The Fate of the Tala

by Jeffe Kennedy

  No joking came from Ursula and Harlan, but they’d both suffered horribly at the high priestess’s hands—or claws—and they were doing well to stand firm. Speaking of that incident, a wave of magic poured ahead of the high priestess, like a shimmering squall sweeping in from the sea, an enchantment to freeze us all in place as she’d done to them.

  I batted the spell aside, taking it by the root and feeding the magic to the Heart. It burped a little, chewing hard, then digested the tainted magic in chunks, taking it back and making it clean again.

  Good woman, my conscience murmured.

  The high priestess’s porpoises brought her to the shallows and she stepped off with a bounce, prancing a few steps, before pausing to frown. Another wave of magic blasted us, a lashing storm this time. I funneled it all to the Heart, which devoured it with relish this time. The others didn’t seem to notice much, but the high priestess fixed her dead-black gaze on me. I allowed a smile and shook my head.

  She lifted her chin in regal arrogance and strolled toward me. “Andromeda,” she crooned. “So kind of you all to gather to greet me. Easier to surrender all at once. You will kneel as you do so.”

  Rayfe’s low growl breathed hot over the back of my neck, and I shivered with the savagery of it. Yes, we would tear her limb from limb. But first, we would strip her of everything.

  “Silly little baby sorceress,” I replied in the same tone. “No one is surrendering to you. We’re all here to witness your total annihilation. Once and forever.”

  Kiraka breathed a tongue of flame, lifting her wings with it. The high priestess rolled her eyes. “Dragon flame cannot harm me. None of you can do a thing to even touch me. You cannot defeat me. You’re so stupid you don’t know I’ve won!” She clapped her hands together and laughed.

  “With what army?” I asked politely when she finished.

  “Fools!” she hissed, and lifted her arms dramatically. The thousands of strands of her power pulsed, yanking on her creatures. Using the Star, flush with the power I’d channeled to the Heart, that it freely shared back with me, I ripped away her shielding, slipped down to the root of her control, and took them all for my own.

  She flailed, groping for the sudden loss, staring at me in flummoxed astonishment.

  Shout your loyalty, I sent to all of them, including the creatures I held through her junior priests and priestesses. They did. All the Deyrr creatures near and far sent up a thunderous hue and cry, shaking the earth and sky with the sound.

  “They said, ‘all hail Annfwn,’” I explained seriously. “I thought you might not be able to understand, since they’re no longer yours.”

  “Well, well, well.” The high priestess recovered her aplomb, though her fair cheeks burned angry red within the spiked helmet. “Our girl has grown up. Learned a trick or two, did you? But I’m still a few steps ahead of you. You see,” she smiled thinly, “you forgot that I am not the only acolyte of Deyrr.”

  Her mind lashed out with furious commands. I let her do it, so she would feel the lack of answer. While she’d been talking, I’d taken over the last few of her minions. She called them, one by one, then en masse. The silence strung out, then I instructed them to answer her.

  “All hail Annfwn!” they shouted mentally at once, and the high priestess flinched, turning wild eyes on me.

  “Maybe I forgot to mention, but they are all mine now, too,” I informed her softly. “You’re alone.”

  She quivered. Drew herself together. Then laughed. The gay, silvery sound rippled over the now silent gathering, all the people and animals listening to every word we spoke. “Oh, dear, sweet, stupid Andromeda! Have you listened to nothing I’ve told you? I am not alone. I have my god, and He is all powerful. Did you think I came back to life from nothing on my own? When Empress Hulda brought me to her, fed me the milk of Dasnaria’s ancient magic, Deyrr was there to lift me up.”

  Off to my side, I saw Ivariel start, daggers leaping to her hands. Before I could tell her to stand down, Ochieng had his hands on her shoulders, whispering in her ear, and she relaxed. But kept her daggers at hand.

  The high priestess was continuing in full rant, and I used the time to gather magic.

  “I had nothing and no one,” she sneered. “I was a withered mummy thanks to them!” She shot a finger at Kiraka, who blew disgusted steam out her glittering nares. “But Deyrr kept and carried me. I rose from death! And I rebuilt an empire. I created those junior priests and priestesses; I can do it again. For I have Deyrr. Watch, and be afraid.”

