Swords Against Darkness

by Paula Guran

  Bet pulled Hanere into her lap. “You are better off here with me. Out there is a world of monsters and mad people.”

  Hanere waggled her brows. “Who’s to say I’m not a bit of both? Come with me, we are out of bourbon!” She held up the empty bottle.

  “No, no,” Bet said. “Stay in. We’ll sleep up here.”

  Bet had gone to sleep while the world burned. But that wasn’t Hanere’s way. While Bet slept, Hanere went out into it.

  It was the edge of dawn when Bet finally woke, hung over and covered in cigarette ash, hands smeared in paint from her work earlier in the day. It was not until she sat up and saw the paint smearing the roof that she thought something was amiss. Her gaze followed the trail of paint that was not paint but blood to its origin. Hanere stood at the edge of the rooftop, wearing a long white shift covered in blood.

  Bet scrambled up. “Are you hurt? Hanere?”

  But as Hanere turned, Bet stopped. Hanere raised her bloody hands to the sky and her face was full of more joy than Bet had ever seen.

  “The government is nearly toppled,” Hanere said. “We will be gods, you and I, Bet. There’s no one to stop us. It’s delightful down there. You must come.”

  “What did you do, Hanere?”

  “I am alive for the first time in my life,” Hanere said. She opened her hands, and salt fell from her fingers. She murmured something, and little blue florets colored the air and passed out over the city.

  “Stop it,” Bet said. “What are you doing? You can’t cast in the city outside the College!”

  “I cast all night,” Hanere said. “I will cast all I like. Come with me. Bet, come with me, my Elzabet. My love. We can take this whole city. We can burn down the college and those tired old people and repaint the world.”

  “No, Hanere. Get down from there.”

  The joy left Hanere’s face. “Is that what you wish for us?” she said. She came down from the rooftop and walked over to Bet. She placed her hands on Bet’s stomach. The blood on her hands was still fresh enough to leave stains. “Is that what you wish for our child?”

  VII.

  Bet sucked in water instead of air, and paddled to the surface, kicking wildly. She popped up in the brown water and took in her surroundings.

  Lealez was nowhere in sight. She dove again into the water, feeling her way through the muck for Lealez. Opening her eyes was a lost cause; she could see nothing. Her fingers snagged a bit of cloth. She grabbed at it and heaved Lealez to the surface.

  Lealez coughed and sputtered. Bet kept per at arm’s length, yelling that all per splashing was going to drown them both.

  “Head for the shore,” Bet said.

  Lealez shook per head and treaded water using big, sloppy strokes. Bet followed per gaze and saw the hulking shapes of the plesiosaurs circling the carriage.

  “They eat plants,” Bet said. “Mostly.”

  Bet hooked Lealez under her arm and paddled for the shore. The plesiosaurs kept pace with them, displacing great waves of water that made it more difficult to get to the shore.

  Lealez gasped. “They’ll crush us!”

  “More worried about the lizards on the shore,” Bet said.

  “What?”

  Two big alligators lay basking along the shore. Bet made for another hollow a little further on, but they were closer than they should be.

  “They only eat at night,” Bet said, reassuring herself as much as Lealez. “Mostly.”

  Bet and Lealez crawled up onto the bank and immediately started off into the brush. Bet wanted to put as much distance between her and the lizards as possible. Massive mosquitoes and biting flies plagued them, but Bet knew they were close enough to the city now that they might find a settlement or—if they were lucky—someone’s spare pirogue.

  Instead, they found the plague.

  The bodies started just twenty minutes into their walk to the shore, and continued for another hour as they grew nearer and nearer the settlement. Soft white fungus grew from the noses and eyes and mouths of the dead; their fingers and toes were blackened. Bet stopped and drew a circle of salt around her and Lealez, and sprinkled some precautionary concoctions over them.

  “Do you know which one it is?” Lealez whispered.

  “One of Hanere’s,” Bet said. “She likes to leave a mark. She’s expecting us.”

  “Is this where you left the shield?”

  “Hush now,” Bet said as the swampland opened up into a large clearing. Nothing was burning, which was unlike Hanere.

