“Horace,” she thought as loudly as she could. If he could attack Kora’s connection while Naos was busy, maybe he could sever it and find a way to shield her and Natalya both. But she had to find Kora first.
“I’m here,” he said in her mind. “Get ready to run.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Cordelia floated above a battle she couldn’t hear and searched the ground below. The Sun’s fires turned it into a series of flickers, bringing combatants into sharp relief before throwing them into shadow again. Ballista bolts caught fire as they smashed into tents, and people were thrown into the air by the Moon’s invisible hand.
Cordelia searched for that telltale blue glow and finally spotted it near the edge of combat. She willed herself toward it but had only a vague idea of what to do when she got there. The plan was to get Naos to notice her, but she really didn’t want that to happen again.
Still, no time to run from a fight. Distract and retreat. Right.
“Fuck it.” She hurtled toward the blue glow and through it, trying to pass out the other side and hurry back to her body, but she stuttered to a halt as images and memories raced through her mind, one after another, the whole of the universe trying to fill her head as it had before. She willed herself to fucking move, to go faster, and the feeling eased as she passed out of the glow. She hurried toward the city as fast as she could, but before she reached the edge of the field, that titanic force seized her again.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Naos’s voice roared in her head.
Cordelia grunted and struggled. She felt Naos’s power waver, probably the Sun-Moon attacking her. “Horace!”
“Here,” he said. “Naos is attacking the Sun-Moon now.”
Which meant the plan was working, but it wouldn’t keep working if Naos killed the Sun-Moon. Cordelia turned, bracing herself, and hurtled through the blue light again.
It splintered, and she crowed, thinking they’d broken the link, but it only stabbed toward many bodies, the lights becoming thin threads. As she focused on one, it seemed to disappear. She turned for her body—best to retreat if the whole plan was fucked—but one of the threads coalesced into the ghostly woman she’d seen earlier.
“Horace!” Cordelia cried.
Naos lifted a hand, and Horace’s voice melted into nothing.
“Nice try. Let me give you a little kiss as a reward.” She blew along her palm, and Cordelia cried out as her spirit tumbled backward. She tried to lift her hands and shield herself, but she had no hands, and she’d never felt so powerless as her spirit lifted high into the air. She hurtled across the landscape, away from Celeste, and darkness grew around her, the lights fading into the distance. Her silver life cord unwound like a rope going over a cliff.
Cordelia screamed, but no one could hear, even if there’d been someone around. She struggled and reached for Horace, but nothing could stop her, and her lifeline grew thinner and thinner before it dissolved into nothing. When she finally whirled to a stop, darkness surrounded her, with nothing to show the way home.
*
Cordelia’s pain rattled through Horace’s brain, and then her mind was gone as if she’d never existed. He turned from healing the Sun-Moon, but Naos was no longer attacking them either. “I have to get to Cordelia!”
They waved him away. “Stay close.”
He ran to the side of the road where Nettle watched over Cordelia’s body. Blood trickled from her ears, and she shuddered and jerked. Horace healed her body, but her mind was just…gone. “What happened?”
Nettle bent over her, and Horace caught, “Sa, come back to me,” but Cordelia didn’t respond. The screams from the battlefield were coming closer. Horace had sensed it as Naos splintered her own link so she could control multiple people at once. He didn’t know if they could all wield her awesome power, or if she was just maneuvering them like puppets, but it sounded as if the battle had turned.
“Shawness,” Nettle said, “what has happened to her?”
“I don’t know.” He sent his mind out again, but there was so much telepathic chaos, not to mention the random attacks from the Sun-Moon, and he couldn’t find Natalya without Cordelia acting like an antenna. He laid a hand on Nettle’s shoulder. “She’s not in there anymore, but we’ll find her.”
“How?”
Again, he had no idea.
Nettle stood, her lean face without expression. “I will find this girl, this host of Naos, and kill her. Perhaps then Sa will come back to her body.”
“Wait, you can’t just—”
“Guard Sa, shawness.”
