THREE

THE CURSE

Errol almost took a step back as the first of the boys appeared—they weren’t human or at least not completely so—like the Sheriff’s boys, but even weirder. This bunch wasn’t so much wolf-like as just—wrong. Each one was a different mixture of lizard, baboon, hyena, and—devil, what with their horns and fangs. Their bodies, too, were distorted in all sorts of unexpected and often puke-inducing ways.

It made it easier to knock the hell out of them with his sword, but he was still set against killing them if he didn’t have to—they had once been normal boys, like him, even if they had fallen in with a bad—really bad—crowd. As before, the weapon had a mind of its own, feinting here, jabbing there, finding clever angles of attack he would never have thought of on his own. But he was in control enough to make sure the blows came from the flat of the blade or the hilt.

The first several divlings were now piled inside the landing’s threshold, which made it harder for the others to get to him. The sword hardly weighed anything. He wasn’t winded at all. He felt as if he could hold this spot all day.

But from the sound of things, Dusk was having a harder time repelling the enemy trying to reach the roof by ship. He only had to defend a few square feet; the roof was wide open.

He dared not glance behind him to see exactly how bad it was. He could still hear Dusk’s war cries, so she was at least still fighting. But he did see her flagship drift by, in flames.

Veronica was on that ship.

Trying not to think about that, he smacked a monkey-snake-devil and kicked him back against his comrades.

Spots dancing before her eyes, Delia couldn’t take it any longer. She had to open her lungs, put something in them, even if it was seawater. What was left of her free will was gone.

Then something grabbed her and water rushed by and she was above the surface, on the stone. Air, sweeter than anything she had ever known poured into her like God, like the Holy Spirit—like life itself. Her eyes, still open, blinked away the tears of the ocean as she struggled to comprehend what had saved her.

Vilken was still there. And a demon.

The demon looked like a young girl, but her eyes were all wrong, voids into a Hell of deep water. The Marianas Trench was in those eyes, the crushing depths at the bottom of the living world. Her hair was sea-foam, her slender arms and legs pale eels wriggling before her, far longer than they should have been.

She reached for Vilken, and he shouted, once, before she closed him in those arms and yanked him into the water.

The air made Delia dizzy, and she began to push herself up when what she wanted to do was just lay there and breath.

But her body had other ideas. It was supposed to jump into the water, and that’s what it meant to do. She screamed for help as she crawled back toward the water’s edge.

Veronica drew the Raggedy Man down into the depths. She had been here before, and last time it had been easy. Then, he had seen only a victim who had escaped him once and that he could finally have.

This time was different. He was afraid and he was fighting.

She kissed him and felt the sickness that was older than time invade her mind, the decaying, festering core of him that always sought to be whole but which would never—could never—be complete. He was a mass of black tumors; every soul he had ever taken had become a cancer, and that’s what he was: a malignancy on the universe itself, a disease not of the living, but of the forces that made life possible.

She had failed to kill it before, and she understood she couldn’t kill it this time, but she could rob it of a body, of hands and feet and sexual organs. It would come back—it always came back—but for a time the world would be a better place, and she would be a little happier herself.

As they reached the bottom, the wave-shattered shells, the rotting beams, the thousand thousand tiny lives going about their business, she felt him begin to quiet, his struggles to lessen. He began to give in.

Lightning struck—everything went blue-white and her marrow turned to flame. She tried to keep hold of him, but her limbs wouldn’t respond.

Shandor had been right. Once again, she had underestimated the monster. Once again, she had failed.

Delia had almost reached the water when someone stepped in front of her. She tried to push past the legs to obey the command turning in her brain, but he bent, and strong hands lifted her up, and he kissed her, and her cramped, knotted muscles relaxed all at once—her body was her own again.

“Kostye?”

He turned, quickly, and slapped his hands together. The water erupted, and Vilken with it. The chancellor crashing to the cobble stones.

He was wet and looked pale, but he still succeeded in regaining his feet. He held the orb out in front of him.

“Stop!” he shouted.

Kostye didn’t stop. He moved as if he was struggling beneath an impossible burden, but he moved. Vilken didn’t seem to believe it as Kostye reached out, grabbed his hand, and began to crush it.

Vilken screamed, but it wasn’t merely a sound; there was a word in it, the sound of which sent a quiver of revulsion through her. Kostye screamed, too, and struck Vilken with the back of his other hand before staggering and dropping to one knee.

Vilken skipped backward, became a shadow, and vanished. Kostye stayed where he was, panting heavily. She stumbled over to him.

“Where is he?” he asked.

“He’s gone,” a small voice said. It was demon from the sea, but she had changed, diminished, become the blond girl she’d first seen at Kostye’s house. A friend of Aster’s.

“Skedaddled,” the girl added.

Kostye nodded grimly. He looked up, to where more ships converged on the tower.

“Aster is there?” he said.

“When I last saw her,” Delia said.

He closed his eyes, and once again turned inside out, and rose skyward on black wings.

The blond girl sat down next to her.

“I recognize you,” she said. “Aster’s teacher.”

“Guidance counselor,” Delia corrected, absently.

