The Tattered Lands

by Barbara Ann Wright

  Vandra didn’t ask if he was dead. The haunted look in Fieta’s eyes said it all. She spat to the side, her expression dark.

  “Good riddance,” Faelyn said.

  Vandra looked at him in shock. “What?”

  “He’s a traitor.”

  Vandra glanced at the twins. Fieta stared at Faelyn with murder in her eyes. Pietyr frowned, looking between everyone. “No,” Vandra said, “he was with us yesterday. These enemy seelie must have caught him.”

  Pietyr shook his head. “But he was heading straight for the forest. What’s he doing all the way out here?”

  “They probably captured him like they did Lilani,” Fieta said, still glaring. Then she looked away as if something occurred to her. “Except he’s armed and stabbed in the back.”

  “I’m telling you, he betrayed and attacked us in Parbeh,” Faelyn said.

  Vandra went through several scenarios in her head, but she needed more data. “I want to see him.”

  They all went forward this time, Faelyn grumbling that they should believe him. The mist grew thicker under the dark clouds overhead. Vandra knelt beside the body along with Pietyr.

  “Well,” he said, “the sword near his hand is his own, but if he’d been captured, he could’ve stolen it back at some point.” He shifted Burani’s arm. “There’re no marks on his wrists, so he wasn’t bound.”

  Fieta knelt near Burani’s head. “No wound here, either. They didn’t knock him out.”

  Vandra sighed, grateful they knew what they were doing. “I’m sorry, Fieta. I know you thought he was…” She cleared her throat. “Whether he was in league with them or not, they turned on him.”

  “He was,” Faelyn said.

  Fieta frowned at the corpse as if it had injured her personally.

  “We suspected some kind of cabal,” Faelyn said. “There might be more.”

  “Did he start the fire in Parbeh?” Vandra asked.

  “It’s possible.”

  Vandra thought back to Burani’s words about barely escaping the fire and not being able to save his friend. Maybe he’d injured himself pushing her deeper into the flames. She shuddered. Whatever had happened, they couldn’t linger if they hoped to catch Lilani.

  As they approached the pylon, Vandra expected to see the soldiers assigned to guard duty, but there was no one. Either they’d never arrived, or they were as dead as Ariadne, Burani, and so many others connected to this awful business.

  And Lilani wasn’t conveniently waiting.

  Vandra wasn’t surprised to see the seelie trail continue past the pylon, through the dead field, and into the wall of mist. Her heart sank as she thought of the aura of nauseating despair around the dead seelie. He’d had a deathly pallor, as if he hadn’t seen the sun in who knew how long.

  The sun never shown in the tattered lands.

  “Oh gods,” Vandra whispered. “They’ve been living in there.” And they’d taken Lilani inside. Vandra slowed her breathing, forcing herself to remain calm. Lilani could shroud. She’d be all right.

  For a little while.

  “Why come out if they can live in there?” Fieta asked. “Why break a pylon?”

  Faelyn frowned. “I thought I heard a human voice among them, too.”

  Humans living in the tattered lands? Vandra tried to think how it could be done without them turning into creatures like Face-mouth. “The why doesn’t matter at the moment,” she said. “Lilani’s in there, and we’re going to get her out.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  As they passed through the wall of mist, every nerve in Lilani’s body burned. She gasped, gulping in air that oozed through her lungs. She could almost feel it corrupting her from the inside out. Then, like the tender folds of an enclosing flower, Camilla’s magic flowed around her. It felt nothing like the warm blanket of her own power but drew from the taint around them and turned that malevolent energy back on itself like a mirror.

  Lilani’s own magic shivered, and she was tempted to pull it around herself even though she was already shrouded by Camilla’s power. Better to save it for her escape, though the desire to shroud persisted like an itch in the back of her throat.

  She braced herself for Camilla’s touch, a guiding hand since they were invisible, but she felt a tingle as Camilla’s magic touched those of her followers, all of their power joining like some great bubble. If she concentrated, Lilani could feel where the tattered seelie were standing, marking the edges of their shroud.

  So much for sneaking away; they’d feel it if she left.

