by Sam Farren
They scorned the one who needed the gods the most, made a shield of their own fear and made light of all that kept it tethered to the earth. There were so many of them. They’d come closer and closer, they’d take Brackish from Eos, from her, and they’d cast the spirit into the ocean. They’d condemn her to the waves and jagged rocks, where she would sink and sink into the silt that would never rise upon a mountaintop, blue light lost to the dark water.
They were going to take Brackish. Eos couldn’t fight them off. There were so many, but they were one, rising like an ocean wave, ready to drown Eos and Brackish both. They were willing to reinforce all the reasons Brackish had to hold onto the bitter dregs of her distant past.
They were going to take Brackish, but Castelle needed her. She needed her to prove who she was, to prove she was anything.
They were going to take Brackish, but Castelle couldn’t let them. She couldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t.
She snatched the bag from Eos’ back. It caught on her shoulder, but the contents spilt, spirit-sword falling into her open arms.
The crowd pressed closer, Eos lashed out an arm, but the sword was glowing and Castelle was running, sprinting, charging along the smooth stone ground, tearing across Fél in a blaze of blue as The Preserver sat unmoving, watching over her.
Chapter Sixteen
The bear trap creaked, jaws spreading open. The trigger rose, hidden in the long grass, and the trap was never sprung. Metal never met flesh, never scraped across bone. Castelle spent those missing months in the hills, back and forth, back and forth, making up for the stillness of temple life.
There were no fractures in her bones. Blue light coursed through her, filling the faults, smoothing over like clear ice covering a murky lake. Her legs were strong, and her lungs drew down deep breaths as her feet pounded the uneven ground, rock solidified in ripples and waves.
Fél was the smallest of the inhabited islands. There was the port town, the caves and the statue, and a few settlements that thrived on fishing and tourist trade, barely worth calling villages in their own right. There was nowhere for her to go, for her to hide, no forests to lose the crowd that’d gathered for piety and set themselves to a different purpose altogether.
Her heart pounded. Her mouth split into a grin. Castelle gripped Brackish to her chest, sword warm through the cloth and twine, blue light trailing behind her like smoke caught in the wind.
Half the crowd had fallen behind, frustrated they couldn’t keep up with her, not knowing what they’d do with the spirit.
Just a little further. That’s all it’d take. Away from the main town, across the unforgiving basalt, towards the coast. The people would lose interest after another mile. They’d convince themselves they’d been outpaced by everything but courage and head back to the town to keep watch. They’d ensure their families were safe, ensure the spirit’s blue lights didn’t blaze through the night.
Castelle caught her foot on a rock, tripped, but didn’t fall. She stumbled without losing her gait, charged down the hillside along the coast, cliffs falling away sharply, ancient trails of lava spilling towards the ocean, finally stopped.
Spirits rose from the rocks, blue light reflecting against the sea.
Birds squawked, circling her. Brackish thrummed. A little further and they’d both be safe, they’d both be free of the pilgrims and their sharp eyes, fixating on a spirit; not the life that had unfolded before one last betrayal, seeing a woman with long red hair and a Yrician that spoke for her. They’d put the pieces together, cobbling rumours into action. The Princess of Fenroe, the survivor of her own assassination, sprinting with a spirit in her arms.
The archipelago would come alive with it, islands drifting closer together, spreading their word along the empty miles. It was a prophecy none had dared to utter, fulfilled after a decade and a half of silence.
Sharp rocks rose along the stone beach, spreading out into the sea, cutting off most of the land, by boat. The spirits gathered, but what did she have to fear? Castelle had Brackish in her arms. Those ahead couldn’t do a thing to her. She flew forward, beach betraying her. The rocks caught her arms, her knees, but it was as nothing. They were just bruises, bruises and scrapes, and she could outpace any who followed.
Castelle glanced over her shoulder as she pushed herself up, Brackish thrown to the water’s edge. She’d been right about those who’d come to Fél with a head full of prayers. They’d shirked their responsibility, as their gods had shirked Brackish and all the spirits across all the lands.
