Maelstrom (29 page)

But he didn’t stop, despite what must have
been agonizing pain. Instead, he raised the witch hunter’s
dagger.

And plunged it into
Bradley’s chest.
His
chest.

No.

The world stopped—or maybe it spun faster,
and I was still. Frozen.

Because if both bodies were destroyed, then
how could he live?

My throat was raw; distantly, as though it
happened to someone else, I realized I was screaming a denial. My
legs moved, seemingly of their own volition, as though every muscle
in my body, every atom, demanded I go to him.

I had to stop this, somehow. Had to turn
back time, remove the dagger, put Whyborne back in the right body
and piece it all together again. But I was already too late.

Just as he had been.

The surge from the device nearly blinded me.
All the wild energy of the barrier, of wind and wave and cloud,
collapsed inward. The beam of light shooting from the center of the
maelstrom changed, focused by the Lapidem.

And tore a hole in reality itself.

The signal had been sent. The Restoration
had begun.

Bradley collapsed forward, blood pouring out
from the huge wound in his chest. His mask fell off, revealing the
features that should have belonged to my Ival, and I screamed
again. He fell onto Whyborne, but the rapidly disintegrating human
body couldn’t hold his weight, and they both crashed into the
device and the Lapidem.

The light seemed to pulse again, and the
power of the maelstrom poured into both bodies, human and ketoi
hybrid. Bradley’s original body began to come apart, charring into
ash, pieces falling away, crumbling faster and faster, until there
came a bright flare—

And in my shadowsight, something rose up
from the ashes.

Widdershins

A thousand flickers of life.

Mr. Quinn stands panting, staring at the
bridge, his heart in his mouth. He is afraid, as he has never been
afraid before.

A young woman watches the last glass fall
from a shattered window. It’s summer now, but in the winter, the
wind will be bitter with nothing to block it.

Miss Lester waits outside the mortuary, her
eyes unfocused, feeling the magic she cannot see. Something has
changed. Something terrible. Her kin are from the dry deserts,
gnawers of bones, but the fear that touches her is cold indeed.

A ketoi gasps, dying, and his body slides
into the river.

They are all Widdershins.

And none of them are.

But this is: a tiny fragment of myself
running across a bridge, screaming for its other half.

This day would always have come. But knowing
this, I prepared for it, as best as I could. So many little sparks
of life, collected and woven together, until just the right bodies
formed.

A fragment of myself split off, then split
again. One spark for the land, and one spark for the sea.

And now one of those splinters has been
inadvertently set free. It hovers above our heart, caught between
remaining the separate thing it has become, or rejoining the
whole.

Griffin looks at it. At me. I am the most
beautiful thing he has ever seen. Umbrae touched him years ago, so
I drew him here. Just as I drew them all here.

So many little sparks of life, so many
little pieces, but each one of them beautiful in their own way.
Each transforming with every passing moment, emerging from the
chrysalis of the past but not quite the shape of the future. A
kaleidoscope, made from a broken prism; each fragment perfect in
its flawed self, and yet adding to the whole.

And still it was not enough, all the
beautiful, ugly, perfect, broken parts. We failed, despite
everything. The battle lost.

This little splinter that is me (but become
its own self, too; both at the same time) turns my attention to the
hole in the sky. The fulfillment of my purpose, the reason the
Masters twisted the lines of arcane fire and created the maelstrom.
Created me.

My sole reason for being, and the last thing
I ever wanted. Does the edge of steel wish to cut flesh? The hammer
wish to crush bone? Or is it enough to merely exist? To be.

The umbrae and the ketoi were created to be
tools as well. I have no more desire to exist as a slave than
they.

Mr. Quinn weeps, although he does not
entirely understand why. Miss Lester nods grimly, for no creature
of the Outside will ever claim her allegiance; her desert-born
ancestors came here, to me, to be free. Iskander closes his eyes
and whispers a prayer.

Griffin does not close his eyes, doesn’t
weep. He is wonder and awe. It may have been accident that brought
him across the path of the umbrae, but this...this is no accident.
There are others I might have brought here, and did not.

