Among the Fallen

by NS Dolkart

  Goodweather was thriving too. She was learning to crawl on her own, dragging herself along with her arms since she had not yet mastered the use of her legs. She sometimes tried to stand too, pulling herself up to her feet while holding onto Bandu or Vella or a table leg, but such efforts usually ended with a fall and a wail. Then Bandu would scoop her up, or Vella would, and within a minute she would be back to smiling and babbling.

  She was babbling a lot now. At this rate, Vella said teasingly, she’d be talking better than Bandu soon. Bandu didn’t like that joke, but she knew Vella hadn’t said it to make her angry, so she decided that it was all right.

  The babble didn’t mean anything yet – Goodweather was only experimenting with the sounds she could make. Her cries, on the other hand, were distinct and meaningful. Bandu could tell hunger cries from sleepy cries, lonely cries from hurt cries. Vella couldn’t quite, but she would look to Bandu for her cues and it would generally turn out all right.

  They were not always happy, of course. Vella still missed her family, for all that her feelings about them were complicated. She talked of them sometimes, telling Bandu stories of the way they had raised her, and especially of how tender her father had been. Bandu hadn’t had much of an opinion of Kilion, who had never given her more than the occasional sympathetic glance, but apparently he was a kind and thoughtful man. He was with his children, anyway.

  Bandu avoided talking about her childhood, or about Criton. Instead she told Vella about the others, Phaedra and Narky and Hunter. Vella said they sounded like Bandu’s real family, which was right. Bandu might have no parents, but she did have a family.

  Vella was horrified to learn that Bandu did not know how to read. “How could Phaedra not have taught you?” she asked, and when Bandu told her that she didn’t want to learn, Vella would not take that for an answer.

  “All the Dragon Touched teach their children to read,” she insisted. “We were advisors to the king once. Everyone has to learn.”

  “I don’t,” Bandu said. “Dead people shouldn’t talk.”

  Vella clearly found that statement confusing, so Bandu had to explain how Psander had had animal skins full of the words of dead people. Bandu did not think it was right for dead people’s words to remain after they were gone.

  Vella didn’t care. “I’ll teach you,” she said. “I’m sorry, but not being able to read – it’s like being a child, for us. You have to at least try.”

  So Bandu tried. She hated it. A week of lessons yielded no progress whatsoever. She couldn’t tell the symbols apart – they were just meaningless shapes that didn’t look anything like what they were supposed to: a camel, a fish, an ox, an eye, and so on. Each made a sound related to its shape, but it was hard to remember what those sounds were when it took such creativity to recognize the pictures.

  “Why I do this for you?” she complained. “I never use this.”

  Vella looked at her sternly. “Of course you’ll never use it if you don’t learn it. That doesn’t mean it isn’t useful.”

  Bandu tried kissing her, but Vella pulled away. “You can’t get out of learning to read that easily.”

  Sometimes Bandu missed Criton.

  “How it helps later?” she demanded, not bothering to hide her skepticism. “I never read from dead animal skin, history and lies and bad things. Phaedra reads those, and she can tell me things if I need them. You can do that too – you don’t need me to read also.”

  “And what if I have to go somewhere, and I want to leave you a note to tell you where I’ve gone? You can’t always rely on other people, Bandu. If you don’t learn how to read, someday you’ll wish you did.”

  Bandu doubted she was right about that, but there was no dissuading her, so she did her best. Her best wasn’t very good, but as long as she was trying, Vella showered her with praise and affection. That made the struggle easier, at least.

  She did sometimes resent Vella for forcing her to tire her eyes and her mind; for torturing her with the symbols even when she wanted to relax; for taking even the moments when Bandu was nursing her daughter to test her knowledge. Vella scratched the letters into the wall beside their bed, formed them out of rocks in the garden, used them to count the days. The letters didn’t only make sounds, they also represented numbers, and Vella drilled Bandu in those too. She began dreaming at night that the symbols were chasing her through the forest, shouting their names at her. The whole thing was exhausting.

