Love, Resurrected
Cat Rambo
General Aife Crofadottir was acknowledged the greatest military mind of her generation—perhaps even her century. No wonder then that the sorcerer Balthus recruited her early in her career, setting her to rally armies of Beasts and magically equipped soldiers, planning campaign after campaign, until finally he stood the ruler of a vast expanse of the continent’s northeastern corner. Once fertile lands, once countries, now only uncontested devastated territories.
Three years after her death, she still labored in his service.
Aife stood at the window of Balthus’s tower, looking out over the desolate countryside. Age and blight had stooped the apple trees dominating the view, and sticky webs clustered in the vees of the knobby branches. The dry grass tried to hold onto the dust, but here, as everywhere, drought and ash and the silty remnant of magic choked away all life. The chalky-white stones surrounding the dry well gleamed in the hostile sunlight.
Decades of sorcerous battle had warped the land. It was dead in patches, or so plagued by ghosts that no living soul could walk it and remain sane.
She rested her fingertips on the windowsill and contemplated her hand. The skin was gray and withered but still functioned. Sooner or later, Aife thought, it would rot away, despite Balthus’s preservative spells. What would happen then? Right now she could pass for a living but very ill person, could wrap herself in a cloak and whisper, make some claim to human company. What would happen when her bones began to show through?
Behind her, Balthus said, “You will become a skeleton, but one that walks and talks by magic means. The mere sight of you will strike fear in any heart. What a war leader you will be then, my darling!”
He touched her shoulder, closer than she had thought him. “You will make a beautiful skeleton. All clean-lined ivory. I will commission you a crown, gilt and amber, with the warhawk that shows you general.”
She was weary of him reading her mind.
At the thought, he removed his hand. “Is that what has concerned you lately? But I must know your mind, Aife, must be able to glimpse your plans in order to work to aid them.”
“Every creature in your employ,” she said, words thick. “I know, you must know them all.”
He let the room’s silence gather, then ventured, “Perhaps . . . ”
“Perhaps?”
She turned away from the window to contemplate him. She might be a monster, but he was little more: yellowed skin stretched drum-tight over his bones. His long, wispy hair was tied back with an embroidered ribbon the wrong color for the crimson robes he wore.
Blotches and scars marked his hands, the relics of past experiments. An olive-green patch covered the heel of one hand, an irregular oval resembling old mold or lichen.
He returned the gaze, eyes as glassy as an opium addict’s. What spells had he laid on himself, throughout the years? She wondered if he saw her as she truly was now. Or did he let the memory of her slip over it like a mask, making him see her when the blood still coursed through her veins, instead of the slow seepage it engaged in now, as though begrudging her body its energy?
“I will make you a charm,” he said. His voice was almost pleading. “One that keeps your thoughts hidden. No other man, woman, or Beast in my employ has that privilege. But I will give it to you.”
And with that promise, she gave him her hand, her gray and withered hand, and let him lead her to bed.
But again, she did not know whether he kissed her or the memory of what she had been to him.
He kept his promise. The next day, beside her on the pillow he had left at dawn, a silver chain coiled, holding a dark gem, darker than death or the loss of memory.
She put it around her neck and went to do his business.
Since her transformation, all living things shied away from her. She had become accustomed to that. But the Beasts accepted her more than the humans did. Most of them were creatures Balthus had created, sometimes by putting living things together to make something new, like the swan-winged woman that acted as scout and courier, or the great Catoblepas, blended of ox and wild pig and turtle and something Balthus would not name, whose breath withered whatever it struck. More often he transformed what he was given: stretching, pulling, augmenting, till something was created that the world had never seen before. If it showed promise that he could use it, he left it alive.
She did not seek the Beasts’ company deliberately, but rather, as a cat does, she would sit in a room where they were gathered, not part of the conversation, but letting it swirl around her. There but not there. It reminded her of long-ago barracks chatter, the taunts and gibes and affectionate mockery of fellow soldiers.
This day she sat in the corner near the fire, careful not to get too close, lest a spark singe her without her knowing, because her skin was dead now and only reported a little when pain struck it. Near her was the swan-woman, who they called Lytta, and the Minotaur who guarded the stables, and a man-wolf who had once been one of her finest soldiers. He was the only one who had looked at her when she entered, his eyes glinting sly green in the firelight as he half-nodded. She had not returned the gesture.
“They say the Falcon is making inroads near Barbaruile,” Lytta said to the wolf-man, who had refused any name other than “Wolf.”
That news interested Aife. She had pursued the bandit chief who called himself the Falcon for almost a year now and found him a more than adequate challenge.
“What does he fight for?” the Minotaur demanded, his voice as heavy as a sack of gravel. “He leaves things worse than they are, with no sorcerer to look out over the land.”
“He must have magic of his own,” Lytta said. “Look at how he has escaped capture, again and again.”