“Well, if it isn’t the human girl upstart.” Buchanan of Westbend floated down from the vaulted ceiling, which now teemed with a host of colorful companions. Ryon moved toward Tess.
“Watch what you say about her.” He felt Tess’s hand squeeze his shoulder.
Profigliano offered support as well. “Looks like Mr. Bossybird Snootybeak needs help eating his humble worm pie.”
“Buchanan,” Nory interjected, oblivious to the tension, “I’ll need your battalion stationed at all the windows in this entrance hall, and also those in the banquet hall to protect the women and the wounded.”
“First a summons from a servant, now an order to babysit—”
“Do it, Buchanan.” Wyndeling swooped to join them, apparently reinstated as one of the Wise. She shifted on Tess’s shoulder. “What are you looking at?” said the owl to Osiris.
“I be eyeing a surprising wild owl.”
General Bud and his company returned to the cavernous entrance hall, each sustaining above his head a collection of heavy furniture in swirling golden clouds and funnels. They stacked the tables, chairs, and bookshelves in a semicircle, and the noblemen stationed themselves behind, armed with their household weapons. The castle servants stood on the peripheries.
Ryon did his best to help carry out Nory and Rette’s orders as the large wooden doors continued to tremble, and the shouts of the Atheonian soldiers grew more desperate. He darted down the western hall toward the banquet hall, checking every nook and room for solid furniture. After a few minutes, he saw there was nothing else to be used for the barricade and turned back for the entrance hall. Suddenly a hand gripped his arm.
“Tessy, you scared me.” Ryon nursed his bicep.
“I’m sorry.” Tess wrung her hands. “I’ve got to go.”
“What?”
“Aideen is dying, and . . . I need to speak with her. I need her, Ryon. I don’t think I can defeat Pider without the queen.”
Ryon looked around to see whether anyone could hear them. Twenty paces down the corridor, women hurriedly moved about the banquet hall, some caring for the wounded, others shushing their children. He could hear Dahly’s and his mother’s voices echoing against the walls, directing the women to stay calm and ready themselves.
Men and terriers began to yell from the entrance hall. Ryon could hear Rette shouting for them to stay low. Then, a terrifying crash resonated throughout the castle.
“Go.” Ryon pulled a rock from his pocket. “We can manage.”
“Don’t you dare get killed.” Tess shook Ryon by both shoulders. Wyndeling circled overhead.
He gently pulled himself free. “Love you, Tessy.” He flashed a smile before sprinting down the corridor.
Chapter 47
Tess’s boots made no sound as she hurried through the northward hallway of the west wing. Wyndeling hovered overhead, like an auburn winged spirit. They soon reached the plain door to the gardens—the same gardens where Tess had betrayed her dione just one week before. She felt heat against her palm and saw that the orbs of the shenìl glowed a fierce orange.
Tess suddenly felt nauseated. What if she failed again to concentrate on the modes of surrender?
“I’m here, my lady,” Wyndeling said, settling on Tess’s shoulder. Tess nodded and pushed open the door and stepped onto the rosebush path.
Searching for the queen, Tess rushed to the end of the path, where the stones spilled into a wide patio bordering the pond. Aideen was nowhere in sight—not among the roses, nor by the shrine where Ola, the constellation of the future, stooped with her ladle. Quickening her pace, Tess ran along the edge of the pond, calling for the queen. Finally, just on the other side of a weeping willow, she came upon a woman so slender and listless, Tess thought she was looking at an empty cloak. Queen Aideen drooped on a carved stone bench, her hair blowing loose on her shoulders. She lifted her head and, seeing Tess, smiled with dim eyes.
“Is it still with you, princess?” she said. Her stiff fingers opened and closed in her lap.
Tess knelt, trying to hide the desperation in her voice. “Yes, Your Majesty. Just a moment; I can heal you.” Tess threw back her cloak and took up the hot glowing orbs.
