And then he was back beneath the terrible tree. It seemed to moan softly above him. He turned to Aisa, eyes wide.
“Did you—?” he began.
“Was that—?” she said.
No one else seemed to notice. The battles raged. Kalessa swept the heads off two fairies and ducked beneath an elven sword. A giant stumbled beneath an onslaught of Fae arrows, caught his heel, and crashed to the ground, where he lay without moving. Two wyrms squirmed and writhed, partially disemboweled. Death backed up a step and Vesha jabbed at her with the cracking Bone Sword.
“The world is ending,” Danr said. “It’s almost over.”
Blood sang through Danr’s body. It hadn’t hit him until this moment that Aunt Vesha would soon die. Either she would lose the battle with Death and be taken, or the Bone Sword would break and she would die with everyone else in the world.
“What do we do to stop them?”
“We cannot get past her blood,” cried Aisa.
Her blood. The words burned through Danr like bits of lava and he knew then what to do. It was the blood. His aunt’s blood.
Resolve overtook the unhappiness. Death always took someone, didn’t she? He glanced at Aisa, his dear, kind, sarcastic Aisa. She was carrying their son. No matter what, she would have that.
He ran toward the fight between Death and the queen.
“Hamzu!” Aisa shouted. “No!”
He felt more than heard her change shape behind him, but he ignored her. He ignored the battle, ignored Talfi’s death, ignored everything except the way the Bone Sword, forged from the living flesh of his best friend, cracked against the rapiers of Death.
Danr flung himself at the boundary of blood and shadow. He crossed it, and there was a flicker, a tiny moment of ice when he wasn’t sure if he had been right, and then he was inside the circle. He and Vesha shared the same blood, and her circle wouldn’t harm him.
Death and Vesha continued their fight, oblivious of his presence. Death was losing, but the Bone Sword was badly damaged now. One or two more hits, and it would break. Vesha drew back the Bone Sword. The ruby on the pommel gleamed. Death raised her needle rapiers. The entire world slowed. Danr vaulted forward. He would take the stroke himself. Vesha would lose the Bone Sword, Death would take her, the battle would end, and someone else—Aisa, perhaps—could use the Bone Sword to free Pendra from her wooden prison. Air rushed past Danr’s ears.
And then he was slammed to the ground. The world jolted forward. A mountain lion leaped over him and vaulted between Vesha and Death. Vesha’s stroke with the Bone Sword missed Death’s rapiers and slashed the lion deeply. Blood spouted in all directions. The lion dropped to the ground with a sickening thud.
Danr’s heart stopped. He tried to scream, but all that came out was a choke. His mind refused to take it in. He looked back over his shoulder, expecting to see Aisa with the others outside the circle of blood and shadow, but Ranadar stood there alone with Talfi’s corpse and a shocked look on his face. The lion was Aisa, and she was dead.
Danr crawled to her, kneeling between Death and the queen of trolls. He pushed at her, ran his hands over her. But she didn’t move. Her body was slack and heavy. Blood matted her fur, and her eyes were half-shut. Panic swept him. No, no, no! She wasn’t dead. She was wounded. She could change shape and heal herself. There was life in there, he knew it! He slammed his right eye shut and looked at her with his true eye.
Darkness swept over her body. There was no soul inside. Both Aisa and their son were gone.
Grief like nothing he had known before tore at him with blackened claws. He pounded the leaf-covered ground beside her body. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. His eyes grew hot and his throat closed. There was no world without Aisa. She had brought life and love and reason to live to him. She was breath and sweetness and salt and everything he needed to survive another sunrise. Now she was gone. The uncaring, awful battle raged on between the golems, the orcs, the Stane, and the Fae, but Danr could not notice.
In a helpless rage, Danr rounded on Vesha. Death hung back, though she kept her rapiers ready. “What have you done?” he roared. “What did you do?”
“I don’t understand,” Vesha said. “It’s a lion. But it shouldn’t have crossed the circle without the right—”
“Aisa was carrying my child!” Danr bellowed. “She carried my blood!”
