by Lucia Ashta
“Will I be able to continue living?”
Mordecai reached out for the split’s hand and stared into the haunted face. Several moments passed by peacefully, betraying the fact that urgency surrounded us and that death might announce itself at any moment. Finally, Mordecai looked back up at those sea blue eyes that I loved. “That depends on what you mean by ‘living.’ I imagine that the physical functioning of your body will continue much as it always has, although you will likely be weaker. You might fall ill more often and take longer to recover. I don’t know what will happen of your life purpose if you are to become only half of who you were meant to be. It’s also possible that your mind won’t work as well as it used to. You may not be as sharp as you once were.”
Marcelo startled but concealed it. I wondered if he’d already noticed some of the differences Mordecai mentioned, and they’d only get worse once the life force was completely gone from his split.
Mordecai noticed also. “Whatever you have already experienced will only become more pronounced afterward. And it may also become worse as time passes. There’s no real way to know.”
“And what will happen if I do it?”
Mordecai shrugged. “Again, we can’t be certain. The Magical Council has limited so much of this dark magic. I warned them that it was dangerous to prohibit something in this way. Those that would disobey the laws would become stronger, yet those that obeyed would be at a disadvantage, prey to a magic they wouldn’t know how to defend themselves against,” he said before he realized what he was saying. “I suspect that you’ll take on the full force of the darkness that infects your split, yet you’ll do so with a strength your split doesn’t possess anymore.”
Marcelo crouched down and reached out a tentative hand as if he were afraid to touch his other half. “I’ll do it,” Marcelo said and touched the back of his hand to a cold, ashen cheek.
“You could die,” Mordecai whispered.
“I know.”
“But you’ll do it anyway?”
“Wouldn’t you?” Marcelo asked.
Mordecai nodded with the sadness of three-hundred-and-seventeen years. “I suppose I would.”
“Should I do it now?”
“Well, there is very little time. If you are to do it, you must do it before the split passes onto death. As you very well know, once a person is dead, we shouldn’t mess with him. Whatever part of the person can come back to us is always dark and the ultimate effect is always terrible, a price too high to pay.”
I remembered that Mordecai, with all his incredible skill, wouldn’t even consider interfering with his brother’s death. There were some things worse than death, and life as an undead was one of them.
Marcelo moved closer to his split.
“Are you certain, son? Have you thought this through?”
“Of course I’m not and of course I haven’t.”
Mordecai and Grand-mère nodded in understanding. Intelligence and experience could prepare you for some things, but they couldn’t prepare you for some of the most important things in life—or death.
Marcelo settled himself on the ground between his split and Sylvia’s body. “Will it hurt?”
“I don’t know, son. I have never split myself. You have.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. Will the darkness hurt me?”
“Oh, of course it will try. But you’re strong enough, my son, you always have been. If you keep true to yourself, you can defeat this darkness. You must remember who you are though, at all times.”
Marcelo nodded and closed his eyes. He didn’t look at me one last time, nor did he look at anyone else with the intention of saying goodbye, just in case. I hoped that was a good sign.
I didn’t have a chance to prepare myself for what witnessing a split merge might look like before it began. Once it started, I couldn’t look away. Even Gertrude woke up in time to take in this rare occurrence of forbidden dark magic that was dark only because of its possible ramifications. Magic could only truly be dark if the magician’s heart was dark as he performed it.
Marcelo’s magic was both beautiful and terrifying at once and I all but forgot to worry about the outcome. Marcelo’s body and that of his split began to vibrate so intensely that they lost their solid form to a blur of what it had once been. One solid body had become two, and now two seemed to become nothing tangible at all, at least for now.
The bodies started to shake violently, ephemeral images of the fiancé I had promised to share my life with, if there was a life we could still share. The solid forms of two bodies began to disintegrate into particles of light and sound. Every color of the rainbow, beginning with white, traversing the spectrum of light, and ending with black, shimmered and sprang from the bodies as if air or water suddenly burst from a vessel under pressure.
The light and sound tore through the bodies, devastating them, leaving behind nothing of the forms I was used to. And then, in the absence of solid bodies, the light began to coalesce. The rays began to stitch themselves together. At first, the bodies began to reveal themselves like an impressionist painting, free of the constraints of rigid lines.
As the seconds passed, counted out in the shocked silence of the observers, the image left behind all ideas of impressionism and reached for the precision of realism. It didn’t seem possible that it could achieve it, but time proved otherwise. Time proved, as it so often did, that the impossible was possible.
Marcelo started to come into focus, revealing one body where two had just been. The rays of light no longer shot out as far. They wove themselves together more tightly, creating the fabric of a human being.
Eventually, when it seemed impossible that something that held so much movement could ever still, the vibrating of Marcelo’s body slowed. Finally, it quieted entirely.
As soon as complete stillness settled over Marcelo’s body, I wanted desperately for it to be gone.
I rushed toward him with Gertrude in my arms and Sir Lancelot on my shoulder. I reached out a hand to touch him, the one that wore his promise ring.
