Caitlin Kiernan - Alabaster

Evil times demand strange alliances, the alchemist reminds himself and wipes sweat from his forehead before it can drip into his one eye. It's very hot in the small chamber that has been prepared for the Nesmians' ritual, a great fire burning inside a brick-lined pit set into the floor at the center of the circular room. There's a low stone table pushed against one wall, its upper surface freshly engraved with runes that few, if any, men can read, and there's a long iron sluice running from the table to the fire. Everything's exactly as the red witches have asked, and Alundshaw whispers a hurried prayer that he hasn't simply invited some greater atrocity into their midst. The chamber is crowded with all the court astronomers and the other alchemists who have accompanied Alundshaw in his descent from King's Hale.

He begins to speak, but then there's a loud grinding sound from the bowels of the Weal, and the floor rumbles treacherously under them.

"Alundshaw, there's no time left for you to waste," Pikabo Kenzia says impatiently. "The Seraph is free, and already the Dragon's waking beneath our feet." Her violet eyes glimmer in the firelight, and Alundshaw tries hard not to let his dread of her show. Both women wear the simple crimson robes and grey-green skullcaps of their order, but he's well aware that Kenzia is no common adept, that she's next in the line of succession to be Mother and Voice of all the red witches of Nesmia Shar. She's a beautiful, fearsome woman, a warrior and accomplished sorceress, an uncompromising zealot and a scheming politician, and Alundshaw knows that she was counted a worthy adversary by the King of Immolations. The unruly tangle of her chestnut hair, just beginning to go white at the temples, puts the alchemist in mind of a lion's mane, and, gender aside, the comparison seems all too apt.

"Do you have the feather?" she asks, and he takes a paper envelope from a vest pocket and passes it to Pikabo Kenzia, almost dropping it before she takes it from his trembling fingers. She scowls at him and opens the envelope; inside is a single feather pulled from the wing of the captured Seraph.

"Will it be enough?" one of the astronomers asks her, a nervous old bastard whose name Alundshaw can never recall.

"Possibly," Pikabo Kenzia replies, holding the large grey feather up in front of her face. "Probably. Regardless, I suppose it will have to be, won't it, Ezcha?" and then she turns to face the other Nesmian, a much younger and plainer woman with none of Kenzia's fierce presence.

Ezcha doesn't reply, but merely smiles and nods her head before she goes to stand beside the stone table. "We should hurry," she says. "I'm ready," and the witch removes her crimson robe. She's wearing nothing beneath it, though her skin has been painted with elaborate runes which match the ones carved into the table. Ezcha folds the robe neatly and lays it on the floor, then takes off her cap and places it on the floor, as well.

"You will return these to my sisters," she says to Kenzia.

"Ezcha, you know that I will," the elder Nesmian replies, and Ezcha nods her head again. Then she climbs onto the table and stands at the mouth of the iron sluice, facing the fire.

Pikabo Kenzia takes a deep breath and draws a dagger of black volcanic glass from her own robe. "I would ask that you all leave us now, excepting, of course, Lord Alundshaw. He may remain, if he so desires. I would not wish your Queen or her agents to harbor notions that we're working some secret enchantment against her."

Kypre Alundshaw hesitates, not wanting to be alone with these peculiar women and their heathen ways, but then he motions for the others to leave the room, and, relieved, they obediently file through the door to wait together in the cramped antechamber.

"You will not speak," Kenzia says to the alchemist, and the tone in her voice is enough to prevent him from even asking why. The red witch closes her eyes a moment, then opens them and glances up at the naked woman standing alone on the table.

"We ask nothing of you, daughter, that you have not already pledged," Pikabo Kenzia says, then looks down at the dagger in her hands. "You are brave, and you will shame us all with your forfeiture. By your sacrifice might this world be saved. By your grace and willing death, might others live."

And if he were not now too afraid to move, Alundshaw would join the rest and damn his mistrust and the Glaistig's suspicions. Well, I can shut my eyes, he thinks. If nothing else, I can at least shut my eyes.

"The body of woman is like a flash of lightning," Kenzia says, "existing only to return to nothingness. Like the summer growth that shrivels in winter. Waste thee no thought on the process, for it has no purpose, coming and going like dew."

I can shut my eyes.

And the floor rumbles again.

"Like a wall, a woman's body constantly stands on the verge of collapse," Pikabo Kenzia continues, speaking faster now, as if she's afraid there won't be time to finish. "And still and always, the world buzzes on like angry bees. Let it come and go, appear and vanish, for what have we to lose?"

The woman on the table spreads her arms wide, as if in welcome, and Alundshaw can see that there are tears in her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks. Pikabo Kenzia leans towards the fire pit and drops the Seraph's feather into the flames. For only an instant, the fire burns a brilliant, exquisite blue, and the chamber is filled with the screeching of eagles and a blistering wind that reeks of gunpowder and battlefield carrion.

Don't watch it, Alundshaw thinks, his mind gone desperate and wild. Don't see what's coming, but he can't seem to remember how to shut his eyes.

The awful grinding sound comes again, and this time bits of masonry are shaken free of the walls and the stone table wobbles.

"Leave this place forever, you murdering son of a whore," the red witch growls and swings her black dagger around, slicing her companion's belly open. "Be gone, and take all your foul brethen with you!" Ezcha's blood spills into the sluice, and hisses when it reaches the fire. She screams, and the second time Pikabo Kenzia's blade sinks deep into the younger witch's gut, the alchemist finally finds the will to close his eyes.

The shadows gathered in the old church on Dry Creek Road have kept Dancy busy for the better part of an hour. Rushing her suddenly from behind, their not-quite insubstantial fingers tearing at her shabby clothes or snatching strands of her white hair, then darting away to safety again. They've taunted and jeered and mocked, hurled threats and mildewed hymnals, and they've promised her, again and again, that she won't live to see another sunrise. There are scratches on her arms and face, the best they can manage with their shadow claws and teeth, a few drops of blood to whet their appetites for what's to come. They've backed Dancy all the way down the narrow aisle to the pulpit, where she stands with her back to the altar, her carving knife held out and glinting faintly by the unsteady glow of their will-o'-the-wisp eyes. She's noticed that their eyes have gotten a lot brighter, as if tormenting her has stoked some furnace hidden within them.

"Would you run, child, if you could?" the wolf-woman shade asks Dancy, and then, addressing all the others-"Brothers and sisters, if we took pity on this poor, misguided ragamuffin and let her leave now, would she even have the good sense to go, before Elandrion gets here?"

For an answer, there are ugly gales of laughter, hoots and whoops and uproarious fits of giggling.

"Do what you like," Dancy tells them. "I'm not going anywhere until I've done what I came here do to." But this only makes the shadows laugh that much louder.