Vesha paled. “Aisa? I didn’t mean … I wouldn’t have …”
“She saw you die during the blood storm, dear,” said Death, who knew these things. “I don’t think she was able to go through that again, so she gave herself up before you could.”
Vesha worked her long jaw. “This was to be between you and me,” she said to Death.
“You brought an army to this fight and expected it to be between you and me alone?” Death sighed. “The short-sightedness of mortals never ceases to amaze. You can’t win this, Vesha. You knew that the moment you put the chain around my neck. You were hoping to put it off a few more years, but all you did was hand me one of your dearest friends.”
Vesha hesitated a long moment. Danr knelt next to Aisa’s motionless body, feeling the heat leave it. He felt as if his own life was draining away.
At last, Vesha dropped the Bone Sword. It tumbled to the ground and lay there among dead ash leaves. “Just … remember I gave it up, would you?”
“I always remember,” Death said. Her rapiers shrank. She slid them back into her hair and, without further fanfare, touched Vesha on the shoulder. The troll queen vanished.
“Wait!” Danr flung himself at Death’s feet. “You have to—”
“I can’t change anything, dear,” Death interrupted sadly. “Greater powers than you have asked, and I gave them the same answer. Your love’s fate was decided the moment she chose to cross that circle. It’s best not to linger on it.”
And Death was gone, too.
A dry, dusty sound followed. The circle of blood and shadow crumbled into nothing. The Bone Sword, sleek and pale and stained with blood, lay near Aisa’s motionless body. He had come all this way, fought shape mages and Fae, to find that very object, and now he couldn’t summon the strength to pick it up. Danr touched Aisa’s fur, wishing she would at least change back into herself when she died. But shape magic didn’t work that way; indeed, it didn’t. Aisa was even being denied the dignity of going to the funeral pyre as a human being. The Nine were crueler than Danr had ever imagined.
“Ha!” Gwylph rolled to her feet and crossed the boundary of the circle. Without Vesha’s magic, it failed to keep her out. Danr realized with a start that she must have come to quite some time ago and was only waiting. She reached for the Bone Sword.
“No!” Danr made himself lunge for her. Gwylph’s fingers touched the grip just as Danr slammed into her. They rolled across the ground, spilling Gwylph’s arrows as they went. Her armor ground into Danr’s skin. He punched, but she caught his fist and shoved it aside. Vik, she was strong! It was like fighting an oak tree.
“Filthy Stane!” she shrieked. “Get your hands off me!”
Ranadar chose that moment to bolt forward. He crossed the boundary as well and snatched up the Bone Sword. Without looking back, he sprinted toward the tree with the Bone Sword held high over his head. Aisa’s scarlet blood stained the edge.
“Ranadar!” Gwylph thrust her hand against Danr’s chest. Something punched him with such force that he flew backward and landed hard several feet away. The wind burst from his chest and he gasped for air. The dreadful sounds of battle echoed all around him. Wounded Stane, elves, orcs, and wyrms lay on the ground in the trollwives’ twilight. Dead giants made mountains of flesh at the riverbank. The Fae were winning, but barely.
“Ranadar, stop!” Gwylph had snatched up her bow and was aiming an arrow at her son’s back. He was only a few paces from the trunk of the tree now, running like a deer. Danr tried to push himself upright, but he couldn’t catch his breath. “Do not move!”
Ranadar ignored her. He rea
ched the tree where Pendra was imprisoned and drew back the Bone Sword, exposing his side to Gwylph.
Gwylph whispered a word and fired. Time slowed again and Danr’s blood thundered in his ears. The arrow flew in a slow, aching arc toward Ranadar. The Bone Sword descended toward the bark of the tree.
The arrow pierced Ranadar’s side with a meaty thunk. It stuck there, quivering as if in joy at finding its target.
Ranadar stiffened. He turned. Scarlet blood poured from the wound in his ribs. Danr touched his side with a fist in numb disbelief. Ranadar looked at his mother.
“You really do hate me,” he managed.
The Bone Sword dropped from his nerveless fingers to the roots of the tree. Ranadar fell beside it.
