Cursed Seer

by J. A. Culican

  Our gazes meet across the dinner table. "Yes, I'll be fine. Nothing new, by the way, so you don't need to ask."

  Maybe I should mention the feelings this vision brought, but I decide against it for the moment. I'm tired of having no privacy, even among my own thoughts.

  From the head of the table, Birka says, "No one truly has privacy, dear. Something about this one is nagging at the back of your mind, but I'm not going to dig it out of you. Tell us if you wish, or don't. It's your decision. I should point out, however, that we're all in this together."

  I stare at my plate of corned beef and cabbage, fighting off feelings of outrage. I hate it when she skims my surface thoughts, but she probably can't help it any more than I can control my visions. Nor would she want to, if it involves the future fate of her son—which it always does, at least indirectly.

  "I'm just not making as much headway as I'd like in doing what everyone, including Death, seems to want me to do. I can't yet just decide who lives and who dies, and—" My voice cracks as it tightens up. I hate admitting it, but Talon is her son, after all.

  I feel Birka's eyes drilling holes in me. There's a moment of silence before she finishes my thought for me. "—And, you can't see a way to save Talon and Luka."

  I nod, staring at a bit of cabbage on my plate that suddenly looks far less appetizing than it had a minute ago.

  Talon laughs, startling me.

  I look up and see his eyes sparkling, face grinning. "What?"

  He shrugs. "You'll figure it out or you won't, but I have faith. You've done everything I've ever seen you put your mind to. You're unstoppable." He's still smiling at me.

  I don't have a response. He's willfully ignoring the fact that I haven't fixed him, cured Luka, or rescued my parents. Not yet.

  Luka, two spaces down from me, continues eating. His silverware scraping the plate lightly is the only sound I hear. At least his appetite isn't ruined by the thought of them both dying. Nothing fazes him, though, not since he was resurrected.

  Into the silence, he says, "That's not what is truly bothering her."

  All heads turn to him, but he only continues eating, ignoring the curious stares.

  After swallowing a juicy chunk of corned beef laden with mustard—disgusting!—he finally looks up and looks us each in the eyes in turn, until his gaze settles on me. "She'll save us if she can, but I know her. She's probably already almost come to grips with the idea of our deaths. No, what she's really bothered by is her visions of the Landing burning down."

  Birka stands up like a rocket, sending her chair skittering back five feet, though it remains upright, and slams her palms down on the table to either side of her plate. "What visions? Mortals Landing burning? Tell me now, what is he talking about?"

  Damn him. I told him about the vision yesterday, and he drew his own conclusions—correct ones. But he wasn't supposed to say anything until I could be more certain of the details. I gulp, steel myself, and meet Birka's glare with my own passive stare, unflinching, struggling to keep my expression and thoughts blank.

  "Is this true?" She leans forward, putting more weight on her hands, which still straddle her plate. "We have a right to know. This is my kingdom, these are my people, and you need to tell me what you saw."

  An image of the burning and dying flashes through my head before I can stop it.

  Birka immediately lets out a sound as close to a whimper as any I've ever heard from her, and one knee buckles, almost sending her sprawling.

  I can't keep up my mask. That poor woman just saw the unimaginable, and I can't guess how that would feel to the one who ruled the Wraiths for decades. "Yes. It's true, as you already saw by violating my thoughts."

  Her complexion darkens, jaw muscles standing out.

  Again, I can't blame her. I continue, "I didn't want to worry anyone. And it may not come to pass, anyway. It doesn't have that 'Fated' feeling. How it happens, and how to stop it, I don't yet know. Until I do, I wasn't going to mention it."

  "My goodness," Princess Meredith says in a half-whisper. Louder, "Every one of us has family or loved ones there, most of them fighting and dying every night on the streets of Mortals Landing in this stupid fight to keep us and the world free. We all know we can't win, but what are we supposed to do, lie down and take it? Just wait for Dawson's boot heel on our throat?"

  I stare at her. I've never heard Meredith speaking in so animated a fashion. "No, that's not the choice we made."

