The Fate of the Tala

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “I thought you were going to talk in my head.”

  All right then. Steeling myself against the revulsion, I pushed past her natural resistance, finding the cracks in her psyche to slip through. Where Zynda’s mind had open windows she spoke through, Jepp’s was closed. Feeling sordid as a rapist, I wedged a crack open and spoke into her mind.

  “This is Andi.”

  She jumped about a foot, cursing in a language I didn’t know—a dialect of the hill people she sprang from—but that translated in her thoughts just fine. “Fuck me sideways,” she added in Common Tongue.

  “Sorry.”

  “No, no. I’ll be prepared next time.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Kral asked, entering the cabin in full armor, dripping with rain.

  “Queen Andromeda is talking in my head and it’s freaky.”

  “Tell her we’re pulled back and in position,” Kral replied without missing a beat.

  “She can hear you, idiot,” Jepp retorted.

  “Good, then you don’t have to repeat it.”

  She made a rude sound. “Got that, Andi?”

  “Confirmed. Good luck.”

  I let go of her mind, a bit shaken at how easy that had been. Lines like that shouldn’t be so easy to cross.

  I focused back on the barrier, on that frozen cliff, taking a moment to clear my mind. Though I naturally wasn’t physically present, I imagined the stark, pristine air flowing through me, cleansing me. Concentrate. Do the job.

  Though I didn’t need to, I extended my right hand to the barrier, sinking my metaphysical fingers into it, feeling the taut elasticity of its magic. It helped, sometimes, to imagine nonphysical things as material. I’d been grounded in one body for most of my life, so irretrievably mossback in much of my thinking that working with the image of that body helped me focus. Some of the shamans and wizards who’d attempted to teach me to wield my native sorcery had shaken their heads at me for this, muttering darkly about dilettantes, but I’d learned to ignore them.

  This was mine, more than anything else, a legacy of my mother’s and her mother’s before her, all the way back to the n’Andanan sorceresses who’d started all of this, perhaps to Moranu Herself. No one could teach me how to be me.

  I opened to that confidence, letting my own magic flow. A reflection and daughter of the Heart’s magic, the barrier reached instinctively for it through me, intertwining. My small stream flowed into the great river of magic and, in turn, it flowed back through me. Sending a prayer to Moranu for whatever assistance She might give, I took a step toward the cove, dragging the barrier with me.

  Of course, I wasn’t truly walking—simply using that metaphor to focus the magic—but my muscles strained as I pulled. I dug my heels into the ground for purchase, using all my might. It felt like trying to pull the moon with a short rope, the bit under my grip yielding, coming with me, but the rest resisting.

  I pulled harder, sinking into the Heart and the earth. Using all the stubbornness in me, I demanded that it move, that it obey me. Just beyond the body I’d left in the dome, far away from my consciousness, the crabs raced over the surface, digging with their claws, frantically attempting to follow my command.

  I am the Sorceress of the Heart. You will yield to my will.

  The entire barrier groaned inaudibly, a shudder running through it. It came unmoored, flexing, pulsating, tethered only to my will. I struggled to hold on, and for a panicked moment I thought it might collapse entirely. I supposed we should’ve planned for that possibility.

  Too late now.

  And too late to abandon the effort, for the barrier had budged—not much, but just enough to lose its anchored size and position. It billowed, in flux, an unwieldly balloon of immense magic tied to me by a thin thread of will.

  I began walking, pulling the piece under my hand, the entire globe shuddering and contracting—thickening in some places and thinning in others, flowing like lightning and honey to compensate—and as it did, the magic residue it dragged in its wake sparked against the physical realm, stirring up storms.

  “Oh my, Andromeda. What can you be doing?”

  The high priestess appeared before me, blond hair whipping in the arctic wind. Her cloth of gold gown remained still, however, a piece of the illusion she’d neglected in her haste. She tried to look bored, but I’d surprised her. Good.

