The Immortal Walker

by McKellon Meyer

Does she think I’m big enough to fly yet? I want to fly!

  Of Raina’s phoenix watching her with that same, inquisitive focus.

  Can I come back now, girl?

  Kaislyn stiffened. “What did you say?”

  Can I come back now, girl?

  She really was insane. Ikaros talked to a form of the phoenix. Raina supposedly did too before she became queen. All this time she thought she’d been talking to herself and it was... it was... Kaislyn felt dizzy. “Blast the mountains, I really am as crazy as he is.”

  I want to come back.

  “Why do I even have you?” Kaislyn yelled. “Why? I don’t want you. I don’t even like you.”

  The phoenix wriggled out of her grip and back onto her lap. If she throws me again, I’ll peck her eyes out.

  Was that all it took to get a phoenix of your own? Find an actual hatchling? How rare were those?

  Very rare. She did kill all the others with that poison water trick. The phoenix sounded older after helping itself to her memories, more experienced.

  “It was an accident.”

  No, it wasn’t, girl. We’re much too dangerous.

  Blazes, how horrible was she that she’d destroy every phoenix subconsciously because of what? Competition? They were all wrong. The phoenix wasn’t immortal so long as it was tied to the royal family. It was immortal because she was.

  Mostly true. I do still need to die.

  Just like Kaislyn. “But you won’t really die until I do.”

  Yes? Maybe?

  “How did you end up with the royal family?”

  I don’t know. She hasn’t done it for either of us.

  All those times she needed to sleep to heal herself. Just like when the phoenix healed people. And what of her own mind? Was she wrong? It wasn’t the Immortal House gifts that protected her mind from Ikaros and anyone else. It was because of the phoenix. It had been, was there, first. Did Athalia and the other phoenix rulers know she was first? Had found the phoenix?

  Of course not. I can pick and choose what I share. Just like she can. She was blocking me again.

  “Good. I don’t want you prying through everything.” What had Raina said? All of her memories were shared with the phoenix, but not all of the phoenix’s memories were shared with her. Except that Kaislyn could control what the phoenix knew of her own thoughts. She smiled a little. That was something at least. The idea of having a having a creature permanently attached to her, of always knowing where she was and what she was thinking was almost as bad as being stuck with Ikaros. Almost.

  That is not very nice. I am not insane.

  “Just give it a few years,” Kaislyn promised and tried to block the phoenix again. It wasn’t hard she discovered. Like her markers, she only had to assign another pin to the phoenix and then cover it with a bowl.

  Maybe I’ll put a bowl over her. Her pants are wet.

  “What are you right now? Do you have a name?” Never once could she recall anyone calling the phoenix anything but ‘the phoenix.’ Ugly Vulture didn’t count.

  Are names important?

  Hezere or Aamir?

  Ikaros or the Sorcerer?

  Leandra or the Immortal Walker?

  Kaislyn looked at the inquisitive phoenix. “Yes,” she said, quietly. “They make us who we are.”

  I shall think on what I want to be then.

  “You do that. Now let me think.”

  What are Weeping flowers?

  Kaislyn brushed a few molted feathers off her lap. “It’s the favorite flower of the Mountain God. Why?”

  But it’s her favorite flower?

  “More than one person can like something...” Kaislyn stared at the phoenix. It looked smug.

  She lived in the mountains. She’d always had an affinity for the tiny, white flower. Had died from it so many times its symptoms were almost a welcome familiarity to her. She battled against Ikaros, her presence in the mountains distracting him from the villages. She’d boasted of being the Mountain God but that had been for show. For flare.

  Girl, do I have to say it?

  Kaislyn’s voice came out in a whisper. “I’m the Mountain God. For real.”

  It was impossible. A good impossible this time? Kaislyn’s thoughts whirled.

  She was smiling. I do not like it when she smiles. It looks dangerous and not at all nice.

  “Do you know how the mountains were formed?” Kaislyn asked, voice dreamy.