  "Damn right, no. Instead, we fight. And to do that, we have to know what we're fighting. Ella, I can't believe you kept this from us."

  That was a quick change in her tone. After a long moment of eye contact, I find myself looking down at my feet, her eyes boring holes in the me. Apparently, it wasn't a rhetorical question. "So, we fight. We do what we can to save Mortals Landing. Ending the Revenants is one thing, but ending so many innocent lives? Unthinkable. You're right, this is a fight we can't possibly win. But you know what? If I can control death, then by everything decent and good, that's what I'm going to do. Let them fear the reaper, for a change."

  As I speak, my voice gains volume, and I feel a new confidence floating through me. Now, in the face of impossible odds against a threat to the entire world, I find my backbone. I see I’ve made a decision.

  My timing always was ironic.

  I tuck daggers six, seven, and eight into their usual hidey places with the clock ticking. In five minutes, we go on another mission—another opportunity for me to learn about my Gifts and figure out how to control them better. If I am Death's daughter, if that wasn't a weird hallucination, then I have my work cut out for me.

  As I turn toward the door to leave, it creaks open of its own accord. I stop midstride. "Come in, why don't you?"

  Luka, smiling, steps inside. Closing the door behind him, he turns to me and sucks on his teeth as he looked me up and down. "Prepared as always. You're getting better at hiding your daggers. I can only see five of them."

  "Awesome. I was on my way down, anyways. Or did you want to talk about something?" Please don't want to talk. I'm trying to get my head in the game.

  His expression is placid, more a lack of expression. I miss how animated his features used to be.

  He says, "Actually, I just have one question. No offense, but why are you fighting so hard to save Mortals Landing?"

  For a second, my thoughts derail. That is not what I had expected. I don't stay speechless for long, however. "What do you mean, why? Do you know how many innocent civilians will die? People who matter to me?"

  Luka lets out a frustrated sigh. I didn't know he got frustrated anymore. He locks eyes with me. "What if Mortals Landing is the explosion, not Talon? Look, Talon has to be connected to something with tremendous raw power. Do you know how much energy it takes to keep Mortals Landing flying? I don't, but it isn’t anything mechanical. A nuclear reactor couldn’t do it."

  I feel an itch at the back of my mind. I knew that Luka, as a Revenant, had some issues in the soul department, but to sacrifice a city? The most magical city in the world? "You aren't suggesting we sacrifice this place to save ourselves, are you?"

  Luka takes a step backward, holding both hands up toward me placating me. "Whoa, don't be so quick to judge. Just listen. Mortals Landing is built on top of a huge power source. In a way, the entire place is one energy matrix, but it still has a single source of power, buried deep within the disk. It seems to me that’s the only thing with enough magical juice to keep Talon running and connected to all those nodes, powering all us Revenants. If you destroy it, you cut all the threads tying Talon to the other hubs."

  My eyebrows furrow, lips tightening as I contemplate the death toll such an action would create. "That would destroy Mortals Landing, and likely kill everyone in it..."

  "Just think about it. Dawson has to be stopped, and so does his Revenant army. You know it as well as I do. The entire world matters more than any hidden little city full of rich, over-privileged magicians. Save the w
orld, Ella—destroy what's powering Talon's connections, destroy Talon's connection to the other hubs, destroy the Revenants, but most of all..." His voice trails off into nothing.

  "Most of all, what?" I demand, crossing my arms and facing him squarely.

  "Most of all, save one of the men you love. If you don't, everyone dies."

  Long before I decide how I feel about that, he spins on his heels and strides out the bedroom door. "See you downstairs, Mirella. It's almost mission time."

  I'm left standing in the middle of my room, with more troubled thoughts and questions than solutions, but I already know Luka's plan is more solid than Birka's. I'm not looking forward to talking to her about this, but I have to. I must.

  I'll do it after the mission, I promise myself, and head downstairs.

  Chapter 21

  I'm staring at a giant map of Mortals Landing that stretches across an entire wall of our hideout's living room.

