Sword Sisters

by Tara Cardinal

  “All right,” I said, “these are the rules. Three passes, best two out of three wins. When I say halt, you damn well better halt. And blade flats only, Gaither. We don’t have any practice armor, so I expect you to be careful.”

  “What about her?” he said, and pointed his blade.

  I knocked it down with my own. “I’m not worried about her. Now: first position.”

  Gaither stepped into a pretty good stance; Amelia did as well, but she copied him instead of remembering what I showed her. I couldn’t fix it now. “Go!”

  Gaither lunged, and Amelia blocked, but he let his sword slide off her blade and hit her in the shoulder. And that would be gliding. She cried, “Ow!”

  “Halt!” I called. “First point, Gaither.”

  They returned to first position, and this time Amelia attacked, a solid forward thrust that Gaither tried to block but couldn’t. He jumped back, avoiding the point of her sword.

  “Halt!” I said again. “Point, Amelia. One-one.”

  “Hey, she tried to stab me!” he whined. “I thought it was supposed to be flats only!”

  “Do you want to win on a disqualification?” I said. “Is that what you want your pal to spread around town?”

  Gaither glanced back at his toadie then nodded. “All right, let her have it. I’m about to win anyway.”

  They resumed position, and this time, neither got the advantage right away. Instead, they swapped blows, each alternately attacking and defending. Amelia’s face was tight with concentration, and Gaither bit his lower lip as he tried to get the upper hand.

  Then he slipped up, and Amelia saw it. She executed a spin, something we hadn’t practiced or even talked about, and smacked him on the ass with her blade.

  He cried, “Ow!” and dropped his sword.

  “Halt!” I said, barely able to keep from laughing. “Point Amelia. You lose, tough guy.”

  Taunting him was a mistake though. He was already humiliated, and it made him angry. Angry people were dangerous as I well knew from hours of lectures on my own temper. I should’ve recognized the look in his eye as he snatched his sword from the ground.

  “Calm down,” I said. “This isn’t a real fight, remember?”

  “The hell it’s not,” he said as he put away his sword then muttered, “you stunted little monster.”

  “Calling people names,” I said, “doesn’t change the fact that a girl beat you.”

  Oh, was that an error. He screeched like some wounded cori bird and lunged at me not with his sword but with a knife I hadn’t seen him draw. He knocked me to the ground and crawled on top of me, the knife raised high overhead, his face creased into an expression of hatred and fury.

  “Stop it, Gaither!” Amelia shouted. And it was the last thing I heard over the roaring blood in my ears as I shifted into full Reaper mode before I could catch myself.

  Reaper mode takes you out of time. It’s not that you black out, it’s more like when you wake from a dreamless sleep and are surprised by how much time has passed. To me, it was no more than an instant, and in truth, it probably wasn’t much longer than that in real time. But when I came out of it, I stood over the boy, who howled with pain and clutched at his legs, both of which seemed to have extra knee joints they hadn’t had moments before.

  Oh, shit. I broke both his legs.

  Then I looked around. Amelia wasn’t laughing now. She stared at me as if I was the monster here.

  Heod and Sela, followed by their smaller children, stood where they’d stopped just outside the door. Their eyes were wide.

  I stepped slowly away from Gaither, who continued to screech like a wounded bird. I bent to pick up my sword. When I lifted it, there was a collective gasp, and everyone jumped back a step. Even Amelia stood with her hands over her mouth, eyes wide.

  Someone shouted, “What’s going on here? Is this—”

  I turned. Sixle, accompanied by Damato, came around the house and, like everyone else, froze in their tracks. The elder stared at the boy on the ground. Then his eyes rose to me.

  “You,” he snarled. “That’s my son lying there! What did you do to him?”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. This is exactly the sort of thing Andre always warned me about and what Damato had feared. Now, it had happened.

  “It wasn’t her fault,” Amelia said, suddenly beside me. “Gaither tried to stab her.”

  “Why should anyone believe you?” Sixle snapped at Amelia.

  “Because I’m telling the truth,” Amelia shot back.