  I should’ve predicted, also, that she’d feel this enormous of a sorcerous effort. That is, I’d suspected she would, but not that she’d pinpoint the location of my metaphysical attention so easily. I’d been worried about her finding my physical body in the Heart when I should have worried about her finding my consciousness, balanced out at the extenuated arm of my will, precariously unprotected.

  I did the only thing I could do: I ignored her and kept walking. The barrier responded more easily now, as if it had gone from a solid to a liquid, lighter and flowing with resilience. My metaphorical walking turned to leaps, as if I wore magic boots from the old tales, allowing me to travel leagues for each step.

  Forced to move by the encroaching barrier, the image of the high priestess flew beside me. She’d abandoned the effort to make her hair move, her expression angry—and satisfyingly anxious. “What are you doing, Andromeda!”

  “Grownup things,” I replied tersely. “Mommy is busy. Go play somewhere else.”

  The barrier billowed and furled, momentarily destabilizing with my lapse of attention. I moved faster, blocking out the high priestess. She couldn’t stop me. If she could have, she would have attempted it by now.

  “Almost lost control there, didn’t you?” she simpered, adding a giggle, but it didn’t work to disguise her panic. “You’re an amateur. This is way beyond your abilities.”

  I didn’t bother to reply, accelerating toward the cove, the magic globe once again reasonably docile. As long as I kept moving, it seemed to do all right.

  “You can’t do this!” the high priestess screeched in my ear, startling me. Amazing how painful that kind of manufactured input can be on an eardrum that doesn’t physically exist. No longer needing to dig into the earth I also flew, the barrier flowing into an obediently tighter circle. “It won’t work, baby sorceress,” the high priestess informed me. “You think you can bring the barrier back to shelter only Annfwn again, that you can starve me of magic like before. But I have reserves you don’t know about. I can penetrate your barrier like that.” She snapped her fingers, the click reverberating through several realities.

  “I seriously doubt you can,” I replied. I knew bluster when I heard it. The louder Uorsin had roared, the more impotent he’d felt. “All you do is talk, talk, talk.”

  “You think the barrier will be stronger if it’s smaller, but it won’t be,” the high priestess insisted. “You can’t keep me out because I’m already inside. I’ve won; I’ve murdered you and you’re too stupid to know you’re dead.”

  “Or smart enough to know I’m not.”

  “I have hooks in your very heart. You have no idea.”

  Rayfe. I determinedly didn’t think about him. I bit my tongue against retorting that I knew very well what she’d done and that I would undo it. What I knew and she didn’t was my weapon to wield.

  “You’ve lost this war, half-breed,” the high priestess sneered. “This is a desperation move. You’ve revealed your panic and terror. You’ve exposed yourself.”

  I’d reached the cove, sailing over the deceptively calm water that became a cauldron beneath. As I drew the barrier through the water like a curtain, the sea tumbled with uncanny colors that didn’t exist in the physical universe. A sea monster exploded out of the water, hurling itself in a leap farther inward, like deer running from a forest fire. All over the world this would be occurring. People who couldn’t cross the barrier without my help would be scraped out of their beds, flung against walls by its inexorable travel.

  I should’ve thought to make it permeable before I moved it. Too late now. And, knowing what I knew now about
my tenuous control of the untethered globe, I might have lost control if I’d thinned its nature that way.

  Nearly there. The far side of the cove drew close. Even if the barrier slipped my hold, I’d probably brought it within Dafne’s margin of error.

  The high priestess wrapped her hands around my throat. Her icy fingers, shards of bone encased in death magic, clamped down on my windpipe. I choked before I remembered I didn’t physically exist in this place. No more than she did.

  But so interesting that her magic could grapple mine this way. Her matte black eyes from this close were pits into the eternity of soulless death. They held nothing, no expression, no glimmer of anything but the void. Around them, her lovely face contorted with rage and terror, the rest of her body shredding away like a wraith’s.

  I screamed, to make her smile, to make her overconfident. Allowed myself to falter. Pretended to fumble, the barrier slipping out of my metaphysical hands… And I parked it at the far side of the cove, exactly on the planned landmark. Dafne would be proud of my precision.

