by Faith Hunter
Behind my closed eyes, I saw the ship fire weapons into the hillside, into the attacking Darkness. The weapons were light and heat, yet neither, the fine, laserlike beams a gavotte across the mountainside. The ship rose, still firing, and altered its plane, climbing over the blasted ground of the sepulcher where it had lain, land that had once been a clearing.
Yet the earth still shook and the rumbling had grown. Suddenly, I knew what I was hearing. An avalanche. The ice cap had shifted. Broken. It was racing downhill, thousands of tons of ice and rock and debris, to bury the town. "Thorn! The ice pack!"
Mistress? I thought.
"It is of no matter. You are safe. The rest is of no importance. They are humans."
Shock swept through me. I raised up from the ground. Even in the night, I could see the avalanche approaching, a thunderous roaring of white and death to my blended scan. There was something I could do. I could call "mage in dire" now… But there wasn't time.
I threw back my head, flung open my arms, dropping back into the otherness. And once again, I heard my heart beat. Lavender light pulsed. Power lanced me, speared me, damaged me as it passed through me. I studied the wheels for two heartbeats. Light, brighter than the sun, sang inside me.
"What are you doing, little mage?"
"What I have to," I yelled back.
I called on stone.
In a place that was here and not-here, I understood how the wheels, the ship, worked, what directed it-them. The eyes, all the eyes turned to me. My heart beat a fourth time. On the hillsides all around, I saw Darkness dying. Being burned and drained and killed all around me, their energies warping, bending, shattering, as the bones in my hand had shattered.
The ground vibrated beneath my feet. My heart beat again. I looked into the eyes on the wheels and twisted with my will. Wordless. Without incantation. With only my need and desire and fear for the town, for the people I loved. With only my knowledge of stone. The wheel gyrated. Pulsed once in time to the beat of my heart.
A light brighter than the sun reached out from the navcone. Navigation cone, my mind whispered. In a single sustained burst, it melted the ice cap.
The thunder of avalanche ice became the rushing of Niagara. An entire sea of water, a tsunami of destruction raced toward the town.
My heart beat again. A second burst of light followed the first. Steam, hotter than the fires of hell, rose and hissed and divided and separated. The avalanche of snow that had become a sea now steamed into a cloud. My heart beat. Rain started to fall. Heavy, drenching sheets of rain. My heart beat.
I was suddenly back in the clearing. Beside me, Thadd stood, his gun sweeping. I smelled battle and death, blood and spawn, ozone and sulfur and rain.
I felt, I knew, the thoughts of the Darkness, the spawn, the few remaining humans, the walkers… and the Dragon standing in the mouth of the cave. My heart beat. The Dragon that smelled of Lucas' blood. The chain it held in its hands. Links from Mole Man's chain…
The wheels turned and fired again, the energy of creation gathered, braided, wove itself into a single beam of Light and otherness. Darkness howled with anger, shrieked with pain as the Light weapons of the wheels killed them by the thousands. My heart beat.
My chin rested in wet, chilled soil. Rain pelted me, forming runnels and creeks and currents that sparkled and gurgled. I found the energy to lift my nose out of the water and roll over, my face to the heavens. Darkness fled and died. The smell of death and defeat and victory and rain blew over me. My heart beat.
Mage-heat blazed up in me. Need and want were colors, rich and glorious and yet, somehow, meaningless. Desolation welled up in me. I sobbed, once, as my heart beat.
I released the ship, Holy Amethyst's wheels. We had won. We had won.
Suddenly, the sky above me was filled with seraphs. They shouted and sang, a song of a thousand bells. I felt, more than saw, Raziel settle beside me. I took a breath. We had won.
My heart beat. And I knew no more.
Epilogue
The world was dark, a clouded, cold, empty place. I stood in a meadow, a glen, my dobok whole, my hair free and blowing in a chill wind, my cloak tied around my shoulders, my amulets throbbing with power. My blades, the longsword and the kris, were crossed before me, steel on steel. I was scarred, my face disfigured with a tracery of glowing white, stark, yet beautiful.
