Soul of Fire

by Laura Anne Gilman

  The faint sting of the splatter was still tingling on her face, and the acrid taste of vomit in her mouth was too real, the thuds and low screams around her too insistent. Not even a preter. She couldn’t.

  Jan’s eyes had adjusted enough to the lighting, or lack thereof, to see the battle better now. She didn’t want to see it better, didn’t want to see it at all, but that was Martin in there, and Seth, and somewhere AJ, too. They were fighting for their lives—and hers. Jan had no illusions about that. The preter lying restless but still under her foot would destroy her, given a chance. Maybe not kill her, but something worse than that—would take her will away, turn her into something that served out of some kind of twisted love/fear/masochism thing.

  “I know it wasn’t you who did that to Tyler,” she said to it, almost conversationally, “but you did it to someone else to be here, didn’t you?” That was how they held the portals open, with humans. Human slaves. Human “pets,” tortured emotionally and physically until they would do anything for the preter who held their leash. Until Ty, broken free and healing, still couldn’t return to his old life, couldn’t accept love or hope, but stayed behind so he could wash the pain off with blood....

  The preter looked up at her, its face pale and beautiful, even half-coated in its own blood. “And they loved me for it,” it agreed, its voice too beautiful, too melodic, to come from such a creature. “As will you.”

  Everyone had their breaking point. Jan knew that, rationally. She knew that there was provocation that caused someone to bend down and pick up a stone, to hurl it with such force that it became a weapon, a killing tool.

  When blood splattered up her arms, across her torso, the metallic grit of something on her tongue, and she wasn’t sure if it was her blood or not, Jan dropped the rock in her hands, her fingers clenching convulsively.

  Too many friends had died. Too many things had been destroyed. Jan couldn’t feel regret at her actions. She couldn’t feel anything at all.

  If the preters won here, they would do terrible things. They’d admitted it in their own words. By the time anyone else realized what had happened, tried to resist, it would be too late.

  But if they killed all the preters, every last one of them who was here, then the magic tying them to the humans and holding open the portal would also die. Wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t that stop them, if not for always, then at least for now, until they could find a way to shut the portals forever?

  Where were the humans? Jan thought suddenly. Where were the ones holding open the portal? Indecision pushed aside the numbness, indecision and fear not for herself but for the others. Others like Ty, who hadn’t had someone like her and Martin to get them out, get them home safe. Where were they?

  Worry about them later, a small, cold part of her brain said. As long as the preters need them, they’re safe, physically.

  Mostly, another part of her brain said, remembering Tyler in the first moments. Only mostly.

  Mostly had to be enough. The preters were the real threat. Jan reached inside her jacket and pulled out the knife. She didn’t know how to fight with it, but if someone fell on her, she could probably manage to stab them. She could take out one or two....

  We cannot destroy each other, or the balance between the realms will shift. You know this.

  Martin’s voice, but not Martin shaping the words. Jan didn’t believe in god, or gods, or fate...but she believed in the Center. She had to; she’d been there.

  This wasn’t what the words had meant, Jan told herself, taking a firmer grip on the fabric-wrapped hilt, trying to rub off the sweat on her palm. That had been about all-out war, about destroying realms, not—

  Balance. About maintaining balance. How no matter who tried to change the balance or for what reasons, imbalance would only make things worse in the long run.

  Jan wasn’t sure she wanted to know what “worse” might be. But she couldn’t just stand there and let people—more people—she called friend, die. Her fingers curling around the hilt of the knife, Jan tried to find that place she’d been in before, that numb space where killing had become the only possible reaction. Her nostrils flared, and for a moment—just a moment—she could almost smell what Martin and Seth had reacted to. Blood, yeah, and fear, and a particular cold taint that she had come to recognize was the scent of a preter.

  And it was coming from behind her.

  * * *

  Somehow, impossibly, she wasn’t surprised to see Nalith or the shadow lurking just behind her. If even she, Jan, could smell the bloodshed here, there was no way the preter queen could resist it, even if it meant abandoning her own court.

  She had done it once before, after all, hadn’t she?

  “You got here fast,” she said almost idly, letting the blade rest obviously in her hand. If Nalith tried to aid the preters, Jan was pretty sure that she would be able to thrust the blade into the queen’s side. Pretty sure.

  What she wasn’t sure about was if Tyler would try to stop her or not.

  “I killed the one who brought me here,” Nalith said, her gaze on the battlefield, not acknowledging Jan’s words or even her existence. “So that they could not open that portal again, could not find me, to bring me back. When their scouts came close, I merely moved, keeping a pace ahead of them at all times. I did not think that they would go to such lengths, to bring so many over at once.”

  She sounded almost pleased by those lengths, by the carnage. Apparently, Jan thought with cold amusement, even unwanted attention fed her preternatural ego.

  Like Stjerne, she thought. Like the consort. All me-me-me.

