by Amber Argyle
“Brusenna!”
In the stillness, someone called her name from the ships. She searched among them until she saw a knot of Tartens. Grendi stood in the front, her beautiful dress torn and her hair hanging in limp knots. In her stance, Senna saw defeat. Grendi had lost, and she knew it. Knew she was going to die.
“I’ve won.” Senna’s words came out as a song.
At a gesture from Grendi, the soldiers behind her thrust two men forward. Senna squinted at them.
Grendi grabbed handfuls of their hair and pulled their heads back. They were bloody and beaten, so bruised and swollen they were nearly unrecognizable as men.
But then one of them locked gazes with Senna. He was too far away to make out details like the gray color of his eyes, or the way his skin wrinkled when he smiled. But she knew the way he moved like she knew the melody of the wind.
Joshen. And beside him must be Reden. They were alive!
Grendi had to scream to be heard. “You move the island and they’ll die with us.”
Senna shook her head. When she’d faced Espen so long ago, she’d declared that if she had to choose between the world and Joshen, she would choose Joshen.
She looked down at Haven, at the Witches who were still singing to keep the barrier intact. They would all die if she let it go.
Her gaze found Joshen again.
“They’ll kill me anyway!” he shouted.
One of the Tartens cuffed him.
Senna cried out. Either way she chose, people she loved would die. Joshen had all of her courage and none of her powers. He’d risked everything, suffered so much. He had more heart, more bravery than she did.
She searched for a familiar face on the ships, but she couldn’t find Krissin. Her heart wringing inside her, she cried out, “This is what your Composer has aligned herself with? This is the choice you force upon me?”
A shudder convulsed through her. The wind grew weaker. She sang softly, strengthening it. When she looked up, she knew what she had to do. She had to have as much courage as Joshen.
In the space of a blink, angry gray clouds boiled in the sky. Senna hurled down a barrage of lightning, striking Grendi’s ship and the soldiers on it.
Joshen and Reden rolled away from their captors. Reden swept up a sword from a fallen soldier. They limped to the other side of the ship, where Joshen worked at their bonds. The ship exploded beneath them as the fire reached the gunpowder. A wave swept them off the burning ship.
Senna bit her knuckle as she watched them, so small and helpless against the might of the freezing waters. And then she saw a boat moving toward them. Inside was a small girl with dark hair. Mistin.
Perhaps she was Senna’s friend after all. But even as Mistin reached out an arm to the Guardians, Senna knew it was futile. When the island disappeared, a wave would rise up. All the ships would be swallowed by the raging sea. She hadn’t saved them. She’d only delayed their deaths.
Always serve the higher law. Reden had told her that. Choose what is hardest now, but better in the long run. Closing her eyes tight, Senna turned away. As brave as Joshen, she mouthed to herself. As brave as Reden. She concentrated on the barrier. The Haven Witches hadn’t stopped singing since they’d created it. It was strong enough now. Her song changed.
Haven, raise thy stakes.
Winds, a path to make.
Earth, compact thy soil.
Plants, thy roots uncoil.
Waters, thy waves divide.
Take us to a home we can abide.
The light that had gathered under her skin shot out, striking the barrier, which flashed with such brilliance she had to shield her eyes. When she looked back down, there was only a gaping, concave hole. Her skin no longer glowed. Her voice felt broken.
A great wall of water trembled, hesitating as if feeling for the walls that were no longer there. Then it rushed forward with a roar, dragging the unfortunate ships with it. And she was in the epicenter. She realized the water would reach the heart and explode upward, toward her.
Wind, lift me higher!
The wind tugged her up even as the sea surged beneath her. Senna threw her arms over her face. Water slammed into her, tossing her like a child throwing a doll.
It slowly began to fall back. Gasping, Senna sang for the wind to keep her afloat, but her voice was raw and overused. The power she’d wielded had left her bereft and hollow.
She was slipping, the wind’s hold on her lessening. Looking down at the chaos of sinking, burning boats and the debris-filled sea, she tried in vain to locate her Guardians, but it was impossible.
