Chapter Twenty-Eight Martyr
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
MARTYR
We returned.
Rory on horseback, Maude driving the cart, we fled the Cliffs of Bellidine, fighting the wind and our greatest foe—time. I rode in the cart, bracing myself against its rim, holding tightly to the wood as we rattled up the holloway road.
The gargoyle was there, too. “Take me with you,” he’d said on the beach. “Take me back to the tor. I’d like to see it again.” He’d looked down at his fissured legs, sinking into sand. “Though, I confess, I don’t think I can walk.”
“I’ll carry you, Bartholomew.” I’d put my arms around his cracked body, and though it cost me strength and a great deal of pain, I’d lifted him out of the sand. “I’ll carry you wherever I go.”
The cart hit a bump. The pain in my body cried out, and the gargoyle held in a whimper, limestone dust filling the air. My racing heart dropped. “You still have more time, don’t you?”
There were cracks in his entire face now, his eyes, his ears, his teeth. When he blinked I did not know if he saw me. “Of course.”
It was the first time he’d lied to me.
The day passed, and the shadows grew longer.
Night fell upon us, its companion, the moon, hardly a sliver in the sky.
The road steepened. A great hill, cloistered by a stone wall, appeared, and we drew nigh like it was our north star.
When I looked up, I saw the exact spot on the wall I’d stood with the Diviners when we’d peered down upon the king’s caravan.
Up we went, an ascension into the clouds, and then the path straightened.
A broken iron gate awaited us, and so did a field of stone that had once been five looming statues.
The gravel courtyard opened, the visage of that once noble cathedral brought low coming into view—rubble and stone and glass its gravestones.
When the wind whispered through grass, I could smell it. That sweet, terrible rot. The spring.
And then, there were the bodies. Dozens—hundreds—of dead sprites, killed by arrow or sword or spear.
“They were trying to help her,” I said, pressing my hammer against my chest.
“Who, Sybil?” Maude asked.
“The voice from the ox-eye. The spring, the tor. She cried out when the cathedral fell. They came to help her…” I turned to the gargoyle. To Rory. “I think I know who she is. Or was.”
“Look,” Rory said, pointing ahead.
There were more. Dozens—hundreds—of sprites, not dead but full of life.
They looked so beautiful, so fearsome, all together, all of different kind.
Some were jagged and gray as shale, advancing on all fours, snapping and snarling like dogs.
Others took to the sky, winged and taloned, some as small as hummingbirds and others the size of falcons.
There were birke, too. Among them, standing near the limestone spring—
Benji.
“Benedict Castor.” Maude’s voice ripped over the tor.
The king turned. Saw us. “I’m taking my second chance, Maude,” he managed.
Arm trembling, he tossed the Artful Brigand’s coin, and a nearby shale sprite exploded into a mess of jagged pieces and hot viscera.
Benji gasped, wrenching at the straps in his armor he could not undo, the dent in his breastplate slowly robbing his lungs of air.
“I will die with spring water on my lips.” He picked the coin from the sprite’s body, wincing for the blood. “When I wake, I will not be temporal as a king, but someone permanent. Essential. Strange. Special. New.”
A winged sprite dove, clawing him over the face. The king screamed. Tossed the coin into the air. It missed the sprite, then fell into the grass. “Except these bloody stupid creatures won’t let me get to the spring!”
“Give it up, Benji,” Rory shouted. “You’ve been beaten at your craft.”
The gargoyle huffed. He pulled a chunk of limestone from his shoulder, closed one eye in concentration, and threw it with such outstanding force it knocked Benji off his feet.
“Bartholomew!” I bellowed. “Don’t throw your own godsdamn stones!”
Maude and Rory and I rushed forward. With hammer and axe and bare fist, we swung at the king, and every time, gasping for air, he tossed the coin and evaded us, drawing closer, closer to the spring.
The tor began to shake.
“Earthquake,” Rory shouted, bracing his arms around me.
Only it was not an earthquake. An enormous earthen boar, with bromegrass and rocks upon its back, hooves upon its feet—tusks as large as trees—had risen. With terrifying speed, it came upon the tor, its shriek so loud it put wool in my ears.
The mountain sprite lowered its muddy snout and broke through a wall of the cathedral’s rubble, its great orange eyes fixed on Benji.
“Useless, wretched things. No merit, no name…” Benji held his ground, and I crept closer, my steps even despite the oncoming sprite, my balance honed.
Meanwhile the king was peering down at the Artful Brigand’s coin like it was his final friend.
He lifted his gaze, eyeing the mountain sprite, the creature but another victim of the king’s insatiable want for power. “It will not be me who diminishes.”
He did not see me come up behind him until the coin was out of his hand.
Benji put up an arm, but my hammer was already falling, already striking the king on his temple, planting a mark upon his brow; a red flower with devastating roots.
Benji’s skin split and his skull fractured.
Blue eyes going blank, arms and legs falling limp, the king slumped to the ground and did not move.
The earth was still trembling—the Artful Brigand’s coin had missed the mountain sprite.
Relieved of his target, the creature lumbered by, his breath stirring my hair and making the king’s body tremble.
I watched the sprite run through Aisling’s ruins.
When he called out, echoed by the other sprites upon the tor, the sound was so wailful and long it sounded like a minor tune.
Everything felt sullied. Everything felt clean.
Rory screamed.
I turned.
I thought the coin had simply missed its mark, the mountain sprite spared by the king’s poor aim.
No.
