The Fate of the Tala

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “We’re coming to help,” I promised recklessly.

  “Better make it soon.”

  Hoping against hope that at least we didn’t have to deal with the Dasnarians yet, I expanded my mind out to the Hákyrling. Not wasting any more time, I tapped directly into Jepp’s mind. Then reeled in astonishment at what I saw through her eyes, unable to wrap my mind around it: it looked like the entire Dasnarian navy indeed streamed through the barrier.

  Jepp was fighting. I felt her moving in a whirlwind of blades, my phantom hands tracking with hers. Fishbirds flew in pieces as she spun.

  “Andi, tell me if you’re there,” she panted. Then she repeated it, like a chant.

  “I’m here,” I said with her mouth.

  “Thank fucking Danu,” she snarled. She spun and ran for a door, hissing as something sliced her arm. She vaulted through and paused in the dark interior, slowing her breath. “The barrier is breached. We’re doing our best here, but the Dasnarian ships are pouring through, and moving fast. They’ll be at Annfwn before long. Tell Ursula I’m sorry.”

  “Do you need help?” I asked, though I didn’t know what I’d offer if she said yes.

  “We’re playing it safe, holding back or else we’ll be decimated. We can’t stop them, but at least we can come in behind them. One of Nakoa’s storms would be handy. Any other magic tricks, too. Though you might need all of that there. Good luck.”

  “Good luck to you,” I said back, though numbly. She thumped a fist to her heart in the Hawks’ salute, then plunged out the door again, knives at the ready.

  The barrier breached. Just as I’d known it would be, but how had it happened? I reached for the Heart, finding the cobalt crabs going about their business… except for one side. They’d opened up a hole in the barrier, sea water now filling my dome, the abalone throne knocked onto its side by the force of inrushing pressure. I remembered with a visceral stab how the high priestess had punched at me when I freed Rayfe from her leash. She’d been ready for me to do that very thing—and I’d been connected to the Heart, pulling as much power as I could to augment my own.

  No matter what I did, I seemed to be dancing to her tune. Well, that was going to change.

  I commanded the crabs to repair the barrier, but they—impossibly—ignored me. I reached into the barrier itself. For the first time since I first infused it with my will, it failed to respond. I tried again, but it was like dashing my power against an impervious wall.

  Just like when I tried to blast that Deyrr warthog.

  At least the true Heart—the font of magic buried beneath the ocean floor, still responded to me, a flood of power surging through me with uninhibited fire. The high priestess had compromised the barrier itself, but she didn’t have the Heart. That was mine.

  Furiously I jammed my hand in my pocket, finding the Star, not the high priestess’s focus stone, but I used it nevertheless to wrench a door open to her mind. I startled her—she recovered fast, covering it up—but I took savage satisfaction in catching her that much by surprise.

  She hastily formed a featureless bubble around herself, but not before I caught a glimpse of a serene aquamarine sea—unmistakably the Onyx Ocean near Annfwn—and the spars and masts of a sailing ship with billowed sails. Not clad in her usual semi-naked sensual attire, she wore a version of Dasnarian armor, though in her trademark gold instead of silver. It also fit her feminine curves and petite frame, clearly custom-made for her in an empire that not only never armored its women, but went as far as possible in the other direction, denying them even shoes. A delicately wrought helmet perched on her head, framing her lovely face with sharp metal thorns that emphasized her beauty while protecting her face.

  She’d learned from the time she’d attacked Ursula, and lost both eyes in the process. I didn’t know how she’d regrown them—if those dark pits even required regrowing—but she was clearly taking no chances with a repeat injury.

  “Oh, Andromeda! I’m afraid you’ve caught me at a busy time,” she chirped, as if I’d stopped by for a neighborly chat at an inopportune moment. “Can we talk later? After I’ve finished conquering Annfwn and enslaving the Tala will work for me. I know you will be at your leisure, with no people and no kingdom.”

  I’d lashed out without a plan of what to say, but I wasn’t backing down now. “What have you done?” I snarled.

