Armor of Roses and The Silver Voice

by Marjorie M. Liu

  The amulet was a flat stone disc engraved with concentric lines that coiled into the center like a tangle of roses. It hung from a chain made of pure gold, soft and gleaming, as though infused with sunlight at dawn.

  His mother had only removed it on her deathbed—her body eaten by cancer—and much to Grant’s shame, his sixteen-year-old self could not recall her message to him as she placed the necklace in his hands. All he could remember of that moment was the antiseptic smell of the hospital, the soft, rhythmic click of the machines, and his father’s pacing the hall outside with red-rimmed eyes and a broken voice in which he was still trying to make a business deal in Japan.

  Her grip was strong. Her gaze filled with grief. Her dry, bleeding lips moved, with intent. Grant remembered holding the amulet to his chest, the stone warm, and whispering, “I’m sorry.”

  That was it. Everything else was a blur. Which was the problem with memories. They were always one-sided.

  Unless you had a seed ring.

  “I’m afraid to know,” Grant said, on what was only the second day of his honeymoon, near sunset, while sitting on the porch of a Texas farmhouse overlooking a golden-tipped meadow that disappeared into the shimmering haze of the fading horizon. He held a glass of water in one hand and a book in the other, and was frowning at his wife—who had just placed his mother’s amulet on the table in front of him.

  Maxine, dressed in jeans and a tank top, straddled the chair on the other side of the table. Her tattoos were already beginning to twitch and shudder, and red eyes gleamed from her slender arms.

  “Baby,” she said. “You’ve been avoiding this.”

  “There’s nothing to avoid,” Grant muttered. “You can’t be sure—”

  “It’s a seed ring,” Maxine interrupted with particular gentleness. “There are memories inside.”

  Memories. Stored within an object that resembled stone . . . but not any stone that originated on earth. As Grant had learned, there were many worlds—millions upon millions—each connected by an interdimensional road that some called the Labyrinth.

  Grant had never seen the Labyrinth. He had no concept of its enormity beyond that which his imagination could provide. But he had witnessed its mystery and power. A place of possibilities, defiant of time and space.

  So defiant.

  “What if I don’t want to see those memories?” Grant retorted, gripping his book a little tighter. “I don’t particularly want to be inside my mother’s head.”

  “Might not be your mother,” Maxine replied, giving him the clear-eyed knowing look that always cut right through him. “Either way, I know you won’t be easy with yourself until you understand the world your family came from.”

  Grant’s hand was beginning to hurt. He loosened his grip on the book, but the ache simply settled elsewhere—in his heart. “My dad was a good man.”

  “I know.” Maxine glanced at the setting sun, little more than a gleam of gold above the meadow. “But he wasn’t your real father.”

  Nothing Grant could say about that. Nothing he wanted to say. His real father was a million years dead, the casualty of a war that had destroyed an entire world—while the father he had always known was also dead, buried outside a suburb north of Chicago.

  The light of the setting sun blinked out below the horizon. Grant watched Maxine shudder, and he focused on a different kind of light, a spectrum of energy he could ignore if he liked but that was always present, always, in every sound, in every living creature. Hugging the edge of his vision like a dream.

  In that dream, in the dream that was his life, his wife’s aura flowed from the crown of her head down to her shoulders—a soft shimmer of white light edged in a darkness that—though Grant would never admit it—made him shiver, deep inside, with a cold that slid through his ribs like a knife. He rubbed his face and arm, fingers skimming over slow-healing cuts and bruises—marks of his encounter with the terrible power that lived inside his wife.

  “Wife,” he mouthed, but she was facing away from him, shoulders hunched, vibrating with pain as her armor of tattoos blurred and flowed into a river of ink and flesh, and shadow, streaked with small bolts of red lightning that were eyes, a liquid burst of muscle that emptied off her arms, shimmered from beneath her clothes, and flowed from every inch of her with all the force of slammed thunder.

