On Wings of Bone and Glass Read online

  “To bar the dead from the living,” I said.

  “The king is our charge!”

  “Humanity is your charge,” I said. “The king of elves is a means to your end. Winifred herself would say so. Rose, where I go no force of arms can aid me. The sorcerer cannot be defeated by a sword, no matter how bravely wielded. And the minor magics you can bring to bear would trouble him no more than the bite of an ant.”

  “Enough ants can bring down a man,” the Vessel said.

  I held up my hands for quiet, received it, mercifully. Looking at my brother, I said, softer, “Will you decide?”

  A smile curved his mouth, gentle and rueful and loving. “I am the King-Reclusive. In this you lead.”

  “Then,” I said with a sigh, “I will lead first by retiring to consider my options.” I rose and bowed to the company. “I won’t be long.”

  Hoping that would stay them from following and beleaguering me with their well-meaning attempts to help, I left the campfire for the forests, where the land could cradle me and the silence soak into my heart and still my racing thoughts. Picking my way through the thickness of shadows that would have once tripped me, I continued until I found a likely tree. I sat against it and wrapped my arms around my knees, stared through the black fretwork of the branches. With fewer leaves to diffuse the pattern, it looked almost like the ceiling of a cathedral, and I thought of the hall at Vigil with its glass open to the firmament. Some elven architect had sat beneath a forest’s canopy and found glory in the hint of blue mystery, and duplicated it no doubt. A reminder that none of us had access to the pattern, and it was glorious beyond our ken.

  Had the sorcerer gone mad for seeing it?

  Why did I think he had?

  I pressed my brow against my knees, feeling the frame of my glasses pinch the skin at my nose. Really, there was no choice. I could not leave Sedetnet free. I could not afford to leave the library’s answers. And the elves would come straight through Vigil on their way south, unless they broke west, and the mountains that way quickly became impassable. It was in my heart that they would take the easier path, not just because it was easier, but because it led to the ground where once they’d fought and bled. Threnody-Calling-Forward was calling, and they would heed.

  How dearly I wanted to stay and read books and make notes. Almost it was in me to wish I had died ignorant of myself, and too young, rather than have come into this. But it was useless.

  Almost.

  I closed my eyes and marshaled my strength for what was to come, and I had not finished when I heard the whisper of feet against the earth. Softly, Almond said, “Master?”

  I held an arm out to her and she poured into the space alongside me, rubbing her furred cheek against mine. Kelu I heard because she allowed me to hear her, sitting to one side and before me.

  “We know you said you wanted to be alone,” Almond whispered, though I’d said no such thing—it was like her to have heard it so clearly—“so if you wish us to go....”

  “No.” I gathered her close and sighed. “No, it’s well. I think I’ve had about as much solitude as I need.”

  “You have attracted a small horde,” Kelu agreed, dry.

  “Not my intent, I assure you.”

  “No.” She grinned, all sharp teeth. “Just an accident of your going around turning everything upside down. First the Archipelago. Now the human civilization. I thought you would, but I didn’t think you’d do it so fast.”

  I thought of the messengers racing for the capital. “It is not how I would have chosen to introduce humanity to the elves. The damage may in fact be irreparable.”

  “I’m sure they’ll shrug it off when they see the elves being ripped apart for them by the dead,” Kelu said. At my expression, she said, “You don’t honestly expect to be able to stop Sedetnet, do you?”

  “Kelu,” Almond murmured.

  “No.” Kelu flicked her ears back. “No, on this one point, I’m not going to soften the blow. We’re talking about someone who can float a tower and open Doors. If he wants to summon demons, no one’s going to be able to stop him.”

  “I could ask,” I said.

  “You could, and he might even say ‘yes’. But I doubt he will. For someone capricious, he’s acting like someone with a mission.”

  “He is, isn’t he?” I said, puzzled anew. “I’m missing something, and I fear the lack may destroy us all.”