  She simpered prettily. “Catching on now, are you? Really, it’s been dreadfully dull waiting for you to see past a few simple diversions. I’d rather thought you’d be smarter but…” She lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “I’ve realized I expected far too much of you. Unfair of me, as I knew you couldn’t amount to much, poor untrained, untalented little thing. Such a pity your mother died before she could teach you anything useful.”

  “You certainly saw to that, didn’t you?” The rage had a grip on me.

  She raised her brows and fluttered her lashes, a gesture that on Ami looked charming, but became grotesque with those dead black eyes staring out. “I can’t imagine what you mean, Andromeda, darling. You’ll really have to try to be more specific with your questions.”

  It didn’t matter if she’d killed Salena or had a hand in her demise. I shouldn’t let it sidetrack me. Don’t let this become a personal vendetta. Hatred and anger can tear you apart. No, I reminded myself, my hatred and anger will tear them apart.

  “In answer to your question,” the high priestess said with some impatience, and I realized my pause had spurred her to keep talking. “What I’ve done is win. Again, unless you’d like to be more specific. Or, perhaps you’re rethinking your curt refusal of my patronage. There’s still time to pledge yourself to me. Just say the word. I’ve outmaneuvered you in every direction. Give up now and you, at least, will have a good life.”

  Tempting, to spit out all the things I knew—but also foolish. I needed to be smarter. All the things I wanted to ask—what had happened to the strike team, how close was she to Annfwn, how she’d taken control of the barrier—would reveal what I did and didn’t know. If the high priestess didn’t know about Zynda and the others, then they might be hiding, and I’d betray them by asking.

  “Perhaps I was hasty.” I tried to sound contrite. “Let’s meet and discuss.”

  She laughed, a gay twinkling sound appropriate for a glass of wine with friends. “Silly little baby sorceress. We’re talking now. Pledge yourself to Deyrr. Otherwise I can’t possibly trust you. Surely you understand that.”

  “How would I go about doing that?”

  “Oh dear, that is a conundrum.” She pouted, then a reptilian smile crept through, cold and without a shred of compassion. “I suppose you’ll have to wait like a good girl. Surrender and I might take you to Deyrr. But that will have to wait until we meet.” She made a moue, adding that fatalistic shrug, then laughed. “Which is fortuitously quite soon!”

  She waved a hand and cut the connection with a vicious backlash that had me physically reeling. Rayfe caught me, steadying me in his warm embrace. Utterly grateful for his strength, I burrowed against him.

  “Andromeda.” He drew out my name like a warning, but I sensed no anger from him—and I clung to that small comfort. “Were you… You were talking with the high priestess.”

  “Yes. Yes, I was. And not for the first time.”

  “Is that wise?” Ursula asked.

  “Every weapon at my disposal,” I answered.

  Rayfe frowned. “I don’t understand what you’re doing.”

  “No, I know that,” I replied quietly. “Will you trust me anyway?”

  “Yes,” he answered simply, no uncertainty in it, and I drew strength from that. I needed it for this next bit. “Ami—I’m sorry to say I couldn’t make contact with any of the n’Andana team. They’re not answering, and I can’t sense the dragons like I usually can.”

  Ami, who wept over the death of a baby bird, firmed her chin and studied me with dry eyes. “Ash is dead then? Along with all of them.”

  “I don’t kn
ow. This is what I do know.” I gave them the rundown of everything I’d seen, heard, and learned.

  “That verifies what I discovered,” Rayfe added. “The cliff city is overwhelmed, but we cannot hide down here any longer. We can fight or surrender. I say we fight.”

  “Kiraka can hold awhile longer, but not much,” I said. “I can pass a message for Nakoa to brew a storm, but we need to get to them.”

  Rayfe growled deep in his throat, likely not even aware of it. “We have to get ourselves out of here.”

  I swallowed against the knowledge that we’d at last run up against the wall. This was the moment that everyone I loved would throw themselves into that endless onslaught of monsters, with only a spinning fragment of chance they’d live through it.

  “This is what I propose,” Ursula said. “We bust out our forces, seal the tunnels with the vulnerable inside. Rally the outside troops, secure the cliff city, repel the high priestess, then we should have a short breather to prepare to repel the Dasnarian navy.”

  It sounded so easy, put that way.

