Chapter 69
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.
With Cassius at the center, souls were joining hands, steadying themselves against the wind that pushed them toward the fire.
More souls approached, joining the line, and with each soul their collective light grew brighter and stronger.
I saw Westy, Ella, the Parley twins, Darnell, Loch, Sherzer, Delain, and so many other Iron Horse folk—vestige friends I’d tried to send on and human friends whose souls had come to the Meadows naturally.
Against the roar of the mountain flames I heard them singing “The Lays of Resolve.” And above all their beautiful, graceful voices was Cassius’s powerful bellow.
He sings it with a warrior’s cry, said the Ward, standing beside me, radiant again, but that may be a good thing.
“I’ve never really figured out my past,” I admitted. “Not all of it. Not yet.”
The forgiving path is still one you should walk, Jack, but it was the essence needed for my threads. Each ward-bond is unique.
I was relieved, and troubled. “I’m not sure, then, how to ward this place.” She looked out across the Meadows at Cassius. You are good at staying,
Jack, and that is also a good thing.
A long silence fell between us. We shared it the way friends do.
At last, she said, I can rest now. Goodbye, Jack. Then she started toward the mountain of fire, born by the wind, voices rising from the other side, calling her home.
“Goodbye.”
As soon as the Ward disappeared inside the flames, Ella, Westy, the Parley twins, and all the rest merged with Cassius, becoming one in his body. Neither the fire nor the wind could move them. And with each joined soul their song grew louder and richer.
When they finally stopped singing, the old soul, my friend Cassius, walked through the howling wind, across the plain, and stood next to me.
“How . . . ?” I asked him. “Why?”
Because I wanted to finally stay a good course, Jack. For our third option.
In his shadow I could see the aching flare of his primal moment—the day he’d lost his family. “So you could become the ward.”
He nodded. And try to preserve the balance between your world and mine.
“So, instead of going into the mountain, you asked her to teach you her song.” His shadow shone bright with so many souls. “And the others?”
I sang an invitation that they might join me.
“You’re saving my ass again.”
Cassius smiled. There is no need for invective, Jack. And it is you who gave us the opportunity to make this choice.
It was so good to have my friend back. “Thanks . . . brother.” Cassius smiled.
He’d found a way to stay, to give us a chance to fight off a revolution.
It was everything.
Only a moment later, the barrier passed through me—the ward had collapsed. From somewhere behind me, screams rose and blades clashed. My friends in the Strata were still being attacked by Shiguan.
I offered Cassius my hand. He took it, and I let go of the Asphodel Meadows. Suddenly, we were back near the amphitheater in the Roman Stratum. Many of my friends had fallen, but the clashing of blades and war cries stopped when Cassius appeared glowing like the sun beside me.
Brach stood frozen, staring at the centurion. Then he raised and pointed his bow. “Take them!”
The Shiguan stormed toward us.
“Watch our back,” I called to my friends, then pulled Cassius after me as I raced down the Steps. Behind us, light flared, cries echoed, and steel clanged off the cold, hard earth. Brach and his mob took chase, playing assault strokes that shattered earth and stone around us.
Soon, I staggered out onto the Ancient Stratum. Clutching my aching head, I stumbled a few yards onto the long plain where I’d seen the Ward, dropped to my knees, and shoved my hands into the dirt.
The earth heaved. My mind exploded with images—a man weeping over a dead horse, a family huddled around a cook fire, Caswallawn charging into battle. It all churned up from the shifting soil.
I pulled my hands out of the loam and pointed Cassius to the spot. The old soul stepped to where the Ward had been and stomped his massive feet into the ground.
The battle spilled out behind us. Brach raged forward, blasting light at my friends and driving them back. His hundred Shiguan circled wide, hemming us in.
My friends closed ranks around me. Blades flashed in the lantern light. Church and Lady leaned on each other for support; Lakshmi waved one sword, using the other like a cane; Chuey could hardly hold up his macuahuitl; and Kincaid staggered, trying to defend Chuey.