"Help me, little mage" a voice belled. But the sound fell away. Holy Amethyst's voice, caught once again by the heart of the mountain that trapped her.
Malashe-el stood before me, smiling, older, darker than it—he? —had seemed once. Its hair whipped back in an unseen wind, free of its braid, flying and tangled and lustrous.
"You survived. You will be called," Malashe-el said, its voice a lower tone, abrasive and coarse. "You are desired. You will not refuse. I have your blood." Turning, it raced away toward the night.
I have your blood.
In the vision, feathers and down brushed along my sides, down my legs. A hand cupped my head and lifted my lips for a kiss. Raziel peered through his wings and smiled at me. And I have your heart.
* * * * *
Three days later, I woke. I eased up on my elbows and looked around. No cell. No hot pincers. My loft was as neat as a pin, clean, windows sparkling. Outside, a snowstorm howled, but inside, gas logs whispered and fans circulated warm air overhead. Scented candles burned, flickering in glass votives.
I had been bathed, shampooed, slathered with sage-scented unguents. Despite a strange, hollow ache though my torso, and an empty stomach that growled its displeasure, I felt… pretty good… nearly ducky.
I had survived. On a mountain, at night, in a battle with the AAS and Darkness. And… wheels. Amethyst's wheels. And a burning river. But the river seemed to slide away, hard to hold on to, impossible to recall with any detail. Stranger and stranger.
I inspected my hand. I expected to see a stump. Instead, four fingertips and a thumb, red and delicate with new skin, peeked from a gauze dressing. I flexed the hand. It hurt, but not like I expected. My fingers moved, bones and tendons contracting painfully. Seraph healing here, combined with mage-conjure.
Mage-conjure… Like the links of a chain. Mole Man's chain. And the Mistress, injured, in pain, still trapped below-ground. I tried to hold on to them, but the thoughts slid away. I flexed my hand again.
Above the scent of candles I caught a whiff of something sweet. Vanilla and caramel, brown sugar and just a hit of ginger. Kylen. My belly did a little dip and curl. The susurration of cloth on cloth drew my eyes to the rocker. Thadd sat slouched in it, his hands draped over the carved lion-claw arms, legs outstretched, his head rocked back, mouth slightly open. He breathed slowly and steadily, the sound not quite a snore. A bruise colored his cheek, and both eyes were black fading to green. His knuckles were scabbed over. I wanted to reach out and touch him, but he looked so tired. I dropped my head back to the pillows, hearing a soft clink.
Around my neck hung my amulets. I had muzzy memories of seeing them each time I woke. On the steel chain were new talismans. I picked them up, letting them dangle. A half-melted silver and gold crucifix, a burned wooden cross, a second cross so disfigured I didn't recognize it.
An additional amulet hung with them, touching the mended prime—a four-inch ring of watermelon tourmaline. Surprised, I lifted the ring and studied it. "Seraph stones," I whispered. It was a sigil, a carved and shaped article of intent. On its surface were runes and characters that flamed like torches and ran like water. The flames were characters of a once-dead language, saying three numbers and one word. 106 ADONAI.
The angel of punishment had ordered me to wait for him.
Almost afraid to look, I lifted my left wrist. On it was a solid copper and gold bracelet, one too small to slide off over my healing hand. It too was inscribed with 106 ADONAI.
Glory and infamy.
106 ADONAI, carved into a stone of promise, and a metal band of bondage. They were the sigils and GPS locator device of a li
censed witchy-woman. I had been given one year.
About the author
A native of Louisiana, Faith Hunter spent her early years on the bayou and rivers, learning survival skills and the womanly arts. She liked horses, dogs, fishing and crabbing much better than girly things. She still does.
In grade school, she fell in love with fantasy and science fiction, reading five books a week and wishing she "could write that great stuff." Faith now shares her life with her Renaissance Man and their dogs in an Enclave of their own.
To find out more about Faith, go to www.faithhunter.net.
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