Malwina falls to the floor, shaken. She begins blinking rapidly. Her face stays stoic, but tears start falling from her eyes. She stands and turns to Ivanya and Taty. “You, and you,” she says, her voice shaking. “Get these kids up and get them over to the door. Now.”
Ivanya sprints over to the closest bed, where a young boy of about twelve with curiously scaly skin is rubbing his eyes in a stupor. She doesn’t bother introducing herself: she just grabs his arms, drags him out of bed—muttering as she does, “You are a lot heavier than a sheep”—and trots over to the fireplace, where she dumps him down like a sack of flour. She looks to Taty, who’s still dumbfounded by the sight before her. “Taty! Focus and help me, now!”
Taty shakes herself and goes to the next bed with Ivanya, while Malwina hauls one of the drowsy children out of bed like someone trying to get drunken friends home from the bar.
Another crash, another bang. The doors tremble. There’s an awful sound coming from the other side, the sound of creaking trees and cheeping insects and a high, cold wind. Ivanya’s not sure why, but she begins to feel like she’s lost somewhere deep and dark, waiting for morning….
It’s him, isn’t it, she realizes. The thing Sigrud’s been fighting all this time.
She shakes herself as they haul another child out of bed. As they carry the child away they walk by a chair, which is strangely out of place in this odd room: it’s tattered and overstuffed, and it sits with its back to them, facing the windows, like a chair at a convalescent home.
As they round the side of the chair, she sees it’s occupied.
And it appears to be occupied by a dead woman. Or, at least a woman who should be dead.
Ivanya gasps and nearly drops the sleeping child. In the chair sits an ill-looking Shara Komayd, craning her head around the other side of the chair so she can see the doors better. She seems wholly unaware that there are two people in front of her, and only turns around when Ivanya gasps. She blinks owlishly at the two of them. Then her mouth drops open.
“Oh, no,” she says. “Taty?”
Tatyana Komayd stares at her. “Mother? Mother! You…You…You’re alive? You’re really alive?” She drops the child’s feet and almost bursts into laughter. “I knew it! I don’t know how but I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!”
Shara tries to stand, but she doesn’t seem to have much strength. She swallows, panicked. “You can’t be here, dear, you can’t! Not here, not now! He’s coming through, he’ll kill you! You’re not safe here!”
Ivanya looks up at the doors, which shudder again with another fierce blow. “I’m starting to think,” she says, “that we might have gotten here too late.”
* * *
—
Tavaan’s arms and legs scream in pain as she tries to hold the doors up. How many more blows can I withstand? she thinks. One? Two? No more than that, certainly.
Her ears are filled with the sounds of night: the crackle of leaves under invisible feet, the soft cry of distant birds, the shifting of tall grasses. It’s hard to focus now. She uses all of her power to survey the sleeping children behind her.
Twelve awake, only twelve. The rest still struggle to rise from their slumber, the one she herself placed them in.
How did it go so wrong? How did he get in? How did we let it all come to this?
Another blow. Tavaan is knocked back from the doors and sent sprawling onto the stones. The doors break open the slightest bit.
“No!” she screams. She makes the floor come rising up, shooting her back at the doors, slamming them shut and forcing all the pieces to stay where they are.
Twelve awake. And Malwina, Komayd, and the newcomers.
She grits her teeth in rage and despair. Tears fall from her eyes and patter onto the stones.
What a damnable choice to make, she thinks, and what a damnable end this is.
Tavaan focuses her energy, takes a breath, and screams.
* * *
—
Ivanya, Shara, and Taty all jump when the girl at the doors begins screaming. “What in the world?” says Ivanya, but she doesn’t have time for another thought, because then Shara’s chair begins moving of its own accord, sliding toward the fireplace and scooping up Ivanya and Taty with it, who both fall on Shara with a thump.
Ivanya cries out in surprise, but she sees the chair isn’t the only thing moving in the room: all the beds bearing children near the fireplace are drifting toward the exit as well, as if the whole room has been tilted up, dumping the furniture to that one corner, and taking Malwina with it.
