She remembered that. Sven had caught Robert selling Nightfire’s slaves in the Duxy of Wasfal instead of returning them to their homes. That Robert had survived Sven’s wrath was a testament to Nightfire’s ability to keep the peace at his Academy.
Katla shrugged. “It will take more than a civil war to draw Pidel or Wasfal into this. Even if they discover Flasten has broken the Law, they are not going to let the Mardux break it further by arming mundane with wands.”
“What of this amendment?”
Brack feared her brother, Katla knew, which could only mean the Delegates did, too.
He is right to fear Sven. I see what my brother intends. By the time he finishes, it will be too late to raise an army. His changes will destroy Drake civilization. The Mass must invade or die.
“It is fen lights and nothing more,” she assured him. “Even if Wasfal and Pidel radically altered their policy, they would never agree to such an amendment. Flasten is hardly going to vote in favor of it, and it would take a unanimous vote.”
I just need to delay the Mass until Sven has broken Flasten. Pidel won’t support the amendment, but they can’t oppose him alone, and Wasfal has no stomach for an expensive civil war.
Brack stopped pacing. “The Delegates have given orders to mobilize the Mass.”
“How soon before they invade?”
“The First Wave marches in a month.”
Katla swallowed. So much for delays. “First Wave?”
She listened numbly as Brack explained.
There were millions of Drakes, like there were millions of Mar. Marrishland had shaped the majority of both into warriors. When the Mass invaded, the sea of bodies would be as spiky water drowning the land, Dinah’s Curse come to life. Except the Mass was made of living, breathing beings that had to do a lot of the same things the Mar did: eat, drink, sleep, defecate, heal. The entire Mass in one place would starve to death inside of a span.
Therefore, as Brack explained in his aged voice, it was broken down into waves of more than twenty thousand apiece. Each had numerous scouts. The distance between the waves would vary based on the Delegates.
“The point, Yee Ka Lah,” he finished, “is that there are more than three hundred waves, and the Drakes are not afraid to use all of them.”
She gaped at him. The math was terrifying. The Mar could be extinguished.
But I knew that was a threat when I started this.
Brack’s ancient face was grim. “I cannot hold back the river any longer, but I made a deal with them. The Mardux is still in Domus Palus. As soon as this morutsen wears off, I will teleport into the chamber with a squad of jabber guer and kill Weard Takraf and anyone else in the citadel. A headless damnen is a danger to no one.”
“He has a hundred yellows guarding him at all times. Their counterstrike will be swift. How do you expect to escape once the deed is done?”
“I do not expect to escape.” Brack removed the silver and gold ring from his finger and held it out to her. “If I succeed, you may be able to convince the Delegates to call off the invasion. So long as you wear Domin’s Favor, they will recognize you as my successor.”
Katla accepted the ring, the weight of the ancient metal heavy in her shaking hand. How long have I waited for this moment? How long have I practiced and planned? “And if you fail?”
“Then they will leave the Mar in a worse state than when the Gien Empire fell to the Mass.”
Am I ready? Can I control the Delegates? Can I make the Mass attack when I need it to? He seemed to want her to say something.
“You seem to assume victory is inevitable, yet you said the Mardux might prove powerful enough to destroy the Mass,” she said.
He turned away again, back straight and proud. “The Mass has never been defeated in the field. It will strike before your brother is ready.”
Now, now! Katla raised her hands, fingers splayed, myst of every kind already gathered in great quantities along her fingers.
“By the Oathbinder and by Dinah, my patroness, this time, they will be, and my brother will lead them. The Mar will meet the Mass in the field, and they will drive it back across the Fens of Reur.”
Determination filled her as her mentor turned, and fear washed away as his brown eyes hardened, so clearly pained at this seeming betrayal. Even if his magic had not been neutralized by morutsen, it would have made no difference. No one could evade morutmanon — a spell whose touch was death to the wielder’s enemies and harmless to allies.
“With this act of war, you condemn Marrishland to a dark age. No duxy will be left standing,” he said.
