by Joe Ducie
I managed a rough chuckle, blood ran from my nose, the whole world spun about my head. I stumbled back from the twin swords as the blades folded and then melted from the surge of heat and power I had channelled through them, rivulets of molten steel pooling on the precipice, the last stolen starlight of Atlantis. The best laid plans, and all that nonsense. No new Roseblade for me.
I don’t remember falling, I don’t remember Annie and Tal catching me in their arms, or being wrapped in the warm, blissful embrace of some well-earned unconsciousness.
Which was a flowery way of saying I fainted just after saving the whole worthless world.
It had been a long night.
*~*~*~*
Warm healing light, the sun at noon on a spring day, flooded my body and I sat up with a start, reaching for the sword on my hip, the shotgun at my side, and finding neither.
“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Lady Evelyn Waterwood said, her hands still glowing with the power she’d used to rouse me from troubled dreams.
I’d dreamt of a field of sunflowers, a familiar face sitting amongst the blooms, my lost Valentine. Clare had smiled, in a sad sort of way that seemed par for the course around me, and told me the worst was yet to come.
I recalled a similar dream, during my first few weeks in Atlantis, recalled pulling one of those sunflowers from the dream.
“Where are Tal and Annie?” I asked, and speaking hurt my throat. Lady Waterwood handed me a glass of water and I sipped at it carefully. My head was pounding.
“Your friends are well. Resting.”
I swung my legs off the cot and found spongy grass beneath my feet. I was alone with Lady Waterwood inside a three-walled white canvas tent. Through the open wall, I glimpsed rolling green fields, the edge of a forest, and in the distance the silver towers of the Atlas Lexicon. I was in the mobile command centre where Annie and I had been brought after arriving in the valley.
Someone had changed me out of my bloodstained jeans and shirt, removed the rags of my waistcoat, and healed the worst of my wounds. I was dressed in a simple pair of board shorts to hide my shame, shirtless and barefoot. I felt all kinds of out of sorts.
The worst of my wounds, the pierced shoulder, looked about three weeks healed. I prodded at the lump of red scar tissue gently, felt a faint twinge but nothing severe, and examined the rest of my body. A wicked swath of purple bruises covered my chest and along my side. Over my heart were four new scars, lines drawn like claw marks—Dread Ash’s fingernails. She’d left her mark on me, for sure.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man with so many scars,” Lady Waterwood said. She stood above me in some fancy blue ceremonial robe, a small flap cap on her head. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, highlighting her severe face, her sharp nose and sparklingly clever eyes. “You cannot be happy, living the life you do.”
On a small table next to the cot I spied a pile of clean clothing—shirts, socks, a pair of thin boat shoes. I shrugged into a white T-shirt and slipped on the shoes. The movement cost me in aches and pains. I wished for a patch to cover my dead eye and the hideous network of scar tissue around it, but we don’t always get what we want.
“I spoke with Sergeant Grenn before healing you. Arlon, that is,” she said at my frown, “and he informed me of everything that happened after you left the Vale Crystalis. How you defeated the Everlasting and destroyed the majority of the deadling army.”
Had I done all of that? I supposed I had, but it hadn’t been done alone, and a lot of good soldiers had died. But then that’s what soldiers did. So the rest of the worlds could sleep easy in their beds. Someone had to bleed. If I’d learnt nothing else in my life, I’d learnt that—someone had to bleed.
“Honestly,” Lady Waterwood said, “I took a moment to decide whether to heal you or to slit your throat.”
“You will recall,” I said, taking another sip of water. I wasn’t quite ready to stand yet. “You will recall that I was invited here, and my assistance was formerly requested by all available lords and ladies of the Atlas Lexicon. More than once, even.”
Lady Waterwood scowled. “If we’d known you were here to clean up a mess you were responsible for, Arbiter—”
“You would have done nothing differently,” I snapped. “Let’s skip to the punchline, my lady. You sat out most of the Tome Wars, and that’s good, and the work the Lexicon does in saving children from the Story Thread is admirable, but you are Willful, you are travellers of the Story Thread.” Now I stood. “What on this or any world makes you think you’re exempt from being called to fight when the Knights Infernal demand it?”
She took a step back, not in fear, but to work herself up into quite a storm. Lord Towré Winter strode into the tent wearing a similar blue robe of importance, handsome if grave, leaning on his tall black-glass staff.
“Our accords with your people, Arbiter,” Lady Waterwood spat, “recognise the Atlas Lexicon as an independent city-state. You violated those accords by tethering one of the godforsaken Everlasting to a school for children! You declared war on us!”
“No,” I said.
“No?”
“When were the accords signed?” I asked softly.
“Ah,” Lord Winter said. He chuckled without mirth. “I see I’ve come at the right time to defuse this particular time bomb.”
“Lord Winter,” Lady Waterwood said. “We should arrest this man. He should be tried under our laws. His people won’t protect him—he broke the accords.”
Lord Winter stared at me and I saw that I didn’t have a friend there, no, not at all. But I also saw that he got it. That I hadn’t broken a single law, not one letter of the accords.
