by NS Dolkart
She had returned to the road a few minutes later to find her instruments broken, the special lamps that she had designed to measure the Gods’ presence shattered and useless. She had left them there, their oil soaking into the ground, and run for home. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t possibly arrive until well into the following day: her body was pushing her to move, and her mind would not let her sleep.
She had only stopped when she realized that she must soon come upon her attackers if she kept up her pace. That was when she had moved off the road, backing away from the sea, and made her first ward against Mayar’s vision. If those men who had tried to kill her were right, then Mayar was her enemy now.
She hadn’t known yet, at the time, that They were all her enemies.
She also hadn’t known, though she had suspected, that Pelamon was already dead by then, that his tower would be torn down and dedicated to the God who had ordered his death, that her night on the road would be the first of many. She hadn’t known that her study of the Gods’ boundaries and markers would be the one advantage that let her live while all the others would die.
Now she could smell her doom. Even if the worlds did not soon shatter, her plan would result in a return to that place where the Gods were always watching, always waiting for their chance to smite her. Would she have the time or resources to rework her wards to once more hide from the Gods before the great merger? It didn’t seem likely. Would any God be grateful enough to protect her? The notion was almost laughable.
But Psander wasn’t laughing.
“Phaedra,” she said, “before you go… there is something else. I hope you realize that none of this is for my benefit.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have criticized me for my choices, gone as far as to call me evil, as if I stood to benefit from the work I am doing. I hope you realize that returning to a world watched by Gods is hardly any safer for me than allowing both worlds to shred each other.”
Phaedra did not speak, did not apologize. But she nodded.
“I have given you more than you had any right to ask for,” Psander said. “I have trained you in magic, given you access to books that exist nowhere else on any side of the mesh, and even now I am working to save two worlds, either of which would have me swallowed up and forgotten. The least you can do is to refrain from calling me names.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care if you’re sorry,” Psander said. “Be grateful.”
24
The Elf Queen
It took some time for the poison to take its effect, and by then it was too late. Her whole court had feasted – all but Aviaste, her disgraced pet, and the Illweather prisoners who had been brought up in chains to witness the celebration. Aviaste had told them of their court’s destruction, and they had sat with tears in their eyes as their enemies feasted on the wizard’s charges.
She should have known those godserfs would be as expendable to the wizard as they were to her.
Her raiders died first, their tongueless mouths gaping in agony. The pangs had already started in the queen’s chest by then – she could feel the strength being ripped from her body and sent elsewhere. Whatever trickery Psander had planned, it was working admirably.
She rose from her throne, and stumbled. Below her on the dance floor, her entire court was dying. The Illweather prisoners stared from their corner, witnessing the horror silently. This was not their doing – they knew neither the joy of victory nor the pain of participation.
“Your Majesty!” Aviaste cried, rushing to her side. “What is happening?”
“The wizard has tricked us,” the queen gasped. “Find your queen a knife.”
She swayed as he left her side to get a knife from one of the dead raiders. The magic was leaving her at such a rate, she was bound to perish soon. Her vision was blurring, narrowing. First Illweather, and now this. Her whole race was dying.
“Your Majesty.” Aviaste appeared out of the haze, presenting her with the knife.
“Thank you, Aviaste,” she said. “Now hold still.”
The runt squirmed as she cut his heart out of his chest, his ribcage parting at her command. It took much of the strength she had left, but it was worth it. His heart was sweet and unpoisoned. It would give her what she needed.
“Clean the poison from my body,” she commanded as she ate it. “Give my strength back to me.”
The room blinked out of her vision for a moment, but came back. She looked hungrily toward the prisoners across the floor, but abandoned the idea. They were too far away. Aviaste would have to do.
She crawled back to her throne and climbed into it, her hands and mouth dripping. This would soon end. Her chest could not bleed its magic forever.
When at last she rose again, her entire court had stopped twitching and lay still before her. She took up her knife and approached the prisoners.
There were only eight of them, a disappointing number. Their heads had all been stitched back on, at least. The greatest prize among them was the Illweather raider with the bells in her hair, but besides that one, none impressed her. Ah, well. They were only prisoners, after all.
“So,” the queen said. “Only you remain. The prince is gone and devoured, as are both courts. One monarch still lives. For now, so do you.”
The raider dipped her pretty head. “We will pledge our allegiance, my queen, should you desire it.”
The seven beside her knelt and bowed their heads.
“Good,” the queen said. “I do desire it.”
When the prisoners had said the sacred words and pledged their fealty, the queen released them. They were hers now, as much hers as Aviaste and his ribcage had been.
“Will you take revenge upon the wizard?” the raider with the bells asked, arming herself with the blade of her former Goodweather counterpart. Or, no, not with his. With the captain’s blade. Ooh, the queen liked her.
“I will not,” the queen answered. “Not yet. She is still vital, as my pet informed me that she has an answer to the problem of the worlds. After the problem is solved, then her lifeblood will be mine. Tell me, raider, what is your name?”
