From Under the Mountain

by Cait Spivey

  “Yes. There’s at least seventy corpses, maybe more,” Josen said.

  “Have there been that many deaths recently?” asked Lord Warren.

  Evadine sneered. “Del is a huge city. There are that many deaths by the hour.”

  “Desmond, can you think of any reason why Thiymen would not come for the dead?” Guerline asked. He frowned and rummaged in his pockets.

  “Fiona is preparing for war! She’s about to make her attack!” Pearce Iszolda squealed.

  Guerline groaned. “Gods, would you stop it, Pearce? Something must be very, very wrong for the Thiymen witches to abandon their duties. Desmond, could this have anything to do with what you told me? About the damage to the barrier between life and death?”

  “Yes, I’m certain it does. I can’t think of any other reason why Thiymen would not come for the dead.” He pulled out a small compact—a less powerful version of the mirrors his mother and aunts used to communicate in times of emergency.

  “Let me try to get in touch with Fiona,” he said, and walked a few steps away.

  He lifted the lid of the compact and popped open the compartment with Fiona’s dragon-head symbol on it. He dipped his little finger in the sulphuric powder and touched it to the mirror in the lid. It rippled as it should, but when it stilled, all it showed was black nothingness where his aunt Fiona’s face should have appeared.

  “Aunt Fiona?”

  There was no response. He wiped the powder off the mirror with a small handkerchief and opened his mother’s compartment. Her powder was a light blue the color of the sky and smelled like rain. He dipped his finger into it and touched it to the mirror. The mirror rippled for a long time, and then went back to normal. Desmond frowned. Either the mirror was failing, which it had never done before, or things were far more dire than any of them had suspected. He tried Morgana and Aradia in the same fashion, and neither of them responded to his call. He snapped the compact shut and put it back into his pocket. Olivia, Morgana, and Aradia weren’t answering, and Desmond had no idea what Fiona’s black mirror meant. Something was very wrong indeed.

  “Well?” Guerline asked when she saw him coming back.

  “I can’t contact any of the Kavanagh sisters,” he said. “Something has happened to them, though what, I couldn’t say.”

  “What should we do about the crowd, Your Majesty?” Josen asked. “The longer the Thiymen witches do not appear . . .”

  “I know,” Guerline said. She turned away, frowning and rubbing her forehead, chewing madly at her bottom lip. “Desmond, can any of the other clans escort the souls?”

  “No,” Desmond said. “Only Thiymen witches are trained to do that.”

  “Can the Thiymen witches pull a soul from a body even when it’s in the ground?” she asked.

  “Yes, as long as it isn’t buried too deep.”

  “Good,” Guerline said. She strode toward the doors.

  “Where are you going, Your Majesty?” Josen asked.

  “We cannot have hundreds of people squatting before the gate with dead bodies in high summer,” Guerline said. “People will get sick from it. The bodies must be buried.”

  Evadine followed her. “But Lina, the people are superstitious when it comes to the rituals of death. They will not want to bury the bodies until the souls are gone, otherwise it will be like burying their loved ones alive.”

  “I realize this, but is it less of an indignity to allow their loved ones to rot in public? We have no idea when the Thiymen witches will return, and in this heat, the corpses will rot very quickly. This is our best course of action,” she said. Her voice wavered, but her jaw clenched. No one argued.

  Her councilors trailed after her out the palace doors and down to the gate. Desmond stumbled along behind them, distracted. It was unsettling that he couldn’t contact the Lords Paramount for the empress; it was worse that he couldn’t contact his mother or his aunts. These were the powerful, untouchable women who had raised him. They were sometimes beyond conventional means of communication, but the mirror was for emergencies, and he knew the sisters always kept them close. Thinking of whatever might be preventing them from answering made him deeply nervous.

  Guerline nodded to Josen, and he unlocked the gates. She, Desmond, and Evadine went out into the square, surrounded by a dozen guardsmen who pushed back the gathered people to make a path for Guerline. Desmond saw the brightly colored summer costumes of the First and Second Neighborhoods scattered among the faded ones of the Third and Fourth. The crowd, which had been wailing and calling for Guerline, Lisyne, anyone, quieted down as news of her appearance spread. She walked straight to the fountain at the center and climbed up onto it so that she could be better seen.

