Chapter 5

  Fiora: three years BK

  Curtains of darkness veiled the world. Shadows shifted beyond her half-closed eyes, their outlines crawling with sparks of light, unseen, baffling. She heard voices, shouts, cries of pain, pleas for help, far-off explosions. The calls for help, for anyone to help, made her stir. She struggled. She needed to be there with them. She needed to help. Someone out there, in that world of shapes and motion, was in pain. But she could not move. Something held her, enclosing her in a grip as gentle and strong as an old oak.

  The darkness in her vision began by soft degrees to fade, to melt away into the natural darkness of the cold night. She would be shivering, except that whatever held her buzzed with a tingling warmth. She tried to open her eyes wider, overwhelmed by a sudden and powerful desire to know, to remember.

  Where? What? Why?

  A battlefield, that was where. She could tell at once from the noise and the smell. The dying, the dead—she could see them both, even with her eyes closed. With her eyes closed, she saw the light that held her. The light was weak, but the body was strong, strong, strong. A tiger. Carrying her. Why? And this tiger was wounded, badly wounded. Why?

  She found then that she, too, was wounded. Her arms hurt. Of course. That was why she was here: to bleed. Why else would she be on a battlefield? But she had always been careful not to bleed too much. She couldn’t remember passing out. What had happened?

  The tiger spoke. He was holding her close to his chest, and his voice vibrated her whole body, though he tried to speak softly. “You are awake?”

  She had to remember how to speak. She tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry. “Wha…” she croaked.

  A flask of water touched her lips. She drank and drank, but the flask was large and she couldn’t finish it. She reached up and spilled some on her dry skin. “Th-thanks!” she said, at once feeling much better, though she still didn’t try to move.

  “What was that?” his effort at whispering, both obvious and futile, made Fiora smile.

  “Thanks!” she said, louder.

  “It is I,” grumbled the tiger, “who will do the thanking! AHA, HA!” Although he was clearly making an effort to be quiet, his laugh boomed out with such sudden force that Fiora flinched.

  Fiora had many questions, and they only compounded as her head cleared and she began to think properly. She was weak, so weak that she could hardly move. The tiger, though strong, was terribly wounded. His life energy flickered like a guttering candle. They were on a battlefield. Who had won? She knew that one already. No one. Only the Grim King. Only the void.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “I am Rasmus,” the tiger replied. He looked ahead when he spoke, his face dimly lit by fires and lights as they passed. His face was broad, honest, young. His yellow eyes reflected the lights like a cat at night, and they sparked sometimes with their own light. Fiora wondered if the shadows or her addled mind were playing a trick with her perception. This daimon was huge!

  “Hi Rasmus,” she said, her voice a soft croak in the darkness compared to his. “But why—”

  “What is your name?” he asked.

  “Fiora.” Then, because she wondered if he couldn’t hear her, she said it louder. “Fiora!”

  “Then, Fiora, listen well.” The tiger, Rasmus, stopped moving. Fiora squeaked in surprise as he suddenly held her out in two huge hands as though offering her to the roiling night sky. Rasmus, his yellow spines sparking weakly in the shadows, descended to one knee and placed her on the ground. Even on one knee, he was more than twice as tall as she, and his hands remained to uphold her as she stood delicately with what little strength she had.

  “I owe you my life,” said Rasmus the tiger. An explosion shook the night somewhere nearby. The earth trembled beneath Fiora’s small feet. Cries of pain and alarm rose to her right. She wanted to help. But she could not even stand on her own. Too small. Too weak.

  “Therefore,” continued Rasmus, “I now pledge tha…what is wrong, Fiora?” The tiger scooped her up again like a child handling a doll. Static electricity sparked against her when he picked her up. “I apologize,” he said. “You are too weak.”

  Too weak! He knew.

  Fiora sobbed, and her tears were the tears of pent-up frustration. Months of pain and bitterness and misery welled up in her eyes and fell like liquid emerald to the burned and blackened soil, and the place those tears fell would later bear flowers and fruit even when all else in sight remained scorched and barren.

  She realized that she was biting her gloved hand again, so hard that some of her precious remaining blood leaked out from under the glove.

  “Just a moment,” said the tiger. Huge hands laid her down onto the dark mud. She tried to wipe her tears as she heard a groaning near to her, somewhere close among the oily shadows. Then a grunt, a sparking of static, the sounds of shattering crystal, of rock breaking against stone, a hideous crunch.

  With a thrill of horror, Fiora understood. The voidbound. They were here.

  “For now,” said Rasmus as he emerged from the shadows, one hand stained black with darkness, “I will escort you safely from this place. I will.” The earth shuddered again beneath Fiora as he picked her back up with a tiny jolt of static and continued on his way, faster than before. But had he been limping before?

