‘Fahren?’ she croaked, dispelling the notion that he might escape so easily. Then she looked about at the casket she was in, and gave a little cry that almost broke him.
‘Here,’ he said with an attempt at a comforting tone, going down on one knee and reaching towards her. ‘Let us get you out of that thing.’
She reached back, but then her eyes widened. Her hand twisted from reaching to pointing, and a blazing beam shot over Fahren’s shoulder. Battu staggered under the attack, the air around him dark with a hastily cast defence.
‘Elessa!’ shouted Fahren, over her howl of rage.
‘Call her off,’ grunted Battu through gritted teeth as the shadows around him wavered under the onslaught.
Fahren crawled along the side of the open casket until he could put a hand on Elessa’s shoulder.
‘Elessa! Battu is not the enemy!’
She did not seem to notice – maybe she did not even feel his touch. He gave her a shake and her gaze snapped to his, while the beam continued burning at Battu’s ward.
‘Please listen to me,’ said Fahren. ‘You must stop – Battu will not harm you. In fact, he helped me bring you back.’
‘Bring me back?’ she echoed, confused.
The beam sizzled out as she raised her hand before her eyes, turning it for inspection.
‘A strong one, that,’ puffed Battu, the shadows around him fading.
The horror on Elessa’s face was more than Fahren could bear.
‘High Mage,’ she said, ‘what have you done?’
•
Elessa wound her way haltingly through the graves of the Inviolable. Smooth white pathways ran out before her, leading off in various directions through well kept gardens and graves. They passed polished glass plates set in the ground, beneath which lay perfectly preserved bodies. It was a serene place, though the last thing she felt was serene. Beside her trod Fahren, and the man who had been Shadowdreamer the last time she had known of him. For nearly twenty years now she had not been confined to a body, and functions that had once been mechanical and instinctual now demanded intense concentration. Worse, the flesh atop her skeleton had the sensation of a heavily constrictive cloak. Certainly as she touched things she knew they were there, but there was no depth to that knowing, no pleasure or pain. The sun was shining, yet there was no heat on her skin.
In the Well she had floated free, part of a collective, but as an individual her memory was fragmented, her sense of self uncertain. All that remained were the barest structures. Maybe it was a blessing, considering the supreme wrongness of what had been done to her – the last thing she needed was more of herself present to feel such deep violation. She had been at peace, in paradise, yet now she was back, pulled harshly into a world she should never have seen through these eyes again.
The High Mage – now the Throne, it seemed – was gabbling away about something, his voice piercing with a metallic ring. In fact, everything she heard seemed that way, as if sound was not entering through her ears, but being magnified directly into her mind. It was the same with sight – she was not really looking , but rather knowing things instantly for what and where they were. With such elevated senses, it all fast became busy and confounding. If she’d been able to feel her guts, she would have emptied them.
He was talking about why he’d done this thing to her, asking her to forgive him, bringing up their time together as student and teacher, maybe in an effort to reignite her identity, or make her somehow feel a part of things again. She felt about as much a part of things as a bird drowning in mud. She tried to listen, but anger distracted her …of all the people who might inflict this on her, she would not have suspected Fahren! Certainly the presence of Battu, and Fahren’s evident alignment with him, was something she did not yet understand. Of her mortal life, the night she remembered best was her last, when she had died at the hands of Battu’s minions – and yet here the man was, walking beside her, casting her dark glances. She thought of the dagger wound that had been her undoing, ran a hand under the white dress they had buried her in. There – a patch of smooth skin like the hide of a drum stretched tight, ringed by the ridges of a blade’s entry, where she had sealed herself to stop the bleeding. She had never actually healed properly underneath, so the slightest tear and the wound would gape open …yet in her present state it would not harm or hinder.
What did she look like? She suddenly needed to know. Was her face grey and rotting, her eyes dim and lifeless? Had she been bruised when she’d died, or even as they had put her in her grave? Was every scratch now permanently affixed?
‘A mirror,’ she said, interrupting whatever Fahren had been saying.
‘Sorry, Elessa?’ he said.
‘Bring me a mirror!’ she shouted.
He took a step back before her wrath, pale and stricken. What did he expect, that she would happily return to this wasted carcass?
‘Allow me,’ said Battu. He waved at grass nearby, and dewdrops rose from the ground. He whorled them together into a sphere, then flattened it out into a circle. As it drifted towards her, she wondered vaguely how such a prettily shining thing could come from such a man. Then she noticed it was backed with shadow, a thin film that stopped the other side showing through, ensuring she would see her reflection clearly. It arrived to hover before her face, the watery surface taking a moment to still …and then she saw herself.
Whatever abhorrence she had feared to find staring back blankly, what she actually saw stunned her. She went on looking, on and on, and time must have passed, for Fahren started talking again. He was explaining about something she had to do, something involving that goblin Tyrellan, the one who’d stuck her with his dagger, whom she had cursed forever in return. She turned her face this way and that, but could not bring herself to believe that so little had changed. A moment of relief came to her, a relic of vanity that left her grounded as she rediscovered something human in herself …but the moment passed quickly. Perhaps she looked normal, yet how could she be, when she felt so different? The vanity was nothing but an echo of a woman’s concern, not one for a ghoul.
She waved her hand and shattered Battu’s mirror to mist. It sprayed against him and he grinned, beads dripping from his nose. Inexplicably, she felt an odd affinity with him. Battu understood what had been done to her more than Fahren did, she felt sure – at least he was not nattering away, trying to distract her from dealing with her own desecration.
‘How could you?’ she said to the man she had once revered. ‘It is not the way of the light. I should not be here.’
Fahren wiped his cheeks with his sleeve – how long had he been crying?
‘We are in very great need, Elessa,’ he said. ‘Please, you will not be long amongst us, but your presence could save us all.’
Something else sparked in her then, very deep and dim, a firefly trapped in a jar that sank into the sea – the love she had once held for her land and her people, her family and friends. Days spent in the shining sun. Holding Kessum’s hand.
No , she thought. I never did that. I only dreamed about it.
A sob wanted to burst from her chest, but all that emerged was a grating rasp, and no tears formed in her dry, dead eyes.