“Destroying duxies is easy. I do not need the Mass to do that.”
The eight colors of myst merged together into a blur of blackness that fanned out into a thousand snaking tentacles of killing power, seeking her victim.
The black tentacles crawled up and draped over Brack’s blood-drained face, unaccepting of his fate, then squeezed. They faded into his bubbling skin, and Katla held her poise as his eyes exploded and skin popped and boiled. The blackness seemed to grow within him, and ashes of his bones mixed with his smoking blood and flesh and the corpse finally collapsed, being consumed and crushed in its own heat.
Katla stared down at it. He was always the enemy.
Brack apparently had triggered spells of his own active in his home, for the library exploded into flames. Darkness clouded Katla’s vision as the fire seared her. She recalled the day her mother had been taken as she blacked out.
I know you remember her, Sven. I know you remember her sacrifice.
* * *
Katla woke to the sound of her father putting on his boots, stomping them against the floor, but she pretended to be asleep. A chill hung in the air in their small home, and twelve-year-old Katla wasn’t ready to come out from under the deerskin blanket she shared with her younger brother.
“Be careful, Pitt,” Tyra, her mother, said too loudly, forgetting the children asleep by the hearth only a few paces away. “I want you home safe.”
Sven stirred against Katla’s back, and she thought for certain he would sit up, and then he would start asking questions.
Her brother had started speaking at so late an age that their neighbors had wondered if he might be deaf, but anyone who looked at his green eyes knew he heard perfectly. Other children began speaking in simple words — mama, dadda, no. Not Sven. His first word had been “why,” and sometimes it seemed all his sentences ever since had been questions. From waking until sleep, always questions, and it seemed he thought Katla was there for no other reason but to answer them. If Sven woke, Katla would have to leave the warm blanket and begin her chores, and he would be at her heels the whole time, asking her to explain the world to him.
After a moment of rubbing his face against her back, though, his breathing settled back into the slow rhythm of sleep. At the door to their house, Katla’s father spoke in a low, soothing voice too soft for her to understand.
It was his way. Katla had only heard him raise his voice once, and that had been to stop her from leaving the house barefoot. She knew he wasn’t quiet because he was afraid of people. It was something else.
Her mother had tried to explain it to her, once. “Your dad talks quiet so people want to hear what he’s sayin’. It makes them quiet. It makes them stan’ close so they can hear — not just close to him, but close t’each other. Swind’s whisper, they call it.”
Katla hadn’t understood it then and still wasn’t sure she did. She knew her parents’ chose the name Gematsud when they married, which meant “south-spirited” or “as warm and gentle of spirit as Swind, the south wind that brings summer,” so maybe it had something to do with that. Her mother had that name, too, but Katla had heard her neighbors joking that it meant something else about Tyra.
Her mother tried to speak quietly, but Katla could still hear. “Domin take those wizards! Snatchin’ people like we don’t know who’s doin’ it.” She sounded furious.
Katla’s
stomach growled, and she risked opening one eye to look at the fireplace. No soup pot hung over the flickering remnants of the fire. They had not eaten anything in two days except a bitter bark tea, and her parents had barely sipped that.
Pitt murmured something apologetic, but Tyra would have none of it.
“You couldn’t have done anythin’ if you’d been there. They’ve magic, an’ you don’t.”
Katla knew the words had not been for her ears, even though she knew it was the worst winter anyone in their town could remember. Even during her short years, she had seen higher snows and felt colder nights, but she had learned many new words for winter hardships — war, magocrat, slaver, starve. People went out to hunt or collect firewood, and many of them never came back.
Her parents whispered back and forth, and Katla could tell they were arguing about something. Finally, her father let out a heavy, exasperated sigh. He was so agitated that Katla caught two words, “be back.” And then he was gone.
Katla’s stomach rumbled again, and a hollow pain seemed to sink teeth into her whole body. She began to cry softly into her blanket, hoping her mother wouldn’t notice, fearing it would only make everything even harder for her parents.