  “I’m with you,” Rayfe declared, body singing with energy, eyes glittering with feral excitement.

  “Our ships, even the ones we’ve recalled, won’t reach us until tomorrow at the soonest,” I reminded them. “And our aerial forces might be trapped, or destroyed. We can’t count on any help.”

  Ursula actually looked excited. “Then we’d better step up and handle this ourselves.”

  Rayfe nodded at her, expression the twin of hers. Never had they seemed more alike to me, to my great love and everlasting despair. “Agreed,” he said.

  “We need a temporary strategic retreat,” she said.

  “Behind Kiraka,” he said.

  “Perfect,” she said. “We’ll need to clear a path and rally everyone to the cliff city. Abandon the beach.”

  “Won’t we risk being trapped there?” Harlan inquired mildly.

  Rayfe grinned, the wolf in it. “We can always go up and over.”

  “I see.” Harlan nodded thoughtfully. “A small rear guard can defend us from pursuit.”

  “And Andromeda can lock the gate to the road, so they won’t be able to follow that way,” Rayfe added.

  “You can?” Ursula raised her brows at me.

  “Already done,” I said. “I’d intended it as a final measure to keep any forces that defeated Annfwn from invading the other twelve kingdoms.” Rayfe watched me with calm knowingness in his eyes, and I realized he’d known this, too, about me, all along.

  “How long can you hold it?” Ursula asked cannily. “And be honest.”

  “Honestly? I don’t know. I’ve never had to hold a fixed enchantment against a high priestess of Deyrr and a god, while fighting to regain control of the larger barrier and maintain several other battles at once,” I replied, trying not to snap at her and failing.

  “What’s this?” She made an astonished face. “The great and powerful sorceress Andromeda is recognizing her limitations at last.”

  A retort hovered on my tongue, but I swallowed it. “You have no idea,” I finally said, feeling the sag in my shoulders. I straightened them and my spine. “But I’ll hold it as long as I can.”

  “That’s all we ask,” she said, giving me a smile before she moved on. “All right. We make a concerted push to get every able-bodied fighter out of the tunnels, rally our people to the cliff city, leadership meeting back at the council chambers. If we cannot hold until our reinforcements arrive, we evacuate the cliff city and reconvene at Ordnung.”

  “Abandon Annfwn to Deyrr?” Rayfe said the words like a question, but I knew he was testing the truth of that possibility within himself.

  “We always knew we might have to,” I said softly, leaning into him so he’d feel my shared sorrow. “Annfwn was always temporary. A toehold clawed out of a desperate effort to re-create what had already been lost.”

  He looked down at me, holding my gaze. “I know. It just … feels like defeat.”

  “Lose the battle to win the war?” I asked, attempting a brave smile.

  “We can hope. All right, agreed. I’m telling the Tala.” Rayfe closed his eyes, the song spinning out.

  “Andi—can you relay to the staymachs with our lieutenants?” Ursula asked me.

  “Yes.” I opened my eyes. “Done.”

  She acknowledged that crisply. “Are you going to the Heart?”

  “Not enough time to get there.” They didn’t need to know the Heart had been compromised. I would fix it. “I’ll be on the promontory. I can access the Heart from there and still see everything.” I thought Rayfe might object, but he dipped his chin at me, his confidence bolstering.

  “All right. Ami—would you stay here to guard the children and others?”

  “Of course,” she replied, her face set in cool reserve. “And I shall pray to all three goddesses to intervene on our behalf.”

  “We’ll clear the doors and send reinforcements,” Harlan told her.

  “I can put up the shield again,” I offered. “Though it will keep us from communicating with you. You’ll be on your own with your people here.”

  “Not entirely,” she replied with firm conviction. “No mortal shield can thwart Glorianna, Danu, and Moranu. The sisters will be with me.”

  Ursula glanced at me, an unreadable look in her steely gaze. We’d come so many years from spoiled little Ami trotting out Glorianna’s wishes as justification for her childish whims. “All right with you if I call on Danu’s attention and assistance from time to time?” she asked. Though she’d phrased the question with some amusement, a core of sincerity rode in it.

