Then … a wind cleared the air, herding the gray clouds in ripples before it, and a pale moon reluctantly shone its ghostly light across the ruin.
Nora stood in a circle untouched by the destruction surrounding her. The cobblestones around her gleamed, reflecting the silvery moonlight. She turned to see the buried space where the girl had cowered.
She spun slowly, nearly dancing, in the swath of destruction that ran through the city, a long and wide corridor of loss, the toppled temple crushing an entire district to dust and debris, and she at its zenith.
In the distance, the all-too-human lament of anguish.
That was … different. Where were the Whisperers? What was going on? Had she just … brought down the Temple of Arrun with a shout? That was preposterous. But where was the little girl?
She ran to the edge of her circle, and started shifting rubble with her bare hands. Her bare hands that were coated with blood and dust, but were otherwise unharmed. Both of them. She stared.
Her right hand should still be crippled from when she had held the Blade’s power against Bashan. She touched her face, expecting the burnt, leathery, numb feeling she had become accustomed to the last year since Solstice at the Temple of the Wind. But her cheek was smooth, and her skin responsive to her fingers.
The Blade! It must have healed her—keeping her and it alive.
Her hands worked furiously to uncover the patch where she had seen the little girl. Whenever she scraped a finger, whenever a sharp edge cut it open, she watched her body heal the wound equally fast, until she was sobbing.
“What do you think you’re doing?” A presence hovered just outside of her vision, a ghostly apparition of the two-faced Nora.
“She was just here. I know it.” Nora pushed a piece of broken timber aside.
“A little girl?”
“Yes, a girl,” Nora snarled at the ghost. “She was scared, and lonely, and she was crying because her mother was dead, and I … I think I killed her mother, too.”
“You know you sound like a madwoman talking to yourself?”
“Fuck off!”
There was a pause long enough to make her think the Whisperer Nora had withdrawn back into the depths of her mind.
“A little girl just like you,” the skull-face said, leaning closer. “That’s why you’re looking for her, aren’t you? Because you see yourself in one random person you happened to mee—”
“I said fuck off!” Nora swept around, swung a silvery blade in an arc straight through the apparition. The two-faced Nora wore a surprised look on both her faces that tore apart. Both halves separated as Nora lopped off the top most head. The burned face laughed and the skull face snapped its teeth in hunger. Nora reveled in this new found power to destroy. She didn’t care where the silver gleaming blade had come from. She knew she could summon it, now, whenever she wanted.
“Look at you,” both mouths spoke at the same time, a sound of many whispers. “In control. You don’t even believe it yourself. We will wait while you look for this little girl, Noraya Smith. We will watch as you tear the whole city apart with your bare hands looking for her. But she’s dead and you know it. Nothing you can do will ever bring her back.”
“I will bring her back.” Nora turned her back on the creature and continued to dig. “I will find her.”
“You know it wasn’t us. You’ll hope it was,” the voices danced around her. “But deep down, you know. We don’t have need of your mind, but we know your thoughts. We are millennia old, and we know how to use what’s in someone’s head. What you wanted but never said. What you needed but never dared. We do that for you.”
“No, all you do is lie.” Nora spat, lifting a heavy stone from the rubble. Another drop of blood welled up from her torn flesh, only to be healed once more. “I didn’t want this.”
“But you did.”
Nora said nothing.
“You hated this city,” the ghostly voices continued. “You hated this temple, hated all it stood for. You hated feeling powerless. Hated feeling worthless, not a human, but an object to be used. We know how you feel. We feel the same. For so long. Too long.”
Another splinter wedged under her fingernail, the twang of pain. She watched the wood sliver back out of her finger, the blood under her nail disappear.
“We only did what you wanted, you monster.”
Nora hefted a large slab of brick wall, tossed it aside, and there she was.
The little girl, her dark hair plastered to her head as though by sweat. No blood, only a gray dust settling like a shroud on her tiny body. A tiny shoulder raised, as though she were sleeping on her side. One tiny hand still clutched her mother’s toes. She never let go.
