Stain

by A. G. Howard

  Though Crony had no fear of the dark, her spine tingled with a bleak premonition, compounded by the all-too-familiar scent of puss-filled boils somewhere within the dripping, moldering dampness.

  Dyadia spoke an enchantment that echoed through the small chamber, and torches lit. Orange, flickering flames painted shadows across the stony space—revealing an alchemist’s lab. In the center of the room, on a dais, laid her son’s supine body, cloaked in his blue satin robes. And in the far corner, sat a nest bigger than two bales of hay. Within were five leathery eggs, split down the middle, as if they had stopped mid-hatch.

  “Drasilisk offspring.” Crony croaked the revelation, unable to look at her friend for fear of what her face would show. That explained why a full-grown drasilisk had not been found; eggs were much easier to hide. She forced herself to meet Dyadia’s weary feline gaze. “Regardless of their immature state, yer son broke the alliance.”

  Dyadia stood by the dais, her hands covering her son’s closed eyes. “The queen had asked him to use his necromancy to find a cure for King Velimer. He dabbled deeper than he ever had and stumbled upon the drasilisk secret. You musn’t tell anyone. He would have to be beheaded for such an offense against your king and the alliance, or there would be a war . . .”

  “There already be one brewin’.” Crony stepped closer to Lachrymosa’s prone form. “The soldiers be but a week behind me and I be sworn to me king to keep the world safe. As yer son is to his. What he be thinkin’, doing such a thing?”

  “The heavens are eternal. He thought to draw from that power, to use the link the creatures have to the moon to find a cure for the king.”

  “Nay, he finally found a means to become immortal himself, or so he thinked.”

  Dyadia turned away. “He spoke to a drasilisk’s spirit,” she began, her voice breaking in intervals, “and it told him of a nest of eggs . . . he concocted a determinate elixir with some scales he had saved to find their whereabouts. It transported him to the cliffs by the ocean where he found them hidden. They . . . were the only survivors. My son connected himself to the nestlings mentally, climbed inside their minds. Stole their link to the moon and learned how to manipulate it himself.” She spun to face Crony. “I tried to reason with him, to warn him of the dangers, but he wouldn’t listen. A few days ago, they began hatching. I thought he would come to his senses then, but he was emotionally attached and convinced they felt the same, that he could raise and control them. And not only would he be immortal, but ours would be the most powerful kingdom.” Her slitted pupils dropped to the hem of her swishing dress. “I tried to intervene for his own safety, for everyone’s safety. I cast a spell upon the eggs—a quietus thrall—to fool their minds into thinking they were already dead, to prevent them from growing strong enough to break out. In my haste, I forgot the most crucial precept: that it should only be conjured in a sacred place of life and death, else the recipient’s spirit grows fearful. Once a spirit gives up faith, all is lost. I didn’t mean for it to be fatal, but they’re dying.”

  Crony leaned across one cracked egg and shuddered as a glint of firelight reflected off deadened eyes and glimmering coiled scales. “How ye be sure?”

  “Because my son is part of them now. He can’t disconnect. I realized it when he fell to the floor and struggled for breath. He’s dying, too. At his mother’s own hand—” Her voice cracked and she clutched her chest, as if she could feel her insides tearing apart.

  Crony shielded her own chest with her staff, putting up barriers. Her friend grasped her wrist, tears streaming down her beautiful striped face, several leaking from the empty socket in the midst of her forehead. “You must know what I need of you.”

  The witch’s stomach turned and twisted, torn between pity and self-preservation. “And ye know why I can’t be givin’ it.”

  The sorceress fell to her knees and gripped Crony’s ankles, her fingers too fine and elegant to put a dent in Crony’s thick, rough skin. Was she as calloused inward as outward? So much she could say no to the one who meant most to her in the world? Was she such a coward, she couldn’t trade her immortality for another’s son? Didn’t that make her no better than he in his search to live forever?

  “Please. My love . . . my life, everything I have is yours and always will be. But I cannot live with killing my child. Please,” she sobbed. “You must bid him back.”

  The memory became too real, and Crony stalled the narrative for fear of saying too much to Luce, or worse, that the acid rising in the back of her throat would seep into her tongue and render it as mute as little Stain’s. She met her sylphin companion’s gaze. He waited, silent and mortified, for the end.

