Grave

by Michelle Sagara

  Silence.

  “If you want the lantern, you must now prove yourself worthy of its light and its burden.”

  “I am worthy of it! I always was!” She seemed shocked by the words that had escaped her. She couldn’t retrieve them; she could control anything else that left her mouth.

  “We don’t get to decide our own worth,” Scoros replied, his voice gentle. But beneath the surface of those almost fatherly words, Emma felt the slow movement of glaciers. “Emma did not decide that she was worthy of the lantern. The magar did.”

  Silence.

  “And you will not decide you are worthy of it, either. Emma will. The lantern and its burden is now hers, to carry or to pass on.”

  It was clear that Reyna had no desire to prove herself worthy to Emma Hall. It was clear, as well, that she wanted the lantern—and that she could not simply take it. Her lips folded in what was meant to be a smile; it did nothing to gentle her ferocity.

  “I would have trained you,” the Queen told Emma, her voice quieter but no softer. “I sent my Knights to save you from the hunters. You repaid them with death.”

  Emma, stung, said, “They would have killed a baby. They would have killed Eric and Chase.”

  “They would not have dared to kill Eric. Even had they, I would have resurrected him.”

  “They tried to kill my best friend. Even after I said I would go with them if they released her. They tried to kill my best friend’s family. They may have succeeded with the youngest. Nothing you could have offered me was worth that. Nothing.”

  “Is that what you were taught? Poor child. You have lived in ignorance of the gift to which you were born. Do you know how old I am?”

  “Not to the day, no. I don’t see how it matters.”

  The cold smile almost fractured; the Queen held it in place with obvious effort. “Perhaps not. But, Emma, I resurrected Nathan for you. I did, for you, what I did for myself. He loved you. He wanted to be with you. It is only me who could make that possible.”

  “By binding him to you?”

  Do not argue with her.

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t have to bind Eric. Have you become less powerful with time?”

  Reyna raised a hand—a fist—and part of the wall melted. “I would have returned him to you,” she finally said. The wall didn’t reform. “If you proved worthy of his love, I would have given him into your keeping. I resurrected him because I know what it is to lose the man you love. I expected—”

  “Gratitude?” Emma asked, her voice much softer, much fuller, than the Queen’s.

  “I would have given anything to have Eric back,” the Queen replied. “And I did. Where is Nathan?”

  Emma kept her gaze on the Queen. It wasn’t as difficult as it should have been. “He’s dead,” she replied. At this very moment, it didn’t even hurt to say it, which was a first. “Nathan is dead.”

  Eric turned to Emma, his expression almost unreadable. It was the first time since straightening the train of a very beautiful, very impractical dress that he had moved. It was the first time since he’d entered the room that he looked at Emma.

  “You killed him?” the Queen demanded.

  “No. A drunk driver did that.” Emma tried to return her attention to the Queen—the most dangerous thing in the room. But Eric’s expression caught her and held her—there was pain in it. Pain and hope—but hope was so often painful.

  “Don’t play games. What have you done with him?”

  “He’s dead,” Emma said again. Eric nodded. She turned toward the Queen, and as she did so, she rose. The lantern came with her, part of her right hand.

  Scoros attempted to rise as well, and Emma glanced back at him, shaking her head. “You don’t need to stand,” she told him quietly. “This isn’t about you anymore.”

  “If it weren’t,” he replied, accepting Chase’s aid, “I wouldn’t be here. I, too, would be dead.”

  But Emma shook her head. “It affected you. It affected Eric. It affected the dead. But it wasn’t about any of you.”

  “It is not,” he said, his voice gentle and thin, “about you, either.”

  At that, Emma nodded.

  • • •

  Reyna had lost the thread of words; they were buried beneath accusation, anger, and the familiar sting of betrayal. Her eyes were fixed on the lantern as Emma raised it. “Eric,” Emma said. She extended her left hand.

  The Queen mirrored the gesture as Eric moved; she extended that arm into his chest, restraining him. “Eric is alive,” she said, voice low. “You have no power over him.”

  Chase laughed. It was an ugly, harsh sound. He said nothing, but the laughter was accusation enough.

  “Reyna,” Scoros said, speaking the most forbidden words in the citadel, “the boy is dead. He’s been dead for centuries.”

  • • •

  Fire erupted from the floor, scorching and blackening it. The fire was green, bright, wild; it seemed to require no wood, no spark. Chase flinched but held his ground; the fire didn’t enter the circle that enclosed the three of them. Emma could feel it and was surprised: There was no heat in it. It was a wild, lapping green ice.

  “You will destroy the citadel,” Scoros told her gently. “Before you can destroy me.”

  Reyna cursed. And it came to Emma, listening to the rising fury of the Queen, that she could understand every word the Queen spoke. That she had always understood every word—even in memory.

  Surely that was wrong. The language Reyna had learned from birth wasn’t modern English. The Necromancers that she had plucked from their homes across North America couldn’t be the only Necromancers born. Had Reyna chosen the language of her inferiors? Had she chosen to adopt a tongue that wasn’t her own?

  Emma would have. If it eased communication, if it helped to build—and hold—a community, a family, together, she would.