  “Beloved subjects, we understand your confusion and anxiety,” she said as loudly as she could. “Please, rest assured that we are making every effort to discover the reasons behind the absence of the Thiymen witches.”

  Well said, thought Desmond. Such neutral wording would hopefully keep most of the crowd from jumping to the same conclusions as some of the war-mongering councilors.

  “In the meantime, to preserve the dignity of those we have lost, we must lay them in the arms of the earth,” Guerline said.

  He caught himself nodding along. That sounded much more poetic and spiritual, and less like burying them alive. Still, the crowd did not appear happy with the decision. An outcry rose up, but Guerline raised her hands and called for quiet, which she received after only a few moments.

  “We know this is not how things are usually done, but this is an unusual circumstance! We have had it on good authority from the other clans that the witches are still able to collect the souls of your loved ones even from under the ground. We promise that every person who has died will make it to Ilys!”

  There was silence as the nervous and grief-stricken crowd decided whether or not to trust the words of their young empress. Guerline held her arms open, palms up, and spun slowly to look at every section of the gathering.

  “Please, bring those you have lost here to the palace. We will lay them in the ground on the palace green until the witches come to take them home to Ilys,” she said.

  Desmond held his breath, but her offer to host the corpses seemed to resonate with the crowd. Some of the tension in the atmosphere dispersed, and he exhaled. Though they were still frightened and confused, the people seemed glad to have some semblance of a plan. Those who hadn’t brought their deceased began to filter out of the square to retrieve them, and those who had carried the dead to the palace pressed toward the gates. Desmond offered Guerline a hand to get down. She squeezed his fingers far tighter than necessary. He could feel her whole arm shaking, but, from the look on her face when she turned to Josen, he never would have guessed how she trembled.

  “Have the guards assist the people. Take the corpses and bury them on the palace green in shallow, separate graves. Get a carpenter and a scribe to make temporary markers for them so we can keep track of everyone.”

  Josen nodded, and Guerline walked back toward the palace, followed by Desmond and Evadine.

  “That was very well handled, Lina,” Evadine said, more emphatically than anything Desmond had ever heard her say.

  “Thank you, Eva,” Guerline said. The smile she gave Evadine was so warm, so full of a love he’d never seen between them before, that it sent a hot wave of jealousy through him. He pushed ahead and joined Josen in opening the gates in the palace wall. Guerline and Evadine slipped through, and Desmond followed them, leaving their escort to guide people into a queue.

  They rejoined the rest of the guards and councilors inside the palace wall and crossed the yard in a slow, stately procession up the stairs, through the huge silvery doors and into the front hall. Guerline put a hand on Shon Marke’s shoulder.

  “Shon, send word immediately to anyone you know in the east that may be able to tell us what’s happening there,” she said. He nodded and branched off to climb up a set of stairs to the right, up to the rook
ery where the messenger birds were kept. Guerline turned next to Jon Wellsly. “Jon, please send the criers out with instructions that anyone with dead, for whom the witches have not yet come, should bring their deceased to the palace.”

  The old man nodded and took a left off the hall. Guerline dismissed everyone but Evadine and Desmond with orders to keep their eyes and ears open for any developments, and then she returned to her tower chambers with her chosen companions in tow. Once the door was shut safely behind them, Guerline sank onto her bed and let out a shaky breath. She looked up at them, her eyes wide with fear.

  “What’s going on, Desmond?” she asked.

  He looked down at her grimly.

  “I’ll try to contact Fiona again,” he said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  For days, the entire Thiymen clan had been working furiously to repair and reinforce the curtain that separated the world under the mountain from the living world above the earth. It was crucial that the two did not mix, and even more crucial that the thing bound under the mountain not be allowed to escape.

