Anna and Christina mentally flanked her for this newest development, Bianca retreated to minding the soul trap.
Christina had predicted the goddess wouldn’t be done with them even after the break from the Rock survivors. While Anna had been right with her initial observation—Sil’s ability to heal was far more complex than a simple magical effect, and was handled by a wholly different part of the healer’s brain than the channel through which the goddess could intrude on them—it was still unwise to underestimate Panacea and what the creature could do to get her way.
They hadn’t expected, however, that they’d be dealing with this sort of pettiness.
“Dearest clever daughter,” Sil read off Vergil’s back. “Make apologies in my name to whoever you’ve inflicted this message on. Unfortunately, you’ve left me no alternative but to sully this sacred act of healing. I hope shame burns you.”
Sil made a face at that, partway between disgust and disbelief.
“Is she taking the piss?” the healer asked, shaking her head. “Cut all this into you just to whine?!”
Vergil hugged his knees and rested his forehead on his arms. He raised a hand and waved it halfheartedly.
“At this point I can’t even act surprised,” the boy said, voice tired and resigned. “It’s high up in the top five horrid things done to me. Probably fourth place.”
The elendine whelp hovered around him, looking undecided if to reach out and help Sil, or keep her hands to herself. “What’s first?” she asked, as if that mattered in any way.
Vergil turned his head her way and grinned, the git. “Discovering all my memories are fake and that I may not be an actual person at all. That one really stung.” He chuckled at his own tone. “Isn’t that silly?”
Tallah had to laugh at the expressions fighting across the elendine’s face. Whatever she’d expected, she had not expected this. Vergil was entirely too honest for his own good, and their fresh companions were not ready for the sort of absurdity he dragged along.
At least there was more to the message. Tallah gestured to Sil to get on with things.
“Right, then, where were we?” Sil traced a finger over the alien words. Vergil shivered. “I hope this message reaches your attention. I find myself relying on your group’s penchant for trouble. For all your claim to independence, I still hear your prayers so I assume it will not be long before you need my aid. The School is besieged by our common friend. My defences are sufficient for now, but I expect escalation before summer’s eve.”
Tallah’s eyebrow rose at that. She hadn’t expected news of Ryder until closer to midwinter. Her hands balled into fists, and her anger flared at the sight of Vergil’s ears going pale white. All blood drained out of the boy’s face. He gave a perfunctory shiver, as if trying to shake loose of some invisible grip.
When all was said and done, she would give Vergil the last swing of the axe for that monster’s throat.
“And what does she want from us?” Tallah demanded, feeling her patience draining away. More important work awaited. “Sounds like she has things in hand.”
“I’m getting there.”A frown creased Sil’s face and she pressed a hand to her eyes. She gripped Vergil’s shoulder to steady herself.
‘I can bet you a couple brain cells,’ Anna said, giddy with excitement, ‘that’s the rest of her synapses snapping back into shape. Monstrous. And delightful.’
Anna’s working theory was that Panacea tampered with her healers’ minds to such a degree that it was nearly impossible to identify or change. Without Sil’s particular experiences in Grefe and at the Rock, not even someone of Anna’s ability would have ever noticed the scarring and tempering. Aliana and her girls certainly hadn’t when they’d made Sil, and that said much about Panacea’s abilities in this regards.
Without Anna and Christina as safeguards, Tallah had to admit she’d be weary of walking into the goddess’s domain. Already returning Sil to her, and Vergil for that matter, gave her pause.
Sil shook her head and sniffled, a thin line of blood streaking her upper lip. “Again,” she growled. “She changed something again.”
‘Yes! I knew it. I bloody knew it and told you so.’
Yes, Anna would be an insufferable terror now that she was proven right. Again.
“Yes, yes, you’ve said so,” Tallah said. When Sil looked confused, she added, “Finish reading. Then tell me what else you’ve just been made to remember.”
“How did you—Nevermind.”
Sil wiped her nose on her sleeve while the elendine just stared between the two of them and Vergil.
Yeah, welcome to the kind of weird we’re all used to. It’s going to get worse.
“You will now know coordinates and locations of safe houses and my emergency vaults. Make your way to the closest and find one of the guides I’ve sent out to wait for you. Without them you will not survive the approach to the School. My defences do not differentiate between intruders, no matter their former allegiance. I know you have split from the refugees of the Cauldron so I expect you are headed the right way. Tread carefully and make haste.”
Vergil let out a sigh of pleasure as Sil finished reading. As with the Red Marks on the healers, observing the message led to it healing and scarring.
Well, that at least answered one question. Sil knew locations now, at least some of them. It made the upcoming trek into the Vas Midlands far easier to stomach, though there was still a lot of land to cover and search.
“Is that all?” Tallah asked. “Do you have the locations?”
Sil wiped her bloody nose again and used Vergil as a support to push herself to her feet. She threw a scowl Tallah’s way before offering a hand to Vergil.
“You could show a minimum of sympathy,” she said. “Having your head rearranged is not pleasant. And yes, if you show me a map, I can mark out some locations.”