My hand was cold with dread. Yet when I finally reached out a palm to cup Marcelo’s cheek, it met with ice. I gasped and pulled my hand back as if it had made contact with fire instead of flesh that shouldn’t be this cold if it held life.
I fell back against the ground next to the body of the man I’d hoped would one day become my husband. I closed my eyes to the concerned looks and to the thought that I might become a widow before ever becoming a wife.
Chapter 4
I heard movement around me and felt Sir Lancelot and Gertrude nuzzle me in gestures of support. I didn’t open my eyes. I slouched into myself and leaned against a damp, cold wall of stone. Everything was so cold all of a sudden, as if it would never be warm again—as if I’d never be warm again.
Whether Marcelo survived this merge with his injured split or not, that one touch of his frozen skin screamed a truth at me that I couldn’t deny: He’d never be the same.
My fiancé would never be the same man I’d learned to love. The dark bat, a manifestation of the essence of darkness, that had at first infected Marcelo’s split through the one contact point on his left forearm, had now spread to the whole Marcelo. From my touch of a frigid cheek I suspected what neither Marcelo nor Mordecai suggested in their veiled discussions about the dangers of Marcelo merging with his split. Marcelo, now merged to form one person again, might never truly become whole. He might never rid himself of a darkness that dug its roots as deeply as this darkness had.
The darkness spread its tentacles to within an inch of the split’s heart. Had the darkness achieved its goal in reaching the split’s heart, it would have permanently infected the split with darkness instants before it claimed its soul in death. A death of a soul condemned to darkness was far worse than a normal death.
Grand-mère and Mordecai had been right to warn that there was little time to act. There had been so little time in fact that it seemed to be mere luck that encouraged Marcelo to act so rashl
y—and so quickly. Had he waited any longer to do what he did, it would have been too late, and the only remedies left would have been ones too terrible to consider.
My heart pounded in a chest cavity that felt as big and as cold as the cave. I had come so close to losing Marcelo to irreversible darkness. And now, would Marcelo’s fate be any better?
I forced my breathing to regulate. I reminded myself that my distress served no one, certainly not Marcelo. I willed the whooshing pulsing in my brain to recede so that I could hear what was being said around me.
When I finally opened my eyes, I almost laughed at myself. I wasn’t in control of my emotions. There had been too many of them in this interminable day. There had been too many instances when death of a loved one hinged on luck or circumstance or a crazy, ill-advised act of rescue, or all of them at the same time.
I wanted to laugh then, an incongruous reaction, because I’d been so fast to recoil into despair. I’d traded logic, patience, and hope for the desire to shut out what was going on around me, if only for a little while. If I could push away the facts for just a bit, then maybe I could be free of any of their devastating consequences.
When I opened my eyes, I found Grand-mère looking at me, and I smiled sheepishly. She smiled back in complete understanding. Just as it happened when I was a child, her smile soothed me. The spark of a small fire lit within me. Its welcome warmth began to spread, dispelling fear and desolation. Grand-mère spoke, but it took me a moment to realize that her lips were moving to form sounds.
“Quoi?” I said, reverting to the French she taught me as a girl without realizing that I was.
Grand-mère smiled again, more warmly this time. “He’s alive, ma chérie.”
My eyebrows shot up and I sat up away from the cavern wall.
“Yes, my darling. He lives.”
I fumbled to my feet and half-walked, half-ducked toward Marcelo’s body. Had I possessed self-awareness then, I would have certainly laughed at the sight of me waddling in a crouch with an owl perched on my shoulder and a cat in my arms. I must have looked very much like the confused witch that I was then.
But I only thought of getting to Marcelo and feeling what must be warm flesh, thrumming with life. As soon as I reached him, I touched his cheek again. And again, the cold touch of his skin startled me.
“Why is he so cold then, if he’s alive?”
“I don’t know, my child,” Mordecai said. “A merging of splits when one is infected with darkness and the other isn’t might have never happened before. I don’t know exactly how things are supposed to turn out.”
In answer to my unspoken question, Mordecai continued. “I know he’s alive because I can feel the pulsing of his blood.” He reached two fingers beneath Marcelo’s ear. “See, he’s alive.” I watched Mordecai’s fingers bounce slightly every few seconds. “He’s weak because his split was almost dead. Now Marcelo must fight to regain the strength of his split and to reestablish the footing of light within his being. He must fight darkness while he’s at his weakest.”
“Is there anything we can do to help him?” My words were soft with compassion at an internal battle that might be no less awful just because it was inside the man. In many ways, it might be worse than a battle that could be fought through the clashing of swords and spells.
“This is a fight he needs to win on his own, my child.”
“And what if he doesn’t win?”
Mordecai met my eyes. “Then he’ll die and it’s likely that the darkness will claim his soul.” He turned his eyes back to the man that was like a son to him. “Only he can determine his fate now.”
“But that’s terrible! He’s so weak. Is there really nothing we can do to help him? How can he fight the darkness alone when he’s so burdened by the weaknesses of his split?”
“I wish there were more we could do to help, trust me. But there isn’t. He understood the risks. He knew what might happen.”
Marcelo might have understood the risks, but I had not. Marcelo and Mordecai revealed so little in their talk before Marcelo lay on the ground next to his split. And it had all transpired so fast.