Only one person had followed her. Only one person had dared come near the lingering spirits. Castelle reached for Brackish, but Eos’ boot pressed between her shoulder blades, pinning her down.
“Stop this,” Eos hissed, breathing heavily. Castelle gripped the rocks she’d tripped on, but without the blue light engulfing her, couldn’t push Eos off. “You’ve hurt yourself. Stop. Stop.”
“I can’t!” Castelle said. “They’re going to catch up, they’re going to catch up, and they’re going to take her from me, Eos. Get off!”
“Who is going to catch up?” Eos asked, crouching slowly. She took Castelle’s shoulders and pulled her up, fingers digging in tightly. “No one followed. No one but me. You ran off with a blazing spirit. No one was foolish enough to risk following you, to get this close to Fél’s spirits.”
“No one but you,” Castelle said, words losing their bite halfway through.
Something metallic flooded her mouth. Castelle pressed her fingers to her lips and saw blood.
“No one but me,” Eos said, one eye on Brackish.
The spirit-sword had landed hilt-up, caught in a prism of rocks. The tide lapped against Brackish, turning the cloth a dull grey, and the light faded as sea-salt overpowered it.
“You’re hurt,” Eos repeated, chest still rising and falling heavily. “Here. Let me see.”
How far had she run for Eos to be exhausted? Castelle didn’t recognise anything behind her, couldn’t comprehend running so far. Walking had been a strain, those last few months, and before that, she had no real endurance stockpiled. The town was out of sight, the volcano lost to the crest of a rocky hill, and while the island was only three miles at its widest, she’d crossed it in what felt like minutes.
The waves still lapped at Brackish. Eos needed to worry about the sword, not her. Brackish was going to be washed away, out to sea, as good as though the gods themselves had condemned her to its depths.
Castelle reached out. Eos eased her back, but needn’t have.
Pain ran up the outside of her ribs. Castelle yelped, looking at herself for the first time. It wasn’t just her lip she’d cut. The rocks had caught her left shin and forearm, gouging rather than impaling. Had she not suffered a break so recently, had it not flooded back as the spirit’s light left her bones, she would’ve sobbed, certain her arm and leg were both shattered.
Her face paled, skin clammy. She gripped Eos’ shoulders, determined not to look down at her torn skin and bright blood, lest her stomach turn.
“It looks worse than it is,” Eos said. “It will sting because of the grit in it, and there will be bruises. But nothing worse.”
“Easy for you to say,” Castelle muttered, wincing as she let Eos pull her up and ease her to the coast’s only flat-topped rock.
She sat with her head tilted back, watching the clouds. Eos searched her bag for the supplies Reed had laden her with. For the first time in weeks, a sliver of blue broke through the swarm of clouds, so unlike that of a spirit’s glow.
“Why did you run off with Brackish?” Eos asked, peeling back Castelle’s trouser leg and using a canteen to dampen a cloth. “Why did you charge into the spirit’s land?”
Why had she run off with Brackish? It was obvious! Too obvious to speak of! She scoffed, wishing it wouldn’t hurt to fold her arms over her chest.
“I took her because…” Castelle said, jaw moving without her say so. “I took her because. Because they would’ve taken he
r, otherwise. Because they would’ve looked at us and put two and two together, they would’ve realised who we are, what Brackish represented, and they wouldn’t let us leave.”
“They?”
Castelle straightened as Eos pressed the cloth to her scraped shin, fingers digging into the side of the rock.
“The… the people. They were crowding us. Surrounding us. More of a mob, really. They wanted Brackish. They wanted to take her, to throw her into the ocean,” Castelle said. “So I took her and ran, because you weren’t going to.”
“They wanted the sword,” Eos agreed. “They were concerned. This is sacred land, and a spirit was suddenly glowing. But at worst, they would’ve escorted us from the island. Spirits are to be treated with solemn respect. No one followed you. No one but me.”
“I…” Castelle bit the inside of her cheek. Eos wrapped a length of clean bandage around her leg and pulled the cloth back over it. “I had to run.”