“I’m Veronica,” the girl said. “And actually, Aster isn’t up there anymore.”

“Why didn’t you tell him that?”

“Because my other friends are, and they could use some help.”

Delia looked back up. In this state, Kostye was capable of anything.

“He might help them,” she said. “But he will also be angry, and that is . . . bad. Do you know where Aster is?”

“Sort of,” Veronica said. “Maybe.”

“We’d better go tell him, then,” Delia said. “And we had better hurry.”

“Yeah. But maybe on the way up we can find you something to wear.”

Delia glanced at herself. She had forgotten she was naked. But after everything that had happened, that was a small worry.

Errol felt heat like the summer sun on his back, and the faces of his opponents were suddenly lit as if by a camera flash. He saw their pupils shrink to nothing. Then even the reflected light from their faces forced him to squint. Behind him he heard screams as if a choir was being tortured to death.

When the light faded, he didn’t have anyone left to fight. All of his enemies had dropped their weapons and were either backing away, holding their hands over their eyes, or had simply turned and run.

Errol spun around to see what had happened.

The sky was full of burning ships. The only one that hadn’t been set aflame was Dusk’s remaining vessel. The cause was easy to see: two dragons were circling the castle. As he watched, one dove toward a ship arriving from below.

The dragons were on their side, now?

Before he could parse that out, a demon settled onto the rooftop.

Dusk and her warriors were still fighting a knot of Vilken’s boys, but they quickly broke when the demon started toward them. Dusk raised her sword, but the monster knocked her sprawling with a clawed fist.

Then it came for Errol.

The demon was hairless, with glossy scales like a snake, gleaming in murky rainbow colors, like a slick of oil in a swamp. It had gigantic, translucent, featherless wings. It’s eyes, now bearing down on him, were oddly human.

He raised his sword, but to his surprise, the thing stopped.

“Where is Aster?” It demanded.

“She—she’s not here. Billy took her.”

The demon leaned in near him, then stood straight and pulled its wings around itself. A rush of hot air buffeted him back, and the demon was gone. In his place stood Aster’s father in all of his naked, tattooed weirdness. He looked . . . hurt, but he had no obvious wounds.

“Who?”

“Billy,” Errol said. “He’s sort of her boyfriend. He’s a giant.” Aster’s father frowned. Behind him, one of the flaming ships slowly sank out of sight.

“Where?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.”

Aster’s father began an answer, but suddenly stepped past Errol, toward the stairs.

“I think I do,” someone said, behind him.

It was Veronica. Ms. Fincher was there, too, still naked. She ran forward and hugged Aster’s father.

“You kind of took off before I could say anything,” Veronica went on.

“Then tell me now,” Kostye said.

“She’s supposed to go someplace called The Isle of the Othersun.”

Kostye’s eyes widened, and he passed his hand across his face.

“I see,” he said. He looked around him, studying each of them in turn.

“You are all her friends,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Errol replied.

He nodded at Dusk. “What of her?”

Dusk pursed her lips but said nothing. Veronica coughed up a little laugh.

“She’s good,” Errol said.

Kostye swayed on his feet; Ms. Fincher got up under his arm, supporting him.

“I need rest,” Kostye said. “And strong drink. Help me on board the ship. We will go together to find my daughter.”

Dusk’s single remaining vessel was singed, but still in one piece. Now that the enemy was cleared away, it was able to move back to the castle. Before boarding the ship, Kostye managed to find a bottle of a clear liquor, but drinking it didn’t seem to strengthen him; instead he looked steadily weaker. Ms. Fincher sat beside him, holding his hand. One of Dusk’s girls had fetched her a dull-yellow shift.

“You,” he called Errol over.

“Yes, sir.”

“You were Aster’s friend. At school.”

“You remember now?”

He nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Vilken said he could restore me. He told me things, showed me things. But it was all from before, from the old days. That was the Kostye he wanted, the old me. He never intended that I should remember Aster or you or Delia.” He glanced up apologetically at Delia. “But I became sure you were telling me the truth, Delia. So—I took memories from you. I’m sorry. But I remember now, maybe everything, maybe not. There is a price for that, and I will pay it soon.”

“What do you mean?” Delia asked. “Are you hurt? Sick?”

He ignored her question. “Aster is in terrible danger,” he said. “I never meant for her to come back here. But now that she is here, there are things she must know, immediately. If I am not able to tell her, you must. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Errol said.

He sighed and lay back.

“Those were great and terrible times,” he said. “War raged. Every kingdom fought every other. I did not care. Alone, in my demesne, I was uninterested in the affairs of men, only in power, in the mastery of sorcery. I hunted in the lower realms, I fought demons, I mastered myself.

“I was not, however, completely without obligations. My father arranged a marriage for me that many believed would end the strife, a marriage to join Heaven and Earth and the Hells below.”

“There was a queen. The death of her husband was in part what began the Troubles. She was beautiful and strong and wicked in her own way. We made a good match, I thought. Our marriage brought the peace everyone desired. The Kingdoms prospered. My wife indulged my appetites, and I spent much of my time in my dark places, learning the runes that undergird creation, while she governed. She raised the children of her first husband. Between us there was no issue, which suited me.”