“My first name is no longer. The prince named me Raider Eleven, though we are not eleven now.”
Raider Eleven. Strongest in magic, weakest in combat. That would do nicely. “Keep the name,” the queen told her. “But add to it Queen’s Consort.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“We shall pay the wizard a visit before dawn,” the queen went on. “Take the nine finest horses and slay the rest. Goodweather will need even their pitiful bodies.”
Her new subjects nodded, gathered their sickles, and left her throne room. The queen followed them to the door, then turned around.
“Goodweather,” she said, “I expect this room to be clean and empty when I return. And find out how we were poisoned. I plan to eat that wizard’s heart when this is over, and I will not do so blind.”
25
Hunter
The library door was still shut when Tritika, Ketsa, and the two brothers rounded the corner from the stairway. The sun was setting outside, its blanket of pink and purple hues visible through the window, but with no torches and none of Psander’s magical lights, the hall had grown very dim. Nonetheless, their weapons were clearly visible.
Hunter’s voice came out raspy and choked. “If you’re not here to help,” he said, “turn around.”
Ketsa scowled. “You know what she did.”
“I also know what she’s trying to do.”
Tritika made an open gesture with her arms, as if her spear was merely a walking stick. She was still frowning, though. “We’re not here to stop her,” she said. “We all want to live. But what she did is unforgivable, and we have the right to question her about it. We have the right to demand an apology.”
“You do,” he acknowledged. “We all do. But right now she and Phaedra are figu–”
“There will never be a right time,�
� Tritika spat. “Did she apologize to us for dealing with the Gallant Ones? Did she apologize for letting them in here? I was a child then, but I haven’t forgotten. She never apologized. She never apologized for making us wear those charms – she didn’t even want us to stop wearing them after she found out they were making us sick! We had to refuse to put them on before she’d take them back.”
Tritika was in tears by the time she had finished speaking, and had to pause to wipe her eyes and compose herself. Ketsa put a calming hand on her back and continued in her stead.
“Psander never apologized, either, for bringing us to this world without asking us if we wanted to go. Tritika is right: it’s never the right time with her. There’s always some crisis and some excuse. It’ll never be the right time until we say it is. She thinks she’s so far above us that she can ignore our needs until they become a problem for her. Well, we’re not waiting this time. She can’t make us wait for an apology that’ll never come, and neither can you. She has to face what she’s done to us.”
Hunter was having difficulty maintaining his composure. For the second time in his life, he had left home on a mission and returned to find his community gone. The first time, it hadn’t been his fault. Nobody could have predicted the plague on Tarphae. But this time? This time he had known. He had known, and done nothing, as if his hope that the elves would leave the villagers alone would be enough to protect them. He had accepted Psander’s logic, and let his people be massacred.
But he was guarding this door for a reason. “Give them another hour,” he said. “You’re completely right, but you still need to give them time. Psander said she had a solution. When they’re done talking about it, I’ll let you in. I’ll come and get you myself, if you like. But not yet. The two of them need their space to hash it out, or the whole world we came from will disappear, and all the people in it will be gone just like our friends and families.”
“You have no family here,” Garno said. “It’s easy enough for you to tell us to wait, when it wasn’t your parents and children who got dragged away to feed those cursed elves.”
“My parents and my brother died on Tarphae,” Hunter answered, failing to keep the anger out of his voice. “They were killed by our own Goddess, who was supposed to be their protector. You think I don’t know what you’re feeling? I’ve felt it twice now.”
“Then how can you take her side?” Tritika demanded. “How can you stand and defend her door as if she were blameless?”
He was shaking. He had to stop shaking. “She’s not Karassa,” he said. “She didn’t kill our people; the elves did. She’s a kind of monster, but not the kind you think. She’s always projected more power than she really had. I don’t believe she could have protected everyone, and if she could have, I don’t think she realized it. That’s not where her power lies. Think about it, Tritika. Did she fight off the Gallant Ones when they came here, or did she just scare them away? Did she battle the army that besieged you here? Did she make war on the elves, to keep them away from here for so long? What has she done?”
The hall was darkening too quickly for him to see their expressions well, but he thought they were starting to understand. It had taken Hunter a long time to come to his conclusion, but he had little doubt in it. The more closely he had worked with Psander, the more clearly she had shown him that her power was almost entirely perceptual. The wards against the Gods, the candles that had let the islanders slip past their enemies, her original presentation as a man – they were all deceptions. The one time he had seen her use non-perceptual magic, she had made those calardium pendants that unexpectedly harmed their wearers. She had not believed that the elves could be fought until Hunter had proven it to her, because she had no confidence in physical solutions.
This fortress at least was physical and impressive, or it had been until he had found its design while searching for solutions to Phaedra’s limp. That discovery had changed everything for him. Silent Hall had been described and diagrammed from top to bottom in the first chapter of a long scroll on wizardly building techniques, and though Hunter could hardly understand the instructions himself, he understood the implications of their placement well enough: Psander’s fortress was a basic design, a sample. She had followed step-by-step instructions in its construction, because all her talents lay elsewhere.
