Fiery Edge of Steel (A NOON ONYX NOVEL)

by Archer, Jill

  “This is Thomas Stillwater, our gerefa,” Vodnik said.

  We introduced ourselves (I thought it would be far less time-consuming than having Rafe do it). Stillwater gave me a look that ran head to toe. “Were you really born with waning magic?” he asked in a clipped, chirpy voice.

  I answered his question with a curt nod. Stillwater shook his head in disbelief, but then said, “Well, come on, then. There’s a storm coming and we’d all best be back before it starts.” He marched off then, glancing back only once, at Virtus. I couldn’t tell if he was wary of him or if he thought Virtus might make a good meal. I followed Stillwater, catching up to him quickly.

  “How far is it to the Meadow?” But Stillwater didn’t answer. He just kept on walking.

  We walked from Stone Pointe, across the moat, and through the Shallows toward the stone boundary wall that separated the Shallows from the Dark Waters beyond. Except for Stillwater and me, and Fara and Virtus, our hunting party formed a straight line marching through the camp. The people of the Shallows turned out to watch us go. The children scampered up ahead of us as their parents watched from the side. Some looked up from where they were repairing tools or clothes, while others peeked out from behind their door curtains. Their faces were grim and it wasn’t just the dirt. They looked like they were watching us being led to the gallows.

  I think it was that, and my annoyance over Stillwater’s ignoring me, that made me do it.

  I lit a small fireball in my hand and held it, as if it were a toy ball I were going to throw to a dog, and then I tossed it up in the air and caught it again. I rolled the ball to the tips of my fingers, balancing it there for a moment, and then flipped my hand over and rocked the ball back and forth on the back of my hand. I gave the ball one final toss in the air. This next trick was the toughest for me—retracting my magic without a fireworks show.

  I didn’t even bother. I let the ball burst into a hundred small colorful sparks in the air, each one sounding louder than the last in the quiet of the morning. The children came running over to me, grinning, tweeting, and chirping. Their pleasure over my magic “trick” was heartwarming, but I hadn’t performed for them. I turned to see Stillwater’s reaction. Indeed, he was reassessing me with a look similar to the one he’d given Virtus earlier. I cocked an eyebrow at him.

  “A morning’s walk,” he said. I nodded and we tromped through the wide opening in the wall. The children stayed behind.

  No attempt had been made to erect a gate. We slipped through the wall without even thinking. But as we moved into the other side, a prickly feeling of apprehension came over me. It felt very much like the pre-hum of an electric storm and, indeed, as if on cue, another low rumble of thunder sounded. Beyond the wall were the gardens and gathering areas for the Shallows. I was relieved to see that a wide dirt path had already been carved out of the shallow lands we passed through. Farther off, to our left and right, I could see neat rows of unfamiliar vegetables. I couldn’t be sure, but some looked blighted. Yet another reminder that hunger was as much an enemy of these people as the rogares and crocodiles were. We passed spindly orchards full of trees strung with cobweb-like moss and low-hanging black fruit. Whatever the fruit was, it stunk, and I actually pinched my nose shut while we passed to avoid the smell of stinging pepper laced with mold.

  The dirt path turned into a rickety, sometimes rotted, boardwalk that wound and twisted through the swamp with myriad shallow sets of stairs and numerous two-, three-, even four-way forks. I tried to keep track of our route but it became increasingly difficult the deeper we went into the Dark Waters. I was tempted to ask Rafe if he knew the spell Breadcrumbs, but I knew of something better. Just as a precaution, I touched a leaf at every fork, turning it into a black marker. Should something happen to Stillwater, I wanted to make sure we could find our way back.

  Beneath and beside us the swamp bubbled up in various shades of ochre, puce, and rust. It reminded me of the “water” in the moat around Stone Pointe. Was the entire peninsula sinking? In a hundred years (or next week) the Secernere and the Blandjan might end up merging much farther west and this whole area would then be underwater.

  “Did you see Grimasca when he attacked the fishermen?” I asked Stillwater.

  He grinned. His teeth were remarkably white and straight for a man who’d grown up in an area that was known for its dietary shortages.

