the toe of her boot. After covering her hand with part of her cloak, she reaches down to grab it, hesitating before closing her fingers around it as though it might bite. Once it’s in her grasp, she strides toward the edge of the cliff and raises her arm to hurl it into the sea.

  “Wait!” I call. As everyone looks a question at me, I start to grin. I can’t help it. I’m that pleased w
ith my own cleverness. “I have a better idea,” I explain.

  XXXV

  Hadrien’s rock now sits on top of the highest hill in Grenwyr City, overlooking the palace and its surrounds, a perfect vantage point from which he watched us give the metal soldiers’ empty husks to the sea. From on high, he’ll even have a view of tonight’s fireworks as Valoria hosts her first public festival since the one at which we bid farewell to the Dead.

  And festivals aren’t the only thing she’s reinstated in the two months since we stopped Hadrien a second time.

  After I had a long talk with her about it, Valoria came to understand that while we necromancers are willing to respect her ban on raising the dead, she has to respect us traveling to the spirit world regularly to make sure all is well. She even has us training some young and eager necromancers who we rarely let out of our sights. I’m afraid one of them, a girl of about eight with a vocabulary far beyond her years, looks at me the way I used to look at Master Cymbre. If I’m right, I’m in for eight or nine years of trouble—especially since the trainees don’t have much to do other than follow us around until Valoria reopens the mage school.

  For now, she’s turned the Temple of Change into a library where all are welcome. I even helped her place the metal plaque naming it after Karston.

  He’s on my mind now, as evening creeps over the palace and we prepare for a festival he certainly would have enjoyed. But soon my attention turns to Meredy, who helps me into my party gown in the privacy of our shared room. As she does up the laces on the sides of my dress, her fingers slip between the fabric and my skin, lightly grazing the scar Orsa’s blade left despite Danial’s best efforts to heal me. Meredy, on the other hand, came away unscathed thanks to all the training she did with Lysander in Sarral.

  I don’t mind my new scar, though. It tells me that I fought and won another hard battle. It tells me that nothing is impossible, no matter how dire things may seem.

  Turning in Meredy’s hold, I grab her hands and kiss her fingers, then her lips. “I have to tell you something,” she murmurs, drawing back to look at me. Her new insistence on never keeping secrets seems smarter than ever, given all the suffering that could have been avoided if people had been more open with one another.