“I am beyond help.” Aideen gathered a bundle of undone hair and tilted her head, revealing on her neck a small black wound. “How foolish I was to return to the Hold. But look”—the queen’s dry lips stretched thin in a delighted gasp—“you have been imprinted, already?”
Tess let a tear trickle onto her nose. “I’ve been to the Hold, Your Majesty. Ember is free again.”
The queen allowed her heavy lids to close and she took a shallow breath. “Good girl. The dione is safe now.”
Biting her frowning lip, Tess focused on where Pider’s curse had entered Aideen. The open wound revealed cracked, ash-like flesh, with blue veins snaking along the queen’s paper-white neck. Tess thought of the worms from Crescent Cave, spreading silently across the walls. Catching herself, she breathed and concentrated on the modes of surrender. A low bluish fire grew between her hands.
“We need you, Your Majesty. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.” As Tess held her breath to listen, she heard the soothing voice of the shenìl, but the words were muddled, like someone trying to speak through her hand. She opened her eyes. “Something is wrong.”
Wyndeling must have felt it, too. She flew to the uppermost branch of a young water oak and scanned the horizon. Tess sat still and tried again to listen for the shenìl. The wind grew stronger, carrying the faint sounds of governors howling from within the castle. Tess thought of the wind the night of the wedding festival. She remembered how it pulled strands of Tynaiv’s sandy hair across his forehead. . . .
“My lady,” Wyndeling called from the tree. “Perhaps we should take the queen inside.”
There was a note in Wyndeling’s voice that pricked the back of Tess’s neck. The owl had seen something, and she was trying not to let on.
“Inside?” Tess called out hesitantly. The queen’s purple lids were still closed, and her head was beginning to droop.
“Above you,” the owl screeched.
Tess sprang to her feet, shielding her head as an agitated squawk sounded in the garden. Terrified, Tess stumbled backward toward the pond. Fiery globs of lava crashed against the willow, and Tess looked up into the glazed eyes of Pider as he dove headlong from the treetops. Chunks of melted rock sizzled as they landed, splashing onto Aideen’s bench and barely missing the fading queen. Then they were at Tess’s feet, surrounding her, searing Tess’s clothes with unbearable waves of heat. She had no other option—she threw herself into the pond’s cold green water.
Tess swam deeper and deeper into the frigid dark, her cloak pulling at her neck. Dark, glowing masses shot in the water around her, with lines of fiery lava quickly cooling along their surfaces. The last of the air dissipated from her lungs, and Tess became aware that she was choosing her course of death—to drown or to burn. A pounding sounded in her ears. Her chest felt like an empty wine flask, wrung for every last drop, as she sank farther toward the muddy floor. She reached for the shenìl, and her fingers brushed the medal with the last of her strength.
A voice called.
“Tessamine, Tessamine.”
Tess was standing on a mountaintop. Clouds crawled at her feet. Rich forests blanketed the landscape far below. The emerald mountain where she stood was sliced on two sides by streams, which flowed into a pair of massive rivers. The rivers cut through the forests and flowed into two oceans—one to her left, and one to her right.
“Tessamine,” the voice called again.
“I am Tessamine,” she answered.
A tangerine-colored cloud rolled before Tess, and on it stood Ember. She wore nothing but starlight, arranged around her like the fine feathers of a bird’s wing. Her lustrous purple waves lifted, almost weightless when she tipped her h
ead.
“Tessamine,” Ember said. “The skies formed you, and the skies wish to see you return.”
“Am I . . . have I died?” Tess said the words with mild surprise, but also with relief.
“Irgo protects you, but Ola is not finished pouring your ladle.”
Tess wanted to cry. If she threw herself from the mountain, then would the constellations take her into their company? “What else can I possibly do? I have given my life trying to do what is right.”
“Surrender your past. Trust that every trial is for your good.”
Ember’s cloud floated farther away, toward the ocean to the left. Tess wondered if she could jump on the next cloud, follow Ember’s apparition to the water. Anything to never go back to her messy, cruel life. She spotted the next one, and without thinking, leapt for the cloud, her legs split in a ballerina’s flight.