  “You are Her avatar, Essla,” Ami replied seriously, exactly the way her daughter did. “May Danu protect you and guide your blade.”

  It might’ve been the emotion of the moment, the certain dread that this might be the last time I saw some of them alive—or all of them—but Ursula seemed to take on a light, banishing the shadows. And Ami… she wore the face of love.

  “And you, Andi,” Ami said, turning to me. “Moranu goes with you. She is yours and you are Hers. There is nothing for you to fear in letting Her will fill you.”

  I shivered at her insight, and the compassion in her violet blue eyes, so lovely, and so knowing. How had she known of the fears that plagued me? Such a narrow line for me to walk between fighting the high priestess—and becoming her. Unable to voice any of that, I simply nodded.

  But Ami—or Glorianna—didn’t let me off so easily. She canted her head slightly, the stern mother shimmering in her. “Remember that Deyrr is Moranu’s ancient nemesis, more than any other of the sisters. You have been Marked by Her from the beginning. Don’t refuse Her will now, when all hangs in the balance.”

  A midnight wash of silver flame licked through me, as if the many-faced goddess set her hand on me, indeed. I tried not to resist it, but I also flinched at the darkness so like Deyrr’s. I never asked to be Marked.

  “But you did,” Ami said, making me jump. The numinous echoed in her voice, and I knew Glorianna spoke directly to me.

  “Before you were born, you asked for this,” Ursula said crisply, Danu in her eyes.

  A firm hand at the small of my back kept me from retreating. I looked up to find Rayfe watching me with that same ruthless compassion as he had from the beginning. “There’s choosing and there’s choosing,” he said.

  I smiled at him, knowing it to be tremulous. Then I faced the goddesses, all three of them—the two in Ami and Ursula, the one flickering around me with the beating wings of night—and said, “I accept my destiny and will do my utmost.”

  The immediate, crushing presences of the goddesses withdrew, and I took a full breath.

  “You handle the barriers and the high priestess,” Ursula said. “Trust us to deal with the rest.”

  “Nothing will get through me to harm the children, or anyone down here,” Ami vowed. “You have my word.”

  I almost didn’t say it, but felt I should. I’d p
laced trust in Stella and she in me. I would honor that. “Nilly will tell you if the high priestess approaches.”

  Ami paused in surprise, then dipped her chin, not questioning.

  Ursula embraced Ami, then crouched to kiss the sleeping twins, Harlan following suit. “We’ll organize our forces and get the doors cleared,” she told us.

  “We’ll be right behind you,” Rayfe replied, following me as I hugged Ami and also kissed the children goodbye. “Be strong, heart-sister,” he said gravely. “I trust no one more with the children of Annfwn.”

  Her eyes filled, but the tears didn’t spill. “Andi—Ash is alive. I’d know it if he wasn’t.”

  “I believe you. We’ll find him, all of them. I promise.”

  Rayfe and I walked together, ascending the long tunnel more slowly as Ursula and Harlan jogged away, calling commands. He took my hand, weaving his fingers with mine, and it felt so familiar, so necessary that I shuddered inside. “Harlan explained everything,” he said quietly. “There’s so much I don’t remember. Stretches of time gone from my memory.”

  “Yes,” I whispered into his expectant silence, though he hadn’t posed it as a question.

  “I understand now why you lied to me,” he said. “Though I imagine I don’t know all the lies you told me.”

  “It probably doesn’t change anything, but I want you to know I really hated lying to you. I can’t express how much.”

  “I don’t know whether that changes anything,” he said slowly. “I don’t know what to think or feel.”

  “I understand that.” I bit down on my lower lip, wanting to tell him more, but it felt selfish to tell him how hard this had been for me.

  “It’s a very strange thing, not to be able to trust one’s own mind.”

  “You can now. You’re free of her. I made sure of it.”

  He paused at the last turn—Ursula and Harlan’s orders echoing from around the corner, preparing our people to push through—and turned to face me. Rayfe searched my face, his eyes shadowed in the flickering lamplight. “You went into my head, like she did, and some of those missing memories, they’re gone because of you, not her. It’s very odd, though—I can’t really tell you apart. What you did and what she did, they’re the same, aren’t they?”