“It is a balance,” she was saying, and I could no longer tell if she was speaking aloud or not. “We share this power. It does not belong to you or to me. It is ours. It is fresken, and it is tah. We are bound together.”
One more stroke and Tain was within reach. Half-sinking, exhausted, he must have swallowed too much water. I hauled him into the boat and he slumped against the edge, coughing up water. Back on the west shore Salvea was bent over the Speakers, shaking shoulders, and even from this distance I could understand her emphatic hand gestures as she entreated the Darfri for help. How they could, I wasn’t sure. “Can you row?” He nodded weakly and I gratefully handed over one oar.
We turned the boat around and headed for the shore. Os-Woorin continued to morph and grow and shrink in turn, debris swirling around its watery form as if a visual representation of its thoughts. I could feel its consideration of Hadrea, its ancient indifference to this tiny person vying with its curiosity.
“What is Hadrea doing? How is she standing out there?” Tain broke off coughing to ask. “She can use Darfri magic?”
“She’s asking the spirit to stop. Can’t you hear her? Can’t you feel it?”
He shook his head, looking at me like he’d never seen me before. “I can see it, but I can’t understand what’s going on.”
If he couldn’t, I didn’t know how to explain. “Just row. I think she needs help.”
Another roar split the air, and under it Salvea’s heartrending cry as Os-Woorin blurred toward Hadrea in a sudden, immense wall of water that would surely crush her. I dropped my oar, heart in my throat. But instead of being knocked back by the force of Os-Woorin’s blow, Hadrea seemed to slide through it; the water rippled and parted around her, splashing harmlessly ten treads from where she balanced, facing the spirit with deep calm. I felt her calm, and so, too, did I feel the confusion of the spirit as its rage rebounded without victim or recourse.
“This is a shared power,” she said again, with more force this time. “We are connected. We are sharing the power, and we will not destroy each other.”
It made another attempt, this time spurting geysers all around her, but once more, none of the boiling water touched her. This time I understood, because it understood. She had shared with Os-Woorin—we both had—and it was its power she was channeling; all the power that it had sucked up from the people around the lake was the same power that was keeping her safe. “We are the same, now,” she said.
The spirit paused again, the geysers dying down. I felt a thin, fragile wavering, the edge of concession, and dared to hope.
But it darkened into rejection with the loudest, wildest howl yet, and the full force of the great thing turned on Hadrea like a concentrated storm. The Speakers on the shore—and others in the crowd—howled along with it, but our terror and hysteria was feeding it, making it stronger, and the invisible bubble of protection around Hadrea grew smaller and smaller until I could not see her in the assaulting waters, and could barely feel her presence.
“Help her!” I screamed at the Speakers, but they seemed incapable of responding. More and more Darfri in the crowd had come to the shoreline and were plunging their hands in the water beside Salvea, and I felt their efforts connect and grow. Os-Woorin could take power from us, but as Hadrea had said, it was a shared power. The miniature storm intensified, but then so, too, did Hadrea’s protective barrier, and suddenly it was her control that was growing. I could see her small figure in the center of the flurry, her hands outstretched, and I felt her push back, and with it the water moved, and solidified, and compressed back against Os-Woorin until their two presences seemed equal. Two forces pressing on a sheet of glass that wavered and wobbled as they battled for dominance. And all the while I could feel her communication with it, as well, beseeching it. We have wronged you, but there will be amends, she told it. The Compact will be restored.
Tain’s head ricocheted between the battle on the lake and the reaction of the crowd, uncomprehending, and it was his obliviousness to the true nature of the battle that triggered my memory. Hadrea had said we were connected. We had made an offering together, and somehow that link had remained. I wasn’t Darfri and I didn’t know how to help, not really, but I leaned over the side of the boat and plunged my hands into the water all the same, and tried to make myself open, to give her strength. As if that gesture sprang a trap in my mind, the tight intensity of the air broke into a million pieces and it felt easy and natural to pour into the whirlpool everything I felt for her and my home and my lost sister and uncle, and …
And the balance shifted.
The water started to tip away from Hadrea, back to Os-Woorin, and as I watched, my hope literally flowing into the maelstrom of power, she seemed to grow straighter and taller even as the spirit diminished. But she did so without aggression or anger, just calm determination and force of will. And empathy.
With a hiss like steam escaping a kettle, the tumult in the lake peeled back to calm, the geysers fell away to nothing, and slowly the creature’s form sank back into the surface of the water. One last sigh, and all of the sucking, draining sensation of power in the air was gone, and the release was like waking from an intense nightmare, or breaking one of my worst compulsions. I gasped for breath.
Out in the center, there was one last splash as the power died away and Hadrea fell from whatever had kept her buoyant. Without a word, Tain retrieved his oar and I mine, and we set out to rescue her as she had rescued all of us.
Traitor’s curse
DESCRIPTION: Toxin of unknown origin.
SYMPTOMS: Dizziness, followed by increasing swelling of the face and extremities, excessive perspiration, pressure sensation in the chest, difficulty swallowing and breathing, weak heart rate, heart failure.
PROOFING CUES: Unknown.
33
Jovan
As though the very weather celebrated the end of the war, the cold morning cleared to a bright day violent in color. The rich blue of the sky, the broken-mirror sparkle of the lake, the white walls and bursts of early autumn red and gold amidst the greenery made a glossy portrait of a city, painted over the violence and turmoil.
A weird dichotomy played between the rebels and the Silastians: deep relief at the end of the fighting, but inevitable distrust and suspicion as we came together. Nice moments punctuated the tension, though; families reunited between cityfolk and soldiers in the army and between some on both sides of the lake. The sight of them mingling on the shores that had so recently been a battlefield gave me heart. The hospital had become once again the busiest place in the city as hundreds of people who had fought for their lives now worked together to carry wounded from both sides.
Aven and her lieutenants marched across the bridge to applause from the city residents. The Warrior-Guilder strode first, magnificent in her decorated armor and crimson cloak, one arm held aloft to cheers. Tain met with her there on the bridge, clasping her shoulders and thanking her for her timely arrival in a voice rich with emotion. The army roared just as loudly for Tain as the residents did for Aven.
“By the fortunes, it’s good to see you alive, Honored Chancellor,” the Warrior-Guilder said, her face breaking into a rare smile. “We had heard otherwise.”