“Edmund Bale.” It could be no one but Warbur Drake. She spoke from across the barricade, a quarter mile down a road filled with raging monsters and screaming villagers, and yet Edmund heard her as clearly as though she had stood at his side. “I pictured you somewhat taller. Go on, then. Try your little spell. It might present a salutary challenge.”
“Edmund, Edmund, you’ve got to cast the spell!” Geoffrey grabbed his arm. “Edmund!”
Edmund ducked down, out of view of Warbur Drake and the Skeleth, and frantically studied his tablet. He jammed Sign to Sign, guessed at angle and chord, hoping to find some way to get it past a counterspell.
The first of the Skeleth to come over the barricade did so at a flying leap, knocking Missa Dyer spinning off the back of the wagon. Warbur Drake sounded her double horn once again, the notes rippling against each other brash and sour, and the rest of the creatures swarmed toward the square.
“Edmund!” Katherine swung her pole down hard, knocking a second Skeleth back before it could gain its footing on the spars and climb over. “We can’t hold them off for long!”
Missa Dyer let out a cough as she hit the ground, and lay limp. The creature kept coming, dodging in between the row of villagers on the barricade, rushing out to leap on top of Missa with its sword held high.
“Get off my sister! Get off her!” Jordan Dyer jumped from his post on the barricade. He brought his pole crashing down on the man inside the twitching, reaching coils. The Skeleth staggered—blood poured from the man’s nose, then his mouth. He dropped the sword in his hands, blinked, and seemed to wake up—then he collapsed and died—
—and the Skeleth took Jordan instead. It leapt and reached up the pole, and before Jordan could so much as scream, he was one of them, a dead-faced monster.
“Don’t kill them!” Edmund shouted at the top of his lungs. “You must not kill or the Skeleth will take control of you!”
He took one more glance at his tablet and books—it was now or never. He brought himself into the Sign of Perception.
“YOU-WHO-CRAWL-BELOW, I NAME YOU, I GRIP YOU.” It felt like it was working—an answering hum in his mind seem to vibrate with his voice. “I SHUT YOU FROM THE SUN, I—”
His mind snapped and reeled. The air around him hissed, then with a whoomph his breath seemed to flee from his mouth, and then from his lungs.
“AIR IS FICKLE, AIR BREAKS FAITH.” The voice of the wizard woman crackled on the wind. “BREATHE OUT, AND FIND IT FLED. OUT AND NEVER IN AGAIN. THE AIR BE DRAWN FROM YOU, AND UNMADE. THE AIR BE UNMADE WITHIN YOU, AND SO BE YOU UNMADE.”
Edmund pitched over, grabbing for the stone leg of the statue. He missed—he struck his head, seeing stars, white, then black.
“Edmund?” Geoffrey grabbed him by the collar. He ripped his shirt wide. “Edmund, why aren’t you breathing?”
Edmund flailed out with both his arms. The pain was beyond bearing, beyond knowing. His lungs pushed out, out and out, sucked into themselves within his chest.
“AIR IS STEADY, AIR IS JUST.” Another voice rose to a chant, higher in pitch than the first. “AIR ABHORS THE EMPTY, AIR FLOWS WHERE IT IS DRAWN. THE AIR RISE WITHIN YOU, MADE UPON THE TIDES OF BREATH. BE THE AIR REMADE WITHIN YOU. BREATHE. EDMUND, BREATHE.”
With what felt like a pop, Edmund started breathing again. He rolled onto his side, bubbling spit from his mouth, and saw Ellí up on the barricade, her arms in the action of the Sign of Air and the Sign of Making. Between her and Warbur Drake thrummed a humming shift of wind, slices of it buffeting back and forth. The two spells canceled each other, brought the air back into balance—but the effort cost Ellí far more than her opponent. The last residues of the spell smacked Ellí left and then right, lances of air released unbalanced in the world.
“It’s that wizard girl!” Geoffrey reached for an arrow. “Katherine, beside you on the barricade, it’s her!”
“No!” Edmund grabbed his brother’s leg. “No, she’s helping us!”
Katherine stepped along the barricade toward the place where Ellí stood swaying from the cost of her spell. She turned to look at Edmund, sword in hand.
“Trust her,” said Edmund. “Trust me.”