*
Talfi wandered, everywhere and nowhere. This was like Twisting, but without the fear and potential for pain. His own blood and flesh called him, drew him in a hundred directions all at once. He walked a street in Balsia, where yet another earthquake had struck and the citizens wandered in both shock and fear. He limped through the Rookery, his face hidden under a ragged hood. He marched through the forest behind a grim-faced Lieutenant Sharyl. He punched wyrms and battled orcs and was crushed under the foot of a giant. His arms were chopped off, his heads rolled across bloody leaves, his legs broke. All these things, these incredible, impossible things, happened at once. He was a puzzle with thousands of pieces scattered across the world, and each bit thought it was the whole. But even though the big picture was broken and scattered, it still existed. Talfi saw the full picture now, though seeing everything made it difficult to concentrate on any one thing. He had thousands of hands and eyes, ten times that many fingers. Some of him froze and refused to move. Some of him continued with whatever task it had been given—fighting, hiding, walking.
Talfi backed up from himself, his whole self, and looked down.
“Well,” he whispered, and all the golems all across the continent paused in what they were doing to say the same thing. Thirteen golems were cut to pieces in the battle, but they felt no pain, and neither did they die.
Each piece contained memories. He touched them, and his past came rushing back at him. This part of him remembered nursing at his mother’s breast. That part knew what it was to take tottering first steps. Another part recalled laughing on his father’s shoulders. Talfi touched every part of his past—sneaking a sour apple from a neighboring orchard, staring at the dark-haired boy who lived across the street, finding a dead owl with his sister and touching its soft feathers, discovering the shivering wonder of the hardness in his groin on a crisp fall morning, eating oatmeal with salt and butter while his parents argued in the next room, practicing his letters on a sand table while splinters dug into his backside—all the parts rushed back at him like a flock of birds fluttering back to their accustomed perches.
How had he ever forgotten any of it? It was walking down a familiar street and knowing every door, every window, every face and name. It was turning a key in an old lock and feeling it turn with the usual ease. It was smelling simple cheese, bread, milk, boiled eggs, wine, and potato soup in the kitchen.
It was coming home.
And there was more. Each piece from his other selves contained memories of Ranadar. Memories of loving him. It was a shared love among all his selves, and together it was more powerful than any of the parts. Love itself and love’s memory were no different, and the second restored the first. Talfi’s heart and soul swelled with both and he wanted to find Ranadar, tell him, let him know it would be all right, share in the relief that spilled across his face.
A sigh rippled through all the golems. All but one. One piece of Talfi—a big piece of him—lay motionless between two other parts of him, and this bothered him. It shouldn’t be so. He focused in more deeply, entered the motionless piece, and inhaled. He opened his eyes and sat up.
It was dark. Twilight. How much time had passed? He was expecting Ranadar nearby, but the elf was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the elf queen. This was going to be a hell of a thing to explain. He tried to get to his feet, but the feeling of being in so many places at once washed over him, and he staggered dizzily. Automatically, he reached out for something to balance with, and the two parts of him, the two flesh golems, steadied him, which was also like standing on his own. They weren’t mere flesh golems. They were Talfi’s own arms and legs and eyes and ears. They were him. Vik, this was hard to get used to.
The Fae were winning the war. The other Talfis were—Talfi himself was—helping them. He pulled back, and the Talfis stopped fighting. He thought about it again, and those that could walk left the battlefield. They walked and hopped and crawled toward him. Surprise and confusion broke out through the fighting.
But now Talfi noticed the scene beneath the tree. Gwylph was aiming an arrow. Talfi followed the line of fire and saw Ranadar with the Bone Sword under the tree just past Danr and a dead lion. What?
The arrow flicked across the intervening space and punched into Ranadar’s body.
Everything stopped for Talfi. He couldn’t understand what he was seeing. A spasm worse than any Twist wrenched every cell in his body. This couldn’t be. It was some hallucination. Ranadar said something—Talfi and his other selves couldn’t hear it—and then he dropped the Bone Sword and crumpled to the ground.
Talfi didn’t remember getting to his feet. He didn’t remember screaming. He didn’t remember leaping over the dead lion. He only remembered holding the warm, bloody body of the one person who had meant anything in his life, who had given up everything he had ever known just to be with him.