“Come back! You might hurt Natalya!”
Nettle took off into the battlefield, and Horace watched through the haze as she stabbed one young girl through the neck before she was lost to smoke and darkness.
“Damn it!” He took a deep breath and sent out a telepathic call for Mamet.
“Almost there,” Mamet said. She jogged around the corner, and Horace waved her over.
“Help me move Cordelia somewhere safer.”
“What happened?”
Horace explained as they shifted Cordelia into a nearby house, and Mamet went pale as she listened. “Do you think Nettle’s plan will work?”
“I don’t know! We have to get after her. If she kills Natalya, there’s no telling what Naos will do.”
Horace hoped the Sun-Moon were too busy to notice as he slipped past the wall and onto the battlefield. “There!” Mamet whispered.
Nettle leapt from the shadows and killed another woman before fading into darkness. Horace ran after her, both he and Mamet trying to keep away from pockets of fighting. Horace sent out small telepathic bursts, searching for Natalya. Maybe she would know what to do with Cordelia, and they could get her back and leave this place behind. He had a brief thought that they should have brought Cordelia’s body with them, but that would have slowed them down. When Mamet dragged him out of the way of two brawling fights, he knew it was too late for second thoughts.
*
Natalya felt Naos all around her, but not like when she was speaking in Natalya’s head or inhabiting Kora. She filled the plains dwellers and made them throw themselves at the Sun-Moon soldiers. Natalya didn’t know whether she was targeting the people guarding the Sun-Moon or the Sun-Moon themselves, but the reckless attacks threw lives away.
One thing was certain, Naos wasn’t currently with Natalya, which meant now was the time to act. Horace had told her to run, but she had a better idea. She had to attack the link. A jot of loss surprised her. So much for being the chosen one. She’d never wanted to be Kora, but the thought that she was no longer worthy of even a fraction of the goddess’s attention irked her. But now wasn’t the time for lamentations. If Naos was busy spreading herself around, Kora might be free, too.
She found Kora standing in the middle of the field, head thrown back and eyes wide. One of the Sun-Moon’s long spears hovered in front of her, suspended in midair. Natalya grabbed it with a macro-psychokinetic shove and hurled it into the dark. She put her hands on Kora’s shoulders and reached for the link with her micro powers. She tried to adjust Kora’s brain, but it resisted her. She cried out for Horace, hoping he was still listening. When he’d disappeared, she’d feared he might have been killed.
“Natalya?” he asked in her head.
She whooped. “Help me! I’m with Kora. We have to break the link now.”
“I’m on the battlefield. Where are you?”
She looked around, but the chaos was impossible to follow, and the darkness made distances hard to gauge. She caught a flaming tent with her powers and tossed it into the air. “Here!”
“If we break her link, will that free the rest of the plains dwellers and stop this?”
She didn’t know and hoped he wasn’t listening too hard when she said, “Yes! Hurry!”
He linked with her mind, not shoving in as Naos did, but offering his telepathic powers and letting her use her micro powers to focus them
both. They’d communed sometimes in Gale, and the memories came flooding back. The link twitched under their combined assault, and Natalya felt Naos’s attention turn toward them.
“More!” Natalya cried.
He reached for someone else, and she felt another power join theirs, the telepathic might of the Sun-Moon; she wasn’t about to argue. They attacked the link as one, and Kora screamed, a cry that echoed all around them. Across the field, plains dwellers screeched in gut-wrenching dissonance, and Natalya had to resist clapping her hands over her ears.
The link shuddered, collapsing like foam in a storm, but before it could wink out, Naos’s connections to the other plains dwellers snapped shut, and her mind overtook Kora’s, her power butting against Natalya and the others and swamping them. The force of it launched Natalya off her feet and sent her flying.
She landed hard, grunting, and the air rushed from her lungs. She tried to use her micro powers to heal herself, but Naos stalked closer, a blue glow shimmering around her, around Kora’s body.