  “It’s not only about you anymore,” Jan said. “You paid too much attention to this realm, so now they want it. Not to keep it, though. If they win, they’ll destroy everything you desire about us. They will take you back like a spoiled child being sent to her room, and lay waste to the things you value. It will destroy the spark you were chasing, grind it into ash, and laugh when it goes out forever. The Center warned you.”

  The Center didn’t speak to her, a mere mortal human, but she was good at looking at the pieces, putting them together and finding the pattern that made it all work. Logic. It wasn’t just for breakfast anymore.

  “They will not succeed,” Nalith said, still not looking at her. Preternatural eyesight must be better than human, the way she was almost eating the scene in front of her, her face rapt with...something. “I am stronger than them, in any configuration they attempt. I will not go back.”

  “Yeah.” Jan pulled up as much sarcasm and irony and doubt and all the other tones she’d ever used to cut someone down, and loaded that one word with it. It was enough to make Nalith turn and look at her. “But they’re not going to stop trying, are they? You preters, you don’t change. You don’t want to change, most of you, and the fact that you did, that scares the ever-living whatever out of them.”

  There was a slight brush of something against her hand and then the familiar feeling of fingers sliding against her palm, clasping it. A human hand, slightly sweaty but real. She squeezed once briefly and kept talking. “And they will keep coming, to either take you or destroy you, and you will keep—what? Moving? Throwing your new court in front of you like some kind of living wall? Think about this, then, when you’re contemplating that future. You’re using our tech to enhance your own magic. I don’t know how, but I know you are. Only thing is, our tech? It’s fragile. A single power outage and you’ll be just as helpless as we are.”

  Maybe. A theory, on the spur of the moment. Don’t show doubt, Jan thought. Be ruthless, go for the kill.

  “No, you’ll be even more, because you’ll be dependent on your court. And how well will those leashed dogs be loyal, if you show them weakness?”

  Nalith straightened her shoulders, her pale blue eyes not showing the spark that supers did, but unnerving enough in the night. “T
hey will give up. Eventually. Especially if your people kill enough of them.”

  “So long as you are here, they will return.” Tyler spoke up now, his voice small but clear, even when Nalith turned to stare at him, as though her lapdog had just bitten her. “They could let me go—I didn’t matter. But you are part of them. They could have chosen a new queen, pretended you were dead or had never existed, but they couldn’t.”

  “It’s not in their nature,” Jan said. “They won’t change.”

  Nalith lifted her chin proudly, refuting them. “I changed.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Jan said, sure now that she was on the right track. “Not inside, where it matters. You saw something you wanted, something you didn’t have, and you tried to take it, demanded it as your right. But it doesn’t work that way.” Jan took a breath to say something else, something scathing, but Tyler squeezed her hand harder, a clear warning. Push her too far, and she would kill them.

  A shape came over the far-right line of tombstones, kicking a preter in the face and sliding under the blade of another. Jan’s breath caught: Martin. She couldn’t see if he was injured, but he was moving awkwardly, without his usual horse-form grace. And then a third form came out of the gloom just as he dealt with the first two, trying to cut Martin’s legs out from under him. Jan forgot Nalith, forgot everything but the danger in front of her. She dropped Tyler’s hand and moved forward, her other hand gripping the small blade the super had given her. Off balance on the gore-slick grass, she was still able to jab the blade up, catching the preter in what she thought was either his thigh or ass. Either way, it was enough to distract him away from Martin.

  Another figure swooped in from above and finished him off, even as Jan scurried back to relative safety, her breath harsh in her throat and the insane desire to let loose with a whoop curling in her chest.

  “Are you insane?” Tyler hissed, grabbing her elbow and pulling her close to him. She might have been; it almost didn’t matter.

  Nobody seemed to have realized that the preter queen was among them. She had wrapped herself in thicker shadows, and even knowing she was there, Jan had trouble finding her again.

  “I’ve tried.” Nalith continued their conversation as though nothing had happened, her gaze seemingly caught by a tombstone off to their left, waist high and deeply carved with rosettes. “I’ve tried everything. It comes so easily to you all, even you. Everything in this world has some spark, some thing, that lets you create. Even the meanest, dullest child draws, dances, sings, and there is a spark. I want that.”

  Jan stared up at the preter. All this—for that? Because she wanted to be an artist? But it made sense, in a weird sort of way. Preters were cold, hard—all the things that the fairy tales said about elves. But they loved arts, and poetry, and all that, and maybe for one of them, being a patron, however twisted, hadn’t been enough.

  The queen had wanted it enough to give up everything. Would destroy everything if she couldn’t have it. She didn’t understand that you couldn’t force that, either, couldn’t demand it and make it happen.

  But preters had honor, too. The consort had honored their bargain, had let them walk away. Nalith had asked for their fealty, not forced it. They had been the ones fooling her, not the other way around.

  Oh, this was going to suck.

  “You don’t have it.” It was hard—Jan had never been good at letting anyone down, gently or otherwise. She was more likely to encourage beyond reasonable limits than tell them their heart’s desire was out of reach. But the stakes were too high, and the body count was mounting. Soon, they’d notice the three of them, and...and Jan wasn’t sure they could run fast enough, even if they started now. “Wanting isn’t enough. You could work the rest of your life—” however long that was “—and you still wouldn’t be anything more than technically adept.”

