Chapter 17 #2
At the same time, Kinnek and I kept up our rhythm of closing off the beasts. Progress was steady, but not fast. His focus was iron strong, and if he made any mistakes in his workings at all, I didn’t know enough to see them.
Outside, Vergis was shooting down humans, and Charles was covering his son’s back. The two of them were deadly together.
They—the humans—were coming at us from the direction of the church, but some had also circled around us, and with my power needed elsewhere, the fog that hid us had almost dissipated.
Nokim got hit—the chest. How did he keep getting hit in the chest?—and I healed him. Lissir had chosen stealth and used the fog as best he could, and was now close to the Mound of Hostages, where he plunged his daggers into a burly human, killing him instantly.
It was a fight, but we were winning. I could see it, Vergis alone easily cutting down a dozen of the human mages.
The magic was taking too much out of me to feel relieved, but I could see where this was going.
Right until everything changed, right until the tides turned on us.
The veils parted just outside the church. The only good thing was that I didn’t have any room in my head to be shocked, all I could do was keep going.
“Koa Esher,” I said.
Inkiri heard. He’d stayed close, his gun out. So far, he hadn’t fired a single shot.
Kinnek stumbled and struggled when a bullet hit him in the back. He hissed. Inkiri spun and aimed at the shooter, at a minimum wounding him with two bullets.
I immediately healed Kinnek—it was difficult, painfully difficult. My guys were so much easier to heal.
“F-fine,” he said, halfway through me pushing the bullet out, but he was bleeding still, and the bullet was in there, so I went on. It took more magic. It stung like bees pricking my skin.
Kinnek picked up the magic and kept stitching the veils back together, but he wasn’t as steady as he had been.
I helped. I healed him, finally getting the bullet out of him, then mending the flesh. The land had a better sense of when I’d done enough, and I stopped as soon as I was sure he was no longer in danger.
The stitching of the veils needed to be done. We closed another opening, and a slicing migraine pain hit me. I gritted my teeth together but kept going.
Kinnek and I managed three more openings in the veil before the Koa Esher got to the Hill. With them came several of the purple beasts, the very same kind that had been about to eat me when Inkiri had found me, when he’d saved me and changed my life for the better.
Lissir, being closest, saw them first. The Koa Esher spotted him too, a lone fighter, apart from the combat group and almost within their reach, and…
I would have gasped if I’d had the energy.
At the head of the band of Koa Esher, the one-armed celadon marched, crooked-horned mages on either side, each holding a chain with a leering monster pulling toward the scent of blood.
The celadon’s stump was bandaged, but unlike the survivors we’d saved, his bandages were clean.
It was such a small detail, but it enraged me, the fury boiling in my belly like a scream that needed out.
The one-armed celadon had his massive blade in his remaining hand, and he raised it and pointed it at Lissir.
I didn’t understand what he was saying, but it sounded disgusting. Filthy. I wanted lightning now, but there was no way, not with everything that still had to be done. My power was needed elsewhere.
The Koa Esher mages wove their magic, and the beasts’ chains glowed. They were pulling sacrifice energy from the beasts, but not enough to kill them. Kinnek had taught me that that wasn’t a thing, had taught me that a sacrifice was always a life entire. Magic accepted no half measures, he’d said.
With the humans helping them, the Koa Esher had found a different way, and it cost less.
Lissir fell back. The land felt the Koa Esher magic first. They wanted to make the ground unsteady, just like I had done, and their magic was stronger now than it had been before.
My arms trembled, but there was no other choice. Kinnek and I were working hand in hand to close the veils, and on the other end, the land and I worked hand in hand to hinder the magic of the Koa Esher and keep the Raikengana alive if they were wounded.
It was like being torn into two. It hurt, it hurt so bad, and I didn’t even have the energy to scream.
Lissir dropped one of his short daggers and drew his curved sword in a parry. The celadon’s blade echoed off his.
No, no, no, no, no. Help him!
The land looked around, desperate, then acted fast. It woke a sleeping pair of crows who huddled wing to beak, and the birds took to the air, then descended.
The crows were faster than my fear this time. They dove at the celadon’s face, and in a near comical move, he raised his handless arm to fend them off. That did little to deter those black-winged masters of flight.
The celadon cursed and took a step back. He hissed something at Lissir, and even though I didn’t know the words, how they were said, how Lissir’s eyes widened, scared me.