  The phoenix tilted its head at her.

  “The gods had a fight. A big one. Hurry up and finish growing. I have a fight to finish.”

  Kaislyn returned to the clearing alone. She wasn’t surprised that Ikaros was still there. He looked up from his cross-legged seat on the ground with a bright smile, his eyes brimming with wild insanity. “Come back to me already?” he taunted.

  Kaislyn planted herself in front of Ikaros, hands curled into fists on her hips. “You’ve made a mistake.”

  “There are no mountains here. I will live forever and torment you forever!”

  She smiled. It was not a broad, mocking smile like Drazan’s. It was not a tight, scornful smile like Sveka’s. It was her smile. A smile that made an immortal creature like the phoenix unhappy. A smile of endings.

  Ikaros’ stopped mid-word upon seeing it.

  “Watch what you made me into, Ikaros.”

  There might not be any mountains visible at the moment. But they were here. All she had to do was find them.

  Kaislyn started to Shift, feeling her body getting stuck. She let the dizziness envelop her, focusing on the ground around her. It was just like a Shift attack. The mountains were here except they weren’t. Just like she could be in two different places at once.

  Ikaros drummed burnt fingers against a knee and watched her curiously.

  Her sinuses throbbed against her face and head like shards of glass. Her eardrums burst from the pressure. Her mouth turned dry, felt full of sand. Her skin turned black and purple with bruises, as if struck by dozens of rocks.

  There. Through the increasing dizziness, she caught a brief, wavering glimpse of glossy white peaks, pocked grey slopes...

  Kaislyn took a step.

  The ground broke. Orange rivers of lava oozed through long, jagged cracks. Trees crumpled and fell. Bits of ground rose, buckled, collapsed back into the lava. Rocks pummeled Kaislyn. A heavy weight pressed into her shoulder, healing her as rapidly as the rocks hit her and the fires burned her.

  The phoenix growled as it struggled to keep up with Kaislyn’s injuries. At least she hurt too much to have to worry about passing out just yet.

  She turned her focus on Ikaros, barely visible in the storm of stone and fire around them. He’d leapt to his feet. Was shouting. She saw his lips moving, but she could not hear him. His gaze was fastened on the phoenix. The ground convulsed in a Shift attack, but she knew that it wasn’t actually convulsing yet.

  She lunged for Ikaros. Her nails dug into his arm. The phoenix’s claws dug into her shoulder. Ikaros grabbed the phoenix, his hands fastening around its neck. It felt as though he had his hands around her own. Her bones were bruising, cracking.

  Kaislyn yanked at the mountains as her vision turned a foggy blue.

  The convulsing ground stilled for one long moment.

  And the mountains burst into existence around them.

  Ikaros let go of the phoenix with a surprised cry. The phoenix lost its balance on her shoulder and tumbled off. It vanished in the wild, uncontrolled Shift. She took a blistered step, let the impossible Shift end.

  Kaislyn’s grip slipped from Ikaros and she fell a few steps down a steep mountain slope. Near her, near the top of the mountain was a gaping hole from which oozed fresh streams of lava. She recognized the volcano, the section of mountain. The Cene Volcano. Ikaros’ mountain home. That wasn’t right, she thought, bemused. They should be in the grove of pine trees from before.

  Ikaros screamed in surprise and rage as he realized what she had done. He’d arrived r
elatively unscathed, Kaislyn having borne the brunt of the violence from the forming mountains.

  Kaislyn forced her attention back to Ikaros. She grabbed him by the arm again and Shifted to the humid summer night Hezere had shown her.

  In his birth life, Ikaros did not revert back to the age he had been when he’d first Shifted, young and strong. Instead, he was old. Very old. His body bent over with arthritis, his blue eyes faded, his hands withered and burnt. His beard and hair were entirely grey, twisted and long. His lungs and voice were largely unchanged.