  “Probably,” Kelu agreed, scooting over and putting her back to the tree. She ignored Almond’s outraged gasp. “More than probably, really. Unless, I guess, you can make all these humans into bad copies of elves by pricking the magic in them. Not that it’ll matter, since there’s not enough magic on this continent to feed them all. What good is a hundred knights who can use magic if you’ve got thousands of corpses rushing them?” She shrugged. “I don’t know how that’ll work out for the best.”

  “Maybe an angel will save us, the way an angel saved us before,” Almond said.

  Kelu snorted. “You know how many people have prayed for angels to save them?”

  “Maybe if Amhric and I ask,” I murmured, but they both heard the lack of confidence in my voice. Responding to Kelu’s quizzical look, I said, “But I fear our sacrifice has been debased. There is nothing in our blood to bring forth an angel anymore. We have wasted the gift.”

  “You didn’t waste it,” Almond said firmly. “It was taken from you by betrayal.”

  “Either way, I don’t think we can rely on our ability to summon one. The very idea is blasphemous. We are no one to be ordering the arrival of one of God’s divine messengers.” I removed my glasses and rubbed one eye with the butt of a palm. “We will have to muddle through as best we can.”

  “You will, anyway.” Kelu closed her eyes. “The rest of us will be dead, and probably for the best.”

  Almond tensed against me, but said nothing. I frowned and squinted at Kelu. “By which you mean—”

  “God, you are daft.” Kelu sighed. She leaned over and knocked on my brow with her furred knuckles. “I’m the oldest genet in existence, and I’m near my expiry date, ‘Master.’ Almond won’t be around in a few years. All of the genets that exist, right now, are all the genets that will ever exist, because there’s no more Fount to make them, and even if you somehow figure out how to win this disastrous epic battle you’re not going to hand the king over to Suleris so they can keep making more of us. In five or six years, the youngest of us will die, and there will be no more genets.” At my expression, she nodded, satisfied. “So you see, I don’t really care whether you figure things out or not. Either way, it’s not going to matter to us. Me, Almond, Emily,” said with disdain for the human name, “Serendipity... all the genets in cages back at Suleris... we’ll all be dead.”

  The thought of a future without genets was absurdly depressing. But there were no genet sires, and their lifespans were engineered into them as surely as ours were into us. “Perhaps the same knowledge that will liberate the elves from their imprisonment will serve the genets as well.”

  Kelu snorted. “Maybe. But by the time you have time to figure it out, I’ll certainly be dead.” She got to her feet, dusting off her legs. “Don’t worry yourself over it. No one will ever be asked to make a hard choice between saving the genets and saving everyone else. That’s a privilege you furless people reserve to yourselves. We’re just...” She trailed off and grinned humorlessly. “Unfortunate victims.”

  “Kelu,” I said, “I can understand you throwing darts at me. I can understand you hating me. But the darts you throw rip you as well. Why do it?”

  She looked away, ears flat against her head and a wrinkle rumpling her muzzle but not quite baring her teeth. Finally she said, “Don’t try to save what can’t be saved. ‘Master.’” And then she stalked away.

  “She doesn’t hate you,” Almond said softly, distressed. “Her life has been nothing but fear and cruelty, Master. She doesn’t know how to hope.”

  “Your life hasn’t b
een much better.” I drew her into my lap and wrapped both arms around her.

  “No, but I have known kindness. You have been kind.” She petted my arm.

  “But before me?” I pressed.

  “Before you I knew that pleasing my masters was good,” she said, “because pleased masters are happy, and then there is more happiness in the world.” She lifted innocent eyes to mine. “And if I have added to some of the happiness in the world, then my life has been worth something.”

  I hugged her tightly, feeling in my heart for the first time that she would die, years before I had tired of her sweetness and her wisdom. She licked my jaw and perhaps I let my eyes well against her hair.

  When I could breathe again I leaned back and let her right my glasses on my nose. Through them she burned a purity, as well she should. I no longer knew what the glow signified; it only seemed appropriate that she should be among the brightest of the people I had yet seen.

