Elysium Girls

by Elysium Girls (retail) (epub)

  “My brother’s cricket thing,” she said, picking it out of the dust. “What’s it doing here?”

  “That’s no trinket,” Mr. Jameson said, eyes on the golden thing in her hand. “That’s… that’s the Master Stone! The one I took out into the desert back when the walls went up.”

  “The stone that can end the Dust Sickness,” Lucy breathed.

  When her brother had picked it up the night Sal and Asa had been exiled, it had seemed nothing more than an oddity. But now she could feel its power, its darkness, radiating like heat.

  Mr. Jameson took his rifle from its spot and put it on his shoulder. “Come on,” he said to Lucy as the war raged beyond the wall. “Let’s go make this right.”

  CHAPTER 28

  THE END

  OF THE

  WORLD.

  In Mother Morevna’s room, the smell of sickness, of blood and soap, hit us like we’d run into a brick wall. Her cane leaned against the dresser. The low doorway to the roof was open.

  We ran to it and climbed the narrow stairs beyond, through the dark, until we saw the swirling sky overhead. We climbed out onto the roof of the church, that flat area behind the steeple, and for a moment, all I could do was stand and watch.

  Death had won the Game, and now She was trying to claim Her prize. The Dust Soldiers’ speed and strength was terrifying as they lunged and swiped with their enormous black scimitars. But every so often, we saw an explosion of black dust as one of them was run through with a spear or shot by an enchanted rifle.

  Out in the middle, we could see Susanah on her painted horse, jabbing this way and that with her spear—chopping one Dust Soldier to the ground and then another as Mowse hung on to her waist. And on the wall, just above the doors, I could see Cassandra casting her copies, and Asa, nearby, hurling blue flames down from the heavens. Another and another Dust Soldier exploded in bursts of black sand. He was fighting with everything he had. Hold on, Asa! I thought. We’re coming!

  “There she is,” Olivia said, pointing.

  Mother Morevna was standing by the steeple, her shape a dark, bent outline against the swirling sky. She was laying something down, pebbles maybe, to prepare some sort of spell. When I saw her, all the anger I’d been holding began to simmer in my belly. Everything had changed for me now. This woman with all her dreams of equality, with her perfect society, whom I had once wanted so desperately to be like, was the one who had killed my mother, who had cursed Lucy.

  I have to make it right again, I thought. I was her Successor. Her mistakes are my responsibility to fix, or what am I fighting for?

  I secured my components belt. My penny glowed hot around my neck.

  She must have felt our eyes on her somehow, because she turned. When she saw us, she didn’t seem surprised or frightened or angry. Her face was expressionless, and up close, I saw how hollow her cheeks had become.

  “What are you doing?” she said. “You should be down there, fighting, as was your own idea. Leave me. This spell may still win Life the Game!”

  She bent again, put another small something at the end of the row she was making.

  “But Death has already won!” I said. “That’s why we built the horses!”

  “We were just buying her time,” Olivia said darkly. “What are the marks, Morevna?”

  “Precautions, set in place long before I took either of you under my wing.”

  “Precautions?” Olivia stopped in her tracks.

  “When you lead, you must be able to choose between the many and the few. And I have. Now go back to your horses and pray that the Goddesses accept the ones I’ve marked.”

  “Marked…” My stomach lurched. “The red marks! She’s going to offer the people who have them as a sacrifice!”

  Olivia’s face seemed to lose all its color and I knew what she was thinking. Rosa. She buckled for a moment as though she’d been punched. And when she looked at Mother Morevna again, her eyes blazed with a dark fire that would make the Devil quail.

  “So killing your own people with Dust Sickness wasn’t enough?” Olivia spat. “How much blood have you got on your hands, Morevna?”

  The old woman’s eyes flashed. “Don’t you dare judge me as though your own hands were clean. We do what we must to save what we love. And I love this town more than you can possibly imagine.” She turned to me. There was a glint of gold in her hand. “If you and that magician hadn’t ruined the Sacrifice, we could have gotten by! But this spell was laid long ago in preparation. And there isn’t an Old Goddess in the world who can resist blood.”

