Mourning Cloak (4 page)

I am me, if only for a little while.

Those who changed me took my will, but not memory. The memory that lurks beneath conscious thought, drilled from years of chant and dance, memory that brings me back to myself. Amidst all the turmoil in my head, I occupy a small, clear space and
breathe
again.

The darkness is not gone, though. It nibbles away at the edges of myself, but I focus on this moment, this prayer.

Please, Taurin, just this one prayer.

I chant and gesture and step, weaving prayers with my voice and my body, that highest magic of all. I strain to see a hint of gold lattice-work, a shimmer of silvery mist droplets, that evidence of Taurin’s gift, Taurin’s grace.

Prayer magic, they call it, but it is only Taurin lifting away the veil that blinds us all and shows us the world at its deepest level, stripped naked. And with the seeing comes the ability to—if we dare—reach out and pluck the very strings thus laid bare. To change the world.

Lalita vey lalita vey lalita vey

It does not come. I have lost the sight.

Last refrain, last spin—
nonononokeepgoing!
—last stretch up to great outspread skies not seen in this mountain-pierced land.

All things come to an end. As the circle disperses, I hold out my hand—
don’t look at the nails the length the paleness of it—
beseechingly toward the Prayer Leader. He gives me a hard, glinting glance, then deposits a rosary into it.

I retreat to the pallet—no matter how grudgingly given or how exposed to the stares of the
itauri
—and bend over the beads. I mumble the Invocations in time to the click of the beads, but the mist is back.

It tugs my mind, pulls me off balance, darkens my world.

That is the way of this land. The sun may burn away the fog, but then night descends and the mists rise again from the chilly mountain lakes.

Voices echo as if in a tunnel. The two men, the Chosen and the
eilendi
, talking.

The Chosen. Kato Vorsok. I know this one as more than just a name, but when I probe my hidden knowledge, there is pain there, as if I picked at a half-healed wound. I turn back to my chants, but I cannot block out their words.

“…you’re not surprised…”

“…heard reports of our people being taken, from the south…”

Tauria dey baradari tauria dey baradari tauria dey baradari

“…so she is…?”

“One of ours? Can’t say.”

Tauria dey… tauria dey… tauria… tauria…
Can’t hold on, mind and memory turn to vapor. Shadows creep into their place, shadows with their own demands and compulsions. Cold commands replace the faltering prayers, pounding the inside of my head in relentless, unchanging litany.
Return to origin. Return to origin.
I see the world in crystalline facets, smoky grays and dark browns, made up of flickers of movement.

The men talk, words almost lost in the boom of their voices.

“…names?”

“None.”

Senses spin out from self, unraveling being like threads from cloth.

“So, it’s Flutter for now, then.”

Stench of metal and ozone and alcohol and wrongness. Movement, sharp-edged, jagged. Fast. Very fast.

Head jerks up.

“Fl-?”

Rise in one fluid motion. Voice is buzzed, thin. “They’re coming.”

Flutter’s warning gives me just enough time to whip out my sword. Cobble crunchers squirm in through cracks in the walls, swarm through gaps around the door. Toro slants a sharp, sideways glance at me, most of the
itauri
gasp out of sheer reflex—not at the crunchers, but at the sword. I bite back the words, “Yes, that’s the sword. Now x sword.stop gaping and take charge of your own destiny” as the
itauri
begin their foot-stomping dance of cobble cruncher extermination.

One of the crunchers, a cross between a rodent and a wizened six-inch-high man, tries to climb my leg. I poke him off with my sword and face the door. Waiting for the next wave.

Metal sizzles, wood splinters, and the door gives way with a crash. Three eerie men bound in. Their blue hair is raised in spikes all over their heads, their compact bodies are hunched and heavily-muscled. Ear-piercings and sharpened teeth gleam as they catch the light.

The first meets my blade with a casual swipe of his claw-tipped hand and loses it. Blue blood spurts from the stump. He howls, the piercing tones making everyone wince. The other two join in his cacophony; it reverberates in my bones, shoots up my nerves, and plugs straight into my brain, the part that screams fear and panic and flight.