  Bet stopped Lealez from going further and held up a finger to her lips. Two figures stood at the center of the village, heads bent in deep conversation. One wore a long black and purple cloak. The other carried a sword emblazoned with the seal of the Contagion College.

  “Stay here,” Bet said to Lealez. She pulled out her machete and stepped into the clearing.

  The two figures looked up. Bet might have had to guess at their gender if one of them wasn’t so familiar. She knew that one’s gender because she’d been there during the ceremony where he’d chosen it. It was her and Hanere’s own son, Mekdas. The other was most likely female, based on the hairstyle and clothing, but that didn’t much concern Bet.

  A trade for something Bet loved, that’s what Hanere had written.

  “So it was you who broke away from the Contagion College,” Bet said.

  Mekdas stared at her. He was nearly thirty now, not so much a boy, but he still looked young to her, younger even than Lealez. He had Hanere’s bold nose and Bet’s straight dark hair and Hanere’s full lips and Bet’s stocky build and Hanere’s talent and impatience.

  “I left you with the college so you could make something of yourself,” Bet said. “Now here you are disappointing me twice.”

  “That’s something Hanere and you never had in common,” Mekdas said. “She was never once disappointed in me.”

  Bet searched the ground around them for the shield. If they had gotten this far they must have found that too, no matter that Bet was the only one who was supposed to know where it was. Had Hanere used some kind of black magic to find it?

  “Give over the objects,” Bet said, “and we can talk about this.”

  “Have you met my lover?” Mekdas asked. “This is Saba.”

  Saba was a short waif of a woman, a little older than Mekdas. As much as Bet wanted to blame this all on some older Plague Giver, she knew better. She had done her best with Mekdas, but it was all too late.

  Bet held out her hand. “The cloak, Mekdas.”

  “You’re an old woman,” Mekdas said. “Completely useless out here. Go back to your swamp. We are remaking the world. You don’t have the stomach for it.”

  “You’re right,” Bet said. She didn’t know what to say to him. She had never been good with children, and with Hanere dead, she had wanted even less to do with this particular child. He reminded her too much of Hanere. “I don’t have the stomach for many things, but I know a plague village when I see one. I know where this goes, and I know how it ends. You think you can take this plague all the way to the city?”

  Saba raised the sword. “With the relics, we will,” she said, and smirked.

  “Hanere tell you how they work, did she?” Bet said. “The trouble is Hanere doesn’t know. There is one person alive who knows, and it’s me.”

  “Hanere will show us,” Saba said.

  “You shut the seven fucking hells up,” Bet said. “I’m not talking to you. Mekdas—”

  “Why are you even here?” he said.

  “Because Hanere invited me,” Bet said.

  That got a reaction from him. Surprise. Shock, even.

  Bet already had a handful of salt ready, but so did they. The shock was all the advantage she had. Bet flicked the salt in their faces and charged toward them. She bowled over Saba and snatched the sword from her. They were Plague Givers, not warriors, and it showed.

  Mekdas had the sense to run, but Bet stabbed the sword through his cloak and twisted. H
e fell hard onto a body, casting spores into the air.

  Bet yelled for Lealez.

  Lealez bolted across the sea of bodies, hand already raised to cast.

  “Circle and hold them,” Bet said.

  Lealez’s hands trembled as per made the cast to neutralize the two hunters.

  Bet tore the cloak from Mekdas’s shoulders and wrapped it around her own. She dragged the sword in one hand and crossed to the other side of the village. Bet found the tree she had nested her prize in decades before and hacked it open to reveal the shield, now buried in the heart of the tree. Sweat ran down her face so heavily she had to squint to see. She picked up the shield and marched back to where Saba and Mekdas lay prone inside the salt circle.

  “Now you’ll see all you wanted to see,” Bet said to Mekdas. “You will see the world can be made as well as unmade, but there are sacrifices.” She raised the sword over her head.

  “No!” Lealez said.

  “Please!” Mekdas said.

  Bet plunged the blade into Saba’s heart and spit the words of power that released the objects’ essence. A cloud of brilliant purple dust burst from Saba’s body and filled the air. Lealez stumbled back, coughing.