The air grew thinner and weaker by the moment. Senna tried to claw her way up. The speed of her descent picked up until she was freefalling. She would join so many who had died this day. Like Cord. He’d given his life to save her.
But that wasn’t all he’d given her—the vial of Ioa! She fished it out of her pocket and dumped it down the front of her face. Gripping the vial so tight her fingers turned white, she sang with what little strength remained in her.
She flailed her hands and legs, trying to slow her descent toward the freezing cold Endall sea.
As the choppy waters rose up to meet her, she threw the bottle and twisted so she was feet first. She screamed as she hit the water. Her bones cracked, whether from the impact or the potion, she wasn’t sure. Then her flesh shifted. She didn’t know if she would change soon enough, or if the change would be enough to save her.
Then it no longer mattered. Something pierced her hip, and pain ripped through her. The world went dark.
34. Waiting Blackness
Senna awoke to grit against her cheek. Something tugged her back and forth. She hurt everywhere. Dimly, she recalled reaching Nefalie’s coast just before passing out. With a groan, she opened her eyes. The water and rocks beneath her were red with blood. Her blood. Debris and worse littered the shore around her. She tried to push herself up. White-hot pain shot out from her hip.
Steeling herself, she tried again to push herself up, but she was so cold her muscles simply locked up.
A huge swell crashed over her, shoving her higher onto the shore. Gasping in pain, she dug her fingers into the rocks to keep from being dragged back out with the retreating wave. When the sun had warmed her a little, she pulled herself a bit farther out of the water. The movement caused the pain to gnaw at her anew, and everything faded away.
Her senses returned after a time. She carefully shifted so she could see her hip. What she saw made her stomach roll. Through what little remained of her shift, she saw the garish white of her hip joint, skin and muscle hanging around it like the tattered ends of a flag, the flesh bleached white from sun and salt.
Hissing through her teeth, she locked her legs together and dragged herself forward, waited for the agony to lessen, then pulled some more. She wasn’t sure how many times she repeated this process, but finally she was out of the water.
The movement had caused the wound to bleed again. Senna ripped off a strip of her shift and pressed it into the wound. The world started spinning as blackness edged in from the outside of her vision. She was going to pass out again. Knowing she was on the verge of bleeding to death, she dug her wound into the rocks below her to compress it.
For a time, she was insensible with pain. She came around a bit when she threw up salt water. Her tongue felt as dry as week-old bread. She lay back, wishing for darkness to take her from the pain. When she opened her eyes again, she had to squint against the warm sun that had baked the cold out of her, and somehow made her hip hurt so much she thought she would die from it. She struggled to sit up, but she was so weak she barely shifted. The pain drove her toward the waiting blackness.
“Is she alive?”
“Yes, Head.”
Senna struggled to open her eyes. It was dark out, and the air stank of death. Krissin lifted Senna’s tattered shift; her face went gray. “You’re lucky we’re the ones who found you instead of the Tartens.” Senna didn’t bother to ans
wer. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. The shore is soaked with it.”
Senna worked her tongue over her dry mouth. “Water.”
Krissin pursed her lips before nodding to one of the Guardians standing over her. He held a waterskin to her mouth. She drank, the cool wetness sliding down her raw throat. She coughed at the foreign feel of the moisture. The Guardian pulled back. She cried out and reached for the waterskin again. He gave her some more.
“Slowly,” he chided.
Krissin shook her head. “Why did you move them? They’ve done nothing but betray you.”
Senna lay back against the rocks, feeling the water spread through her like its own kind of warmth. “The Tartens would have killed them.” Her voice came out thready and weak. “There wouldn’t have been anyone left for me to be a Composer over.”
Krissin stood and brushed off her knees. “You haven’t saved them, only delayed their destruction. Because of our earth senses, we know where you sent them. Why to the Tarten coast, right above Caldash?”
