by N. D. Wilson
Caleb and Mordecai had stood in the street as hundreds of families had retreated across the bridge. Even the faeren had fallen back. The alleys on the other side of the river were probably as full of them as they were of cowering archers.
The last Frank had seen of his brothers, Mordecai had fallen to his knees, drawing lightning to himself. Absorbing strikes. Because of him, the bridge was still intact.
Frank was crouched behind one of the pillars in the center of the bridge. He could see where Sergeant Simmons lay across from him, unconscious he hoped, but he had lost all track of Zeke and Richard and Henry.
When the faeren had come, it had looked like the tide had turned. They had even held the wall for a while, held the entire breach.
And then Darius had come again. The tall wizard, who moved for nothing, and stood in the swirling carnage like he was made of the rock beneath him. No arrow, no faerie, not one of Mordecai's blows had reached him, and his wind had pushed the fire through the city. Mordecai had only just prevented it from crossing the river.
Frank had a bow and a quiver full of salvaged arrows. But they were still slung beside him.
His shotgun had one more shell, and it was time to find his brothers.
He stood, looked across the bridge and through the street and flames. And he began humming. It was a simple tune, a protective charm of a war song, one lost from his boyhood. His mother had called it a breastplate.
Frank was not unhappy. He was home, where he belonged. And if his home was going to be destroyed, he was grateful that he had seen it again, that his life, rather than fading into dust on a couch in Kansas, could be laid down here.
He moved across the bridge and onto the street lined with fire. Cobblestones were dry from the heat, even as more rain fell.
His arrows rattled behind him as he walked.
All the way at the end of the street, through the shimmering distortion of the heat, he could see the remaining wizards gathering. In front of them sat a tall man on a horse.
Frank kept moving forward, scanning the walls and the side streets, wherever people could be hidden.
After more than one hundred yards, he stopped and stared into an alleyway. The buildings around it had already burned themselves out.
“Mr. Willis,” a voice said.
“Zeke?” Frank hurried to the alley, glancing down the street.
“Have they come?” another voice asked. “Shall we stand?”
Frank stepped into the shadow and laid down his shotgun. Caleb was leaning back against a wall with his legs splayed in front of him, his horn bow across his knees.
Beside him, Mordecai slumped.
Zeke was crouched in front of them both, holding a bow. Behind him, wide-eyed, sat Richard, his arms full of quivers.
Caleb opened his eyes, and Mordecai raised his head. “Have they come?” he asked again. “Shall we stand?”
“No,” Zeke said.
“But they are coming,” Frank said. “Are you wounded?”
Mordecai smiled. “Our wounds are the wounds of exhaustion. Of being overpowered. But we are not yet dead, and I do not want to be made a liar.”
“A liar?” Frank asked.
“I told my wife I would not be lost again.”
“Is Darius himself coming?” Caleb asked. “Or is he still unsure of his victory?”
“He is coming,” Frank said.
“Then we stand on the bridge,” said Caleb.
He stood, and the two of them pulled Mordecai to his feet.
They hobbled into the street, and Zeke and Richard followed.
Below them, the wizards were approaching.
When they reached the bridge, Frank called into the shadows for water. A man hurried forward with a skin, and Frank handed it to his brothers.
He turned to Zeke and Richard. “Now it is time for you to fall back to the house,” he said. “If it comes to it, you'll have your own last stand there. Go.”
Richard turned, but Zeke only backed up into the shadows.
Mordecai pulled in long, slow breaths, straightened up, and squared his legs. Caleb stood beside him, leaning on his bow. Frank leaned on the shotgun.
After a moment, Frank hurried forward and lay on his back among the pillars on the bridge. He was careful to spread a leg visibly into the road. Darius would know he was there if he was hidden or not.
There are men who would have scruples about shooting an enemy in the back. Frank Willis was not one of them.
When Henry and Henrietta reached the top of the hill in front of the house, they stopped in shock, looking down over the burning lower city.
