The Song of the Sycamore, page 41
A blaze of light flared up ahead, brighter than the brazier fires. It came from a ragged tear in the black, a wide rent. A gateway? Eden stood before it, limned by the flashes of orange lightning she stared into. A metallic reek filled my nostrils and scratched the back of my throat, and I knew the rent was a hole into the real world, Urdezha, Old Castle. The storm was still raging.
‘No,’ I whispered. ‘He can’t do this. Sycamore has to close it.’
‘You are an anomaly,’ Eden growled, ‘a living being of flesh and blood where none should exist, and the realm of the dead cannot allow that.’
‘Look at me, Eden.’ I was begging. ‘Say my name.’
‘You don’t belong here.’
Even as she said it, I could feel it was true. The spirits between the pillars were waiting for me to leave, the magic of this realm was pushing against me, egging me towards the rent and the world I came from. Both alive and not, I had no place here, but in the land of the living my doom was assured.
I hid behind the ghoul of my wife. ‘I don’t want to go back.’
Eden’s laugh was sharp and spiteful. ‘What were you expecting? That you could spend eternity roaming the planes of Sycamore’s realm, living out some fairy tale?’ She turned to me and shouted in Salabese, ‘You don’t belong here!’
The rage and hatred on her face smothered anything I was feeling, crushed me. ‘Eden, please … Let me stay with you.’
She shook her head, curiosity replacing some of the ghoul’s anger. ‘Surely you understand now that you don’t have a choice.’ She gestured to the spirits peering out from the shadows. ‘And for them, for the sake of Old Castle, I have to go with you.’
Eden turned as the rent rushed towards her, swallowed her, and then came for me with a blinding flash of orange.
Chapter Seventy-One
There was no confusion this time. I stumbled from Sycamore’s realm and fell to my hands and knees on the dirty cobbles of an alley. I coughed on the acrid tang of rusty metal in the air. A flash of lightning preceded a deafening crack and I jumped to my feet. There was no sign of the gateway that had thrown me back into the real world. The drone of Old Castle’s shield was high-pitched and fractured; the ether magic was about to fail and let the storm seal the city’s fate.
Eden was crouched between two piles of refuse waiting to be collected for the reduction houses. She faced away from me, watching the end of the alley.
‘The storm’s getting worse,’ I said. ‘Why won’t he stop it?’
Eden looked at me. No, not at me; through me, as though she didn’t know I was there. Panic on her face, fear in her eyes, my wife exhibited none of her earlier anger.
‘Eden?’
She gathered her courage with a deep breath, turned and fled from me.
‘Eden!’
I chased after her, out of the alley, surprised to emerge into Public Square. Eden waited beside the silent transmission pyramid, but I doubted she was waiting for me. She cast a nervous gaze around her, as if she was scanning a crowd even though the square was deserted, not a single other citizen in sight. It was as if we were seeing different things.
Lightning struck the city somewhere close to us, spearing through the shield one, two, three, four times – once frighteningly nearby, each with a powerful crack of energy. The shield couldn’t take much more of this.
Sycamore was going to let us all die.
Seemingly with other things on her mind, Eden pulled up the hood of her gown and raced away once more, heading in the direction of Tinman District. Perplexed and confused, but mostly scared, I chased after her.
The streets were as deserted as the square. The citizens were in their homes, hiding from the storm – not that wood and stone would protect them if the realm of the dead reached Old Castle’s ether-growth. Not that the Song of Always would protect me, either. The storm was closer to the city than it had ever been, more fire than roiling blackness, and the shield was shrinking against the pressure, faltering under the ravenous mouth of Sycamore’s realm. I wondered about Lana Khem, the other Directors of the Quantum, the Grand Adepts of the Salem – were they hiding as well? Were they lamenting too late that the Shepherd of the Dead had always been a power too great for them to handle?
Lightning cracked the ground ahead of Eden. The blinding flash and shock wave of energy caused me to stagger back, but my wife ran through the smoke and after-glare as if nothing had happened. I raced to catch up with her and noticed something strange about her image.