“With a broken leg?”
“It isn’t broken. Wasn’t broken. I—you saw me, Eos. I’ve never run faster,” Castelle said.
Her eyes darted around, searching for answers, for an explanation. It was hard to find, without Brackish’s song overriding sense.
“No one has,” Eos said, shaking her head.
Castelle raised her brow and Eos reached up, using a clean corner of the cloth to wipe the last of the blood from Castelle’s lower lip.
“Oh,” Castelle said, sitting very still.
Eos cleaned Castelle’s arm in the same way. Once she was done, she sat on the rock with her.
She entwined her fingers, eyes on Brackish, saltwater rising around the blade of the sword.
“What are we going to do with her?” Eos asked. “She is intent on making trouble, and you always listen to her.”
“I do not,” Castelle said. “I haven’t heard a single word from Brackish, though my thoughts may have been swayed in unusual directions. Which isn’t much of an achievement. Wine has been known to do the same. She hasn’t spoken to me, Eos. I don’t know what she wants, other than a vague, all-consuming desire to be away from here. From me. From the archipelago. I can’t say.”
Eos rose from the rock and stood by the land’s end. The wind whipped at her cloak, throwing her hood back, and Eos braved it as her long hair flew about her face. Castelle braved her bruised ribs and wrapped her arms around herself, keeping the coastal winds at bay.
Eos knelt by the water’s edge and pulled Brackish from the rocks. Sopping wet, the bundle of cloth and twine glowed in gratitude. Eos pinned the sword to her side with her elbow and began unknotting the twine, far more intricately bound than the first time Castelle had seen it.
Castelle only had to be near Brackish for the sword to poison her thoughts, fumes rising from the light and filling her lungs, yet Eos peeled back the cloth and held the sword by its hilt. To her, it was only metal. Brackish’s anger didn’t touch her, and the centuries spent in a box didn’t sway Eos.
She turned the sword in her hand, surprised by how light it was, and sat by Castelle with Brackish propped across her lap.
“No sudden movements,” Eos said.
Castelle’s mouth twitched at the corners.
“Do you want to listen to her?” Eos asked. “She had you bring her here for a reason.”
“I’m starting to think it isn’t about what I want. If Brackish wants to be heard, then speak for her.”
Eos rested both hands upon the blade. It was closer in colour to rock than metal, but Brackish could still draw blood, given the right persuasion. With her eyes closed and lips pressed into a tight line, Eos left fingerprints along the blade.
Castelle leant closer.
No light rose to make rivers of Eos’ scars. Strange that there were as many of them as there always had been, that they were no shallower than ever, but they did not strike her as they once had. They were not an outside force, scored upon her; they were part of her face, no different to her nose, her lips.
“What is she saying?” Castelle asked.
Eos opened one eye.
“Nothing. Brackish has chosen this moment to cease her howling.”
“Stagefright,” Castelle said, clicking her tongue. “Well, Brackish? Is there nothing you wish to say to me? I am a Greyser, after all.”
Blue light pooled around Eos’ fingertips.
“She says you are. That your bloodline started this, made her what she is, and as the end of it, you should…” Eos frowned. “I am not repeating that, Brackish.”
Eos turned the sword in her lap, blade pointing towards the ocean.
“It goes without saying. I’ve felt your anger. I suppose I should say I’m sorry, but I can’t fathom where it came from. What did my family do to you that was so much worse than what they did to the rest of Fenroe?”
The light rose and didn’t fade.
The spirits lining the beach were given a purpose beyond mere haunting for the first time in centuries. They drew towards Brackish, moving like the flame of a torch without wood or kindling. They were shapeless, lost in the present, past forgotten, nothing to them but burning light and anger they couldn’t let go of.
As the lights swirled together, the rest of the world grew dim. Entangled, the blue of a dozen spirits finally found a form: two people stood before them, made of light. There was no fear in Castelle’s heart. They weren’t going to turn towards her, weren’t going to rush through her, making their shape solid and whole.
