Spirit’s End

CHAPTER 8

After five minutes of listening to the wind howl in the broker’s room, the urge to get up and peek was almost overwhelming. Miranda desperately wanted to see with her own eyes how the pieces of cloth on ribbons worked, but she stayed put, fingers locked on the battered arms of her chair. The West Wind was already doing her a lot of favors; now wasn’t the time to press her luck.

To get her mind off the sound, Miranda leaned back in her chair to contemplate what she’d learned of Illir. She’d always known he wasn’t a spirit that did things in the normal way, but using the spirit deaf to pass information right below the Shepherdess’s nose was brilliant, and the more she thought about it, the more brilliant it got. How many other events had Illir influenced through his brokers, feeding the right information to the right people at the right time?

She sighed loudly, causing Lelbon to look up in alarm. Miranda shook her head. No need to tell him how much it stung to finally realize how little she actually knew about the spirit world she’d given her life to. If Illir was secretly behind both the brokers and Morticime Kant and she hadn’t known, how much else was she missing? She didn’t even want to think about it, but it all came down to the same mistake: underestimating the spirit world.

Every time she thought she had spirits figured out, they did something that turned her on her head. Even seeing the truth of it in her servant spirits every day, it was easy to forget in the rush to do her duty that spirits weren’t some faceless mass to be saved but a complex network of individuals all trying to make their way in the world. They had their own ambitions, their own wants and needs and likes. Thinking of it like that, the fact that she could control them, overpower them with her will, just seemed… wrong.

For some reason, that thought sent her back to the vision the Shaper Mountain had shown her, his memories of the world that had existed before the Shepherdess. There’d been no wizards then, no people at all, just spirits and the demons who preyed on them. The spirits had been awake then. All of them, even the little ones. Miranda closed her eyes, trying to imagine a world where everything was as awake as her own spirits. A time when the world was enormous, and spirits fought their own demons. A world of free, independent souls without a Shepherdess or her stars to watch over them. Unbidden, Miranda’s hand sank down to brush her rings. If such a world existed now, would humans have any place in it?

She was still mulling this over when the wind on the other side of the wall died out, falling from a roaring gale to nothing in less than a breath. Miranda blinked and turned to look at Lelbon. It couldn’t be time yet. They’d been sitting here less than half an hour, but Emma was already walking through the door with a surprised look on her face and a sheet of paper in her hands.

“Luck is with you today, Spiritualist,” she said, handing the paper to Miranda. “Here you are, names and locations, just as requested. The ones missing are marked with asterisks. I think you’ll find everything to your satisfaction.”

Miranda snatched the paper from her hand. As her eyes ran frantically over the scribbled names, the first thing that struck her was how long the list was. There must have been hundreds of names, each with a place listed beside it, just as Emma had said. The only star without a location was the one at the very top, Eli Monpress.

Reading that name was harder than she expected. All at once, she was back in the Tower at Osera, staring across the dark, still water as the white arms tightened around Eli’s throat, pulling him out of the world. Miranda shook herself out of the memory, scrubbing her blurry eyes with the back of her hand. There was no sense worrying about the thief. If there was one thing Eli Monpress excelled at, it was looking out for himself. Setting the past firmly out of her mind, Miranda plunged ahead, reading as fast as her eyes could move.

All the names from her own investigations, the Shaper Mountain, the Great Ghosthound, and so on, were listed, with one exception. The Immortal Empress’s name was missing. Miranda read the list twice over, searching for Empress or Nara, the name Mellinor had mentioned on the ride down to Osera, but she found neither. That confused her, but Miranda didn’t have time to worry about the Empress.

As she read the list through again and again, a realization began creeping over her mind. From the very beginning, she’d known there must be several stars. A few dozen, maybe a hundred, but the list in her hands was well over that. And then there were the missing stars. Coming in, she’d expected to see the Deep Current and the Allva’s tree, plus a few more. Now, staring at the paper between her shaking hands, Miranda felt like she’d stepped off the edge of a bottomless pit.