The air around Eden was dim, like a twilight of faded colour to match her monochrome appearance, as though she was overlapping onto the real world. The effect was growing, the twilight expanding, and it was familiar to me. The Song of the Dead, I realised with a harsh pang. I was following a ghoul in a vision. Eden was showing me her moment of death, and it was leading us to our lodging house.
‘Eden, no!’
But she wouldn’t stop running.
When we reached the building, Eden’s Song had expanded to envelop me in gloomy twilight. The cracks of lightning were dull, the flashes pale and distant, belonging to another place. By the time she led me up the stairs to our floor, I was cocooned by the vision, deep inside events that had led to my wife’s suicide.
‘Stop,’ I said.
Eden didn’t acknowledge that I’d spoken and came to stand outside the door to our lodgings.
‘No, wait.’ After all this time, the pain of not knowing, the questions I wanted answered, I wasn’t ready to face whatever lay on the other side of that door. I didn’t want to see.
But Eden already had her key in hand. She glanced furtively up and down the hallway before letting herself in. If my resolve had decided not to follow her, it made no difference. The vision came to me and I was inside our lodgings. It was the room I’d always known, small but not yet a sparse, desolate hovel. The vision showed me how it had once been: a place of life, of love. There were flowers, curtains over the window, a rug on the floor, furniture I hadn’t yet sold for jenkem.
Eden closed the door and pressed her back against it. She looked relieved to be home, safe … until she gasped and I followed her gaze to the intruder who had materialised in our home.
Dyonne Obor sat on our bed, aiming a small ether-cannon at my wife.
Eden took her eyes off the Magician, acknowledged my presence for the first time since leaving Sycamore’s realm; and with the calm dispassion of a ghoul, she began narrating her Song.
‘I came home on this night to collect a few things that were special to me, and then I was going to disappear, hide in the shanties or with the dormice, just … get out of sight.’
Dyonne remained statue-still, glaring at Eden as though frozen and not yet free to act out her part in this vision.
‘No, this can’t be right.’ I shook my head. ‘Why is she here?’
‘This is my Song, and the dead don’t lie. I thought I could protect my husband, but Dyonne Obor already knew about him. And she had loose ends to tie up.’
I felt as though I was deflating. ‘I’m standing right here, Eden. Say my name.’
She didn’t; looked confused by the request.
Dyonne’s torpor broke and she began speaking, gesticulating with the ether-cannon. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but my wife continued her narration.
‘She’s telling me I’m a traitor.’ Eden remained with her back against the door as the Magician ranted at her. ‘She said my first duty was always to the Salem.’ She scoffed. ‘I’d actually believed that, when I thought my husband was dead. Clung to it.’
Dyonne was gesticulating more and more agitatedly. I could do nothing but watch, dumb and helpless.
‘I didn’t deserve the title of apprentice Magician, she said. I had proved myself disloyal and disloyalty was an unforgivable crime in the eyes of the Grand Adepts. She had manipulated the situation, of course, looking after her own interests.’
If I could have, I would have snatched the ether-cannon from Dyonne’s hand, used it to kill her and save my wife. But this was the Song of the Dead. These events had already happened.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Eden said. ‘Why didn’t I just run? Why come back here at all? To be honest, at this moment, I was thinking the same thing.’
Dyonne paused in her ranting to grab something from the bedside table: a chain threaded through two wedding bands. I clutched my neck. The rings were lost to the sea now, but the ghost of them felt cool against my skin. Dyonne threw the rings at Eden. My wife didn’t flinch as they hit her on the chest and fell to the floor.
‘She told me that my husband was an insignificant citizen, no matter our relationship. And because I’d chosen him over observing my duty to the Salem, I deserved my execution.’ The gleam of a ghoul’s rage returned to Eden’s dull eyes and her voice became a growl. ‘That pissed me off. It made me so fucking angry that I wasn’t scared any more.’