Perhaps it was moments later, or perhaps an age had passed, but when Tess suddenly regained consciousness, she felt water surging out of her lungs and throat. She was still submerged, yet gently floating upward. Her limbs warmed. Her vision focused again. Her head and shoulders rose above the water’s surface and into the air. The flame of the shenìl erupted with an intensity she had never felt before as she continued to rise, dripping wet. Peering through her flames, Tess saw she was standing on the surface of the pond as easily as if it were a marble floor. Hot air blew through her hair and clothes.
Around her, the sun seemed to have set all at once, and the atmosphere was filled with a sickening red haze. From within the red haze, the shadow of a man appeared. He stood on the bank of the pond, his hands at his sides.
“Tessamine,” Pider said, his looming shadow flickering in the gloom. This figure was slight, with uneven, angular shoulders.
The fire between Tess’s hands licked at her arms reassuringly. Irgo protects you.
“I have only two requests.” The shadow shifted impatiently.
“I know what can happen when you make requests, Pider. There is nothing—”
“Oh, Lady Tessamine. You have been fed so many lies, you think there is no greater good than the weapon,” Pider cooed. His words spread thick in the air, and as he spoke, the red haze seemed to expand from him like a strong perfume.
“First, restore my sight. Then surrender the object, which has only caused you pain and sorrow. In return, I will erase all your past mistakes.”
His words struck Tess’s heart like a mallet. All the selfishness and vanity of her life flooded her mind. Could Pider know how ashamed she felt?
“I have the power to put you back in time, beginning whenever you wish. I can erase all that has happened in your life from the moment you choose until this moment. You can start again.”
The possibilities whirled in Tess’s imagination. She could refuse to marry Linden and preserve her heart against his neglect. The shenìl would not be in her possession, and Tynaiv would have no reason to seduce her. The bandits would never reach her home. Little Belle’s mother would see her grow up to be a good and kind shepherdess . . . but most especially, she would never have discovered the Thane’s Hold, and been burdened with her promise.
“But . . . but you would still have the shenìl,” she said thinly. The red haze inched toward her over the surface of the pond.
“You have seen what horrors the object attracts,” Pider said soothingly. “I will destroy it and have no further reason to bother your dione. I will sail away from Diatonica, and you will live in peace.”
Tess didn’t know what to say. It was the most wonderful gift anyone could offer to her: the chance to erase her mistakes. And since Glademont would still be safe, there was no reason not to at least consider it.
The shroud stretched across the pond and gathered at Tess’s feet, and she began to sink into the water. The fire between her hands reduced to a low blue flame.
“You would put me back home with my family, and I would never see you again?” Tess said.
“Not quite. You would trace back time, but as someone else. Lady Tessamine Canyon, as everyone knew her, would be dead. But you”—Pider’s voice softened to a whisper—“you would start over, avoid that other girl’s mistakes, and earn all the love she threw away.”
Tess pouted. “I thought red magic could do anything you wanted it to.”
“No,” Pider answered as a patient teacher to his pupil. “Rather, red magic requires an exchange.”
The red haze surrounded Tess and lifted her slowly off her feet. Her limbs felt heavy and weak, and she hardly noticed that her fire had snuffed out. It felt comfortable, resting in the red haze. Before, she had to be brave, to try to recall all the sage advice so many women had doled out to her. But now she could just lay still. Her lips began to tingle.
“Imagine who you’d like to be,” Pider said as his enchantment pulled Tess toward him. “I’ll make you as lovely as you like, as captivating as you like.”
Tess wanted to drown in the haze and feel the tingling on her lips forever. She let her head fall back, and all of her muscles melted into the red.
“Well done, well done.” A shadowy face advanced out of the gloom, brown and smooth with hooded eyes. “Now, command it to give me sight.”
From somewhere above her, a silent flying figure came into focus, disturbing the fog. Tess wanted to tell it to go away, but she felt too groggy even to open her mouth. Why wouldn’t it just leave them alone?