So beautiful, like sunlight shining through
a cracked glass. I can taste his belief, his hope, his need, just
as I can that of all the others I gathered. They believe that even
if the battle has been lost, the war has not.

They will fight on. And I can do no
less.

I reach out, and the hole in reality closes.
It is not enough to stop what is coming, but at least it is
something. The veil will rip no farther open tonight.

We are safe. There is still hope.

But I will need this splinter. This
fragment, this imperfect piece that is its own thing and yet isn’t.
I made it for a reason, to have eyes and ears and a vulnerable
heart, because these things have a magic beyond the mightiest
arcane vortex. I—we—cannot do this without it.

Its body is injured, but it came into this
world dying, as did the other body that carries my essence. Then it
took only a bit of a push to sustain their lives.

This time will require a more direct
intervention.

Its clothing and mask is gone, burned away.
The spark of the sorcerer who stole this body from me is gone as
well: a shadow on the wind, crying out, then lost forever in
darkness. So I pour energy into the empty flesh, heal skin, and
knit muscle.

Then I/we/this fragment slip back
inside.

Griffin

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever
seen.

I stared up at the figure within the heart
of the maelstrom, unable to look away even though it burned so very
bright. Tentacles writhed about its head like a crown, and its eyes
blazed like suns. It reached one hand up, toward the sky, and the
very heart of the maelstrom bent to its will.

The hole in reality vanished, sealed off as
if it had never been.

It bent its head, its features too bright to
make out. Whyborne’s lifeless body lifted from the brick pavers of
the bridge, hovering a bare inch above them in the air. His
clothing burned away, flaking to ash, as did the blood drying on
his pale skin. There came a spark, and the wound on his chest
sealed away. Leaving behind not even a scar.

Then the creature—the light—the
being—slipped back inside his skin. Where it belonged. Where it was
the fire in his blood.

The blaze of the maelstrom receded to its
ordinary levels, the wild magic evening out. Eerie silence fell,
broken only by Persephone’s shouts, by my own screams calling
Ival’s name. Persephone collapsed beside him, caressing his face
with her clawed hands.

He didn’t move.

I fell to my knees, grasping his shoulders.
His skin was like ice and pale as milk. I pressed my hand to his
unmarked chest, where the dagger had gone in, and felt the faint
beat of his heart beneath my palm.

His eyes fluttered. “Ival?” I whispered.

Persephone sighed and fell back in relief.
She knew, somehow. Her brother had been restored.

“Is it him?” Niles asked from behind me,
terror in his voice. He hadn’t seen what I had.

Ival blinked and licked his lips. “Griffin?”
he asked in a rough voice, as though he’d been shouting for hours.
“What happened?”

I stared at him, at the light my shadowsight
showed me, the fire within that some part of me had always known
was there. “It’s him,” I told Niles.

“Thank God.” Niles hauled Ival roughly to
him, pressing a kiss against his son’s hair. Heliabel joined us,
touching Whyborne desperately as well, as though she couldn’t
believe he still lived. “Oh, thank God.”

Whyborne had started to shiver, so I took
off my coat and wrapped it about him. He looked at it in confusion,
then at me.

“I’m glad to be alive,” he said uncertainly,
“but what the devil happened to my clothes?”

Whyborne

“Are you ready, Christine?” I called through
the closed door.

It was a week after the original date for
her wedding. The official story was that a series of small
earthquakes had struck Widdershins, knocking out the electricity,
breaking glass, and causing a strange glowing light near the Front
Street bridge. Naturally the wedding had been postponed, while the
city picked up the pieces and tried to recover.

Nothing was said of the blood covering the
streets near the bridge, or the burned hulk of a motor car. As for
the bodies of the cultists, the ketoi had removed them. I didn’t
inquire too closely as to their methods of disposal.

Miss Parkhurst opened the door. “We’re
ready,” she confirmed.

I gave her a small bow. “You look lovely,” I
said, though I was no judge of women. But her red gown seemed to
compliment her coloring, and the pearls at her throat and wrist
almost glowed in the morning light.

