by Tammy Salyer
Tuzhazu drew himself to his feet, watching the urzidae warily. He continued chanting, and within a few moments, several nearby Deathless had gathered around him and taken hold of him under each arm. They lifted him away, and the rest of the Minothian Deathless still of sound body began marching slowly after them, as if half-asleep, toward the Cosmoculous Tower.
Overhead, the triple moons were nearly aligned.
As soon as the Archon was out of reach, the beast turned back to her. In a state of resigned horror, Isemay watched Tuzhazu’s blood dripping from its horn. She lowered herself over Salukis’s motionless form, not knowing if she was trying to defend him or just giving up.
The beast approached, slowly, almost delicately.
“Isemay.”
Impossibly, she heard her da speaking to her, right next to her ear.
“Here, around Salukis’s neck. It’s me.”
Salukis’s neck…of course, her memory keeper! She eyed the beast warily. It hadn’t moved. It simply stood in place and stared back at her.
Cautiously, she moved her hand up and unfolded a blood-damp layer of Salukis’s shirt. The dragørfly pendant lay there, unblemished. Her father’s face stared out of it. “Da?”
“Isemay, I can’t explain this to you, but I need you to crawl onto the back of this creature before you. It will take you to safety.”
Her eyes shot back to the urzidae, who, though monstrously misshapen, remained docile.
“No, Da, I can’t leave Salukis here. I can’t…I can’t tell if he’s breathing.”
The beast looked away in the direction Tuzhazu had run, appearing almost…sad?
“Where’s your mum, Isemay?”
“She’s in the tower. She’ll never be able to hold them all off. Where are you, Da? Can you help her, warn her? Please, tell her she has to get out!”
“I can’t reach her through the Mentalios.” The frustration in her da’s voice was edged enough to cut through crystal. “And this form can’t fight them all…”
This form…what does that mean?
“Why are you here, Isemay?” he asked, his voice so tired the light breeze carried it easily away.
At first, she thought he was asking a real question, and she answered without thinking. “I needed a flute, an aulos. To raise the Cosmoculous.” Salukis was so still, his eyes not moving beneath his bruise-dark lids. The blood coming from his torso had slowed, but there was so much. He still wore his flute tied to his belt. How was it possible he hadn’t broken it? She reached for it, wanting to run her fingers along the engraved patterns in the double pipes, wanting to remember the night he’d shown her how to play it. She’d come here for this flute, or another like it, but she’d have given anything to have him speaking to her instead of having found it.
Then she realized her da hadn’t meant why was she here specifically, on this field. He only meant why was she here, why were any of them here, why was any of this happening? He was as hopeless and bereft as she.
His voice cut through her increasingly darkening thoughts. “A flute? To raise the Cosmoculous? Why? Explain what you mean.”
“The Cosmoculous is part of the Churss, and it’s inside the tower, lowered over the Everlight’s vessel. If it is raised to the tower’s top, the Equifulcrum can align over it, and it will undo the shackles binding the Everlight. Mum has a book written by another Archon that explains it all. If the Cosmoculous isn’t raised, the cage won’t be broken. There’s a song the Zhallah play that moves the Churss, and it’ll move the Cosmoculous. I came to get a flute to play it.”
“You know this song?”
His tone was urgent, almost harsh, as if she were about to get in trouble. But she hadn’t done anything. She just wanted to go home, sit at the dinner table with her parents, laugh about whatever chastisement she’d been given by the teachers at the Conservatum that day—sometimes deserved, sometimes not. “Da,” she pleaded, “where are you?”
But he wouldn’t relent. “Isemay, listen, can you play this song? Can you take his instrument and play it?”
She swiped the tears of anger that had joined her tears of sadness. “Yes, I can do it,” she said defiantly. “But we’re so far from the tower it won’t matter. Why are you pressing this?”
“Reach into his carryall at his waist.”
His tone was commanding, not her father anymore but the Stallari. She did what he said and drew out, of all things, Deespora’s Fenestros. “How did you—?”