  “What have you done?” he bellowed, writhing in her grasp. His arm was skinny and frail under her grip. It was all she could do to hang onto him. Without the phoenix, her deaths were catching up with her quickly. Her newly-broken neck made her body strangely sluggish to movement.

  Her voice was low and weary. “You killed the House of the Serpent. My house. You tried to destroy the House of the Phoenix. My house again. You have trespassed in the mountains. My mountains. You are an insane murderer and you will not escape death any longer, Ikaros.”

  He laughed at her. “You can barely stand without me for support!” He began to Shift.

  Kaislyn still holding onto him, counter Shifted, tried to keep them where they were. They tugged back and forth, Ikaros’ face turning redder with rage, Kaislyn’s paler with fatigue.

  “Stop it!” he yelled. “I don’t know how you got that phoenix or what you did to the mountains, but I will find out how and it will be you who runs from me, you horrible creature!” Ikaros fumbled at her waist, grabbed the dagger there. Kaislyn lurched to the side as the dagger sliced in a long, shallow arc across her gut.

  Kaislyn groaned but did not let go. “How many times will it take before you realize that stabbing me doesn’t work?” she gasped.

  He yanked on her arm, hard.

  Kaislyn fell into him. He was going to Shift, escape from his birth life. Again. Desperate, Kaislyn reached out for the mountain behind them, seeking an anchor for herself. She didn’t have to last long. Ikaros was weaker than she was.

  Except that she was bleeding. And her neck was broken. Too many deaths too close together.

  The ground rumbled beneath their feet. Grehesh said the mountains contained fires. And they were standing on a volcano. She Shifted against Ikaros. Her mind blurred, sulfur choked her lungs. Two places at once. Ikaros was a hazy grey figure in front of her. Behind her, she could feel the burning heat of an exploding volcano. And she could take things with her in a Shift.

  Kaislyn pulled again.

  The mountain above them detonated in a roar of lava, smoke, and ash.

  Kaislyn lost her grip on Ikaros. She fell as the air turned black. She inhaled ash and choked. Her skin was burning. She couldn’t move.

  Get out of there, girl!

  The phoenix’s panicked cry broke through Kaislyn’s dying haze. On her hands and knees, she pushed herself with one foot, an improvised step. She Shifted.

  And landed a few days later next to Ikaros.

  What remained of him.

  Ikaros had turned to dark stone. His form was bent, frozen in an instant, an arm rigidly raised above his face. She could barely pick out his features in the layers of hardened, ashen rock. His mouth was open, teeth bared, a ruined version of one of his precious statues.

  She carefully touched Ikaros’ arm. It was hot to the touch. Suffocated and burned to death all in one go.

  Kaislyn sat next to Ikaros, sat in the warm ash that covered the ground and looked around them. The sky was a faint blue, a layer of ash coloring the air and surrounding area grey. She looked back at Ikaros. At the unmoving stone that would never mock her again. Would never sneer at her. Would never giggle after killing her.

  It was over.

  What did that even mean? Over?

  The wind stirred the ash around her, covering her in a light, sooty layer. Kaislyn did not brush it away. It seemed appropriate, somehow. She pressed a hand against her bleeding stomach.

  “Had to get the last word in, didn’t you?” she asked the statue in a ragged, smoke-clogged voice. Her eyes stung from the ash, her limbs shook. She was certain, she had both bled and suffocated to death just now. Kaislyn stood with a groan and looked down at him.

  She couldn’t just leave him here. He’d been a king. Once. One arm pressed against her middle, Kaislyn grabbed Ikaros’ bent arm and dragged him toward the now silent volcano edge.

  “It’s more than you deserve and certainly not what I deserve.” She shoved him over and watched him disappear into the darkness below.

  There was a boom and black soot exploded upwards making Kaislyn cough blood.

  Though it was now safe in the mountains—her mountains—Kaislyn only wanted to go home and see a familiar face. Zarif’s. Her parents. She’d even take Raina at this point. Ripping the sleeves off her shirt, she wrapped them tightly around her middle. Then she started limping in toward the direction of the Second City.

