The Tower of the Forgotten (15 page)

Portia
brought her foot down into the center of his back. He turned his head far too
easily, twisting it to look back up at her. The jagged slash of his mouth
looked more human now.

"I
am not alone," he rasped. "To defeat me means nothing. The Aldias have made a blood
pact to see this done." He laughed, or at least
tried to, but Portia brought the axe through his skull, splitting it from crown
to chin.

She
leapt back as Samael rushed toward her.

"That
is enough!" The demon cried. "You will leave none for me, and where would be our barter?"

"Take
him, then, and be gone."

There
came an otherworldly howl and a frigid gust of air. And they were both gone.

Portia
stood in the ruined heart of the engine, looking at the only mother she had
ever known.

"How
did you know?" Hester asked. "About my name?"

"Alaric
talks a lot."

The
erstwhile headmistress of Penemue smiled. "I cannot stay with you,
you know. I have no ties to the world of the living any longer. What I had were
severed and replaced with one single tether."

"The
hairpin."

She
nodded. "And it’s destroyed."

"It
was the claim Samael had on you." Portia wiped at an
escaped tear that trickled down her cheek. "But you can go on,
right? Away from here? Imogen said there were other places, nice places even,
beyond Salus and beyond the Shadowside."

"I’ll have to see, I suppose."
Hester shivered and looked at her hands. They began to fade rapidly. "It looks like I’ll be exploring that
soon, then. Take care, Portia. You always meant so much to me, and I have
always been so very proud of you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you more often how much I loved you."

Portia
hiccupped and took a step forward. "I love you, too." She opened her arms in an embrace, but Hester slipped right
through them.

Hester’s gaze grew unfocused, and she smiled. "I wonder if I’ll see Marius and
Charlotte…"

"I pray that you do."

"Goodbye, then, Portia."

"Goodbye, Lady Hester."

And
without any sort of fanfare or dramatics, she was just gone. A sob escaped
Portia’s clenched jaw, and she turned away.
Beneath her feet, the engine still hummed, very softly, as if it still drew on
some power source.

In
the chamber around her, the dark water had finally breeched and had risen to
several inches in depth. It was still coming.

Salus,
at long last, was sinking.

The
base of the engine crackled and sparked as water made contact with the wires.
But yet it hummed.

Portia
slammed the axe into the floor, toppling the pedestal that had held the four
demons’ anchors. The blade bit through and did
not dull, so she hit it again, tearing a gash deep into the bowels of the
machine. Beneath her feet, the glass reserve chamber glowed, churning with the
light of souls harvested for the engine.

The
water lapped over her feet and trickled into the gash. Portia widened it,
tearing it open into an ugly hole, exposing as much of the workings and wiring
that she could. The water poured in relentlessly.

Bringing
the axe down one final time, she shattered the reserve tank. The engine
shuddered somewhat innocuously, and the very last of the humming ceased. She
let out a breath and took to the air, heading for the dangling catwalk that
would take her back to the room where the others waited. Hopefully, they had
defeated—or at least subdued—Adramelech.

She
had just gained the edge of the hanging walkway when the last remaining chamber
beams gave way and the endless black sea rushed in from all sides. The room
split from end to end, revealing that the tower had indeed collapsed and that
the familiar moon hung in the sky overhead, fading toward dawn. She did not
like that she could see her world; that did not bode well.

The
water rose around her rapidly, faster than she could get her wings about her to
fly.

"Imogen!"

From
above, she realized, came the ocean she knew, tasting of salt and seaweed and
colored like tears. It mingled with the black waters of the underworld,
creating a vortex that dragged her into its heart.

From
below, something touched her foot, tentatively at first, then with great
strength, wrapping itself around her legs and pulling her down.

We are not finished with you
.

She looked into the face of the leviathan,
of Nicor, the old one of the deep, as he fancied himself. She slashed at his
encircling arms, each studded with great suckers like an octopod’s.

I brought you back from the
deepest abyss of death, Portia-Fereshte, and I demand tribute.

"Does that mean you have left Radinka in
peace, finally?"

The witchling and I are no
longer bound.

"Does she still live?"

When I left, she did, but she
is no more of my concern. Now, I want tribute.

"Here." She held out the axe. "This is the
greatest treasure I have, a fitting prize for one such as yourself. Take it and
keep it as the pride of your hoard with your trinkets from sunken ships."

The
demon stopped, surprised, it seemed, by her offer.

It never used to be so lovely…

Portia turned it this way and that,
catching the gleaming gold in the gathering dawn. "I’m sorry, Zepar," she
whispered to it. "Despite it all, you have turned out to be an excellent father
to me. I’m going to miss you."

The
axe vibrated a moment, caressing the palm of her hand. She had almost gotten
used to the sensation of the Nephilim leather against her flesh.

"Goodbye." She uncurled her fingers from the axe, watching it sink immediately
into the inky water below.

With
surprising force, Nicor let go of her, sending her into a tumble that
disoriented her completely.

Then all went still and silent.

—
12
—

BLACK WATERS SWIRLED BY as Portia tumbled through the great
sea beneath the island, beneath all of the otherworld. Great hunks of rock and
sparkling pieces of masonry plummeted past; even an occasional copper chunk of
the engine spiraled down into the unending darkness below. The water soon
filled with detritus from the final and total destruction of Salus. Still
smoldering, even under the dark waves, the items broke apart, dismantling
themselves into nothing but steam and a burst of small bubbles. These rose to
the surface and became, like the mermaids of legend, the foam of the sea.