  Bet quickly removed the cloak and draped it over Saba. All around the village, the bodies began to convulse. White spores exploded from their mouths and noses and spiraled toward the cloak, a great spinning vortex of contagion.

  Lealez watched the cloak absorb the great gouts of plague, feeding on it like some hungry beast. A great keening shuddered through the air. It took Lealez a moment to realize it was Saba, screaming. And screaming. Lealez covered per ears.

  Then it was over.

  Bet stepped away from Saba’s body, but tripped and stumbled back, fell hard on her ass. She heaved a great sigh and rested her forehead on the hilt of the sword.

  “What did you do?” Mekdas said. His voice broke. He was weeping. Bet raised her head.

  All around them, the plague-ridden people of the village began to stir. Their blackened flesh warmed to a healthy brown. Their plague-clotted eyes cleared and opened. Soon, their questioning voices could be heard, and Bet got to her feet, because she was not ready for questions.

  “They’re alive!” Lealez said, gaping. “You saved them.”

  Bet pulled the cloak from Saba’s body. Saba’s face was a bitter rictus, frozen in agony. “They only save life by taking life,” Bet said. “Now you know why I separated them. Why I never kept them together. Yes, they can give life. But they can take it, too. It’s the intent that matters.”

  “We have one of them, at least,” Lealez said. “We can take him to the Contagion College.”

  “No,” Bet said. She raised her head to the sky. “This is not done.” While the people of the village stirred, the insects in the swampland around them had gone disturbingly quiet.

  “What is—” Lealez began.

  “Let’s get to the water,” Bet said. “Take Mekdas. We need to get away from the village.”

  “But—”

  “Listen to me in this, you fool.”

  Lealez bound Mekdas with hemp rope rubbed in salt and pushed him out ahead of them. Lealez had to hurry to keep up with Bet. Carrying the objects seemed to have given her some greater strength, or maybe just a sense of purpose. She forged out ahead of them, cutting through swaths of swampland, cutting a way for them all the way back down to the water on the other side of the river.

  Lealez stared out at the water and saw two pirogues attached to a cypress tree another hundred steps up the canal. “There!”

  “Take my machete,” Bet said. “You’ll take one boat on your own. Follow after Mekdas and I.”

  Lealez took the machete. “You’re really going to turn him in?”

  Bet glared at per so fiercely Lealez wanted to melt into the water.

  “All right,” Lealez said, “I wasn’t sure what I was thinking.” Lealez waded out toward the pirogue. Lealez noticed the ripple in the water out of the corner of per eye and turned.

  Bet saw the ripple a half moment before. She yelled and raised her sword, but she was too slow.

  A massive alligator snatched Lealez by the leg and dragged per under the water. Bet saw Lealez’s upraised arms, a rush of brown water, and then nothing.

  Mekdas ran.

  Bet swore and scrambled after him. She fell in along the muddy bank, and then something else came up from the water for her.

  Hanere emerged from the depths of the swamp like a creature born there. She head-butted Bet so hard Bet’s nose burst. Pain shattered across her face. Bet fell in the mud.

  Muddy water and tangles of watercress streamed off Hanere’s body. Her hair was knotted and tangled, and her beard was shot through with white. She grabbed hold of Bet’s boot and dragged Bet toward her.

  Bet held up the sword. “Revenge will get you nothing, Hanere!”

  “It got me you,” Hanere said, and wrenched the shield from Bet’s hand and threw it behind her.

  “You feel better with me here?” Bet said, gasping. “A bit, yes.”

  “And when your son is dead? If I don’t kill him, someone else will.”

  “They were in love, like we were,” Hanere said. “It was easy to convince them to burn down a world that condemned them, and me. Even you. This world cast even you out, after all you did.”

  “Not like us. They’re both criminals.”

  “You became a criminal when you fucked me, and kept fucking me, even when you told them you were hunting me. You and your soft heart.”

