A Sorcerer’s Treason

by Sarah Zettel

  Bridget lifted her arms as if she meant to embrace them all. Perhaps she did, but in her mind just then was the light that called and warned, the water that saved and drowned, the stone, the earth, the life inside and the living. The living in their hundreds, so many more living than dead.

  They knew her too. Not her name, or her many shames, but they knew the lighthouse keeper, they knew the one who got the boats out for their men, who warned their ships away from the rocks. This was the other truth that all the dead Superior claimed could not take from her.

  You know me. I’m the one. I saved them. Help me. Help me.

  Reaching inside for the truth, reaching out with her cry, woven all in the fire, metal, water and stone that surrounded her, Bridget called the spirits of the living to her side.

  At first they seemed so much less substantial than the dead as they moved across the water. Women, all of them, of all ranks and kinds. Old women, little girls, women carrying babes in arms, the wives, sisters and daughters, the passengers, cooks and nurses, they all came, and their flesh was whole and their eyes were bright.

  The dead, stooped and shivering in their dread of their own cold couches, turned so their empty eyes could look across the shining throng of life. So much life and so familiar to them all.

  “It cannot,” came Kalami’s disbelieving shout. “You cannot. Death must swallow life.”

  “And death must give way to life,” cried Bridget. “It must give way!”

  The living ringed the shore, putting themselves between rocks and the shifting, broken ice. “Come home,” they said, in a thousand voices. “Why are you here? Why are you not home with us? I am your sister, your mother, your wife, your daughter. I know your son, your brother, your father, your friend. Come back, come home. Come with us. Let us take you home.”

  Disbelieving, trembling, first one, then another of the dead stumbled toward the shore. The living met them, unafraid, embracing them with shadowy arms and substantial souls.

  And the dead disappeared. They melted away like ice in the thaw, all of them heeding the call of the living, all of them believing the promise of life so much more than the fear of death.

  • • •

  Come now, Medeoan.

  Medeoan opened her eyes. Avanasy stood before her, smiling gently.

  “No,” she whispered. “Another cheat.”

  “Not this time. I am here. Come away. You can now.”

  But her gaze traveled past him to the Firebird. It had swelled again, grown fat and shining on some distant heat. The cage bars strained. Medeoan felt them bend. They would break, they would break, they would break and the Firebird would burn down Isavalta and burn Mikkel when she had sworn to keep him safe.

  Medeoan, Dowager Empress of Isavalta, flung herself past her ghost, past life and death, and wrapped her arms around the golden cage.

  • • •

  All ghosts had faded from the shore. All but one. Poppa still stood in the snow, empty-eyed, shaking not from the waves but from his coughs. Not one of the living came for him.

  Bridget was not aware of returning inside, of climbing down the stairs and walking out the front door. She knew only that she needed to be down in the snow with Poppa’s shade, and she was there.

  “You are my poppa,” she said, opening her arms wide. Power of place, of self, of all the life burning around her robbed Bridget of fear. “That’s all that matters. You will always be my poppa.”

  She saw then the other truth. One spell or another, or perhaps even her own eyes, showed her the truth as she met the emptiness that stared back at her. This was only part of Everett Lederle. This was the fear and the sadness, not the whole of the man who had raised her and loved her as long as he had lived. The other part of him stood beside Momma as she watched Bridget embrace his fear. That part of him minded the light and watched the shore. That shade waited patiently for Bridget to make herself whole.

  “Come home, Poppa.” She folded her arms around this fragment of his shade. “It’s all right. You can come back now.”

  She did not feel his dissolution. He was there, in the circle of her arms, and then he was not.

  “No!” Kalami’s roar cut through the air and he charged toward Bridget, hands outstretched. She leapt aside, her foot catching his, sending him sprawling, into the arms of the living spirits.

  They surrounded him, all trace of welcoming gone. Bridget felt the tide of them grow cold as snow and hot as the sun all at once. Anger, deep and wild, poured out of them, and they advanced, circling Kalami rank on rank, remorseless, relentless. He had tried to harm her. Harm could not, would not be allowed. Not here, not now.

  Kalami screamed. The shining rank of spirits pressed forward, driving him to the cliff’s edge, sending him staggering down the jetty steps, driving him to the swells of Superior with its greasy coating of partially formed ice.

  No, he did not deserve to drown. But Bridget had no breath to speak. The anger beat her down as surely as it drove Kalami forward to the shifting slurry of the water.

  They drove him onto the rocks, the rocks where she had rescued him and all this had begun, and she saw him turn, saw rage and panic take him, and Kalami began to run.