‘Oh, if only we could understand how it feels to have our minds scratched out of our brains and our selves peeled off our bones.’ Anna’s deadpan almost sounded detached, the bitterness almost hidden.
Christina snickered at the tone, ‘Not to mention you can never forget the feeling of it happening. It lingers.’
‘Does it ever. I can still feel fire on my skin. And I had a lot of skin stretched out throughout my Sanctum.’
“My ghosts are berating you,” Tallah said, cutting off their bellyaching. “May want to choose your words a tad more carefully.”
A cursory up-and-down check on Vergil showed he was unchanged, aside from fresh scars. Gangling. Wiry. Awkward. Not as pale as he used to be, but would still outshine a wheel of cottage cheese. All in all, he was fine, at least to her assessment.
He smiled at her questing look and shook his head. Good. He didn’t need anything more than to get a fresh shirt on. The elendine clucked around him while Sil struggled with her nosebleed.
Right. This was cleared. She reached into her rend and produced her old map, handing the oiled cylinder to Sil.
“Unless one of you grows a third arm or a second head, I don’t want to be disturbed.” She made sure everyone got an equal dose of her glare. “I will burn the next one to bother me without cause.”
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So much drama for nearly nothing. Head here, find this, or else. Like that was meant to impress her.
Tallah turned and stalked back up the hill, shaking her head. Danger lay ahead. It also lay behind, to the left and to the right, and all around them. That was hardly anything new or worth getting worked up for, much less worth torturing poor Vergil over.
Now, she had a different challenge to deal with and this one had taken days of preparation already. She wanted it seen to before they took another step in any direction, gods, goddesses and maggots be damned.
Christina was first to get back on schedule. ‘I believe you’re as protected as we can make you.’ Her voice remained pensive. ‘We can’t predict what she might know of this that we don’t. She’s been at it far longer than we have.’
It would have to be enough. As ever, a defence was only as good as what informed it, and in this case they had very little to go on beyond their own observations and experiments.
Bianca was left to deal with the inner work. The other two would be far more valuable for this contact attempt. Christina for her strength. Anna for her spectacular mental barriers. Between the two of them, Tallah felt as safe as she could get, at least for this.
‘You need the focus,’ Christina said.
“I can do without.”
‘What you can do is waste our time and risk our integrity through sheer stubbornness. You’re going to hurt whether you use the focus or not, so may as well improve our chance of success. Get it out and stop acting a child.’
Tallah groaned with displeasure and felt the beginning of a headache blooming between her eyes. Headaches were becoming a constant presence these days, especially when she and Christi butted heads on anything. It would only get worse if she protested.
Unfortunately, the ghost was, of course, right.
Blood and bone were the best mediums for establishing a sympathetic connection. Next best thing was an item of special significance. Having them all meant almost guaranteed success, but that was when you didn’t have to deal with a monster in human skin, steeped in soul magic for maybe as long as the empire existed.
Reaching Catharina was the goal. They could not afford a single errant risk.
Tallah slit open her rend again and dug inside. The feel of the ebony case on her fingers sent razors in the back of her throat, the taste of blood coating her tongue.
She hadn’t used this since she’d baited Anna’s anger, and even then it had been Sil who handled it for her. Tallah hadn’t touched the wand ever since she’d discovered Rhine’s fate.
Now, she opened the case’s lid with trembling fingers. The wand lay inside its velvet cushion, as pristine as ever, the silver shining in the midday sun. The Amni house motto lay engraved down the wand’s length, the words gently teased into the silver by Rhine’s skilled fingers.
The wand had been a gift for Tallah to celebrate her advancement into the role of Justice. Rhine had never liked that path but she’d supported her sister all the same.
Purity of purpose through cleansing flame.
Five centuries of pyromancers born to the Amni name. None as powerful as Tallah and none as wickedly clever as Rhine. A shame that their final legacy will only ever be measured in ash.
The wand felt cold and heavy in her hands. Lifeless. It sent her stomach roiling to remember how excited Rhine had been to build the thing for her. The long nights her sister toiled on the engravings and the precise patterns set in small rings beneath the leather strips serving as the wand’s handle. Her red eyes after working with the alchemical compounds used in creating the core of the wand. The look of triumph on her face when it was done.
She remembered all these things in the abstract, like memories belonging to someone else. With Christina’s protections in place, she couldn’t even picture the wraith of Rhine, much less conjure up the actual image of her sister.
The wand lay across her knees where she sat, glittering in the sun. For the thousandth time, Tallah cursed that she couldn’t bring herself to destroy the thing.
It was build specifically for her irregular, explosive output. With its aid she’d mastered the lances, made herself into one of the most dangerous pyromancers ever to take to a field of battle, far more precise than her caste generally got.
Much as she hated touching it, the wand was made for her. That much was clear from the way it sat in her hand, to how her power sharpened around it. Illum tugged to coil around the silver and be made into pure, white flame.
‘See? It’s not so bad.’
Tallah resisted the urge to scream. She gripped the wand, set her jaw, blinked tears of frustration away, then lowered herself down to the ground to sit cross-legged on the grass.
“Let’s get this over with. We all know what we need to do. Best we see it done.”