  “Where is it? Where do you hide that skill?” It was a demand rather than a question, but now Jan could almost hear the panic underneath it.

  “Nobody knows. I told you that. Nobody knows why one person gets it and another doesn’t, or why this person can sing and that person can draw, or... It just happens.”

  “I want it,” Nalith said again, a touch of fire in her voice.

  Jan tensed but didn’t back down. Cruel to be kind; hell, cruel to survive. She’d learned that lesson better than Nalith had learned hers. “Yeah, well, life sucks that way. Here, at least. Probably there, too, from what you’ve said.”

  The preter drew herself up—and then stopped. Her attention had been caught by something, but Jan didn’t risk looking away to see what it was.

  “Nalith.” The voice was silver-bright and familiar. Next to her, Tyler shuddered once but said nothing. A preter limped toward them, barely sparing the humans a glance. It wasn’t the consort, nor were the two moving with him. The fighting slowed, shadow-figures moving to surround them. Jan swallowed, feeling sweat on her face and down her back, despite the chill.

  “Damn it, Seth, I told you to get them safe, not to bring them here.” AJ’s growl, unpretty but far more welcoming, as the lupin matched the consort’s pace, carefully and almost subtly preventing him from coming closer to the two humans.

  Around them, the fighting slowed as the survivors realized that their leaders were distracted, and why.

  “Under your own accord, or theirs,” Jan said in a low voice, playing a hunch. Preters were cold, proud, selfish. But they had their own honor. And Nalith had been—was—a queen.

  “I am...fond of this place,” Nalith said. “The sunlight, the colors. I wanted to...to possess it. To make it part of me. But you are not wrong. It resists, refuses me.” Her smile was sharp, but for once, there was little cruelty in it, and Jan thought what there was might have been directed inward, not out. “I am not accustomed to being refused.”

  “Humans,” Tyler said. “We’re obnoxious that way, sometimes.”

  “I would have been a benevolent queen,” she said, and Jan was pretty sure that she believed that, which was a whole new kind of terrifying.

  “You can be,” Jan said. “Just not here.”

  * * *

  After a major project was finished, Jan always felt wound up, jittery—until the realization that they were done set in, at which point she felt the urge to crawl into bed, pull the covers over her head, and lie there like a lump, exhausted by the anticlimax. That same urge hit her now, looking at the portal shimmering in the basement of the old church.

  “What about...them?” She lifted one index finger and pointed at the humans, lining the wall and staring at the portal as if it was the best reality show on TV ever.

  “We take them with us,” the consort said matter-of-factly.

  “The hell you do.”

  “Jan.” Tyler stopped her from saying more. “Wait.”

  She glared at him, then Martin touched her hand, and she dropped her gaze. Ty had been one of those, once. He knew, better than she, what they were feeling, thinking. “What, then? Let them go back, as...pets?”

  “Humans have been doing it for centuries,” AJ said. His face was bruised, as if someone had taken a two-by-four to the left side of his head—for all she knew, someone had—and he was listing slightly, but there was no doubt that he was in control of the moment. Jan would be annoyed at being replaced if she weren’t so grateful for it.

  “If they were treated the same way you were...”

  “They were.” He had no hesitation on that score.

  “So, don’t you think maybe they have someone who wants them home?” Like you did, she didn’t say. He’d either know that or not, but this wasn’t the place or time.

  “I think maybe it doesn’t matter. They’re broken. Unless the supers are willing to spend six months trying to glue the pieces back for all of them... How the hell are they supposed to recover, when nobody will believe wh
ere they’ve been or what happened to them?”

  And there was no one here to hold them went unspoken. It took true love, a true heart, to break a preter’s glamour.

  “They are ours,” the consort repeated.

  “My lady,” Jan said with exaggerated politeness to Nalith. “Please tell your consort to shut the hell up.”

  “Shut up,” she said to him. Then “Your leman is correct. Whatever damage was done to them in our care, your people cannot cure. It was ever thus.” Her smile was both sad and weirdly proud. “What Under the Hill takes, it keeps.”

  “She’s not wrong, Jan,” AJ said, his voice harsh but not entirely unkind. “You were able to save Tyler because, well, you had a stronger bond. Love trumps everything else. But you don’t have that here. We can’t even know these people have a true love to make the attempt.”

  She slid her hand into her pocket and pulled out the remains of some dried herbs and cotton. The sachet had worn through during the fight. The little horse was cool and smooth under her fingertips. A healing fetish. “We have to try!”

  “Why?”

  Jan exhaled hard and reminded herself that she wasn’t arguing with humans. AJ and Martin and the others were...well, not human. They didn’t feel the same way she did. It was getting harder to remember that, until they reminded her.

  “Jan.” It was the first time Nalith had ever used her name. “I will ensure that they are cared for. They will lack for no comfort in my court. And if ever any wish their freedom or a leman comes to find them, they will be released.”