Eden launched herself off the door and leapt at Dyonne. But if she hoped to catch the Magician off guard, she was out of luck. Dyonne stepped in to meet her, ramming the ether-cannon into Eden’s chest. They froze in that position for a moment, still as a sculpture. I held my breath. How many Songs had I witnessed in the past three months? How many moments of death had I seen? I couldn’t bear my wife’s to be among them. This wasn’t right.
Eden said, ‘I was dead from the moment the Magicians first heard the name Sycamore,’ and Dyonne pulled the trigger.
A blast of ether magic erupted from Eden’s back, spraying blood and bone over the door and cracking the wood. Eden fell to the floor, dead beside our wedding rings. The ragged hole in her gown smouldered, and beneath it, another hole, bloody, punched through her chest, through her heart.
Cold and hard, Dyonne wasted no time considering what she had done. Seeing nothing more than an obstacle removed, she placed the ether-cannon in Eden’s hand before crouching beside her corpse. She dipped her fingers into my wife’s wound and began to cast a spell, weaving secret words in the air with one hand while the other drew symbols on Eden’s face with her own blood.
The violence of the storm above Old Castle was nothing compared to the rage I felt towards Dyonne Obor. A murderous anger clenched my fists so hard they shook. I knew what the Magician’s spell was doing: capturing my wife’s ghoul, trapping it, hiding her from Sycamore. When Dyonne had finished, she gave the room a cursory glance and then left. I followed her, perhaps thinking irrationally that I could chase her down, but she slammed the door shut behind her and Eden’s Song began to fade.
Drab twilight lifted and the world filled with colour. Furniture and flowers disappeared and the storm flashed orange through the bare window. I was returned to the sparse room my home had become, back in the real world, the real Old Castle. I stared at the closed door, my fingernails cutting into my palms.
‘I know you.’
I spun around. Eden was on her feet. The wound in her chest and tear in her gown were gone, as were the symbols written in blood on her face. Her eyes had reclaimed their natural colour, as bright and clear as emeralds, and they were seeing me for who I truly was.
‘Wendal.’
Chapter Seventy-Two
‘I never gave up on you.’ Eden’s voice had softened, her manner now calm and gentle. ‘All the time I was lost inside my Song, a part of me trusted that we’d find each other. And here we are.’
She was the person I knew, the woman I loved. I wanted to touch her, hold her, but reaching out, I felt only a dry, nebulous sensation where her shoulders were, like my fingers had passed through threads of spiderweb hanging in the air. My hands balled into fists again. My wife, a ghoul, a victim of murder …
‘I know you, Wendal Finn. I know what you’re thinking.’ Eden looked around the sparse room, tears welling. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’
I shook my head. ‘Dyonne made me believe you’d killed yourself. She stole your Song—’
‘Just as she stole yours.’
‘She’s still out there, not that it makes any difference now.’
‘Forget Dyonne.’ Eden stepped closer, right in front of me, so close but a million miles away. ‘I was overjoyed when I found out you were still alive. The best news.’
Her words perturbed me. They were spoken with affection but underlined by finality, like she was beginning the end of things, and I was the blind man who had learned to see too late.
‘But the news was double-edged,’ Eden continued. ‘Powers greater than us wanted Sycamore and they would always stand between us.’
‘But not now?’ I said, hope making it sound like a question.
The sadness in Eden’s smile told me everything I didn’t want to know.
She said, ‘You’ve been shadowed by death for too long, Wendal. It’s over, you’re free. It’s time to live again. Look out of the window.’
The flashes of lightning were less frequent, less bright.
‘Old Castle is safe,’ Eden said. ‘The storm is passing.’
I could hear the truth of it in the drone of the city shield. It sounded less strained and the air felt less heavy, less angry. The rift was healing, but how could I care about that?
‘This is Sycamore’s gift.’ Eden’s smile was happier this time. ‘He’s giving us the chance to say goodbye to each other.’
