The pain and rage of my mother reverberated through me. But somehow those feelings were shifting. She was shifting.
The dark energy boiling out of her faded from glittering black and purple to grays and blues.
What was happening?
I gripped my sword, caught between the urge to slice into the energy and kill her while I had the chance… And the amazement I felt at really seeing her for the first time since I left her in that ancient Sanctuary and cut it free of the Path.
For a few more seconds, she looked like the Nire I remembered from Old Salem, when Jazz and I first battled her for control of the magical world. Streaks of dark magic still dripped from Nire’s fingertips and disappeared, absorbed by her magical prison.
Then another shift.
Softer grays and blues, swirling inside the bubble.
The rage and raw insanity I sensed from Nire faded to an overpowering feeling of confusion.
All of the inhabitants of L.O.S.T. who used their magic to suspend her above slowly lowered the brilliant ball of light so that it settled on the ground in the middle of the crowd, right beside where we were standing.
“Move away,” I commanded as I drew my sword and stepped closer.
Everyone cleared the area, leaving Rol and the bunch of us from the Witch Circle to do what had to be done.
My throat got a big lump in it and my chest hurt like somebody was standing on it, but I knew I had to keep myself together. This wasn’t about me. This was about all the witches, about the safety and peace for the people I had to protect.
Silver magic coursed up and down my blade.
Tears streaked Todd’s face, but he drew his sword, too.
I felt Jazz’s hand on my arm, but I shook it off.
It was time. I was the Shadowalker. I was King of the Witches. I had to kill the Shadowmaster.
I had to finish this nightmare once and for all.
Jazz could help. And Todd, and anyone else who wanted to lend me power, but somehow I knew it had to be my blade. No other sword would be strong enough to take Nire’s head.
I have to kill my mother. I have to do it now, before she can kill anyone else. Come on. Come on!
I tried to make my arm swing, but it didn’t move. I wondered if I’d ever move again. I felt like lead inside. I wanted to tear myself in half and die instead of using my sword.
When I looked at the Shadowmaster trapped inside that shining globe of magic, she didn’t look like Nire anymore. The fury had evaporated and she wasn’t screaming or casting spells. Nothing. She just hung there inside the ball, looking more and more confused.
How could I kill someone who looked so pitiful?
She’s not a person. She’s not pitiful. That’s Nire, you idiot. That’s the Shadowmaster. She’ll kill you if you give her half a chance.
But she kept shifting. Changing. Every few seconds, the lines of her body and face softened, and the blues and grays got lighter and lighter.
Every person, every being in L.O.S.T. watched, mesmerized. Me included.
Jazz walked up and stood beside me with her hands at her sides instead of up and ready to fire spells. Her eyes were wide and she looked as puzzled as I felt.
Nire’s features shifted again, then melted.
That was the only way I could think of to describe it. It was like a wax mask sloughed off her face and body to form a pool around her feet and then the substance vanished into the ground.
Her clothing changed, too. Her tattered purple robes had disappeared. This new being wore a sky blue dress clasped at one shoulder leaving her other shoulder bare. Her dress was all gauze and silk and reached her bare toes. The ball of magic around her was green now, as if her power had changed, too.
I kept hold of my sword, but my arm was shaking.
In Nire’s place stood a young woman. Like, really young. She looked like a teenager, my age, and she was beautiful. She had big, green eyes and dark blond hair pulled back smoothly from her face.
A bewildered expression crossed her pretty features. She raised her hands and pressed them against the magical ball surrounding her. The magic didn’t hurt her, didn’t seem to affect her at all, except to keep her trapped. Palms against the magical ball, she peered out as if gazing through a murky window. She looked confused, and lost.
Lost as I had been when Jazz kidnapped me and took me onto the Path. Lost, like when Jazz and I were trying to find our places in this world. Lost, like when Jazz died and went to Talamadden.
My heart thumped in my throat.