Tyra came to the hearth. Her back was to her daughter, so Katla watched her stir the dying coals with a metal poker. It was the last of their firewood, and there were many days of winter left. Her parents might die. Her friends.
Sven shifted slightly against Katla. He’d never get answers to all his questions, she thought, and she couldn’t suppress a sob.
Tyra turned slowly, her face a mask of concern. She held out her arms, and Katla flew into them, weeping as quietly as she could to keep from waking her brother.
“What’s the matter, Katla?”
“Are we goin’ to die?” she whispered like a secret.
Her mother cradled the back of her head and rocked her slightly. “What kind of question’s that?”
Katla shook her head without releasing her hold. “I know what’s happenin’, Mom. We’ve no food. No firewood. There’s bad wizards stealin’ hunters, so we can’t get more.”
“Your father’s gettin’ us food and wood, baby. Not all the hunters got snatched. I brought you back a duck.”
Katla relaxed a little. Maybe it was a lie, but her empty stomach forced her to believe it. “An’ the fire?”
“If you’ll let me go a minute, I’ll show you.”
Katla released her and looked around the room as if expecting a pile of sticks to appear out of nowhere. But there was no firewood or even blocks of peat to burn. Tyra walked over to a beautiful rocking chair Katla knew had been a wedding gift from her mother’s father, who had been a carpenter.
Tyra ran a hand along one polished arm of the chair, traced the carvings at its back with her fingers. She had nursed her children in that chair, sung them to sleep. She looked at the chair thoughtfully for a long moment.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, and then she picked up the chair reverently and carried it outside.
Katla winced as she heard the hatchet fall, cringed at the splintering of wood meant for sitting. A short while later, her mother came in, her cheeks wet from crying, her arms cradling a pile of carved and turned wood like the broken body of a fond memory.
Tyra set the pile of wood down next to the fireplace and carefully chose a single, small shard. She caressed it, cupped it in her hand, and then placed it on the coals. A soft breath, and the faint orange lights glowed more brightly. Another, and the hot specks spread across the dark coals. A third, this one a little more forceful, and sparks flitted and spun in the hearth. Smoke curled up from the tiny sliver of the rocking chair. A few breaths more, and a tongue of fire burst out of the stick as if it had always been there, and Tyra had merely coaxed it out of hiding.
Tyra went to the door and collected her hunting bag. To Katla’s delight, she withdrew not just the promised duck, but two fat rabbits, too. She felt her mouth watering in anticipation, and her mother smiled.
“Pluck it while the water boils.”
“Yes, Mother,” Katla said, taking the duck.
Tyra helped her cut up the meat and put it in the pot of melted snow with a little laurita from their winter supply of the herb. Soon, Sven was awake and asking his sister questions. Mostly, though, he spent the day asking when the food would be ready. Tyra urged him to be patient as she fed one precious piece of the rocking chair after another into the fire to keep it burning. By the time the soup was ready, they could no longer see their breath.
Their father didn’t come home that night, though their mother was up most of the night waiting for him. He didn’t come back the next night, either, and the pile of rocking chair shards shrank to a few chips of wood. Once, Sven asked about the rocking chair, which made his mother cry, but she comforted him with a story of how the Mar learned to make food sacrifices to the gods.
After Sven fell asleep, Katla crept out from under the blanket to sit with her mother. Eventually, Tyra fell asleep, but not Katla. She stayed awake, feeding the fire the chips of wood a few at a time.
The next morning, Tyra took the crib where her children had once slept out of the house. It took longer to dismantle than the rocking chair had, and soon they had another little pile of precious wood next to the fireplace. Tyra prepared a rabbit soup this time, and Katla fell asleep watching the memory-eating fire on which their lives depended devour the scraps greedily.
When she woke, the house was full of people — all of them murmuring, all of them afraid for the hunters and their families. The cyan-cloaked wizard who lived in the village had left days ago with promises to bring help, but she hadn’t come back. Katla heard enough to know many people were dying of cold and hunger, and nobody knew what to do about the slaver wizards.