  She stared at eyes that were markedly brown in a pale, white face. She stared at the contours of lips and cheek and jaw, at the color of hair that could be seen above the rise of a crown, at the perfect, smooth skin of her throat. And she remembered Reyna as Scoros had first seen her.

  This woman was not that child. Not the girl that Scoros had vowed to protect. Her eyes were the same, but very little else was; her build was different, her nose a different shape, the curve of her forehead less pronounced, the point of her chin too delicate. In other people, some of the differences would be produced by age.

  But the Queen had not allowed herself to age. She had maintained the semblance of youth because Eric was young.

  Eric, dead, would be forever young. Unless the Queen chose to change his body, the form that she’d made for him, he would never age.

  The dead couldn’t. The dead didn’t. They were trapped and held forever in memories that could no longer be added to.

  Eric was dead.

  But, Emma thought, so was the Queen. Dead enough that her words were clear to Emma, no matter what language she spoke. All of the dead spoke in a language that Emma could understand—because they weren’t actually speaking. And when Emma answered them, neither was she. Speech was a function of an actual body.

  Reyna had that.

  But how much of what she now had was built—as Nathan’s body had been built—of the dead? How much of her living self remained beneath the shell of the perfect form, made and remade, massaged and changed, over the passage of centuries?

  Something must remain; her eyes were living eyes. But the rest of her? Emma lifted the lantern, extending her arm to its full height. The light weighed nothing.

  “Scoros,” she whispered.

  The old man seated beside her didn’t reply. But she wasn’t talking to him.

  “Preserve them. Please.” She didn’t mention her friends by name. If she failed, she didn’t want to tell the Queen w
ho’d been here. Stairs—familiar stairs—appeared in the circle, the lowest step an inch from her foot.

  I will, he replied. But preservation has never been my strength.

  No, it really hadn’t. But Scoros was not yet dead. Living, parts of himself had been scattered through the citadel, underpinning it, forming a structure beneath the whole, like a spider’s web.

  You understand what was done? he asked her.

  “No. But I think you keep the citadel in the air. Bring it to ground,” she whispered. “Quickly. Safely.”

  It was the living man who answered. “Yes. I did not intend to kill her. I hoped to separate her from the power that destroyed her.”

  “Destroyed me? Destroyed me?” Green fire leaped and sizzled in the air around the circle; it consumed the walls of the resurrection room. “It saved me! It saved us!”

  “Is this salvation?” he asked her, raising one arm in a slow, steady sweep. “Is this life? It is a tomb, Reyna. It does not return you to the earth; it doesn’t offer peace to the living. It is not a place where memory brings joy. It is not a place that offers comfort—to either the living or the dead.”

  “It is not a grave. It is home!”

  “It is not a grave, no,” the living Scoros replied gently. “It is a tomb. It is a gentle tomb. A monument of stone and unnatural grandeur. A thing made of—and for—man. Emma has spent much time beside graves. She knows the difference.” He looked beyond Reyna. “Eric.”

  Eric was staring at him.

  “It is time,” Scoros said. “It is past time. I do not ask you to harm her. You can’t without her permission. I regret what was done to you and your kin.”

  “It’s not on your head,” Eric replied, his voice rough and low.

  “I regret what was done to mine.”

  Eric shook his head again.

  “The magar will grant you the freedom you have never had, if you ask it. But she will, I think, grant you that freedom even if you don’t.”

  “Scoros!” Reyna shouted.

  The old man winced. “I loved you, child. Not wisely and not well. I love you still. But I can see it, Reyna. I can see what waits. And, child, I am tired.” His expression gentled. “Aren’t you?”

  Chunks of the floor fell away, in answer to the question. Parts of the wall eroded, thinning and becoming porous.

  Emma took this in before she squared her shoulders and set one foot on the stairs. She looked across the room at Eric, who stood, empty hands by his sides.

  “Where is Nathan?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “Here,” she whispered. She began to climb.

  • • •

  How many of the dead did Reyna hold? How many had she bound? How many had she drained? With each step she took, Emma wondered. She didn’t ask. She wasn’t certain that the Queen of the Dead was capable of answering that question—not now. She raged against Scoros, against her absent mother, against Eric. Emma was barely mentioned.

  Emma began her ascent alone, but as she walked, people joined her. They poured through—or from—the broken walls, the crumbling floor, and they followed her, almost unseeing. No, she thought, they saw. They saw the light she carried. They saw what waited at the top of the spiral stairs.

  And they wanted it. Of course they did.

  She didn’t ask them their names; nor did she ask for permission to use whatever remained of their power. She did note that some of these dead appeared as ghosts and some as living people. It didn’t matter. They streamed toward the door above Emma’s head, and when it failed to open, they retreated, standing in the glow of the lantern.

  They didn’t reach for it, not as they reached for the closed door. But it didn’t matter. The lantern’s handle was cold, and it grew colder as she climbed.

  • • •

  Emma wasn’t certain what the Queen saw. Did she see stairs as Emma did? Did she see the dead that the walls and the floor had released? Or did she see Emma Hall sitting in the circle?