  Letting my personal albatross hang from my neck, I ignored the stream of curses and promises she hurled at me. I settled the barrier into its new place, calming it like a living creature. Which, in a way, it was. A short distance from my body and far away, in an abyssal crevice, the crabs worked furiously to secure the new shape and position.

  Like hot glass congealing in the cool water of a glassblower’s bath, the barrier ceased its liquid shifting, smoothing into position. Outside the shimmer of the barrier, in the eternal noon of the arctic night, the sky churned with magic waves.

  I sagged, seeming to succumb to the high priestess’s grip. She screeched in triumph, letting me go when I dropped dramatically to the snow beneath me on the far cliff face of the cove.

  “See?” she sneered, her body reforming, all golden perfection. “All that effort, wasted. You moved the barrier, what? Barely a few leagues? You failed, Andromeda.”

  I sat up, careful to look defeated, utterly dejected. It worked perfectly with our plans for her to believe our focus lay with moving the barrier all the way back to shelter only Annfwn.

  “I’ll just try again,” I said, wary of being in this metaphysical state where lying simply did not work. We were projections of our thoughts and while I could physically speak words counter to my thoughts, I couldn’t think anything other than what I knew to be true. This, however, was no lie. I would try again—the last resort solution—if it became necessary.

  “And I’ll just stop you again,” she replied carelessly. “Look, Andromeda. You’re a decent sorceress—especially for such an amateur, but you truly are a green and naked child trying to fight armored warriors. You cannot win against us. We’ve been preparing for centuries. I hate to see you destroyed for no reason at all. Join me. I’ll teach you.”

  “I’d rather die,” I informed her, letting her see all my hate for her and everything she represented.

  “You will die,” she replied with frankness, even compassion. “Even if you somehow survive this war, which I don’t see happening—and if you can see the future, you know I’m right—then you’ll eventually die anyway. Like all mortals, you carry your death in every cell of your decaying flesh. You’ll be an old crone, withering to dust while I’m still young, vibrant. Beautiful.”

  I snorted my disdain. “Young? You’re not even alive. You’re a twisted ghost of a woman who once lived.”

  “I’m immortal!” she screeched at me.

  “You’re an echo,” I informed her. “A pitiful whine of someone long dead, a whimper that will be silenced when I destroy you.”

  She laughed, the sound false and metallic, then pursed her lush mouth in sympathy. “Oh, honey. You understand nothing. Deyrr has made me His. I’m practically a deity myself. The gods cannot die.”

  “But their servants can be extinguished,” I replied sweetly. “And even the gods can be imprisoned and neutralized by powerful magic practitioners.”

  “You?” She snorted. “You might have the power in time, but not yet. You certainly lack the knowledge, the skill to use the tools you have. Look at you, all the power of the Star and the Heart at your command—don’t think I can’t see it, oozing out of your illusory pores—and you lost control of the barrier, managing to move it a pitifully small distance. You’re like a toddler trying to lift his daddy’s broadsword and failing.”

  Ha. An apt analogy. I often felt that way. “And yet, the Heart and the Star are mine, not yours.”

  “A waste,” she spat. “Think about it, Andromeda. You know I must speak the truth here. This isn’t something you can do on your own. Your mother died when you were a child. She taught you less than nothing. A shame and a pity, but there’s nothing to be done about that. You know just enough to be dangerous.”

  “Dangerous to you,” I pointed out.

  She laughed, light and tinkling, managing to sound genuinely amused this time. “Oh, sweetling, no. You are no danger to me. You think you understand the Heart and the Star. You believe you have power. But you’ve only scratched the surface of a world of magic so immense and rich that you can’t even comprehend it as you are now. Like that silly child, you are a danger only to yourself—and to the people too stupid to get out of the way.”

  I made a sympathetic face, wincing on her behalf. “I know you’re too stupid to duck, but how sad for you that you know it and still can’t help yourself.”

  She opened her mouth and hissed in fury. “You think you’re so clever. But there is only one answer for you, if you are smart enough—and humble enough—to embrace it. There is one person in all the world who can teach you. Me. There is no one else who can teach you what I can.”