Ellí staggered down. Katherine reached out to cushion her fall.
Edmund gave his brother a shove. “The old woman on the road, the one with silver hair, she’s your target. Go on!”
Geoffrey raced up to the barricade. “There’s a wizard down there—that one, the woman by the dye tubs. Bring her down!” He fumbled for his bow, then an arrow.
“I see her.” Hob Hollows grabbed for his bow and took aim along with Geoffrey and a few others—but then, with a searing blast of words from Warbur Drake, every longbow on the barricade snapped at once. Ellí lay dazed, unable to counter the spell. In the confusion that followed, another Skeleth nearly made it over the wall, and it was only by the surprisingly quick action of Wat Cooper, knocking it back with a hard swing from his garden hoe, that it did not kill Ellí then and there.
Edmund gained his feet, though when he did, he stumbled, seeing gray. The bow-breaking spell rippled in the eye of his mind—its cost, the fact that as each bowshaft hit the ground, it took root and turned into a lovely, fragrant young yew tree from which dozens of new longbows could eventually be made, must not have bothered Warbur Drake very much. His neighbors, family and friends fought a desperate stand against the onrushing Skeleth. He could spare no thought for his own pain. He must not fail.
“Edmund, look out!” The warning came nearly too late. Edmund leapt aside from the swing of a long pole. He had forgotten all about Jordan Dyer, consumed within the luminescent coils of the Skeleth. Jordan was a young man in good health, and the Skeleth used all the strength he possessed. Edmund could do nothing but roll away from his books and off the pedestal of the statue.
Katherine jumped from the barricade, tackling Jordan to the ground—but almost at once, Jordan was up on his feet, seeming to care nothing for the bruises and cuts he had suffered. Katherine grabbed up the sword dropped by the first of the Skeleth and chopped his pole away, but that only brought him forward at a headlong run, without the slightest fear of her blade. Katherine backed and twisted, leading Jordan on. When at last he sprang, she leapt aside through the door of the mill, and he tumbled past and down the steep bank of the Tamber.
“MOTHER OF RIVERS, RISE AND FLOOD THE EARTH.” Warbur Drake started up another chant. “SWELL FOR RAGE, BRING THE ENDING, DROWN ALL IN THE DEEPENING TIDE. RISE, MOTHER, RISE YOU SULLEN, RISE YOU HATEFUL, RISE—”
“SLEEP, MOTHER, SLEEP!” Ellí spoke over her, her words desperate, out of rhythm. “MOTHER OF RIVERS, COME TO REST. THE EARTH EMBRACES YOU. BE STILL, COME TO REST.”
Edmund heard the sound of crashing, rushing water from the east, as though a flash flood had started up without warning. The river rose, waves lapped up hard against the banks—then sank again, receding.
“Edmund, hurry!” Ellí trembled on her knees. She spat up a gut-full of water. “I can’t hold her for long.” Edmund watched her teetering from her imperfectly cast counterspell, the unbalanced Signs around her snapping and tearing at her in ways that ordinary folk could not perceive. Any doubt he had that she truly meant to make amends disappeared.
“Everyone, everyone from the bridge, to the barricade!” Katherine rushed back across the square, with Martin Upfield, Nicky Bird and a dozen more villagers. “We’ve got to give Edmund time.” With speed born both of skill and desperation she charged at a Skeleth that had made it over the wall, a man who held a woodsman’s axe and looked about to cleave Wat Cooper in half with it. She stabbed in, looking for a moment as though she meant to kill, but instead got her blade hooked under the axe-head and then jerked the weapon away, disarming the creature. Martin crashed into it a heartbeat later, bowling it backward through the dirt of the square.
Edmund gained his feet. “YOU-WHO-CRAWL
-BELOW, I NAME YOU, I GRIP YOU.” He made the Sign of Closing. “I SHUT YOU FROM THE SUN, I SHUT YOU FROM THE AIR, I CONFINE YOU.”
One breath went by, and another.
“Oh, no.” Edmund staggered. Terror rose to claim him. “No, no.”
The Skeleth came on, clawing and grabbing at the barricade, as though he had not spoken a word.
“Hold them!” Katherine leapt up onto the wagons and bashed down at a Skeleth with the flat of her blade. “Edmund, hurry! Try again!”
