Chapter 28 Pemberley, Shrouded #2
A smile eased Georgiana’s lips. “What I am to melody, she is to form. I heard her, even here. But she is stalked by malevolence. Blight.” She grimaced. “Lizzy, fly to London. Evil pursues her, and you must save her. I thought I could master Fènnù and protect her, but Fènnù is taking me…”
“I am with you now,” I said. “You and I will drive Fènnù away, then we will find Mary together. Fènnù will not hurt her.”
She arched and cried out, “It is not Fènnù who hunts her!” then fell back, limp.
I settled my mind, seeking my own strength.
So near the black dragon, thousands of memories arrayed themselves from an army of past wyves.
I hunted through their experiences while seeking a way to push back Fènnù’s shroud, but my attempts were like pressing my fingers into smoke.
Instead, I tried supporting Georgiana’s song, to be a foundation for her shining melody, but the music slipped past me, ephemeral and glorious but beyond my understanding.
Darcy was watching with his hands locked behind his neck, arm muscles straining against nothing, face ragged. When he saw my frustration, he said, “The dagger was created to control the black dragon. Can you use it?”
I remembered it burning my fingers when I forced it into its sheath.
“The dagger was created to call the black dragon. It strips my protections and merges my mind with hers. I might command her once, convince her to free Georgiana, but she would win control in the end, as she did at Helmsdale.” I almost offered to do it, unfair as that choice would be to Darcy, but some ruthless past self refused; uniting the black dragon and the wyfe of war would unleash annihilation.
I searched for another way. “We must strengthen Georgiana. The black dragon can steal her strength, but they are not intended to pair. She can resist Fènnù better than I. My skill is command, but command is a human thing, a weapon. Georgiana is song, the essence of draca themselves. She needs that.” I turned to Mrs. Reynolds and Lucy. “Do either of you play?”
“The pianoforte?” Lucy exclaimed, aghast.
“I do,” Mrs. Reynolds answered.
“Play something she knows.” That was meaningless; the wyfe of song remembered every note she heard. “Something she knows from childhood.”
Mrs. Reynolds took a seat at the keyboard, straightening her cuffs, her posture as proper as ever. “Her mother played this to her when she had bad dreams.” She began, not a child’s lullaby but an introspective, melodious baroque aria.
I sent a silent summons for draca. It reached the two firedrakes before being quashed by the shroud. “I summoned the drakes, but we need more draca.”
“I will bring them,” Darcy said. He ran out the doors even as the firedrakes arrived, winging cautiously in the building’s interior.
They settled by Georgiana, one on the floor, one perched on the back of the sofa.
I shared a mental image of Georgiana singing but tiring, and they began to croon, not Fènnù’s melody, but other tones…
they had joined the music Mrs. Reynolds was playing.
Georgiana heard; subtly she adapted her inner song so the rhythms and harmonies interleaved.
Outside, a deeper tone added an inhuman basso, Yuánchi’s own slow thrum.
Faintly, through the towering, double-paned windows, I heard a horse whinny. Hooves pounded away, galloping despite the dark.
“Where is he going?” Lucy asked.
I did not know, but I smiled for her sake. “Where he will find aid. He knows Pemberley better than anyone.”
I took a seat by Georgiana and held her hand, lending reassurance if not strength, and her fingers tightened on mine.
My draca senses shivered from the unseen battle, Fènnù pressing in and Georgiana resisting with song, although that was a shallow name for what surrounded her—it was the endless music of seasons, of intermeshed stars and planets.
I remembered the nights she spent with her telescope, observing the motion of the heavens.
“Help is coming,” I whispered. “Hold on so we may go to Mary.”
The drakes crooned over Yuánchi’s deep pedal tones. Mrs. Reynolds reached the end of her piece and began again. Lucy, learning the melody, began to hum along.
The hooves returned and came nearer than the stables, somewhere in back of the main house.
A door banged and hurried steps approached; Darcy had ridden to the conservatory entrance, a few rooms away.
He burst into the music room with Aggy, one of the wyves from the Briton village.
She held her roseworm, forest-brown and rich-red.
“More wyves are following,” Darcy said. “Escalus outran them, but they will be here soon. What should we do?”
“Just… gather,” I said to Aggy, who fell to her knees beside me, staring in dismay at Georgiana’s drawn face. “Encourage him to sing,” but her roseworm had already joined with a pure, bird-like tone that danced above the crooning drakes.
Two more bound wyves arrived, and the draca chorus grew.
I closed my eyes and, unbidden, their vision replaced mine, the darkened music room lit in brilliant violet, our living bodies glowing with the warmth of life, Georgiana and I shining with the gold aura of great wyves.
Georgiana’s song flowed, buttressed by the draca, but Fènnù’s shroud pressed down harder, as if mountains were being stacked on top.
The sable cracks, remnants of Georgiana’s resistance, began to seal, each thud like a closing tomb.
“I do not understand this fight,” I whispered to Darcy. “It is too foreign. I do not know what to do.”