  The circle itself didn’t fray. It didn’t shatter. The Queen of the Dead stormed toward it, toward Emma, and only when she reached the circumference did she stop. Emma couldn’t see her expression; she could hear the sudden silence. It was the silence of slowly drawn breath. She looked down, over the slender rail on which her left hand rested.

  The Queen’s face was raised. Silence was broken. “Do you think you have any hope of destroying what I’ve built?” Hysteria, anger, grief, were gone. Icy contempt remained.

  Emma shook her head. She glanced at Eric, whose face was white and still. “No.”

  “I see you’ve attempted to remake my circle in your own image. Clever.” The Queen knelt, her skirts an impediment; their hems brushed against the words she attempted to study, obscuring them. Impatient, she pushed them aside. “But if my mother is your adviser, you don’t have the knowledge to defend what you’ve built.”

  “I am not her adviser,” the old woman said.

  • • •

  Reyna rose, the circle momentarily forgotten. “You gave her the lantern.” Her voice was ice; her eyes almost glittered with it. “You gave her the lantern. An outsider. How could you?”

  “She is of the people, Reyna. She has power to rival yours. To eclipse it.”

  “She does not!”

  “And power was never the issue. You knew this. You know it now. Emma Hall has walked through the fires of the dead to free the lost—without training, without a circle to protect her. She thought she was risking her life, but she took that risk. I did not guide her. I did not advise her. She had nothing from me.”

  Reyna’s lips were white. “And without lessons she learned how to draw this circle?”

  “No. Most of what she knows of circles,” the magar continued, “I did not tell her.”

  Reyna threw Scoros a murderous glare.

  “Reyna,” he said, his voice softer than the magar’s. “It is time. It is past time. The dead have been weeping for centuries. The gift we were given—”

  “It was not a gift,” Reyna said, her voice low. The heat that seemed to drain from her was contained in those words. “You think this is a tomb?”

  “It is a place of death, of the dead. There is almost no life in it.”

  She laughed. It was not a pretty sound. “What do you expect me to know of life? All of my life was given to the dead. To death. I wasn’t allowed friends. I wasn’t allowed daylight. I wasn’t allowed love. The only thing that mattered to my mother—to my family—was death and the dead. There was nothing of me in it, and none of you cared.

  “You think I should have built something else? How?”

  Scoros closed his eyes.

  “You never cared about living. Only survival. And Scoros? I survived. I don’t intend to stop now.” She reached out and placed her hand against the gentle curve of letters. Emma looked down, halting her climb. She shook herself and started to move again. Reyna was right. Emma had no knowledge and no weapon that would prove effective against her. She had no defenses, and Chase hadn’t had time to prepare any.

  Chase.

  He was watching the Queen of the dead; Emma couldn’t see his expression. She wasn’t certain what he would, or could, do; she was almost certain he would try something. But the fire that lapped at the edge of the circle hadn’t reached him yet. Both he and Scoros seemed safe.

  That safety wouldn’t last when the Queen unmade the circle. Emma had no doubt that she could—and she could remake it once again in her own image. While it lasted, Emma climbed.

  She reached the door.

  REYNA RECOGNIZES THE WORDS. They are English. They are not the old tongue, with its compact runes; they are not the hidden language. The circle shouldn’t work, written as it is, a mishmash of the words that remain unchanging and pure and words that should not be written in a circle at all.

  She
is shaking with fury, burning with it. Ice melts, cold fades. These words are not carved in stone; they are carved in the bedrock of death. Death is Reyna’s domain. Her rule over the dead is undisputed.

  And yet they stream past her as if she has become invisible. Those that can, all but fly; they do not stop. They offer no obeisance and no power; they do not recognize their Queen. Nor does the circle that Emma Hall has fashioned prevent their passage. They come at will, as if nothing is preventing them.

  Did Emma learn nothing?

  Perhaps not. Perhaps it is only the lantern that gives her the strength to defy Reyna. It doesn’t matter. Emma will learn. Starting now.

  Reyna breaks the first word, changing the shape of the offensive, foreign letters. She is not sure that she has chosen the right word to start with, but it doesn’t matter; they are all wrong, the wrongness so obvious it practically burns.

  As if anything could burn her now.

  But the word struggles against her, as if it had will; its shape breaks and then reverts, resisting her commands. She is shocked for one long moment; she assumes there is a greater treachery here—and that should not surprise her.

  It doesn’t surprise her when the doors burst open. It doesn’t surprise her that the steps she hears are heavy, audible. It has been a long, long time since she has been vulnerable to physical attack, and she is not concerned.

  Not until Merrick Longland brushes past her, leaping into the circle she cannot instantly remake. Her heart rises at the sight; she believes, for the briefest of instants, that he intends to kill Emma Hall—and she knows that Emma Hall is vulnerable to all manner of physical attack; she is not what Reyna has become.

  But he does not kill her. The whole of his attention is riveted by what she holds in her hand.

  Emma looks up at him—but everything in the gesture implies that she’s looking down, as if from a height. Her eyes are glowing faintly, but it is not her eyes that catch the attention—it’s her smile. There’s something in it as she looks at Longland; some hint of recognition, of connection. Of warmth.

  Was it Longland? Did Longland teach her?