This was … real?
You monster.
Nora stretched out her hand to smoothen the little girl’s bangs, but then snatched it back, to let her rest.
She’s dead because of me.
Nora hadn’t always been a fighter. For a time she had been quite content to be a charcoaler, to dig the pit and build the clamp, neatly stacking the logs, then covering it all with a big, fat seal of clay and earth, and then to sit back a while and rest until the watch began. Watch for wisps of smoke, watch for cracks and seal them quickly. Spade always at the ready.
A frail wisp of smoke escaped the charcoal clamp now—it had to be sealed off. But where was her spade? Where was Owen? This was all wrong.
You monster.
Her father had made the sign against evil at her. That hurt. Because it was true. The people of the Ridge, her own foster father, hadn’t been turned against her by the words of the baker’s wife. No. They had always blamed her, the evil twin, for everything. When Mother Sara died, they whispered that Nora was cursed and had brought death to the village. What if they were right?
“They’re just scared,” Owen would say when she crept to his room after waking from nightmares. “They’re afraid of things they don’t know. Of new things. Of change. So they make up stories. But that doesn’t make the stories true, Nora. We can make up other stories.”
But Owen was gone, too.
Sight blurring, she took some of the larger stones that lay around, and arranged them around the little girl’s body in a makeshift cairn. His story was gone. She had to find it again, find him. Because if she didn’t, well, they would be right about her.
She tried to recall the heat from every clamp, the cold of the crisp autumn air weighing on her shoulders. The tension of watching, waiting for the clamp to work its hidden magic and transform the logs inside its belly into charcoal. She had been a charcoaler for a long time. Maybe so long a time that it had been burned into her very bones, and now she couldn’t be anything else. Not really. Not even when she had replaced the spade with the knife.
Where was the spade?
The thick clay cracks were opening, wider, ever wider, and the furnace heat wrapped her on every side.
The final stones of the little girl’s cairn clicked shut.
And Nora was falling through the cracks in the clay, sucked into the womb of the earth where wood transforms to charcoal.
Chapter 4
Nora fell through the world, and landed scraped and cursing on a stone bridge. The dew on the flat of the stone bridge sizzled in the burning heat of her transition. Steam wafted up around her as she rolled over onto her back and lay there a moment to catch her breath, find out where she was.
The taste of the dead air, the woodland scent of rot and decay, a rustling among the dead leaves in the chestnut grove beyond the crossing stone—she was bleeding and hurt, her whole body a dull ache.
What the fuck had just happened? Some part of the Blade’s madness had taken her body, no doubt. Though to where and to do what, she wasn’t sure. A prayer to Arrun to keep watch over his city leapt to her lips, but … that seemed pointless. The Great Shepherd had been slain by the Blade millennia ago, and besides, she had just torn down his temple, ruined his city.
As she rolled to push herself
up, she didn’t even need to see the dark outline of the Ridge looming up before her to know she had come home. She had landed on the threshold of her village, the slab of rock spanning the brook that hissed at her blaze. But the heat of the charcoal burn was ebbing and the deathlike cold seeped into her bones. And pain.
She took in the damage. Fingers and toes were torn bloody, palm bleeding, knees scraped raw, a dozen cuts all over her torso, a weeping red wound on her chest, just over her heart—the formerly healed cut with which Bashan had killed her, reaching from her throat to her groin, slowly came undone. Everything hurt. She groaned and took a few hobbling steps towards the Ridge. Her ankle was still a mess.
Owen’s Ridge was built on top of a steep cliff of rock that guarded the villagers against whatever came at them from the forests around it. What better place to find her twin than in the home he was named after? The one place they both knew intimately, and the Blade did not. The winding path up the cliff face would be painful though, and beset on all sides by the tyranny of the night. She winced, but walked on, bleeding hand pressed to bleeding chest, drops of life left in her wake. Slowly she made her way up.