  “Help!” Sixle bellowed over his son’s caterwauling. “Help! Bring weapons!”

  Damato grabbed his arm. “Stop shouting. There’s no need to—”

  “Help!” Sixle continued.

  Amelia pulled me aside and said urgently, “You have to get out of her, Aella. Now. Go back to your castle and your people.”

  Those words, coming from a girl I considered a friend, cut me worse than any weapon could. “But I can’t leave—”

  “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. I know I can’t stay either. Meet me after full dark at Lurida Lumo’s cave. Nobody will look for you, or me, there.”

  “But—”

  “Aella, listen. I know you can kill all of them, but I don’t want to see that, and I truly believe you don’t want to do that. So just…go away for a while, okay? I’ll see you tonight.”

  I stared at her, an absolutely unexpected range of feelings going through me. For the first time in my life, I was truly ashamed of my loss of control. Was this what Adonis had always wanted me to feel? I also felt rage at this boy and all his friends, but it was not the same hot fury that sent me into Reaper mode; instead, it was anger that they thought so little of women in general and that Amelia and the other village girls had to grow up with that belief. As they stared at me, I realized they no longer saw me as a girl, no longer even as human; I was as much a monster as Lurida Lumo.

  I caught Damato, still trying to silence Sixle, glaring at me. Horva and Hatho hid behind their parents, and Heod and Sela appeared as terrified as their babies.

  I turned and ran.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The dress wasn’t the best thing for running, and, carrying the sword, I couldn’t really hike it up out of my way. But I still managed to cover a lot of ground more quickly than any human could. Yay, me. Bravely fleeing.

  I chose no particular direction beyond back toward the castle, but it took me along the trail to Lurida Lumo’s cave. When I realized no one immediately pursued me, I stopped to catch my breath and realized I stood near the first of the strange little pillars. The flowers left around it, presumably on the pilgrimage that took Amelia to the cave, had begun to wilt and fade.

  I looked it over. It had been carved long ago, but the surface had been maintained so that the pictures and words remained visible and in sharp relief. It showed an image of a valley nestled among a range of low mountains with a group of people arriving from somewhere else, their arms upraised and their simplistic faces all smiles. I couldn’t read the text chiseled around this, but I assumed it told where the villagers came from and what brought them here long ago. They probably fled the Demons like so many human populations; it was one reason the eventual uniting of the humans under a single king was such a big deal.

  I could breathe easily again and paused to listen for pursuit. I doubted the villagers would come charging after me, and if they sent Damato, he might be so good I didn’t hear him until he was ready to pounce. Reapers move a lot faster than humans even in flouncy dresses, but I didn’t know how fast Damato could move.

  I trotted easily to the next pillar. It also showed the village, but something was clearly wrong. People lay on the ground, and around them, others were shown in poses of despair and grief. A plague of some sort must have ravaged them. In one corner stood a cave opening with lines indicating light shining from it. Before it was a lone figure kneeling, perhaps a priest or maybe the first person to discover Lurida Lumo.

&
nbsp; How did a god introduce himself to his worshippers, I wondered? And what had he been doing all those eons before the villagers arrived? I was no theologian, but the myth of Lurida Lumo didn’t seem to hold up to too much scrutiny.

  I learned about religion from another elderly Reaper, Molon. He was absolutely dead certain in his beliefs, and if you didn’t agree with him, you were absolutely dead wrong. He explained the Reaper cosmology, that we were intended to be the shadowy reflection of what was best in humanity while the Demons represented what was worst. Humans, made in the image of God, embodied both, just as God encompassed everything, even contradictions.

  After spending my childhood with the Demons, I had no doubt they were truly the worst. But I struggled with believing Reapers were really just a shadow of humanity. I was filled with the certainty of my own existence and challenged Molon on this. He broke my jaw in punishment for my temerity. I would have hated him for it, but later that night, as I prowled the castle practicing my stealth, I found him in the chapel and overheard him praying for me. It wasn’t a prayer for my immediate painful death, as I expected, but instead one that asked God to give my soul peace. It hadn’t worked, but damn it, I admired the old guy for trying.

