by Kira Brady
“Come.” Constance tugged his elbow and led him off the main drag. “Sarah,” she whispered. “She’s my sister’s child. Sarah escaped her Drekar kidnapper, but she died giving birth. Died in my arms with my promise to protect her child. Her last words to me were, ‘Call her Lucia, for she is my light.’ How could I turn the baby away after that?” Her voice was choked with unshed tears. “Any Aether mage could tell the child had a soul, so who would know she was half-Drekar? There was nothing to give it away. I knew the safest spot for her would be in Corbette’s fortress. She should have been safe! But the Unraveling—” Constance dropped his elbow and raised her chin. “She is my child even if she didn’t come from my womb, and I won’t rest until she is home safe again.”
Kai had never seen a light so fierce in Constance’s eyes, and he didn’t doubt her pledge, Tiamat be damned. “I just want to know if the baby in Tiamat’s belly will be a soul-sucker.”
“You can’t know. You can’t predict what form your child will take, and it doesn’t matter. The only choice you have is this: will you claim the child as your own, or will you abandon it to certain misery and death?”
Kai took a step back from her. Could he love a child who had the power to destroy worlds like its demonic mother? What would Jace do? The Lady have mercy, but he didn’t know.
Finding the end of the maze from the tree of eyes was simple. Corbette walked hand in hand with Lucia. The palace was even more fascinating than Lucia had described. The towers seemed to shift in the air as they drew near. It was so familiar and yet unreal. He’d been here before in dreams, different parts of nightmares from his childhood, hotter snatches of memory as a teen, the long burn of the Drekar/Kivati war that preyed on his sleep as the rising body count kept him tossing and turning late into the night. He recognized the twisted black towers and the poison blooms of the garden, the impossible architecture driving his eyes away, the carved gargoyles perched along the gutter, and the whirling black birds in the skies overhead. The strange sky lit the onion domes from above like fireworks.
“I’ve often wondered if artists have found inspiration in the Land of the Dead,” he said. “I didn’t think there were that many mortals who could traverse the realms.”
“Maybe they came in dreams.”
“Yes. Have you dreamed of this place?”
“Yes. Nightmares more than dreams. People reaching out to me. Their hands clawing at my clothes, pulling me back. I could never escape them.” She wrapped the blue cloak around her body.
“And now?”
“Now I think perhaps their hands weren’t reaching out in anger. Maybe they didn’t want to hold me back, but sought my help.”
Corbette gave a sharp nod. “I dreamed of this place, but only just recently.”
“Has your dream come to pass?”
Not all of it. But he couldn’t hide the knowledge from her. She’d stripped him bare.
“I see,” she said. “And the worst is yet to come. Let’s get the Scepter and see what we can do.”
A gauntlet of black suits of armor lined the path to the wide front doors. As they passed, each in turn pounded his pennant on the ground three times. Corbette braced himself to be stopped, but nothing else happened. Close up, he could see the walls of the palace were covered in a thin sheet of spider silk.
The doors opened silently for them. Inside was again the place he’d been in dreams: the endless hallways he’d raced down with some unseen assailant at his heels, the line of mysterious doors that never led back home. Paintings covered every inch of wall in thick, ornate frames. He had the sense that he recognized the artists, but these paintings were all unfamiliar. They depicted everything from legend to ordinary, everyday people. Pastoral scenes and battles, mothers and children, burlesque dancers and animals. No order, just endless color and movement.
“It’s as if all the art museums in the world were squished together and housed at the Louvre,” Lucia said, “except without a curator. I could spend eternity here and never grow bored.”
A long pause. “Perhaps that’s the idea.”
The halls were filled with birds. They swooped down the long hallways and perched in the candelabras. Watching, waiting, and silent.
After what seemed like forever speckled with wrong turns and dead ends, Corbette and Lucia found the doors to a grand hall where servants in black livery waited to let them in. Their faces were completely blank—no eyes, noses, or mouths, just a flat stretch of skin across their skulls. They took hold of the handles and opened the doors.