  She waved her hands and a crack shook the sky.

  The golden god Deyrr stepped off the boat. Three times the size of a man, carved naked and with a protruding erect cock the length of my arm, it walked across the water toward us with long, angry strides.

  “Well,” Ivariel commented archly, “he’s certainly overcompensating.”

  The high priestess glared at her, then looked again. “Who are you?”

  Ivariel replied in Dasnarian, something I didn’t understand, but her words made the high priestess pale.

  “Andi?” Ursula said in a mild tone, as the god closed on us. “You have a plan?”

  The high priestess laughed. “No, she doesn’t. And now you all will die to feed Deyrr’s hunger.”

  “Are you in position, Zynda?”

  “Yes, I’m directly above and behind. Ready to dive.”

  “Then go.”

  I felt her plummet, and I reached to the focus stone she carried, then connected the Star with the rubies I wore and then out to the rubies my sisters wore. I poured magic into the triangle we’d created through the stones. Ami and Ursula both staggered as the lines connected, but the people at their backs caught and held them. Rayfe steadied me, his heartbeat loud and wild in my blood. Zynda dropped from the sky to level the three-sided trap—a line going straight from her to the god through the high priestess to me.

  “Sorry to disappoint,” I said, “but I made a promise to a two-year old. Time for you to die.”

  “There is nothing you can do to me, for I am immortal!” she shrieked, body arching as the power lanced through her. She lashed out with her own magic, but it bounced off the warding of Salena’s rubies.

  “Oh, honey,” I said, feeling sorry for her at last. Putting her down would be a mercy to the twisted, insane creature she’d become. “I told you before. Only the gods are immortal.”

  “Yes!” she screamed as she writhed under the searing whip of magic. “And Deyrr will devour you all. Behold your doom!”

  The golden figure had slowed his stride, close enough to see the glitter of those depthless eyes. I drilled through the metal casing, filling him with heat. And the metal began to melt.

  “A false idol,” I informed her. “The gods are immortal, yes, but they cannot take physical form for long, for it makes them vulnerable. See?”

  I released my grip on her just enough for her to turn and look. The idol had shuddered to a stop, sinking to its knees in the water, the great cock drooping as beads of gold ran down in giant tears. The high priestess wailed and waded to him, all grace lost. “No! He cannot die! I can’t and won’t.”

  “Death is simply another change,” I told her, not without sympathy. “One you have avoided for far too long. This unnatural extension of life has twisted you into a perversion of who you used to be.”

  She turned back, eyes wild, face distorted in a snarl, screaming at me in her native Dasnarian. I raised a hand, making the sign of Moranu, Ursula and Ami echoing the movement with the signs of Danu and Glorianna. When I dropped my hand, the red dragon and Djakos—Ash on his back—dove from above, flames searing.

  The idol of gold and the flesh of the sorceress went up in flames together.

  A great cheer of triumph roared from the assembly, but I held up a hand. “We’re not done yet.” Magically amplified, my voice rolled over them, and they fell into an expectant rumble.

  I could see what most of them could not—how the high priestess’s truly im
mortal aspect, her spirit, clung to Deyrr. The god easily abandoned the metal slag he’d briefly occupied and cradled his erstwhile servant in his arms. We often spoke of the dead as returning to the bower of Glorianna’s arms. The sight before me became, as so often happened with Deyrr, a perverted mirror of that metaphor.

  The disincarnate god billowed black and bilious against the sky, the many tentacles of his insatiable hunger reaching restlessly to drain magic from the pores of the world. The shade of the high priestess turned her attention to me.

  “See?” Her numinous voice echoed in my very bones. “Even now I am more than what I was. He has raised me up. You pitiful mortal. You cannot defeat a god.”

  “I don’t have to,” I replied, and gave myself over to Moranu.

  Her silver-edged darkness filled me, almost painfully so, but Her blackness was a relief in its fullness. She was the new moon, the dark that is full of all existence. The opposite of the void of Deyrr, the starvation that could never be sated.