  Now, looking over this record of the villagers’ belief in Lurida Lumo, I wondered if they felt the same certainty before I came along.

  The third pillar, the last one, showed the villagers prosperous and happy. Again in a corner, the cave now had the crossbeams in place, a sacrifice chained to it. Standing in the glowing cave mouth was no spider but a human form. That made sense: Molon always said humans created gods in their own image then put the blame on these deities for the humans’ own mistakes.

  Humans, I thought bitterly. The race we were supposed to gladly allow dominion over the world. The ones who irrationally feared us even though we all had human mothers. Maybe the Demons had the right idea about them.

  Then I felt a rush of horror at my own thoughts. Of course the Demons weren’t right. Not about anything. And yet for a moment, that thought had been so satisfying, so pleasant, that I realized it had made me smile. By the screaming banshees of Limba, was I truly more Demon than Reaper?

  I was also ashamed. And that shame was deep and fundamental, because it was shame for something I couldn’t help. I was a Reaper, I was half-Demon, and that Demonic half had been nurtured by Ganesh and his followers the way the other Reapers had cultivated their human halves. Until I could learn to control it, it would always come out at the worst possible time, destroying false gods and cocky teenage boys who didn’t really deserve it.

  Wow, I’m a piece of work, all right.

  I’d been walking as these thoughts marinated in my head, and I emerged at the head of a familiar ravine. The sun had already dropped below the trees, placing it in deep shadow. All evidence of the spider was gone, no doubt cleaned up by forest scavengers. Nothing went to waste in the natural world unlike the sphere of humans, Reapers, and Demons. Everything here had a use, even the broken pieces of a dead god.

  The cross-tie for sacrificial victims stood like a skeleton, the broken ends of the chains dangling in the slight breeze. I leaned on it, eyes closed, exhausted, and suddenly trying not to cry. I broke a boy’s legs, a boy probably no different than my beloved, long-lost Aaron. I was a monster, wasn’t I? Just like Adonis and Eldrid said. The best I could hope for was to let someone have his way with me, breed with me like a farm animal, and produce the true Red Reaper. Then, my usefulness would be over, and I could find a way to die.

  I didn’t cry. But it was a near thing.

  When I opened my eyes again, it was even darker. And that blue glow was present again, coming from deep within the cave.

  I knew some caves had glowing moss that grew on the rocks, and there were animals that glowed in the dark as well. But this was too bright and too steady to be either of those things, and it didn’t flicker like a flame either.

  I stepped to the edge of the cave mouth and peered inside. Would I see the same shadow moving within?

  The light illuminated a high, narrow path that led down into the earth. Fine webbing coated all the surfaces, no doubt from Lurida Lumo’s passage. Yet the floor of the passage was carved into stairs designed for two feet, not eight. What had this cave once been?

  And then, from the depths, I heard a voice. Whispering.

  I knew Amelia would be along shortly—I trusted her to keep her word—but I couldn’t just let this mystery go. Who or what was down there? Some hermit or bandit hiding in the one place he knew the villagers would never go? Or worse, was this a secret hideout for the Demons? Were they planning a return to this world to renew the Thousand Year War? It seemed absurd, but as a Reaper, even an unwilling and inept one, I simply couldn’t ignore this possibility. I had to know.

  I tore off a piece of the dress’s hem and tied it to the end of a broken manacle chain. Hopefully, Amelia would understand that I’d been there and would be back. I held my sword ready although the confines of the cave were probably too narrow for it to be of much use. Then, quietly as I could, I entered the cave.

  Just inside the entrance was a curtain of fine webbing, heavier than the cobwebs I knew from the castle but not by much. It was also ridiculously clingy, and I had to spit strands from my mouth. They tasted metallic and bitter.

  I’d gone about ten feet when I reached a slight turn and found a wall of webbing blocking the way. I cut it with the sword, and when I did, a faint, whispery moan rose from the glowing-blue depths ahead.