Color. Corbette saw nothing but color. All patterns, all shades. A kaleidoscope of polka dots and stripes, prints and solids. So bright, it took his eyes a long moment to adjust. Then he saw the people—men and women in masks and gaudy costumes spinning across a wide dance floor. Their clothing spanned all eras, but was alike in the flashy colors and eclectic patterns found in nature. Purple polka dots on a rose skirt with a saffron striped bodice. Seersucker pants and gold chains. And the masks—every shape and style, wood-carved, wire and plaster crafted, feathers and sequins and elaborate headdresses of bone and taffeta. A woman in a simple Grecian-style white gown wore a five-foot headdress of crimson feathers with a small eye mask carved of gold. Real bone horns protruded just below the explosion of feathers. Not all were beautiful—another wore a gorgon head of snakes.
A man all in green wore a head that was twice too large for his body and shaped as that of a bulbous frog. His eyes were wet. He blinked at them in a slow, steady appraisal. “Intruders,” he croaked.
“Guests,” said the snake woman.
The dancing and talking ground to a halt. Those nearest drew back. Corbette noticed the walls and ceiling hung with cobwebs. The candles flickered with black flame. The elegantly dressed people were familiar but not, their elaborate masks transforming them into something beautifully monstrous. An accusation in their eyes pricked his conscience, but for what, he didn’t know. They tittered behind fans. Corbette was too old and hardened to care what the polite society of the dead thought of him. He glanced to Lucia. Her back was straight as an arrow, but she held herself more confidently than she had in Kivati Hall. Something had changed for her, and he was proud. She was more than a match for these cockatoos.
“The living have no place here,” the Frog said.
Corbette stepped forward. “The Raven has always been welcome on both sides of the Gate.”
The Frog’s head jerked. His tongue shot out and snapped back as if he tasted their scent on the air. “I see no Raven. Just a man.”
“Where is the Spider?” Corbette demanded.
“We don’t want you, faithless one,” the Frog said.
“Faithless?” Corbette repeated. Fury seeped across his vision. “We have passed the Lady’s tests. Jumped Her hurdles. But She punished me for trying to save my people? Tiamat is taking over the world, and you do nothing!”
The dancers hissed.
“You have learned nothing,” the Frog said.
“I’ve kept the faith alive for more than a century. The Kivati are whole only because I fought off our enemies and upheld the old ways. And what did I get for it? The crash of the Gate ruined the land, decimated my people, and now Tiamat has risen to enslave us all, while you drink and dine and dance—”
“Your people?” The Frog croaked a laugh, and the crowd echoed him. “Ah, but there you are wrong. Tell me, who holds together the threads of the world? Who created the Aether to tie the universe together when the birds of torment tried to rip it apart? And who welcomes Her children home at the end of their journey, here to Her bosom, here to rest in Her halls? Do you?”
“So She only cares for the Dead now?” Corbette’s voice was flat. “And the dead have turned their back on their brothers and sisters on the other side.”
“Still so arrogant,” the Frog said.
“And right,” Corbette growled.
“What a room full of cowards,” Lucia said. “Dancing? Drinking? Are you all blind to th
e horror that’s risen in the Living World?”
“Am I blind?” A girl stepped forward from out of the crowd. She pushed up a mask made of crow feathers to reveal familiar Kivati features and the proud nose of the bird tribes.
Beside him, Lucia gave a small sob. “Georgie,” she whispered.
He remembered her friend. She’d died in the Unraveling.
“Am I blind?” A man stood forward and pushed up his mask of eagle feathers. Another Kivati. Another name on the long list of casualties that woke Corbette in the middle of the night.
Another stepped forward, and another. Men and women who’d died in the Great Seattle Fire stood next to others who had perished in the battles afterward. He saw faces he’d not seen since boyhood. People whose old black-and-white tintype photographs hung in Kivati Hall, and he’d given them no notice, but here they were in “living” color. The victims of the Unraveling walked forward and nodded in turn.