  “I deemed me dearest’s son unworthy of bein’ saved,” she told Luce, her vocal cords no longer cooperating, cutting her voice to a whisper. “But even worse, I kept it quiet in me heart. I knew, to bring him back from the brink, I be bringing back the drasilisks with him. I knew he had to be destroyed to save the kingdoms.” Crony didn’t tell Luce the ugliest part, that she was a coward who justified her cowardice by telling herself it was a black-and-white choice. By convincing herself there was no gray. “I pretended I be willin’ to help him, only to get close enough to steal his last few breaths and lock the memories he’d shared with the creatures in me own mind, so I could break their hold o’er the moon. That I did, with Dyadia standing there beside me, trusting me, thinkin’ I was to save her only child’s life. Thanking me as I was takin’ his last breaths away.”

  Crony’s tongue prickled on the admission, each word stinging like a shard of glass. “She knew what I’d done in the same instant I realized the catastrophe me thievery had caused, for in breakin’ Lachrymosa’s connection to the creatures and his hold over the moon, I left the heavens in an uproar.”

  Neither she nor Dyadia had expected what happened next, that the moon would fall from the sky, still tied to the threads she’d severed. That it would tear through the earth and drag Nerezeth down with it. As the castle walls began to shake, Dyadia met her gaze and Crony saw agonized perception. She would never forget that look.

  Crony had started up the stairs as debris tumbled from the ceiling all around—running from her guilt, from her fear, from her self-deprecation. But she couldn’t outrun those final memories she’d stolen from Lachrymosa. One of which she could ne’er share for its power and potency, as it was still tied to the moon. It would stay locked within her for the entirety of that long lonely forever she’d chosen over a man’s life and her dearest one’s heart.

  Dyadia followed Crony through the corridors as they passed confused royalty and guards alike. Thana was waiting when the giant doors opened to reveal the drawbridge leading to a landscape in turmoil. Trees, hills, and rivers shivered as if they were painted on flimsy parchment and set aflutter on the wind. Thana screeched at Crony and flew to her mistress’s side where Dyadia stood at the threshold. Crony stepped off the bridge and looked down on them when the castle began to sink and the world shook. Trees crumpled forward as if bowing to the moon as it glided into the open seam of the earth—as it magically converted to smoke and clouds, then siphoned through the crack. Then it was gone, pulling with it all of Nerezeth’s terrain, the forest, the castle in the same fashion.

  Crony and the landscapes that belonged to Eldoria were untouched. Somehow the moon knew who belonged to it, to the one who’d been controlling it. Every creature that loved the darkness, and everything that had ever been a part of Lachrymosa’s territory, slipped away and took form again within the belly of the earth. There to stay, along with Dyadia and all her righteous rage.

  When the dust settled and the sun beamed down—hot and accusatory on Crony’s back—all that indicated Nerezeth had ever stood beside Eldoria was the crack between realms, still glittering with broken magic that would form the ravine. At first, the kingdoms had no contact with one another. Eldoria despised Nerezeth for taking the moon. But in time, after hearing of the harsh conditions the night realm endured, Eldorians came t
o feel superior. They believed Nerezeth deserved their eternal night for their sorcerer’s vile actions. In turn, Nerezeth hated the day realm for their apathy, and envied them their sun.

  Thus, blind prejudice was born.

  “I stayed here”—Crony indicated the ashy terrain around their skeletal home—“as the twisted trees grew ’round me and the sins of others crept down the trunks to swallow me bare feet. I left all me possessions in the castle behind, let the king believe I was swallowed by the earth that day. I couldn’t return to me kingdom, for by then they believed I betrayed them by siding with Dyadia, and may-let I had. For I’d made a new vow to her. In those last minutes when I be seein’ her face through the castle’s drawbridge, afore the bubble of magic formed around her palace and all those homes . . . afore every citizen and creature were dragged again’ their own will into the moon’s pull . . . we had our last words. I begged her forgiveness. She refused . . . said I chose Eldoria o’er her precious son; that there be no forgivin’ a sin so vicious. I told her it was for the world, for the greater good. But she knew me heart, and the cowardice and fears lurking there. And she knew me sworn loyalty to King Kreśimer. She made me vow I would leave all kingdom politics behind, ne’er interfere again, for look what I had wrought. I agreed, and vowed as she said, and in her anger and bitterness she added a curse upon me head. That I could ne’er close me eyes so long as I walked the bright, sunlit earth. That I would have to always be seein’ the world’s undoing. And should I interfere again in either kingdom’s politics, the world would ne’er heal. I felt the curse take hold when me eyelids thinned to transparency. Now ye see why I can’t stop seein’, and ye know why me interference is forbidden.”