  “I could learn from you, it’s true,” I said, feeling the weight of those words. I didn’t even have to try to find a way to disguise my meaning. It was true, and the thought had occurred to me more than once. If I managed to destroy the high priestess, the world would lose centuries, perhaps even eons of sorcerous knowledge. I might as well set fire to Dafne’s library.

  But then, Dafne’s books weren’t trying to eat the world.

  Her expression lit with triumph. She believed she’d gotten me to agree with her, but I knew to be wary of that. Affirming what I already knew to be true didn’t give her power over me.

  “Then you agree,” she prompted. It had begun to snow, and the blizzard whipped through her lovely form. What had she looked like when she wore a real, mortal form? Not like that, I bet.

  I said nothing.

  “Leave those animals,” she coaxed. “It’s beneath you to be wed to a dog. What do you owe them besides duty to a mother you barely remember? You could live a life that you choose. Come to me and you could have everything.”

  I pretended to consider her offer—easy enough as my mind raced to weigh the various options. This could be my opportunity to find a path into her mind, so when I was able to strike, I’d know the way. But I didn’t delude myself that I could remain immune to her mind control. Only a fool would underestimate her ability to erode thoughts and manipulate emotion.

  “It would be wrong,” I finally said, making a show of reluctance. “I have a duty to my people.”

  “What is wrong?” she cooed. “What is duty? A construct, taught by our parents to control us as children. Then laws, imposed by others—mostly men—to govern our lives. Those laws serve society, not the individual. When have you ever done something only for yourself, Andromeda?”

  “I was born to rank, to duty,” I replied. “I’ve had luxury and power. In return, I serve my people.”

  “And why must there be an exchange?” she demanded, as if indignant on my behalf. “Did you agree to this bargain before you were born? Did you agree to any of it? Your mother sold you to a man in marriage before you were even conceived. What about your fundamental right to happiness? I don’t understand how a woman as intelligent and powerful as you are can submit to being enslaved like this.”

  Oh, she was goo
d. And I must tread carefully, because she’d gone straight to the core of my unhappiness. What had she said to Rayfe? I never wanted to know. “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “Don’t think too long,” she warned with a conspiratorial smile. “I don’t want to ruin the surprise, so…” She pressed her lips together and pantomimed locking them with an invisible key that she threw away. Glancing around at the barrier, the snowy waste, she lifted a shoulder and let it fall, a Dasnarian shrug in every way. “So much wasted effort, trying to move this barrier. You’ll see. And you know how to reach me. See you soon. Sooner than you think!”

  She smiled brightly, waggled her fingers in a goodbye, then vanished, her toothy smile the last to fade.

  ~ 15 ~

  Hours before dawn, when I returned to the cliff city, it was still fully shrouded in Moranu’s night—and glowing with lanterns, bustling with even more activity than when I’d left. Ships in the harbor creaked with the sounds of ropes, sails, and wood. People moved supplies along the beach and out to the waiting ships. Others moved stores into the tunnels below and the cliff city above. Ursula was planning for siege, too.

  Annfwn was never fully asleep, as our more nocturnal denizens carried on their business at night, but this was another level. Such are the effects of looming war.

  I was too keyed up to sleep, so I went to find Ursula, who I felt sure would be awake, monitoring the effects of the barrier shift, and directing all this preparation. If I encountered Rayfe there, well… I could hardly avoid him forever.

  Sure enough, I found her in the first place I looked, sitting in her now favorite chair along the side of the big conference table in the council chambers. The room blazed with light, and her auburn hair stood out in wild tufts where she’d raked her hands through it, but she looked alert, vividly in her element with an array of notes and missives spread around her. Marskal stood at her shoulder and nodded to me as I entered.

  To my surprise, Dafne was awake also, little Salena asleep in a Tala-made wooden cradle at her feet. She rocked the cradle absently with one foot, her attention on some message a staymach nightjar had just delivered to her, checking the missive against a detailed list as long as my arm.