The book was warm to the touch, like a living thing. The cover was ancient and dry, and it bore five words written in a script Yorda could not read. Yet the spirit of those words hit her like a wave, engulfing her, bringing her back to her feet. Yorda closed her eyes and clutched the book to her chest.
As she did, she felt something flowing into her, a divine power, making her entire body glow so that even when she closed her eyes it was bright.
The power healed her, closing the wounds and cuts she had endured during her descent from the crumbling stairs and the fight with the skull. When she opened her eyes, the bite marks on her wrist had vanished entirely.
She still glowed from the inside, the book filling her with light. When she looked around again, she saw a crowd of the shades surrounding the cage in series of concentric circles. There were too many to count. Nearer still, she saw her father, appearing as he had when he visited her chambers as a ghost. His advisers were there too, standing at his side.
Yorda stared at the apparition of her father. Her father looked back, his eyes filled with warmth and gratitude. He raised one hand, his skin the color of shadow. He was waving farewell. The shades in a circle around the cage began to drift upward. They climbed in silence toward the top of the tower, fading as they rose, evaporating like mist in the light of dawn.
Her father’s shade lingered the longest. There were no more words. Yorda watched her father’s form as he lifted into the air, free at last. When all of the shadows were gone, the Tower of Winds was filled with light.
For a moment, Yorda stood praying to the Creator, the book clasped in her arms. The words of the prayer she had known since childhood flowed from her lips, leaving her filled with joy such as a child knows tasting a sweet, fresh fruit.
The enchantment was broken. The tower had been purified.
Yorda walked back outside between the idols at the door, heading toward the long stone bridge. At its far end stood the queen.
She was not dressed in the long, flowing white dress she wore that morning on her way to the final match. In its place she wore a black gown, dark as night-the same gown she had worn when she summoned Yorda to the graveyard.
This is my mother’s true form. I have torn away her mask and revealed her for what she is.
The queen was walking across the bridge, coming closer. No, not walking. She was floating.
They faced one another-the queen wrapped in shadow, the castle looming behind her, the daughter clutching the book to her chest, radiant with light.
“What have you done?” The queen’s voice pierced Yorda’s heart like a knife. “Do you even understand?”
Yorda did not reply. She stared at her mother’s face, framed by her flowing black hair. Her skin was whiter than her poor father’s bones. Not the pure white of new-fallen snow, but of nothingness-an absolute white that permits no other color to exist in its presence.
It was this evil darkness and absolute whiteness with which her mother sought to conquer the world. There was no room here for the color of a man’s flesh or the red of his blood, the rich brown of the soil and blue of the sea, or even the deep green of the trees and grasses. She knew then without seeing that the Dark God, too, must resemble his child: black clothes, black hair, and a bloodless white face.
“I did not expect my own daughter to betray me,” the queen said, stepping close enough that they might reach out and touch one another. “It is not too late, Yorda. Return that odious book to the Tower of Winds.”
Yorda shook her head, clutching the book tight. “It isn’t odious. It is a book of freedom. I’ve used it to release your enchantment upon the tower, while you were busy watching men try to kill each other. Men you value little more than the stones upon which you walk.”
“Naive child,” the queen breathed, her face twisting into a scowl.
Yorda blanched but stood her ground. “Do you enjoy watching men squabble over swords and wagers? Do you like to see them inflict pain on each other, Mother?”
Yorda was sure now that Ozuma had fulfilled his promise to her by distracting the queen. As her cruel lust for bloodshed had risen, she had lowered her guard.
“What do you want?” the queen asked, her voice crackling, echoing.
“I don’t know yet. But I do know what I do not want. I do not want a world where the Dark God reigns. I do not want the kind of world you scheme to bring about. I will stop you!”
“You are a fool!” the queen said. With a flourish she spread her arms wide, her long dark sleeves becoming giant wings, blocking Yorda’s sight.
“As child of the Dark God, I will be queen of his world. And you are my daughter. What is mine will one day become yours. Why do you not understand?”
“I don’t want a world of darkness!” Yorda shouted. “I want a world of people. I want a world of love, love like my father showed me. That is what I want!” Yorda took a step forward, closing the distance. “Did you not love my father? Did you never feel any guilt at what you did to him? What was my father to you? A tool? A warm body to fill a throne while it suited you? Did you hesitate at all before killing him, before cursing him to a suffering worse than death?”
“Love?” The queen tossed back her head and laughed. “Where do you get such precious ideas? Do you even know what love is?”
“I do!” Yorda said, the queen’s words like knives in her chest.
“Then,” the queen said with a smile, “you know that love between two people is worth nothing more than dust! Your trifling sentiments reveal how little you comprehend, my child. I am one with a god, and a god is something far greater than any man!”
“You’re wrong!” Yorda shouted breathlessly, looking like a sparrow defying a hawk.
The queen clucked under her breath. “I see now that it was a mistake to bring you into this world. Why did I think to share my life with you? How did I ever imagine something worthwhile could come of an alliance with a mortal? With one misstep I have earned a lifetime of lament!”
Yorda knew she could not cry-that she had no tears left to cry-yet the sadness rose in her all the same. She felt a tear run down her cheek, and she bit back a sob.
The queen beamed. “Foolish human child. See what has befallen your home, all because you had to free your miserable father!”
The queen flitted up into the air and disappeared from Yorda’s sight. In her place, Yorda found herself looking out on the castle. The place of her birth, a homestead from which she had never left. The castle was her entire world. Now that world was shifting, its outline bending in ways it should not, like a scene viewed through warped glass. The sky was frozen, and the very wind had stopped.
Yorda ran across the bridge, looking for someone, anyone. She listened for voices and heard nothing. When she reached the castle proper, she saw guards, all frozen in place like living statues. One man had been stopped in mid-step, one foot hanging in space. Another was about to speak to a comrade, his lips slightly parted.
She looked around more and found a handmaiden, frozen holding a tray of silver goblets. Her other hand was behind her head, frozen in the act of fixing her hair, fingers outstretched. Even the air inside the castle seemed frozen in stasis.
She heard the queen’s voice, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once. “This is your doing.”
So dependent was the castle upon her mother’s enchantment that it could not live in its absence. All who lived within its walls, cut off from the outside world, living in false peace, were frozen in time.