Lissir immediately took his opening and ran back, called out something to Nokim, who ran toward him and tossed one of his vials over Lissir’s head.
The little glass container exploded in the air.
The celadon and his two cronies stayed back, shielding their faces.
There were more Koa Esher coming in behind them, but it was the celadon who wanted blood.
Another wave of humans was coming from the church now too. The air filled with bullets. My guys and the other Raikengana took cover where they could, but there was precious little of that on the Hill.
The Koa Esher mages were still working to make the ground give out from under us. Kinnek kept working the spell, but on one particularly large tear, he faltered, slipped, and needed to restart.
The cusp of panic and despair was a distinct edge ahead of me, and I approached it fast; faster still when I realized bullets were hitting our people. Vergis paid the shooters back, blood for blood. He always found his mark, and he was lethal.
Kumo got hit, and Hanakaris stopped firing arrows to take his friend back toward the Stone.
Hove was limping, but he was still shooting at humans and Koa Esher and getting in some good hits.
I had to push against the Koa Esher mages to keep the ground solid under our feet, and I had to help Kinnek too.
I was stretched to the very point of feeling it tear me apart.
The knowing hit hard. We would lose if we did not leave right now, and losing meant death for some. Even with my magic, there were limits: blood flowed faster than magic could, and when the damage was too extreme, I wouldn’t be able to do anything for those who weren’t my knights.
Then, as if all of this wasn’t bad enough, Inkiri took a bullet to the side of the chest, and something in me snapped.
Concentration, the flow of magic I’d allowed, I lost all of it as if I’d stacked too many plates in my arms and was now dropping the lot to turn into sharp shards on the floor. I pulled my hands off the Stone.
I needed to get my guys home. I needed to get everyone home. Screams rang through the earplugs, and the commotion got to me more now that my concentration had broken.
Inkiri. Inkiri was making wheezing sounds. He needed to be better.
“Wait, we need to—” Kinnek ducked when another bullet whizzed past his head.
Before I could even tell the land, my mate turned toward me, and his light blue face was illuminated by gunshots.
“Finish it, sadir.”
That was not a lover’s request. Inkiri had a commanding voice, and he had just given me an order.
I inhaled and pulled away from that abyss of panic, even though I had one foot hovering over it already. I put my hands back on the Stone.
“Kinnek, help me!” I had to shout over the commotion, but he was already moving.
We cannot lose. We must end this. I thought of the girl, the green-eyed witch, my distant ancestress.
Where are her bones, where is her ghost?
Then, I thought of the Apocalypse Screwdriver No.
573 my aunt was no doubt having right about now, and of my manager mom who had handled me like one of her R&D guys, if I was lucky.
Find them. Find me all of them. If you can, find my Gran’s ghost. Make them help.
The land, pragmatic to the last, didn’t go looking. It didn’t call on my mom or aunt. No, the mental image I had was of the land opening the front door to my mind and saying, loud and clear, Death is ever welcome in this house.
For just a moment that felt like a shard of eternity, everything went silent. Death stepped across the threshold of my mind.
She was neither man nor woman, she was both and neither. She was not pain or hate or anger, although some met her with those emotions. The heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh was heir to, as Hamlet said, Lady Death knew them all, had seen them all. They didn’t scare her.
The land stepped aside, and Death looked at me.
There was a strange kind of beauty in her. I could not argue it, couldn’t unsee it. She took up room in whatever place inside of me could receive such a guest and waited for me to speak.
The bones and lives of my sister mages, of the few brother mages, of those venerated mages who were neither or both, you hold them. Please. I need their strength and knowledge, just this once.
Lady Death smiled, and I knew this meant she had granted my request. I also knew that it would cost me.
I DO NOT TAKE IN GREED OR WITH ILL INTENT. IT WILL BE A WHILE YET BEFORE I COLLECT, MAGE. AND REMEMBER, I CARRY OR CRADLE OR COMFORT. I DO NOT CUT OR REAP, NOR BURY FOREVER. I AM MANY THINGS. I AM NOT CRUEL.
And Lady Death folded her cloak back, her cloak of shadows, and out stepped my sisters, brothers, brother-sisters, and siblings.
Old hands, young hands, cold hands, warm hands, they all joined atop the Stone, and they sang both hymn and requiem, majors and minors combined, and the Stone sang with them.