As they slide toward the exit, Ivanya can’t help but notice that many beds are staying still. These seem to contain children who are still asleep—so it’s only the ones who are awake who are moving.
Ivanya thinks, But what will happen to the others?
She doesn’t have time to wonder, because the next thing she knows, the chair is dumping her and Taty and Shara out through the fireplace, sending them tumbling down the strange passageway, back through to the tollbooth, until…
Ivanya lands on the grass outside the tollbooth, followed by Taty and Shara, who each land on top of her, knocking the breath from her. They roll to the side just as a handful of children come tumbling out, all of them ones they managed to waken.
Malwina refuses to stay down. The instant she strikes the ground she rises back up and staggers back toward the passageway, seeming to fight against an invisible wind. “No!” she cries down the passageway. “I won’t let you! Not like this, not like this!”
Ivanya can still see the distant blue square of the fireplace entrance down the passageway. The light within seems to quiver, like a candle flame brushed by the breeze. Ivanya isn’t sure how she knows this, but she can tell that something is leaking into the distant room, flooding into it like poisonous gas through the frame of a door, something invisible and terrible….
A screaming voice comes echoing down the passageway: “Tulvos! I love y—”
There’s a tremendous crash. The distant room floods with shadow. Then comes a horrible sound, a sound that carves itself into Ivanya’s mind: the sound of dozens of children all crying out at once.
The passageway goes dark. The screams are cut short. Malwina is blown backward like ten tons of explosives have gone off in her face, and she lands on a heap in the grass.
Then there’s silence.
Malwina coughs, then claws herself to her feet. “No,” she whispers. “No, no!” She runs back to the tollbooth, but is dumbfounded to find it is only four blank, wooden walls—no more, no less. “No!” she screams. “No, no, no!”
She begins hammering on the walls of the tollbooth, sobbing hysterically. Ivanya rises and physically restrains her, pinning the girl’s arms to her sides. “Stop,” says Ivanya, firmly but gently.
“She shut the door!” screams Malwina. “She dumped us out and shut the door and trapped him in there with her!”
“Stop,” says Ivanya again.
Malwina keeps struggling. “I have to go back! I have to help her! I have to, I have to!”
“Stop. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“Shut up!” cries Malwina. “Shut your mouth, shut your fucking mouth!” She kicks at the walls once, twice. “Let me go, let me go! Let me go, let me go, let me go!” Then she dissolves into tears.
Everyone sits in silence, trying to understand exactly what happened.
“M-Mother?” asks Taty, sitting up. “Are you all right? Are you…Are you really alive?”
Shara snaps up into a sitting position with a surprising amount of strength. Then she grabs Taty’s arms and pulls them out, frantically looking at her wrists, her arms, her neck and face. “Are you all right?” Shara says. “Are you hurt? Taty, tell me, are you hurt?”
“Mother, stop!” says Taty. “I’m fine, I’m fine! I should be asking you if you’re h
urt, since you’re the one who di—”
Taty never gets to finish her sentence, because then Shara throws her arms around her, hugs her tight, and bursts into tears. “I never thought I’d see you again,” she whispers. “I never, never, never thought I’d see you again.” Even though she’s weeping, her arms don’t stop searching Taty’s back and neck, still seeking any hidden injury.
“I’m fine,” says Taty, who sounds torn between terror and bewilderment. “But…But what just happened?”
One of the children, a boy of about fifteen, stands and walks to the tollbooth door. “Malwina?” he says. “What’s going on? We were asleep, and then…And then he was coming…”
“What’s going on?” says Malwina savagely. “What’s going on?” She makes a noise that’s halfway between a sob and a laugh. “We fucking lost is what’s going on! We lost! He got everyone else, everyone else!”
“What do you mean?” asks the boy. “What…What do we do now?”