“How is it?” Lelbon said, peering over her shoulder.

Miranda shoved the list at him. He took the paper from her shaking hand, his wispy eyebrows climbing. Of the nearly two hundred listed names, a full thirty had the sharp, black asterisk beside them.

“I thought four, five at the most,” she whispered. “Ten at the very worst. But thirty? How do thirty stars vanish without our knowing?”

Lelbon’s pale face went a little paler. “Look,” he said, pointing at a cluster of names marked with the black asterisks. “They’re mostly stone spirits, or spirits involved with the sea.” He glanced at Emma, who was still hovering. “Have there been reports of earthquakes?”

“Aye,” she said. “Several, mostly down south.”

Lelbon shook his head, muttering under his breath.

“Look here!” Miranda cried, pointing at one name toward the bottom of the list. “It’s the coral reef I sent Eril to check on just this morning.” She looked up at Emma. “Are you sure this one’s missing?”

“Everything you see there is correct as of five minutes ago,” the woman said, insulted.

Miranda mumbled a quick apology and turned back to Lelbon, who was reading the list over again. “Sea spirits, corals, a rain forest, bedrock, the humans,” he muttered, resettling his spectacles on his long nose.

“Is there a connection?” Miranda said.

“There must be,” Lelbon said. “These are all spirits whose loss won’t be felt by the world at large immediately.” His frown deepened, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s like she’s picking off the hidden ones, the stars whose spirits are either isolated or locally clustered. And since human souls can’t dominate each other, we wouldn’t feel the loss of Eli or the Empress.” The paper list fluttered as his hands began to shake. “She’s taking the ones who won’t be noticed.”

“Hold on,” Miranda said. “You’re saying that the Shepherdess is out there grabbing stars, and she’s trying to keep it secret?”

“There’s no one else who could,” Lelbon said. “Not on this scale. But what could she be hiding from? Nothing in this world can stop her from doing whatever she wants.” He scratched the white stubble on his chin. “Maybe she is trying to prevent a wide-scale panic after all? But then, if she cared enough to show that kind of caution, you’d think she’d say something before ripping a star away from its spirits.”

Miranda had no idea. The more she tried to think about what all this meant, the heavier the feeling of being helpless, useless, became. The weight grew and grew until it physically forced her back down into her chair.

“It’s hopeless,” she whispered, shoulders sagging. “Even if every wizard in the world mobilized, thirty stars vanished in one day. How can anyone stop that?” She scrubbed her hands over her face. “You were right. I’m in over my head. I can’t do anything.”

“Now hold on,” Lelbon said. “It’s still possible we’re jumping to conclusions. After all, we don’t know for sure how long this has been going on, or if the Deep Current was first. Maybe this has been building slowly.”

Miranda didn’t believe that for a second, but she had no proof, so she kept it to herself. Instead, she studied the list, paying close attention to the stars who weren’t yet missing. “If she’s trying to keep things quiet, she can’t do it for much longer. Look, she’s already pulled every ocean and stone spirit save the Shaper Mountain itself.”

“You’re right,” Lelbon said, pulling the list toward him. “She’s finished the easy targets.”

Miranda shook her head helplessly. “Whatever goes next, it’ll be big. But there are, what, a hundred and fifty, hundred and sixty stars left to choose from? There’s no way we can cover them all before the next one vanishes. But if we wait until the next one pops, we’d most likely arrive too late to do any good, just like you said.”

Lelbon looked at her sadly. “I didn’t tell you these things to weigh you down, Spiritualist.”

“No,” Miranda said. “You told me the truth.”

“At least you now have the proof to convince the Spiritualists that the world needs them united,” Lelbon said. “If the list isn’t enough, the panic and chaos following whatever spirit goes next certainly will be.”

Miranda blanched. “Forgive me for not jumping for joy at that thought.” Even the idea of sitting back and waiting for a panic to galvanize the Court felt like a betrayal of everything they stood for. “It can’t be all dead ends,” she muttered. “There has to be—”

A sound exploded before she could finish, stabbing into her mind and cutting every other thought free. It started like a shot, an arrow of pain plunging deep into her flesh before widening into a high, keening wail of loss. Miranda gasped and clutched her head, trying in vain to keep her skull steady as the scream vibrated through it.