  Moranu stepped through me, many forms and faces flashing like lightning and thunder in a vast storm. Her sisters joined her. Danu, unbearably bright and sharp-edged, the clear-eyed warrior brandishing her lethal swords of justice and wisdom. On the other side, Glorianna swept in a cloud of ferocious love. Mother, maiden, crone, she was all in one. As Danu wore Ursula’s face, so Glorianna wore Ami’s. Or perhaps we’d been born in their images.

  I couldn’t say, and I didn’t have to.

  It was over in a moment: the Three embraced Deyrr and his burden, containing and shrinking him. The divine magic threatened to shiver the foundations of the world, building to an unbearable intensity.

  And then They were gone, leaving nothing but the physical world behind.

  I opened my mouth to pronounce it done.

  Not quite.

  Whether Moranu Herself, or my own conscience, I acknowledged the inner voice. Taking the leashed wills and lives beholden to me, I gathered them together and sent them into the Heart. It welcomed them in, all the lost souls, opening like a portal that moved in all directions.

  All around, bodies fell as the unnatural magic that animated them fled. The red dragon fell from the sky, becoming a rain of ash that sizzled into the water.

  I sagged, going boneless as the thousands of lives left me empty. Distantly I knew that Rayfe caught me and held me close.

  Knowing I was safe, I looked up at his face, his eyes fulgent with triumph and worry. “Andromeda?”

  “It is done.”

  And it was.

  ~ 25 ~

  “There’s still the Dasnarian navy,” Ursula said.

  Not much time had passed. I recovered my equilibrium fairly quickly, though I could tell it would take some time before I felt right being alone in my own skin again. By the time Zynda and Zyr had landed and shapeshifted to human form, and Ash had jumped straight from Djakos to embrace a freely weeping Ami, I could stand without Rayfe’s support.

  He stayed close, however, a hand resting on my lower back so I’d feel him near.

  “I hate to interfere with the celebrating,” Ursula added, as no one had mustered an answer for her. She gestured at the spreading jubilation outside our circle. “But the navy will be here before long and we’re nowhere near ready. And we have yet to deal with all the Deyrr creatures that made it past the gate. The winged ones could be reaching Ordnung even now.”

  I shook my head. “I can set your mind at ease there. No Deyrr creatures will reach Ordnung, or anywhere ever again. I took over every last one of them. That’s part of how we defeated the high priestess.”

  Her eyes glittered, the flash of a sword’s edge in a victory blow. “Then you can marshal that entire army. We’ll use them against the Dasnarians.”

  “You can’t do that,” Ivariel burst out. “I’ll be the first in line to kill Hulda, but there are good people in Dasnaria, too. To turn those monsters upon them.” She clutched Harlan’s arm. “Think of our sisters there if no one else. Don’t let her do it.”

  Harlan gave her a grave smile, patting her hand. “I do not command Ursula’s actions.”

  “But she—”

  “It’s an irrelevant argument,” I said, cutting her off, then turned to Ursula. “I let them all go.” I swept a hand at the carcasses and corpses littering the beach and sea, decaying rapidly or slowly, according to how long ago those bodies had died.

  Zynda, who’d joined our circle, studied me with hopeful interest. “Then all those spirits trapped by Deyrr…”

  “Are free,” I confirmed, feeling weary enough to lean back against Rayfe, who set warm hands on my shoulders, bracing me. “They’re all free,” I repeated with some wonder, assimilating the truth of it.

  “But still dead,” Marskal asked, looking from Zynda to me.

  “Lost to the living,” Ash echoed sorrowfully.

  “Yes.” I nodded, understanding they grieved for all those lost. They hadn’t seen what I had, and what Zynda had, the horror of those spirits enslaved to Deyrr’s hunger for all eternity.

  “So many people,” Karyn said, leaning against Zyr. “All those n’Andanans. Millions of dead, maybe.”

  “But free, gréine,” he reminded her, tucking a lock of her buttery hair behind her ear. He met my gaze. “You did right to set them free.”

  “Restoring the balance.” Zynda nodded thoughtfully.

  “It’s the natural order of things,” Ami said, mostly to Ash. “Once Deyrr had them, no one could restore them to their bodies. But Andi returned them to the eternal wellspring of the universe.”

  I thought of the Heart, and how it had inhaled the magic as well as exhaled it. An eternal wellspring, indeed.