  My stomach threatened to bottom out. I stared at the woman whom I had once seen as an idol, a mentor, and in her place all I saw was a monster.

  She took a step away from her line of pebbles. I glanced at Olivia. She nodded almost imperceptibly. It was now or never.

  “Entflammt!” I shouted. Streams of fire billowed out, enveloping Mother Morevna in a great, white-hot fireball. For a moment, I was blinded. But then I saw her moving in the center of the fire, tall and thin, a shadow at the center of the brightness. As she moved forward, the flames fell from her like sand. Not even her dress was singed.

  “You leave me no choice, Sallie,” Mother Morevna said.

  She raised a tattooed claw and threw a handful of black dust. It became hands, grabbing my legs, pulling me down. It dragged me across the hard, dusty shingles of the roof. I felt the hands connect around my throat, choking, choking.…

  Olivia had Asa’s handkerchief in her fist, holding his blood against her palm, absorbing his magic. She shouted something I didn’t understand, voice harsh against the howling wind, and the magical, painful hands crumbled away like flakes of rust.

  Mother Morevna reached into her pocket and hurled a handful of salt. The grains became needles as they flew toward us.

  Olivia shouted again, something in an infernal language that made the marrow of my bones feel hot. A great spiky black shield rose in front of us, smelling of mercury and rain, and the needles glanced off it and away.

  I pulled myself to my feet and reached into my pouches, fumbling for the crushed seashells and chicken feathers I’d planned to use on the Dust Soldiers. I raised my hand and shouted down a new spell, a fork of lightning. It came blazing down at her, but Mother Morevna caught it in one tattooed hand and threw it back at me, a ball of light I barely had time to dodge before it flew past me and blackened the wall at the other end of the city.

  Olivia was moving forward, her hand extended, wind rising at her back. She shouted into the wind in what I knew now was the language of the world beyond ours. Shadows rocketed past her and pinned Mother Morevna to the steeple.

  “Stop this now, Morevna,” Olivia growled, moving forward, the shadows still swarming.

  But Mother Morevna closed her eyes. I felt an enormous surge of magic from her, and the shadows retreated. She rose to meet Olivia. She extended her hand and made a slapping motion. Ten feet away, Olivia was knocked to the ground as though by the slap of a massive hand. She crawled back to her feet, her lip bleeding.

  An earthquake roared under us, so strong it nearly threw us from the roof. Beyond the walls, the battle raged on, showers of blood and black dust. More of the desert fell away into nothingness.

  Mother Morevna bent, clutching her stomach. She winced, then hobbled to her line of stones—I could see them now: small golden stones all in a row.

  “Goddesses!” she shouted, her voice magically magnified, booming out over the din of battle. “I speak as the leader of this settlement! Accept this sacrifice for my society, a good and responsible society of equals!” She raised a hand over them, and they began to glow. I felt a surge of dark, smoky energy, could feel its drain all around me. She had set her curse in motion.

  A dagger whistled by my ear and lodged in Mother Morevna’s shoulder. She turned toward us, her eyes alight with cold fire.

  “This isn’t your society,” Olivia said, wiping the blood from her mouth. “It’s ours.”

 
; “No, my dear,” Mother Morevna said. She pulled the dagger from her shoulder, waved a tattooed hand over the wound, stopping the blood. “This city has always been mine.”

  Blue-black flames began to rise around her, licking at her dress, her sleeves, but not burning her. The flames grew and surrounded her, covering her. The column of flames grew taller. Her arms lengthened, multiplied, until she was a great, eight-armed beast of fire. Her frailty was gone, replaced by a fierce, almost feline fluidity that spoke of unfathomable power. The black teardrop pendant was the only thing that did not blaze as she rose, beautiful and terrible before us. We tried to run, but all around us a glowing circle of flames was rising. We couldn’t move our legs; they stuck fast in the circle as though embedded in concrete. Then I saw the white stones placed around the edges of the roof. One final trapdoor spell.

  Asa felt an enormous thrum of power from behind him. Then the sound of hundreds of voices screaming in pain rose from Elysium. Twenty meters down on the battlefield, Mowse and Judith sunk to their knees. “Susanah!” Mowse screamed.