  As she started walking, she automatically checked the markers in her head. Ikaros’ was gone. Exultation washed through Kaislyn and was gone almost immediately as the consequences finally struck her.

  She was alone.

  Ikaros was insane and a murderer and vicious. But he had understood her. Knew what living forever meant.

  Not true, girl.

  Kaislyn looked up at the large, red bird coasting above her.

  “You know, you could help and actually heal me this time instead of making unwanted comments.”

  The phoenix landed on a rock near her and glared at her with accusing eyes.

  “I didn’t mean to lose you... back there. You fell off.” Kaislyn waved her free hand vaguely. “You survived and found someone to torment with your annoying opinions anyway. I’m just glad I don’t have to deal with it.”

  The phoenix shook its head. I shall wait until I am summoned back to the Immortal Walker. I will wait. I will watch. I will guard.

  “You’re even more arrogant than I am.”

  The phoenix rose into the air. It hovered for a moment in front of Kaislyn. Then, so softly, it was little more than a sigh. I am Xipil.

  The phoenix turned and drifted toward the Second City. “Send someone to get me!” Kaislyn shouted after it.

  There was no response and Kaislyn remembered too late that she was in Ikaros’ birth life. No one to send for.

  Dully, she Shifted, returning to what she still thought of as her birth life. She resumed her methodical plod. Each step grew harder, her vision wavered, her sense of direction slipped. She sagged to the ground. Might as well as sit here for a while. Maybe even forever. That sounded nice. Not ever moving again.

  “Kaislyn!”

  Kaislyn tried to focus her blurry eyes on a shape moving below her. It sharpened into Zarif. He leapt off a horse he was riding and ran toward her.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked stupidly.

  “The phoenix told the queen right after you vanished that you were at the Cene Volcano so I came here. We all did, but I had the faster horse,” he added, pointing at something too far away for Kaislyn to see.

  “Oh. You’re smiling,” Kaislyn said.

  He wasn’t just smiling. A grin covered his face. It turned into a scowl a moment later. He’d noticed her blood-soaked middle. “You don’t do anything half-heartedly, do you, Kaislyn?”

  “Ikaros—”

  “I will throttle him myself.”

  “Can’t. He’s dead. Forever this time.”

  “Good. I’m getting tired of you always coming home and bleeding all over the place. People were beginning to complain.” He scooped her up easily in his arms. “Come on. I’m taking you home.”

  “Just so long as you don’t cheat at Drowned Man’s Choice anymore. Ikaros cheated. He always found a way out. And I’m so tired of always having to be cleverer than everyone else. Cheating is exhausting.”

  Zarif’s chuckle rumbled through his chest, against her ear. “Somehow I think you’ll change you
r mind. You hate to lose more than anyone else. You’re babbling anyway.”

  No, she wasn’t babbling this time. She might be in a lot of pain, but she knew what she was saying as she said it. She meant it too. She would not let herself turn into Ikaros, always scheming, always escaping, always cheating.

  Again, girl. Again.

  Again, Kaislyn agreed. She would not turn into Ikaros again, completely unhinged, wild, uncaring.

  Her eyelids drifted shut. Safe. At long last, she was safe. She didn’t have to be afraid anymore. Didn’t have to look over her shoulder for a giggling, mad figure waiting to kill her. What would that be like?

  Very boring, I should imagine.

  Kaislyn was too tired to even smile. What had the phoenix told her?

  I am Xipil.

  Names were important. She’d been Leandra, a scared slave girl. She’d been the Immortal Walker and destroyed kings and crowned queens. She’d been the Mountain God, creating the mountains and destroying would-be gods. She’d been Ikaros.

  What was Kaislyn? What sort of life did that name have? She cracked her eyes and looked at Zarif’s calm face. She turned her head a little to look down the hill at the distant figures of her family climbing toward them.

  Maybe it was time to find out.

  Books by Mckellon Meyer

  The Phoenix Queen

  The Immortal Walker