Internally, they all knew they were about to throw away a tactical advantage. Once this was done, Catharina would know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Tallah could reach her. Their war was about to move on a different, much more dangerous plane, from the physical into the mindscape.
‘I’m ready.’ Both ghosts topped up their charges of illum.
Tallah dragged in a deep breath, forced down the revulsion for what she was about to do, and dove inside her mindscape. Christina’s office materialised around her. There were no chairs this time. No table. No foul rose tea.
Just the office and its books, and the two other sorceresses waiting with crossed arms. For once, Anna was dressed.
‘One must be presentable when dealing with royalty,’ the ghost said when Tallah’s gaze lingered on her.
Presentable meaning, in her case, wearing a body-hugging leather suit that was so tight it left nearly nothing to the imagination. It could only be described as wildly impractical. Anna, it seemed, fancied the elendine’s attire.
“Amusing,” Tallah groaned as she took her place between the ghosts. Even in the mindscape, she could still feel the touch of silver on her hands, stoking her anger. “All you, Christi.”
The first stage was to invite their guest in. For that, they needed an illum anchor.
Rhine’s wraith did not appear immediately after Christina dropped her protections. It hadn’t tried poking at their defences for the past couple of days, which Tallah took as a sign that Catharina had reached Ria. Whatever went on there, it had shifted the empress’s focus off Tallah and onto other matters.
Christina coiled her power around Tallah’s and siphoned it out through the wand, then back in. The loop grew in power as they fell into the now familiar state of illum refinement, each of them offering a little of their stores and taking some of the other’s.
Rhine appeared in the centre of the room. First as a shadow, indistinct and blob-like. Then, as more power was added into the mix, she gained details and coherence. Like a portrait coming alive through the brushstrokes of an artist, Tallah began recognising her sister as she’d been once.
Her heartbeat rose in tempo and thundered behind her ears.
Christina drew on her own and Anna’s memories of Rhine. Tallah gritted her teeth so hard that she felt her jaw creak with the effort. Absurdly, she felt jealous of her friends, that they still could remember Rhine where she couldn’t even conjure up the hollowed-out ghost.
The Rhine portrait smiled at Tallah. A tooth cracked with the pressure.
It was her turn.
Without the empress threatening intrusion, Tallah had to reach out towards the piece of Rhine still attached to Catharina. Only she could do it, of course. And it meant opening herself up to all the pain she’d locked away.
The distance to Christina’s construct felt like miles. It was barely three steps.
Reaching out to the image, pressing a hand to the warm chest, looking it in the eye… She almost abandoned the attempt then and there, and knew neither ghost would begrudge her weakness. It was only the spectre of their pity that pushed her to do what was needed.
“I want to see you.” The words stung as they fell out of her, both lie and truth at once. “I miss you, Rhine.” That was only truth.
That last part wasn’t necessary for the ritual.
A flood of old memories swallowed her.
Being girls in Solstice’s countryside, both of them too mischievous by half and too clever for their own good.
The first time their abilities manifested. The fight that had them both spitting flames at one another. It was over something trivial and meaningless, but had ignited the illum in them to explosive results.
A touch of soft fingers on her lips as Rhine applied red pigment. Tallah was to meet with the high caste of Hoarfrost and her father had demanded she be presentable.
Bittersweet partings. Rhine too young yet to join her at Hoarfrost. Tallah too eager to be away, to learn, to grow her power. The first tastes of it were intoxicating.
Hoarfrost itself, with cold, black walls. Rhine joining years later, taller, sharper, hungrier than Tallah remembered her. Still her sister, still her match in mischief and explosive temper. Still—
She shoved everything that tied her to Rhine into the construct and Christina provided the power needed to open the conduit. Half-remembered memories. Malformed feelings. Longing. Shame. Anger. Everything that Tallah could conjure up to tie herself to her sister, she pushed it in until nothing remained but a cold hollowness in her chest. It felt like a dip in freezing waters.
Christina worked through her, redirecting in the power they’d refined together. It all sunk into this fake Rhine, and it, in turned, swallowed it all up greedily.
Their stores depleted.
Something tugged at Tallah’s chest. First a faint itch. Then a slight pressure. Then…
Rhine burst into blinding light and threatened to consume Tallah. She tried drawing back but could do nothing against the overwhelming tug at her chest, now a hook into her heart. Something drew her into the light. And, all at once, pushed her away. She remained stranded between ghosts and light, caught in the summoning.
They weren’t going to reach into Catharina directly. That way lay too much danger. So they, instead, aimed to pull the empress into themselves. It was working!
It all lasted for a couple heartbeats only. The light disappeared and the room dimmed back to its normal perpetual late afternoon streaming through fake windows.
And Tallah was touching the wraith she knew. Hollow eyes stared into hers. Cold skin beneath her fingers. A gash of a mouth that could no longer smile.
Before, she would’ve screamed at the sight.
Now, she scowled and hardened her heart to stone.
“You wanted to talk. Asked for a truce.” The sound of her own voice, steady and strong, strengthened her resolve. “Show yourself properly, Cat, and we can talk.”