  “Do you know what you’ll do?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “So let us go back and see it done. The sorcerer is putting distance between us as we speak.”

  3

  “We need the library’s wisdom,” I said. “Even more, we need people here who represent those elves who are not marauders to greet humanity when it arrives, for—” I glanced at Carrington, “—I pray that the messengers convince their auditors that they are in earnest, and that the peril is real, both from the dead and the elves who would enslave them. For this task, then, I ask... and it is asking, for I will not command... that Kemses and his men stay, and the Vessel and hers. Kemses....” I faced my liegeman. “You must be the face of our allies to those eager to defame us. I can trust no one else with this task, if Amhric and I do not ourselves stay.”

  Kemses bowed. “It will be as you say, my liege.”

  “Rose,” I said to the Vessel. “I know it galls you to remain, but you alone have the status in our society to have any hopes of convincing whoever leads the human contingent to take up our cause. If you aren’t here I fear that no one will heed Kemses. The counsel of fear and hate will win the day.”

  Rose said, between gritted teeth, “You give me nearly an impossible command, my lord.”

  “I ask,” I repeated. “I ask, Rose, because without you there is no chance of success. And because when the dead rise, they will rise here, from this place of grief and memory. The Church must be here. This is their ancient charge. I know you will not turn from it.”

  A sigh ran from her, and with it her resistance. “It will be as you say, my lord. But we will have words when you return.”

  “I look forward to it,” I said, and found I meant it.

  To my friends, I said, “I would have some of you stay as well, though it pains me to separate our fellowship.” I smiled a crooked smile. “But someone who can do the work of reading books should be doing it in my absence.”

  Guy slung an arm around Radburn’s shoulder and shook the other man affectionately. “We’ll hold the fort. Won’t we, Radburn.”

  “Wait, I haven’t volunteered! I won’t cower here alone while everyone else rides off—”

  “We’ll hold the fort,” Guy repeated. “Because someone has to. And there’s going to be danger enough, what with being surrounded by resentful academicians hoping we fail.”

  “That’s a danger we’re used to, though!”

  Guy rolled his eyes. “You complain all the way here about the discomforts of travel and how irritating you find being away from what you find familiar. Now you want to abandon all that you find familiar so you can go back to them?”

  Radburn ignored him. “Morgan, I won’t abandon you.”

  “You aren’t,” I said. “You think that your part of the task is less important? The fate of elvenkind rests on our ability to free their magic—not just elvenkind at this point, either, for if we fail, and we very well may, the dead will destroy humanity as well. You must discharge your own errand. Someone must, or it will all be for naught.”

  Radburn grimaced. Quieter, he said, “It goes against the grain, letting you ride off like this.”

  I rested a hand on his arm. “We won’t be gone long.”

  Having left him resigned to his fate, I knelt before Emily and Serendipity. “I would ask the two of you to stay as well.”

  They glanced at one another with identical looks of puzzlement. Emily said, “Of course, Master. But... why?”

  “Because the genets no less than the rest of us are bound up in this.” I could sense Kelu’s burning regard on my back. “And it is in my heart that you have gifts to give to the task. Some of your number should remain and contribute your efforts.”

  “We’ll help in whatever way we can,” Serendipity promised, and I hoped they would, and that Serendipity’s gift in particular would serve them.

  “That leaves the rest of us to Sedetnet’s trail,” I said.

  “I see you’re smart enough not to try to make those of us who’d follow you stay behind,” Ivy said.

  “I like to think I have a little common sense,” I said, sliding an arm around her waist and kissing the top of her head. “If we’re all agreed? We should leave as soon as we can.”

  “Wait!”

  We all halted, for there was Carrington, feet spread and hands fisted at her sides.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “You don’t truly believe I’m going to let you ride back into Vigil and take it over!”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do.”

  She hesitated.