  “Mowse! No!” Susanah cried. Then she turned just in time to duck the blow of an oncoming Dust Soldier. “Asa!” she shouted up to the wall. “Take her!”

  Without another word, Asa disappeared and reappeared on the battlefield. He ducked a blow from a Sentinel and gathered Mowse in his arms, then flashed back to the wall. Her color was going, draining as though being sucked away by a leech. The red mark on her hand looked bigger and angrier than ever, and Asa understood immediately what it meant, what Mother Morevna was trying to do.

  “What’s happening to me?” she whimpered.

  Down on the ground, Judith was suffering too but powering through it. Still, her movements were slowed by pain, and her skin was gray as old bones.

  “You’re gonna be all right, okay?” Asa said to Mowse. He put her on the flat part inside the lip of the wall.

  There was a surge of heat, a smell of sulfur. Asa turned toward the church. There on the roof, Sal and Olivia were fighting an enormous, fiery beast. Mother Morevna, he realized. But why weren’t they moving? His heart seemed to stop beating. Something was wrong. It seemed as though they were stuck there as in the web of a great fiery spider. Asa had to go to them. He had to help.

  Then the crack of a magical rifle rang out from somewhere on the ground beneath the church.

  Mr. Jameson was standing beneath the church with Lucy Arbor beside him. He hung his rifle at his side and held something in his hand, something small and golden.

  “Marike, stop!” Mr. Jameson shouted. “It’s over! I have the stone!”

  Asa gasped. No… it couldn’t be. But it was. And looking up at the beast Mother Morevna was, the beast she had always been, he finally recognized her for what she was, and what his true responsibility had always been: Death’s Wildcard. She was the one who had been working against Elysium, unknown even to herself. She was the one who disarmed him by throwing him out of Elysium. She was the one he had been sent to disarm. And there was still time.

  “Don’t make me do this, Marike!” Mr. Jameson shouted. “You’ve gotta make this right again!”

  “Mowse, I need you to listen to me,” he said. “Stay here behind this wall and do not move, okay?”

  “But where are you—”

  “I’ll be back, I promise. Just do not move.”

  And without another word, Asa blitzed away.

  He reappeared next to Mr. Jameson, who nearly fell back in shock.

  “Jesus!” Mr. Jameson said, throwing a protective arm in front of Lucy. “What the—”

  “Daemon,” Asa said. “No time to explain. But the cricket! Give it to me! I can take it to her.”

  Still standing between Asa and Lucy, Mr. Jameson put the cricket in Asa’s hand. Without another word, Asa blitzed to the roof, placing himself between Olivia and Sal and the beast that was Mother Morevna.

  Mother Morevna looked confused for a moment, faltered.

  Olivia stepped forward, her hands blazing with deadly magic, ready to aim the killing blow.

  “Olivia!” Asa said, holding the cricket in amber up. “Olivia, it’s hers! You’re not Death’s Card! She is! This can disarm her!”

  Olivia shook herself and stood down, the magic fading. Asa stepped forward.

  “Mother Morevna,” he said, holding the cricket out in front of him. “I think I have something that belongs to y—”

  A giant, flaming arm caught him in the stomach and knocked Asa off the roof. As he fell, he threw the cricket upward.

  “Sal!” he cried. “Catch it!”

  And he fell directly on top of Mr. Jameson, sending another magical shotgun blast into the sky.

  I saw the cricket glint in the firelight. It fell at my feet, and I scooped it up, realizing for the first time what it was: the Master Stone, the one she had laid in the desert so long ago. The one that could end the second sacrifice, the Dust Sickness, all of it. The Dust Soldiers roared beyond the walls, and suddenly, I understood all of it. The truth of it all filled me like light, like wind, and I knew what I had to do.

  She was so close now that her heat was singeing my hair, wrinkling my clothes. She reached out, and with the cricket in amber in my fist, I grabbed her fiery hand, and as my palm blistered, I pressed the cricket into her hand.

  “No!” she roared, her voice crackling like timber. “Put this back!”

  “Don’t you see?” I said. “The whole time, you’ve been helping to destroy us. Helping Death. She’s been using you!”