  By their appearance, these seelie had been living inside the tattered lands for some time. They’d clearly adapted, their magic binding them into an unseen horde. Had it also made them murderous or just more casual about the loss of life?

  She couldn’t bring herself to ask, watching the mist instead. She recalled the hideous creature that had attacked Vandra and imagined it circling them, knowing someone was there but unable to find them. Or could it smell them, maybe tasting Lilani’s fear on the wind?

  The deeper they walked into the tattered lands, the more cries and gurgles echoed from the mist. Tall black shapes that loomed out of the gray haze proved to be the remains of trees, now bent and twisted. Lilani swore she saw one move, the branches snapping. A crash came from the left, and Lilani jumped, but Camilla’s touch on her shoulder kept her moving. No one spoke, and Lilani repeated in her mind that they were hidden. The creatures of the tattered lands couldn’t see through the shroud, or these seelie wouldn’t be alive.

  Something snuffled from the right. The mist swirled and parted, revealing a long snout bristling with teeth. Lilani clamped her lips together to keep from crying out. Camilla’s grip on her shoulder turned hard; the strength in those fingers could punch into bone. Lilani couldn’t help a gasp, and the snout twitched in her direction. She didn’t take her eyes from it as Camilla picked up speed. Before the mist closed over the snout again, she spotted something else between the teeth: little waving tentacles or tiny fingers, all of them pointing in her direction.

  The mist closed, and the thing was gone, but Lilani kept seeing it in her mind, wondering what other horrors surrounded her. Even her pain wasn’t enough to distract her from the fear. She tried to breathe deep, to keep hold of her sanity. To bolt into the mist would mean death, if Camilla didn’t simply crack her over the head again.

  They walked for an hour or so, but it felt like days, each moment counted by her racing heart. When she spotted a shadow ahead, she thought it might be another great beast, this one too large to pass, but the seelie kept their course. The shadow was as large as the library in the Court, maybe larger, and nothing that huge could miss their passing.

  Lilani’s heart thundered, and she tried to pull away, but Camilla’s other hand grabbed her arm, marching her forward. Were they going to feed her to this giant monster? Her breath came in gasps, her mind drowned by a fog of panic as thick as the one surrounding them. Any moment now she’d shriek and force Camilla to let go or wrench her arm from the socket.

  Then the mist parted to reveal not a monster but a structure. Lilani nearly laughed in relief, even with the danger. A tower loomed above them, rising from a larger mass. The tower’s corners were marked by jutting spears of brick. It seemed more like the buildings of Parbeh than anything in the Court, a stronghold inside the border of the tattered lands.

  She stumbled as the ground sloped, and Camilla kept her upright. The stronghold wasn’t as tall as she’d thought but had been built upon a short, steep, craggy hill, and the path to the tower took them through spires of pointed rock. She didn’t see trees or a single blade of grass; what the tattered lands couldn’t corrupt, they killed.

  Lilani glanced at the spire, and something tickled her memory, an offhand comment inside Awith’s tale. The humans had tried many experiments before hitting on the idea of the pylons. This had to be one of a series of watchtowers where humans had experimented with alchemy to stop the spread of the tattered lands. They
might have conceived of the pylons in strongholds such as these, but ultimately, the watchtowers had only been observatories to watch a wall of fog and malevolence gobble everything in its path.

  The path led to a small door set in the base of the tower. A squat, rectangular building joined the tower on the right, but Lilani could see through the windows that the inside was a ruin. Mist streamed through holes in the roof and walls. The tower appeared solid, and its door opened soundlessly. When everyone was inside with the door shut, the seelie blinked back into view along with the human, Maruk, and Lucian, still unconscious.

  Torches illuminated a staircase that circled the tower’s interior before disappearing through the ceiling. Lilani let out a deep breath, and some of her fear went with it. Behind the safety of the walls, her ire rose, and she focused on the lone human.

  “Why bring down the pylons and destroy your entire race?” If possible, Lilani was even angrier at him than the seelie. At least the seelie could survive in the tattered lands, but Maruk was condemning his kind to death.