Scattered voices and half-glimpsed faces
haunted Portia as they passed, some sinking, some rising, but always
surrounding her as the island shook itself apart. Halford and Quentin, the
lusty roustabouts, the widow and her child, the doomed patrons of Circus
Avernus whose faces she had but glimpsed and whose names she never knew, all
dying again here in the water. Even the stones from the ruins of Salus,
Belial’s favorite prisoners, cast forever—or so they thought—into stone and
used in the construction of the courtyard and palace. Nephilim, as most of them
were, and Aldias. Once they had power over the living and the dead, then they
became immortal, and now, they died.

Portia
had no idea what might be waiting beyond this watery realm. When Hester had
dissolved into nothing, had her soul been committed elsewhere to some
nether-realm of the underworld? Or perhaps heaven and hell lay on the far side
of Salus, where the souls of her kindred might finally be treated to their due
as dictated by the merciful but just God she had been taught to fear and to
serve.

Whatever
their fate, she did not share it. And she did not find Imogen among them, nor
Kitty, nor Radinka, nor Kendrick, nor even Lord Alaric. She wished with all her
heart and soul that they had been able to reach the safety of Alaric’s estate, whatever safety that might offer, considering he
had been the catalyst of the entire affair. She hoped she would see him sinking
to the depths of this bottomless sea, his face ashen with terror, his flesh a
mass of blood, but she did not. The currents toyed with the detritus around
her, melting it into foam and releasing the withered souls trapped within. Away
they floated, away, away, leaving her completely alone. Nicor did not return to
torment her.

How
long she floated there, heaved and dropped by the ever-present current, she
could not even begin to reckon. After a long while, nothing more fell from
above. She imagined the desolate morning sky somewhere overhead, streaming with
clouds the color of blood.

* * * *

Every sea has a shore, and this one was no
different.

Portia
rolled onto a beach of gritty, grey sand. A tall grey cliff cupped the narrow
strand, shielding it from wind and weather and blocking most of the light. She
crawled a few feet out of the surf, thankful to feel air on her puckered,
waterlogged skin. Mouthful after mouthful of water came up from her lungs and
her stomach. She coughed and gagged for hours, it seemed, before her body was
well rid of it.

And
then she lay still. For a while, she still felt as if the surging sea cradled
her and rocked her and bobbed her about, but that eventually passed, as well.

The
light never shifted.

When
she felt sufficiently strong again, Portia stripped off the tatters of her fine
silk ensemble and laid them out on a nearby rock to dry. She stretched out,
naked, spreading her wings wide and relaxing her arms, legs, fingers, and toes
into the warm sand.

Still,
the light never shifted.

When
the clothes were dry, she shook them out and put them back on. She combed her
fingers through her hair, working out the worst of the knots before braiding it
back up again.

 She
realized only then that her wrist was bare; there was no sign of the stained
ribbon and the precious little charm anywhere amid the grains of sand or caught
up in her clothing. Wherever the golden axe had gone, her favorite possession
had gone with it, lost to the sea, lost to Nicor’s
treasure heap.

She
walked from one side of the beach to the other, finding no exit from it. She
flew up the face of the grey cliff only to find that the higher she went, the
taller it was, extending right into the clouds far above. There was no escape
from this place unless she braved the water again. And she decided she would,
but not now. At the moment, it pleased her far too much just to be dry.

So
Portia sat and gazed out across the softly lapping waves, each tipped with the
foam of souls. She avoided touching them.

At
some point, she realized that someone had come onto her beach. A tall
individual sat on the wide rock upon which she had dried her clothing. Although
rather androgynous in appearance and wearing a simple tunic, Portia decided
that she felt confident in thinking of the person as a he, and stood to greet
the stranger.

"Good
day to you, sir," she said with a voice
surprisingly strong, and even pleasant.

He
inclined his head. "Good day to you, sister."

She
grew wary at that. "How did you come to find
your way here?"

"Certainly
not the way you did." He had an utterly
disarming smile, and Portia relaxed, just a little, despite herself.

She
looked back toward the water. "No, I suppose not."

He
rose and took a few graceful steps toward her. "Do
you know me, Portia?"

"Should
I?"

"Probably."

"I’m sorry, but I don’t."

"It’s because you don’t remember when last we
met." He reached out his hand and touched her shoulder. "You were very young."

Had
she ever met a handsome male stranger as a child? She had rarely taken notice
of men, even from her earliest days.

"I
suppose I would’ve had to be."

He
leaned in and pressed his lips to her forehead. She closed her eyes,
instinctually, and saw him.

In
her little garret room above her father’s pottery shop—the one that overlooked the alley and not the front of the
store—this man stood there, eyes and hair and skin
aglow. His tunic had been embroidered in gold with great acanthus leaves and
arabesque flourishes that accented the impossible blue of his eyes and the
gleaming color of his hair.

She
had bowed; that, she recalled immediately. He had taken a seat on the old trunk
on the corner and told her not to be afraid of the woman who was already on her
way there. The woman with golden hair would take her far away from this musty
little bedroom and into a bright, new life.

"You
mustn’t be afraid," he whispered. "The things you once knew as the whole and entire of your
life are soon to be a thing of the past. You must open your soul to the newness
of God’s plan for you."

Portia
opened her eyes. "You said that to me that
night. Verbatim."

"I
have a good memory."

"Gabriel."