Last came the newly dead. Corbette could name them all. Lucia held tightly to his hand, and he was grateful for her strength as one by one his murdered friends revealed themselves. These were the surprises. The ones who’d come through the Gate behind him. Lady be, so many. How could such an atrocity go on and the Spider do nothing?
Will stepped forward and threw back his mask of silver and vermilion. His feathers soared above his head, casting giant shadows on the walls. “Am I blind?” he asked. “The dead who look back never find peace. The dead who walk the shores of the living have signed up for eternal torment. Are you a king to us all, Emory Corbette, or only to those who haven’t passed through?”
Corbette straightened. “I would lead you all, if you’ll have me.”
Lucia wiped the tears from her eyes. So many dead. So many with hope in their eyes looking to Corbette to lead them. But lead them where? The room sat hushed, waiting.
Who will lead them? a voice hissed in her mind. Like the wind in the Valley of the Gods, it was split into a thousand hissing sounds, bouncing into her head from all directions.
She couldn’t tell who spoke. Corbette will, she thought as she searched the room. The high gothic ceilings disappeared beneath a murder of crows. Silent as the grave, they wheeled across the room, biding their time, beaks sharp.
But who will lead him? the voice said again. The blind leading the blind will not move far, and the world calls for balance. The Aether is unraveling.
Lucia finally pinpointed the direction of the voice. Across the sea of color, the far wall hid in shadow. She studied it, and the shadows shifted. A monstrous creature came into focus, and it was all Lucia could do not to scream. Black as obsidian, her abdomen stretched halfway to the gothic arches that held up the ceiling. Her legs were thick as light poles and hairy as a Newfoundland dog. Lucia had mistaken the legs for pillars when she’d first come in. They bent at the level of the window tops and plummeted back to earth. But her head sucked in Lucia’s attention, even though a thousand voices screamed inside her, Don’t look into her eyes. Which eyes? How many eyes? Their silver depths drew her in like funhouse mirrors and reflected herself back at her in a hundred variations: young, old, thin, fat, pretty, hideous, injured, whole, glowing and white as the grave. But in each one, something deeper than any of those shallow appellations applied to human skin showed through. There was a continuity of spirit—bright, sparkling with Aether. Lucia wasn’t the same woman who’d walked through the Gate, but her spirit was recognizable no matter the shape. A feeling of destiny struck her. She’d been here before, and she would come again when the world needed her.
Me? she asked the Spider. I can’t do anything about the Aether. I can hardly control my own Change. Corbette is the most powerful—
Unity, the Spider said inside her head, balance. Your blood unites us. Your blood destroyed us. Together, you can weave the threads back together. Hurry, child. Sing the song of making.
The voice reverberated in her bones as if it was drilling into her back teeth. Lucia’s jaw shook. Song of making? Was this another test?
Corbette pulled her to him. She’d forgotten him entirely, but his hand in hers was an anchor, and he used it ruthlessly to yank her into the circle of his arms. The vision of the Spider was replaced by his welcoming chest. The scent of cedar calmed her racing heart. He wrapped her in his arms and crooned into her hair. “What’s wrong? Tell me.”
“Do you see Her?”
“Who? The Lady of Death?”
Lucia nodded. “At the end of the room.”
“I see only webs and shadow.”
“She’s trapped in the unraveling Aether webs.”
“How do we free her?”
“I don’t know.”
His arms tightened. “Lady Spider,” he called. “We need the Scepter of Death. Tiamat has risen. The world cries out for you once again.”
The crowd rattled. The frog man stomped forward. “Leave us. You upset the dead with your presence. We don’t wish to be reminded of all we have lost.”
Corbette gave him the Raven’s death glare. The musicians started up again, and the host of dead donned their masks and picked up their skirts to swirl about the dance floor. After a moment, Lucia couldn’t tell they were masks anymore. The violins screeched a minor key waltz. The flames in the candles grew taller.
The doors opened again, and the Enkidu stumbled in. Skin red as clay, eyes a film of white, he looked the worse for wear. He was missing a finger on his left hand, and his movements were rocky, like he’d injured his right leg.
Lucia wondered what tests he’d been sent on the journey here. Help us, she tried to send to the Spider, but the Lady didn’t respond.
