Chapter Thirty-Eight Vina
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Vina
I know you like your ghost stories. There’s a story I shouldn’t tell you, that old warders whisper when the nights grow cold and long, and watch duty grows bitterly dull.
When the Isle dies, the first sign will be the ravens. When they fly away from the Tower, my Pearl, you’ll know we’re done for. If you watch the skies carefully at night, who knows—maybe you’ll be the first to see it happen.
Source: Letter from Warder Kellan Smith to his niece, Pearl Smith
They waited on Tower Green, the open land beneath the White Tower. “Better to lead him into the walls,” Galath said, voice low, “than risk the city.”
The sky had darkened above them. Vina raised her head. The ravens had gathered on the White Tower and the innermost walls, a watchful and beady-eyed flock. They were utterly silent. Sarah stood beside her, arms crossed, face white with growing terror.
“You need to run and hide,” she said to Sarah. “You, and all the witches. Protect the librarians. Please.”
Instead of arguing, Sarah looked up at the ravens and shivered, then nodded.
“I can feel him coming,” she said, voice strained. “Trust me, we’ll keep our distance.”
When they were gone, Vina stood tall. She’d taken a bow from the body of a fallen warder, and a sword from another. She held the sword now, her fist hot, her heart hammering. Galath stood ahead of her, axe silver and gleaming. He didn’t move. He was waiting.
The knights came first. Their ghostly bodies had grown more solid, as if the strength of their King fed their own flesh.
They were pearly-skinned now, their horses’ hooves thudding in whispers against the soil, their voices carrying in shrieks upon the wind.
They did not draw their weapons. Instead they gathered like shafts of moonlight on the green, surrounding both Vina and Galath in a translucent and shifting cage of ghosts.
Vina strode over to Galath’s side as the ground began to tremble and the sky curdle, strange as spoiled milk.
“No closer, Vina,” said Galath. He was staring into the distance, unblinking.
“Let me fight with you,” she said again, helplessly.
“You and the witch asked me for trust only hours ago,” he said quietly in return. He still wasn’t looking at her. “Extend me the same trust now. This is my task to fulfill.”
A susurration moved through the ghosts—their heads turned, their eyes brightened.
He is here. He is here. Our King. Our King!
The Eternal King rode onto the green with ritual solemnity. He was golden-haired now—tall and green-eyed, burning from within with life and power. Vina felt the wave of his presence wash over her, and bit hard on her own cheek to hold his charisma at bay.
Galath strode toward the Eternal King, dragging his axe behind him. He was a broad, uncanny figure—pale as the ghosts, stained with archivist blood. He was not a handsome prince, a fair knight, a hero. He was her old enemy, and a murderer, and he was her father.
She could not believe he’d die here. She could not allow it.
The Eternal King steadied his steed, looking down at Galath, through him, as if he were nothing. The King was on the path of his tale, and Galath did not belong.
“You cannot pass,” said Galath steadily. “Unless you pay the price.”
The King’s nostrils flared. His eyes narrowed.
“You are no incarnate,” he said. “You have no right to command me. We will pass.”
“My words are an old tale, born from old laws,” Galath said, implacable. “I stand in your path, Eternal King, and I hold my axe in my hands. You know the rules of this tale. If you wish to pass, you will bargain with me.”
The tale snapped into place. An ugly look crossed the Eternal King’s face. In it, Vina saw the pettiness of the Queen—her pride, her incisive cruelties.
“We will pay, then,” said the King. “But so shall you, for standing against us. Your life is forfeit, stranger. When our bargain is done, you will lay it at our feet. Tell us the price.”
“A battle,” said Galath, hefting up his axe. “Defeat me, and you may pass.”
The Eternal King’s face darkened as he drew his own sword and alighted from his horse.
He moved without pause, without patience—swift and brutal, economical and deadly.
He struck Galath with a blow that would have sent a mortal man flying.
Instead, Galath grunted and straightened, lifting his axe as if it were a feather, no more.
Glorious, she thought, looking at the King. But also savage, as all monarchs are—an absolute power, moving to violence as easily as hilt to blade.
It was an old voice in her. The voice of hundreds of knights, who’d seen the same Queen rule, and knew the shape of the violence enacted by a body upon a throne and beneath a crown.
In a blink, Galath was on the Eternal King, all savagery, his axe a violent extension of himself. He struck for the neck first—then for the belly. It would have been a cruel wound, a slow death, if the Eternal King had not darted away with pleased laughter.
She’d never truly realized what a honed monster the pale assassin was capable of being, but she saw it now. The Eternal King was swift and bold, tale-carved for success. But Galath was a killer who did not fear death. Galath was breathing steadily, barely winded.
“Perhaps you are a worthy opponent,” the Eternal King said. “Continue. We welcome a good battle!”
“Then I will provide one,” Galath said roughly, and attacked once more.
The whispers of the ghosts were growing stronger.
They crowded closer, drawing their own weapons.
Vina clenched her jaw and steadied her sword.
“If you interfere,” she said, her voice low, “then I will fight you. You may be ghosts, but if you have the flesh to hold a weapon, you have enough flesh for me to sever with my sword.”
A sigh almost like laughter ran through them.
The Eternal King’s sword arced through the air and glanced a blow against Galath’s arm.
Blood sprayed from the wound, but Galath did not falter.
He swept forward, brutal blows from his axe glancing off the King’s shield, his armor.
Then, with a cry of triumph, the Eternal King slammed his shield into Galath’s jaw, sending him bloodied to the ground, the axe skittering across the soil far from his grasp.
“Father!”
Vina tried to go to him. The ghosts barred her way.
If we cannot interfere, they taunted, neither can you. The tale has its laws, sir knight.
There was a rumble behind her. Vina whirled.