Spiders, sluggish from the aborted transformation, stir.
No. Not that.
Two transformations in so short a time, after so many years? That would kill me. My muscles are still clenched from earlier.

I grit my teeth, ignore the knot in my belly, the ache in my thighs and arms, the tension of veins and nerves. Some of the
itauri
break ranks and flee to back exits unknown, others cower against the walls. Toro marshals his novices, starts the Invocations going, summoning his unreliable prayer magic—
if
Taurin happens to be in the mood to grant wishes—but I can’t pay attention to that right now.

The eerie men uncoil the whips at their belts.

I duck the first lash, jump the second. The third catches me in the stomach, with a jolt and a buzz. I double over. A thousand needles prick all the way up my spine and barbed darts twist in my gut. The next lash falls on my shoulders, then on my hand. It spasms and I nearly drop the sword.

The whip comes at me again. I can’t escape it in time.

And then Flutter is there, one delicate forelimb upraised, almost in benediction. The whip cracks against her wrist, then wraps around it, squeezes. Flutter shimmers, moves
through
the whip, down its length, till she reaches the eerie man holding it. She reaches out with sorrowful grace and shuts his eyes. He falls to the floor.

The other two eerie men growl in their throats, and thumb the spikes at their belts. Electricity crackles in the air. I gasp out, “Watch out for—”

She flows around the lash, dances between the two whips tangling for a piece of her. The tip of one flicks her cheek, and she winces, cries out.

And dissolves.

Falls into smoke and disappears into the floor.

No!

I utter a cry, all anger and frustration. I swing the sword, go for limbs and torsos and heads. Soon, the eerie men are covered in a dozen cuts, oozing their bluish blood. There are tiny stinging burns on my face and arms from their whips.

If you have taken my one chance of finding Sera from me…

My muscles jump and twitch from the electric shocks jolting through me. My spiders are there, channeling the energy as fast as they can, but every swing is slower and wilder. I’m losing control, losing the fight.

Eilendi
chant swells in the room. Toro is at my shoulder, a little behind me, a disconcertingly familiar presence. The scent of green things in the rain comes to my nose. Outtl my nost of the corner of my eye, I see his hands move, fingers weaving the air.

Taurin has listened. Toro sees.

Not for me, though. Taurin’s through with me. This is for the
itauri.

I squint but I can’t see the magic at work. I see its effects, though, as the eerie men, in mid-attack, slow and stumble. Their whips dangle from their hands, fall limp to the floor.

I attack. A stab through the handless one’s stomach, pull back while he falls, then dispatch the other eerie man. My sword sings its approval, my blood hums in response.

As the last eerie man hits the floor, Toro says, “Perhaps it would’ve been better to have left one alive for questioning.” He understates, as usual.

I don’t care right now. I squat at the place where Flutter had been, looking for—what? A scrap of her cloak? A sticky stain of her thin blood? “Where’d she go? What happened?” Even the greater energy of the swift strike hadn’t affected her as that one touch from the eerie man’s whip.

“They came to destroy her,” says Toro, leaning over me. “They made sure they brought the right weapons.”

I glance sharply at him. “Do you know who
they
are?”

Toro doesn’t answer. He moves over to the first eerie man, the one that Flutter touched. He lies still and waxen-looking on the floor. Toro checks him and announces, “He’s still alive. Barely.”

They.
Flutter has powerful enemies. They tried to kill her outside my alley, then sent a cloak after her, and then the eerie men.

The cloak had attacked
me,
though.

They want me dead, too. Who have I offended in Highwind?

Toro’s hands hover over the eerie man’s chest. “Come quickly, Kato. He won’t last long.”

I bend over the eerie man as his eyes open. A panicked wildness twists within them, so different from the lunatic glee they had previously displayed. He thrashes his head from side to side, his muscles ripple and bunch.

“Who sent you?” I ask. “Why did you come to this place?”

The eerie man growls. It takes me a moment to realize that he’s speaking, his words almost incomprehensible in a mouth crowded with overlarge teeth.

