Chapter 42
In Which I Am Puffing and Groaning and in Substantial Amounts of Pain, but In Which What I Am Doing Is Important Enough to Be Worth Any Agony.
The popping bubbles let me know that I was being summoned.
I’d been speed-marching up and down a set of stairs to maintain the tone of my calves, so it came as some relief to stop. Even still, I had to bend double and pant, slicking back sweaty hair, before I felt ready to follow.
Once certain of my attention, the bubbles picked up speed, popping and re-forming so that I had to break into a trot along the cracked pavement to keep up.
I dodged past the trident-wielding statue that had so badly frightened me on that first day, skirted a pit of collapsed concrete, and circumvented an abandoned vehicle, catching only the briefest glimpse of the small, curled body within.
I barely needed the bubbles now, having recognized the route to the library plaza, so I slowed, not wanting to arrive out of breath.
The mismatched dragon siblings stood before the shelves, waiting.
“See?” said the sorcerer, receiving a fully laden basket from Hydna. “He comes when called.”
I frowned at him, before clapping Hydna’s outstretched hand, her preferred method of greeting. “How’s it going?”
“The prosthetics are complete,” said Merulo, shattering my good spirits. “So I thought I’d take one last walk on my own two feet. Hydna’s even packed a meal.”
Merulo looked scared, I realized. Pale, even for him, with a forced edge to his usual scowling arrogance. His hands shook almost imperceptibly where he gripped the handle.
“And there’s no point in saying you don’t have to do this?” I reached for the basket, and he allowed me to take it; from its weight, Hydna had clearly packed something substantial.
“None whatsoever.” Merulo brandished a hand imperiously, then waited. Growling in annoyance, Hydna nevertheless obliged her brother and spoke the words to tear through space. A portal bloomed in midair, revealing the calm sands of a starlit beach beyond.
I had asked Hydna earlier why she summoned portals with spoken words, while Merulo drew elegant pentacles.
Apparently, it came down to efficiency. The more direction you gave a spell, with intertwined sigils, spoken command words, and symbolic items, the easier it flowed, like a channeled river without excess leakage.
Merulo had been less wasteful than I’d thought with his magic. Hydna favoured shows of brute strength.
The sorcerer stepped through first, lifting his feet high to get through the raised portal. I hopped up next, landing in soft, sinking sand on the other side. When the portal clamped shut before Hydna could join us, I raised my eyebrows at Merulo.
“My sister has some final tinkering to do. She’ll open the portal again, at a set time.
” He stalked down the beach. I watched his stride, wondering how it would differ, afterward.
His robe blew gently in the evening breeze, complementing the rhythmic lapping of the waves, and I felt the terrible urge to freeze this moment before anything more could change.
He sat abruptly in a black flap of cloth, having found a jutting rock that suited him. “We’ll eat here.”
I got to work disemboweling the basket. It contained a disconcerting amount of wrapped meat, two apples, paired goblets, and a flagon of dark red wine, all bundled in a finely spun blanket that I laid with a flourish on the sand.
The sorcerer groaned as I unpackaged the meat. “Hydna has been forcing chicken liver on me, for blood restoration.”
I smiled at that, and selected a tender strip, popping it into my mouth. “She’s showing her love.”
“Do not speak with your mouth full. Liver is a repulsive organ that smells like spoiled cheese. Meat should not”—his voice rose in a burst of temper—“smell like cheese.”
Right, time for the wine. Holding the bottle between my knees, I pried out its cork with a loud pop. As I poured in arcing red streams, Merulo chewed on the liver with exaggerated revulsion.
He’d chosen a bright evening. The full moon shone silver on us, granting decent visibility, though the night still drained the beach of colour.
“Hydna has a theory.” Merulo sipped, and I tried not to look too eager.
It’d be funny, I thought, to see the sorcerer drunk.
“She’s been pilfering my books, in particular astronomy, and something bothers her.
” He tilted his head, appraising the abyss that curved above us, dizzyingly deep.
“The stars. They match the pre-Descent records precisely.”
“Ah, I see!” I nodded, not understanding. At Merulo’s glower, I took a deep swig from my own goblet.
“Everything is in motion, always. Orbiting, falling, spinning. Due to the vastness of space, it would take many centuries for even the slightest difference to be noticeable, but we’ve had that, and there is nothing.”
“God’s influence extends farther than you thought?” I guessed, munching on another piece of liver. Merulo had a point; the flavour took some getting used to.
“No,” said the sorcerer, after draining his own cup. “We can’t think that. Or else, all of this will be for nothing.” He held out his goblet for a refill, and I, the perfect henchman, indulged him.
“The alternative is what, that it’s fake? We’re not seeing the real sky?” The wine made my tongue feel dry and puffy, along with its usual effect of emboldening my lustful impulses. I settled for running my fingers through the sand, carving nonsensical lines.
“Precisely.” The sorcerer leaned forward with the breathless excitement of a buzzard on a carcass. “Which means . . . ?”
I swallowed another mouthful to get out of answering.
Frustrated, Merulo continued, “Which means that the colonies on Mars, and the moon—that moon, right there.” He pointed accusingly into the sky.