  They fought about it sometimes. Bandu didn’t like being forced to do anything, and the fact that Vella did it in order to help her was no consolation. Bandu couldn’t imagine ever needing to know how to read, and it felt sometimes as if Vella was trying to punish her for not having had parents who taught her such things. She didn’t mean it as a punishment, of course, and that was important… but it wasn’t everything.

  Still, despite the pressure from Vella and the inevitable arguments that resulted, Bandu couldn’t help but notice how much happier she was here than she had ever been with Criton. Vella never stopped engaging with Bandu’s feelings, never refused to explain herself, and never, never turned violent. They would come out of each fight happier with each other than they’d been before, and that was more precious than anything. When Goodweather grew older, Bandu would teach her to look for that in a mate.

  And over time, Bandu had to admit that Vella’s lessons were working. When she forced herself to, she could sound out most of the words Vella scratched into the ground for practice, and she nearly cried when she discovered one day that one of the phrases Vella had carved beside their bed the week before was “I love you, Bandu.” Vella did not stop teaching her after that, and the lessons didn’t get any easier, but Bandu stopped resenting her for it. If it hadn’t been for Vella’s persistence, Bandu would never have discovered the joy that old words could bring.

  Then one morning, Bandu awoke to Vella shaking her. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I had a nightmare,” Vella said. “Could you tell me if you think it means something?”

  Bandu nodded, feeling suddenly afraid. She had had a prophetic nightmare once. She had misunderstood it at the time, and it had cost Four-foot his life.

  “It started like one of my regular bad dreams,” Vella confessed. “You told me you were leaving me and going to find Criton. I have dreams like that sometimes. But this time, you left me holding Goodweather, and she looked up and asked me if you were ever coming back. And I wanted desperately to say ‘Yes,’ but somehow I couldn’t. And she said, ‘We never should have left.’

  “Then my grandmother was sitting alone in a room, crying. I wasn’t holding Goodweather anymore, and I went to try to reassure my grandma, and put a hand on her back, and she turned to me and said, ‘I feel sick.’ Then she started heaving, and she opened her mouth and black feathers came pouring out. There was blood in the feathers too, it was really frightening and disgusting. I could still see it happening even after I turned away from her, because you don’t see things with your eyes in dreams. I think there was more, but I can’t remember it now. What does it mean, Bandu?”

  Bandu shook her head. “Hessina is all the Dragon Touched. Black feathers are Ravennis, or maybe Narky. Narky is from Tarphae like me, he goes to Ardis before we meet your kind. Maybe Narky is Ardis? Your people try to eat Narky, and that is bad for them. I don’t know why Hessina is crying before the feathers.”

  “And the first part?” Vella asked. “Where you left me with Goodweather and went back to Criton?”

  “That never happens,” Bandu said firmly. “I don’t want him, I want you.”

  Vella looked dissatisfied, as well she might. In her dream, Goodweather had said that they shouldn’t have ever left. They shouldn’t have left, and now the Dragon Touched were about to do something foolish. Was it too late to stop them?

  “Bandu. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  Bandu didn’t want to say it. Vella was happy here. She was happy here. She would have been glad for Vel
la and Goodweather to be the only Dragon Touched, the only people she saw for the rest of her life. But she did not want Goodweather to grow up as Criton had, believing herself and one parent to be the only two Dragon Touched in the world.

  “I think if we don’t go back, they try to take Ardis and it is very bad for them. I think if they lose their war, then we are never safe. You are not safe, Goodweather is not safe. Maybe I am looking for Criton in your dream because I want to say don’t try to take Ardis. Sometimes Criton listens to me.”

  Vella looked horrified. “Don’t go,” she said. “I can’t live out here without you, hoping and praying that you’ll come back. Don’t do that to me.”

  “I don’t go without you,” Bandu answered. “Your dream is wrong. You come with me.”