“Our treaties with the Knights were signed over four hundred years ago, during the last conflict we had with them,” Lord Winter said.
“Exactly,” Lady Waterwood said. “And the travesty Hale brought down on us two days ago is in direct violation…” She trailed away, I saw the light of understanding dawn in her eyes, then fade to sullenness. “You monster,” she whispered. “You knew there would be children here, but still you did it.”
“No accords were broken,” Lord Winter said tightly. “As when Arbiter Hale imprisoned the Everlasting Dread Ash here at the Atlas Lexicon, there was no Atlas Lexicon. No accords.”
Almost like I planned it…
“As I said, Lady Waterwood, Lord Winter.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “You don’t get to choose when to fight and when not to—the Everlasting threaten the entire Story Thread, and this world most of all. I am their sworn enemy, and I will use any means to ensure they do not get a foothold on True Earth.”
“Tell that to the people who died for your strategy here,” Lady Waterwood said, as if sucking on something sour. “The soldiers we lost, the teachers and students.”
“War is coming for all of us,” I said. “And you will be called into service. But look on the bright side. Now instead of eight vicious and malignant elder gods darkening the universe, there are only seven. Today was a win, and could have come at a far greater cost.”
“The cost was too great!”
I was ready to leave, but I wanted to make sure they understood, that they got it. “I would have let the entire Atlas Lexicon fall into the Void if it meant one of the Everlasting fell with it,” I said. “I would have burned you all, every last man, woman, and child, to gain an inch of ground against Dread Ash. Count your blessings the city still stands at all.”
I left them gaping and strolled out into the sunlight on that cool autumn afternoon. How long I had been unconscious, I didn’t know, but I felt it was still the same day. The sun was like a kiss against my skin, the breeze and fresh air even more pleasant.
Unarmed—well, without a physical weapon—I strolled across the lush green fields in search of my friends.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN
(For everything a price to pay, for everything in its time)
Sensing I
’d worn out my welcome at the Atlas Lexicon, and not wanting to push these good people any further (or risk the soldiers turning on me), we left the picturesque mountain valley not one hour after I’d awoken in the field tent. Annie and Tal at my side, we headed back into the forest and the portal that would take us down to Western Australia.
As we strolled through the pleasant forest glades, dashes of sunlight falling through the green canopy, carpets of wildflowers either side, they told me about all that had happened during my unconscious hours.
After destroying the shield and heroically passing out, the four of them had carried me a little ways down the mountain, but found the path beyond the canyon, the hillside where I’d glassed the deadling army, impassable. The celestial illusion still burned hot, scorchingly so, and would for a very long time to come. The potential energy and power in that cavern would outlast the sun.
Thankfully, Arlon had made a call—all the electronics and devices had started working again once the shield fell—and a shuttle craft had collected us from the mountainside. The city, still rife with scatterings of deadlings and a few other ugly creatures, was deemed an active battle zone, so we had been brought to the command centre just outside of Spire-Brunnen.
Lord Winter had been waiting for the shield to fall, and had led his soldiers and mercenaries into the city almost the moment the purple bastard disappeared. He swept the streets clear of the dead.
The fighters among those that had been trapped in the city emerged, too, led by the lords and ladies. It was a short, swift, decisive battle over in a matter of hours. Mostly because I’d burned ninety-five percent of the army on the mountain. You’re welcome, I thought, but didn’t say.
Annie, Tal, and I walked through the forest in various states of slow injury. Scrapes and bruises, mostly, after all the healing, but a seeping fatigue had stolen over me and I wanted nothing more than to get home, back to my bookshop, and put this matter to bed. I had a feeling there was still work to be done, though. I hoped I was wrong about that.
I collected the black duffel bag I’d stashed near the Road’s Fire portal when we’d arrived, full of weaponry and shells for a shotgun I’d have to remake, and opened the portal back to Rottnest Island just as the sun began to slip behind the tallest peaks to the west.
The little quokka who had bounded through ahead of us at the start of this sordid adventure was waiting nearby, and once again the furry marsupial took lead and hopped back through the portal, back to his natural habitat on that tiny spit of island just off the coast of Western Australia.
It was a warm night on Rottnest, we’d jumped forward about six or seven time zones, making it close to midnight. Stars blazed overhead, reflected in still portrait against the salt lakes.
After all that happened, it felt good to be away from the Atlas Lexicon. No doubt there would be ramifications for all I’d done, all I’d wrought, and the Knights Infernal would want to talk. But, as discussed, none of the accords or treaties had been broken. I was a bastard, but an honest bastard.
“Can’t believe we’ve been gone less than a day,” Annie said, as we headed through the main settlement on the island and toward the ferry jetty. “Declan,” she asked, “did we do good?”
I glanced at Tal, who had said little, who stared not at the world around her but I feared at the world behind, at the long ago.
“The Everlasting are…” I sighed. “They are more human than they care to admit. They love and hate, just like the rest of us. I would have let Ash go, I truly would have, if she had released Tal and dropped the shield. I had hoped to imprison her forever in that cavern, that was the plan, back in Atlantis, but it wasn’t meant to be. Not once she took Tal.”