“Look to the bridge,” the faerie said behind them.
Two figures, both tall, stood on the near side of the bridge, with their feet spread and their shoulders square. Up the road from the other side came a single horseman.
“Where's my dad?” Henrietta asked.
Henry was already racing down the hill.
Darius sat still on his horse. Half the city had fallen. He had only to cross the bridge, to trample the two weary lives in front of him. He nudged his horse forward and stopped even with the first thick posts in the railings. His cloak rolled and flapped in the gusts that burst through the streets. His mouth opened and spoke. He did not choose his own words.
“You are of a blood I do not love,” he said. “You cannot stop me.”
“Likewise,” Caleb said. He closed and opened his fingers around the grip on his bow. There was a shaft on the string.
Darius listened to the words that poured out of him. “I am Nimroth. Blackstar. Mountains have bowed to me. Your knees, your souls, will bend.”
“You are not Nimroth,” Mordecai said. “Mountains may have bowed to him, but our grandsires made sure that they bowed to the ground. He is under them still.”
After a moment of silence, Darius opened his mouth to speak again. This time, he spoke with a woman's voice.
“I am Nimiane, dread queen of Endor. Nimroth lives in me for I am his daughter.” Darius said this without flinching, without even noticing. His soul was being crowded out.
The horse sparked a hoof on the cobbles, snorting.
“That much we know,” said Caleb. “Why have you come?”
“To settle old grievances. To collect a debt from your diminishing clan. It is a debt they will pay.”
“We owe no one,” Caleb said. His right hand found the bow string.
“Do you think an arrow can find my flesh? Do you think there is a bow that can pierce me?”
“Yes,” Caleb said.
The woman in Darius laughed. “You are not your father. Nor are you your brother. You are not even equal to your brother's son. He at least drew my blood when I was weak and entombed in the prison his father gave me. He is also the one who opened the way to my freedom. The father's seals were broken by the son, but that will not prevent him paying his portion of the debt.” Darius nudged his horse a step forward. “Speak to me, Mordecai. Have you learned of that betrayal?”
Mordecai's voice was heavy. “Darius,” he said. “I do not know you, but she has filled you past return. You cannot but die, even if you defeat us. And you shall not defeat us. Do not set foot on the bridge.”
Caleb shifted his feet and drew the bow back to his cheek. Raindrops ran down the string and dripped off the arrow's feathers onto his lips. Caleb held the bow drawn, and his arms did not shake.
The horse tossed its head, but did not move.
Caleb's voice rang out. “This shaft was taken from the tomb of the Old King, and the bow was made for his brother kings in the South, who set the ancient stones. Try its strength if you dare.”
“I dare,” the woman's voice said, and Darius rode onto the bridge.
Henry ran past alleys and shadows crowded with watching men. He ran straight for the bridge.
He saw Darius ride forward.
He saw the shotgun blast from the side, and the horse rear. He saw Caleb's arrow fly and turn to ash in the air. He
saw Uncle Frank thrown from the bridge and his father grasp Darius's own wind and hurl it toward the ramping horse.
The animal staggered on its hind legs, and for a moment, Henry thought it would topple.
“Henry!” Eli jumped out of a shadow.
The small old man ran after him.
The horse stamped, regaining itself. Darius's hood had fallen back, and the woman in him laughed a rich, long laugh.
“I have braved the arrow of the Old King, the Old Dead King, and I live. I will always live. I have stood your blow. Can you stand mine?”
Henry ran onto the bridge with Eli behind him.
Darius looked at him and smiled.
“That blood I have tasted,” she said. “Shall we begin with the young and move on to the vintage?”
The blow fell.
Air as hard as rock crushed Henry from above, and he crumpled on the cobblestones. His body slid forward, toward the wizard. His life was being drawn out through the burn on his face. His blood, his newfound fire, was being taken from him. Henry struggled. He could see the gray lines of his life, dying green and gold, straggling toward the wizard, and they dragged him behind. Suddenly, another strength stretched above him, purple and rich, twisting and green, his father's vines drawing him back, intertwining with his own.