  He ran across the rock, and he ran onto the incomplete ice, and for a moment it seemed he flew across Superior, shedding the ranks of the living spirits behind him, and Bridget heard him laugh and saw him fling himself into wind and water.

  And vanish.

  Gone. Not sinking, not drowning. Gone. Bridget stared, all determination, all other feeling lost in surprise. Before her, without her need to drive them on, the living faded away, dispersing into the night to await the dawn in their homes, as it should be.

  Bridget knew enough to know what a feat she had just witnessed. In sheer desperation, Kalami had just pulled himself into the Land of Death and Spirit. He was between worlds now. He might be anywhere. Anywhere at all.

  A wave of weariness overtook her, and Bridget could not bring herself to care. There was still the dowager to be seen to. Now she knew how Ananda felt. Always one more thing to be done. One more battle. Never an ending. Never true freedom.

  She turned toward the keeper’s quarters, and as she did, the light winked out.

  Bridget hesitated in midstep, drawing in an involuntary breath. A sense of danger crept over her. There was no ship to see whether there was light or not, but the light failing was no good thing. What …

  Before she could complete the thought, the Firebird rose.

  It filled the whole sky, burning with unending flame brighter than a thousand suns. It stretched its mighty wings into an arc that must surely sweep away night forever and let out one silent cry that shook the stars overhead.

  Then, it too was gone, save for the red afterimage left burning on Bridget’s eyes.

  Awe rooted her to the spot, leaving her able to do nothing but gape and blink for a long moment. Gradually, her brain shook itself far enough loose to give out one single thought.

  Medeoan.

  Bridget hiked up her skirts and ran. She clambered up the steps and into the front room and clapped her hand over her mouth.

  The quilts had been thrown back. Her imperial clothes, tattered as Kalami had left them, lay strewn across the sofa, all of them coated with hot, black ash.

  Bridget walked slowly into the room. Trembling too violently to stand, she sat on the footstool Kalami had pulled up beside the couch. She bowed her head, and because it was right, and because there was no one else, Bridget began to weep long and silently for the lost life that was Medeoan’s.

  • • •

  The Land of Death and Spirit opened wide before Kalami. His boots waded the river and he scrambled out onto the mossy bank, bent double from the strength of his panting.

  Damn her, damn her. She would crawl yet. He would pull her back and she would know the depths of his anger. She would …

  Warmth touched Kalami, and he looked up. He saw a flash of green between the dark pine trunks
. In the next heartbeat, the Vixen stepped into view.

  She bared her yellow teeth at him, and Kalami felt all the blood drain from his heart.

  She knew. She knew he led her sons to Sakra’s sword, and that he had planned to do so. He had told her, all unknowingly, when he had taken her to himself.

  Her grin grew even wider, and the Vixen spoke one word.

  “Run.”

  • • •

  Dawn came, bright and clear. It stretched pink and gold fingers over the vast stretch of the freezing lake to illuminate a sky of solid, sapphire blue.

  Bridget stood on her stoop to meet it, stretching her aching back. While the dawn was still a thin, grey line in the sky, she had changed out of her battered Isavaltan party gown into an old working dress of her own with a knitted shawl she had found at the very bottom of one of the trunks.

  Mourning. Morning, she thought idly toward the rising sun. All mourning done.

  She had carried Medeoan’s clothes to the shore last night and cast them into Superior, willing the water to carry the empress back to her home. She did not know whether that prayer, or spell, or mere wish, had any effect. Perhaps it did not, but the act brought Bridget a little peace, and for now, that was enough.

  Now she stood bathed in the fresh light of day. Bridget took a deep breath of winter air, drawing it down into her tingling lungs. The winter wind blew off the lake, painfully cold against her cheeks.

  But Bridget did not move. She felt suspended, balanced between worlds and lives.

  In so many ways now, she was free. Her ghosts had all forgiven her, and she had forgiven them. The dead that had held her so long slept safe and warm, forgiving and forgiven, and she was free to live. She could do anything. She could stay with the light. There was good, hard work to be done here still. She could go away, to Madison, to Chicago, where she could begin a new life wholly of her own making.

  She could return to Isavalta, where she was the daughter of Ingrid and Avanasy, and take up that heavy legacy.

  Just the thought of that legacy bowed her shoulders down. She was tired, incredibly, enormously tired, exhausted by all the things she had done in the past few days, and all the things she had seen. She had been used by Isavalta, used hard, and she was not the first they had used. They had taken her mother, and ended her life, cutting her short, for what? For love, surely, but for what else? For the game of kings that they could not seem to stop playing.