She pinked slightly, but smiled. “Thank you,
Dr. Whyborne. A shame Persephone couldn’t be here.”

“I’m certain she agrees,” I said. “You’ll
have to tell her all about it later on.”

“Oh. Yes. If she wants me to.” Now her
cheeks had flushed scarlet. “Perhaps you should signal the
musicians for the processional? If you’re quite ready, Dr.
Putnam?”

“I’ve been ready,” Christine muttered.

I stepped to the head of the staircase and
nodded to Griffin, who waited below. He signaled the string
quartet, and the first strains of music drifted up.

Miss Parkhurst took up position at the head
of the stairs, waiting for the guests to settle. I took the
opportunity to turn my attention to Christine. Her veil lay over
her dark hair, and the long train of her dress stretched out
behind. Powder covered a lingering bruise on her cheek, where one
of the cultists had struck her, but otherwise she seemed entirely
recovered.

“You look beautiful,” I said.

She snorted. “And what would you know?”

“I know you and Iskander will have a long
and happy life together.”

She blinked rapidly, and shifted her bouquet
to one hand so she could punch me on the arm with the other. “Damn
it, Whyborne, if you make me cry, I’ll have to challenge you to a
duel.”

The music changed—the signal for Miss
Parkhurst to start down the stairs, to be escorted by Griffin to
the altar. Another few minutes, and it would be our turn.

“Are you ready?” I asked, and offered
Christine my arm.

She took a deep breath, then nodded. “After
every thing else we’ve been through, I think I can manage
this.”

“That’s the spirit.”

She gave me a sideways glance. “I’m glad
you’re here with me. I thought...”

I didn’t really recall the moment I’d nearly
died. I had a vague recollection of pressing forward into the
barrier, of looking into my own face and stabbing myself...but
nothing more. In truth, all of the memories from my time in
Bradley’s body had grown insubstantial. Fragmented, more like
pieces of a dream that fade in time.

“I can’t believe I didn’t realize
immediately it was Bradley,” Christine went on. “You’re my best
friend, and I didn’t recognize it wasn’t you until he told me.” She
shook her head, the veil rustling softly. “You must think me a
fool.”

“Don’t be absurd. You had no reason to
imagine he’d stolen my body, for heaven’s sake.”

“Still.” She took a deep breath. “You’ve
been beside me through so much, and—and I love you, Whyborne.”

“I love you too, Christine.” I bent over and
kissed her brow, careful not to disturb her coiffure. “Now, let’s
not keep Iskander waiting, lest he think you really did run off
this time.”

Her hand gripped the crook of my arm. We
made our way down the sweeping stairs to the crowded ballroom.

A sigh rippled across the assembled crowd as
everyone turned to look at us. Well, at Christine, mostly, as was
only right. I glimpsed Mr. Mathison, various members of the Marsh
family, Miss Lester, and nearly every person of import in
Widdershins in the crowd. Society reporters had already been
gathering outside when I’d arrived at dawn; every detail would be
splashed across the pages of the newspapers by the evening
edition.

Miss Parkhurst stood waiting to one side in
her red gown and pearls, and Griffin to the other in his dashing
lavender vest and gray suit. Our eyes met, and he gave me a
smile.

Iskander stared at Christine as though he’d
never seen anything so beautiful. Tears shone in his eyes, and he
didn’t bother to hide them. As I paused with Christine, she
whispered, “Stop it, Kander, you’re going to make me cry too!”

I slipped quietly away and took my seat in
the front row, beside Father. The priest droned on, but I don’t
think Christine and Iskander heard a word of it before the vows,
too busy staring into one another’s eyes to pay the slightest
attention. I dabbed at my eyes once or twice with my
handkerchief.

When the ceremony ended, we retired to the
dining room for the wedding breakfast. Champagne flowed freely, and
the kitchens had outdone themselves: chicken croquettes, lobster
cutlets, several types of salad, and of course cake. After, there
was the dancing in the ballroom. I stood listening to the quartet,
watching Griffin and Miss Parkhurst waltz for a time, before
slipping away.