  Something flew low overhead, making a noise like many angry bees buzzing in a hollow log. Rasmus the tiger clutched her close and hunched over her to shield her from the sky. But no death rained down, no fire or ice, and no other aircraft flew behind. This battle was over. In a way, that made everything more dangerous. And this tiger was going to carry her out. Right!

  “I can help,” she said loudly, her voice so weak and small compared to his that she had no fear of giving them away. “I can see them.”

  “Are you able?” asked Rasmus, now crouching low, though his legs trembled with the effort. He still tried to keep his voice down. “I am lost.”

  Fiora moved her head weakly, this way and that. Nothing but darkness all around her, a confusion of lights. Still the distant noise. Still the screams, the scattered firing of weaponry, the explosions like far-off thunder. No stars above by which to tell the way.

  She was tired, tired, tired. Maybe more tired than she had ever been. She had bled too much. Had she saved this tiger’s life? How much blood had it taken? He was so big, it must have taken a lot; that could have knocked her out for sure. She needed sleep. She needed more water. She needed to help those people, lost and afraid and all alone out in the darkness. Maybe they were dying thinking that nobody loved them. She looked through green tears up at Rasmus, his face outlined by the sparking lights of his yellow spines around his chin like a beard.

  She closed her eyes. Sleep crept close, thinking this an invitation, but she fought it off. She opened the eyes inside her mind, weary though she was, and saw the life around her. She was horrified to see how little there was. She looked farther. Hardly any plants, for miles. All burned away. Hardly any insects but those deep in the soil. No birds, though they would come in time. Dozens, hundreds of living daimon in scattered clumps, in twos and threes and singles nearby; farther out she saw them in groups up to a dozen. The survivors. But there was worse than nothingness in the darkness she saw, worse than the absence of life. She saw them—the voidbound, the soulless, the dead. Hundreds of them, more than she’d ever seen, arising scattered throughout the barren fields like an infection.

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  “I can see,” she said.

  “We must avoid the living as well as the soulless,” he muttered to her. “The Ephathites have come down to scavenge the field. They will take you if they find you.”

  Her mind was fuzzy, but the word ‘Ephathites’ sent a shiver of fear through her. She couldn’t remember exactly why, but she was afraid of them. She couldn’t go with them. No matter what, she couldn’t let the Ephathites take her. She didn’t want to go out into the cold emptiness between the stars. She was biting her hand again.

  She told Rasmus the way, and he carried her. She spoke loudly so he could hear. And she told him to go far around those remaining sparks of daimon life, even though it made her weep, for some of them were dying and afraid and maybe she could help them. But Rasmus had sworn to carry her alive from this field, and she wanted him to live too.

  She steered him the best that she could, but it was harder and harder. At last, when they were close to the southern woods, close to safety, she could see no longer and hung limp in the arms of the tiger. And so it was that on the edge of the field of battle, near the tall trees of the Mothrim, lights shone upon them from the darkness and a harsh voice called out for them to stop. The light and noise dragged Fiora painfully back to wakefulness.

  Rasmus sighed, and his sigh was partly a growl deep in his throat that sent a shiver through Fiora. He was strong; she could tell that this tiger was so very strong, but he was also so very near to death. So very wounded. And there were several voices now, and several lights shining on them, shaking in the darkness as they approached from down a muddy hill.

  “I must set you down,” said Rasmus softly. “But I will pick you back up, and take you from this place. I will.”

  She shook her head at him. “You can’t,” she said. He began lowering her to the mud just as he had before. She struggled in his grip. “Wait!”

  He stopped, looking down at her. In the bright lights that approached, she saw his face. So tired. And young! Not fallen much earlier than her, she guessed.

  “Listen,” she said. “Tell them…that I’m your viridesce.”

  He recoiled in horror. “I will no—”

  “Rasmus!” she whispered harshly at him. “Do it! Or they’ll kill you, Rasmus!” Her unspoken words seemed to ring in the air: and think of what they’ll do to me.

  The lights were very close now, and they gathered around as Rasmus turned to face them, Fiora still in his arms. Four or five lights, and now Fiora saw the details of those who held them. A bear, red. A small songbird, grey. A monitor lizard, blue. A fiverat, white. All female save the lizard, whose spines grew back along his head instead of hair. All wearing the bulky mechanical suits of skyfarers, the dark alloys aglow with beads of light. Parts of them were machines, made of cold metal instead of warm flesh. They all held weapons—deadly, brutal close-range forcewave weapons that tore people apart and made wounds that Fiora bled herself to heal. She couldn’t help but grit her teeth when she saw them. Rasmus held no weapons; only a small exhausted green.

