by Chris Howard
Her guards exchanged looks with Gregor and Lady Nikoletta, pausing for direction as Kassandra threw her arms over her head and pointed her toes, dropping below their position, farther out of range of their protection.
"By herself?” Nereus turned to Nicole, now riding archer on his orca. “What is she doing?"
Nicole watched a second longer and shrugged.
Kassandra bent her knees hitting, something solid in the sea, putting one hand out to dig her fingers into Ochleros’ upper arm. Her feet were flat in the palm of his hand, and she was smiling grimly up at his face.
"You've finished wrestling a bit sooner than I expected, old friend."
"Whales have long memories.” His deep voice made the water shiver around him. “One of them owed me a debt of life. I once saved her mother from the harpoon."
Kassandra nodded, pointing down. “The story another time perhaps. I would give nearly anything to hear it. Battle calls."
She waved her guard over, shouting “To me, Rexenor!"
The vanguard spun to face the floor a mile below and dove straight down, a hundred on orcas following one side of the rage and blood of the left Rexenor wing and two of the king's phalanxes.
Praxinos’ voice rode smoothly through her thoughts. Rexenor has fought the dead twice. They do well.
No. Andromache corrected him. The bone-gatherer has weighted his ranks against the king more than us. See, the dead have outflanked them.
"It does not go well for either of us."
Hearing her, a Rexenor mage pointed out, “Dardanis’ line holds."
"Dardanis is dead,” said Kassandra quietly. She turned slowly and shouted over her shoulder, “I want the pale woman alive!” She held out her left arm, directing them to broaden the face of their attack.
With Kassandra's burning star behind the charge, it was like diving out of the sun. They could see well, but their enemies had to look into the blinding light.
"Who knows what the dead can see,” said Kassandra grimly.
The Rexenor charge swung under a column of the dead, punching a wide gap through them. The orcas, blinded by Kassandra's star on the last charge and directed entirely by their riders, were finally able to see their prey. The second ranks in the charge held their lances out, ducking against crushed plates of armor and high-velocity broken bone.
Nearing the command formation of the dead army, Kassandra slipped out of Ochleros’ fist, her sword gliding through bone and armor. A spear point caught her in the shoulder, sending her into a rapid spin.
The ocean rolled in front of her, blurs of shiny black orca and bone white, the battle roar so loud she couldn't hear Ochleros over it. A blink of time showed her his mouth full of giant teeth closing over twenty of the dead. The pale woman spun by, arms wide, fingers curled into claws, calling something darker than the abyss between them.
Kassandra cupped a hand to slow her spin, the cry of her senses jumping right to her muscles, throwing her body sideways, upside down.
A thin slice of darkness, the size of a small ship, winged past her. She turned to follow its path through twenty orcas and Rexenors, cutting them into pieces, a cloud of blood in its wake.
The Rexenor charge broke into a red ocean of screaming, dodging, tumbling orcas and Seaborn. Another black sickle shape shot through them, taking Ochleros’ left arm off at the elbow.
Kassandra ducked a tangle of spear-length claws still curling around a handful of dead in broken armor.
"Nereus!” Kassandra looked around for him. One of the pale woman's blades came at her. She tucked in her legs, turning sideways to it, bracing the back of her sword with her feet—an old trick Phaidra had taught her. The slice of dark split on the edge of her Telkhines blade, firing off in opposite directions. She followed one shard whirling through the middle ranks of the bone-gatherer's own army, a row of fifty skulls in helmets popping off in sequence.
Nereus rode up with Nicole firing bolts in every direction. “My lady! The king's army is in flight!"
Kassandra pointed vigorously away. “Get her out of here!"
She blinked, startled, a jolt of electricity. Nicole dropped her crossbow, a bolt shooting wide, agony on her face, and Kassandra clamped her teeth shut against the rage that seized her.
A flood of heat slid up her spine, a hot current firing along her back into her brain. The ocean went silent, the battle frozen in time, the only movement was Ochleros’ solid black eyes sliding toward her, a grimace of pain on his face.