  “Course not. Wouldn’t be here if I had. The bastard threw me against a tree. Knocked me out cold.” Stillwater pulled a knife out of his pocket. A large one. Metal weapons weren’t exactly my specialty but I thought it might have been a falchion, one of those old, single-sided short swords.

  “Don’t you think it’s odd that you’re the only one to have survived?”

  Stillwater narrowed his eyes at me. We both knew what I was really saying. His survival made him a suspect as well.

  “Vodnik survived. Luck must have saved us for a reason.”

  I grunted. It wouldn’t do to question Luck’s judgment and yet . . . well . . . Stillwater’s survival smelled fishy to me.

  The boardwalk narrowed and walking side by side became impossible. Stillwater dropped behind me. I was thankful that he couldn’t sense my signature because he made me nervous creeping along behind me like that, with his unsheathed knife and his hulking, slightly unfriendly presence eyeing my rear. My magic was exponentially more powerful than him or his sword, but one sharp blow to my head would render me unconscious and unable to use it. I suddenly wished I’d taken the rear so I could stare at his butt, preferably with a threatening fireball in my hand.

  Of course, I had no reason to believe that Stillwater intended us harm. As far as I knew, he still believed we were here solely to help him and Vodnik hunt down Grimasca. To my knowledge, neither he nor his outpost lord knew that the Rust sisters had filed demon complaints alleging that Vodnik might be murdering his own people. But it was equally possible they did and were leading us out here to be ambushed.

  As we walked, that prickly feeling I’d felt along the back of my neck as we’d left the Shallows intensified. I couldn’t say exactly what the impetus was, whether it was the silent Stillwater at my back, the rumbling storm threat from above, or the oozing stew of the Dark Waters all around me. But Ari must have sensed the growing tension in my signature. He called out from the front: “Angels, cast up.”

  * * *

  It’s possible that “the Meadow” was older than even Lucifer’s Tomb, the archeological site that Peter and I had found last semester. If Haljan legend is to be believed, Babylonians sailed the Lethe long before Armageddon. The route to the sea was long, even then, and there were many stops. Legend says one of them was a beautiful meadow, about halfway between Babylon and the sea. The area was immense, naturally flat and cleared of all trees save one, a large tree that grew right up through its middle. It was said that the meadow’s tree was awe-inspiring, nearly fifty feet around and towering hundreds of feet into the air.

  It was almost impossible to believe that anything could grow beneath such massive shade, and yet, legends say that grass and flowers grew in the meadow abundantly. In late summer especially, white asphodels dotted the verdant green ground, marking it as a calm, cool place of respite for weary sailors. They say that Asphodel Meadow was a mirror image of heaven. That children played there, picnicking among the flowers, sleeping beneath the tree. But over time, the meadow grew swampy. People stopped coming, except for the Boatmen, who later used it as a different kind of resting place—one for the plague and famine victims who died following the war.

  Legend says the dead loved Asphodel Meadow a hundred times more than the living ever had. For years the Boatmen’s boats came bearing visitors who would never leave. Hundreds of corpses, thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, the sheer number of them being so vast that the ground sank beneath their weight. It was said, when Asphodel Meadow was full and could accept no more, it flooded, not with water, but with tar.

  I clomped along the bo
ardwalk that twisted through the Dark Waters in my leather boots and borrowed linen clothes, damp from perspiration and humidity, heavy in body and mind, mulishly dredging up every shred of memory I’d ever had on the legendary Asphodel Meadow or any other meadow between New Babylon and the sea.

  Hadn’t that tale about Grimasca from Oude Rode Ogen, Bicho Papao, and Grimasca: Folktales for Children had a verse in it about a meadow? One with a waertree and two streams? Maybe the two streams were the Secernere and the Blandjan. Maybe the waertree was the towering tree that had grown up in Asphodel Meadow. Maybe the meadow from “The Grim Mask of Grimasca” was Asphodel Meadow and that’s where we were headed now.

  “Meghan Brun told me that one of the young men from the Shallows, Cephas, was bitten by something at the Meadow. Possibly a hellcnight. Why did the fishermen come to the Meadow to fish after that?” I asked Stillwater. “Even if Vodnik came to protect them, there must have been other fishing areas. Safer ones.”