“Never mind. Listen carefully. We’re going to raise that stone. Take the flute and the Fenestros, and your memory keeper, and get on the urzidae.”
“Da—”
“Isemay, do it. We’re going to release Mithlí and save your mother. The Zhallah will come for Salukis now that the Minothians are gone from the field. But this isn’t something we have time to argue about.”
He was right, of course. And the Zhallah tenders might be able to help Salukis in a way she could not. After gathering the items, she leaned down to his ear and whispered, “I will find you again when this is over, Lukis. Please don’t leave me for good.” Then she stood, feeling a weariness that was not in her body but in her spirit, and climbed atop the frightening urzidae.
Chapter Fifty
Symvalline hadn’t seen anything but the wrath-red face of the approaching Archon for too long. The Cosmoculous seemed altogether consumed with him, and the scene playing across its surface followed him with a bird’s-eye view.
She would have abandoned the tower when she saw Isemay run recklessly onto the stalled battlefield to the side of the poor, badly wounded Zhallah boy, but the urzidae’s attack on Tuzhazu that caused him to flee showed her Isemay was at least momentarily safe. Probably safer there, in fact, than she would be in the tower with Symvalline. The Archon and his forces were now at the tower door.
And Symvalline and the three remaining Zhallah children were trapped.
Despite being made of metal, the door wouldn’t stay closed for long. The Archon held a Fenestros, and he would find a way to get it open.
The lighting inside the vessel’s chamber continued to pulse and wane, its light flashing stronger each time. What light from the three moons found its way down the tower’s shaft and through the Cosmoculous was likewise intensifying, though still diffuse. The air held a weight of expectation. Yet no matter what angle or consideration she took trying to imagine an outcome to this that saw Tuzhazu defeated and the Zhallahs freed, she came up short. There was simply no way she and the Zhallah children could escape, not with the mass of Minothians-turned-Deathless following the brutal Archon, not with the Zhallahs all but defeated, and not with no other way in or out of the tower.
No matter how loudly she called to Ulfric through her Mentalios, it came to nothing. She hadn’t seen him on the battlefield, only the bruhawks, and had no idea where he was. Even if she did, she could think of no way he could help, either.
The sound of heavy, deliberate hammering echoed up the tower to them. Tuzhazu, striking the door. It was a tolling bell, like those that played for the dead in Asteryss. She looked to the wall where the three Zhallah children huddled. The sheen of tears in their wide eyes lit up brightly each time the vessel’s light pulsed. They were so afraid.
“I will keep him at bay as long as I can,” she promised, hating how little anything she did would matter.
The youngest, the girl named Cylli, whimpered, and the older girl comforted her in an embrace as she said to Symvalline, “We know you did what you could, lady of Vinnr. And maybe Dwoon and your daughter will make it back. There’s still time.”
Symvalline smiled sadly. The girl had strength, and hope still, and Symvalline would not dampen that with her own lack of it.
Then came the clanking crash of the tower’s door being thrown open, hard enough to hit the inner wall. It echoed so loudly she almost expected the building to shake. The stairway was too narrow for more than one person to climb, and when finally the sound of stomping boots could be heard on
the other side of the chamber door, she was ready for him.
Tuzhazu shoved the door open. Blood coated the right side of his body from the urzidae’s horn. His eyes, too, were red-rimmed and blazing with fury and triumph. He lingered in the doorway, regarding Symvalline, who stood in front of the children.
“Oh you Vinnrics, you’re like the plague yourselves. Everywhere you aren’t welcome,” he said.
“Even if you win today, Akeeva will expose you. She knows this is wrong—” Symvalline began.
“Akeeva is dead and her head will make a pretty trophy. I sent the Deathless to finish what I started. I don’t need any further interruptions to my rule. Arc Rheunos will no longer be subjected to weak leaders who refuse to do what’s necessary. And now nothing else stands in my way.”