  Luce’s face contorted with compassion, a reaction Crony had never expected—an unworthiness compounded by her recent understanding of the depth of a parent’s love for their child.

  “Wait,” he mumbled, his eyes alight with cunning perception. “So, the grimoire I found hidden within the tunnel . . . ?”

  She nodded in answer. He opened his mouth again, as if needing to air out the many facets of this revelation, but was interrupted by the bark of a dog at the edges of the thicket.

  They both leapt from their seats and turned to see a brown spaniel and Dyadia’s crow leading five Nerezethite soldiers.

  “Ready your weapons!” said the man at the head, drawing out a sword.

  A woman came forward and paused beside the garden. Her purplish eyes glinted with an odd mix of trepidation and authority. It appeared she’d been warned about crossing the threshold. “Cronatia of the Ashen Ravine, you are under royal order by Prince Vesper to accompany us to Eldoria’s castle and face Regent Griselda and Princess Lyra. You are to account for the murders of King Kiran and his first knight, along with the princess’s cousin Lustacia. Also for the malicious misuse of your magic against the kingdom, causing its subjects and citizens to be imprisoned within their homes over the last five years. Will you come peacefully?”

  Luce tensed as if to defend her, but Crony whispered, “No interferin’.” She didn’t tell him that should she fight back, she could be killed prematurely, before her part was complete in all this. “This be in the hands of the fates. Keep to our code. Find Stain and tell her of me imprisonment. Tell her I be sorry for hurting her, and that she made every day brighter just by bein’ here. But don’t force her hand. She must be makin’ choices of her own accord.”

  Jaw clenched, Luce dropped the flowers and transformed, scampering out the opposite side of their home as a fox, his talisman dangling from his neck. The spaniel began to take chase, but was caught by the female soldier. Crony looked around at her belongings, stopping on the cedar chest. The contents of the two boxes—Lyra’s memories and Griselda’s conscience—would be safe with her nightmare wards. Luce would return in search of weapons. And he would find Crony’s note, waiting to be read.

  The old witch stepped over the threshold and laid herself prostrate, allowing her captors to bind her, giving all her faith to the crafty nature of prophecies. It appeared the prince wouldn’t be luring the princess to the castle after all.

  17

  A Collection of Corpses and Consciousness

  In the ravine’s lowlands, where the ash thinned and the shade deepened, the Shroud Collective prepared to feast. It had been a long famine—three full weeks—since their last taste of flesh. Soon their suffering would end. The page boy who escaped five years earlier was about to stumble back into their keep. From this distance, he appeared to be in much the same state as when he first arrived in a pine box: shredded clothes matching his torn skin, deserted and broken. The perfect candidate for luring into their lair. Mistress Umbra began casting out her siren’s song—a whispering enticement meant to trick those walking the path overhead, meant to sound like whatever their heart wanted most to find. The page boy would take the bait. He was too lost to do otherwise. The mother shroud gathered her children within the clearing, each amorphous silhouette conforming to the black, gnarled trees that hid them. Innumerable glowing white eyes blinked between branches, awaiting attack.

  Stain paused along the steep pathway, perking her ears at a rustling down below. The ash within the ravine muffled most sounds, like a thick layer of downy feathers. The ravine’s lore echoed within that silence . . . a tale she hadn’t thought of in some time: those who came to live here brought their sins and shed them upon the trees. The wickedness, having nowhere else to go, transformed to a sentient moss that slunk to the ground and decomposed every wild, beautiful thing to ash.

  Had she been so wicked, in her past? That someone had shed her here like a vile sin? Or was she once beautiful until left to decompose and rot in the wastelands?

  With the absence of wind, birds, and skittering bugs, the quiet became deafening. She’d been calling for Scorch in her mind to fill the void, to no avail.