  Bet kicked herself further down the bank, holding the sword ahead of her. “I thought you dead,” Bet said. “For thirty years—”

  “That’s a bunch of shit,” Hanere said. “You know they’d never kill someone like me. You know what they did to me for thirty years? Put me up in a salt box and tortured me. Me, the greatest sorcerer that ever lived.”

  “How did you—”

  “Does it matter?” Hanere said, and her tone softened. She crawled toward Bet and took hold of the end of the sword. She pressed it to her chest and said, “Is this what you wanted? To do it yourself? Or did you wait always for this day, when we could take the world together?”

  Tears came, unbidden. Bet gritted her teeth in anger. Her own soft heart, betraying her. “You know I can’t.”

  “Even now?” Hanere said softly, “after all this time?”

  Bet shook her head.

  Hanere reached out for Bet’s cheek, and though it was mud on Hanere’s fingers and not blood, the memory of Hanere’s bloody hands was still so strong after all these years that Bet flinched.

  “We are done,” Bet said, and pressed the sword into Hanere’s heart.

  Hanere did not fight her. Instead, she pulled herself forward along the length of the blade, closer and closer, until she could kiss Bet with her bloody mouth.

  “I will die in your arms,” Hanere said, “as I should have done.”

  Mekdas screamed, long and high, behind them. Bet sagged under Hanere’s weight.

  Mekdas bolted past her and ran toward the two pirogues.

  Bet turned her eyes upward. Soft while clouds moved across the purple- blue sky. She wanted to be a bird, untethered from all this filth and sweat, all these tears. Thirty years she had hid, thirty years she had tried to avoid this day. But here it was. And she had done it, hadn’t she? Done everything she hoped she would not do.

  She heard a splashing from the water, and heaved a sigh. The lizard would take her. Gods, let the lizard take her, and the relics, and drown them for all time.

  When she opened her eyes, though, it was Lealez who stood above her, dripping water onto her face. The pan was covered in gore, and stank like rotten meat. Lealez held up the machete. “Told you I was the best in my class,” Lealez said.

  “Didn’t know you learned how to kill lizards,” Bet said. Lealez gazed at Hanere’s body. “Is she really dead?”

  “I don’t know that I care,” Bet said. “Is that strange?�
��

  Lealez helped her up. “The boy is trying to figure out the pirogue,” Lealez said. “We aren’t done.”

  “You take him.”

  “He’s your family,” Lealez said. “My responsibility?”

  “I just thought . . . You would want to take the credit.”

  Bet huffed out a laugh. “The credit? The credit.” She heaved herself forward, slogging toward the pirogue.

  Mekdas saw her coming and pushed off. As she approached he stood up in the little boat, unsteady already on the water.

  Behind him, Bet could just see the lights of the city in the distance. Did they all know what was coming for them? Did any realize that there were Plague Givers out here who wanted to decimate the world and start over? Would they care, or would they be like Hanere, and wish for an end?

  “You must kill me to save that city, then, mother,” Mekdas said. “Will you kill me like you did Hanere? You won’t bring me in alive. You must make the—”

  Bet threw her sword. It thunked into her son’s belly. He gagged and bowled over.

  Lealez gaped.

  Bet waded out to the pirogue and pulled it back to shore. “You killed him,” Lealez said. “I thought—”

  “He’s not dead yet,” Bet said, but the words were only temporarily truth. He was gasping his last, drowning in his own blood.

  “I’ve heard ultimatums like that before,” Bet said. “Hanere gave me one, and when I hesitated, I lost her. You only make a mistake like that, the heart over reason, once. Then you take yourself away from the world, so you don’t have to make decisions like that again.”

  “But—”

  “Blood means little when there’s a city at stake,” Bet said. She gazed back out at the city. “Let’s give them to the swamp.”

  “But we have to take the bodies back to—”

  Bet raised the sword and pointed it at Lealez. It was only then that she realized Lealez was favoring per right leg; the lizard had gotten its teeth in per, and Lealez would get infected badly, soon, if they didn’t get per help in the city.

  “We do the bodies my way,” Bet said, “then we get you back to the city.” When they came back to Hanere’s body, it was encircled by a great mushroom ring. Green spores floated through the air.