  Maxine did not make a sound as her tattoos fled, but her entire body lurched and trembled, and the strain on her face was excruciating. Grant wondered what his own face looked like. It didn’t matter how much love and concern he felt for her—the helplessness he suffered at sunset—and at other times during their life together—outweighed everything. All he could do in that moment was focus on her heartbeat drumming within his heart, a shared rhythm, root of the bond flowing between them like a river. A bond that kept him alive, with a woman he could not live without.

  Maxine Kiss. His wife. Future queen of a vast demonic army.

  And he was a Lightbringer.

  But it was no good. Really, it wasn’t. Grant still couldn’t escape his memories, memories that had become his dreams.

  Not that night.

  It was South Dakota, again. A hotel room off a freeway. That much was familiar. Good days. Eight years old. Grant remembered, and dreamed, the sound of water hitting the tub. His mother had turned on the shower for him and left the bathroom—but he was still seated on the edge of the toilet, taking his time as he removed his socks.

  (in his dream, the empty socks resembled tunnels, and in his dream, tunnels meant you were going places)

  For the last week, he and his parents had been crammed together in the same car, traveling long hours from one national monument to another, and while he loved his mom and dad—a lot—he needed some time alone to pretend he was alone.

  Grant was humming when he saw the cockroaches scuttle out from beneath the sink cabinet.

  Energy flowed around them. Waves of color, sunk into ochre and violet. Dim, faint, compared to a human aura—though it tickled his eyesight, drew his focus, made him lean forward to stare. Without thinking, his voice flowed into a deeper octave, a rumbling bass he could barely hear that filled his chest like thunder.

  He did not think about what he was doing. Music and voice, sound and light, had always been the same—as inextricably linked as air, breath, and lung—and it was nothing, nothing, simply to reach out with his voice and twist at the light surrounding those cockroaches. He had never done so before. It was not quite an accident now, but it felt right. Like learning how to ride a bike and kicking off two wheels for the first time.

  Which was great. Until the light around the cockroaches went away.

  It happened suddenly, easily, like candle flames blown out. Grant stared and nudged them with his bare toe.

  Nothing. Dead.

  I killed them, Grant thought—stunned—horrified. He began to sing again, trying to bring them back to life, to fill them with light—

  The bathroom door slammed open, making him flinch. His mother stood in the doorway.

  “I’m sorry,” he stammered. It didn’t occur to him to pretend that his mother didn’t know what he’d done. If he had been less panicked, he would have realized there was no way she could know. He had never told her what he could do, that he could see lights around people, and other living creatures. Who would believe that?

  But his mother was staring at him, and she knew. He could see it in the flare of red light that burned, briefly, around her—and that scared him almost as much as the dead cockroaches on the floor.

  Grant heard the television in the other room. News. Sports. Loud. His mother glanced over her shoulder, then closed the door. The small bathroom was hot with rolling clouds of steam that wrapped around her like a veil.

  It was suddenly hard to breathe.

  “Up,” she whispered.

 
Grant obeyed, sweating and dizzy. His mother bent, scooped the cockroaches into her hands and lifted the toilet lid. She flushed them and stood back as the water drained, putting her arm around his shoulders. It felt like a vise, crushing him, making him small.

  “Mom,” he began, but stopped when she kissed the top of his head. He tried peering at her face, but her aura flared: a deep storm rising from her shoulders, a shroud of weeping steel and silver tears. He tasted regret. He tasted sadness, and knew it was not from his heart.

  She wiped her eyes and cheeks with the back of her hand. “I’ll take my shower first. Go outside with your . . . father.”

  In the dream, the pause before father was a chasm. An abyss.

  Grant did not want to leave her. Now he had questions. Now, he was afraid for her, and ashamed she was crying—because of him. But when she pushed him from the bathroom, he did not fight. He stood in the cool, musty hotel room, wiggling his toes into the old carpet, listening to the door close behind him. He looked at his father, who was asleep, propped up on pillows, maps scattered across the rumpled covers. Grant strained to hear his mother weep, but the pounding of his heart drove out every sound, even the television in front of him.