  Before ending up here, she had searched their usual haunts: the market where they frolicked in the after hours when everyone closed shop (Scorch was fascinated by human customs and items, much as he tried to deny it); the lofties, where the ravine’s dense canopy reached to monolithic heights so high Scorch could fly without even stirring the ash below; and the quagmire-quarry, where they held contests to see who could outrun the most puddles. Scorch had the advantage of wings, but Stain learned that climbing trees worked as well, since a living puddle—no matter how agile—was repelled by wood and stone. Over the years, she had tied with Scorch in only three matches, and only because he allowed her to, according to him. Every other time, she had to tolerate him mocking her lack of wings and extra legs. Today his arrogant jibes would be music, if she could only see him safe.

  She’d circled around the tarn of clear water where they liked to go fishing, only to stop in her tracks, hidden behind a trunk. Though she didn’t see the Night Ravager, his crew had set up camp there—close to the labyrinth of thorns where Stain first encountered them. Scorch hadn’t been anywhere in sight, so she slipped away undetected, ending up here at the ravine’s entrance.

  If she couldn’t find her friend, perhaps she could at least find herself.

  She licked her lips and tasted blood, which reminded her of the drying spots that dotted her clothes. The healing ointment she’d brought promised a numbing comfort, but she wasn’t sure how much Scorch’s wing might need.

  The tin and bandages were no longer tucked in her vest. They were now residing in a bag she’d found earlier at the marketplace. The nightmare wards set upon Crony’s booth to prevent anyone stealing wares after hours held no sway over Stain. She fingered the talisman at her neck and swung the bag against her thigh, causing the assassin’s knife to clink against the kinder sleep chimes she’d plucked off the shop’s pegs. Stain had always liked the bedtime stories and lullabies that played out across the cylinders of glass, and decided if Crony wouldn’t give her memories back, she had every right to steal some from the shop’s supply. She required them, after all, for her plan—as dangerous as it mi
ght be.

  The rustle again. It came from her destination: the lowest clearing surrounded by a circle of black trees in the distance—down the steep decline and past stumps and burbling quag-puddles. She’d always avoided the lowlands. Even Scorch had abided that rule, wary of the repulsive creatures subsisting there. Yet today the valley held an irresistible pull.

  Crony and Luce had made Stain believe she belonged with them; but all the while they’d been hoarding the only true belongings she ever had. Even her rescue had been a lie. There were reasons . . . ulterior motives, mysteries that made up her entire existence, that they’d either sold on the market to degenerates and criminals, hidden out of her reach, or given away as a bargaining tactic.

  She’d never been able to view all the trinkets hanging in the house; without Crony’s magic animating them, it was no better than looking through a glass pane: a transparent backdrop to a colorless, unseeable past. Luce admitted they’d found her lifeless body spilling out of a coffin, about to be eaten. They’d had to bargain with the shrouds for her release, though he didn’t say what they bargained with.

  It was said that Nerezethite sun-smugglers used to come to Crony’s shop and purchase memories to trade for their lives on the chance they should get trapped by the voracious creatures.

  Shrouds craved humanness in all facets: flesh, spirit, or memories.

  It made sense that Crony and Luce might have given the shrouds Stain’s past in exchange for her future. If so, the creatures had absorbed details about her prior life into their shared consciousness, the very details her guardians didn’t want her to know.

  She moved the bag’s strap higher on her shoulder. The kinder sleep memory chimes tinkled against one another—animated and tempting. She would offer them as a trade to the vaporous corpses: fresh memories for stale information.

  Stain took a step sideways as a sudden wave of dizziness smeared her surroundings to mottled blacks, pale greens, and grays—as if she were trapped in a cylinder of spinning glass herself. Fear collided with hunger and heartache, and she sat upon the path. She stretched her legs, avoiding the sticky liquid sunshine that dotted the trunks beside the briar curtain. Her feet cried out, aching to be released from their prisons of soles, heels, and laces. But it was her heart that was truly trapped, entombed within a body scarred from head to toe, yet as nondescript as a pile of bones. She had been hoping Scorch’s need for her help would outweigh his anger. But in truth, she needed him now. She needed his cynicism and wisdom to talk her out of doing this.