The sound was cold and sharp, but the terror in it turned Miranda’s bones to jelly. She would have fallen if Lelbon had not been there, catching her arm even as he grabbed his own temple in pain. The sound went on and on, changing and deepening from a keening scream to a roaring torrent of sorrow and abandonment, and Miranda realized that she had to pull herself together. If she waited for the sound to end on its own, she’d be here forever.

Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to stand. Lelbon was still clutching her chair, his wrinkled fingers wrapped around her arm. Across the room, Emma was slumped against the door frame, and behind her, Miranda could see the other women were doubled over as well, clinging to their machines for dear life.

That threw her. The scream going through her certainly belonged to a spirit. How could the spirit deaf be crippled by it as well? But before she could puzzle over the impossibilities, the floor began to shake under her feet.

The windows bucked in their frames, and the walls shook and groaned as the tiny, sleeping spirits within them woke. Woke, and began to scream, their tiny voices joining with the wail that was still hammering through her skull. When the air itself joined them, the atmosphere tightening like the empty space was bracing for impact, Miranda’s blood went cold. She’d seen this before.

“Lelbon,” she whispered through gritted teeth. “Demon panic?”

It had to be. Nothing else could wake this many spirits with such fury. She cursed loudly. This was just what they needed now. But Lelbon was shaking his gray head.

“No,” he whispered hoarsely. “The river.”

He jerked his head at the window, and Miranda’s eyes followed on instinct, her breath catching in her throat. Outside, the Whitefall River that flowed behind the broker’s had stopped. No, she realized, not stopped. The river was pulling upstream, the water sucking in like a breath. It roiled and foamed as it flowed backward, taking the boats with it, and as it churned, the river rose.

Brown, frothy water spilled over the narrow channel, flooding into the street. Screams went up as street carts vanished under the muddy flood. Still lurching under the endless wail, Miranda pulled herself to the window for a better look. She’d barely made it to the wall when the floor under her feet stopped shaking and started to groan.

She looked down in alarm. Brown water was welling up between the floorboards. It rushed up in little gushers, flooding over Miranda’s boots, but even this was wrong. Miranda had dealt with floods before, but she’d never seen water behave like this. The river’s water wasn’t just rising; it was spitting up, almost like the water itself was jumping to escape something.

Outside the window, the river was screwing itself into knots. Whirlpools spun all across its surface, all turning different directions in a terrifying, unnatural spectacle. But worst of all was the scream.

It was still going, still stabbing through Miranda’s mind, growing louder and louder, harsher and harsher. Each swirling eddy and gushing spout added its voice to the rest, flowing faster and faster as the sound rose. The building was screaming as well now, the stone foundation babbling in fear as the water overwhelmed it, and Miranda realized with a start that she had to do something before they were all swept away.

Purpose pulled her out of her panic, and Miranda slammed her eyes shut. The practiced calm fell on her like a stone, and her spirits rallied to her silent call, each going still and ready in its ring. When her mind was quiet, she opened her spirit.

Grief hit her like a wall. Grief and loss and fear and all the things that had been in the initial scream were still there, only now they battered against her naked spirit rather than the shell of her flesh. Miranda stumbled under the onslaught, but she found her ground again and opened her spirit wider, throwing her arms out to take in the full wave of the scream. As it broke over her, she realized with a shock that it wasn’t a single, nonsensical wail, but a word. One word, repeated over and over and over.

“Gone!” it shouted. “Gone! Gone! Gone!”

“Who is gone?” Miranda shouted back, kneeling in the water, which was now up to her calves. “Rellenor!”

At the sound of her name, the river pitched, sending its water even higher.

“Our source, our guide,” the water sobbed. “Our everything, the mother water, the mouth of the world.” The names came on top of each other, tumbling together like flotsam in the flow of the river’s panic. One word, however, was crystal clear. “Ell! Ell!”