Tyra had no answer for that, but she told them about the chair and offered to share her soup. They accepted but only took a few polite sips before excusing themselves. The next day, some of the ones with no children brought food to Tyra’s house — another duck, a bowl of wild rice, some roots and herbs. Nobody had much, but they shared it anyway.
“If everyone’s hungry, why’re they givin’ us food?” Sven asked.
“They’re not givin’ the food to us,” Tyra explained. “They’re givin’ it to the gods.”
“So we can’t eat it?” Sven asked, sounding a little petulant.
She smiled at him and brushed his cheek with one hand. “Don’t worry, darlin’. You can eat it.” She turned her face to Katla. “Do you un’erstan’?”
“It’s a sac’fice. They go hun’ry to prove they believe the gods will help us. That’s why you gave them soup, right?”
Her mother nodded. “An’ I believe the gods will sen’ the hunters back with enough food an’ wood to last the winter.”
“What if they don’t?” Katla blurted out.
Tyra looked a little wounded.
“I b’lieve,” Sven announced proudly, climbing into his mother’s lap. No question in his tone, this time, and for once Katla missed it. Tyra wrapped Sven in her arms and held him tight while Katla contented herself feeding pieces of the broken crib into the fire.
Days passed with no word of the hunters. Furniture burned first. Extra tools came next. In the end, even the dearest mementos that could burn fed the Gematsud hearthfire. Swind, the south wind, carried warmer weather, but they still needed to feed the fire. People who drank water without boiling it got sick from Dinah’s Curse and died.
Katla and Sven weren’t allowed out of the house anymore. Katla worried for her mother because she never seemed to eat anymore. Almost all Tyra’s food went to her children, until she looked like sticks held together with mud — like something that would soon be chopped up outside and fed to the fire in the hearth.
Tyra stopped inviting neighbors inside for soup. They had no soup. They had started trying to boil just about everything in the house to make it into food — leather, reeds, even spiders and centipedes. They
were hungry all the time. No one brought them any food, either.
Katla secretly stopped eating after two days like this, sneaking Sven her part of whatever barely edible food her mother gave her. If starving herself would bring her father back safely, that’s what she’d do. She knew that soon she wouldn’t have a choice. They would run out of food, and then they would all starve like so many of their neighbors were. The gods didn’t reward Mar who starved because they ran out of food. That wasn’t a sacrifice. For it to be a sacrifice, you had to have a choice. When she fainted from hunger, though, her mother forced her to eat — told her the gods didn’t want children to make sacrifices like that. Katla was too weak to argue, and she ate the soup made with two boiled mice.
At last, they had nothing left to offer the fire. Instead of searching the house for a forgotten scrap of wood, Tyra put on her warmest cloak and kissed Sven and Katla on the cheek where they lay by the fire.
“Mom?” Katla murmured. “Where are you goin’?”
Tyra looked at Katla seriously. “I’m going out to look for firewood and maybe for some food, too.”
“But the wizards,” Katla whispered in a panic, hoping not to wake her brother.
Her mother cupped her cheek with one hand, her green eyes gentle but sad. “I have to. The fire won’t feed itself.”
“But Dad’ll come back, won’t he?”
Tyra crouched next to her daughter and spoke in a whisper. “I’ll tell you a secret if you promise not to tell your brother.”
“I promise.”
“I don’t know if your dad’s comin’ back. You an’ Sven have t’eat, so I’m doin’ ev’rythin’ I can to get you food. If dad gets back first, good, but if the wizards took him, someone has to feed you, an’ I’m the only one left. Do you un’erstan’?”
Katla shook her head and started to cry.
“You know how fire works, right? If fire doesn’t have something’ to burn, it goes out.”
“Yes.”
“People are a lot like fire. They have to eat or they die. Rem’emer how the fire burned Grandpa’s chair, the spoons, your old doll?”