Mark Del Franco - Uncertain Allies

“Tell me what to do,” I hear her. I hear her, and I hear fury.

My mind blinked.

I stand on a plain, white grass waving against a white sky. It’s not winter, pray, what is this new madness? Where have I come? I turn in place, searching, searching across the plain, searching about the standing stones, but Maeve is not there. Was she? What is this place?

My mind blinked.

The golden-cloaked king shudders into view. “The Wheel of the World turns as It will. It is not mine to lead even a sliver of it.”

My mind blinked.

Vize is running. Everything is white. I am running. Everything is white. He looks over his shoulder at me. He looks determined . . . or crazed . . . I can’t tell. Everything is white. One minute we were facing each other, and now everything is white. He stops. He looks surprised. There is someone lying on the ground. Something about him is familiar. Everything is white, and there is no ground. There is someone lying in the white. Everything . . .

My mind blinked.

“You can’t do this,” I shout.

Something is not right. Or different. She doesn’t look right. The woman reaches out.

“I must. It’s the only way,” she says.

I close my eyes against pain, and something black blossoms in my mind. Black like a seed in the white. The woman sings; and then she screams; and then I know what to do.

My mind blinked.

My mind blinked.

. . . the inevitable. A man steps forth, faint spirals of woad pitting the skin above his wide brow, a sudden wind tugging at the dirty drape of cloth over his shoulder. “We shall be as bones, bones of the earth, steadfast and eternal,” he says.

“I promise I will try,” I say.

“We hear and hope,” he says.

My mind blinked.

The wild man returns. “The wielder wheels and is wheeled but chooses his own path. We are the Wheel and Its instrument.”

My mind blinks.

He cocks his head as he looks at me, the colors in his eyes shifting like the sea in a storm. “Have you ever met someone and felt like you’ve known him forever?” he asks.

“No,” I say.

He laughs, with a deep rumble in his wide chest.

“Liar,” he says. “Liar.”

My mind blinked.

Vize looks feverish. “It must happen this way. You must let it happen.”

“I won’t let you,” I say.

He looks frightened yet determined as I reach toward him. “I thought it was me. But it’s you. You have to destroy it.”

My mind blinks.

The robed man towers up. “The Ways seal and unseal. A needle binds as it pierces.”

My mind blinks.

Essence pours out of the sword.

My mind blinks.

Essence pours out of the spear.

My mind blinks.

Essence pours out of the bowl.

My mind blinks.

Essence pours out . . .

My mind blinks.

A blue light burns the sky, a blue so pure it burns white. It hits me in the head like a fist of flame and burns its way in. My head explodes with light and darkness, then everything goes silent. I scream and

everything

goes

white

Wind roared as I fell through the sky. Smoke and fire blurred around me in a dirty smear of orange and black. I was going to die. No rush of images cascaded through my mind, no marching panorama of my life’s highlights. I thought how strangely beautiful the Guildhouse looked as it crumbled in smoke and flame. I closed my eyes, feeling the rush of gravity pull me to the street below. It wasn’t going to be pretty. I hoped I didn’t hit anyone. At least I was going out in a blaze.

A blue haze of essence around me, the essence of the Dead coming to call me home. My eyes flew open as a turbulent air knocked against me, batting me from side to side. The fractured street pavement grew closer, larger, before wind shear blurred tears into my eyes. Something pressed against my back, like I wasn’t falling fast enough and needed a push. The blue essence blossomed around me as I rushed into the embrace of the Dead. The ground moved below, a nauseating shift toward my feet, then flashed by as I skimmed over the street and surged into the air.

Remain calm, Ceridwen sent.

I laughed. Remaining calm was so obviously the right course. I had fallen off a burning building and plunged toward my death. I laughed with a sound tinged with madness and disbelief as rough hands gripped my back.

Ceridwen banked away from the smoking building and set down at the opposite end of the square. Chaos filled the streets, people fighting with essence or scattering in fear. Police officers tried to enforce order, only to stare in stark awe when they caught sight of the Guildhouse.

The Guildhouse burned. The upper stories were gone, lost in smoldering stone heaped on the street and sidewalk. Gaping holes belched smoke from where towers used to be. Guild agents swarmed and hovered, darting in to retrieve anyone that appeared in a window or broken opening. The ground trembled, a deep rumble that intensified. The Guildhouse contracted about the middle, a slow, inward shift of wall and tower. With the sound of a raging storm, the Guildhouse shed the remains of its outer walls, pulling the rest of the building with it.

A towering pall of angry gray smoke shot from the implosion. I thrust my hands out, an instinctive warding off of the heat and debris, as a boiling mountain of ash and smoke rolled toward me. My body shield triggered—my full body shield—bursting around me in a crystalline barrier of deep gold. The smoke spilled over me like a wave hitting a cliff, then raced up the street and swallowed the remaining fighters. It passed, becoming less dense, but not dispersing.

My head burned with a cold fire. I trembled with power, but a power I didn’t understand. Something had changed. I not only had my body shield back, I could control it. I didn’t have time to question it but was glad of it. The dark mass felt different, like it was generating energy instead of absorbing it. My skin danced with an electric sheen.

Ceridwen lay on the ground not far off, no spark of essence in her body. I leaned over and felt for a pulse. She was dead again. I stared for a moment, then left her there. She was Dead. She would wake up in the morning as if nothing had happened.

I stalked toward what was left of the Guildhouse. Firefighters wandered through the smoke, empty-handed and helpless, their trucks and gear buried under rubble. Shattered walls rose ghostlike around me. I circled around burning stone to the front entrance. It was gone, nothing left but the fractured remains of the dragon head. The lobby was gone, too, a crater of fire burning where bored receptionists once sat.

Shocked, I fell to my knees. I stared, trying to make sense of what I was seeing—what I was not seeing. Endless piles of stone and fire rose around me. Smoke bled through the filter of my body shield and irritated my eyes. The only sounds were the crackle of fire and the high-pitched beeping of rescue-worker alarms. I don’t know how long I sat there before someone touched my shoulder.

“Connor? Are you all right, buddy?”

I lifted my head, the world asserting itself around me like I was waking from a deep sleep. Murdock stared at me, his face filthy and scratched.

“Yes,” I said.

“Are you sure? You were screaming,” he said.

“She was in the basement,” I said.

Horror etched across his face as he stared into the fire. I got to my feet. “I have to get to the subway,” I said.

“It’s collapsed,” he said, his voice rough.

“I have to get to the subway,” I said.

I wandered out into the square. Haze filled the air. I didn’t remember anything about the walk from Park Square to the Boylston Street T station except stumbling through debris, Murdock beside me like a shadow. Transit workers stood at the entrance, directing people several blocks away to where buses waited. A man stood in front of me as I tried to enter.