I bowed my head, not wanting her to see my denial, and futilely, desperately, I begged for what I had no right to ask: ‘Stay with me.’
‘Oh, Wendal. The realm of the dead is singing. The other side beckons.’
‘I—’ I choked on my words. ‘I don’t have a spirit, Eden. I can’t come with you.’
‘Then let me go, here and now, while you still can.’
‘No.’ I sniffed back tears. ‘There must be another way.’
Eden reached out and her phantom touch stroked my cheek. ‘You were always the same, seeing only the moment, never thinking ahead, never considering reason.’ She knew me too well; it broke my heart. ‘But you should savour this moment. We did it. We found each other. You got what you wished for. And I know that my husband would never ask me to give up heaven in return.’
The last four months of my life weighed heavy on my mind. They had been nothing but a stall, a slow, protracted journey to the truth. I had no anger left inside me, no tears or sense of injustice; I felt no relief or elation for Old Castle and its one hundred thousand citizens. Time stopped at this moment. Time stopped and waited for me to accept reason.
‘I used to hate that you were always right,’ I said, managing a weak attempt at a smile. ‘We had a good life here, you know.’
‘We really did.’ Eden’s eyes became wistful. ‘It ended too soon.’
I nodded, my gaze fixed on hers. ‘I …’ I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence, to bring this bitter-sweet reunion to a conclusion. My wife did it for me.
‘I love you, too, Wendal Finn.’
‘Find peace, Eden. Find beauty.’ I held out a hand and her dry, gossamer fingers stroked mine. ‘Maybe I’ll see you around.’
Eden sighed contentedly and her spirit filled with a light the same deep shade of green as her eyes. She shattered into a thousand glowing sycamore seeds, spinning, holding the shape of her before flowing through me with the gentlest of sensations, leaving a mark that told her husband how she felt about him in a way he would never forget. The seeds scattered in all directions, sinking through the walls and floor and ceiling, pursuing peace. And Eden was gone.
My hand fell to my side and I stared into the space where she had stood. Resolution took over my sadness, leading me to a strange state of mournful completion. My eyes roamed the room, and I didn’t have the heart to consider what came next.
Voices provided a welcome distraction, coming from the lane outside the window. They sounded relieved, joyful. And suddenly I could be surrounded by this familiar desolation no longer. I didn’t belong in this room, so I left, heading out of the door, down the stairs and onto the streets of Old Castle.
Above, the storm was calming. The lightning had already stopped and the black, roiling clouds were slowing, their colour growing paler. The airborne metallic taste had weakened to a faint bitter tang. Citizens were coming out of their homes. More and more of them joined me on the street to witness the end of the storm, and soon there was a thick crowd. Some people laughed, others wept or stared at the sky in hope, genuine and cynical both. The relief was palpable, and I bristled to hear some of them thank the Scientists for this change in Old Castle’s fortune.
Amidst the crowd, with Eden’s final touch lingering inside me, I watched the rift between worlds healing and wondered if Sycamore could see me from his realm, taking a final look into the land of the living. The Shepherd of the Dead, free at last, back where he belonged.
I might as well have been standing on the street alone. None of the citizens noticed I was there. The Song of Always had taken care of that, but for how much longer? I was staring into a half-life that might end in the next minute or … When? My only certainty was that Old Castle had no place for me, nor any other city on Urdezha.
Someone jostled me and I stumbled. When I’d regained my footing, I looked up to see that Lana Khem had joined the crowd. She was watching me, statue-still. Her face was bruised, but on her forehead was a large glassy bead in the shape of a teardrop. It gave off a rose-tinted glow. Mrs Blackstone’s ether implant, now prolonging life for a new Director of the Quantum.
Separated by celebrating bodies, Lana and I stared at each other for a long, frozen moment while the red glow of the sun shone through the clouds for the first time in days, and cold, fresh wind blew along the street. Lana nodded at me. I turned my back on her, shoving my way through the throng of citizens, heading for the city gates and whatever lay beyond.