Senna closed her eyes. She hadn’t known where she was sending them. The song hadn’t dictated a location. But it didn’t really matter. She’d sacrificed Joshen to save Haven, but in the end, she hadn’t saved either.
When Senna didn’t respond, Krissin asked, “Is Chavis dead?”
Senna nodded carefully.
Krissin sucked air through her teeth. “She was supposed to convince Haven to join with us. I don’t see how that can happen now. You might have just sentenced them all to death.”
Senna’s heart beat a lonely echo in the hollow of her chest. She willed it to stop, but it went on despite the pain, both inside and out, that threatened to destroy her.
“With that injury, you may never walk again.” Krissin nodded to two of her Guardians. “Take her to the Healer. See that she is cared for.”
Someone made a sound of disapproval. Senna couldn’t see who.
“I won’t have a Creator-touched dying because I refused to treat her,” Krissin responded. Then she turned and left.
“The Creators don’t want this!” Senna cried even as one of the Guardians slipped his hands beneath her. She drew breath to say more, but he lifted her. A hollow ringing sang through her head, and there was only the pain.
35. Burning
Senna remembered waking when they gave her bitter opiates. Though the drugs made her sleep, the pain didn’t recede. In fact, it grew, increasing until she was certain her bones were crumbling to dust. Eventually, even the lure of water couldn’t make her drudge up the will to swallow. When they tried to help her drink, the water ran down her cheeks and into her damp hair.
She heard their worried voices. They knew she was dying. She knew it, too, and she didn’t care. She welcomed the fever, the hot infection that spread its poison through her blood.
She came to her senses suddenly and saw a woman standing above her. She was as beautiful as a sunset over ripe fields. She looked vaguely familiar, but Senna couldn’t place her.
“Do you hear the breeze across your skin?”
Senna thought it an odd question. After all, she was dying. But the answer seemed important. She concentrated and heard the distant sound of woodwind instruments. The wind drifted across her, caressing her and soothing away the fever. The sound of sunlight and wind. She managed the barest of nods.
The woman’s face lit up, seeming to glow from the inside. “Come, dance with me and the Fourth Sister, Sunlight. Let us take you away from the pain and sorrow.” She held out her hand.
Senna recognized her. The Creator who’d gifted her with Espen’s song. She controlled Sunlight. Senna took her proffered hand without question.
The pain was gone as if it had never been. Music rose up around her. She clung to the woman as the sound lifted her. They danced, twirling like a pair of autumn leaves on a breeze until she grew dizzy. They skimmed across meadows and low hills like a rock skipping across the water.
The music shifted from light and playful to darker and more insistent. The tempo increased until she was driving across open seas in a stampede of storms. Finally, they reached mountains, and their frenzy cooled as they rose. They crested the top and drifted down until Senna rested on the baked sand. The desert filled her with a warm and delicious heat.
She slept to the sound of the deep, sonorous song of the earth. When she was rested, she opened her eyes to find another woman—this one with ebony skin and wild hair. She smiled at Senna, her eyes like chips of onyx. Another of the Creators. “Come, and I will show you the beauty of the First Sister, Earth.”
A part of Senna wondered if she had died.
The Earth Creator cocked her head, listening. “Can you hear it?”
Senna listened to the rumbled lullaby of the earth. It spoke of cover and quiet and hidden places in drums. Secrets of sparkling diamonds and shining gold with the tinkling of chimes. The pacing of the drums picked up, and the woman smiled so broadly her white teeth gleamed. She took Senna’s hand and pressed it against the hot sand. “A mountain aches below. Can you feel it?”
Senna closed her eyes and felt the earth’s pulsing heartbeat as the drums pounded out their rhythm. “Yes,” she breathed. “I feel it.”
Without the need to confer, they began to sing. The earth rumbled, shifting and growling. With a great shuddering, it exploded beneath them. The ground shifted under Senna like a crest of water. She rode the wave upward until she stood at the mountain crest.
Still singing, she stared at the space between her feet, feeling something hot and surging beneath her. She lifted her eyes in question.