  I have no one, he thought.

  Not alone anymore. Not alone.

  Those were the first words inside his head, his first conscious thought upon waking from the dream.

  Grant opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling. It was night. Wind rattled the glass, and thunder, but the house had been built a hundred years before, with stone and a deep foundation, and nothing, certainly not this little storm, would crush it.

  A warm body pressed close, accompanied by the brush of lips against his arm. Grant turned his head to look at Maxine, who lay naked in bed beside him. Curled on her side, eyes closed, breathing slow and steady. Mouth still touching his skin. An unconscious kiss. He wondered if he ever did the same for her. He hoped so.

  Grant eased out of bed. As he stood, a warm serpentine body wrapped around his wrist, coiling up his forearm and stroking his skin. He patted Mal’s head, smoothing down sharp spines and a thick ruff of bristly hair. The demon purred, red eyes blinking lazily. His brother, Dek, slid from under the covers to peer over Maxine’s shoulder.

  More red eyes glinted around the room. Little demons. Zee clung to the sill, staring out the window, the sharp spines of his flexing hair glinting like daggers. Raw and Aaz sprawled on the floor below him, nibbling on car batteries and drinking from bleach bottles. Grant waited to feel revulsion or shock—he had been waiting for years, testing himself—but all he felt, deep inside, was quiet acceptance, as though the demons around him were as natural as the thunder raging.

  Five demons. Five lives, bonded to Maxine. His wife.

  Grant studied their auras: a violet so deep it was almost black, pulsing with flecks of an even darker light that might have been what blood looked like if stars bled from their places in the sky.

  Not evil. He did not taste malevolence. Just power. Power in them, power in Maxine. Enough power to turn a trillion cockroaches to ash, along with the rest of the world.

  I could have had that power, came the unbidden thought.

  Grant looked again at Maxine, but she was still asleep. Face relaxed, soft, shedding years. Precious and beautiful.

  Protect this, whispered another voice inside his mind—maybe his voice, maybe not. Protect what is between you.

  Protect it with his life. Protect it with everything he had. That was what he had promised Maxine on the old hill, days ago, when he had given her his ring. Married her, with just that between them. He might not have spoken the words out loud, but he had felt them, so deep inside it hurt.

  He was a husband now. Not on paper but in spirit.

  He wanted to be a better husband, a better man, than his father. The father he had known, anyway.

  As for his real father . . .

  Thunder rumbled. Grant resisted the urge to wake Maxine and hold her, or make love to her, or even look into her eyes and reassure himself that she knew him. Instead, he gave her one last look and grabbed his cane where it leaned against the nightstand. His knee hurt like hell when he stood, but the pain was old and familiar—another disastrous injury, product of hubris—and he swallowed down the discomfort as he limped, not as quietly as he liked, from the bedroom. He made his way, barefoot and naked, down a long hall to the stairs (stairs, his nemesis) to the old kitchen, from the kitchen to the back door—out into the storm.

  He was not alone. Raw and Aaz followed, slinking from the shadows, red eyes flashing, while glints of silver pulsed against the surface of their obsidian skin.

  Grant stood in the cool summer rain, leaning on his cane and staring at the dark sky, unflinching, as lightning struck in crooked white fire. He felt a hum in the air, electric and wild, sinking into his bones in a storm-song, a song he had heard since childhood on other rain-wild nights.

  “Lightbringer,” rasped a soft voice.

  Grant glanced down. Zee crouched beside him, and the rain that hit his rough skin made a faint sizzling sound.

  “Storm heart,” said the little demon. “Storm hard, inside you.”

  Grant was silent a moment. “I don’t know what I am anymore. I never knew, but I was good at pretending.”