Inwardly aghast, all Symvalline could think of were the children who’d been in the antechamber to Akeeva’s rooms. Had they witnessed the murder of the one they thought was their maker? If so, what would, or had, become of them?
Keeping her voice calm, she said steadily, “I do.” And with every bit of force she had in her, she flung her last three klinkí stones at his face.
The vessel’s light pulsed, harder than ever, just before the stones found their mark. The room went white, and Symvalline was blinded completely. Her hands rose to shield her eyes reflexively, but of course that didn’t help. Before her vision cleared, she heard a low chuckle.
The sound nearly drained her of her strength.
“I’ve dealt with these nuisances for the last time,” Tuzhazu said.
Blinking away the spots, she focused on him once more. He’d taken a few steps closer to the vessel and now held her wystic stones, all of them, out in his hand as if to offer them back. Symvalline tried to call them, but they merely danced in his palm, jerking toward her, then back toward the Fenestros he held in his other hand. Tuzhazu suddenly closed his fist around the stones and clenched it. She could hear the stones cracking in his palm. And when he opened it, they were bits of dust and tiny pebbles. He shook them free, staring at her.
“I’m going to do the same to you—”
A loud but low tone filled the bore of the tower, coming from above them, snapping off Tuzhazu’s words like a branch. It was a deep note, like what you would hear from a wind instrument, but hundreds of times louder than any instrument Symvalline had ever heard. Both she and Tuzhazu looked toward the Cosmoculous, neither understanding what they were hearing.
In a moment, the tone changed, becoming a lighter note, then changed again. Each note rang for several beats, evening out like a chant of some kind.
The Cosmoculous began to move.
Behind her, Symvalline heard one of the children. “It’s the Churss melody. Someone is playing it.”
The Churss melody? Was this the power to move the Churss that Isemay had spoken of?
“How is it moving? Why?” Tuzhazu yelled to no one in particular. Then his eyes fell on Symvalline. “Are you part of this, Vinnric? You are, aren’t you?”
She wanted to spite him with a laugh but held it back, merely challenging him with her gaze.
He crossed the room, stopping briefly beneath the Cosmoculous to watch it roll upward a few more inches, then shoved Symvalline aside and gripped the arm of the older Zhallah, Eleni. “You’ll tell me what’s happening, girl.”
Symvalline lunged at him, but he struck her hard in the chest with his fist wrapped around the Fenestros. She slammed against the far wall, feeling as if her torso had caved in, struggling mightily to breathe. It felt like the world’s weight on her breastbone as she began to push herself to her hands and knees.
His eyes returned to Eleni’s face, and he pulled her close enough to kiss. “Who is doing this and why? Tell me and I will spare you. I’ll make you part of my Deathless Guard.”
“El—” Symvalline tried to cry, but her voice couldn’t break free of her wounded lungs. Don’t, was all she managed, the word a whisper’s whisper.
Eleni was terrified, too terrified to hear her. “It’s a way to break the cage Archon Akeeva discovered. If-if the Equifulcrum can shine through the Cosmoculous onto the vessel, Mithlí will be free.”
Tuzhazu glared at her a moment longer, then shoved her away and turned to the vessel. The other two children wrapped their arms around Eleni, crying soundlessly. Symvalline’s chest burned. She couldn’t straighten, couldn’t stand, wasn’t even sure if she could drag herself to him and make him fight her. Overhead, the long, tonal sounds continued, and the Cosmoculous had risen far enough that its bottom curve was out of sight.
“No…” Tuzhazu whispered. “No no no.”
He rushed to the statue, a man he’d known in life, once an ally, surely, and then later as their maker’s vessel. He gripped the man’s arm where it was outstretched defensively—and began to pull it.
Catching Eleni’s eyes with her own, Symvalline jerked her chin weakly toward the open door. While Tuzhazu was distracted, they had a chance to escape. Where they’d go was another concern, but anywhere but near the deranged Archon was better than here. Eleni seemed to understand and gently took the hands of Onni and Cylli. Their flight from the room went unhindered, Tuzhazu wholly focused on the inert vessel.