He rested his hand atop mine and Georgiana’s. “I called someone who will.” Voices approached in the hall, and he shouted, “Edward! In here!”
Mr. Digweed, the gray-haired headman of Pemberley’s Briton clans, hurried through the double doors, aided by his young son, Thomas. Mr. Digweed uttered one pained exclamation when he saw Georgiana, then he strode over. He felt her damp brow, his face grave.
“What see you, wyfe of war?” he asked me.
“Fènnù’s shroud presses in on her. Her song holds it back, but she tires. I have been trying to aid her… my power is no use.”
“Teine eigin!” he said, and I recognized the words from our Beltane wedding—make fire. Thomas ran to the fireplace and stoked it with wood, then blew at the banked coals until the smolder burst into flame.
Mr. Digweed moved to the head of the sofa and held Georgiana’s hands high in his.
“Druí wide, join us.” The Britons held hands to form a circle with him, including Darcy and Lucy who had a deep connection to the Briton’s faith.
I hesitated, but at his nod, joined as well. Mrs. Reynolds continued to play.
Mr. Digweed began a gruff, melodic chant, words that felt as hoary as mossy oaks and as solid as bedrock.
A tiny, glowing light flew into the room, then a flurry of them—little needledrac glowing in blues and greens despite the dark.
They swirled around, dancing near the warmth of the fire and dodging in and out of our circle.
Georgiana drew a hard breath, then began to sing with her human voice—Fènnù’s song.
When I first heard those notes, they stabbed me like icy knives, but now it was part of something greater that shone like sunrise.
In the world of draca, the song flared as blazing sapphire.
The shroud twisted and tightened, a black iron vise struggling to contain it.
The windows rattled, then more violently. The thumping thunder of Fènnù’s wings grew louder.
“Fènnù will not relinquish this power,” I warned. “She will kill us all first.”
Mr. Digweed bent to Georgiana, his voice almost lost in the strength of the chorus. “Daughter of Bel, beloved of Pemberley, scion of a great wyfe. Gather our song into yours. Sing. Proclaim yourself!”
The musicians, human and draca, reached a climax, then the disparate melodies resolved in a meeting of perfect, pure unison.
I felt a crashing tear open in the shroud, then it split, folding away into itself like a punctured soap bubble.
The darkness outside appeared to spatter with sparks, then beams of sunlight ended the false night.
Like a person waking from a nightmare, Georgiana flew up to sitting, her eyes wide. She reached to the window, to the south, and shouted, “Mary!” Everyone crowded around her, reassuring her.
Everyone but me. At last I could sense Fènnù—and her surging anger.
Her malevolent presence looked down from on high, assessing tiny, fragile Pemberley, the shelter for a lost prize, a frustration she could blot out of existence.
I ran through the conservatory, knocking treasured plants aside while summoning Yuánchi, hopelessly, to fight.
But even a minute might draw the battle away from Pemberley and save the others.
Bursting out the conservatory doors, I entered the south garden. Fènnù’s gaze penetrated me like an icy lance, but this time, her strength did not crush my mind. The brilliance of Georgiana’s song was fading but not yet gone, and it held Fènnù’s mind at bay, a fleeting advantage, one I could use.
But as Yuánchi winged in, steel-strong fingers grasped my arm. Georgiana, staggering, had half-dragged Darcy across the garden to catch me.
“Do not fight her,” she said, her voice worn and cracked. “Do not drive her away. The pestilence is the enemy. Fènnù must be healed to cure it. We need her close.”
Yuánchi landed at the garden’s edge, furrowing the earth and obliterating decorative hedges in his blindness. But I looked another way, seeking the black dragon.
From the clouds, Fènnù dove on Pemberley. I no longer felt even the shards of her broken sanity. She had succumbed to fury.
Stop! I commanded with all my strength, but no human could command a dragon. Black darkened her wake as her breath primed. Out of time, I abandoned strength and reached for the memory of when our minds had merged in Scotland and I entered her abyss of despair and loneliness.
Wait, I called. Wait until I join you.
Her wings flared, braking her plummet, and she shot over Pemberley with a thump of wind that knocked slate tiles off the roofs. But that was all.
My wyfe of war, crooned in my mind.
“You commanded her,” Darcy cried. “I knew it. You saved us.” He pulled me against him, supporting Georgiana with his other arm.
I was not sure what I had done.
With daylight restored, I saw the garden properly.
The hedges, the flowers, even the towering oaks were stained a lifeless gray.
That leaden darkness extended to the hills, to all the forest in sight.
Withered leaves were dropping, coating the ground with oily decomposition.
Young, green branches softened, drooped, and spattered down as mush.
The only growth that survived were the budding flowers and fruits.
The rosebuds, poppies, even the green acorns were swelling, bloating with infestation.
Beyond sight, Fènnù coasted into a turn and began a patient circle. Not leaving. Waiting for me.
Georgiana’s iron grip tightened on my arm. “We have not saved everyone. Take me to London. Now.”