Miranda knew that name. She’d seen it on her list just moments ago. Ell, star of the rivers, whose water wound from the plains through the rain forests before finally spilling into south sea in a delta so wide you couldn’t see its end. But Ell’s name had been one of those without the asterisk, one of the stars still present. Miranda cast a frantic glance at the backward-flowing river. It seemed that had changed.

“Gone!” the river screamed again as it pounded against the building. “Gone! Gone!”

Outside, the river barges were now level with the windows and the water was full of debris, some of it moving. People, Miranda realized with an icy shock. Men and women, little children caught up in the river’s sweep before they were sucked down beneath the swirling brown water.

“Gone!” Rellenor’s scream crashed against her. “Lost! We are all—”

“Be still!”

The command rang like a bell through the whole of Miranda’s spirit. It was not an Enslavement. She did not grab the river or force it down, but she leaned on it as hard as she could, using the whole of her will as a weight to press on the water until, at last, the terrible wail sputtered to a stop.

“Who are you?” the water said bitterly. “Who are you to stop our grief?”

“You know me, Rellenor,” Miranda said slowly, never letting up on her pressure. “I’m Miranda the Spiritualist, Mellinor’s shore. I can help you, but I need you to let go of some of your water before you destroy the docks.”

Laughter filled her mind, cold and bitter and stinking of mold. “What do I care?” the river cried. “My star is gone! All water flows through Ell. We rivers are only tributaries of the greatest water. The Mother River has been with us since before the beginning of this world, but now her voice is silent and her banks are dry. Without the connection of her water, I can no longer feel the other rivers, no matter far I reach. I am alone, human. What can I do but flood?”

The river’s voice rose as it spoke, building again into the heart-wrenching wail, and the water rose with it. Miranda ignored the icy swirls beating against her knees and slammed her will down harder.

“Stop!” she commanded, and then eased her voice into a plea. “Please, Rellenor, stop. It is your right to flood, but do the spirits around you deserve to be washed away? Lower your waters. The Spirit Court knows stars are vanishing, and we are doing everything in our power to bring them back.”

“Bring Ell back?” Scorn flooded the river’s voice. “Are all you wizards so arrogant? What can you hope to do? Ell is a star.”

Miranda pulled herself ramrod straight. “I am the Rector Spiritualis!” she shouted. “There is no spirit I will not serve, and no crime against them I will not seek to undo! So I have sworn, and so I will do until I die. Even if the Shepherdess herself stands in my way, I will do everything I can to bring your star and the others back to their places.”

The River seemed momentarily stunned by this outburst, and Miranda went on, softer now. “You flow through the city of wizards, Rellenor. You should know better than any spirit the tenacity of the Spirit Court. We will serve you well, I swear it, but please, please do not destroy the innocent in your grief. The loss of Ell is loss enough. Do not add these poor spirits as well.”

For a long moment the water hung, and then a watery sigh went through her, as cool and soft as evening rain.

“You humans are as stubborn as you are blind,” the river muttered as the brown water began to sink back through the floorboards. “But I have long flowed through the white city of the Tower, and those years have taught me better than to go against the Tower’s master. Still, you can do nothing, human. Ell is gone.”

Miranda reached down to plunge her hand into the retreating water. “I can’t speak for my race,” she whispered. “But I will not desert you, nor will any other Spiritualist. All you have to do is flow as you have always done and we will do the rest.”

“I don’t see much point.” The water’s voice was deep and bitter. “What good is flowing if you flow alone?”

“Just keep flowing,” Miranda said, gently lifting the weight of her spirit. “We will make things right. I swear it.”

The river didn’t answer; it just cried, folding itself back into its banks with soft sobbing sound. Miranda caressed it one more time before closing her spirit and shooting to her feet. She rushed past the brokers and out of the building, shoving the list of stars into her pocket as she went. Lelbon followed hot on her heels, his voice low and buzzing like a wasp in her ear.