Even over the reverberating notes coming from outside, now rising louder and faster, Symvalline could hear stone scraping over stone. If he moved the vessel too far, the light of the Equifulcrum would not reach it, and Mithlí would remain caged. She couldn’t let that happen.
Chapter Fifty-One
Isemay sat atop the urzidae and played Salukis’s flute. Deespora’s Fenestros lay wedged between the instrument’s dual pipes while her da spoke an Elder Veros incantation through the memory keeper she wore around her neck once more, amplifying the flute’s notes through the celestial stone.
From above the ravine that led to the secret path past the barrows to the Cosmoculous Tower, the arrhythmic sounds she played were as loud as ten waterfalls, maybe a hundred, and they soared from the rocky outcrop like the summoning pipes at Aster Keep.
Below them, the Minothian Deathless Guards stood like statues in the small clearing outside the base of the tower. They looked around as the resounding notes pressed into the valley, but the sound bounced from the fortress walls to the mountains’ flanks and back, making the direction they came from unknowable.
Above, the three moons were no longer visible. Now almost fully aligned, it seemed there was only one, the pale, blue, and red colors slowly melding into a single great orb, like the Eye of the Cosmos itself staring down at them.
With a heart that no longer had room for fear, or sadness, or even hope, Isemay simply closed her eyes and thought of Salukis’s laughing eyes, his teasing smile, the way he’d shown her how to hold the flute and breathe through the reeds. She played the notes exactly as she’d heard him play them. She played them perfectly.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Lying on her side on the chamber floor, Symvalline spotted Isemay’s surrendered Deathless Guard’s sword. It still leaned where she’d left it at the end of the vessel’s platform. With soft cries she struggled to hush, she reached out, wedging her fingertips into the grooves between floor stones, and pulled herself forward. Again. Once more, her own struggle matching Tuzhazu’s as he continued to yank the current vessel away. He was weakened from his wound, and the vessel’s weight was amplified by its celestial prisoner, but he was managing to move the vessel from the center of the platform, fingerbreadth by fingerbreadth.
Feeling the ends of her cracked ribs grinding together, she reached out and touched the sword’s cold hilt. She gripped it with one hand, and with her other, she stretched to grasp the lip of the platform.
“No, curse the Verities, no!” Tuzhazu was yelling, but his voice had an edge in it she hadn’t heard before. Panic.
She looked up into the bore of the tower and saw what had sparked his reaction. The Cosmoculous crystal was far above them now, lighting the space with a glow that nearly burned the ey
e. Faintly perceptible, a white luminance swirled inside the crystal, like the eye of a hurricane. And as she looked, two more lights joined the first, one a deep ocean blue and the other fire red. The colors grew denser and filled the orb, spinning faster and faster in the opposite direction of the five Fenestrii still hovering over the vessel. With a flash like the spark that could ignite an inferno, the spinning luminance burst from the sphere and began to spin down the bore of the tower.
Tuzhazu raised Balavad’s Fenestros, screamed something in a foreign tongue, and Symvalline knew he was drawing strength from it for one final attempt to move the vessel.
With a scream of her own, she lunged to her feet, lifting the sword aloft like a candle. The swirl of celestial moonlight roared down the tower’s shaft like spinning lightning as she chopped the sword down at Tuzhazu’s outstretched hand.
With a flash of light off the blade, she saw Balavad’s Fenestros gliding across the chamber, Tuzhazu’s hand still attached to it, and the chamber exploded into soundless, shattering radiance.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Isemay’s eyes rose to the three moons as she played the Churss melody, and she caught the last tiniest sliver of the farthest moon, Maiztos, as it disappeared behind the blue moon, Kahros.
Instantly, a beam of light so penetratingly bright it seemed to split the air it passed through shot from the alignment directly toward the visible Cosmoculous orb at the peak of the tower.
From her vantage along the ridgeline, seated atop the urzidae, it appeared that the tower exploded at the moment the beam struck the crystal.