  “That’s not true!” she roared. “I have done only what is good for this city!”

  “It is,” I said. “And I’ll show you.”

  I willed my magic into our hands. The nausea and darkness rose and took us. I felt the truth of it rise around us, all the mistakes, all the deaths, all the blood. Truth that couldn’t be turned away from or ignored. And as it enveloped us, held itself over our minds’ eyes, I felt Mother Morevna try to look away. But she could not. And as it burned itself into our souls, I felt her absorb this truth. I felt her absorb every particle of the pain she had caused. The wishes of Goddesses, the wants of witches, and all the misunderstandings of a society built to be equal, gone terribly, terribly wrong. I felt it begin to dim and recede, and when the darkness fell away, instead of a monster, I was holding the frail, tattooed hand of an old woman, an old witch who had finally seen the truth.

  She let go of my hand, and as she did so, my blisters healed themselves. I stumbled, then righted myself. Our feet were no longer stuck in her web of magic.

  Mother Morevna swayed on her feet, a look of hollowness, of brokenness making her appear far older than she’d ever looked before.

  “It’s too late,” Mother Morevna said quietly. “Oh, God, now it’s too late.”

  She had seen her utopia for what it was, what she herself had made it. She heard for the first time the pain in the cries of her people, and the knowing was the heaviest burden.

  “Sallie…” she croaked desperately. “Here.”

  She raised her hands and closed them over the cricket in amber. There was a deep thrum of power, more power than I’d ever felt at once. A feeling of leaving, of draining, of never going back. As I watched, the tattoos faded from her hands until they could have been the knobby, gnarled hands of any old woman. She heaved a great, weary sigh. Then she held out her hand. The cricket in amber glowed in her palm, power radiating from it. But no longer from her.

  “I am not fit to wield this power,” she said. “But you… you saw the truth. You saw it the whole time.” She gritted her teeth in pain. “Take my magic! Add it to your own, and set it all right, once and for all. And when my spells have been lifted, use it to fight them. You are our only chance now.”

  I hesitated. Beyond the gates, there was a roar, the screech of metal, the sound of many men screaming.

  “They’re gonna break the lines!” shouted a guard. “We need help!”

  “Sal!” came Olivia’s voice from behind
me.

  “Go,” said Mother Morevna. “Go, now!”

  I started to say something—what, I didn’t know. Then Olivia shouted for me again, and I took the cricket and clambered back down into the church. We ran across the quaking sanctuary, out of the church, and out into the street where Asa and Lucy and Mr. Jameson waited.

  “Go to the house!” Olivia said to Lucy. “Take care of my sister! We’ve got one last chance to win this!”

  “Don’t worry,” Lucy said. “I’ve got it!”

  “We’ve got to get to our posts!” I said. “Come on!”

  Olivia and I ran to the walls and climbed our ladders. We stood, hands over our components belts, twenty feet between us, in our crow’s nests over the battlefield. Asa blitzed to a section of the wall where Mowse lay, crumpled and hiding. He stood over her and looked out over the battlefield.

  The scene before us was a bloody one. Through the clouds of smoke, we could see glimpses of the cavalry, rushing, striking, rearing on mechanical limbs. The ground was splashed with dark blood. And through it they fought on.

  Zo had come down from her tower and was fighting hand to hand with a Dust Soldier, her spear pulled from a fallen mechanical horse and rider. Judith, bleeding from multiple wounds, held two spears, fighting a Dust Soldier back with one while she threw the other like a javelin, skewering another Dust Soldier in the chest.

  Susanah was still out front, fighting two and three Dust Soldiers at a time. And just as three Dust Soldiers were bearing down on an unsuspecting guard knocked from his horse, I saw his eyes go white. Moving like one possessed, he turned and sliced the three of them through the belly with his spear. Then he blinked as Mowse let him back to himself.

  From her spot behind Asa, Mowse was doing her best to cast, even though her skin too had taken on the gray of death and the red mark on her hand had deepened to the dark red of blood.

  Up on the wall, Cassandra sent illusion after illusion, turning one horse into five, one soldier into ten. She was fading fast. And she had been carrying our weight for too long.