Yes, Nire would kill me if I gave her a chance. By all rights, the witches of L.O.S.T. should tighten their magical bubble until they crushed her like she once caused fanatics in Salem to crush Jazz’s father. They should have raged at her and smashed her into submission with their combined force, smashed her and held her still for my fatal blow—but they hadn’t done that.
Why?
Why didn’t they kill her like she would have killed them?
I glanced around at the crowd.
Instead of the fury and twisted hate people held when they wanted revenge, I saw peace and determination. The witches of L.O.S.T. had answered Nire’s madness with sanity. They had answered her terrorizing with comfort. They had answered her hate with compassion.
They had used magic as the Goddess intended for it to be used—to protect, to help, to…to heal.
When I looked back at Nire, I felt like I was seeing her for the first time, only, she wasn’t Nire. This being didn’t seem to be the Shadowmaster. But I didn’t think she was my mother, either.
“Nire’s gone,” Todd muttered from nearby, confirming what I thought I saw. “Mom’s gone.”
“Indeed,” said a woman’s voice. Jazz’s mother. She sounded stunned.
“Release her,” Aaron pleaded, but I shook my head.
“She could be fooling us.” I kept my sword up, though I wasn’t as tense and ready as I should have been. “This could be some trick to get us to lower our protections.”
“I don’t think she’s tricking us,” Jazz said. “I don’t think she could manage a glamour or even a spell inside magical containment that strong and positive.”
“She’s a murderer and a monster,” I insisted, but I couldn’t see it in her now, no matter how hard I looked.
“Let her go.” Todd spoke with an anguish that stabbed at my gut. “Please, Bren. Let’s talk to her, or try to. We can always contain her again together. Like now.”
Two or three times, I tried to make myself cut through the magic and finish the being inside, but I just kept standing there. I had no idea what to do. What was right? What was my head talking, or my heart—reality, or my wishes?
Finally, keeping my sword firmly in hand, I took a long, slow breath.
“Set her free,” I commanded, my voice magically projected so that every being in L.O.S.T. could hear me.
I expected snarls, hisses, shouts, and growls of argument. But everyone was completely quiet as they let their magic fade away, until the young woman stood with no bonds, in the center of us all.
She let her arms drop to her sides as the remnants of the bubble vanished. She looked around the circle of witches, hags, and other beings surrounding her.
“Who are you?” I asked, then clenched my jaw, unsure of what she was going to say.
The young woman tilted her head, obviously not understanding the question. She gazed at the tip of my sword, only a hand’s length from her throat. Then she spoke in a soft, almost musical voice, but I didn’t understand her.
My crow-brother landed softly on my shoulder, but he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—translate.
My chest tightened. So did my fingers on my sword.
What was she up to?
One of the Circle boys pushed his way to the front of the crowd so that he was standing beside me. “She’s speaking in ancient Greek,” my newly found younger brother said. “She asked who we are, and she wants to know where she is.”
“I don
’t sense any dishonesty, Bren,” Jazz said, still looking puzzled.
How I wished Acaw could have been there. I had never missed the elf’s wisdom as much as I missed it right that second. Jazz was good at intuition, but was she good enough for me to risk the lives of everyone in L.O.S.T. by lowering my sword and actually talking to the Shadowmaster?
Nire’s gone.
Mom’s gone.
I started to say something to her, hoping my crow-brother would translate for me. But before I had a chance to, the little boy stepped forward and held out his hand to the young woman. I held my breath as she took his fingers in hers. For a long moment they looked at one another.
They dropped hands and she offered a shy smile. “Thank you, Biton,” she said, and I realized that somehow she had absorbed our language through the boy.
“Where am I?” Her accent was unusual. She looked directly at Jazz and me, seemingly recognizing that we were the leaders. “Who are you?”
“You’re in L.O.S.T.” Jazz’s voice held uncertainty, but also a quiet sort of awe. “A Sanctuary for witches, oldeFolke, and other magical beings.”
“This is Queen of the Witches Jasmina Corey,” I added, not bothering to keep the growl out of my voice. “I’m King of the Witches Brenden McAllister.”
The young woman gave a slight inclination of her head before meeting our eyes again. “I am most pleased to meet you. I am Carmentia.”