“You miserable fucking shitbag!” Naos’s hair whipped in an invisible wind, and her eyes blazed with fury, the blue light dancing like smoke as it made spectral faces near her shoulders. “I’ll teach you!”
Natalya tried to move but an invisible hand gripped her so hard she couldn’t breathe. She lifted from the ground, hovering. One of the spectral faces stared over Kora’s shoulder, showing Naos’s true face—leaner and older than Kora’s—but both faces wore an evil grin as Naos lifted one hand, index finger pointed at Natalya’s right eye.
“Lessons to learn, prices to pay,” Naos said. The finger didn’t shake, didn’t move a fraction off course as it slid forward. Natalya couldn’t even gasp as it filled her vision. With her left eye, she stared at Kora and willed the girl to stop the goddess.
The fingertip grazed her eye, burning, but she couldn’t cry out. Naos paused, and Natalya had a fraction of a second to hope for mercy.
“Mercy is earned.” Naos drove forward in one smooth, violent motion.
Pain blocked out everything but the feeling of hot fluid rushing down her cheek. Naos released her voice, and she shrieked until her throat felt shredded. As her screams turned to sobs, Naos finally released her, and she fell to the ground.
“I’m going to need a little time to recover. You hurt me.” Naos forced Natalya’s head up and smiled. “I’m almost impressed.” She flicked the raw flesh inside the empty socket, and Natalya summoned up another scream. “Hopefully, this little reminder will keep you out of trouble.”
As Naos departed, Natalya slumped to the ground, Kora beside her.
“No!” Kora crawled closer. “I hoped it was a dream.” She lifted Natalya’s head, probably trying to help, but the pain doubled, tripled.
Natalya turned her head to the side and retched. She couldn’t even manage another scream, could only grunt and sob. Kora wiped her cheeks and chin, murmuring, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She petted Natalya’s hair and called, “Someone help!”
“Natalya?” Horace’s voice. What the fuck had taken him so long?
“Can you help?” Kora asked.
Someone took Natalya’s hand, and healing energy flowed into her. She sighed as the pain ebbed away, and Horace’s power carried her away from madness and into a comforting black abyss.
*
As Natalya fell asleep, Horace turned his attention to the girl. She was filthy with soot, and tears had carved clean tracks down her cheeks. He felt her link to Naos and knew this was the one Nettle had gone looking for.
“I don’t know what I am,” she said.
So, she had some of Naos’s power even when the goddess wasn’t around. Horace had expected Naos’s vessel to be horrific, a mad warrior covered in blood, not this young girl who gripped the hem of her shirt like a lost child.
Mamet had her sword out and was looking between all of them as well as watching a battlefield that had ceased battling. All it had now was the pop and crackle of random fires and the cries of wounded people.
“Grab Natalya’s legs,” Horace said. “We’re taking her back to the city.”
The girl’s eyes widened, and Horace thought she might protest, but she said, “Yes, good! Take her so the goddess doesn’t punish her again!” She scrambled to her feet.
Mamet helped Horace lift Natalya. Horace hesitated, not knowing if he should invite this girl to come with them, not knowing if Naos could take her over with impunity. He decided not to ask. If he couldn’t break the link, there was every chance the Sun-Moon would kill her, and he didn’t know if he could stand by and watch such a thing.
“What about Nettle?” Mamet asked when they were halfway across the field.
As if to answer them, someone hissed nearby, and Nettle peeled away from the shadows. Mamet suppressed a cry but let go of Natalya’s legs and fumbled for her sword before she recognized who it was.
“I followed you,” Nettle said. “Who is this?”
“My friend Natalya.”
“And the girl you left behind?” Nettle stooped to support Natalya’s midsection, lessening the burden so they could go faster.
Horace swallowed and didn’t answer.
“Shawness?” Nettle asked again.
Horace sighed. “She’s the one we were looking for.”
“And you did not kill her?”
“I couldn’t!”
“First you leave Sa, then you let the person who injured her go?”
“That was Naos, not the girl!”
“You said they were linked, shawness. Are they not the same?”
