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“Some of you have yet to understand the blessing you will receive,” Lirr went on. “I’ve many siblings to be freed once this forest awakens and burns, and it’s you who will have the honor of joining with them. I give you this prize withoutcost—saveyour trust, and gratitude.”
Lirr’s pirates cheered, the raucous, blood-hungry cry of revelers at a hanging. My mouth was dry, the pain in my arm forgotten as Lirr’s influence wafted over the heads of the assembly. A lifetime with Benedict had hardened me to Magni power, but even so I barely resisted it. My heart thundered, and desire pulled atme—desireto please him, to be like him.
Ghiseau.
My skin crawled.
Mary had retained enough of herself to glare at him and say something I could not hear. He grabbed her bound wrists and prodded her to the edge of the larch’s rocky perch, right over the roaring bonfire. Firelight played across Mary’s face and her shadow grew taller on the trunk of the great larch. Then Lirr’s shadow passed over it, swallowing it, and he laid heavy hands on her shoulders from behind.
“Return to your tree and your children, Tane,” Lirr said, expression cool and intent. “Or let the fire free you from this world.”
I needed no vision to foretell what would happen next.
Lirr’s hands softened on Mary’s shoulders, and he pushed.
The drop into the bonfire was short. Mary hit the blaze in a burst of dancing sparks and the dozen gut-melting cracksof—wood?Bone?
I heard Anne howl into her gag, but could not see her anymore. I lunged to my feet, only to be kicked back down by a pirate. A boot connected with my skull and the world momentarily faded.
The Dark Water sensed my distraction and erupted all around me, shallow and cool. The light of the fire faded but ghistings lit up the night like torches, sapphire ghistings, indigo ghistings, ghistings edged with grey and attached to human flesh. Lirr’s loyalists. Lirr.
Mary. She struggled to her knees, here in the DarkWater—orrather, her reflection did, teal and grey and swirling. There was no fire here, no blazing heat. But she burned brighter than the fire ever could, and as she did, a new visage overlaid her.
Another being manifested in Mary’s flesh. At first, the ghisting was a mirror image of Mary herself, as perfect a replica as Benedict was of me. Then she began to change. She aged andhardened—intoAnne, into someone else, someone with angular features, lithe limbs and a drape of captured moonlight.
I could still see Mary through her, and she screamed. She fought towards the edge of the fire but something pushed herback—swords?Rifles?
“Mary!” I shouted. I tried to thrust myself back into the human world, but I was stuck. I could not reach the coin in my pocket, not with my hands bound.
My eyes filled with Mary and her ghisting, and the memory of the flames. How long would she survive? How long before the flames took her?
I was helpless. Again.
No, not helpless. Passages from the Mereish book welled again in my mind, and this time their meaning wasclear—unitingwith the memory of the morgories I had banished.
I staggered upright in the Dark Water and began to shout, still straining at my ropes. Lights flickered beyond the Wold as Mary burned, oranges and umbers appearing between sapphire and grey all around us, until the Wold had as many lights as the night sky.
The ghistings turned to me, first. Then the fae dragonflies converged, the murmur of their wings turning to a howl as they closed around me like a sea spout and cut Mary from my sight. I felt a momentary panic as she vanished, but I had one lasthope—awild, recklesshope—andI intended to use it.
“Come!” I demanded of the Dark Water. “I am here, come to me!”
A new light appeared through the trees, bloody orange and dreadfully swift. Elation swelled in my chest and crashed into panic; I had seconds before they arrived.
Back in the human world, one of my straining hands broke free from my bonds. I seized the coin in my pocket.
I lurched back into full consciousness, gasping and sweating. Pirates and prisoners watched in rapture as Lirr faced the larch tree. The fire still blazed, too high and dense to see Mary through.
There was no way she still lived. I knew that, but rejected it, and as I did, I heard the voices.
They were thin and distant, whispers that grew in strength. The ghisting who stood with Lirr raised his head, looking up to the treetops as theyswayed—notin the wind, but of their own accord.
There was a crackling, a rustling rush. Leaves began to take shape on arching branches, hazing and shuddering. The snow and ice beneath my knees melted to mist and steam. Moss blossomed, carpets of green creeping across earth and root and rock and tree. Fiddleheads and mushrooms burst up from the soil and, above, firelight filled a sudden, lush canopy. The cold vanished, and the ghistings of the sleeping Wold awoke into a warm, midsummer dusk.
Nearby, Penn gave an awed, baffled sound.
The serenity was short-lived. Just as sweet, warm air filled my lungs, the bonfire died. Darkness clapped down around us, smoke filled the air, and a monster tore out of the Other.
Enormous tentacles wrapped around straining trees, leaves fell and the trees moaned. The beast solidified into a bloody orange nightmare, suspended between the trees above ourheads—thefang-ridden, ravening union of octopus and hunting spider, easily the size ofHarpy.
