Widows of the Sun-Moon

by Barbara Ann Wright

  “This is such a mess,” Cordelia said. “I’m sorry, Pool.”

  Pool smiled. “I feel your grief, Sa, and it is welcome. Do not worry. We will see you whole again.”

  “What if I can’t be?” If she’d had a body, she wouldn’t have been able to choke the words out, but there was no hiding like this. At one time, the idea would have scared her to death. “Naos asked me how long I could be alone before I turned to her from loneliness.”

  “Hear me, Sa.” Certainty flooded Pools words even though she wasn’t speaking aloud. “The drushka will never abandon you. Do not abandon hope.”

  Cordelia felt grateful, but she didn’t know how long her body would last without her inside it. And if her body died, the rest of her would fade away.

  Unless she didn’t, and she was doomed to float around forever, watching the people she cared about yet unable to touch them, to speak with them except through Pool or Horace. Before she gave in to despair, Pool’s light flowed around her again, and she sank into it, letting it comfort her.

  *

  The fighting seemed to be done for the moment, but Horace didn’t know which deity to thank. After they’d come back inside the city, they’d collected Cordelia’s body and moved both her and Natalya a little deeper inside the city to a small, unattended house. Horace hadn’t seen the Sun-Moon, but even Nettle seemed to think better of escape at the moment, not with a mad goddess right outside the walls and two unconscious bodies to haul around. Horace pointed out that if they moved Cordelia too far, she might not be able to find her way back to herself, but he didn’t add that he also wanted to help the young girl in the field if he could. He couldn’t get her small, dirty, hopeful face out of his mind.

  Nettle and Mamet went back outside the wall despite Horace’s protests, and now he watched Natalya sleep on a narrow bed inside a small, abandoned bedroom. He wondered briefly who’d lived here. The room held another bed, probably for a partner, and it called to him, but he resisted the urge to close his eyes, focusing on Natalya instead.

  Ever since he’d been augmented, he’d wondered if he could regrow a missing limb or eye, then when Simon had taken his power, it hadn’t seemed worth the time to ponder. Now he tried but found he couldn’t do anything except seal the cavity and nudge away infection. Either it was beyond his power, or Naos had done something to prevent this sort of tampering, but how was that possible? Maybe it was just a case of having nothing left to work with.

  “Nat,” he said gently, using his power to wake her.

  Her remaining eye flew open, and she tried to sit up. “Kora?”

  Horace pushed her back down. “It’s all right, Nat. You’re safe.”

  She had to turn her head to focus on him. “Horace?” Her hand went halfway to her empty socket before it fell.

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t fix it.”

  “It’s not your fault.” She stared at nothing, and he didn’t want to use telepathy on her, but he needed answers.

  “Tell me about Kora, Nat.”

  She barked a humorless laugh, and her left eye filled with tears. “Is she all right?”

  “Fine when I left. Do you know what Naos did to Cordelia?”

  “Who?”

  “One of the paladins. You met her in the swamp. She can…leave her body. Anyway, Naos separated her from her body, and I have to figure out how to undo it. Would Kora know how? Does she know how to get rid of Naos?”

  Natalya stared at him a long time, and he recalled that he was never good at hiding things from her. “You’re going to kill her. You think that’ll undo all your troubles.” When he didn’t respond, she grabbed his arm, fist knotting in his shirt. “She’s only four years old, and Naos stole her. She grew her overnight, implanted false memories. Kora has no idea what’s happening, Horace!”

  It took him a minute to figure out what she was talking about, and then he felt sick to his stomach even thinking about it. “That’s disgusting! How is it even—”

  “None of what happened is her fault. You can fix her, Horace. It’s what you do!”

  And you couldn’t blame a shawness for being a shawness. “She has some power on her own, right? Or is that just Naos, too?”

  “I don’t know, but if you sever the link, the power might go. You can fix your friend without Naos’s power, Horace. Make Simon Lazlo help you. I’ll help you!”

