CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
It was once called Sacred Death.
Consecrated, set apart from that which lives.
We’ve forgotten the gift it gives.
For what is Sacred Life without its
antithesis?
—THE HARMONY OF BEING
Kyara and Tana stood, hand in hand, on the edge of the cemetery on the northwest corner of the city. The sight before her was like rain falling, except the dark forms of the spirits were the precipitation, diving like missiles into the ground.
Elsirans did not burn their dead as the Lagrimari did. They buried them and marked the grave with a mirror, embedded near where the head of the deceased would be. Across the field before her, tarnished, cracked, and broken mirrors were dotted through with newer ones of the recently dead. All so that the loved one could look through and view the Living World before they joined the Eternal Flame.
Some of the older mirrors were well-maintained, polished regularly by family members. Others were abandoned to the ravaging of time, in the hopes that the person had crossed over. But now they were all being desecrated. Cracked, broken, and destroyed as bodies clawed their way from the ground.
Instead of corpses, these bodies were whole and healthy, already transformed. The wraiths used their superior strength to break through the caskets and dig their way up through the earth.
Behind her, one of the Raunians who’d been fighting with them gasped. It took a lot to shake one of the stalwart sea-faring people, but this was surely enough to do so.
Tana squeezed Kyara’s hand. Both of them were exhausted. Their physical bodies on the edge of collapse, even if their Songs were still going strong—buoyed by the portal overhead and the death all around them.
Again, Kyara sank into her other sight, as she’d been doing during the fighting. Her wildcat avatar wasn’t tired, and this fact kept her hope high. The creature eagerly leapt in the direction of the wraiths. Tana’s dragon and Mooriah’s raptor swooped in as well, tearing spirits from bodies and gorging on death energy.
Normally the presence of so much Nethersong would energize Kyara, but all of the benefits she would have otherwise experienced were funneled to her avatar, which grew stronger and stronger the longer it fought. Kyara wished she could say the same. But she only had to last long enough to control the thing.
Strong and fast as it was, the wildcat could only dispel one spirit at a time—and though it took less than the blink of an eye to do so, as the forces arrayed against them grew and grew, as the rain of spirits picked up and multiplied, Kyara knew they would be overwhelmed.
The elaborate, mirror-encrusted crypts of the wealthy shattered. Stone and glass sprayed everywhere as wraith after wraith climbed free of the weak encumbrances. Unlike around the rest of the city, however, these stood still, as if awaiting instruction. Kyara had the heavy foreboding that the True Father was nearby and once he gave the command, his army would attack.
With a hand gripping Tana’s, she grabbed for the radio Darvyn had insisted she carry. She wasn’t certain that they would survive this, but the others needed to know what was happening. Even if they couldn’t stop it.
You stare at your sister from across a stretch of cracked and broken pavement. She gazes at you as if she no longer knows you. Ha! The secret is she never truly did.
Yllis is here, too, something that strikes you as odd, but then everything about this place is a bit odd.
Elsira. You breathe in its rarified air. It has taken you lifetimes to reach this land again. To stand by this ocean in which you played and swam in your youth. But this city is unrecognizable to you now. So different. So crowded and dirty. Perhaps that is why you instructed your wraiths to tear it down. Brick by brick if needed. In preparation for you to replace it with something new.
You carry the jar—the empty jar now. The final spell used up the last of Dahlia’s flesh, leaving the jar full of naught but ashes. Oola stares at it, grasped in your embrace like a lover, and you toss it aside, shattering it against the cobblestone walkway behind you.
The Songs you liberated from the Wailers before they died have been drained nearly to empty husks inside you. That’s the problem with taking Songs, they run out so quickly. Inside a born Singer they would rejuvenate, but within you, they stagnate.
You will need more. Luckily, there are more to be had here. Hunger strikes a deep chord within you.
Oola’s Song is bright and blooming. It would definitely satiate you. And the girl standing next to her—the new queen—along with the boy calling himself the Shadowfox … What a meal you shall have. The strongest Songs in the land all together, ripe for the plucking.
The radio crackles again, the words on it too inconsequential for you to listen to again, but the boy’s face ripples with anguish.
“Go to her,” the girl-queen says. He glares at you once more before taking off to the north. His escape makes little difference, it simply prolongs the inevitable. You will track him down and finally have his Song, before long.
The music of destruction sings in your ears. The crashes of buildings collapsing, fire licking against wood, burst pipes flooding the streets. It is all there, sounds on the breeze.
“Will you embrace me one last time, brother?” Oola says. Her expression is stoic as a placid sea. Then again, she was always the patient one.
“That is my line, sister.” You step toward her, knife in hand. You can almost taste her power on your lips, she’s so near. Her dark eyes shine, they remind you of Father’s.
You startle. You hadn’t thought of him in quite a while. But the memory is implanted within your mind now. Father and Mother teaching you and Oola to swim in the ocean. You were but tots then. Young and fresh and innocent.
You shake off the memory and regard her again. She has not moved, but you have taken another step forward.
“How does it feel?” she asks, voice low.
“How does what feel? Victory? I know it is not something you are much acquainted with.” You are not trying to be smug. Much.
“No. Freedom.”
You pause at that, at the wistful quality in her voice. Yllis, standing just next to her, is grim as ever. “My old friend,” you call out warmly. What are grudges when victory is at hand?
He nods in acknowledgement, wary. Perhaps he has not forgiven you for killing him, but that is all water under the bridge as far as you are concerned.
“Freedom is the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted. I shall not be imprisoned again.” There is a warning in your voice.
Oola inclines her head slightly. “No, I should think not.”
You step toward her, prodding at her shield, curious to know what she is feeling. All you want is a taste of her regret, her sadness, her disappointment at being bested. You do not remember her as a sore loser.
“My sister. There will be no hard feelings between us in the new kingdom I will create. There is even room for you.”
“There is?” she asks, an eyebrow quirked.
“Of course. The bulk of my force stands now, awaiting my command. I do not have to destroy this city and everyone in it. I realize you are quite fond of them. I will give you them—the non-Singers—as a gift if you will just accept my rule.”
You ready the knife. There is nothing she can do against your army once you give them the order to charge. You are obviously the victor here.
“Do you promise no hard feelings?” she whispers. Movement in your periphery catches your attention. The girl-queen. You will not make the same mistake twice where she is concerned.
“I promise.”
A blast of Earthsong shoots toward you from the side. Potent but clumsy. You bat away the charge and give the girl-queen a withering glare.
“Your protégé could use some manners.”
Oola lifts a shoulder. “She is young. And headstrong.”
You sigh, and deflect new blasts from the child coming in a swift stream. The glint of a knife peeks out from Oola’s fist. You can no longer read the expressions on her implacable face, but disappointment fills you. Her emotions are still well shielded, but—there. A glimpse of remorse in her eyes.
A vein in her neck pops forward as she tightens her fist.
“I will give you some more time to think on my offer,” you say, taking a step back.
Surprise registers on her face. She expected you to strike.
And so you do, but not in the way she expects. A mental direction calls forth the regiment of waiting wraiths. They pour from their hiding places, racing down the gangplanks of ships and out of the shadows of destroyed buildings. Nearly one hundred strong, overwhelming the tiny force before you. Two Singers, Yllis—whose wraith form you cannot control, interestingly enough—and a handful of swarthy foreigners carrying oil canisters.
Pathetic.
As the wraiths converge, you lift yourself into the air on a controlled current of wind. Your sister spares you a glance before returning her focus to the battle before her.
Family has often been disappointing. But she will come around.
Once you are king again, she will have no other choice.