47. Mythmaking
Ash flaked from the sky, turning the world gray. Or maybe all of the color had seeped away when Gams had turned to dust because I knew what that meant was waiting for me at the Rift.
Ciarán leaned against me, and magick flurried at our feet, freezing the bay to forge a path back to the others. The air crackled with Skal, and without the mountains limiting my power, it was easy to form the ice bridge beneath us.
Paleomagnetism studied the flipping of the globe’s magnetic poles. Something similar had happened when I’d siphoned Keldori’s magick into Skalterra to save Ciarán. The magick poles had reversed, and Skal now flowed the opposite direction.
Skalterra was brimming with it, and I was certain when I walked back through the Rift into Keldori, there would be none.
Stanley lay on the ice near the Rift. Twenty yards away, the snow and ice was stained red, but what remained of Ferrin didn’t qualify as a body anymore.
A third shape lay surrounded by my friends.
Mom’s head bowed over the gossamer blue dress of the body.
Fana and Iseult knelt beside her with Orla supported between them.
My father lurked nearby, unmoving. He flinched away as a beast with rippling green fur and a muzzle stained in seal blood crept from the depths of the Rift.
Una gave a low, mournful howl, and then bounded across the ice to meet us. She nosed at Ciarán, trying to push her nose beneath his arm, but the cloak he had wrapped around himself hung in the way. She circled us in an anxious pace, finally landing on my side to try nosing at me this time.
“Una.” I rested my hand on her muzzle, taking a half-moment of comfort in her touch. “Bring me the Baron.”
Una barked, ran in the direction of the armada where it continued to float out at sea, and dove into the water.
I knelt on the ice next to Gams across from Mom. With one arm still supporting Ciarán, I reached to move a lock of hair from Gams’s face. She looked so much more peaceful in death than I had when I’d been dying in the cave outside of Willow’s Grave.
“We still need to reseal the Rift," Mom said quietly. She kept her eyes on Gams’s face, but reached for me. Her fingers shook as they tightened in mine.
“But Gams is—” I started, then cut off when I realized the alternative. “No.”
I ripped my hands away.
“I’ll come back to Keel Watch as a Nightmare. It’ll be okay.” Mom’s strained tone suggested she didn’t necessarily believe those words.
I remembered Gams describing how she’d felt all her friends die, one by one, as their tethers cut. We would all do the same. We would fade, but Mom would remain.
And I’d lost so much today already.
“Wren,” she begged.
“I said no. You can’t be resealed without me. You need three Sovereigns.”
“Three is ideal,” Mom’s voice turned stony, “but two will suffice.”
I looked at Orla and Fana, but Orla, with half of her face swollen beyond recognition, looked barely conscious, and Fana shrank away.
“We came all this way to seal the Rift.” Iseult’s voice was hard and reprimanding.
“I came all this way to save my grandma, and she died anyway!” I snapped.
“And that’s exactly why I didn’t want to join you!” Silver sparks flared at Iseult’s fingertips. “And we’re here now! Ferrin is dead, but there are still armies on the shore and in the sea!”
“Keldori doesn’t have what they want anymore.”
They hadn’t noticed it yet, the way the air was rife with magick. The way it buzzed against our skin and swirled on the wind.
I stood, and Mom reached for my hands again, but I pulled away.
“I said no,” I snarled.
“You don’t get to unilaterally make that decision for both worlds!” Mom rose to her feet too.
“Why not? Gams did four hundred years ago when she and her friends forced every Magician into Skalterra in the first place!” I spread my arms out.
“I didn’t ask to be a Saergrim. I never signed up to protect the Rift or lose my mom or my grandma!
And Skalterra didn’t ask to be closed off from Keldori.
Even if we reseal the Rift, someone new is going to come along and try to force it open. ”
“You sound like Lysanor,” Iseult growled.
“Maybe Lysanor had a point. Magicians were removed from Keldori because the Skal made them transform into rotsbane,” I said. “It won’t do that anymore.”