Kassandra opened her mouth to scream, and a storm two miles above her on the surface of the Atlantic Ocean flattened to glass.
"Kallixene!” She cried her grandmother's name, feeling the full bleed of the Lady of Rexenor ram belligerently into her soul.
There was a click in her ears, deep and needle-like. Time started and the battle noise hit her like a fist, shaking her senses, a sudden blur of motion, orca teeth and twisting armor, and thick red blood everywhere.
Kallixene had taken her own life, giving her granddaughter every last thing she possessed.
Kassandra turned and charged through a thick ring of the dead, one sweep from her shoulder that ended with her holding the blade point out, both hands white on the sword grip as she broke through the line.
The pale woman spun slowly toward her, her mouth just starting to open for a song, teeth glistening, her tongue lifting. The thick black bar between her fingers shattered and drifted away like smoke, and Kassandra drove her sword to the hilt through the center of Corina's chest.
Kassandra swung her legs up to circle Corina's waist, locking her ankles behind her back. She uncurled her fingers from the haft of her sword and dug them into the pale woman's face, tilting it back to force their eyes to meet—and then she was swimming into Corina's soul.
Corina screamed, a bolt of agony shooting through her body. The scary woman, Kassandra, rammed the point of her sword into her, through her breastbone, cutting her heart into pieces, sliding through muscle and vertebrae, sticking three feet from her back. Blindness and crushing pain in her chest, the taste of her own blood in her mouth, then the water stilled behind her teeth.
End it. Even the Pacific, my protector, has abandoned me. My body's dead. Destroy me, destroy my soul.
"I was already dead.” She cried the words in despair, dropping solidly onto the gray rocks of her inner world. She twisted her ankle and fell to her knees, sobbing, tears and snot running off her chin.
The jagged flat stones cut her skin, and she ran her fingers through it, streaking blood up her thighs. She snorted something bitter about shock and internal bleeding, and stood up on wobbly weak legs.
"I died the day...” She was about to say, I placed my hand on the print in the cave in Monterey and released this monster into my body, but paused and said, instead, “My mother and father died. What made me so special?"
Hopelessness emptied her mind, nothing but a running slick of pain pooling in the bottom. She ran screaming for the edge of her gray inner world. The rocks cut her toes. The roaring wind hit her in the face, throwing her hair back. She wanted to fall forever, through the pure black space.
A dim line from the glow of her body showed the edge of her gray island. She kicked her legs harder and ran off the end of her inner world, into the void.
Corina was flying.
The roaring wind lifted her in its arms, a smooth certain grasp on every inch of her body. She tumbled forward and the wind flipped her upside down and pushed her back.
Not falling.
She was caught in a current that threw her toward her island. She slowed as she approached the rocky edge. Too slow.
She stretched out her arms, her fingers stiff, reaching for her barren haven, tears streaming off her face in blurry tendrils, her hair coiling around her head like tentacles.
She was falling, slowing down, headed directly for the cliff face, a long wedge of blackness cut into it, the opening of a cave the same shape as the one that had once held Aleximor.
&
nbsp; A blast of wind hit her in the back and threw her into the dark. She tumbled over the rocks, skidding up to wall, scraping her chin and knees.
She brought her hands up, bloody and raw. Beyond them she saw a smooth blank space on the wall of the cave, right where the handprint had been, where Aleximor had been locked inside the earth.
She gave it another glance before stumbling to the edge of the cave. Leaning out, she found a handhold, reached up, and began to climb.
Corina reached for a ridge of rock, hooking her toes in a depression in the cliff face. “I hate you!” She screamed it to the world—her inner world. “I hate you, Aleximor!” It made her feel strong to hear her voice. “The killing, betrayal, binding souls, waking armies of the dead, to the bottom of the sea and into a battle where the woman leading the Rexenor army runs her sword through me! I hate you! Do you hear me! All of it for nothing. I should have given up the day you took my body over. I have tried to fight you and look where it ends."