The Enkidu advanced. Corbette tried to block his way, but the clay man picked him up and threw him aside like a sack of potatoes. Tiamat had imbued him with some of her strength, and Corbette couldn’t match it. The Frog moved aside with a short bow, and the Enkidu slipped into the crowd of dancers.
“Why are you helping Tiamat?” Lucia yelled at the Frog. “Why would you choose chaos?”
“Only chaos brings the true diversity of life,” he said cryptically. “We do not interfere with the affairs of mortals.”
Rising, Corbette ran after the clay man. He tackled him from the back, and they crashed to the ground, locked together. Corbette held on as if he could squeeze his opponent to death. Twisting in his grip, Enkidu socked him across the jaw. Blood splattered the ground.
Lucia rushed over and dug her fingers into the Enkidu’s eyes. She tried to pry away his head, but the man wasn’t human. He knocked her back, and the two men rolled across the floor, leaving a trail of crimson. She searched the surrounding faces for help. The masks stared back at her. There was no mercy in the dead.
The blood on the parquet floor started to bubble. Steam rose, and the stench of rot. Lucia backed away. “What’s happening?”
“An unmaking,” the Frog said.
Her stomach clenched. “What happens when someone dies in the Land of the Dead?”
“They cease to exist.”
“Like when a Drekar dies?”
“To be unmade is the ultimate punishment. The gods showed no mercy to Tiamat’s dragon spawn.”
“But Corbette—”
“The Lady’s threads hold the world together, but the crash broke them apart. You must reweave the web.”
Lucia stared at him. “I don’t know how to do that.”
The Frog shrugged. “Then your lover will no longer exist in any world.”
“Tell me! What is the song of making? How do I sing it?”
“Listen,” he said.
She focused on the sounds around her. Beneath the hum of violins, she caught the crackle of the fire, the chuff of gowns and slippers across the floor, the tap of fans and light jingle of bells on costumes. Overhead, the glide of wings through the air. Deep beneath her feet, the heartbeat of the world. It rose into the walls, thump thump, thump thump, and settled into her bones.
Closing her eyes, she shut out the screaming
colors of the ballroom. In the dark, blind, her hearing sharpened. She could feel the Aether threads stretching through the room, flowing to the beat of the phantom heart. Where did it come from and where did it return to? The sparkling water bore the taint of the Unraveling, like oil on the tide. The warp and weft of the universe in a liquid essence, like time, it had no beginning and no end. How did she fix it? How could anyone expect her to know how to do this? It was too vast, too important.
Corbette cried out. She was pulled from her exploration, fear drowning out her senses. He needed her. Her, with her mixed blood, Kivati and Drekar, two ancient enemies united in one small body. She held her palms up and closed her eyes again. Soft power, Grace had called it. Wisdom and compassion. Violence couldn’t fix the Aether—it could only unravel it further.
Focusing on the deep heartbeat, she matched her pulse to its stronger pull. Blood, bone, and flesh, all these were transient, fleeting properties. She dropped her awareness of those things, and was left with the blinding light of soul. She felt invisible wings of Aether spring to life from her back and the spirit of the Crane flow over her. She joined her soul with it. Not two souls sharing one body like before, but one soul, united, lighting up the world.
The burst of power radiated out in every direction. The ground shook. The musicians faltered; dancers were thrown to the ground. The very foundation of the palace began to crack.
Across the worlds, she heard Tiamat shriek.
Out of chaos came life, Lucia thought. She opened her mouth and began to sing. The song filled every corner of her soul and spilled out to light the corners of the room. It burned away the cobwebs and melded the cracks together. Shadows fled as the light burst out in a fire of sound. At the far end of the room, her song lit the grand dais where the Spider waited. She flickered, clean Aether swirling around Her monstrous form, and the hideous legs collapsed. When the dust cleared, a woman lay across a throne carved of ebony.
Lucia came to the end of her song. There was a great rushing in the room as all the Aether retreated like the tide releasing the beach cove, and then it came raging back in, directed, hungry.