Who had simply loved him. Talfi stroked his sunset red hair, and waves of memory washed over him—fingertips in the dark, thrilling laughter on a balcony, the frightening clink of coins, angry words across a blanket, confused footsteps in a forest. Tears rained from his eyes.
“He had to die,” called the elf queen, bow still in her hand. “It was sad, but inevitable. You humans are so weak. When one of you dies, you become utterly helpless.”
The Bone Sword flipped upward by itself to fly toward her. Talfi lunged for it, but he was tangled in Ranadar’s body and he missed.
“The rest of you will die now,” the queen said in the twilight. She dropped the bow and put out her hand to catch the blade. “None of you can—”
The Bone Sword smacked into the hand of one of the other Talfis. Talfi cocked his head, and the other Talfi swung. The Bone Sword sliced off the queen’s left arm. There was no blood, but she screamed anyway. Yet another Talfi clapped a hand over her mouth. A third grabbed her bodily from behind. A fourth grabbed her ankles. Gwylph kicked and struggled. Her body glowed with golden light, and Talfi’s other selves were flung backward, but yet more of them, dozens of them, hundreds of them, piled on top of her. She screamed and howled like a mad beast, but there were too many.
“The Nine!” Danr gasped by the dead lion.
Talfi’s other self tossed Talfi the Bone Sword. He snatched it out of the air. When the heft touched his palm, his entire body quivered. Only the crushing sorrow kept him from crowing with delight. He leaped to his feet while the elf queen fought and spat under her burden of flesh.
“No!” she howled. “This is my kingdom! This is my world!”
“You didn’t mention your son,” Talfi said hoarsely. He slashed the tree with the Bone Sword.
Chapter Twenty-two
An explosion of white light and dreadful sound thundered across the river and crashed against the Lone Mountain. Talfi and everyone else flew backward and landed hard, flattened by the terrible force. Ranadar’s limp body landed nearby. Blood continued to leak from the awful wound. The Bone Sword shattered into a thousand pieces. Everywhere across the battlefield, Talfi’s other selves bowled over. Many painlessly broke bones.
The twilight vanished as the trollwives lost their concentration. The surviving dwarfs, trolls, and giants, already blinded by the explosion, shrieked in agony as the evening sunlight burst across the bat
tlefield. Howling their pain, they ran, limped, and crawled back toward the cave. The earth shuddered beneath their heavy footsteps. The Fae were too dazed to do anything but stagger.
The tree was gone. Even the leaves on the ground had disappeared. Where it had all been was a crater several yards wide, surrounded by flattened grass, stunned Fae, fleeing Stane, and staggering Talfis.
Danr and the lion were utterly gone. Vanished.
Talfi didn’t have time to think about this. Gwylph was already righting herself. She was missing a gauntlet and her hair was blown wild. “No,” she groaned, and her voice came to Talfi from one of the nearby other Talfis.
From the crater rose the figure of a woman. Her features were both ancient and ageless. On her back she wore a cloak that looked woven of autumn leaves, and in her hand she bore a battered silver sickle. Scarlet blood streamed from her wrists. Power radiated from her in great waves, and Talfi found it hard to keep his feet in her presence.
“Pendra,” Talfi whispered.
Still hovering over the crater, Pendra turned toward Gwylph. Her expression was as flat and cold as a stone in a glacier above her sickle. The curved blade spat blue sparks, and the very air curled away from it. Terror overtook Gwylph’s face, and Talfi almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
“Death did not come for you,” Pendra said in a hungry voice, “because I have.”
Gwylph suddenly straightened, missing arm and all. “You do not dare.”
Pendra slashed the air with the sickle. The front of Gwylph’s mail shirt sprang open with a metallic tear and the linen shirt beneath it was slashed as if by an invisible knife, but the skin beneath remained unscathed.
“That can’t be!” Talfi said.
“Not even fate can stop me.” Gwylph raised her remaining fist in triumph. “I am still immortal and I will rule this world!” Her voice, amplified by elven magic, spread across the battlefield. “Rise, my troops! Destroy the orcs. Grind the Stane to dust!”
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