  “Doctor Carrington,” I said. “You will not allow Vigil to be overrun by the elves who would torture you the way I was tortured at the hands of your colleagues, even if it means allying yourself with elves who wouldn’t.”

  I saw her flinch and waited. I had done her a kindness by not accusing her publicly of the cruelties she’d committed against my flesh, and I judged her to be too honest a woman to enjoy my protection, while still acknowledging that it was protection. Not from my partisans, though she might be aware, intellectually, of the danger they posed her... but from Eyre. I guessed her to value his opinion of her still, and if she could believe that Eyre loved me as a student enough to hate her for hurting me....

  “They won’t listen to me,” she said at last, quiet, and I saw how much the admission cost her. “I am their colleague only when I agree with them, because it proves to them that I was trained to ape my betters.”

  “It really is the way you said,” Kelu said to Ivy.

  “I told you,” Ivy replied.

  “Does it not please you to return with an argument they can’t refute for fear of their lives?” I asked.

  “That’s not how I want to win. That’s not winning at all. That’s subjugation.” She looked away, shoulders tense, then blurted, “Let me come with you.”

  “Mary, no—”

  “John, my career is done the moment I walk in there with an army at my back. If I go with you I can at least learn something.”

  “You can’t let her come with us!” Chester said. “Not when she—”

  “Chester!” I said.

  “No.” He glared at me, then bared his teeth at her. “I won’t let her. She knows why.”

  “And if I allow it?” At his mutinous expression, I said, more gently, “If I ask you?”

  “Last charged me with your protection—”

  “And I can’t die,” I said. “Not of anything she can do to me. If she’d like to throw her lot in with us, I won’t say no.”

  Ivy was watching us with narrowed eyes, and hers was not the only speculative look. I doubted our exchange had been wasted on Eyre, but I hoped his feelings for her would blunt his powers of observation. I might have wondered why I felt the urge to protect her, save that the reason for it was sitting beside me. Amhric would have urged forgiveness had I explained the matter to him. Amhric would have forgiven his every enemy, given the chance, and while I would have found his example an impossible one to follow had it involved the enemies of my
friends, I found it somewhat easier to extend that consideration to someone who had, after all, not been able to bear my screams. And it was in me that she was not our enemy... she simply hadn’t convinced herself of it yet.

  “You may come with us, if we wish,” I said. “But we go north, and quickly, and into danger. Nor can we take your students. I fear we travel too heavily as it is.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about them,” Radburn said. “We’ll take them in hand. They can help us with the research.”

  Said students looked mutinous, but the maiden took a second look at Guy and became somewhat less distressed at her exile. She nudged her cousin, who scowled at her, but said, “Whatever you wish, Professor.”

  “Then we are resolved?” I looked at my companions and marveled that I had come into so many. How far I’d traveled from the taciturn shut-in who’d been grateful for the four friends willing to suffer his company! “In the morning, then.”

  We disposed ourselves to rest or guard as our inclinations and duties required. My own pallet became a matter of debate for amusing cause, for I was determined to guard my brother, and Chester determined to guard me, and Ivy stubbornly refused to be parted from me no matter what our mixed company might think of the proprieties, and of course the genets could not help but wish to be near the Fount. When the drake also stalked close and sat beside my blanket I began laughing. “There is no bed in the world large enough for this sleeping arrangement.”

  “And I think proper introductions are in order, anyhow,” Ivy added.

  “No,” Chester murmured, watching Amhric. “I think we know one another.”

  “I suppose we must, at that.” Ivy shook her head, then said, “There is nothing for it, but that we make some sort of sunburst with our heads in the middle, like children playing in snow.”

  And that did serve... on this night, anyway.

  In the morning, Kemses and the Vessel took their leave of us, and we made promises to see one another soon. Guy adjured Chester to keep my hide in one piece; I caught Radburn taking leave of Kelu and made certain she didn’t see me noticing. Watching them ride away toward the bridge and the proud spires of Vigil was enough to induce anyone to melancholy, and I wondered abruptly if I’d chosen rightly.