  He smirked and turned his back without answer. She took a step toward him, ready to kick him in the name of humanity.

  Camilla’s iron grip didn’t let Lilani get far. She laughed, the sound echoing off the walls. “You’d better watch your back, Maruk.”

  He snorted, and Lilani twisted in Camilla’s grasp until Camilla leaned close to her ear. “Don’t worry about the humans, dear Lilani. They’ll be fine.”

  Lilani turned, the anger still bright inside her. “How?”

  “Well, not all of them,” Camilla said, “but those who work with us will be fine. Look around.” She gestured around the watchtower as if it were a palace made of gold. “There is safety here, and there are far too many humans packed into Citran. Those who agree not to fight us will have places like this, and they’ll be free to spread out as they can and have their kingdoms back, albeit a little smaller than before.”

  Lilani shook her head. “That’s nonsense! They could never go outside, not without seelie to shield them.”

  “Let them worry about that.” She tugged Lilani toward the staircase.

  Lilani went with her, not wanting to be carried or knocked out again. From the corner of her eye, she watched as another seelie carried Lucian through a door across from the exit. That left one more door, barred from this side, that probably led into the ruin.

  Lilani’s hand brushed the stone of the tower, and it sent a tingle up her arm. A glimmer ran through the brick, lines of syndrium wound through the rock. Whatever the humans had done here, it hadn’t been enough to stop the tattered lands, but it kept the mists out of the tower itself. Maybe it kept the creatures at bay, too?

  Maybe it would even help her.

  “What do you want of me?” Lilani asked. They passed a large open room on the second floor with tables, chairs, and a fireplace.

  “You have the run of the tower for now,” Camilla said, continuing upward. “I hope our walk through the tattered lands was enough to convince you how foolish it is to go outside.”

  They passed into a third floor, this one divided into rooms with only a narrow space for the stairs. “I suggest not poking around in anyone’s room,” Camilla said. “I won’t let them hurt you, of course, but it’s not wise to make enemies in so small a space.”

  “What do you want?” Lilani said again, trying to keep her voice firm.

  The fourth floor was much the same as the third. Lilani couldn’t tell one room from another. Camilla’s laughter rang like a bell. “It’s been so long since anyone raised their voice to me. Except for Remus, of course.” Her fingers caressed Lilani’s knuckles. “I stabbed him twelve times. An overreaction, perhaps, but I had so many grievances to make up for.”

  Lilani took the warning and fell quiet. The fifth floor was a large, open space, with windows looking out on the swirling mist. The floor was dominated by two tables bearing different kinds of equipment. Alchemy, Lilani guessed. Two closed doors stood on opposite sides of the room.

  Camilla sighed as she released Lilani and went to stand by the windows. As fearful as she was, Lilani shivered at the loss of contact and crossed her arms. Camilla wasn’t exactly friendly, but Lilani felt safer with her.

  “You said that you don’t want all the humans to die,” Lilani said. “So why sabotage the pylons at all?”

  Camilla didn’t turn. “We’re so much stronger now that we’ve lived inside the tattered lands. It’s time the rest of the seelie became strong, too.”

  Lilani’s stomach went cold. “So, you’re killing the pylons, forcing the tattered lands on our people, and risking the humans to…make the seelie stronger?”

  Camilla winked. “They just don’t know what they can become yet.”

  It was madness. Even with her shroud, Camilla had been driven mad by the tattered lands.

  “Remus wanted to kill you,” Camilla said. “He wanted to slaughter all the blood of Awith. He feared the power inside you. When mixed with human alchemy, it can do wondrous things.”

  She advanced slowly, and Lilani resisted the urge to back up. As if sensing her unease, Camilla stopped before touching her, but the look on her face said she was amused rather than concerned. “My room is there,” she said nodding to the left. “You will stay with me.”

  Lilani’s heart pounded, and she fought the urge to leap away.

  “In your own bed,” Camilla said, catching a strand of Lilani’s hair where it moved across her shoulders. “Unless you wish otherwise.” She laughed again, released Lilani’s hair, and strolled toward the table. “Don’t touch Maruk’s equipment.”

