60: THE DEFINITION OF VICTORY

Janel’s story The Monastery at Devors, Quur

The rain of scorpion casks ceased on the high general’s order, but the damage was done. Drehemia’s frenzy increased again, and she tried new tricks. Day turned to night and back as she strobed darkness. She turned invisible. She ripped and tore at the Lash’s tentacles, severing many, although they grew back swiftly enough.

Someone down there—Janel assumed Sheloran—began melting all the metal and forming giant dragon-size shackles. The very cliff face itself had distended, providing cover from the scorpion attacks. She imagined Thurvishar was responsible for that one.

Between the distance, the storm, the sea spray, the various shields, and the on-again, off-again light, it was impossible to say for sure what was happening down there. This didn’t stop her, or dozens of other soldiers, from squinting down in an attempt to do just that. She was hard at it when Teraeth appeared by her shoulder.

“Think it’ll work?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Janel said. “Now that we’re giving them a breather—” A baby’s giggle from behind gave her pause. She looked over her shoulder to where her brother Jarith was bouncing his son in his arms. Jarith, Kalindra, and their son were being escorted to one of the temporary gates.

Janel looked at Jarith, then at Teraeth, then back at Jarith.

“Is that … Talon?” she whispered.

Teraeth followed her gaze. “I don’t think so, no.”

“But then, if that’s not … and you’re here, then…”

Jarith glanced up in her direction, and their eyes met. His expression was indecipherable, but he gave her a solemn nod. Then he left through the gate.¹ Janel didn’t know if either Kalindra or Jarith intended on coming back, but she could understand the need to remove Nikali from the war zone.

Janel found herself smiling.

Shouts drew her attention back to the harbor. The wall extruded from the cliff side had begun to crumble, allowing better visibility. Also, the flickering darkness had ceased, and the storm appeared to be letting up. But the most important element, that which drew startled exclamations, was the complete and utter absence of monsters—dragon or kraken.

Janel grabbed the spyglass from a nearby soldier and ignored his protests as she peered through it. Gathered on the shattered remains of the quay she saw Kihrin, Thurvishar, Senera, Talea, and Qown standing in a semicircle looking down. Galen knelt before them, and lying on the ground, her head in Galen’s lap, lay the body of Sheloran D’Talus.

Teraeth’s story Atamer Harbor, Devors, Quur

In the minutes it took Teraeth to run down to the harbor, he decided he hated stairs. They weren’t any more fun to run down than up and considerably scarier in some cases.

Out of breath for the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, Teraeth approached the group, who hadn’t moved the entire time it took him to get down there. He knew it was bad when he saw Galen, Talea, and Qown crying.

“What happened?” he asked Thurvishar, who leaned wearily on Senera’s shoulder.

Thurvishar shook his head. He looked exhausted.

Senera answered for him. “She was already injured, and she overextended herself to hold Drehemia. She saved us at the cost of her life.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again to glare at Teraeth. “Aren’t you going to tell me this isn’t my fault?”

“It isn’t—” he started to say.

“I know it’s not!” Senera snapped. “It’s the fucking Quuros army’s fault!” She looked past Teraeth and said, “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t go up there and just blow them all to—”

“I thought you were done helping Relos Var,” Janel said from behind Teraeth.

Senera closed her eyes and shuddered.

Teraeth turned to look at Janel in confusion. He looked at the top of the cliff, at the never-ending stairs connecting “there” and “here,” and then at her again.

She returned his gaze without expression.²

Teraeth shook his head and returned his attention to the tableau. “When this is all over…,” he said, but left the sentence unfinished. Janel’s abilities would be the least of his problems when this was all over.

In the meantime, he regarded Galen’s tear-streaked face and Sheloran’s empty one. She hadn’t been terrible for a Quuros royal. Neither of them were.

Sheloran inhaled.

Galen opened his eyes in shock. He put his finger to his wife’s throat. He didn’t need to announce if she had a pulse; Sheloran was visibly breathing.

“What just happened?” Qown asked.

Sheloran opened her eyes and stared at her husband. She tsked. “You shouldn’t cry, Blue. It does unfortunate things to your complexion.”

Galen drew in a shuddering breath. “You—” He lowered his head to hers. Teraeth didn’t think he kissed her, but instead whispered something. He couldn’t see the man’s lips to read them and found himself glad of that; the scene was painfully private, and he didn’t feel he had the right to watch.

Xivan stepped into the circle. “I take it everything worked out?”

Teraeth opened his mouth to reply, glanced at her, and froze.

He’d spent enough time in his mother’s presence to recognize Death when he saw her. Xivan wasn’t that—yet. Not fully, anyway. But the echoes were there, like seeing someone dressed up in the favorite gown of a person you loved. They don’t look the same, but you couldn’t help but be reminded of the original owner.

He wondered what the criteria had been; to be singled out to become the new Goddess of Death. Chance? Was she to become the new Thaena because she’d been “lucky” enough to be the lover of the new Taja? That would imply things about the relationship between Khaemezra and Eshimavari I’m reasonably certain never existed. Or was there more to it than that?

He suspected the latter. Xivan’s link with death seemed too strong, her background too appropriate. And perhaps, if one was to be the Goddess of Death, it might be wise to understand the concept from every side; to lose and to have lost, to cut the threads of life and experience their severing in turn.

“You figured out how to Return,” he said.

Xivan smiled, just a little bit. “Oh no,” she said. “I haven’t even begun to figure that out. But stiff-arming a soul that was still in the process of crossing the Veils back into a perfectly good body? That’s not so tough.”

“Thank you,” Sheloran said, looking up at her.

“Thank you,” Xivan said with an awkward shrug. “I kind of owed you for the whole ‘trying to kidnap you to use you to blackmail your mother’ debacle.” She reached down, offering her hand. “Are we good?”

Sheloran took the hand and let Xivan pull her to her feet. She looked at Galen, then at Qown, Talea, and the rest. Her gaze returned to Xivan, and she smiled, for once without covering it with her fan. “We’re good,” she said. “The real question is: What are we going to do with them?” She pointed up the quay.

Teraeth turned to look, only just then noticing the cluster of some two or three dozen creatures standing around awkwardly. He didn’t even recognize some of them, but others were all too horribly familiar. Fuck. Is that a centaur?

Janel laughed, put her arm around Teraeth’s waist. “Come on, everyone,” she said. “We’re a long way from done.”