My eyes stinging with sweat, I pulled the Orcus thread from my pack.
It thrummed in my hands like a low B on a seven-string guitar.
I imagined touching it was like taking hold of the woman’s soul whose streamers had given it life.
After spooling out several lengths, I tried looping it around Cassius.
The Orcus flared crimson and amber against the dark .
. . but wouldn’t go. It was like the ward barrier again.
Something was pushing back against the thread.
I blinked back sweat, hummed a few notes of my song, and tried again.
Closer. But the Orcus still wouldn’t go.
The thread will require something of you.
My mind raced. Whenever I invoked my song, the thread quieted, but not completely. So, whatever the Orcus required must have something to do with my wound, and I just wasn’t giving it enough.
I had to offer more.
And it had to be unique—for Cassius this time.
I thought about his primal moment and my own deep occlusion—both to do with family.
Maybe the ward-bond needed to understand why I would never break my oath to protect it.
I believed Cassius and all the souls inside him might already know that.
But something told me it needed to be more than just words and music.
It needed to be the raw moments that led to the song, led to my fermata, led to the Ward telling me—
You are good at staying, Jack.
I quickly grabbed my khopesh and hooked the tip beneath Lady’s Essiene sutures in my shadow. I hoped I was ready to deal with an open wound of the soul, like those I’d seen inside Henry. Either way, this would mean the forgiving path would have to wait a while.
“Jack,” said Cassius, “what are you doing?”
With a quick jerk of my knife, the Essiene thread slipped away, exposing my wound.
Gold light spilled out. Hurt like hell. But I immediately sang my chorus, and the light pulled into a thin, radiant ribbon that wrapped the Orcus thread tight, flashing, fusing, then quieting it all to a still, bright band.
I then quickly began looping the thread around Cassius. The Orcus flared again—crimson, amber, and now with strands of gold.
“Stop this,” cried Brach. He beat his bow against his lantern, driving Chuey and Lady to the ground.
Each time I lashed Cassius with the thread, the soil rose up further around him.
“I won’t allow it!” Brach rushed me, khopesh glinting.
I pulled one last loop around Cassius’s chest, and a burst of golden light erupted from him, shimmering outward in all directions. A deep, descending glissando pushed outward with it, rolling over the
Shiguan army. Brach froze midstep behind me. All round us the battle ceased, my friends and the Shiguan standing like statues, their weapons clattering to the cracked earth.
Brach managed to raise his khopesh but was thrust back against the Steps, slamming into the wall.
Abandoning their weapons, Shiguan raced past him, clawing over each other as they hurried up the Strata. Iron Horse folk, some dropping to their knees, stared after them with weary smiles. Cassius’s earthen face nodded, then he raised a hand goodbye and sank down into a bed of loam.
It was done.
I looked over at Kincaid, who stood, hunched over, his rods gripped loosely. He’d put away those rods until all this started. Given so much since. Cassius’s friend. Mine, too. He wiped his face and started my way.
Church and Lady and the rest of my other friends gathered around me and together we stared down into the soil.
“Hell of a thing,” said Church.
I nodded. “Hell of a thing.” Then I pointed to Brach. “Lakshmi, get that piece of sh— Get Brach back to his box, will you?”
Lakshmi smiled and flashed the metal salute. She then marched over, grabbed Brach, and started shoving him up the Steps.
“Was that a country fan throwing me the horns, Chuey?” Chuey did the same. Then Lady and Church and Kincaid.
I’d never been so relieved in my life. I almost broke into song right there on the ancient soil—something triumphant like “Carry On Wayward Son” by Kansas.
But I was too tired, too spent. It would take some time for me to process everything that had happened.
I just wanted to be back topside lying on the old greenroom couch.
Almost too weary to lift my arm, I flashed my friends the horns.