At the first twist in the path, the little girl was crouched among the bushes, waiting for her. One side of her head was bashed in. She rose to greet Nora on broken legs, a splinter of bone jutting out from her skinny calves.
“You killed me,” she whispered, and her voice was amplified by the wind around them.
Ah great. Self-flagellation. The cursed had to do penance.
So, this was how it was going to be.
Nora didn’t reply, but kept moving. She shuffled around the undead little girl who snarled at her, a deep throaty sound, an animal sound of hunger. The girl grasped at Nora with tiny clawed fingers, but Nora danced out of her way, jogged up the next stretch of the path before turning around to see the little girl fade into the darkness. Other shapes moved in the blackness of the trees.
Yep, this was definitely how it was going to be. And there were two more twists in the path up ahead.
She squinted into the shadows. Something slunk across the branches, obscured by the rustling leaves, then dropped to the ground in front of her.
The broken ruins of a man sprawled on the stony path. Might be any man—gods knew Nora had killed a few people this past year.
“You killed me and then shoved me over the ridge like carrion.” His whisper, discordant like the girl’s voice, rattled from his slit throat. “You monster.”
“Because you attacked Becca.” Nora stepped back a little, looking at the stab wounds she had dealt him, the black gash across his throat. Of course, the little girl was the last person her conscience had weighed. This man was the first. “You did terrible harm to the women here. You deserved to die.”
The Blade’s words in her mouth again? Or her own? It was hard to know when the lines of reality were so blurred.
The man snatched her hurting ankle as she passed his corpse, toppling her to the ground. Nora scrabbled to her feet and kicked him in the shoulder. He grabbed her leg again and sunk his sharp teeth into her calf. She screamed and ripped her leg from his clutching hands, leaving a fist-sized chunk of bloody flesh in his chattering teeth.
She half ran, half stumbled farther up the path, dreading what might be waiting there for her.
Or who.
Don’t think of him. Don’t think his name, she told herself. If she didn’t think of him, he wouldn’t be waiting for her. Right? It was all just her mind. All just another trick.
She looked over her shoulder, back to the place where the ruined man had been, to check whether he had vanished like the little girl. Yes. He too had faded back into the shadows from where he came. But they were both still there, lurking. And they would never leave. They couldn’t.
“I remember every person I’ve ever killed, and in my memory they shall live longer than they ever walked the earth.” Diaz’s words echoed through her.
“Hey!” Shade’s voice rang with the misery of everyone she had ever killed.
Nora tripped and fell hard. No, not him. She remained prostrate on the path, unwilling to turn her head and see him standing at the last bend of the path. His boots crunched on the gravel. She closed her eyes. This was a trick. Thiswasatrick. thiswasatri—
“No,” he said. “No, you don’t get to not look.”
The ground beneath her heaved.
“Look at what you’ve done to me.”
The dirt and gravel shook, mounded, and began to flow underneath her, pushing her up on a mounting wave, until she stood, and it died away between them.
“Found you,” Shade said, his voice distorted by the Whisperers lurking within his husk.
His handsome face was partly ruined. Scars crisscrossed his cheek, burns seared his forehead and shriveled his ear, licks of flame etched his jaw.
“You burned me, Nora.” He stepped closer. “And you left me. Abandoned me. Left me all alone.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Shade.” She licked her dry lips, tried not to gag at the stench of rot. “It was an accident.”
“I was never good enough for you. Oh, you had your sights aimed way higher than me.” He leaned in, his mouth close to her ear. “I could never be Diaz.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, staring over his shoulder at the ridge ahead, eyes filling with tears.
This wasn’t real. He’s not really Shade. Her mind is playing tricks on her.
Just like in a dream, she could see beneath the mask of his face, could see the darkness wavering into a fragment of the Blade. She saw herself. She had recognized the burn marks on his face—they were her own. She had stared into her own burnt reflection long enough to see Death’s half-face grinning back at her.