  The noise was so creepy that I almost turned back. I was scared of nothing corporeal, but I’d never been trained to fight a damn ghost.

  I continued on, the light growing brighter. I tried not to swipe at the webbing, but I was annoyed that my lovely, clean hair was once again attracting everything I passed. I wondered if Andre could smell spider webs.

  The passage had several other small turns, which kept the source of the glow maddeningly out of sight. I wasn’t exactly afraid—it took a lot to scare a Reaper—but I did get a serious case of the creeps. What the hell was this place?

  As I was about to squeeze through a particularly narrow passage, I sensed movement above me. Another spider, identical to Lurida Lumo, had nestled itself into a cleft and trembled with the eagerness to attack me. I braced my feet and readied the sword, which, in these confines, I could only stab straight up.

  The little black cluster of eyes watched me. The blue glow made them seem eerily gentle. The ache in my shoulder reminded me that I knew better.

  “Don’t do it,” I whispered, watching for the tensing that signaled an attack. “You won’t get out of this alive.”

  The spider seemed to debate this for a moment then scuttled further back into its burrow. I pivoted as I passed under it, not about to turn my back.

  By now, the glow was bright enough to read by yet still that pale blue. It made everything either blue, gray, or black, a monochrome vision of the world that made things harder to discern than you’d think. Ahead was an opening into a larger cavern, and I nervously flexed the fingers on my sword hilt. What was waiting for me?

  As I stepped through the arched end of the passage, I discovered one very important thing as my foot crunched something on the floor. I looked down and saw bones: human bones. I’d been schooled on human anatomy as part of my battle skills and recognized the vertebrae, lower arm bones, and ribs. And as my gaze rose, I saw that they covered the cavern floor.

  I’d found the remains of a massacre.

  But I realized something else as well. None of these bones were wrapped in webbing. They weren’t covered in dried skin. They were, in fact, totally picked clean, which meant that the huge spiders, whatever else they might do, had not done this. But what had?

  And then I saw the source of the blue glow.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  He sat on a crude, rocky throne against the far cavern wall. And because he was naked, I was absolutely certain he was, in fact, a “he.”

>   Despite his humanlike form, he looked…gelatinous. Boneless, soft, and weak. And I suspected he’d be sticky to the touch. The blue glow came from the cavern behind him, from a deep recess that descended out of sight.

  Some of the blue glow actually came from him as well. It made him hard to look at; I had to squint and peek through my fingers. He saw this and grew dimmer until his glow was bearable, and I could easily make out the details. Like the fact that he was looking straight at me with a knowing little smile.

  I didn’t move. My tactical training did not cover an opponent who was half man and half slug. Perhaps if I’d had a salt shaker, I would’ve felt bolder.

  With his blue, glowing skin and humanoid shape, he looked like I imagined the Demons of old did before the spell that made them mortal-ish. His facial features were soft as well, like a clay bust that was only halfway finished. But they creased into a wide grin, and he said, in a paradoxically loud whisper, “Aella the Reaper.” His voice was strange, like it came from underwater.

  Well, no point in pretending to be a terrified local girl now. “I take it you’re Lurida Lumo?” I said.

  “I am.”

  “So you’re a god.”

  “I am.”

  “A god who lives in a hole in the ground?”

  “A god may live wherever he chooses.” He raised one hand and motioned with it, slowly and with apparent great effort. “Please, come closer.”

  “Why?”

  “It is difficult for me to speak more loudly.”

  “I thought gods do whatever they choose?”

  “Come closer,” he repeated with the exact same intonation.

  Did I just backtalk a god? Eldrid was right. There really is something wrong with me. Well, I wouldn’t learn anything standing in the door although, given the way the village had treated me, I wondered why I cared. I knew, though, it was because of Amelia, who had stood by my side against her own people, and who might—if blue slug boy here was really Lurida Lumo—still be in danger. So I picked my way through the bones of what must have been hundreds of people, probably all of them sacrifices: young women taken from their families and left staked out like bait in a trap. Young women who were all some version of my only friend, Amelia.