  He read her desperation, certain she at least was willing to make Simon do things. The idea sickened him further. “I need to contact my friends. You should get some rest.”

  “Please don’t hurt her. Tell your friends not to hurt her.”

  “I will. Rest, Nat. It’s almost over.” He wished he could believe that. He left the room and closed his eyes, trying to block out everything as he searched out the only alien mind near Celeste. He still couldn’t contact Nettle that way, so he reached for Mamet instead, finding her nearby. “It’s Horace.”

  Mamet’s mind jerked in surprise. “I will never get used to this.”

  Horace relayed what Natalya had told him and waited while Mamet did the same for Nettle.

  “Nettle asks if we’re supposed to kill the girl or not.”

  “She’s a four-year-old!” Horace said. “We can’t! She can’t!”

  “I think she’s joking. Maybe. She wonders why you didn’t tell us not to kill the girl instead of taking so much time to explain.”

  As if that would have worked. “Are you coming back?”

  “Nettle says we’ll stay out here and watch. She says consult the Sun-Moon and tell them what you’ve learned, see if they have thoughts about this link. Perhaps it’s weakened now.”

  “Might be worth a check.” He shut off the connection and went to see if Natalya needed help going to sleep. He didn’t know why it still felt so natural to urge a wounded person to sleep. He could cure their fatigue as well as heal their wounds, but Natalya had been through something traumatic and needed real time to heal.

  So, of course, she had gone out the window. He cast his senses out and found her in the street. He sent a telepathic call, but she shut him out with her micro abilities. He ran from the house and tried to track her with power, but she did something to herself, used her abilities in a way he’d never seen, shifting the signatures of her body to blend in with those around her. When she reached a crowd of people carrying a host of wounded, she vanished from his senses. He cursed and tried to follow as best he could.

  *

  Even as she hurried through Celeste, Natalya’s power felt ahead of her, searching for Kora while hiding from Horace. She skipped over the multitude of plains dwellers and looked for that special signature of someone whose body felt newer than it should. As soon as her power touched Kora, Kora’s mind drew her in as it often did. Natalya stumbled but kept going, seeing the streets of Celeste one moment and the plains of Kora’s mind the next.

  Kora was in a dream of Naos’s again, sitting on green grass and watching a long metal string that led high into the sky.

  “Kora, what are you doing?”

  Kora turned as if Natalya was there with her and not just in her mind. “Mom made me a new party dress.” White and pink, it had ribbons on the sleeves. “It’s my birthday.”

  Before Natalya could argue that it probably wasn’t, Naos appeared next to her. Natalya stumbled again, but when this Naos spoke, she had the other voice, the one that sometimes tempered the mad goddess.

  “I loved that dress,” the other Naos said. “She didn’t often make me things, but that dress was special.”

  Kora grinned. “Maman loved me.” She reached toward her throat. The bone necklace appeared there, and she was dressed once again in leather. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Natalya.”

  “It’s all right, Kora. You can wake up now.”

  The pleasant landscape stayed the same, blinking in and out of Natalya’s vision.

  “I’ve tried to be helpful,” the other Naos said. “When I could.”

  “Then wake her up!” Natalya
shouted, but the other Naos didn’t seem to hear her.

  There were other people in the grassy park, but as Natalya watched, they transformed into plains dwellers. She thought Kora might be waking, but these plains dwellers lurched in haunting steps, blood pouring from wounds across their bodies.

  Kora stood. “Change it back.”

  “I’m not doing it,” other Naos said. “I’m sorry, Kora.”

  “Wake up!” Natalya shouted. “You can do it, Kora!”

  Kora put her hands over her ears again. “I don’t want to go back! I don’t like the hurting. I don’t want to break my promise!”

  The dead plains dwellers stabbed one another with weapons made of smoke. They bled and screamed but didn’t fall down, hurting each other over and over.

  “Do you think you’d be better off where we found you?” It was the same voice as before, and the same woman sat there, but Natalya knew she’d changed into the real Naos. She managed a wink in Natalya’s direction before her right eye faded to a black void.