  “What of Lucian?” Lilani asked.

  Camilla shrugged. “Nurse him, bed him, kill him; I don’t care. If he attacks anyone, he’ll die. If he escapes, he’ll die. You already know I plan to use him against you. Can you kill him to avoid that? It would be the most merciful outcome.” She laughed as if the idea delighted her.

  Lilani fought the urge to sink to the ground and bury her head in her hands. This woman was as twisted as any creature in the tattered lands, and she didn’t even know it. Lilani turned, nearly running down the stairs.

  * * *

  Vandra stood at the border of the tattered lands, racked with indecision. She had to believe that Lilani would be all right since she could shroud, but as a human, Vandra had no protection.

  “I’ll follow them.” Faelyn’s color was a little better, and he was able to stand on his own, but he seemed unsteady.

  Pietyr shook his head. “Not on your own.” His lips pinched together so hard they turned white. Faelyn might not know what that meant, but Vandra did. If Faelyn tried to step into the tattered lands, Pietyr would sit on him.

  “I appreciate your concern,” Faelyn said, “but—”

  Pietyr took a step, but Fieta laid a hand on his arm, stopping him. “It’s more than concern, Faelyn. You’d get lost or eaten immediately, and we’d have no way to tell your people what happened to you or Lilani.”

  Whether he saw her side or was affronted by the thought that he’d be eaten if left on his own, he shut his mouth.

  “I need you here,” Vandra said quietly. If she couldn’t go after Lilani, the next best course would be sending Faelyn to gather his people and mount a rescue operation. Vandra wanted to do that, wanted Lilani back, but she had another duty. The pylon was right here. She had more to worry about than the fate of one seelie, as much as that pained her.

  “With your magical field,” she said, “I can turn this pylon back into syndrium. That’ll help when we do rescue Lilani.” She added that last part for his benefit as well as hers, though she felt like a traitor. She clenched her hands, quelling her desire to see Lilani rescued before anything else. When she looked to the others, Fieta nodded, Pietyr looked at Vandra with such sympathy she wanted to hug him, and Faelyn’s chin raised as if he might rebel. Well, why wouldn’t he? His friend, the daughter of his empress, had to be more important to him than any human, maybe even all hum
ans.

  And part of Vandra wanted him to ignore her and march off to fetch rescuers, but she said, “Please.” It was barely a whisper, all the force she could muster. “I want to go after her, but this is all I can do to help right now.”

  Indecision crawled across his face, and time seemed to creep by, the nauseating feel of the tattered lands washing over them every time the wind gusted.

  Fieta sighed, always the most impatient. “Give me some names.”

  Everyone turned to her as if they were marionettes tied to the same length of wood.

  She lifted her arms and dropped them. “Some seelie names, some things to say so they know I’m serious and not some crazy human. I’ll go into the forest as far as I can and shout my head off for help.”

  Vandra grinned. “I’ll give you some syndrium. It might help against any measures the seelie have for keeping humans out.”

  “Are you sure about this, Fie?” Pietyr asked.

  “I’ll be safer than you. Keep your head up out here.” They gripped each other’s arms before hugging. Fieta slapped Pietyr on the back and straightened, taking the syndrium Vandra gave her and stuffing it in one pocket as if it wasn’t the most valuable resource in the whole world.

  Faelyn blurted out a few names, some words that made no sense to Vandra, but she hoped the seelie would understand. He had her repeat them, and they sounded mangled, but maybe they’d be good enough.

  “I’ll stomp up and down the forest for a few hours,” Fieta said. “Then I’m coming back.”

  Vandra nodded. “I’ll be surprised if you last that long.”

  Fieta gave her a crooked grin before hugging her roughly. “Take care of yourself, Van.” She pushed away and put her hands on Vandra’s shoulders, looking deeply into her eyes. “Do what Pietyr says.”

  Vandra rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes.”

  “If he says, run, you run!”

  Vandra shrugged out of her grip. “I said yes! Now, speaking of running…” She nodded toward the forest, but when Fieta jogged away, Vandra smiled at her back, silently asking any gods to watch over her sister.