The Earth Creator nodded. “Yes.”
Senna sang and the mountain split. Red magma gleamed deep below. She dove inside it without a splash. It didn’t harm her—Somehow she’d known it wouldn’t. She saw nothing in the hot darkness, but she didn’t need to. She swam through the earth’s veins, into vast wells of water that tasted of minerals and sulfur. There were gemstones the size of her fist that chimed like cymbals when she touched them, but she left them where they lay. They were the earth’s hidden treasure, and hidden they would remain.
Always, the Earth Creator was by her side, guiding her. Finally, they entered a pool of water heated by underwater magma. They shot out of a spout, and though Senna still couldn’t see anything, the water changed. It tasted of salt and fish. The ocean.
The Earth Creator was gone. The Water Creator had taken her place. The woman gripped Senna’s hand. “You’ve spent time with the Second Sister, Water,” she sang. “But there is much you’ve never witnessed.”
They rode underwater rivers and found lakes within the sea. Senna saw fish no bigger than her fingernail that pulsed with a rainbow of colors. She swam in turquoise oceans with dolphins and sang with the whales in water so dark it was green black. She explored reefs with fish that wore color like flowers trying to attract bees. She crossed vast oceanic deserts where nothing lived for leagues in every direction.
And then a wave carried her forward and set her in a land of verdant pine forests. Their music was rich with deep, chaotic brass. It was also more complex than any of the other melodies she’d heard. An undercurrent of life pulsed through the music.
“And last, you meet the Third Sister, Plants.” A woman dropped down from a high branch, bits of moss clinging to her red hair. “You feel how full it is?”
Senna nodded. The woman took her hand, and suddenly they were on a sparse, rocky plateau. Gray-leaved olive trees grew in the thin soil. The music here was steadier, but more sparse—like the plants themselves.
The Creator watched Senna silently. When she seemed satisfied, she took her hand again and brought her to a vast continent of death—Tarten. Senna crouched and held a hand over the earth. She pulled back as if stung, a hiss passing through her teeth.
“You feel the difference between this and the desert?”
Senna nodded. The desert song was muted but healthy. This, though…
“Sometimes it’s a raw, stinging
pain. Others, a deep, throbbing pulse that shoots out like a wind-whipped ember.” She crouched next to Senna, her hair now the color of baby grass. “But if you listen, you can hear the Four Sisters’ song.”
Senna waited and listened a long time. Finally, she reached out and took hold of a flaking tree. She felt it more than heard it—a faint buzz of life deep within the roots. Her voice joined the Creator’s.
The two called in a storm, dampening the soil before adding their voices to the dying song of the plants. The music of earth, wind, water, and plants swirled all around her.
And she directed it, adding her voice to the mix until a symphony arose, coaxing the music of the plants back to life. Stalks went from a dead brown to a bright green. Tentative leaves uncurled and broadened. Seeds soaked in the water and forced roots into the rich soil. Flowers bloomed, their thin, sweet fragrance filling the air.
Senna listened beyond the music for any sound of life beyond their voices. There was nothing. No hum of insects or cry of animals. Exhausted, she sagged against a tree.
Then she realized the Plant Creator was gone. In her place, the blonde Creator was back. “Now you understand. Our power—the music of the Four Sisters’—is everywhere. Always. Keepers bend the songs of the world to keep it.”
Senna cast outward, listening. The music was strong and steady around them, but beyond was the hollow emptiness—the pain of unhealed lands. “We didn’t heal all of Tarten.”
The Creator shook her head. “No. That would have taxed you too far.”
Senna studied the woman. Without the aura of power she wore like a cloak, she looked very normal. And very young. Senna’s quick eyes picked out distinguishing features. And suddenly she realized who she must be. “You’re Lilette.”
The Creator smiled. “Yes.”
Senna’s mind raced over what Krissin had told her. “You lit up like a newborn star. When the light faded, you were gone.”
Lilette nodded. “It is what the Caldash Witches are saying of you back on the Nefalien shore.”