  “Because Acipenser Paulus lives in the shallow waters around the Meadow.”

  “Acipenser Paulus?” Not another demon, surely?

  “A species of small swamp sturgeon. ‘Small’ being a relative term. They can grow to be twelve hundred pounds or more. One Acipenser Paulus will feed the people of the Shallows for nearly a week.”

  “What about Athalie?” I said. “Why did she go to the Meadow? Seems like a dangerous place to bring an eight-year-old for a walk.”

  “She wanted to see the place where her father died.”

  “You mean ‘disappeared.’”

  Stillwater shrugged. It was clear he thought there was no difference.

  “What was Antony Rust, Zella’s husband, like? Did he and Vodnik get along?”

  Stillwater snorted. “Everyone in the Shallows gets along with Vodnik. He’s our patron. Without him, we’d be dead. The Shallows wouldn’t even exist.”

  But surely, even relations between a demon and his follower could become strained, especially if said demon slept with said follower’s wife.

  I cleared my throat, warning Stillwater that I thought his answers were evasive at best, but he didn’t elaborate or provide any other information. I decided to treat him as a hostile witness.

  “My Guardian knows the spell Veracity,” I lied. “I can ask him to cast it over you, but there can be unintended consequences.”

  Stillwater stopped walking and we squared off. Everyone else stopped too. I don’t know how much of our discussion they’d heard with all the thunder and our clomping on the boards and the fact that we’d been traveling in a line, but they could tell from my stance, and Ari could tell from my signature, that Stillwater wasn’t being cooperative.

  “Such as?” Stillwater said, calling my bluff. I glanced at Rafe, suddenly inspired by his threat from last night.

  “It’s been known to turn some Hyrkes into frogs.” I shrugged. “But he knows Amphibian too so I’m sure we’d still be able to understand your answers. I’m sure they’d be fascinating, and forthcoming, with a boot pressed to your head.”

  Rafe flexed his hand, which made me wonder if he really did know a spell that could turn someone into a frog. Only Rafe Sinclair would learn a spell like that.

  “I know why you’re here,” Stillwater said. “You think Vodnik killed those men. And that girl. But it’s not true.” I sensed a change in Stillwater then. Resignation? Cooperation? His earlier belligerence seemed to deflate before my eyes.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked. “That Antony was Vodnik’s most outspoken critic? Well, it’s true, but it doesn’t mean Vodnik killed him or his friends.”

  “Then tell us what happened,” I said, motioning for everyone to continue walking. I wanted to reach the Meadow before the storm broke.

  “When the old gerefa died last year, Antony and I both put ourselves up for the position. When Vodnik chose me over him, Antony started making trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “He started spreading rumors about Vodnik. That Vodnik was getting too old to rule the Shallows.”

  I inhaled sharply. Those were serious accusations by a follower.

  “Antony said we needed to find another demon patron to watch over us—because if Vodnik died before we found one, the rogares would get us.”

  Unfortunately, it was true. That would be the fate of these people if their patron demon died before they found another.

  “Antony’s suggestion made him unpopular,” Stillwater continued. “Vodnik’s been Patron Demon of the Shallows for over four hundred years. He’s raised us, watched over us, been our protector for so long no one can remember or imagine life without him. Even so, some believed as Antony did. A handful of men said they’d already seen signs that Vodnik was approaching his end.”

  “What signs?”

  Stillwater scoffed. “How should I know? I wasn’t one of them. They just complained. Said Vodnik couldn’t provide for his people anymore. That he’d lost his ability to lead the fishermen to the fish.”

  We reached another fork in the boardwalk. Stillwater led us to the right and I casually grazed a leaf, turning it black. A year ago it would have been unthinkable that I’d be out in Halja’s hinterlands on my way to a legendary meadow tracking a mythological monster—and casually killing greenery as I went. But the fact was, these trees would survive. One leaf wasn’t going to make a difference to anyone but us.