“…don’t know why…why I do…just do…all I came for…help from…they in their white coats!” The eerie man’s voice rises to a shrill pitch, and I flinch, clapping my hands to my ears. Toro doesn’t, but his hands are trembling and a fine film of sweat has broken out on his forehead.

I don’t need Toro to tell me what’s going on. We’re losing the eerie man and I need to be quick.

“White coats, you said. Do you mean the hospital?”

The eerie man makes a strangled sound and shrinks away from me. His pulse beats in his neck, his veins stand out. I push harder. “Did they do this to you at the hospital? Are you saying that eerie men and cloaks are
made
there?” Disbelief colors my voice. The creatures of the night have haunted Highwind for centuries. The hospital was built a few decades ago.

His breath seizes up, his eyes roll back in his head. He’s beyond answering now, and I shake my head at Toro, telling him to let g eyhim to o.

Toro’s long fingers roll, as if he winds invisible yarn into a ball. “Take this, friend,” he says to the eerie man, who, with bared teeth and agonized expression, looks less human than ever. “Take the memories that the white coats buried deep and hid from you.” Toro makes a gesture as if casting a net on the eerie man’s face.

The eerie man blinks once, twice, rapidly. Something dawns—joy, recognition, I can’t tell. He cries out, “Danae!” and then he is still.

He is gone and whatever of himself he recovered in those last moments is gone with him.

Toro brushes the eerie man’s eyes shut. “May Taurin guide your soul to him,
ishtaur
.” Darkchild. I suppose I am one, too, now. Out of Taurin’s light, far from his grace.

Mercy given, prayer said, Toro rocks on his heels. “So. The hospital.” He is weary, but unsurprised.

I narrow my eyes. “You knew.”

“I have suspected.”

“Is that why you denied Sera her last rites? Because she worked there?” I clench my fists. The eerie man was wrong. Had to be wrong. “Where she healed people?”

“She cut people. You know that is forbidden.” Toro’s voice is flat, oddly gentle. This is an old argument, but I cannot keep from poking at it, picking at the scab, making the wound bleed all over again.

“She
helped
people. She saved lives. She did more than you ever did in all the years you spent with my army. More than
Taurin
did.”

He winces, at my blasphemy or my indictment, I don’t know. Don’t care. “No, not because of that. But because…she changed.”

“You think they changed her? Changed Sera?” Anger blooms through my disbelief.
I’ll kill them. I’ll kill all those smirking, soft-voiced, pale-skinned directors if they betrayed her.
Sera had been so damned
proud
when they’d promoted her. “Like they did this unfortunate creature—and her.”

We look at the place Flutter had melted into. Flutter, more mist than human. Is Sera a cloak too? Is that why Flutter came—to tell me? Is that why they—whoever they were—had sent the eerie men, the cloak, whatever had attacked Flutter?

I rise, ignoring the groan of my aching knees. “I have to find her.”

She’s dripped straight through the floor and foundation and into the abandoned mine tunnels below. It takes me most of a day and three hundred and seventy eight repetitions of the Great Invocation to find her, a bundle of mist amidst the darkness. When I reach out to her, my hand passes through her knee—and then her talons are at my throat, very much sharp, very much present.

“
Lalita vey
,” I whisper, knowing that only Taurin’s prayers stand between me and the cloak’s reflexes. My mouth is as dry as the desert sand, and the words have to be dredged up from my memory. They ooze up like a little water from the bottom of a dry well. “
Lalita vey. Eilendi.
”
Please,
I think, but dare not say anything other than ritual words.

Flutter blinks, comes to herself, drops her hand. She looks at it as if it belongs to someone else, as though she cannot quite fathom how it has gotten attached to her wrist. Then sheit st. The hides it in the folds of her frayed cloak-wings.

“What happened?” I ask, soft as breath.

“Dissolution.” Her voice is distant, her gaze shifts to a point above my head. “They hit me, and I—became nothing. Just atoms in space.”

“You found yourself back again, though.”

“The words,” she whispers. “The Invocation. Reminding even the atoms who made them and what they were made for. Reminding me of my purpose.”