Eli jumped over him, yelling, racing toward the wizard.
Henry was released.
His father and uncle were above him, pulling him back off the bridge.
“Here,” he said, and he handed Caleb the arrow.
Eli screamed, and Henry rolled over in time to see his small body fold and tumble in the street.
Caleb placed the bent and rotten arrow on the string. Mordecai stepped forward, drawing strength from the wind, from the river and the stones, pulling down the cold breath from the cloud-mountains. Henry saw it all. He saw the serpentine wind rush down in bands thicker than trees. He saw twisting river words rise from beneath the bridge like a waterfall undone, and a wall of seamless, roaring strength climbing in from the sea. His eyes burned with the sight, and pressure built in his skull. It was too much. His eyes were teetering toward blindness, overpowered. His ears were going to burst and bleed with the crackling magic. But Henry leaned his mind against it, fighting to stay conscious. He knew that it had to be more than his father could bear to hold.
Darius rode forward to the center of the bridge, smiling at Caleb. “And where is this one from?” Nimiane asked.
“Ramoth Gilead,” Henry said. He saw shock on Caleb's face, and a single flash of fear in the tall wizard.
Suddenly, Darius hurled his strength toward them and pounded down lightning at Caleb. But Mordecai had thrown his own. Wind struggled with wind, lightning tangled with lightning and fell to the bridge, thunderless, crackling stone.
In one motion, Caleb drew the arrow to his lips and let it fly.
The arrow veered and twisted. But Henry saw another, white-hot, fly true through the crackling wind.
The two arrows met, and together, they drove into Darius's throat.
The wind died, but the rain continued on.
Darius slid from the horse's back and landed in the road. Henry blinked. He could barely see the wizard's body for all the ghostly, tangled web of stolen life that swirled around him beginning to unravel. All of it gray, like the strands on Henry's face, it expanded, jerking loose, snapping fear, struggling free, accelerating, growing. In a flash, Henry realized what would happen. He saw all that was about to explode, and he knew that he, his new life, his family, would all be washed away. Henry raised his hands and pushed what little strength he had against it.
Mordecai stumbled toward the fallen wizard.
Darius sputtered. Something in his mind drew back. A waterfall, a deluge of strength, roared inside him. He could hold it no more.
All the power gathered, all the life stolen and poured into Darius, burst out in a rushing spirit-wind of death.
With the last of his strength, Mordecai threw himself against it, dropping to his knees with both hands raised. Cobbles cracked and aged to dust in front of him. Henry watched his father's twisting vines grab his own and spin into a wall against the fury, but they were bending back, unable to hold, dying and joining the gray. And then the storm of death turned, pouring away down the street, through the wizards, through the flames.
What was left of the eastern wall collapsed. Trees fell, and in the darkness, the ridge rumbled, and its face slid down to the plain.
The sea crashed on the cliffs, but struggled against no thunder. Rain fell faster, stronger than fire.
Uncle Frank climbed up from the river, and Henry crawled toward the body of Eli FitzFaeren. Onetime traitor, onetime friend.
The bridge around the body of Darius of Byzthamum, seventh son to a priest, was covered with mushrooms. They'd spread through and down the street and over the bodies of the wizards.
The dead horse was covered with them, and they were growing on Eli.
Henry brushed them off.
His father crouched beside him. His face was white, bloodless, but the struggle was over, a weight was lifted.
He smiled at his son, slid his arms beneath the small body of Eli, and stood up.
He turned back. Hundreds of men and faeren drifted out of the shadows.
“Who will carry him to the house of Hyacinth?” Mordecai asked.
Through the rain, a crowd moved forward. Henrietta walked in front of them.
Uncle Frank stepped over the railing, nodded at Henry, and turned to look for Sergeant Simmons.
Caleb stood tall over the body of Darius and looked at the ivory chin and the warped and rotten arrow beneath it.