  “What about Nilly?” Ami wanted to know, rounding on me, and fluttering her fingers at her own head. “The thing that bitch put in her mind.”

  “Gone,” I promised. Though I made a mental note to check later and be certain all trace had gone.

  Ami sagged against Ash with relief, and he kissed her warmly.

  “That’s all well and good,” Ursula put in, tapping her fingers on the ruby in the pommel of her sword, “and I don’t mean to be insensitive to the moment, but there is still the Dasnarian navy.”

  “My Essla is quite single-minded,” Harlan said to Ivariel. “Especially when it comes to her royal responsibilities.”

  “As a queen and warrior should be,” Ivariel replied, inclining her head in respect to Ursula. “I will also say that dealing with Dasnaria is my responsibility. Especially Hulda. This is my war.”

  “As you say, your imperiousness,” Ochieng replied in a teasing voice. “It is still the rainy season at home. And we brought the elephants all this way.”

  “Forgive my impertinence.” Karyn, who’d been staring at Ivariel with fascination, dropped into a formal Dasnarian curtsey, “but are you her Imperial Highness, the lost Princess Jenna?”

  Ivariel lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “I was, once upon a time, and lost indeed. Until I was found.” She gave Ochieng an intimate smile before she turned back to Karyn. “And you, how is a Dasnarian woman of noble birth here?” She glanced dubiously at Zyr who was caressing the inner curve of Karyn’s elbow. “With no family.”

  “A long story,” Karyn confided. “Suffice to say for the moment that you have been an inspiration to me.”

  “Very difficult to imagine,” Ivariel mused. “Regardless, though I claim neither that name nor that title, I cannot deny that Hulda is my mother. We have testimony from that foul sorceress’s lips that Hulda conspired to unleash Deyrr upon us. She must be brought to justice. As she owes me other debts, I shall be the one to make her pay in full.” As she spoke, she shone with Danu’s light. Ursula and Kaedrin gave her Danu’s salute in response.

  Harlan frowned thunderously. “You cannot mean to go back to Dasnaria.”

  “I can,” Ivariel replied evenly. “Besides, I made a promise to Inga and Helva, if they still live, that I would return.”

  “They live,” Ursula t
old her, when Harlan said nothing. “We are in contact with them at the Imperial Palace.”

  Ivariel looked to Ochieng, who took her hand. “I remember,” he told her quietly. “And we stand ready to go with you.”

  “You can’t go,” Harlan burst out. “You forget what it’s like for women there.”

  “I forget nothing, Harlan.” Her voice, her very carriage, had gone to ice. “Not a day has gone by in all these years that I haven’t faced the pain of what they did to me. But they no longer rule me. I refuse to be afraid.”

  Harlan nodded, deflated and resigned. “I understand.”

  “Besides,” she said more softly, stroking his arm as if to soothe a difficult beast, “my children want to see the land of their ancestors.”

  He blinked at her. “Your children. Yes. You mentioned, but…”

  “But there wasn’t time. Children!” She said something more in the Nyamburan language. Dafne, who’d also joined our circle of conversation, listened with fascination, clearly making mental notes.

  A number of the warriors dismounted. Tall, lithely muscled, the shining adult “children” leapt off their elephant mounts and strode over to join us with eager smiles. All had their mother’s extraordinary bones, and their father’s warmth.

  “May I introduce your uncle, Imperial Prince Harlan Konyngrr, who—”

  Harlan cleared his throat. “I, too, no longer claim the rank or family name.”

  She smiled ruefully. “Good, though they are poorer for it. These are my children. My eldest daughter Kajala, my son, Shaharlan.” She paused there, smiling at Harlan’s thunderstruck expression. “My younger daughters, Ingalaika and Helvalesa.”

  Harlan, overcome, embraced each one, Ivariel and Ochieng watching proudly. Another young woman, quite a few years older than Kajala, stood nearby, a hesitant smile on her face, her black eyes full of bright curiosity. Ivariel drew her forward.

  “And, lest I forget, my niece Ayela. She wishes to become a priestess of Danu,” she said to Ursula.

  “May the goddess treat her kindly,” Ursula replied in a dry tone.