  But Fiona had not been among her witches as they raced along the barrier. She had been confined to her room; to her bed, most of the time. Her seal had sapped much more of her energy than she’d revealed. To conceal her weakness, she’d ordered that she was not to be disturbed under any circumstances, and any emergency entrances by Kanika or Moira must be preceded by a knock. That way, she at least had time to sit up in bed and open a book, or perhaps move to a chair, and look less like an invalid.

  Now awake, Fiona propped herself up against her pillows and looked around her room. There was so much black. It was black to match the rock, black to match the grave ash from under the mountain; black, just as colorless as a Thiymen witch’s skin. It was a strange thing to watch color leave your flesh, your hair, your eyes. Yet this is what happened to Thiymen witches. They were the shortest-lived of all the clans, because they spent their lives slowly giving pieces of themselves to the underworld. And for what? For the protection of people who despised them? Oh, the citizens of Del told all sorts of tales about Thiymen, but how would they feel if Thiymen no longer took care of their dead?

  Fiona made bony fists and clutched her blanket tightly until her anger dissipated. She was usually resigned to the ingratitude that Thiymen faced from these young generations of humans, but sustaining such aloofness was difficult. She kept calm by reminding herself that the humans were ignorant, and determined not to be taught. There was little a witch could do to change the mind of someone who was only interested in that which supported the ideas they already had. She chose her battles carefully, passed over the ones she could not win, and focused instead on the ones she could.

  She pushed her blanket back and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Putting her feet on the floor, she stood up slowly and allowed the blood to move with greater freedom through her legs again. I must cross the room and get my tonic, she thought. She took a few steps; then the door opened without a knock.

  “I specifically asked—” She was cut off by a deep, smooth voice.

  “You asked the witches. I am no witch,” the woman said.

  Fiona looked up, and there she stood, broad and black-skinned and strong. Her hair, molded into thick locks, was bound at the nape of her neck. She wore loose black pants and a black tunic that was cinched at the waist with a wide silver belt. The belt, which had an amethyst set in the buckle, was a gift that Fiona had given her many years ago. She looked up from the belt at the woman’s face. Her dark brown eyes were fixed on Fiona, eyebrows knit together. The expression she wore was equal parts worry and accusation. Fiona smiled ruefully up at her.

  “Silas,” she said.

  “You are a fool.”

  “I know. Come, sit with me and explain why I am a fool,” she said, gesturing toward the bed. She retraced the few steps she’d taken and swayed. Silas scooped her up and sat down, cradling her in her arms. Fiona was so small compared to her. She’d always been a large woman, but Fiona had never been this emaciated. Food had lost its appeal to her.

  “You’ve grown old, Fiona,” Silas said.

  “Yes. Even witches must get old,” Fiona replied.

  Old age and then death happened very quickly for witches. They aged normally until they were fully grown, and then spent centuries in the prime of their adulthood. It was almost as if they spent most of their lives in a kind of stasis, and in order to achieve balance, an aged witch would deteriorate very rapidly.

  Fiona was much younger than her sisters, but she had always known that she would be the first to die. Her power had bloomed brighter at a younger age, and her duties had always been more taxing than those of her sisters. Fiona knew death well, and felt her own coming; but she had planned for ten or fifteen more years, at least long enough to train her replacement in the delicacies of leading Thiymen clan. The seal on the gate had robbed her of that time.

  “I was about to take my tonic,” Fiona said, as if that excused her from dying more quickly than expected.

  Silas laughed, a noise that was not mirthful in the least, and took a dagger from the table next to Fiona’s bed.

  “No, don’t,” Fiona said, but a look from Silas quelled the words in her throat. There was no use. She would need to stay alive just a little bit longer, to get everything in order and perhaps see her sisters again, and the dragon blood in Silas’s veins would sustain her as it had for the last five years. Though she had some stored in her cabinet, it would be more potent and invigorating coming fresh from the source. So she sighed and nodded, gesturing to a cup she also kept on the table.

  Silas set the cup on the edge and held her wrist over it. One quick slash sent her dark blood gushing into the cup. She waited until it was almost full, and then touched the edge of the cut with her free hand. Slowly, the blood trickled to a stop and the skin knit itself together again. The woman who was also a dragon lifted the cup from the table and handed it to Fiona.