  “I can’t, Bandu! You don’t understand! My people don’t take kindly to adultery – there’s no telling what they’ll do to us if we go back together!”

  “What is adultery?”

  “It’s what we’ve been doing, Bandu. Making love together when we’re married to other people. My husband could kill us in front of everyone and no one would stop him!”

  “I stop him,” Bandu reassured her. “They don’t know what we are doing together, because they are not here with us. We tell them we leave together because you love Goodweather, and they don’t know anything else. Criton is angry, but he doesn’t hate us, and if Pilos hates you and wants to kill you, I stop him. Don’t be afraid.”

  There were tears in Vella’s eyes. “I am afraid, Bandu. Let’s stay here. Please.”

  Bandu looked at her new mate, so beautiful and so frightened, and relented. “You don’t want to go,” she said, “even if all your people die?”

  “We don’t know that that’s what it means,” Vella insisted. “All I know is that if I go back, they’ll kill me. They’ll kill us both, Bandu. Don’t go.”

  Bandu kissed her and stroked her hair, loving the way it flowed so smoothly down from her head, straight and silky. “If you stay,” she said, “I stay. Criton can save your people by himself.”

  43

  Phaedra

  Now that Phaedra had learned the basics of magical composition, learning how to open a gate turned out to be fairly simple. In many ways it was like tugging on one of the invisible threads that summoned the books in Psander’s library down from the shelves. The difficulty was in finding the weak spot and gathering the strength to pull on it. That would be harder at one of the older gates than it was in Psander’s courtyard, so Phaedra would need a source of external power. But Psander assured her that that would be no obstacle – she planned to cremate Olimande’s body, and between that and the elf’s head there would be plenty of fuel for the spell.

  To be truthful, Phaedra was extremely uncomfortable with that fuel source. Psander might have no qualms with killing a captured elf for the sake of a spell, but Phaedra did. As odious as the elves were, they were sentient beings – they were essentially people. The thought of harvesting a prisoner’s life for magic horrified her.

  It was worth doing anyway: her mission was to save two worlds, after all. It also helped a little that the elves were mortal enemies, and there was no doubt that Olimande would have done the same to Phaedra had their situations been reversed. But while that might be enough to convince Phaedra that the deed had to be done, she couldn’t bring herself to view it with the same utilitarian coldness that seemed to be Psander’s default emotional state.

  She wished she could consult with Hunter, who had struggled with his own moral questions and seemed to have found some happy equilibrium in training the villagers to defend themselves. But if she spoke to him about that, she would have to have that other conversation with him too, the one where she dashed his last remaining hopes of marrying her. She had put it off for too long already, and now that she was leaving, could put it off no further.

  Well, it had to be done. She could start with the easier part, at least, so that was what she did, telling him of her qualms with using the elf’s body and life as ingredients.

  “Am I being unreasonable?” she asked. “Should I just learn to live with this?”

  Hunter answered, “It sounds like you’ll have to live with it, if you’re going to do it at all. But that doesn’t mean you can’t hate it, and never use someone’s life that way again unless you’re forced to. Don’t become like Psander. Don’t stop hating it, or start taking it casually. Feeling every death is a good thing, I think.”

  “It really is horrible,” Phaedra said. “I know it’s necessary for me to get back to our world and save it from colliding with this one, but that doesn’t make the killing any better. It just makes it all more miserable somehow.”

  Hunter nodded. “Now you know how I’ve felt.”

  “But you don’t feel that way anymore?”

  He frowned. “I didn’t say that. Psander is using the elf about as cruelly as I imagined, and I feel complicit in that. It’s training the others that makes me feel better. Teaching them how to defend themselves is a worthy goal – I can throw myself into it without feeling guilty. We all deserve to live just as much as the elves do.”