Edmund looked out in horror from his perch atop the pedestal. The Skeleth bunched in between the inn and Jordan’s workshop, clambering for holds, getting knocked down by villagers, but then getting up again without seeming to feel the pain of it. Warbur Drake looked much the worse for wear, swaying behind the Skeleth—but not half as bad as Ellí.
“Edmund.” Ellí got to her feet. She met eyes with him. “I’m sorry for what I did. The true me, the real me, liked you very much.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Edmund saw something move through the ruined land beyond the barricade, someone in armor galloping at full tilt up the Longsettle road. He held a sword in one hand. He rushed alone over the broken ground toward Warbur Drake, toward the Skeleth.
With a soreness in his heart, with fear in every part of him, Edmund felt once more for the Signs of Perception and Closing. He moved through the first part of the spell. Please, please work—
Nothing happened.
“My student, consider this your notice of failure.” Warbur Drake’s voice came as lightning. “I CALL ON DEATH—”
Ellí brought her arms in across her chest. “I AM THE HOPE OF LIFE—”
“—YOUR HEART IS STILL—”
Ellí broke; Edmund felt it happen. He felt her command of the Wheels give way, felt her terror, her despair.
Warbur Drake clenched her hand into a fist. She glowered at Ellí with focused hatred. “YOUR HEART IS STILL, IT IS STILL. STILL.”
Ellí fell, pitching backward on the wagon. She looked at Edmund, then at nothing.
Warbur Drake sneered, though blood seeped from the corners of her mouth. “There were plans to make you one of us, Edmund Bale.” She brought up her hands into the Sign of Unmaking. “I deem you not worth the trouble. And now—”
Whatever she had meant to say was never said. With one swift strike of sword, her head rolled to the street, a look of simple surprise frozen on her face. Her body pitched over on top of it.
Lord Harold of Elverain did not pause over his kill, for the Skeleth swarmed and surrounded him. He tried to press forward, but could make no headway against the lunging, slashing creatures on every side. He wheeled his horse and retreated along the road. “Katherine!” The rest of his words were lost amidst the clamor of the battle.
“Hold them, hold them back!” Katherine leapt and dodged from spar to spar, smacking and swinging. “Edmund, hurry!”
The Skeleth, free of the will that had guided them, seemed to rage with redoubled fury. First the poles were ripped from the hands of the villagers, then some folk were pulled off the barricades, and then, with a rending crack, the joins of the spars and beams began to give way. There was barely time for Katherine and the others to leap back from the wagons. She tried to regroup them for a stand in front of the statue—then the first of the Skeleth came through.
Katherine wavered, sword shaking in her hand. “Papa.”
John Marshal leapt through the gap in the barricade. Poor Wat Cooper could not move fast enough—John’s sword plunged into him before there was even time to shout a warning. Wat dropped, spouting blood, and John stepped over him, coming straight for the crowd of villagers surrounding Edmund, as though two dozen folk against him were even odds, or better.
“No! You will not have them!” Katherine leapt forward and met her father, blade on blade, but John had all the strength of his youth returned to him, with all his wits and experience, speed and skill—and none of Katherine’s fear. She gave ground, inch by inch, back toward the villagers. The other Skeleth pushed through the barricade and swarmed out in a half circle, pushing in toward their shrinking, frightened knot.
“We’ve got to run!” Edmund’s father threw down his pole. “We can’t win this—run!”
Edmund would have said the same, but he knew that running would not save them. Instead he took up his father’s pole and made ready to leap into the fray. He wondered whether it was worse to die by the hand of a Skeleth, or to kill and become one of their number. No matter—he would soon find out.
Katherine staggered and fell to the ground, then leapt up again, just before her father could finish her off. “You will not have them!” The Skeleth that had once been Jordan Dyer came up out of the river and joined the rest of its kind in a tightening noose around the villagers.
Edmund grabbed Geoffrey by the arm, then embraced him.
“You tried,” said Geoffrey. Their mother found them and held them both.
All was lost.
Then a figure stepped out from the edge of the square—tall and rawbone thin. He placed himself in between John Marshal and Katherine.
Edmund stared, too stunned at first to understand what he saw, or how he could be seeing it.