“Spiritualist!” he hissed. “I realize you’re upset right now, but think about what you’re saying! The Lady’s own hand is in this! You can’t fight the Shepherdess’s will. If you charge ahead, she will cut you down. She cares nothing for humans save those she favors. You can’t just make promises—”

“What else was I supposed to do?” Miranda shouted, bursting into the street. “Look around!”

She flung out her arms, forcing Lelbon to stop and look. He did, his face paling.

The river district was a scene of chaos. A layer of slimy mud lay everywhere the river had flooded. Barges had been washed up into the street. Many had crashed through houses, dropped there by the racing water. People lay scattered as well. Some were lucky. They sat on muddy doorsteps, filthy and half drowned but alive. The still shapes washed into the gutters showed that others weren’t so fortunate.

“And Zarin was lucky,” Miranda said, taking quick, shallow breaths through her mouth to avoid the smell of the river bottom as it mixed with the growing smell of death. “How many rivers are there, Lelbon? How many of those places didn’t have Spiritualists standing by to calm the water? How many people will die today? How many spirits broken and drowned? And you still say I shouldn’t try?”

“I’m saying you shouldn’t go blithely to your death!” Lelbon cried, his wrinkled face drawing into a terrible scowl. “This is larger than you. Larger than the Court. There’s a line between honoring your oaths and throwing your life away. Even if you did somehow find a way to undo this, we’re not talking about some rogue Enslaver, Miranda. This is the Shepherdess, the Power whose will rules the world. Even the favorite couldn’t defy the Lady. What hope do you have?”

“I don’t intend to defy the Lady,” Miranda said. “In fact, in a roundabout way, I mean to ask for her help.”

Lelbon’s scowl fell into a look of utter bewilderment. Miranda didn’t blame him. The insane thought had struck her dumb as well. It had come just a second ago while she was running out of the building, but the more she thought about it, the more certain she was that this was the best chance they had. She might not be able to make everything right as she’d promised the river just now, but if this worked, she could make things better, and any improvement was worth taking a chance for at this point.

Miranda put her fingers to her lips. Grimacing at the stench, she took a deep breath and blew an ear-splitting whistle. It rang in the air, echoing off the low buildings. Across the city, another call rose in answer, a long, ghostly howl. Miranda grinned at the sound and turned back to Lelbon.

“I’m not the only one who cares for the preservation of this world,” she said. “But to get my help, I’m going to need to call in my favor from your lord.”

Lelbon sighed. “I thought I made it quite clear that Lord Illir could not—”

“He can do this much,” Miranda said. “All I need is transportation. The wind doesn’t even have to stay.”

Lelbon scowled. “And where would you be going?”

Miranda told him, and Lelbon’s eyes went wide as eggs. She set her jaw, ready to argue, but he just turned and raised his arm. A wind rushed down in answer, making his white robe flap like a flag. He whispered something to it, and the wind spun back into the sky. By the time Gin arrived, panting from the dash but looking rested and much improved, an enormous wind had come to Zarin, a great howling gale that nearly knocked Miranda off her feet.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Lelbon shouted over the wind’s roar.

“Not at all,” Miranda shouted back, climbing onto Gin’s back and clutching her legs around the ghosthound’s barrel chest. “But if I stay here I’ll fail for certain. What have I got to lose?”

Lelbon’s eyes narrowed, but he waved his hand. The second it moved, the great wind swept down, lifting Miranda and her ghosthound into the air. She dug her fingers into Gin’s fur, pulling herself down to his back as the ground sank away below their feet.

“This is going to be a long trip, isn’t it?” Gin growled, kicking his legs in the air. “Wish you’d told me about this before I ate.”

“If your belly wasn’t full of pig, you’d never have let me do this,” Miranda said. The wind bucked around them, and she pulled herself tighter to his back. “Hold on.”

“To what?” Gin cried, his orange eyes going wide.

All around them, the wind began to laugh, an enormous sound that made Miranda’s teeth rattle. And then, with a stomach-churning lurch, they were off, spinning through the sky north and west toward a distant, stormy shore and the lonely citadel where Miranda had pinned her last, desperate hope.