  “Drink, my love,” she said.

  Fiona drank, and as she did she felt strength flooding into her body. The magic of the Thiymen dragons wasn’t as powerful as that of the true dragons; but the true dragons were long gone, and she was grateful for Silas’s gift to her.

  Silas was the dragon queen, the current leader of the tribe. She had come into power the same time Fiona did; though unlike Fiona, Silas had killed her predecessor in order to gain control. When Fiona heard of the battle, she’d sent for Silas immediately. She had no idea what sort of queen she would be, and the last thing she needed at that time was a fool-headed youth to deal with. Luckily, she’d found the young dragon to be sensible and strong, if a little disapproving at times. They’d quickly established a rapport, and hammered out a new arrangement between the witches and the dragons. Where before the dragons had been slaves, now the dragons were partners. For six hundred years, Fiona and Silas had offered each other love and support. There were few things more valuable to Fiona than the time she spent with Silas. It prepared and refreshed her for everything else she had to do.

  Even now, when all she had left to do was die.

  As Fiona opened her mouth to tell Silas she was ready for her death, there was a knock on the door. Fiona lurched up from Silas’s lap to stand on the floor, pleased to find her vertigo and unsteadiness gone. She felt more like herself again. She pulled her black overdress on with Silas’s assistance before calling “Enter!” to whomever was at the door.

  It was Kanika. The young witch looked very young indeed, with her rich black hair, honey-brown eyes, and flushed cheeks. One would hardly know her as a Thiymen witch, and in many ways, Fiona was grateful for that. But those thoughts were for an old woman’s deathbed. Fiona knew by the wild-eyed look on Kanika’s face that it was not time for her to die just yet.

  “The gate?” Fiona asked.

  “Yes,” Kanika gasped. “It’s buckled and cracking—the Guard—”

  “Move,” Fiona said.

  Kanika jumped back, and Fiona
swept past her, moving as fast as she could. Silas and Kanika followed. Despite her weakness, Fiona managed a considerable pace, and she thanked Silas again for being so good to her.

  The Guard stood in a single line in front of the gate, all shouting and straining. The black sheet of rock in front of them groaned in response. Fiona could see it moving; something was trying to get through from the other side. The seven witches of the Guard were almost at their limit, supporting each other but shaking at the knees and sinking slowly to the ground. One witch in the middle of the line had already passed out. She sagged between two of her fellows, who continued to hold her up to keep the line unbroken.

  Fiona closed her eyes, and in the blackness, she visualized the flickering core of her power. It crackled with purple light. She lifted her left hand, and when she opened her eyes, that ball of light was in her palm. Kanika and Silas stepped back. Fiona looked at them and nodded. Kanika’s lips trembled; Silas just looked down.

  She placed her right hand over the core of her magic and twisted her hands so that they were vertically palm to palm in front of her. She twisted her fingers through the outer tendrils of light surrounding the little ball of power and slowly drew her hands away from each other, stretching and lengthening the magic into a large pane. The current gate was crumbling. The quickest fix was to simply make a new gate. Unfortunately, hers would be only temporary. She didn’t have the same kind of resources available to her as the original makers of the gate.

  Where are you, now when I need you most? Why have you abandoned me?

  Her anger at the reclusive shapeshifters, at the wolf herself, made the miniature gate between her hands fire up with sparks of purple light. She turned her hands palms forward and pushed the gate away from her, allowing it to expand even more.

  “Guard! Stand down!” she roared.

  The Guard immediately broke their line and collapsed. Those who could walk dragged others back from the line. Silas and Kanika ran forward to help them. Fiona glanced down as they carried the witch who had collapsed past her. It was Sempra, the newest addition to the Guard. Fiona felt a pang in her heart, as if it was her fault this thing had come to face them. She knew such a feeling was foolish. That didn’t stop her from feeling it; just like all the years of telling herself that her charge was worthy hadn’t stopped her from thinking her life had been wasted thinking about death.