  “Pretend long enough, make truth.” Zee closed his eyes and tilted his face to the rain. “You sing light. You make light. Light is what binds.”

  Thunder shook the ground, filling Grant’s chest alongside Maxine’s heartbeat. “That tells me nothing. Nothing about my real father, or the world my mother came from. Things I need to know. I don’t want to make their mistakes.”

  Zee opened his eyes and gave Grant a long, steady look that was old and hard, and too much of a reminder that, despite appearances, the little demon was impossibly old and impossibly dangerous.

  “That world, dead. Parents, dead.” Zee backed into the shadows, red eyes glinting. “Be new, Lightbringer. Be you. Never look back, never, at death. Might invite it.”

  “No,” Grant began, but Zee melted out of sight, leaving him alone in the storm. Lightning cracked the sky. Long ago, he had stood out in a storm like this, holding his father’s hand.

  One father.

  His real father, a million years dead, on another world, one that Grant would never see.

  Don’t look back, he told himself, and went back inside to find the amulet.

  It was still dark out. No sense of time. Grant sat on the porch, listening to the rain, and held the amulet in his hand. The stone was warm. It glowed with a small hum of light.

  No stone on earth burned with its own light. No stone on earth was alive.

  But this thing wasn’t made on earth . . . and neither was I.

  Grant thought about his mother dying of cancer, dying slowly—and closed his eyes. Knowing what he did now . . . a cure would have been possible. He could have cured her then if he had only had the training. If he had known exactly what he could do.

  If she had just talked to him. Told him the truth.

  She preferred to die, he thought, and recalled years of unguarded moments, wondering at the sadness in her eyes. Maybe she wanted to die.

  Grant did not want to think about that. He took a deep breath and pressed the disc to his forehead.

  He had never tried to summon a memory from a seed ring, but it felt right to hold it close, close while his thoughts sank into his own memories, moments that flashed from the inane to the trivial, to the superficial: his dad yelling into the phone, his mother in the garden; being harangued during a flute lesson; listening to his dog beg for food; or, finally, the crashing waves at the beach, pulling away and rushing toward him, again and again; and the light, the light around it all, everywhere.

  Except, nothing happened. The amulet—the seed ring—remained dormant.
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  “You’re trying too hard,” said Maxine, behind him.

  Grant twitched, then relaxed as her warm hands slid across his shoulders. Her lips touched his ear, making him shiver.

  “Just think about what you want to know,” she murmured.

  “You hardly have to do that much,” he replied. “All you do is hold your mother’s seed ring, and her memories seem to flow into your head.”

  “Whatever.” Maxine slid into the chair beside him, Dek and Mal coiled on her pale shoulders. “Your problem is that you don’t really want to see what’s inside.”

  I don’t want to see what’s inside me, Grant almost told her, but that would lead to another conversation about how he was a good man, not some monster, and he didn’t feel like hearing that—as heartfelt as it might be. Truth be told, anyone who had the ability to change a person’s fundamental self, down to the soul—like he could, and did, on a regular basis—was a monster. Nothing Maxine said would change that.

  “I’m afraid,” Grant admitted, and held up the amulet. Instead of looking at it, though, his gaze fell on Zee—crouched in the shadows, watching him.

  Never look back, never, at death.

  Smart advice. Not that he planned on listening. Not that he could afford to.

  Grant stole a quick glance at Maxine, settling on her mouth, her calm eyes, and pressed the amulet to his forehead.

  He murmured the biggest lie he had told in years.

  “I’m ready.”

  “I am ready,” he says, and his silver voice echoes across the stone chamber, louder than the screams of the dying on the mountain pass, screams he can hear even now, screams that make the air tremble with light.

  Close, the Aetar and their armies are too close, and the world will fall, and the flesh of the people will be raped—hammered into forms beyond their dreaming. Even dreams will be culled, once the Aetar are done. For those spirits cannot abide a dream that defies them.