Jazz gave a soft gasp of surprise. “Carmentia is the name of an ancient goddess, a water-spirit who took the form of a dolphin.”
Carmentia looked suddenly sad. “It is true, I was once a deity, a goddess of water and childbirth.” Her throat worked and I saw pain in her eyes. “But I was betrayed by my lover, the wind god Zephyrus.”
For a long time she was quiet as she seemed to be thinking long and hard about something, and no one around us seemed inclined to speak. Finally she said, “My memories feel slippery. I don’t think I shall hold them for long, but for now, I know this. Zephyrus grew jealous of me. He spelled me until I had legs, until I couldn’t free myself from human form. I became stuck inside this flesh, trapped away from my true shape and true home in the sea. It was a torment beyond all bearing.” Her throat worked and her expression clouded, as if she found the memories painful. “At first Zephyrus used me for his own dark purposes, but in time, I escaped his rule and fed on my own anger and pain. I grew more powerful than ancient gods. I became…I became…”
“Nire,” I said with no compassion in my voice. I wouldn’t allow it. “The Shadowmaster. Heartless liar and murderer. You terrorized the witches of the Path.”
She bent her head and her hands came up to cradle her face. I heard soft sobs and then the young woman raised her tear-stained eyes. “I became so twisted that I slew Zephyrus and many of my friends.” More tears trickled from her eyes, glistening on her fair skin.
Not a sound was made in L.O.S.T., not a movement made. Even the trees seemed still. It was as if one of Jazz’s or my ceasing spells had been cast.
Carmentia looked directly at me, and then to Todd and my brothers who had come up from behind me. “My sons. You are all my sons.”
The younger boys nodded. Todd looked like he wanted to kill the being, or start crying again, but like me, he was holding back, refusing the whole idea of tears. He still had his hand on the hilt of his sword, too.
Carmentia gazed at him. “Kill me if you must. There is nothing I can do to make amends for the evil I’ve caused, or the evil I’ve worked with my own hands.” She held out her arms. “These human, earth-bound hands. Even as my memories slide away, I know that I have committed atrocities. I know I deserve death.”
When Todd didn’t draw his sword, Carmentia turned back to me.
“Kill me,” she said earnestly. “I will not fight you.”
Keeping my sword raised and ready, I moved closer to her until we were inches away. I moved the blade aside just enough to reach for her with my free hand. She took my damaged hand in hers, and I caught her scent of an ocean breeze.
She closed her eyes.
Her touch was warm and real, but nothing like I remembered from my childhood. She didn’t feel like my mother. She didn’t feel like Nire, either. Still, I felt a connection with her. A hum in my blood. A rushing in my ears, like waves crashing on rocks. I closed my own eyes and images streamed through my mind.
I saw her life before she became Nire. The joy she had felt in life in goddess form, and the pleasure when she was one with the sea as a dolphin. I could feel everything that she experienced, could feel the happiness she had enjoyed in life.
Then I felt the jolt of horror as Zephyrus trapped her into human form, into a body she was never meant to occupy. I felt her terror, her longing to go home, her panic, her rage.
My body shook as I walked with her in her memories, beside her, gazing at a sea she couldn’t return to. How many times had she thrown herself into the ocean, only to come out sputtering and half-drowned, pounding her hands on rocky sand until they bled?
She had tried to kill herself, but the sea wouldn’t take her.
Then she had tried for revenge, but Zephyrus escaped her.
Bit by bit, I saw how darkness claimed this creature who gradually warped into Nire, and even more gradually gave into madness.
My eyes popped open.
Carmentia gazed at me.
Fear danced in the depths of her tear-filled eyes.
“The darkness remains,” she whispered. “At the edges of my thoughts. Kill me before it claims me again. Please. You are my son, I know this, I sense it, and I sense your right and good nature. Destroy me before I can do more harm.”
She tried to pull herself forward, toward my sword.
I threw it down and grabbed her other hand.
Carmentia gasped as our connection blazed stronger than ever.