“Wait,” Errol said. “The queen wasn’t Aster’s mother?”

He shook his head. “No,” he said. “That was another. Someone—unexpected. Someone who truly changed my heart. The queen discovered my . . . indiscretion. Her champion fell upon me as I dreamed and smote me down. I lay as dead for days, but then I rose. I went to the place where my love and I used to meet, our secret place. I found her, or what remained of her. And I found our child. For a few years, I was content in my sorrow and my happiness. I put aside thoughts of vengeance. I foreswore my power, as only he who has seen the limits and shortcomings of power can. I raised my daughter.

“Then the queen’s minions, my enemies, came. Not for me. But for her. For Aster. The queen had a dream, they say, that one day Aster would bring about the end of her reign and ruin to all of the Kingdoms. They came to murder my Aster.

“I cursed them. I cursed them all, with every dark fiber of my being, with every art in my possession. Then I fled, and took her to the one place I believed none of our enemies could follow.”

“You made the curse,” Errol said.

He nodded. “It caught me, even in the Reign of the Departed. Now it is catching me again. In remembering I’ve put myself at its mercy, even as we return to where it all began.”

“That’s where Aster’s gone? The Isle of the Othersun.”

“Yes,” Kostye said. “So she can end it. But if she ends it . . .” he coughed. He looked somehow older. His hair was still red—it hadn’t faded or gone grey—and he was no more wrinkled, or anything. But something was leaking out of him. It was like Errol’s dad, right before the cancer killed him, when it had taken everything from him but the very breath of life, reduced a strong man to a pile of rags.

He knew Aster’s father was dying.

“We’ll find her,” he said. “We’ll figure it out.”

Kostye’s eyes had closed. He was still breathing, but his chest rose and fell only by increments.

Errol went up on the deck of the ship. Veronica saw him and came over, saw something in his face, and without a word took him in her arms.

“I love you,” he said. “I’m sorry—”

“Hush,” Veronica said. “You don’t need to talk so much.”

Over her shoulder, he saw Dusk gazing down at them from her position at the helm. She shrugged a little before turning away.

Kostye came up a few moments later and unsteadily moved to the rail. He lifted his hand and recited something that sounded like a poem. When he was done, a light shone on the horizon. It was not the sun, or the moon, but it was bright and growing nearer.

Aster woke to a warm breeze, and the smell of flowers. For a moment, she thought she was back in nightmare, for the glade she lay in looked very much like the meadow where she had seen the birds fly, where the swan had come to her. But it didn’t feel like a dream.

She sat up, and realized someone was watching her, sitting with his knees drawn up under his chin. Then she realized who it was.

“Billy?” she said. It seemed impossible. Maybe it was a dream.

“Aster,” he said. “I found you.”

He had that sort of dazed look he’d had after turning into a giant and then coming back to his smaller self. She didn’t care. She had pushed her feelings about him so far down, so hard, and now it all exploded out of her. She ran to him and bowled him over, pressing her lips against his.

He didn’t respond—his mouth felt sort of like a cold cut.

She drew back. “Billy?”

Then his beautiful amber eyes cleared, and he reached for her, pulled her back to him.

It was wonderful, it was impossible. And all too soon it had to end.

“Billy,” she said, half-heartedly drawing away. “I have to know what’s going on. What happened. How we got here.”

“You called me,” he said. “I was on the Far Shores, where the stars are near. Where the sea caves are big enough even for a giant to walk in. There’s music in those places, made by the wind and the stone. It takes a long time to listen to. I used to listen for seasons, for years, for decades. But I didn’t hear music; I heard you. You were hurt, scared, in pain. I searched for you.”

He went on, in brief, clipped, sometimes confused sentences. About finding Errol, and the ship which Dusk had made hers, the battles to reach her.

“Errol and Veronica,” Aster said. “They’re still back there.”

He shrugged. “Yeah. I wasn’t thinking, you know, like a little person. I only knew I had to bring you someplace. Bring you here.”

“Why here?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

But she did. She remembered the woman in the webs, how she had said when she found her heart, she would find the Isle of the Othersun. And here was Billy, her heart—and she felt, somehow, this was the place.

But Errol, Veronica—even Dusk, who – to hear Billy tell it, was on their side again—what had become of them? Had they been captured, or killed? Billy’s account wasn’t detailed enough for her to be sure.

“We may have to go back,” she said. “They came to save me, I can’t just let Vilken have them.”

“I don’t want to go back,” Billy said. “If I do, I’ll lose you again.”

“That’s what we thought the last time,” she said.

“We were lucky,” he said. “I know now I would have remembered you no matter what. Love would have made me remember. But it might have taken me a hundred years, or two hundred. That I remembered almost right away—”

“I made you remember,” she said. “I did a Dream, a wild magic, and it found you. We’re connected, Billy. We can always find each other. We have to go back.”

Billy looked away, off toward the horizon. He stayed that way for a long time.

“No,” he said.

“Billy—”

“We don’t have to. They’re coming.”

He pointed by pursing his lips slightly. Then she saw it—a small dot in the sky, moving slowly toward them.