“They could be active, cut off from Larnia by whatever barrier has been erected. And all our knowledge, our cultures and languages, everything presumably lost on the Day of Descent—the religions you can scarcely imagine after this forced, homogenous worship of a monster—the moon could be their ark.”
“Or they could be dead,” I said, the drink making me bold. “It could be a tomb, like the resort. Eat some liver, you need it.”
“Ahh.” Merulo followed the meat with a cleansing draught of wine. “It’s possible. But I’d like to think they’re alive.” He motioned the goblet at me, sloshing out half its contents. “And if so, I’ll be returning their home to them.”
“They will sing the praises of the mad sorcerer,” I agreed, discreetly shuffling toward his rock perch.
“Why do they call me that?” The mad sorcerer noticed his diminished wine with a gloomy lowering of his brows. “I’ve always been quite coherent. Kill God, restore the world. Where’s the madness?”
“They’re haters.” With a carefully calculated scoot, I shoved my way onto the rock beside him. “Ignore them.”
The sorcerer was too deep in his thoughts to protest my arm snaking about his shoulders. “Even if these stars are fake,” he said. “They may be the only ones I ever see.”
My resolve snapped. “Don’t do it.” I fought to keep my voice steady. “Honestly, why should you have to carry all this? If it’s a problem—and I’m not saying it’s not—someone else will step up to fix it.”
“When?” Merulo leaned into me, and having braced for his fury, I fell silent. “It’s been a thousand years. I know how you feel, but let’s not fight about this. Not tonight.”
After a long silence, I managed to say, “Okay,” and brought my mouth to his.
Abruptly, he pulled away. I tried not to audibly sigh as his face hardened, some internal wall sliding back into place. We had finally been getting to the good stuff!
“I lied,” he said.
Surprise brought me to a standstill. My mind swam, bleary under the alcohol. “About the moon?”
“No. Why would I—? No, about that horrible little elf.” Merulo scowled, and my face contorted in an echo of his. As former friends went, I didn’t rank Glenda highly.
And then it connected. “You mean, she told you, that . . .” I paused to swallow and compose myself. “So she did tell you, then? You received my, uh, last words?”
The sorcerer left our perch and stood, silhouetted by the full moon. “That you loathe me. Yes.”
“Loathe? That’s what she—? Oh fucking fuck, Glenda.” I pushed myself off the rock to join him. “Well, actually, that might be my fault, I didn’t get the word fully out before, you know . . .” I drew a finger across my neck, in case he did not, in fact, know.
This, at least, got Merulo to look away from his damn moon. “Then you don’t loathe me?”
I wanted to cry from exasperation, or perhaps slap his gaunt cheek. “You can’t think of any other word it might have been? Come on, Merulo, you’re the intellectual here.”
His thin lips moved as he sounded out possibilities. I gave him time, shifting my weight from one foot to the other with accompanying crunches from the sand.
“Loathe is the only word that makes sense.” The night did his face no favours, shadows collecting in the lines that gave his mouth its perpetual scowl.
“I am not entirely without self-awareness. And I do want to, ah”—he choked on the word—“apologize. For the needle. I have no qualms in using violence against those who would destroy me, but against someone so pitiful, who was under my control?” The sorcerer pursed his lips. “It was tasteless. I regret it.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “It was a completely undeserved punishment.”
The sorcerer’s frown deepened, and his mouth twisted, but heroically, he managed to refrain from comment.
Despite my prodding, I found that I also couldn’t bring myself to say the word. “It really wasn’t loathe.”
“I have done nothing to inspire any other feelings.” A thought seemed to strike him. “Unless . . . lust?”
“LOVE,” I shouted. “For fuck’s sake, it was love! You think my final message would have been a come on? Really and truly not a situation where any movement could occur down there.”
“Well,” said the sorcerer. “One never knows, with you.”
A tense quiet followed, both of us staring at the round white moon. It was that or risk accidental eye contact.
“Hydna will be opening the portal soon,” Merulo said, after a time.
“You don’t have to say it back. There’s no pressure. It was supposed to be an ‘in my dying breath, I confess’ type thing, so there’s no need to make a big deal of it or anything, and—ah fuck, are you crying?”
“No.” The sorcerer sniffed, turning his back on me.
“My mistake. Must be an allergic reaction to the sand. Terrible time for that to strike.” I sidled closer, giving Merulo a playful shoulder-check that made him stumble. “You love me. Admit it.”
“Hydna will be here soon.” He sounded desperate.
“Then she’ll get to hear how much you love me, which is a lot.”
“Quiet,” he hissed, as another voice bellowed across the beach.
“What was that?” Hydna’s figure in the distance looked distinctly menacing, a giant marching down the shore toward us.
“Your brother is in love with me!” I shouted back, cupping my hands around my mouth. Merulo garbled something and grabbed my arm, squeezing with all his feeble might.
“I know!” came the yell. “It’d be cute if it wasn’t so disgusting!”
The sorcerer sagged, his grip on my arm loosening. “This is nonsensical.”
“Oh yes, everything’s been nonsensical for a while now. Let’s lean into it,” I said, and pulled him in for a kiss while Hydna hollered and hooted in the background. With the cool night air, and the taste of wine in my mouth, everything felt good.
As far as final moments of peace went, it was a decent one.