  Birka stands between us and it, facing us. "The map is fairly vague in details, I know. I split it into twelve sections and had nearly all of our loyal trackers roaming the city to take energy readings. They can read strength and direction of magical energies—like the ones tethering my son to Dawson's Revenant hubs. We lost a lot of people, but Mirella's plan is the only one that makes sense in the time we have left to us."

  I try hard not to physically cringe at her tone on that last part. Sacrificing Mortals Landing cannot be easy on her, but in the end, it turned out to be easier than sacrificing her son.

  She continues, "These markings drawn on the maps are all the hubs and, by coincidence, we can see the energy connections. I'll let you all take a look and draw your own conclusions before I continue."

  I crane my neck to get a better look. There are twelve large chunks of parchment, each with a section of the city. On each chunk, various lines are drawn in different colors, which seem to indicate the strength of the signal, for lack of a better term. Where they intersect, circles have been drawn in. What's absolutely clear is that, riding brightly over the background noise of magical energy that infuses Mortals Landing, there are several vast power syncs spread around the city with unnatural regularity. They form an octagon, in fact. And from each hub, a single line extends inward toward the center, drawn in thick and bright with the raw energy the hubs are pulling from the power source.

  That's not exactly a surprise. What is, however is the source of the power. All six lines from all six hubs meet precisely over Birka's manor estates. I draw an involuntary breath when I realize where Mortals Landing's power source lay.

  Birka smiles, but it is a bitter expression. "Yes, that's right. My manor lies at the energy center of the city, and for a reason. Few people know it, but the floating city of magic is powered by an ancient artifact. We have a lot of legends about the source of this artifact, ranging from the soul of a dead god to the heart of Lucifer. I have my own opinions. Nonetheless, that's the source of the power, and it lies deep within a maze built into the city's disk itself. The maze is, in part, a channeling glyph, but the bigger problem for us is that it is also heavily defended."

  I stare at her, but her eyes are on Talon. "You had glimpses of your connections, especially when they were first made. What do you remember about the power source's location? Even the vaguest impression could be of vital importance."

  Talon shrugs. "I said it before, I'll say it again. I don't remember anything. I think we are about to risk it all on an untested theory. We should wait and figure out how to test that theory before we go in with guns blazing, so to speak."

  Luka's head whips toward Talon. "How can you say that? It seems pretty obvious to me, from that map. Not only that, what other option do we have? We don't have time to sit around waiting, trying to be absolutely certain of everything before we move. Desperate times, desperate measures, and all that."

  Ida, shaking her head, glowers at Luka. "If this plan works, you die."

  I take a sharp intake of breath, holding it, unable to breathe. Her thoughts mirror mine.

  Luka's expression seems to melt away, from intense to his usual blank self. "True. It just means I get to say goodbye this time. I was kind of happy being dead."

  I find myself standing, words spilling from my lips. "I promise you, Luka, I'll find a way to save you. I won't give up on you. You're going to—"

  He cuts me off with a chop of his hand through the air as his voice rises to drown mine out. "I'm okay with going out like this. The only thing I want from you is a promise to bring an end to these zombies once and for all. Don't try to bring me back, just fix the problem. I'm happy I get to say goodbye, so please, leave it at that."

  Luka and I stare at each other across the kitchen, I don't know for how long. He never wavers, never flinches away, so in the end, I do. I look down at the floor and give him a single nod. It's all I can muster.

  I hate agreeing with him, though. It feels too much like quitting. There was a time when I would've given anything to avoid having to make such a decision, anything to avoid fighting for it. Times have changed, though. I've been through too much, seen too much, to back out now. A fighter does what they must in the moment regardless of the personal cost.

  That thought surprises me. When did I become a fighter? But I know the answer. It was long before I realized I had. When you come to love people, sometimes fighting is the only option if you want to be able to look yourself in the mirror for the rest of your life. However short that life may be, I'll stand tall while I do it. Anyone can become a fighter if they’re pushed hard enough, if what they love is threatened enough.