She was halfway to the top when her killer floated up behind her.
"You're nearly there,” said Kassandra. “Don't give up."
Corina lost her footing and made a panicked grab for any knob of rock in reach. She pressed her body against the cliff, breathing hard.
When she felt safe again, she threw Kassandra an angry look over her shoulder. The murdering bitch drifted ten feet away, in her fish-scale armor.
"You're trying to make me fall! Have you come to gloat? To drop me into death?"
"Fall?” Kassandra didn't understand. She extended her arms over her head, rubbed her fingers together, and then stuck out her tongue. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. “I recognize this, Corina. It appears thinner, but it is not air or wind. Currents in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of America—that's what you have filled your soul with."
"What?"
"This is the Pacific. You have the ocean in your soul."
Corina's eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. “You found it. My ocean. It's been here the whole time. I just didn't know it."
"Swim up to me, Corina. All of this is yours. Why would you allow yourself to fall? Why would you even think that?"
"But I'm not like you. I'm a surfacer."
"From California, right. I am a surfacer, too. I grew up in Nebraska, as far from the sea as my grandfather could arrange."
Corina reached out one hand and kicked away from the cliff. “Who are you?"
Kassandra took her hand. “You know my name."
They dropped down smoothly onto the gray stones of Corina's island. Kassandra looked cautiously around. “Where is he?"
"Aleximor?"
Kassandra held up a hand. “Do not say his name."
"He's on another island over there,” whispered Corina, pointing.
"He can't just swim over?"
"He doesn't know—or hasn't guessed—it's the ocean any more than I knew."
"He thinks because you are a thinling—a surfacer—that your inner world must be filled with air. Another fool."
Aleximor's cold voice filled the space, a little slow, groggy-sounding as if he was just waking from a deep sleep. “Corina?"
Corina grabbed Kassandra's arm, pleading. “Don't leave me! He's going to kill me. Please."
Kassandra shrugged her off, fingers working the buttons and clips down the front of her armor. She stepped out of it and pulled the thigh-length underpadding over her head.
Corina watched her, panicking. “Then he's going to kill you. He's bargained with something called Akast?. She looks like a woman ... but she's not."
"We've met."
"Corina!” Aleximor roared her name. “Silence!"
"He plans to kill the king! This is all about revenge. Stop—"
"Tell her nothing!"
Kassandra rolled up the underpadding in her fingers, pushed it over Corina's head, and guided her arms through the sleeves. It was almost like dressing a doll.
"He killed everyone on a freighter that went through the Panama Canal. The whole crew. Killed them.” She sobbed. “He even tricked me into binding a man's soul.” Tears poured out of her eyes. “I didn't mean to."
Kassandra nodded. “I know. Just get this on. It will protect you.” She bent down to steer Corina's legs into the armor, straightened to tug the collar even, then pushed every clip closed.
"He killed the rest of the ostologoi. All of his descendants except one little boy."
Kassandra grabbed her wrist and pushed the handle of a knife into her hand, folding her fingers over it. “Don't give up. Don't let him get you, Corina from California. I will do what I can on the out—"
Kassandra vanished.
* * * *
The pale woman pulled the sword from her chest, first by the hilt, then grabbing the bare blade and jerking it through the bone and tissue.
She sang of death and the path that leads into it through the throne room of the Sea, and then brought the Wreath-wearer's sword down to slice open the world. The fiery glow blinded her, and the hollow noises and demands of the things beyond the door hurt her ears.
The pale woman brought up her elbow and knocked Kassandra's head back, unhooked her legs, and kicked the granddaughter of King Tharsaleos into the fire.
Kassandra opened her eyes, stunned, her armor gone, her grip on the living world lost. She turned her head to Ochleros, her fingers grabbing at the edge of the dark sea, the rest of her body burning in the fire beyond the door.