The mushrooms had not gone near the shaft. The chipped-stone point stood out of the wizard's neck. Caleb bent, gripped it, and pulled the rest of the arrow through. Then he shrugged off his cloak and wrapped it carefully around the shaft.
Mordecai watched Eli being carried up the hill, and then he turned to his son.
“Well done,” he said. “I had wondered where you'd gone.”
Uncle Frank called for them as he helped a thick Sergeant Simmons to his feet.
Zeke, Richard, Henrietta, and the fat faerie came and stood by Henry, and no one said anything until Uncle Frank and his two tall brothers returned with the policeman limping between them.
In the crowd, voices were beginning to spread quietly through the memory of what had been lost.
The lower city burned. The eastern wall was gone. Hundreds of fallen waited burial. And yet, Hylfing lived on. Caleb no longer stood alone, but walked with brothers. Mordecai had returned.
Someone began ringing the bells, and they sounded new.
Silent, the brothers climbed the cobbled hill, and the others walked with them.
When dawn came, Henry was standing on the roof of his mother's house. She had stood with him for a while, under a cloak, in the rain and the now-slow sea breeze. Together, they had watched the clouds begin to break and part in front of the laughing stars. Dotty had come and held him for a moment, kissed him, and left him to his thoughts.
Zeke had stood with him, and Richard, but they had both gone inside. The house had been awake through the night, the women treating wounded, and Hyacinth had gone out through the dark to grieve with those who had lost.
After eating, Mordecai and Caleb had ridden up the ridge to the wizard door, and Caleb had carried the Arrow of Chance with them.
They had returned before the sun, beneath the graying sky. Carnassus and the remaining wizards had all been found dead, lying in the ancient, arched throne room. The witch was gone.
Now, as the sun rose through the scattered rain, only Henrietta stood hooded beside Henry, and the two of them looked out over the blackened lower city, out over the white-lined sea. They watched the sun rise over the ridge, above the shattered eastern wall.
After hours of silence, Henrietta shivered and spoke.
“You're different, Henry York.”
Henr
y swallowed and blinked away everything he was feeling. This was where he was from. This place that had almost been destroyed. This wounded family, now partly healed. This city by the sea.
But there were already things he missed, things he had only just found. The barn. The combine-combed fields and the smell of Kansas grain as it ripened. Baseball.
“I'm still scared,” he said.
Henrietta smiled and looked at him, wiping rain from her wet forehead, tucking back her hair beneath her hood.
“Yeah,” she said. “But now you're scary.”
Henry smiled and leaned over the wall. “If you have some dirt, I'll show you a trick.”
Henrietta laughed, and shivered.
Something was moving through the air in front of the ridge.
It was struggling.
“What's that?” Henry asked.
The animal grew in the air, wavering above the charred streets in the lower city, dragging its dangling hind end as it avoided houses and climbed above the hill.
It was Henry's turn to laugh, but not so loud that the raggant might hear him.
The creature circled the house and landed on the roof behind them.
Henry and Henrietta bit their lips, and neither turned around.
A moment later, the raggant sat on the wall beside Henry, spread its wings against the wet breeze, shut its eyes, and raised its nose.
Its job was done.
spent days in the streets, working like he had never worked. But those days were also filled with meals like he had never eaten, laughter and singing like he had never heard, nights full of stories, and the sleep of a body and mind used like tools and not like treasures.
He dreamed, but only one that he remembered after waking. In that dream, he sat with Ron and Nella on their balcony overlooking the city of Byzanthamum. Neither said a word, but they smiled, and together, in his dream, they sat for a lifetime and did nothing but watch the smoke slowly fade away until a new city breathed below.
Though his days were full of tasks, not one passed without a visit to the roof. There, the raggant always joined him. Together, they would choose a wall, or let the wind choose for them, and they would stare—at the sky, the sea, the trees, the city, the world—and Henry would listen to the raggant breathe, and to the wind breathe through its wings.