  “The truth is”—Stillwater paused, as if making a decision about how much he was going to reveal—“Vodnik is dying. About three months ago, Vodnik gathered up the men who’d been the most vocal about his age and diminishing abilities. He told them he didn’t want to frighten everyone else, but it was true—what they were saying.

  “He said he knew a demon that could help. Someone who’d been hiding for centuries. A demon that was lonely and needed followers to look after. He asked them if they would be willing to help Vodnik find the demon and speak with him, to see if he’d be willing to become their new patron when Vodnik was no longer able. The group was full of malcontents. All the young men who loved to complain. About being hungry, about having to walk too far into the Dark Waters to find fish, about the frequent floods.”

  Stillwater snorted disgustedly. “They didn’t deserve to be called fishermen. They were born in the Shallows, but they weren’t born of the Shallows, you know?”

  I paused, but then nodded. I knew what he meant. It was the same way with waning magic. It wasn’t a happy kind of magic, but it made me who I was. It defined me. Without it, I would be someone else. Regardless of which outpost my history lessons had focused on, I’d always understood why settlers left New Babylon. Who didn’t dream of something better? Those who actually sought it were to be admired. But what I’d always had trouble understanding—until now—was why they stayed away. Why they didn’t come back once they found out there was nothing better in the outposts. But Stillwater made me realize that settlers stay for the same reason I continued to train as a Maegester. It was the same reason Burr had continued sailing on the Lethe. It was what we had. It was who we were.

  “We set off that morning,” Stillwater said, “to find him, the demon that might agree to be our new patron when the time came.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Grimasca. Vodnik said he’d changed. That he wasn’t the monster everyone said he was. But Vodnik was wrong. And he lost sixteen of his followers because of it.”

  Was Stillwater lying to me? Had Vodnik lied to Stillwater? Or was Stillwater’s story the truth? I couldn’t help thinking of what Ari had said earlier. The best lies are the truth in disguise.

  Chapter 23

  Around midday we came to the Meadow. The entrance wasn’t marked, but it was unmistakable. After a wobbly walk across a portion of boardwalk suspended with ropes over a particularly watery section, we descended a set of six steps, the longest yet. At the bottom, the boardwalk split in two opposite directions, each curving around into the green swampy brush. The boardwalk here had
railings and, if I had to guess, had been built to encircle the area in its middle, which was the blackest, ugliest lake I’d ever seen. Of course, it was no lake. It was a tar pit.

  Slowly, almost reluctantly, I walked over to the edge of the rail and gazed out across the great expanse of bubbling blackness. The light here was different. It was greener, blacker. I looked up, knowing why before I even saw it. Still, it was a thing to behold. I’d never seen a waertree. They were few in number and waning magic users weren’t in the habit of taking nature walks. It was humbling to stare at something that was both so ancient and so strong. I’d probably have to stand at its base, touching it for at least a month before it would show any sign of weakening.

  I craned my neck, shielding my eyes from the weird light, and squinted at the tree’s canopy. From my vantage point, it appeared to cover the sky. It didn’t, of course. Not even close. But it did cover the entire enclosed tar pit. Shafts of yellow sunlight pierced through small holes, making it look like a giant was up there, shining a flashlight through a huge spinach-colored colander. The tar looked like kale or collard greens that had been left in the icebox too long. It was a liquefied greenish black stew, full of bits and pieces of vine, twigs, and other long, thin things that looked disquietingly like human humerus, radius, fibula, and tibia bones.

  I shuddered. If there’d once been flowers here, they were long gone.

  The canopy’s leaves rustled and swayed with the wind, sounding as loud as a small waterfall. A thunderous crack told me the storm was getting closer. Recalling the many low-lying areas we’d just walked through to get here, I vowed to search this area quickly. The storm that had sunk Cnawlece three nights ago had started with similar rumbling, crackling thunder.

  “We should hurry,” I said. No one argued. Stillwater glanced nervously at the sky. He seemed to be as afraid of the storm as any demon that might still be lurking in the Meadow, which gave me a new appreciation for the storm’s ability to possibly flood this area. “Can you show me where you were attacked?” I asked him. “And where you later found the butcher knife and spice box?” He nodded and motioned for us to follow him to the right. I started to follow but Ari stopped me.