"I command you! Protect her—Corina! Do not let any Rexenor come near her! I command you, Ochleros!” Her eyes, wild with fear, shifted and she saw Jill swimming right behind the demon, her blond hair blazing bright, lit up against the dark ranks of bone-gatherer's army. Kassandra's voice begged her. “Why are you here?"
Zypheria kicked up and grabbed Jill by the shoulders. Nicole had her sword out, charging Corina. “Do not hurt—!"
The fire sealed around the Wreath-wearer and she slipped away.
"One down..."
Aleximor stood on the edge of his island inside Corina's soul, making growling noises and kicking stones into the abyss, the glow of ten thousand bound souls lighting her inner world like a sun.
His eyes were fixed on Corina in the distance, across the void, on her island.
"I will destroy you! You told her everything!” He roared at her.
"And you killed her! You fed her to that thing!"
Rage burning in his veins, he backed up fifty paces and made a running leap.
Aleximor spread his arms and he was flying across the space. He landed on her island on his feet, kicking loose stones behind him, chasing her. The ground of her soul shook under him.
Her cello fell off its stand, hitting the rocks, the strings pulsing with a discordant moan. Corina screamed and ran for the far edge.
He saw her clearly now, her glow diminished by something she was wearing. “She gave you armor!"
Her breathing came quick, short frightened breaths as she ran. He was faster than Corina. She heard him right behind her, his fingers extending, inches from her shoulder. She hooked her foot on the edge of the world and leaped off it into the void, Aleximor one stride behind, his fingers catching her hair and the scales covering her shoulder.
Then the roaring current caught them both.
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Chapter Thirty-Six
A Minor Rexenor Noble
The tale how at the very first the mighty god Poseidon smote the mountains with the three-forked sword which the Telkhines fashioned for him, and wrought the islands in the sea, and from their lowest foundations lifted them all as with a lever and rolled them into the sea. And them in the depths he rooted from their foundations that they might forget the mainland.
—Callimachus, “Hymn IV to Delos"
* * * *
Kassandra dropped to her knees and vomited a thin bilious fluid onto the stone floor. Her lungs erupted and liters of seawater followed the meager contents of her stomach, washing
some of it into a dark band of shadow against the wall.
She coughed, ragged sour fire in her throat. She choked on another cough because something moved in the shadows at the wall's base. She pushed herself backward a few inches.
"Put your mind at ease. The few who pass this way do not hang about."
She threw a startled look at an old man on a bed against the wall to her left. Her voice came out in a raspy whisper. “Why don't they ... hang about?"
"She comes for you quickly—not directly. No. She will send a guard around shortly to take you to see her."
"Why has she not come for you?"
He laughed, a short choppy sound. “She tells me, ‘It is not yet your time.’ Between you and me, I don't think she even knows what that means. I think she cannot kill me. I'm cursed, or don't taste good.” He rolled over, clutching at his blanket so that it did not touch the floor, but his hands worked absently while he stared at her, his mouth open, his short gray beard twitching. “Do you know what she tells me when I ask her for a sign that it is my time?"
Kassandra got to her feet, eyeing the shadows warily. She turned to a heavy wood door, like something out of a castle dungeon. She frowned and pressed her hands against it. “What?"
"A woman who asks the wrong questions will come to me."
Kassandra glanced over her shoulder. “Am I asking the wrong questions?"
His gaze shifted from her eyes to the glow of the Wreath. “I wouldn't know. Different. Yours are different. Others who find themselves here always ask for the way out."
She eyed him suspiciously. “I already assumed you wouldn't be here if you knew the way out."
He laughed again and it stirred up the sounds in the shadows. Kassandra spun at a man's screaming voice, “Use the key before he escapes!"
She reached for her sword but it wasn't there. Her voice came out in a brittle shriek. “What was that?"
"The shadows, they steal the prisoners’ last words—and then repeat them. They lurk in the corners. Those are my final words, a command to my greatest student."