“You should be.” He licked her neck, pressing his sizzling lips onto her collarbone in a wet kiss. “Very sorry.”
“I am.”
“Murderer,” he spat in her face.
The tears spilled onto her cheeks. She really needed Owen now. She needed to run into his room and talk to him. She needed him to tell her that all the awful things she called herself in the dark weren’t true. She needed his light.
The thing in Shade’s form prowled around her. Every step conjured forth tiny tendrils of brambles. Thorned branches wrapped themselves around her ankles, bit into her flesh, climbed up her body as he spoke in his roaring whisper, a distant thunder of voices hidden beneath the singer’s song.
“You are cursed, Nora Smith. Cursed by your blood. You have been consecrated to Death since before you were born. You were to die in the fires of Shinar, a sacrifice to raise the Fire God. You were to die as soon you were born into this world. To die when your own mother set you out in the night for the wights to come take you. But they would never come for you, Nora. It was your purpose to die. It should have been your death every time.”
“I know.” The thorns cut into her throat, pricked her cheekbones.
“Then why are you still here?”
“That I don’t know,” she sighed.
“But you do. Why are you still here?” He pressed the brambles to her eyes.
“Because … I’m looking for my brother.”
“No. Your brother is dead. Because of you. One last time. Why are you still here?”
“Because …”
“Yes?”
He stood there, looking at her through dead eyes, judging her, threatening her. His nearness took the strength from her. The stench of decay was overwhelming. Only the thorns held her upright in their barbed embrace, the briar choking her.
“We’re waiting.” Whisperer Shade cocked his head just like the real Shade did.
“This isn’t real,” she told herself. She was shivering, weaponless, torn and bleeding. This would never heal. She would never be whole. Everything was cracked torn slashed split
“I can tell a new story.”
She took a deep breath and held it, set fire to it from the flames burning in her heart.
&nb
sp; When she let it go, the heated steam made Shade waver before her eyes. His form rippled and she saw the two-faced Nora gibbering.
This was a dream, and Nora was a dragon, breathing fire.
“I’m still here,” she said, sparks erupting from her bleeding fingertips, burning the brambles to cinders. “Because the whole world says I can’t be who I am. And that,” she roared, tearing the charred brambles from her body, “has got to stop.”
She raised a hand toward the Whisperer, fire coiling around her wrist and hand. “Nothing you say or do will change that nor make me feel sorrier than I already do. I am who I am. I have done what I have done. Most of it with good intentions, some of it—not so good. But I refuse to let others make me into something I am not. So I won’t let myself make me into something I’m not. Now, go in peace. But go.”
The scorching blaze distorted the black frayed thing wearing Shade’s face. The tattered cloak that hung from its frame made it seem impish as it spread its arms like wings, and danced back to its home in the shadows.
“We will see,” it cackled before vanishing to a wisp.
When it was finally gone, Nora let her arm drop to her side, exhausted from keeping a hold on the flames. They went out and she felt the chill seep back into her bones. Deep inside, though, a fire burned. It had been burning all along, and it would always be there, a flickering wild creature, and yes, it brought destruction and suffering. But she could draw on it in times of need.
She stumbled against the dark earth of the high cliff. Only a short distance left to go, and she would be in Owen’s Ridge. Surely, she would find him there.
But the cut Bashan had killed her with bled more profusely now with the exertion. The more she gained a grip on herself, it seemed, the more the Blade refused to heal her. Or maybe it was simply that the longer she stayed here, in the darkness, the more she lost herself. Until finally she’d become a cracked, black shard of self, just like everyone else whom the Blade had touched and devoured.
No, not everyone. Not Owen. She started hobbling up the narrow path. First, she’d find Owen, then, maybe—if Nora hadn’t disintegrated to a wisp by then—maybe she’d be able to maintain her control over the Blade and her body, and stop it from wreaking havoc up there, in the real world.
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