  He said it with a passion she had rarely heard from him. “You’re not coming with me,” she said. Hunter only quietly shook his head. Phaedra had known it all along in the back of her mind, had even conceived of her mission as a lone one, but only now that it had been said could she really acknowledge it. There was no reason for him to come with her anymore – he had found the life he wanted, and she had already refused to join it.

  He saw the look on her face. “It’s not because of that,” he said. “I promise. I still love you – I wish you could stay. But even if your work is more important than mine, these people still have to be defended. They need me.”

  Phaedra sighed. “You’re right, you’re right. Oh Hunter, I’m going to miss you.”

  He smiled sadly. “I hope so. Will you come back to me, when this is all over?”

  “I…”

  It was too painful, what she had to say. He clearly meant to wait for her, however many years it took. And she did love him, she realized. She loved him deeply – just not as deeply as she loved the life she had found. She would not sacrifice it to him, even if she might someday be tempted to. He had to know.

  “Hunter,” she said, trying again, “I love you. I do. But I can’t marry you, not now and not later. We couldn’t consummate it – I don’t want any children, ever. I don’t want anything that would keep me from studying wizardry, or theology, or anything I set my mind to. I shouldn’t have to hate you for doing that to me, and if we had any children, I would. You deserve better.”

  Hunter looked devastated, but he was as stoic about it as ever. He had never been one to rage or argue, and that did not change now. All he did was to nod dejectedly and nearly whisper, “I understand. Please come back anyway, if you can. I’ll miss you.”

  She gave him a hug and went to pack.

  The next morning, as Phaedra was filling a satchel with dry food, Psander came to her with the urn of ashes from Olimande’s body, his head resting on top. She had replaced the top of his skull, but Phaedra knew that if she pulled on his hair it would come off like a lid, and the thought nearly caused her to vomit. She took the urn gingerly and tried to think of something else.

  Olimande’s head was asleep, or at least pretending to be. Phaedra closed her own eyes and checked to make sure he wasn’t reading her mind. He wasn’t. The elf must really have been asleep, then. Maybe Psander’s interrogations had tired him out.

  “Before you go,” Psander said, and hurried back upstairs to fetch something. She returned a short while later with the bag of objects they had helped Atella to collect.

  “You were right about these,” she said. “They will be more useful to you than they are to me. They will not be needed for my wards, in any case. With the information I have extracted from Olimande, and with Hunter’s continued assistance in defending the fortress, I believe we will b
e safe for the time being.”

  Phaedra took the bag from her. If she was to give Bandu her report on the underworld, she would have to find her somehow. The dirt inside would help with that. The broken arrow and bucket would be useful too, if she ever had to find Narky or Criton. The latter was unlikely to be a problem, since Criton and Bandu were bound to be in the same place, but she supposed one could never be sure.

  Every soul in Silent Hall came to see her off. Phaedra bid farewell to them all, saving Hunter for last since she had all but parted with him already. What more was there to say? There was so much pain in his eyes.

  She pulled him close and gave him a kiss. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Good luck,” he replied.

  She left him there and struck out into the forest with Olimande’s urn in her left hand and a knife in her right. Every ten steps she stopped to carve a sigil onto a tree trunk. It was a simple sigil of her own design, a lit candle to symbolize her line in the Dragon Knight’s prophecy: let she who is dark bring light to the people. Ten steps were to avoid the elves, who counted in elevens, while she worked her magic to draw the attention of the plant life. This world was built on the roots of the original Yarek, and it was the plants that would have to come to her aid if she was to find the gateway she was looking for.

  When she reached the eleventh tree, she carved two sigils instead of one so that the total number would skip to twelve. She wasn’t sure how effective an evasion it was – Olimande woke up while she was carving the twelfth sigil.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. Phaedra could feel him trying to probe her mind, but she was ready this time, and he found himself locked out.

  “Tell me what Psander has done to you,” she deflected.

  “She has sawed me open and broken that of me which lies and deceives. She has made me more obedient. And she has hurt me, more than anything I could imagine. She has made me welcome death.”