  “Ho there,” said the red, her voice low. She was very big; her head nearly came up to Rasmus’s chin. Red crystals glimmered like embers in the socket where one of her eyes should have been. She smiled, but it was not at all a pleasant smile. Her teeth were thick and sharp, and a trickle of smoke rose up between them, illuminated by the lights. “You’re a big one. Young, too. What are you, then?” She casually pinned her weapon against the side of her suit, but it still aimed steadily at Rasmus.

  “Deserter,” he grumbled. “Meszria. This war is over.”

  “Not over yet,” said the grey bird, her voice thin. She was the smallest of them, but still bigger than Fiora, and size didn’t matter at all when one held a forcewave blaster.

  “It is over,” said Rasmus.

  The red laughed. “Fair enough. We don’t much care one way or the other. We see a mangy half-dead cat, we’re like as not to step aside and let it be on its way. Can’t blame it for fleeing a damned hellion-fire.”

  Rasmus began to breathe a sigh of relief, but then the bear spoke again. “But friend, what’s that you have there? Do I smell green blood? And is that it there on your wound? That’s quite a hole you had in you. You should be dead, friend. Did it kill your little green to heal it?”

  “She lives,” said Rasmus, caution and warning clear in his voice. He took a deep, shaking breath and let it out slowly before saying, “she is…my viridesce.”

  An assortment of sounds, both amused and surprised, came from the Ephathites. They shifted, glanced at each other. One of them, the blue, lowered his weapon.

  “Well, if that’s the case,” said the red as she stepped forward slightly. “We’ll have to let you go. We’re not interested in taking prisoners. And we can’t touch someone’s viridesce. However…” She smiled and exhaled a puff of smoke between her sharp teeth. “I think you’re lying.”

  Rasmus said nothing.

  “It’s the gloves,” the red explained.

  “She is my viridesce,” Rasmus repeated.

  “You’ll have to prove it, big guy.” The red lowered her weapon to her side. She drew a knife from somewhere behind her, its short blade gleaming with ruby light. She drew it along the back of her other hand, cutting a deep gash behind her knuckles. The wound steamed; hot red blood trickled to the mud, sparkling in the darkness.

  Fiora could not help but feel an urge to help. Though terribly weak, though barely conscious and nearly out of both blood and energy, she couldn’t bear to see someone bleed. Someone else.

  “No,” said Rasmus. “She has lost too much blood.” His arms tightened around her. Strong, but trembling. Safe, but weak.

  “That’s not how it works, friend,” said the red. She lowered her hand to her weapon and trained it once more on Rasmus. The three others redoubled their vigilance and spaced themselves out by a few steps. “We didn’t come here to play games,” she continued. “We came to avail ourselves of the spoils of war. So you can show us the mark, or we will kill you and take the green.”

  Fiora trembled. She had no mark save those she had given herself. What could she do? She hardly knew the rules about viridesces. She had never wanted to know. It was too horrible! But she desperately tried to remember. They had to have a mark, that was one thing. That was how they were claimed. Someone had to scar them.

  “Rasmus,” she said, just loud enough for him to hear. But he didn’t seem to hear, so she said it again, louder. “Rasmus!”

  “Quiet, green,” said the red Ephathite.

  But Rasmus heard this time, and looked down at her.

  “Do it, Rasmus,” she said, speaking loud for him to hear. “Mark me.” It was the only thing she could think of, the only way to get them both out alive.

  The Ephathites heard her as well. The blue barked a laugh. “Would that…suffice?” asked the small white, to which the blue answered, “technically.”

  “Wouldn’t be official without documentation,” said the birdlike grey. The white scoffed.

  “That’s enough,” said the red. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  Rasmus growled and moved at the same time that she shot him. With one hand, he swiped at the path of the forcewave. It bent to one side, which Fiora had not known to be possible, and shredded the skin of Rasmus’s hand and forearm, spraying a sizzling yellow rain of blood.

  His other hand, holding Fiora, came alive with a surge of light and energy. Fiora screamed and arched her back uncontrollably as a wall of pain struck her from beneath, burning through her coat, through her skin, into her bones. It was electricity, crackling bright and loud, scorching through her.

  But it lasted only a fraction of a second, gone nearly as soon as she understood what was happening. She fell to the mud and felt the heavy impact of something else falling next to her.

  Everything swam dark and bright through blurred vision. She heard voices, but could not tell what they were saying. She was cold and wet, but her back was hot, hot, hot. It hurt, but she had no tears to cry.

  The voices stopped; the smeared mass of her vision became suddenly very dark. Then something lifted her from the mud, shaking but gentle, and carried her through the night.

  Later, she would awaken under a mango tree in the blue Mothrim, surrounded again by life. Here Rasmus would declare himself her shield and her storm whenever she required it of him. He would hang his head in shame at the terrible electrical burns on her back, but Fiora would cherish those scars above all others.