  A headless corpse staggered toward Kora, and she screamed. “Make it stop!”

  Naos looked to Natalya. “This is on you. You put ideas in her head, and then she saw you turn against me, so I’m having to scare her into accepting me again.”

  “Stop it. Stop this.” Natalya reached for Kora, but she wasn’t there.

  “I want to go home!” Kora cried.

  “You are home, dearest.” Naos forced Kora’s hands down so she had to see the dead killing one another over and over. “And this will be home forever if you try to keep me out ever again.” She looked back to Natalya. “After you were gone, you see, she tried to deny me. She’s never done that before.”

  “Leave her alone! If you want to punish me, punish me.”

  Kora screamed. “Take it away! I’ll do anything, please!”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” Naos said.

  Natalya sobbed and called for the other Naos, but no one answered. Kora faded slowly until she seemed like an afterimage next to Naos, who turned and gave Natalya a final wave. “See you soon.”

  The vision faded, and in Celeste, Natalya picked up speed. They tried to stop her at the hasty barricade at the edge of the city, but she flung them away with power and pushed her way through, ignoring the shouts behind her. The world turned gray in dawn. The ground was a ruin of scorch marks and overturned earth, and corpses dotted the field as if spilled from a giant sack. The fires had gone out, and the air turned chilly. A low fog rolled in, lingering with the smoke.

  People moved through the haze like ghosts, and she didn’t know if they were helping the wounded or looting them, maybe consuming them in this mad world. She headed for Kora, dreading what she’d find. Even across the field, she sensed the link, pulsing like an evil heart in Kora’s mind. When she saw the smirk, she knew girl and goddess were joined, maybe for good.

  Natalya shook her head, not knowing what to do. Her empty socket itched, but she didn’t bother to use power to ease it. She’d let this go on too long. She should have done more, should have tried harder to break the link when she had the chance. Maybe death was the answer, but every inch of her argued against that. There had to be a way. But as Naos stalked closer, Natalya sensed the difference in the link. It infused Kora in a way it hadn’t before, and Natalya bet that were she a telepath, she wouldn’t get any sense of Kora at all.

  “What have you done?” Natalya asked.

  “What I had to.”

  “You killed her.”

  She held out Kora’s arms. “Does she look dead to you?”

  “She feels dead.”

  Naos put on a pout. “Well, now you don’t have to feel so sorry for her. She’s resting comfortably in an endless sleep. How’s the eye?”

  Natalya resisted the urge to touch the empty socket. “You can’t just do this.” Inside, she called herself a moron for even saying such a thing. Who did she think she was dealing with?

  “Who indeed?” Naos said. “I must admit, I’m impressed. I thought for sure all the fight had gone out of you.”

  And it had, in a way. Maybe what she’d meant was that she was too tired to deal with any of this anymore. Maybe it would be better to be dead.

  Naos backhanded her with such force it lifted her from her feet. She landed in a heap again, the air rushing from her lungs. She shouldn’t have come back. She’d been free, and she’d come back for Kora. She tried to heal what had to be a broken cheek, but her power snapped off.

  “Take her eye, and she still doesn’t learn,” Naos said. “You’re mine. Your life, your death, your everything. Nothing will ever happen to you again without my permission.”

  Natalya tried to respond, but her jaw wouldn’t work, and pain roared through her, making her cough and choke.

  “Here, let me help you.” The pain slowly leeched from Natalya’s face. “Now, how do I teach you so that the lesson sticks, hmm? If I take your other eye, how will you see? An arm? A leg? No, I can’t have you hopping after me.”

  Natalya drew a ragged breath. A crowd of plains dwellers had wandered toward them through the fog, all healed by the looks of things, but she couldn’t know for sure without her power.

  “Ah ha!” Naos said. “There’s a thought.”

