Chapter Twenty-One Simran
Chapter Twenty-One
Simran
Incarnates aren’t like you and me. They are special people, with special gifts. They can do things that normal folk can barely imagine. What a privilege it must be, to be an incarnate!
Source: Introduction to Incarnate Tales for Children by Laura Beaufort-Morgan
Archivist’s Ruling: Preserve. Publication permitted. No further action required.
She was frozen, heaving for breath. Her tale had rooted her feet to the floor.
The tale wanted her to stay.
“Run,” whispered Isadora in her ear. “Run, Simran.”
Simran couldn’t run. She was bound to the tor by her tale. There was no escaping it. She could feel it holding her, pinning her in place.
“Run,” Isadora urged again.
“I can’t,” Simran gritted out. “I can’t run. I’m trapped here.”
“Darling,” Isadora murmured, voice dripping with pity. “Are you really going to let those archivists win? Are you going to roll over and show them your belly? Have a little pride.”
She gathered all her strength and threw herself against the tale’s grip. Agony speared her. Let me go, she urged her tale. Let me go. I’ll fight you until my bitter end, I swear it. Let me go!
The tale did not care, but Simran thought of Vina’s face, oh her face—those warm eyes, the farewell written into the way she’d looked at Simran. She’d burn this damn tor down before letting Vina suffer beyond her reach.
I’ll return, she told her tale. I vow it. I’ll come back. But right now I must go.
She flung all her magic, all her strength, all her fury and her want outward once more.
She felt the tale hesitate. It was enough.
She wrenched out of the grip of her own tale, pain needle-sharp in her lungs and her bones.
It felt a little like when she’d held that whip of limni ink—a hot, bright power, a wrongness she could twist and mold to her own purpose.
Why hadn’t she been able to run earlier, when she’d really needed to? Damn her tale. Damn everything.
It didn’t matter now. She had to go.
She ran out of the tor, down the steps onto pale grass. She looked around, frantic. But there was no one. Nothing.
The archivists were long gone. They’d probably arrived on horseback, or with carriages. On foot, she’d have no chance of catching up with them.
She heard a crash of noise behind her, as Hari ran after her. Galath was following more slowly on his heels, blood streaked across him. He pulled the last arrow from his torso as if he didn’t feel it, tossing it to the ground.
Hari stopped in front of her, catching his breath. She put her hand on his shoulder, holding him steady or holding herself steady, she wasn’t sure.
“Sim, shit, shit,” he gasped out. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she lied. It wasn’t even a good lie. How could she be fine? “I should be asking you.”
“Sim,” he said again. He pressed his hand to her cheek. “Darling. You’re crying.”
Ah. She was.
He wiped her tears with his knuckles.
“I need to get her back,” Simran said. “I can’t let her go.”
“Then we’ll get her back,” Hari said. “I promise.”
Hari turned to look back at the pale assassin—at Galath, in his blood-soaked and ink-lashed clothing. She couldn’t see Hari’s face at this angle, but she could see Galath’s—the strange, sudden softening of his jaw.
“I hear I’m tethered,” said Hari. “Funny how you got that past me.”
Galath said nothing. The wind ran coarse fingers through his pale hair.
“Take the mark from him,” Simran said. “Please, I’m begging you. Fuck you, damn you. Please. Let Hari go.” She was crying earnestly now, whole body hot with miserable fury. “Please.”
“Even your begging is more a demand and an order than a plea,” said Galath.
“Simran,” said Hari. “Let me.”
Hari stepped toward him; looked up and met his eyes.
No words passed between the two of them. But Galath’s head lowered.
He touched his knuckles lightly to Hari’s cheek. She felt the magic burn and blow away like ash, the mark erased, leaving Hari free.
“Go,” said Galath. “But I will be waiting for your return.”
She didn’t know if he was speaking to her or Hari. She didn’t care. She grasped Hari’s hand, relieved. Ran.
There was no chance she’d catch up with Vina. Vina’s face swam in her mind. Her own fingers itched with ink, magic.
“What are we going to do, Simran?” Hari asked, between panting breaths.
“I don’t know,” she gasped out. “I don’t—”
And then she saw it.
A golden, ghostly deer was waiting for her at the edge of the woods, in the long shadows thrown by the trees. It changed before her eyes, growing larger, no longer the spindle-limbed creature it had been but a big beast, wrought from magic to the size of a carthorse.
“It looks familiar,” Hari said. He was watching it move, eyes round as coins.