“Put down your sword, Katherine.” Tom bore no weapons. He stood before the creature that was John Marshal, without defense and without fear. The creature raised its blade to strike him down—and stopped, locked in his gaze.
“Katherine, look upon your father,” said Tom. “Trust him. Put down your sword, look upon him, and tell him that you love him.”
A file of peasant women leapt down from a collection of shaggy mules and draft horses and followed Tom into the open, passing out from the trail that led around the village green. They stood in a line before the Skeleth, each one seeking a particular creature. The Skeleth halted their advance and stood staring still.
“Papa.” Katherine let her sword fall to the earth. She took Tom’s hand and stood beside him, faced toward her father. “Papa, I love you. Wake up.”
John Marshal lowered his sword. The feelers around him grasped and whipped, but inside them, a flicker of understanding crossed his face.
The words of the riddle came back as a blaze in Edmund’s mind. He wanted to laugh. “Of course. It’s so simple.”
I am the weapon that wounds the wielder. Love sometimes injures he who loves. Edmund knew that quite well indeed, and yet he knew that love was worth it, all the same.
I am the defense that is no defense at all. The love that comes with defenses and conditions is not truly love.
I am triumph in surrender. Love cannot be taken. It can only be given.
I am that which, by being given, is gained. If you give love, you have not lost it. The one you love has received it, but you still have it within you.
“Are you Edmund Bale?”
Edmund turned. “What? Yes.”
A heavy young woman in a rusty-red housedress and a tall old man carried an odd-looking metal box between them, carved with ancient glyphs and with a handle made from the joined hands of three female figures. They set it down in front of Edmund and raised the lid, showing it to be empty inside. “You’ll want this.”
The Skeleth advanced in silent ranks, their weapons dangling in their hands. The newcomers—peasants, all of them—flinched but did not break.
“Father,” said a girl.
“Brother,” said a woman.
Another: “Son.”
“Master Marshal,” said Tom.
“Papa.” Katherine raised her hands. “Papa, it’s me. I love you, Papa. I love you.”
The faces of the men inside the monsters came alive. The glowing creatures ripped free of their bodies, they seethed and ran into a swirling, angry ball, and as they did so, the hateful character of the Skeleth grew plain for all to see. The Skeleth howled, all together, a co
ursing vomit of hate. They spat their spite for the world of the sun, the world above, the world where men held sway. Edmund knew just what the box was for.
The tall old man had blind, white eyes, but he still managed to tap Edmund’s shoulder. “Now. Your spell.”
“YOU-WHO-CRAWL-BELOW, I NAME YOU, I GRIP YOU.” Edmund raised his hands in the Sign of Perception. “I SHUT YOU FROM THE SUN, I SHUT YOU FROM THE AIR, I CAST YOU DOWN INTO THE PRISON MADE FOR YOU.” He made the Sign of Closing. “YOU ARE CONFINED.”
The howl nearly popped his ears. Everyone, every living man, woman and child in the square fell to the ground at the thunderclap cry of the Skeleth. Edmund fell with them, but with a heavy effort dragged himself up again, and when the last squealing feeler fell into the box, he slammed the lid hard shut.
The sun rose over the moors.
Edmund lay heaving, draped over the top of the box. The metal felt warm beneath him for a moment—it shuddered, then fell still and cool. Voices swirled up around him, the wild and fulsome noise of mingled sorrow and relief. He felt the terrible cost of the spell take hold in the deepest part of himself. He paid it gladly.
“I am a monster.” John Marshal wept slow and hard. “I saw it all. All of it. I am a monster.”
“No, Papa.” Katherine held him. “You’re not.”
The other strangers reached out for the men that once were Skeleth, holding them through a storm of remorse, the horror of waking from a nightmare to find it had all been true. The big young woman in the rusty-red housedress only just stopped a man running out onto the bridge to leap off it and kill himself. She held him tight and let him wail until he fell into a trembling quiet.
Edmund let himself droop in rest over the top of the box. If anything else should threaten his village that day, he had nothing left with which to stop it. He fell in and out of a dream. He could feel no more joy—too much had been lost. He wished that someone would take thought to go up to Ellí and close her eyes, her beautiful brown eyes.
A shadow fell across him, a long, thin shadow from the new sun of the day. The shadow stooped, reached down, and took him up.
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