The Oseran royal carriage creaked to a halt a half mile outside Zarin’s towering south gate. The driver cursed and arched his neck, looking with dismay at the enormous clog of traffic running back from the gatehouse. Cursing again, he glanced down at the ring of king’s guards riding close escort. “Mind going to see what we’re in for?”

The guards exchanged a look, and then the youngest of the group turned his horse out into the fields beside the road, riding around the clot of carts, carriages, and angry farmers to see what the problem was.

“Why did we stop?”

The driver rolled his eyes and looked down to see the Royal Treasurer climbing out of the coach. The old man looked terrible, but then anyone would look like death warmed over after being locked in a small carriage for a day and a night with the king.

“Seems there’s trouble in the city, my lord,” the driver said. “Just sent a rider up, so we should know in a moment.”

He heard hoofbeats as he finished and turned to see that the boy was already riding back.

“It’s a flood,” the young guard called as soon as he was in earshot. “River just wiped out the center of Zarin.”

“A flood?” the Treasurer cried. “The ground’s bone dry! How do you have a flood with no rain?”

“Could have been rain upriver,” the driver said, and then snapped his mouth closed at the Treasurer’s poisonous look. “Yes, my lord. If we’re fast, we can cut west along the ring road and beat the crowd to the north gate. Shouldn’t take more than an hour.”

“Just get us there,” the Treasurer snapped, stepping back inside. “The king’s impatient to get this over with.”

The king was impatient about everything, the driver thought with a scowl. Not that he was going to complain, of course. He’d been at the storm wall; he’d seen what the king could do with that hunk of metal on his back.

The driver whistled to the riders to fall back in. He was about to turn the horses off onto the grass when he felt the carriage shift. The driver cursed and reined his team back in just before the carriage door burst open and the king himself climbed out.

All the guards froze in place, saluting as King Josef hopped down onto the grass. For his part, the driver was doing his best to make himself as small and inconspicuous as possible.

Powers, the king was large. Large and deadly and dangerous; the kind of man you’d cross the street to avoid day or night. The girl he kept with him was no better. She jumped down after him, a leather sack swinging from her hands, her pale face hidden by the creepy coat she wore. He swore he’d seen it moving on its own sometimes, twitching like a sleeping animal even when she sat perfectly still, the cloth black as a nightmare no matter how bright the light.

“Your majesty!” The Treasurer scrambled out of the carriage, chasing the king like a mother after her toddler. It was a pathetic sight for a minister of Osera, and overbearing as the old bastard had been during the trip, the driver almost felt sorry for him.

“Please get back in the carriage,” the Treasurer pleaded. “It will be only another hour.”

“A minute in that coffin on wheels is like an hour anywhere else,” the king growled. “Forget it. We walk.”

The Treasurer went so pale the driver worried he would faint. “Walk? You are a sovereign monarch on an official visit to the Council of Thrones! You can’t just walk in!”

But the king was already striding down the line of traffic, his long legs quickly taking him out of sight behind the other wagons. As always, the girl stuck to him like a shadow, jogging to keep up.

The Treasurer cursed loudly and turned to the riders. “Follow the king! Make sure he comes to no harm.”

As the six horsemen took off, the driver was tempted to point out that, seeing how the king had killed half the Empress’s army with his own hands, the riders’ presence would likely be more of a hobble than a help if an actual threat did emerge, but the Treasurer was already climbing back into the carriage.

“Drive on!” he shouted through the little curtained window. “We’ll meet his majesty at the Council Citadel.”

“Yes, my lord,” the driver said, snapping the reins.

The carriage creaked forward, bouncing over the grass as they turned off the road and cut west through the open field. As he eased the horses into the grass, the driver leaned back, enjoying the sunlight that suddenly seemed far warmer and cheerier now that the monster king and his monster girl were out of his coach. Laughing at the thought, he urged the horses faster, whistling an Osera fishing song as they bounced onto the narrow, rutted cart track that circled Zarin and turned north toward the hopefully unflooded, uphill side of town.