To the spirits, neither Castelle nor Eos were there. The spirits stood facing one another, arms moving as they spoke. No sound filled the air, only ringing in the back of Castelle’s head.
“What are they saying?” Castelle whispered. “What does this mean?”
“You can’t hear them?” Eos asked, without looking away.
Castelle shook her head. Eos’ lips parted silently, mouthing along as the spirits spoke.
“Well?”
“They are speaking of Fél, in particular. The woman with red hair remarked that the gods had not turned them away, so—”
“The woman with red hair? Eos, all I see is blue light.”
Castelle’s eyes were on Eos, not the spirits, determined to see what she saw. Their light washed over her face, the same as it did Castelle’s, and nothing reflected in her eyes.
The spirits had chosen Eos, for whatever it would amount to. Brackish had screamed wordlessly inside Castelle’s head, but it was Eos who saw the truth for herself, Eos who saw shapes in the spirits without having to reach out, without letting them in, giving some small part of herself over.
Eos grabbed Castelle’s wrist. Castelle hadn’t meant to lift her hand, but it was too late. Her fingertips brushed against the light that made up a hand, and the dozens of spirits making up a single memory rushed into her.
For a moment, a hand of blood and flesh brushed against hers.
Castelle’s vision cleared. The shape of the coast changed, jagged rocks standing up to the waves, and the sky grew bright with the illusion of hope.
The image branded itself in Castelle’s mind.
She knew the woman on the right, the woman who said The gods of this land have accepted us. They see nothing wrong with the path we take. Her portrait had hung in the castle’s grand atrium, watching over them all.
Ava Greyser. The first Queen of Fenroe.
History unfolded before them, but it was the other woman Castelle’s eyes were drawn to. Not her ancestor, there in what felt like the flesh.
If this was Brackish’s memory, she remembered Ava Greyser, not herself. Brackish’s long-dead human body flickered in the corner of Castelle’s vision, all shadow, crackling with black light, never quite holding its shape.
That didn’t stop her from hearing Brackish’s words.
The gods of this land are the gods of our land, she said, laughing. They are one and the same. Just because they have not struck us down on holy land doesn’t mean they approve of everything we’ve done.
/> Eos’ fingers tightened around Castelle’s wrist. The vision faded, replaced by the spirits’ light taking on two human forms, slowly dispersing, lost to the wind.
“Gods. Gods, what was that?” Castelle asked, sky dull, wind rough against her face. “I—I felt her. Gods, Eos, she touched my hand. That was—was that real?”
“It was a memory,” Eos murmured. “It was what Brackish wanted us to see.”
“Then she knew my family? She must’ve come to Fenroe with Ava, mustn’t she? That was some two-hundred years ago. She was originally from Nor, as I’m sure you well know. The Kingdom was in a terrible state, and all she wanted was a better life here.”
Castelle’s history lessons had all been about one thing. Her ancestors escaping the instability of Nor and heading north, only to find the archipelago fractured. She’d worked for decades to piece the islands back together, to open trade routes to Nor and Amaros, and she’d been given her throne by virtue of the spirit she’d trapped in a sword, saving the archipelago in a different way.
But the woman who stood before Ava had been Brackish. It was her memory, was something that’d unfolded on that very spot. How could she both stand before Ava and be an ancient spirit that’d forever tormented the archipelago?
“Dozens of people came from Nor with Ava Greyser, then hundreds. Brackish could be any one of the countless footnotes in history books,” Castelle said. “I’d wager her story ends in betrayal of one sort of another. It seems thematic, with my family.”
Eos tapped the hilt of the sword. There was all the evidence it hadn’t ended well.
Castelle pulled her hair over her shoulder, fingers twisting in it.
“What does she want?” Castelle asked. “What can I do for her?”
If she wanted to take responsibility for the islands, for what her family had done over so many centuries, that was the place to start. For so long, Brackish had been used as a pretence of power, while being kept in a box. Whatever had happened between the person Brackish had been and Castelle’s ancestor had been so awful she’d ensured Brackish’s punishment was carried out by all her descendants.