“Bess’s woods—Bess’s deer?” Hari had never been interested in exploring Bess’s woods with her when they were children, but sometimes she’d managed to coax him in.
He’d watched the deer a handful of times in hushed, awed silence as they’d drifted between the sun-dappled trees. She saw the same awe in him now.
Simran nodded. She moved cautiously to the deer. It lowered its head.
“I suppose you are my friend after all,” Simran whispered to it, curling her fingers against the long, velvet line of its neck. She clambered onto its back.
“You can’t ride a deer,” Hari said, strangled.
“It looks like I can. Come on, Hari. We’re both getting on.”
His mouth firmed, and he climbed on after her.
The deer glided through the forest as liquidly as a ghost. The trees shifted around it. She didn’t know, for long, breathless moments, where they were—until suddenly the forest settled back into the shape of deep darkness.
They were near the green library.
The deer lowered its body, allowing them to slip down from its back. As soon as Hari’s feet thudded against soil, the deer fled.
“This isn’t where I wanted to go!” Simran called after it. But the deer was gone.
“Simran,” Hari said in a low voice, eyes white in the dark. “I can smell smoke.”
She inhaled and smelled it too.
Ashes, black and orange, rose around her as if caught in a breeze. Her stomach dropped.
“Don’t follow me,” Simran said. “Hari—I’ll take a quick look and I’ll come back. Just wait.”
Hari protested, but Simran was already running ahead, into the cloud of smoke. The chasm lay ahead of her. She entered it. The ferns and moss that veiled the stone walls were dead, or burned; some had been torn viciously at the roots. In the soil were imprints of boots, still fresh.
Simran strode faster, holding her sleeve to her nose, trying not to choke.
She saw the circle of stones and fell to her knees, bashing her fist to the stone, searching for the right ritual words—but a wind caught the smog of darkness and smoke, parting it in a wave, and Simran’s hand stopped nervelessly midknock.
She could see the door of the library in front of her. It was cracked in two. Smoldering.
“No,” she whispered. “No, no.”
She rose to her feet and heedless of the danger strode into the library, forcing the broken door open with her body.
She saw no one. She ran farther and saw only rooms of smoke, torn and burned books, nothing and no one.
The room of stories—ghostly little stories, shaped like frolicking animals, all those gently tended to tales—was empty.
Everything was burned. Every book, carefully smuggled here. Every tale carried as a secret, a whisper, on loving lips. She stumbled forward, farther and farther, pushing open the door to the room where she’d met Ophelia, and then seen the Beast.
Ophelia was gone. Her sword was all that remained—a scar of silver on a bruise of charred books, smoldering still on the earth. Simran went into the room that had housed the Beast, that room of mist where the chalice waited, heart in her throat. Please, please.
The room was… empty. There was no sign of the Beast. No sign of the chalice, and no mist either. The air was dim and dank, thick with the smell of charred paper. She could feel none of the Beast’s weighty magic.
Whatever had happened to it, the green library itself was dead.
Simran went to her knees, staring at the ground beneath her. Her legs couldn’t hold her.
“It was the archivists, of course,” a voice said breezily.
“I don’t need you now, Isadora,” Simran said hoarsely, smoke in her throat, eyes stinging.
A sigh.
“You’re so convinced I’m Isadora,” her past self said. “A few feathers on my hair and garnets at my throat, a few merry laughs and a tale or two—is that all it takes?”
Simran raised her head and stared at her numbly. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I shouldn’t blame you. You’re no different from any of them. Well, any version of me.” She waved a dismissive hand. “We’re a little gullible, I’m afraid. But here. Let me show you the truth.”
Before her eyes, Isadora transformed. Her body rippled, moving between hundreds of faces. She saw Morgaine, Ismene, Rowan—faces of the witch, reshaped, reworn, a hundred times, a thousand times over. And then finally the face settled.
Elayne. The fourth witch. The one who’d put a knife through Galath’s throat.
“You should have spoken to your fellow incarnates,” said Elayne.
“Past lives are just echoes. They weep, they wail, they scream. They have no substance. Your knight will know all her past names and faces, but all they will do is cry at her feet. She does not speak to them the way you speak to me. No incarnates do. You’re special, Simran,” Elayne said with a smile. “Well. I am.”
“I don’t know what the hell you mean,” Simran whispered.
“Well, that’s your fault, not mine. Galath urged you to seek the truth, didn’t he? The chalice offered you the knowledge, and you rejected it.”
“I didn’t,” Simran said numbly. “I saw everything.”