  Pain stabbed through Natalya’s head, blocking out her vision from somewhere inside. It faded quickly, and she was left wondering what happened, but Naos turned and moved away. She still looked like Kora, like a normal girl, but Natalya couldn’t feel her anymore, couldn’t sense the link. Was Naos still keeping her from her powers? But she didn’t feel the same block as before. She raised a hand to her neck and felt for her pulse, could only feel it with her fingers, not with her mind. She reached out to a nearby stone, but it wouldn’t obey her command to rise into the air.

  Her powers. Gone. Stolen. One of the few things she’d ever cared about gone as quickly as dirt swallowing a raindrop.

  Tears clouded her vision, her one-sided vision, and rolled down her cheek. Loss upon loss. Her eye, then Kora, now this. Why not just kill her? She’d thought what Simon Lazlo had done had been the worst thing, to offer supreme power that her mind couldn’t handle, but to have it all taken away?

  She wept for Kora and her power, smart enough to know which meant more to her. In the field, Naos laughed, and Natalya sobbed in a way she hadn’t done since childhood, when power had been far in her future, and she’d had no idea what really mattered.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  In the light of dawn, Horace marveled at how empty Celeste had become. Doors hung open, and debris dotted the street: spilled baskets, torn blankets, a few trinkets. But the closer he got to the barricades in front of the gates, the fewer people he saw. He didn’t even bother to search for Natalya anymore. He knew where she’d gone; he sensed great power in the field beyond. Natalya must have found either the girl or the goddess that possessed her.

  “Nat,” he whispered in frustration. Why couldn’t she have waited for him?

  There were some guards lingering near the wall, and he hesitated, not knowing if he should follow her out there. He thought to send a message to Mamet, but he didn’t want either her or Nettle to get involved if Naos was throwing power around again. He heard one of the guards saying that people were fleeing the city to the north, as Cordelia had suggested, but it was too late for her, maybe even for them if Naos chased them up the coast.

  Even with his senses pulled back, Horace spotted another power nearby, undoubtedly the Sun-Moon in one of the structures near the breach. Before he could pull his power wholly back, he felt their telepathic call, a summons they could easily turn into a command. He groaned and stepped into a dim building. He sensed their pain from the night before and healed them in moments. If they were going to end the war, they needed their strength.

  “Well, that didn’t go as expected,” they said. “It was a good plan, but all it did was cripple your friend and kill ours.”

  Horace looked to the numerous wounded and de
ad lying in the room and spotted Aaron, one of their friends from space. His eyes had rolled back to the capillaries, and his face was slack, mouth open. Horace didn’t sense any wounds in the body. Naos had probably destroyed his mind as she was going to destroy Nat’s.

  “Two friends crippled?” the Sun-Moon asked. “How unfortunate.”

  He sighed. “Please stop spying on my thoughts. And yes, I want to attack the link to Naos again. It seems the only way to stop this without killing more people. Unless killing lots of people is what you want?”

  “Trying to read our thoughts now? We don’t want you forgetting who’s the stronger power here.”

  His temper began to boil. Usually anger and resentment and all the other bad shit other people nurtured in their hearts rolled off him. He knew the Sun-Moon were speaking from a place of pain, one where they feared Naos could overpower them, but they didn’t want to admit it. They were scared, and he didn’t even need power to confirm it.

  But he was sick and tired of being pushed around. “What do you want?”

  “Don’t go far again. If you want to brood, do it inside the city. Fajir will look after you.”

  She waited near the door, and as he left, happy to not be in the Sun-Moon’s presence whether they wanted it or not, he felt another jolt of anger. He took a few deep breaths and sensed the Sun-Moon turning their attention elsewhere, probably commanding their troops. They weren’t even bothering to keep a close eye on him. Either they thought they had him cowed, or they thought he was scared. Maybe they knew he’d have a hard time leaving Cordelia behind. So they left him with a babysitter who had no actual power.

  An idea began to bloom, but he kept it muted, his shields tight. “I need to find my friends.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Out there.”

  She shook her head. “Call them here with your mind.”