The coin had not hit the mountain sprite, because Maude had put her body between Benji and the great creature, and when the Artful Brigand’s coin flew, it had struck her in the place she was most vulnerable, beneath her arm, reducing half her body to fragments of flesh and bone and armor.
Maude staggered, looked down at herself, then hit the ground.
Rory was still screaming. He lunged for Maude before she could fall. Blood poured from the left side of her body, coating him in red. “I’ve got you, Maude. It’s all right, you’re all right.”
The Artful Brigand’s coin lay among stones, and among stones was where the gargoyle found it. He looked back at Maude. Let out a low, tragic sob, put the coin between his teeth—
And shattered it with one bite.
Maude’s knees gave out, her head falling back, her green eyes drifting to the mountain sprite in the distance. The faintest smile graced her mouth.
Rory fell on his knees, and so did I, both of us trying to hold her together. I saw on Rory’s face the moment he truly understood. “Maude.”
Behind us, Benji lay on his back, gasping. “Sybil? Rory?”
Rory’s face twisted. He looked down at Maude, regretful to leave her even a moment, but then he set her into my arms, moving on his knees through grass to get to the king.
Benji grasped at his arm, pale fingertips slipping over the blood on Rory’s armor.
“Bring her back.” He coughed, eyes flickering, then rolling.
“Bring me back. The Stonewater Kingdom may be in pieces—but a kingdom is still an object of power, and power has to go somewhere. Let us be the rulers the Omens could not. Put the spring water on our lips. Bring… us… back.”
Rory looked Benji in his blue eyes, tears marked on his cheeks. “No, Benji.”
The king would not have it. An inch from death, and still he would not be made to feel small.
He tried to shout, but it came out a low, choked breath.
“I want my second chance.” He jerked, then went horribly still, the world behind his blue eyes disappearing, his final whisper as meek as a prayer. “Everyone deserves a second chance.”
Rory put his hand over Benji’s eyes and shut them, then crawled to me and Maude, leaving the king alone beneath the night sky.
Maude was struggling to breathe. “I love you.” I wept over her. “I love you.”
Rory’s hands shook. “Maude?” I’d never heard him sound like that. Like a frightened child. “The spring water. I know you don’t think we’re meant to come back… but do you think, perhaps, you’d…” It took him a long time to say it. “Would you come back to us, Maude? Please?”
“I’m sorry, my boy. This time… I cannot do as you ask.”
“But you’re king, Maude.” He began to cry. “Everything is going to be better because you will make it so.”
Maude was but a shadow, the light in her green eyes fading. Her axe had long fallen. Now, she used the last of her strength to reach for Rory and me. “Tell them I did not die a sprite killer…” Her voice was as soft as the petals of a gowan. “The name Bauer means something yet.”
The wind picked up, taking her final breath with it, and when Maude Bauer lay still upon the tor, the whole world lay still, too.
I looked up, bleary with tears. “Where is Bartholomew?”
He had been there only a moment ago. Now, the only creatures who moved upon the tor were sprites.
I rose, shaking. “Bartholomew?”
There was no answer.
I began to run.
Through ruins and rubble I rushed, my feet smashing over stones, bromegrass whispering over my greaves. Small iridescent sprites giggled above me, darting down to touch my hair. “Where is my gargoyle?” Another mountain sprite lumbered by. “Where is my friend?” I pleaded.
Then I saw him. He was sitting where the sprites had moved the rubble, running his fingers through gowan flowers, silhouetted against the night sky. Relief clutched my heart. I called out his name.
He didn’t answer. Slowly, he picked himself up off the ground.
There were cracks throughout his body, going all the way down to his fingers.
His left ear was gone, both knees utterly shattered.
But the worst damage of all was the enormous fissure, cutting up the center of his chest, right where his heart rested.
My throat closed. “Bartholomew!”
He did not answer. He just turned, limping, then stumbling, pieces of limestone falling from his body.
“Wait,” I called, running after him. “Wait.”
The gargoyle’s path was straight and narrow. No matter how terribly he stumbled, he made his way to the heart of the tor. There, the spring waited.
“Wait, Bartholomew,” I cried again. I could almost reach him. “You’re my squire—we cannot be apart!”
He did not heed me. He was breaking into pieces. “I’m ready,” I heard him murmur. I’m ready, came his echo upon the wind.
He climbed over limestone. There, above the spring, water that was oily and dark and smelled of rotten flowers—
He fell.
The sound of body hitting the water was not a splash, but a calamitous crack, and I knew he had broken apart. Tears falling, heart ripping, I rushed forward, bruising myself on stones. When I looked into the spring, all that remained in the water were ripples.
Rory called my name.
It didn’t matter that I was wearing armor. There was no thought at all within me other than I haven’t said goodbye, and when I entered the water, it wasn’t like a Divination; no one handed me into the spring. I jumped.
The water took me into its frigid womb, and I lost my breath for the coldness of it.
I dropped beneath the surface, feeling desperately in the dark for the gargoyle’s body.
My fingers scraped against the spring’s stone wall, and though my armor dragged me down, and my knees hit the bottom of the spring, I didn’t find a single sign, nor a stone piece, of Bartholomew.
He was gone.
I opened my mouth. Screamed his name. When the water rushed in, it carried itself down my throat and into my lungs. I coughed. Thrashed. A hand breached the water, and I knew Rory was there. He would never let me drown again.
But it was too late.
Bubbles fled my mouth. I slipped into oblivion. Into nothingness.
Into a dream.