Кейт Форсит - Relics, Wrecks and Ruins - Anthology of Speculative Fiction Short Works

Flydd and I emerged outside the door of my studio with a boom that shook down half a dozen loose roof slates.

“Where’s Malien?” I said frantically.

“Lost, between ,” said Flydd, bowing his head. “No time for that now. Go!”

But I’d known her all my life; how could she be dead, just like that? Yet the living had to come first and if I didn’t warn them, Skald would take them from me as well. I would grieve for Malien later—if I survived.

Three-quarters of a mile away was the meadow, shaded by huge old trees, where everyone had gathered for the reunion. Almost everyone I cared about was there. Staying away now seemed foolish, childish.

I had to warn them. I ran.

“He’s back!” I shrieked as I reached the picnic area. “Get up, quick!”

“Who’s back?” said my father, Llian, raising a crystal goblet in an extravagant gesture. He looked tipsy, and no one could blame him, but this was the worst time to be witless.

I looked around wildly. “Skald!”

“Where?”

A good question. Skald had drawn a monumental amount of power from all those lives, then left his petrified body behind. Had he turned to stone because living flesh could not endure that much power? If so, what was he now?

And then I saw it. High in the air, a few hundred yards away, beyond the meandering stream, a vast presence slowly condensed out of pure power. It was roughly human shaped, though its edges blurred and wavered. A glowing green nimbus surrounded the figure and yellow rays radiated in all directions.

Was Skald a kind of being now? Whatever he was, power leaked out of him as he descended, leaving shimmering trails in the air, charring grass and bushes below him, boiling the water in a nearby duck pond, and heating everything it touched to incandescence.

His touch would kill, though I did not think Skald wanted to kill us just yet. He drifted lower, extending spider-leg projections towards the guards stationed further out and cutting them down in puffs of black smoke. The mongrel!

Everyone was on their feet now, staring up. I could sense his triumph. How Skald loved stalking his enemies. He was savoring our terror. Why would he hurry? He had waited sixteen years.

Flydd appeared beside me, panting.

“What do we do?” I gasped.

“If he’s now a being, he’ll be invulnerable to physical or magical attack. Whatever spell we use on him, he could turn it back a thousandfold…”

“Flydd?” I prompted, when he did not go on.

“Last time you beat him with an emotional attack,” he said quietly. “What are his weaknesses?”

“Umm… Skald never had a great gift for magic. Look at him—power is oozing out everywhere. And I don’t think he knows how best to use it.”

“With that much power, he doesn’t have to. What else?”

Previously, using my empath’s gift, I had sensed out and amplified the agonizing emotions and feelings of Skald’s victims, and deluged him with them. And because the Merdrun had always denied their own emotions, he had been overwhelmed.

I raised my hand to try again. The being that Skald had become drifted towards us, and smiled. The gigantic face was horribly scarred, and his right eye socket was empty.

His voice boomed like thunder, inside my head and outside at the same time, and it shook my bones . I’ve spent the past sixteen years exploring my emotions, Sulien, and learning how to defend myself against such attacks. You can’t touch me now. Give me the Waystone.

“You’re the son of a coward!” I shrieked up at him. “And you’re a coward too.”

He grimaced. Nor can you provoke me. All this time, I’ve been tormented by the most savage accuser of all—myself. The Waystone. Give it to me.

I raked my fingers through my hair, desperately trying to think of a way to attack him. My forefinger stuck to something—a clot of printing ink. I was about to wipe it off on my trews when I saw that it formed a crude letter U.

Was Skald his own most savage accuser? What about Uletta, the only person who had ever loved him? He had loved her, too, yet he had betrayed her and, as she lay dying, she had used up the last of her life laying an unbreakable curse on him and his people. Was she the answer?

“Shard!” I said out of the corner of my mouth to Flydd.

He took the cap off the little pill box. “What are you thinking?”

“You know how to raise people from the dead?”

“Yes, though it’s generally a bad idea.”

“Remember where Uletta was buried?” I nodded towards the mound, partly enclosed in a loop of the stream. “The shard will know her.”

Flydd stared at me for a minute, doubtless weighing possibilities, then held it up, wincing, his fingers smoking where they touched it. He spoke the words of the raising spell and a wraith came up through the nearest mound and drifted towards us, becoming ever more solid as she drew near. A big, strong woman, her features still twisted in the anguish of her betrayal.

“I remember you,” the risen Uletta said as she settled beside me. “You were a little girl. What do you want?”

I looked upwards. “Up there.”

She saw the being formerly known as Skald, and her face hardened.

“Sixteen years ago, you went to your grave seething with hate and bitterness,” I said, “and your dying curse has blighted the world. It’s time to put an end to it.”

Uletta took the glowing green shard. It did not burn her fingers.

Skald looked down, then froze in the air. No human face could have expressed the horror I saw in him.

Go away! he choked.

“Why do you hate me?” said Uletta. “What did I ever do to you but give you my love?”

You cursed me and my people for all time, he said, two parts rage and three parts guilt. And from that day to this, we’ve known nothing but torment.

“You cursed your people when you betrayed me. I merely put it into words.”

Skald raised a smoking fist the size of a small thundercloud, as if to smite her dead, but perhaps his nerve failed him. Or perhaps the guilt got to him.

“When I cursed you before,” said Uletta, “I was just a normal person. But now, raised from the dead and with your shard in my hand, I can have all you have.” She extended a muscular arm. “I’m taking back what is mine.”

Did she hope to regain the life he had drunk, or was it just a goad? Skald let out a desperate cry, turned the fist into a long, ethereal finger and pointed it at her as if to drink her life again. Uletta smiled and folded her arms.

The air crackled. Electric sparks jumped in my hair and stung my scalp.

“Get to shelter!” bellowed Flydd. “Now!”

We scrambled behind the largest tree and the picnickers followed: Mother, wavy gray hair streaming out behind her, my little brother, Gannion, running with a gigantic piece of cake, my dearest friend, Jassika, and a dozen of my old allies.

Dad, ordinarily a clumsy man, got there without spilling a precious drop from his goblet. I covered my face with my hands and peered around the trunk, through my fingers.

Skald cast the life-drinking spell on Uletta. I had seen him use this spell many times in the past, and it was a hideous way to die. She let out such a cry of horror that it shivered my bones. Was she reliving what it had been like last time?

But, as Skald attempted to drink Uletta’s life force, she threw back her head and laughed.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“No one brought back from the dead can have true life,” said Flydd.

A dreadful realization warped Skald’s scarred features, but too late. The power he had drawn from Uletta was the antithesis of that within a normal human life, and it began to annihilate his own life force.