Iseult screwed her face up at me. “You don’t know that.”
“Of course I do,” I said simply. “Besides, like I said, the Skal is here now and I fixed it. There will be no more rotsbane. I’m not sealing my mother in a glacial prison for something that isn’t an issue anymore.”
Mom’s face was unreadable in the falling ash.
“Wren—” she started.
“You have to trust me,” I said. “Please. I can’t lose you too.”
“You won’t. I already told you, I’ll come back as a Nightmare—”
“It’s not the same.”
“You were fine doing the same to Gams!”
“Because she was never real to begin with!”
A hand reached for my ankle, and I looked down to see Ciarán grabbing at my leg.
“Trust yourself,” he said in my head. “Do what you need to do. Do not yield where you don’t need to.”
A splash sounded behind me and I turned to see Una dragging a very angry and very wet baron onto the ice. Tamora thrashed, trying to free her armored leg from Una’s teeth, and red firelight flared in her fists.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said.
“Wren!”
I spun on my heel and marched towards the Baron. Una dropped Tamora’s leg and made room for me to approach. I grabbed Tamora by the collar of her leather chest plate and dragged her across the ice towards the shore.
The armies were approaching, but they seemed more cautious than threatening. I stopped to face them, still with Tamora in my grip. She kicked out, trying to free herself, but she was choking on seawater.
I dropped her and faced the armies where they hesitated.
“Armies” didn’t quite describe all the people gathered there however.
While some wore leather and metal armor pieces, many were in nothing more than thick coats and boots.
I wondered how many had come to the Rift out of curiosity more than anything.
“Keldori is open!” I announced. Iseult snarled something behind me. “But it doesn’t have what you want. Go home.”
“It has Skal,” Tamora hissed. “And it will all be mine!”
“It has nothing,” I told her. “Keldori doesn’t need it, so I pulled it through the Rift and now you have no need for Keldori.”
“You idiot,” Tamora cackled. Red light flared in her fist. “You’ve given me what I want. Endless Skal is endless power. You think you’re a god, little Saergrim? Wait until you see the god I become!”
“Endless Skal is only endless power if your power comes from Skal,” I said. “And yours doesn’t. It comes from others needing the Skal you have. Now that they have just as much as you, you’re nothing.”
She looked like a drowned rat. Her curls were heavy with water and her monocle was gone. Her leg that had been in Una’s mouth sat at a sickening angle. Her eyes widened as she realized supply and demand only worked in her favor when there was more demand than supply.
“Go back to your Barony. If you come to Keldori, I’ll make sure you wish you hadn’t.
” I turned to the gathered soldiers where they’d squeezed on the ice bridge I’d made to cross with Ciarán.
“Anyone who wants to come to Keldori is free to do so. Anyone who comes to cause us harm will be dealt with.”
I turned back to the Rift, back towards my friends, my mother, and my home.
Red flames erupted around me, and heat enveloped me in a vortex of fire that should have burned. That was probably Tamora’s intention. She wasn’t much of a fighter, and her favorite bodyguard was lying dead on the ice, so she’d had to wait for me to turn my back to her.
But her skalfire only warmed my skin and lightly singed my hair and clothes. Pulling all that magick from Keldori had done something to me, though it remained to be seen if it was permanent or not.
When the flames died, I slowly pivoted back to face her. Rage and frustration distorted her face, and she procured her favorite scimitar of glowing red.
It wasn’t a weapon designed for throwing, but with a broken leg, she did what she could, and, to be fair, it was an excellent throw.
It burst into harmless sparks against my chest, and the force of it made me stagger back and left a scorch mark on my crewneck sweater. That was the extent of the damage.
“The god you become, huh?” I asked. “Tell your boats I want them out of my bay.”
I walked back to the Rift.
I’d made it home. I’d done the impossible to save Ciarán. I’d reversed the flow of magick between Skalterra and Keldori, ensuring my home’s safety. I was with my mom again.
And Gams was still dead on the ice in a bloodstained dress.
I had failed.