  Oh, Aunt Grace, I’m sorry, she thought to the winter wind. She should have listened more closely, she should have asked more questions. Then she might have known how this other world had shattered her family a generation ago, and how little it could offer to mend the breaks. Bridget bowed her head and shivered.

  So, why shouldn’t she turn her back on it? Surely, after having walked across worlds, she could make shift to get herself to the mainland. She could see Aunt Grace, perhaps stay the winter with her, and start fresh in the spring. She could retract her resignation to the Lighthouse Board and stay on here, where her fears all had names, and her guilts were all forgiven.

  And what if Isavalta came back? Kalami was still out there. So was the Firebird. Isavalta had taken Momma away and come back for Bridget. What would she do if it came again? Was that how she was to live? Waiting for Isavalta to come across the waters again seeking to claim her?

  Anger took hold of Bridget then, sending shudders through her bones stronger than any the winter’s cold could produce. For Isavalta would come back, she knew it and needed no vision, no magic, to tell her that truth. It had laid claim to her, and it would not leave her alone.

  But what if she went back? Then it would have her, but if she went willingly, with her eyes and mind open, then at least she would have some chance to shape what was to come. She would not have to be like the light, waiting for danger, but she could be like the Firebird, soaring free to meet it.

  The Firebird. Bridget saw again the huge shape of it stretched across the sky. Where had it gone? It had been freed without constraints, without promises. And Kalami. Where was he? Should someone be warned? Who was there to sound that alarm but her? What would happen if she stayed here and held her tongue? Bridget ground her teeth in frustration. Another duty, always there was another duty.

  And then there was Sakra. She touched her hand, remembering Sakra’s touch when he had last held it, and remembering the warmth beyond words in his eyes. She had not known what to feel then. Kalami and the memory of Asa had stolen too much from her. Did she love him? Or did she just want to? Or was it, as he said, just the sorcery inside her reaching out to him? After all that she had been through, how could she put herself on that path again? Another love, perhaps another false love, in any world would surely break her past repair.

  A tear trickled down Bridget’s cheek. She wiped it away before it could freeze.

  Peace called to her. She could have it here. She could have her work and her rest, and the petty gossips and their tongues were nothing compared with what she had seen, what she had done. Let the world come, she’d fight it off, and in the meantime, she would have peace, and a life of her own choosing.

  Or would she? Bridget felt her jaw work itself back and forth. Did she truly believe she would not be haunted in her own heart by that other world? Would she go to sleep wondering if tonight was the night it would come for her? Wondering what lay inside her, what power she compassed inside herself that crouched like a wolf in her soul, waiting for its prey?

  “Damn you!” she shouted to the wind. “Why did you do this to me? Why! Why couldn’t you be content to swallow my mother? Why could you not leave me alone!”

  All at once, Medeoan’s pleading face appeared before her mind’s eye. A life ruined by trying to be other than what she was, by denying power and responsibility, curses and blessing, until there was nothing left to do but go mad.

  If Bridget stayed here, trying to hide from what fortune had made her, was that what awaited her?

  No. No, that I will not permit.

  She could wait for her future to come for her, or she could go to meet it. One way meant the possibility of peace, and the possibility of disaster. The other meant confusion, meant battle and trouble, but it also meant the chance of shaping how that battle would be fought, and it also meant the chance, oh just the barest sweet chance of love.

  Bridget pulled her shawl around her shoulders and fixed her eyes ahead of her, willing them to see her path, shining across the ice.

  Bridget began to walk toward Isavalta.

  About the Author

  Sarah Zettel, author of numerous science fiction and fantasy novels, has won the Locus Award for Best First Novel, for Reclamation (1996), and was runner-up for the Philip K. Dick Award for best paperback original SF novel, for Fool’s War (1997). She lives outside Ann Arbor, Michigan.

  Serving as inspiration for contemporary literature, Prologue Books, a division of F+W Media, offers readers a vibrant, living record of crime, science fiction, fantasy, western, and romance genres. Discover more today:

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  This edition published by

  Prologue Books

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  10151 Carver Road, Suite 200

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  www.prologuebooks.com

  Copyright © 2002 by Sarah Zettel

  Cover images 123rf.com/©Fedor Sidorov, istockphoto.com/©Sergii Tsololo, ©Antagain

  All rights reserved.

  Published in association with Athans & Associates Creative Consulting

  Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-4859-5

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4859-8

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-4374-7

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4374-6

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  Sarah Zettel, A Sorcerer’s Treason