Wyndeling the Red dove for the shenìl, her talons snatching the leather strap and whisking it out of Tess’s hands. To her distress, Tess’s fingers closed too slowly to keep the object from flying away with the owl. Tess despised Wyndeling for making her break her promise to Pider, but a distant voice told her to be afraid.
“You still have not learned, owl?” Pider hissed. “I may be blind, but there are other ways to see.”
The red haze flashed like a thousand bolts of lightning, and Tess collapsed on the bank. Pider’s manlike figure dissolved to the ground as the haze swirled upward and disappeared. The enchantment lifted, and slowly the pond and the weeping willow reappeared by the glow of a low tangerine sun.
Pider was again a crow. He cawed savagely, cocking his head one way, then another. The next moment he was flying after Wyndeling, who still held the shenìl in her talons. At first, the owl flew away from Tess, toward the garden wall. But the wall was barred by a stand of pear trees. Her wings disturbed the leaves as she climbed upward. A blast of magma slung against the branches above Wyndeling, and she faltered, dropping to the rosebushes, her wings badly singed.
Beads of lava sputtered from Pider’s beak as he pursued, following the sounds of her gasping hoots. Another shower of fiery rock cascaded over the rosebushes, and Wyndeling rolled onto the garden path, burnt and blackened. Hooting desperately, Wyndeling hopped away from the smoke, dragging the shenìl in her talons. Pider circled overhead, cocking his black head, following the wounded owl as she made her way across the gravel. She reached the bank beside Tess.
“Wyndeling—”
Struggling to shirk the effects of the red haze, Tess covered Wyndeling with her cloak and closed her throbbing fingers around the shenìl. She breathed. Her head began to clear.
Tess pulled herself to her feet, still protecting Wyndeling with her cloak. Copper orbs floated over her palms, and the familiar flame resurrected in front of her.
Pider dove for the object, but the flame formed a fireball so large, Tess had to close her eyes against its brightness. It expanded, roaring as every tree buckled under the force of its heat. Confused, Pider spewed lava. But Tess’s small sun absorbed his enchantment.
Surrender your past, said the voice of the shenìl.
Despite the fierce heat, Tess felt tears wet her face. She could not erase her mistakes any more than she could abandon the shenìl. They shaped her. They were reasons to grow in courage, not thorns to be plucked and forgo
tten.
Tess forced herself to open her watering eyes. The mass of white-and-orange flames before her spun in place, its surface constantly morphing into different hues and shining shapes. Tess took hold of it. Trusting the shenìl would remain in the air between her hands, she stretched her arms around the fireball and bent her legs. Its boiling surface slid like weightless water under her unburned, graceful fingertips. She found her balance on the balls of her feet and turned her head, pulling the fireball into a tight circle before flinging it at the crow.
Pider retreated, flapping toward the garden wall and the smoking stand of pear trees. The fireball expanded, and Pider was catapulted through the branches to the wall. His feathers plastered against the stone. The fireball lurched forward, and the crow scrambled over the garden wall just as the flames exploded against the stone.
Suspended in shock, Tess stared at the cooling shenìl in her hands. The light hiss of scorched hairs tickled her ears, and the wood of the garden trees popped and groaned.
“I still have it.”
Her temples throbbed as she hooked her trinket back through her belt and scooped up the broken owl. A tangy smell stung her nostrils. “Wyndeling, you were wonderful. Braver than all the Council of the Nest put together.”
“My lady . . .” Soot and dirt covered Wyndeling’s face. One eye was swollen shut. “I wish to take the oath.”
“Shush, Wyndeling. I need to heal you. I need to . . .” The lifeless queen caught Tess’s eye, and she released a sob.
As the receding rays of the sun bounced on the brown leaves of the water oak, Tess held her friend and knelt at Aideen’s feet. The queen’s head rested on her chest, her hands already cold. The rumbling, echoing cry of an animal sounded in the distance. Tess recognized it immediately, but she did not move.
“My lady—” Wyndeling said weakly.
Fyrian's Fire Page 32