“What do we do? There’s nothing to do,” says Malwina. “Don’t you see? We’re the only ones left now.” She blinks as if realizing what she just said. Then, quieter, “We’re the only ones left.”
* * *
—
Alone in the little room, mighty Nokov eats his fill. He eats greedily, lustily, with a fervor he’s never known before. To think he’d ever have such a victory, such a complete and total victory, with hundreds of his siblings laid out at his feet…
He grows and grows and grows. With each death, a new domain. With each new domain, a greater power.
Nokov changes.
He is a serpent, vast and terrible.
He is a great raven, his wings made of purest night.
He is a long, lean wolf, whose jaws devour light and life itself.
He is a tremendous volcano, pouring ash into the dawning sky.
He is many things, many ideas, many concepts all merged into one, all lost within the night.
Nokov eats. His hunger is insatiable and his vengeance merciless.
All your happy lives, he thinks as he pounces from bed to bed. All your days free of torment. I will show you what they showed me. I will share with you my pain.
When the last whimpering child vanishes into the endless abyss of the first night, he finds he is still not full, still not complete.
He needs more. He must have more.
He hears footsteps behind him. He turns around, which takes some time—he is no mere child anymore, but a creature of terrible, rippling bulk. He sees his servant at the door, his distorted seneschal.
“Silence,” he says to her. “We have won. We have won, Silence, we have won.”
There is a rippling silence in the room, and with it comes the words:
It takes him a moment to realize what she means. Then he understands—the dauvkind. He came here, that Nokov knows—he sensed the taint in the man’s body, felt its shadow dwell here. But where is he now?
Nokov reaches out, rifling the darkness for the man’s scent. Finally he finds it.
If Nokov still had lungs—and he never did, but he certainly doesn’t now—he would gasp.
Because the dauvkind now stands in a place Nokov himself could never find, never penetrate, never see. Yet now it seems Nokov is strong and great enough to do so.
And perhaps, he thinks, standing straight and tall until his head touches the ceiling, great enough to challenge her.
I keep coming back to Voortya, and her afterlife. It seems a running theme in this world that a Divinity must defeat themselves in order to accomplish something great and beautiful.
Death, as you know, had to die to understand death. War had to lose in order to understand victory.
If Kolkan had been punished, and confessed, would he have been different?
If Olvos had lost hope, and despaired, would she have been different?
—FORMER PRIME MINISTER ASHARA KOMAYD, LETTER TO UPPER PARLIAMENT HOUSE MINORITY LEADER TURYIN MULAGHESH, 1734
Olvos opens her eyes. “There,” she whispers. “It’s done.”
“What’s done?” says Sigrud.
“The last stages of the end,” says Olvos hoarsely. “You and I, Sigrud, you and I and Shara, we all have a part to play in this. In what began when the Kaj first crossed the South Seas and made war upon these lands. Saypur thought that was the end, but it was just the beginning of the end. The first hour, perhaps, of our twilight.”
“What do you mean?” asks Sigrud, now anxious. “What…What has happened?”
“Your sword,” she says. “Flame. Can you still find it?”
Sigrud fumbles for it, focuses, then grabs it in the air. It’s there still, waiting in the space before him, and though it feels firm in his fingers he notes the blade is now queerly insubstantial, as if it were but a piece of golden tulle.
“What’s wrong with it?” he says.
“Most of the people who made it are now gone,” says Olvos. “It is just a shadow of what it once was.”
He stares at the blade. Then he slowly puts it away and turns to look at her. “Gone? What do you mean?”
Olvos bows her head.
“What…What are you saying?” he asks, horrified.
“That’s the problem with a power vacuum,” she says, smiling sadly. “Something must swell to fill the gap. It’s…It’s just nature, I suppose. But though one may weep, one can’t fight nature.”
“They’re gone?” he asks. “The children? They’re really gone? He’s…He’s won?”
She does not answer.