When Horace said nothing, Mamet added, “She didn’t look like a goddess.”
“If we killed her, would Sa’s spirit return?” Nettle asked.
Horace shook his head, thinking fast. “I…don’t think so. I healed Cordelia, and I don’t think her body would be alive if her spirit wasn’t still around somewhere, so we have a little time.”
“That does not answer my question.”
Horace took a deep breath, sick and tired of all the killing. “Please don’t do anything until I’ve had a chance to talk to Nat.”
“We will take her into the city with Sa. But after this is done, I will return here, shawness, taking Mamet with me, and once you know the truth of this girl, you will contact Mamet with your mind. If killing the girl will help, it will be done.”
Horace wanted to argue, but Nettle’s tone said that wouldn’t go over well. He had to nod and hope there was a way to keep as many people alive as possible.
Chapter Twenty-five
“Don’t fucking panic.” Cordelia would have taken a few deep breaths, but she still didn’t have a body. She tried not to think of herself as the only person she would ever speak to again, but no one else could hear her.
“Shit, shit, shit.” If she’d had fists, she would have been looking for something to pound, but that was as off the table as anything else.
“No, calm. Fucking calm.” Telepaths could hear her. She had to find her way back to Horace. Good, a plan. That was good. Now, which way?
She willed herself upward, but the night below was an endless sea of moving grass. The occasional rock flashed white or gray, but how the fuck was she supposed to find her way back to Celeste, and what would happen when she got there? Would Naos send her right back into the middle of nothing?
The moon was on its way down, so she could find east easily enough, but she had no idea how far north or south she’d gone. Why hadn’t she paid attention to Wuran when he’d tried to teach her about the stars? Why did the plains dwellers have such good alcohol?
She drifted higher still and saw a light in the distance, but it wasn’t the light of fires or the blue glow of Naos. It had a pure, non-flickering quality that filled her with hope.
“Pool!” She headed for it like a shot. She’d been able to touch their connection before when she’d left her body. Why not now? She willed herself faster and faster, and as the tree came within sight, she saw da
rk streaks marring its light like wounds in the bark. She paused by the enormous trunk and saw the burns. If Pool had caught fire, the marks wouldn’t be so precise, and she realized with a start that they were lightning strikes. The Storm Lord had attacked the drushka.
Anger burned in Cordelia’s heart. No one could leave them the fuck alone, it seemed. She sensed drushkan power at work, the shawnessi trying to sing away the tree’s wounds, but they would be a long time in healing. Cordelia drifted downward and threaded past the limbs rather than trying to move through them, not wanting to do anything to interrupt the drushkan connection as she’d interrupted Naos.
She found Pool dozing in the high branches, her green hair spread around her, and the white glow suffusing her dark skin. Cordelia hesitated, but her problems wouldn’t wait. “Pool, I need your help.”
Pool’s eyes flew open. “Sa?” She looked near where Cordelia hovered and reached out. “I hear you.” Cordelia told her story so quickly, Pool held up a hand. “Your memories flow like water, Sa. You must slow yourself.”
“I’m sorry. I’m new at this mind to mind stuff. I need my body back!”
Pool held her arms out, and the white glow extended from her, engulfing Cordelia, but unlike Naos’s overwhelming force, this wrapped around her rather than immobilizing her. She heard the whispers of many voices like wind sighing through leaves, but it didn’t intrude on her consciousness. She smelled greenery and earth, and for the first time since she’d started for Celeste she felt real calm.
“We will journey to reclaim your body together,” Pool said. “All that is done can be undone. Remember this.”
“What happened to your tree? The Storm Lord?”
“I sensed the attack on Nettle’s mind, and so we were speaking of coming to your aid when the Storm Lord ventured from his city. We attacked and retrieved shawness Simon, though he is terribly injured and needs shawness Horace. Some of us are dead.” She fell silent, and Cordelia felt her sorrow, the sorrow of all drushka to find one of their kind missing where before they had been whole.
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