Tritika was not wrong about the wizard’s motives; Hunter didn’t doubt that she had spent little time trying to devise a real defense for her village, once she had lit upon the idea of sacrificing it to defeat the elves. But their perceptions of her evil were also based on an inflated notion of her ability. He found her logic as horrifying as they did, but he could well believe that she had possessed no better solutions.
He answered the silence in the hall for himself. “I’ll talk to Phaedra when she comes out. She’ll know whether Psander can be interrupted, or if her work once they’re done is really as urgent as she’s sure to say it is. Don’t worry. I’ll bring Psander to you.”
His companions shifted in the dark. “We should take watches from the roof,” Eskon said. “If we haven’t even got a gate, we should at least know if they’re coming before they get here.”
They were shuffling back to the stairs. “I’ll take the first watch,” Ketsa said. “We should get some more torches for these halls, if Psander’s not going to light them.”
Hunter breathed a sigh of relief as their footsteps receded. That had gone better than he’d feared, especially after the plan to rescue the other villagers had been abandoned. His companions had been on the verge of rushing back to Castle Goodweather before the discovery of Atella and her children had changed the plan. Palat was as unwilling to leave his grandchildren undefended as Hunter was to leave Phaedra, and without them, the other four had been forced to accept that they could not possibly free their loved ones even if the elves had not yet killed them. The mood had turned dark after that, which was what had prompted Hunter to leave his companions and rush to guard the wizards.
By the time the door behind him opened, the hall was so dark that he found the modest light from the library blinding. There was no moon outside the window, and Hunter had to wonder whether the most recent quake had broken it somehow. The moon’s phases were different here in a way he had never quite managed to predict, and he had seen a new moon only once in his more than a decade of living in this world. That had been last year, on the apparent eleventh anniversary of his first visit. Perhaps the moon only vanished from the sky when the worlds were closest together.
That was an ominous thought.
“Hunter,” Phaedra said, stepping out into the hall with a blue light glowing on her palm. She had a satchel over one shoulder – did that mean she was leaving already?
Her next words confirmed it. “Hunter,” she said again, “I have to go. There’s a lot to be done in our world, and no time to do it.”
“Psander’s solution is real, then?”
She nodded. “It’ll work, I think, as long as I’m not delayed. We’re going to unravel the mesh, Hunter.”
Hunter was taken aback. “You’re… you’re going to…”
“I know. But if we can’t keep the worlds apart, it’s the only way to keep them from cutting each other to pieces. It’s going to take help from the Yarek, though, and permission from God Most High.”
“And you think you might get that?”
“All I can do is ask.”
He thought about that. Combining the worlds on purpose. What would that even look like?
“What’ll happen if it works?” he asked.
“I have no idea.”
There was nothing to say to that. Phaedra looked like she wanted to add something, but she remained silent.
“Good luck,” he said at last. “If it works, I’ll still be here. Wherever ‘here’ ends up being.”
“Oh, Hunter,” she said, and embraced him. This time he had the wherewithal to drop his weapon and hug her back. He held her tight, and when she tilted her head he
kissed her. There were tears in his eyes, inexplicable tears. He’d never allowed himself to feel so much, and now it all threatened to overwhelm him. The light from Phaedra’s palm winked out as they kissed, returning them to darkness. It probably required Phaedra’s concentration, and that had been shattered right along with his.
They kissed in the dark for an unmeasurable time – Psander would probably have disapproved of the waste if she’d seen them, but for Hunter an eternity would have still been too short. He was getting Phaedra’s face wet with his tears, which might have been embarrassing had she shown any sign of caring. It was possible she was crying too.
At last she patted his back, and he let her go. “I wish…” she said.
“We’ll have time,” he answered her. “You’re the most brilliant person I’ve ever known; you’ll succeed. Somehow we’ll find each other again.”
“Give me something of yours,” she said. “I’ll find you.”
“Take whatever you need. I have nothing that’s mine besides the sickle, and that was someone else’s first. Would my belt work?”
“Perfectly. Give it here.”
He fumbled in the dark, but Phaedra brought back her light and soon she had taken the belt from him and tied it around her own waist. It didn’t match the elegance of her Essishan dress, but she didn’t seem to mind.
They kissed again, but only briefly this time. “You defend yourself out here,” Phaedra said. “Psander would sacrifice you if she thought it might help; don’t let her. You’re the only one who matters to me.”
She gave his hand a last squeeze and made her way to the stairs, her staff tapping on the floor as she went. Hunter couldn’t help but follow her all the way to the courtyard, where she opened her gate to Tarphae and stepped through the mists into the world of their birth. He realized belatedly that he hadn’t asked her about Psander’s work but he didn’t say anything. Phaedra didn’t look behind her as she went, only marched forward with the same determination he had always admired.