“And this…This is how you justify your cowardice?” he says. “With talk of nature? This is how you rationalize allowing children to be lost to the most dangerous thing walking this earth, the thing that wishes to devour the world?”
“Nokov is not the most dangerous thing walking this earth,” says Olvos. “He never was. None of the six Divinities ever were. That title is reserved for a player who has yet to make their appearance. Though you will come to know them in due time.” She stands and looks down at him, and once again her eyes are like distant flames. “Listen to me, Sigrud. Do you hear me?”
“I wish I did not,” says Sigrud bitterly. “Such is my disgust for you.”
“Your disgust is well earned,” says Olvos. “And I share it. But listen—this was born in blood. It always was. It was born in conquest, born in power, born in righteous vengeance. And that is how it means to end. This is a cycle, repeating itself over and over again, just as your life repeats itself over and over again. We must break that cycle. We must. Or else we doom future generations to follow in our footsteps.” She stabs a finger out at him. “You have a choice, a choice I never did. You have a choice to be different. You, who have defeated many by strength of arms, you will have a moment when you can choose to do as you have always done, or you can choose to do something new. You, a man who has never forgiven himself, who believes he deserves all his ills, you will have a moment to reconsider. And in that moment, the world will teeter upon a blade of grass, and all will be decided thereafter. Walk it carefully.”
“What are you talking ab—”
She cocks her head as if she hears something, though Sigrud’s ears catch nothing but the crackle of the fire and the sigh of the snowflakes.
“He comes,” she says, her voice low and full of dread. “He comes to me now, my prodigal son.” She smiles slightly. “What is reaped is what is sown. And what is sown is what is reaped. You must go, Sigrud. Soon he will be here, and he cannot find you. Soon the walls will grow and the dawn will be threatened. And time, as always, will remain our deadliest foe.”
Sigrud stands. He sees her jaw is trembling. To see a god so anxious fills him with terror. She notices his glance, and smiles and reaches out to touch his face
, a strangely reassuring gesture. “Quiet now, child. All things end. Just as the stars fade and mountains fall, all things end. But that does not mean there is no hope.”
“What is it you wish me to do?” asks Sigrud. “What is there to do?”
“Fight, of course. And, if we have luck, live.” Her smile fades, and hot tears spill out to hiss upon the ground below. “When it comes to it, when you have that chance…please don’t hurt her. She didn’t deserve what we did to her. And she loves you so. Please be there for her when she needs you to be, as I never was.”
“Who do you mean?” asks Sigrud. “Why must you speak in riddles?”
Olvos points over his shoulder. “There,” she says. “Your auto.”
He turns to look. He sees she’s right: his automobile is just behind him, parked next to the road—but wasn’t the wall there just a bit ago?
He turns back only to find she’s gone: he’s standing on the grass beneath the trees, facing the dark forest below the polis governor’s quarters. There is no bonfire, no walls, no sight of Olvos.
Sigrud looks around, seeking any sight of the Divine, anything that could possibly suggest this last interaction really happened. But there is nothing. He is alone.
Nearly all the children are gone? Can she be right? He feels a Divinity is probably a reliable source, but…What about Malwina? Tavaan? And Shara? Could he have lost her again?
He climbs into his auto, starts it up, and begins the short journey back to Bulikov.
* * *
—
He comes to her like a thunderstorm, like a pack of wolves charging through the forest, like a great, dark wave pouring up onto the shore. Her barriers and protections are nothing to him, mere spiderwebs he can bat aside with but a flick of his hand. He is drawn to her, he finds, drawn to her light, drawn to the shadows dancing around the bonfire.
How he despises those who have the light, who enjoy the warmth. How he despises her.
He leaps forth from the shadows and stands at the edge of the bonfire, tall and proud and regal. A child no longer, certainly not. He stares down at her, smiling, waiting for her glance to fall upon his form—her eyes will widen, surely, and she will be overcome with awe and terror, and beg forgiveness…
The Divine Cities Trilogy: City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles, With an Excerpt From Foundryside Page 143