My ears roared. My insides buzzed and rang.
I could see the darkness inside her mind, just like I was standing in her head, right between her eyes, only the space was huge. Endless. Lonely and terrifying.
“Help me,” I said aloud. My words blared and echoed, but I had no idea who could hear them. Silver light flared along my skin and flowed out, driving back the shadows lingering about Carmentia’s essence.
For what seemed like a long time, I pushed against it. It moved a little, but not enough. Hands touched my shoulders, my arms. Lots of little hands. Then Todd’s hand, Jazz’s hand—and my silver light grew, and blended with gold.
As the space got brighter, the darkness moved again. Farther away. Farther. But still not far enough. I had a sense of Carmentia becoming aware, understanding—and feeling a rush of hope.
Then a white magic flared around the silver and gold. At first it seemed weak, but it grew. And it grew. It got so bright I felt myself squinting, wanting to shield the eyes inside my own head.
“Death is the easy way out of pain,” I said, clenching my teeth against the fearsome echo I felt and heard. “Fight. Fight hard!”
The white magic swirled and went supernova.
Through our connection, with the flowing energy of my brothers and Jazz joined with ours, Carmentia and I pushed the dark away from her thoughts. We pushed and pushed until the power flowed together and swelled into something I couldn’t even comprehend. I felt it in my toes, my teeth, in every hair on my head. For a minute, I thought I could hear every word spoken on Earth, in every time, in every place. I thought I could see every star and planet in the universe, every blade of grass in every world that ever was or would be.
The darkness menacing Carmentia exploded against that unimaginable light and blew away, like so much dust in a strong wind.
The hands on my back and shoulders moved away, but I kept hold of Carmentia.
Slowly, slowly, I came back to myself, and she seemed to settle back to her own thoughts as well. Our connection still hummed and pulsed, but everything had changed.
The darkness had been destroyed.
&nb
sp; The evil was gone.
This woman, this being, she was Carmentia again, fully and completely. I knew that as surely as I knew the heft of my sword, the scent of Jazz’s hair, the feel of sunlight on my face in the morning.
The Shadowmaster was gone forever.
“Thank you,” Carmentia whispered as she let her fingers slide from mine.
I took a step back and watched as she bowed her head and continued. “The choice remains yours, Brenden, King of the Witches. I should pay for my many wrongs. At least if I die, I die myself, whole and restored.”
Slowly, I turned in a circle, meeting the gazes of witches, hags, and other magical beings. In everyone’s eyes I saw peace and forgiveness and felt it rising from the group as a whole. I felt the heartbeat of everyone in L.O.S.T. My father was there, Dame Corey, all the Witch Circle stone-bearers. The leaders of the hags, the klatchKeepers, the harpies, the elves—all were there, all with the same expression of forgiveness.
When my eyes met Jazz’s she gave a slight inclination of her head and then her golden eyes caught mine again. I held out my hand to her and she came to me so that the two of us stood before Carmentia, hand in hand.
“We’ll take you back to where you belong,” I said, and Jazz squeezed my fingers as if in agreement.
Carmentia seemed surprised, then grateful. Her gaze turned to the boys standing behind me, along with Todd, Aaron, and Biton. She glanced around as if expecting more, then seemed to understand. Alderon was gone. If there were more of her offspring running around in different times or places, we didn’t know about them, and they didn’t know about us.
“My sons,” she said softly, and opened her arms.
The little ones ran to her and she held them tight, then kissed the tops of their heads. Todd was more standoffish, but when Carmentia let Aaron, Biton, and the other boys go, he walked up to her. She put her hands on his shoulders.
No words passed between them—just a look—and I knew Todd felt that same connection I had felt, that he was “seeing” what I’d seen inside her. Her true nature. The strong, good fiber that was Carmentia, before all the torture and damage, before insanity drove her to become the Shadowmaster.
“Nire’s gone,” he said out loud, like he had when Carmentia had been released from her magical bonds. Then, sadder, and much quieter, “Mom’s gone.”
L.O.S.T. Trilogy Box Set Page 65