The Beast emerged from the White Tower, unchained and unbound, before her eyes.
It moved forward on two legs, then four, claws digging into soil and stone.
It bled as it loped toward them, streaming gouts of ink behind it.
Its mouth of too many teeth peeled open, and it howled—a howl that echoed from wall to wall, sky to soil.
Its spine was compressed, ears flattened.
It was terrified, she realized. It had tried to run, and in doing so had placed itself perfectly in the King’s sight.
The Eternal King turned toward it, a smile searing his mouth.
“Ah, you are a grand Beast,” he exclaimed, as Galath crawled across the green and curled his bloodied fingers once more around the axe.
“We would gladly hunt you at the solstice, with baying hounds and knights on horseback. But you are here before us, in our city, and we will take your head now.” The King strode toward the Beast. “May your false tales perish. May your death be a blessing to us.”
Vina placed herself in his path, her sword steady.
“Incarnate,” said the Eternal King, eyes as reflective now as an animal’s. “We do not wish to kill you. Your tale nourishes mountains of copper—you are one of our own, of our land, our blessed Isle. Stand aside.”
“I will not,” she said.
The Eternal King exhaled and swept toward her.
She had always been a good swordswoman; it was in her tale, written into her deeper than blood.
But the first blow of the King’s blade against her own made her feel like a child fighting a giant, flotsam against the sea.
She could not defeat him. She could only hope to survive a heartbeat, two, three.
She parried. He disarmed her thoughtlessly, easily.
He looked through her, toward the Beast, as if she were already dead, even as his blade raised for a killing blow.
And beyond his shoulder, she saw Galath.
Galath was on his feet. Galath was running. She had never seen the look on his face that he wore now: terrified, mouth open for air, every part of him focused on one thing alone.
He flung himself onto the King’s back, dragging him bodily away from Vina. His axe fell from his hand and skidded to her feet, sodden with his own blood.
“Run, Vina,” he shouted. “Vina, run—”
His voice turned to silence as the King’s sword pierced his side, running him through.
The King straightened. Galath fell to the ground behind him.
Vina grasped her father’s axe and flung it into the King’s throat.
She cried out in fury as she did so, but her voice was swallowed by the rumble of the earth, the crack of the sky. The Eternal King’s eyes were wide. Blood was running in rivulets from his gouged-open throat.
The Eternal King fell, and the sky exploded, black with ravens. They swept out from every inch of the Tower, as if it bled birds instead of blood. When they vanished, the sky they left behind was blacker still, the light leached from its surface. The ground trembled violently.
The Isle was falling, she realized.
It was rage that had driven her, and love, but she did not care, in that moment. Galath had fallen, and Vina could not stand it. Galath had fallen, so she could not allow the King to live.
The Beast clawed its way closer. She barely saw it. Her eyes were on the King, her heart on Galath.
Simran ran out of the White Tower, followed by Hari, who ran and ran toward Galath, crossing the churned mud like nothing could impede him—not even the shaking earth, not the falling sky, not the world ending.
Vina was frozen where she stood. But a choked sound from the Eternal King drew her to him.
“Lady,” the King gasped, through his ruined throat, as Vina grasped him. “Take me back to the sweet place, among the apple trees. Let me rest.”
How could he speak through his wound? A tale. A ritual. Words that must be spoken.
She was not the Lady he sought, but Vina nodded.
“I will,” she said.
“I must… sleep… rise…”
“You’re free as any of us to change your tale,” Vina said roughly, touching her fingertips to his eyelids. Closing his eyes. His breath rattled, then went silent.
I hope you rot, she thought. It meant nothing.
Ophelia was cradling the Beast’s head upon her lap, as gentle as if it were a kitten instead of a monster from the mists of time. But it was Simran kneeling beside it, in long black librarian robes; it was Simran, speaking to it, so calm, as if the world weren’t crumbling around them.
“You can live through the trees, the rocks, the rivers,” Simran said gently.
“If that’s what you want. You can live through us.
We’ll tell your stories, and we’ll live them too.
That’s what the Isle is.” She pressed her forehead against the Beast’s own.
“You’re more powerful than any monarch,” she said.
“Because you’re not just one grand tale, are you?
You’re the strength of thousands of stories told, thousands of dreams and lifetimes. ”
“You’re safe now,” Ophelia said tenderly. “Let go.”
The Beast looked to the sky.
The world rippled, as if it were not a real thing at all—as if the Isle were just a reflection in water, disrupted by a carelessly thrown pebble.
But as the Eternal King breathed his last, his tale frayed, his death unplanned…
the Beast broke apart into a dozen shadows that flew from the Tower out across London.
They watched it happen: great ravens and sparrows and owls swooping across the city. Deer and foxes, horses and snuffling badgers, snaking their way through the streets. Even within the Tower’s high walls, they could see the change ripple forth. It was a tale that spoke true in their hearts.
Knowledge swept through her, as the tales swept over her skin—light as wings, as breath, as warm light.
The Beast was the soul of the Isle—the ever-changing soul, made of small folk’s dreams, and languages old as the stones, or carried tenderly across the silver sea.
The Beast was not monarchy or thrones, chivalry or glory held fast in a fist. It was life in all its forms—and life was what flowed from it across the length and breadth of the Isle in its wake.
It flew across the ground, the sky, in violent lashes, in ribbons of red and black, splitting the pitch-black sky, snaring the trembling ground.
In those rivulets of ink, Vina saw thousands of stories.
Stories of loss, grief, exploitation. Stories of small joys, desperate loves.
Tales enough to write an Isle with, or to save one.
The ink vanished. The Beast was gone. The ground was steady, and the sky clear. The King and Queen were dead, but the Isle was alive, and saved.
And Galath was still.