  "Fine." I look around the room, meeting my companions' gazes, each in turn. I look to Birka last. "Okay. Let the fight begin. What's the plan to get into this magical glyph bunker?"

  Birka smiles. It's a savage expression, though, with no joy in it. "Simple. We break down the back door when they’re looking somewhere else, and destroy the artifact. It’ll reform, but not right away.”

  “How do we do that?”

  She keeps grinning. “Let me tell you about something I call Archimedes..."

  Chapter 22

  The fiery plasma ball hits us and we explode.

  "Right!" I shout commands, and the hastily-glyphed bubblecars in my little convoy scatter, avoiding doom. Again and again, we dodge death each time. Small-arms fire and lesser Gifts that don't trigger a vision, we ignore and plow through en route to the manor. The enemy forces are usually thicker on the ground around here, but most of what's left of a resistance is busy hitting the sector to the north, where we think a Revenant hub is located.

  "Seems our plan is working," crackles Birka's voice on the radio.

  Glenn shouts, "Jink left!" just in time to avoid a crater in the center lane. It wouldn't have killed anyone, but it sure would have cost us at least one more vehicle. We lost one of our ten transports a few blocks back and can’t afford another.

  It's hard not to close my eyes to the violence everywhere outside our windows. Pew, pew, pew. Beams of light, balls of fire, hurtling cars—we avoid them all and our return fire is deadly. They obviously don't have a Death Seer with them.

  In minutes, we make it to the manor grounds. We're not aiming for the manor itself, as it's too heavily guarded for our little band of forty or so rebels, but elsewhere on the property. Hopefully it will go better than the last time we attempted to use Birka's secret tunnels, but she swears this time will be different. It has to be, because we can't mount another operation like this one.

  Before we enter the grounds proper, Birka leads us south. The manor building passes out of view on our left, and we pull into what looks like a lavish warehouse—two words that don't belong together anywhere but in Mortals Landing. There are soldiers in the parking lot, not ours, but our fighters' cars fan out ahead of us and, after a brief fight and one well-placed fireball, the fight is over. Birka is ushers us all inside while our fleet of bubblecars scatters in every direction, pre-programmed to do so. No going back.

>   Inside, the warehouse is full of shelves loaded with miscellaneous junk, but in the back, there's nothing but a wide-open space. Birka walks up to the back wall and, after briefly searching, pushes the featureless wall with two fingers. There's a metallic click, and then much of the wall slides away to reveal a stairwell going down into darkness.

  "Welcome to the maze," she says. "We'll head north toward the main fighting, in Sector Five, ignoring the side tunnels. Then, there'll be a larger side tunnel that leads to the heart of Mortals Landing, and that's our real target. Everyone have their Gifts and weapons ready? Explosives ready?"

  We check each other for all of twenty seconds, a couple people passing glowing ammo between them. Not everyone has a combat-worthy Gift, it seems.

  The explosives are small devices the size of a tennis ball, each with several tiny glowing glyphs etched into them. Birka reminds everyone one last time, "They're for collapsing tunnels if needed, and to take out the crystal shard at the heart of this place if all else is lost."

  "Assuming we survive long enough to reach it." Luka's expression is passive, uncaring, until he looks at me. His face lights up like the Luka I first loved as he nods at me.

  Then, we're moving out, heading down the stairs. We pass one side tunnel without incident, but at the next, four people seem to materialize from thin air. Invisibility. At the same time, one of them hurtles a forking bolt of lightning at us. It's easily stopped with some kind of glowing shield, and as the enemy rushes us with swords, the sound of automatic gunfire deafens me. In seconds, they're dead—technology has its uses.

  As the echoes die, urgent voices sound from up ahead. This fight isn't over.

  Birka hastily organizes our front line and the rest of us crouch or go prone. There's no real cover in a tunnel, other than what our collective Gifts can provide.

  The first fireball sent our way is huge, filling the tunnel. Our shield flickers and for a moment, I think it's going to fail, but it holds. Barely. Whoever that is, they're powerful.