“I didn’t ask you to save me,” Tal said, but with no heart to the argument. Done was done.
“You never need to ask.”
She looked at me sideways, her angular face in profile against the night sky as we walked along the coastal path to the ferry terminal. Gentle waves from the Indian Ocean crashed against the sandy shores. Tal looked away.
“Killing her was the only option,” Annie said, as if trying to convince herself. After all, it had been Annie’s blade work that had ended the Everlasting.
“I know they can die,” I said. “Because I watched Emily die. But killing Ash was never part of the terribly awful plan. We got lucky, really lucky. It won’t happen again.”
“Am I in danger, Declan?” Annie asked.
“More than you’ve ever been. I’ll try to deflect as much of it my way as I can, but you removed one of the Everlasting from the board.” I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The bruises on my chest twitched, a dull ache. “There will be trouble for that. You will be noticed. I’m sorry, Annie.”
She brushed some imaginary dust from the arms of her torn leather jacket and fell into thought, the frown creasing her brow both pretty and worried.
“How do you feel being back among the mortal?” Tal asked, a hand over her heart where my tiny sliver of immortality now resided. The lights of the main jetty loomed ahead, about two minutes’ walk away. No ferries were parked up alongside the jetty, which was irksome.
I dwelled on Tal’s question. I’d been dwelling on little else, actually, since awaking in the field tent.
“With the petal gone, I’m vulnerable,” I said, thinking of the Everlasting, of their ability to possess. Without the petal, I was just as exposed as any other poor soul in creation. The damage the Everlasting could do, our powers combined, was unfathomable.
And also Future Declan’s problem.
If there was a silver lining to that dark cloud, it was that the petal now resided in Tal’s heart, and so long as it was there she could never be slave to the Everlasting again. If there was any soul so deserving of such protection, it was Tal.
“I guess we’ll just have to see what’s next,” I said.
We were informed by the sleepy caretaker at the Visitor’s Centre next to the main jetty that there were no ferries to the mainland until the morning. He offered us accommodation in a chalet on the island for the night at a discounted rate, so long as we were on the first ferry, but none of us were in a mood to spend the night on Rottnest.
The caretaker called up an after-hours number and arranged a private boat to take us back to Perth within the hour. It cost an arm and a leg, both limbs placed neatly on Annie’s credit card after much grumbling, but soon we were zipping across the dark ocean on a speedy little six-metre boat captained by a short, heavily tattooed man with an impressive wiry grey beard, which whipped over his shoulder as we headed into the wind. Ocean spray and salt stung my face and arms, but it was a good sting, a sensation of being alive after such matters had been so uncertain.
We didn’t speak on the voyage over. Speaking was done for now as there was too much to say.
*~*~*~*
After a call made during the boat crossing, Ethan Reilly, my wayward apprentice, met us in the carpark of Hillarys Boat Harbour on Sorrento Quay. He sported a head of bed hair, his eyes heavy with sleep.
That fatigue was washed away in an instant when he laid eyes on Tal—Sophie’s sister. Sophie and Ethan had been arguing a lot since we disappeared, cast back in time to fabled Atlantis. I could see a thousand and one question bristling on his lips, but I gave him a look that suggested such enquiries were better left to the morning.
We piled into Ethan’s beaten up old ’87 Astra, the floor of the car covered in pizza receipts from his part-time job, a long-since dispersed pine tree air freshener swinging from the rear view mirror.
“No trouble while you were gone, boss,” he said, turning the engine over and looking relieved when the old car started. “I spent last night and all of today at the shop. Had the glazier round to fix the window. You owe me two-fifty.”
I blinked, only just remembering that an hour or two before the whole business of the Atlas Lexicon had kicked off, someone had thrown an enchanted Molotov cocktail through the window of my little bookshop.
“That’s worrisome,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it.
I was done in, knackered, and wanted nothing more than to sleep for a week. I thought, I hoped, Tal might spend the night with me at the shop. I could use a cuddle. And a drink.
I could really, really use a drink.
But, and this was a pleasant realisation, I thought I probably wouldn’t have one.
True what they say, you gotta hit rock bottom before you can quit your demons. Drowning them in blood or whisky doesn’t work. Those bastards can swim.
The drive along the coast up to Joondalup and Riverwood Plaza, the small nestle of shops and restaurants, was only five minutes, but I began to doze in those minutes and they ticked by as if in dream. I awoke as the battered old Astra pulled into the street parking on the side road across from my shop, cold and feeling a touch adrift, out of sorts.
“Cup of tea before bed?” I asked the car and got a few nods and mutters.
We stepped out into the warm night, lit only by two streetlamps, casting shadows all across Riverwood Plaza—all save mine, me without my shadow.
We reached the marble fountain, spouts of water trickling softly in the clear waters, our boot heels clicking on the cobblestones, and here Annie hesitated. She wrapped her arms around herself and gazed at my bookshop just across the way. I could read the look on her face well.
“I should probably head home,” she said. “Via the station, of course. Need to explain where I was today.”
“Surely not the truth,” I said.