“You can support him by loving him,” Mordecai said. I blushed, and the old man smiled with a warmth similar to Grand-mère’s. “Your love possesses a magic of its own. The love you share is powerful magic.” I must have looked doubtful because Mordecai continued. “Do you remember when we were at the castle in Irele, before Washur’s dark army invaded?”
I nodded. How could I ever forget any of my time at Irele Castle? It had all been so… eventful.
“Do you remember when were in the study I shared with Albacus, and we were studying the messages of the runes?”
Again, I nodded. It’d been a comical moment, with Albacus teasing Mordecai about the lack of importance of the runes and Mordecai affirming it. I had the impression then that they had teased each other about the same things hundreds of times across the centuries. Now, they would never tease each other again.
“Do you remember what the runes said?” Mordecai didn’t wait for my answer. “They said that there was a power to the connection that you and Marcelo share with each other. The runes said this connection was important.”
I nodded.
“So focus on that alone. Focus on your love for him, and on the love he has for you. Not on the fear you have for his well-being. Fear won’t help him, love will. It’s strong, you know?”
“What is?”
“The love he holds for you.”
“Oh.” I began to blush again, but stopped. Something grew inside me instead. Unlike past times, it didn’t take me as long to recognize what it was. Because it was growing within me, each time more, I recognized my strength for what it was. And Marcelo’s love for me only made me stronger.
“Love him, and forget about the rest. And he’ll come around, you’ll see. I’ve known Marcelo since he was a boy. He had to endure terrible things at the hand of his father and Washur’s. All those things that could have killed him, but didn’t, have only made him stronger. He’s strong enough to fight the darkness, even as weak as he is. The light has always been strong in him.”
“Love him and his light will grow stronger,” Grand-mère said. “That’s the way it is with love and with light. One can give strength to the other. Mordecai is right.” Grand-mère stood. Well, she almost stood. The cave ceiling wasn’t quite tall enough for her to stand to her full height where she was, and it was part of the reason Sir Lancelot stood on my shoulder with calm. The dragon couldn’t come any further into the cave. “Now, I think it’s time we get going, don’t you agree, Mordecai?”
Mordecai had been considering something. But when Grand-mère spoke, he nodded, and the beads that capped the braids in his beard verbalized his affirmation. He’d been wearing his beard in imitation of Albacus since his brother’s death. I guessed it was his way of honoring him. Mordecai stood.
“Darling, would you please back out of the cave for us?”
I looked up to see my grandmother, back from the dead, addressing this gargantuan dragon with the same terms of endearment she used with my sisters and me. Yet it seemed perfectly appropriate coming from her. The dragon must have believed so too because he began to retreat immediately, backing out of the cave that didn’t allot him the space to turn.
When the dragon vacated the entrance to the cave, it was as if daylight snuck up on night. Suddenly, a flaming red-orange light was everywhere, illuminating the recesses of the dark, allowing the sun its final expression of glory before the moon swallowed it whole. The sun and the moon danced around each other every night, expressions of light and love that could never touch each other, but found other ways to express the beauty of love making.
When the flaming light illuminated Marcelo, I thought that perhaps Mordecai was right and that Marcelo was strong enough to pull through this. Although he wasn’t even awake, the light shone on something within the man that saw past the ashen pallor of his skin. I remembered M
ordecai and Grand-mère’s words, and shooed any other thoughts away. I just loved him.
In the light that flooded the cave, the serpent and dragon awoke from their golden loop of eternity for a moment, responding to a love and a power the magical ring had been forged to represent. The ring came to life, glowing for any that looked. As it was, only one person saw the change in the ring on my left hand, and nobody noticed Salazar’s eyes grow wide with surprise.
Marcelo’s nephew might not yet have the evidence he needed to decide conclusively whether or not Count Washur had fed him lies, but he wouldn’t deny the power that revealed itself in my ring. Salazar might be many things, and he might still not know the other many things he was capable of becoming, but he was a magician, through and through.
Since Count Washur ripped him from his mother’s womb while the life raced to leave her body, he baptized the boy in magic. Count Washur and Marcelo’s father, the only men with any real influence over his childhood, were obsessed with magic. They attributed value to magic when they didn’t even attribute it to life—at least not to the life of others. It was the currency they traded in, and the boy Salazar adopted a similar fascination for the magical arts. He knew a ring of power when he saw one.
His eyes found my face. He also knew a witch with power when he saw one. The signs were too great to ignore.
Although his magic was still bound, for the first time in his life he was beginning to feel the freedom to make up his own mind. Count Washur’s spell over him was beginning to wear off. He stood to lose as much as any of us if Marcelo were to die. Salazar’s magic would die along with his uncle, as no other magician can unbind the magic another has bound.
We exited the cave while Mordecai waited at its entrance to float out Marcelo and Sylvia’s bodies. When Salazar walked by, he averted his eyes from the penetrating look of the older man. But Mordecai noticed the shift in Marcelo’s nephew anyway. He would keep a close watch on him now that the urgent matter of tending to the patients was over, at least until the next treatment.