Glyphbinder (29 page)

“Let me explain.” Melyssa raised her hands. “Your daughter’s life was in danger. I hid her because I had to.”

Byn saw it all now. Xander’s eyes were black, just like Kara’s before they changed. He had proud, strong cheekbones, just like Kara’s when she smiled at the prow of their skiff. Rance Tanner wasn’t Kara’s father. This man was.

“Why the deception?” Byn all but whispered.

“Xander is my grandson,” Melyssa said. “Kara is my great-granddaughter. I could not allow the Mavoureen to know that.”

This time, Byn didn’t even bother closing his mouth.

“It didn’t do one bit of good, did it?” Xander said. “You erased every good memory Ona and I ever had. You took me from my daughter, married my wife to a stranger, and yet the demons still found her. Stole her. You’ve failed everyone.”

“Once the demons learned how to change your child’s blood to match Torn’s, there was nothing anyone could have done. We did all we could to protect her.”

“Demons touched my child?” Ona pushed away from Xander and marched toward Melyssa. “They changed her? How?”

“They altered her blood in the womb so she could serve their purpose. I am afraid that corruption led to your illness.”

“Please.” Byn really needed to understand all this, and no one was helping. “Why are we talking about this?”

Melyssa turned a smile on him. “Because we’re about to go save Kara. And because we need Xander’s help.”

Byn breathed as he felt hope swelling inside his chest. They could still save Kara. They could still stop the Mavoureen.

“The Mavoureen have her,” Melyssa continued, “but she is not dead. Yet. We will enter the Unsettled Lands, enter Terras, and stop Cantrall before he can force her to open its gates.”

“Cantrall?” Byn closed his mouth. “But he’s dead.”

“Yes.” Trell gave Byn’s shoulder a squeeze and stood beside him. “There seems to be a lot of that going around.”

Ona glanced at Xander, lips tight, then looked back at Melyssa. “We’ll do whatever’s needed to save her. You just tell us what to do.”

“Find help.” Melyssa walked to Ona. “Right now, an army of revenants, Shifters, and davengers may be marching on Tarna. We must warn King Haven. More importantly, Tarna must be ready to face the Mavoureen if our bid to stop Cantrall fails.”

“Why would King Haven listen to anything I have to say?”

“Because you have this.” Melyssa pressed a small medallion into Ona’s hand. A golden sun, glittering in the light.

That was Melyssa’s apprentice medallion. If anything would prove to King Haven and Prince Beren that Melyssa Honuron had sent a warning with Ona, it was that.

Ona glanced around. “Do I get a horse?”

The clatter of hooves from below the rise stopped anything Melyssa might have said. Horses, here? Byn turned to look and stepped back as a demon crested the rise.

The demon was the size of a man, but its skin was charred beyond recognition. It had no hair and wore only thin cloth pants. A blackened lump of something – metal? — hung about its neck on a thin leather necklace.

Someone else stumbled up the rise. Jyllith. Jyllith was here, and Byn wanted to murder her. Blood crusted her gloves and most of her leather vest, and she walked with her head down. She carried a lead and attached to it were horses. Chesa, Stomper, and Tack.

“We found them,” the demon said. “And Cantrall’s glyph anchor.” It turned its pits of blistered flesh on Byn. “Meris. Welcome back.”

The charred corpse was Aryn Locke. Byn wondered if this was what going mad felt like. Like your mind was peeling away from itself, layer by layer. Like someone was peeling an onion.

“Jyllith,” Melyssa said. “Bring Chesa. She’s the fastest.”

Jyllith obeyed her, and Byn didn’t understand why. Ona whistled as Trell’s mare approached her. Ona reached out, smiling, and took one step forward. Chesa nuzzled Ona’s hand.

“I like her.” Ona slipped Melyssa’s medallion into a dress pocket, then winced as she braced herself on her still bandaged foot.

“Wait,” Xander hurried over. “Let me help.”

He held out two hands, clenched together, and she stepped on them both before swinging into the saddle. She grimaced when she did so, and Byn wondered if her illness was hurting her. Even if it was, he knew nothing would stop her from saving her daughter.

Melyssa set off. She walked and moved like a woman far younger than she was. “It’s time for us to leave. Byn, we’ll speak as we walk. I’ll explain everything.”

“I wish I were going with you.” Ona gripped Chesa’s reins. “But I’ll do as you ask. I’ll find help.”

Xander grabbed her leg and stared up. “What if you run into the army? The one Melyssa talked about?”

Ona laid one hand atop his. “Then I’ll ride fast.”

Xander’s shoulders trembled as he stared up at his wife. “I love you. More than anything. I never stopped.”

Ona pursed her lips. “Then go get our daughter back.” She tapped her heels on Chesa’s sides, gently, and the mare trotted toward the rise. Neither woman or horse looked back.

KARA WAS FALLING down a tunnel of bright light. It was all the rainbows of the most pleasant summer days woven together in a magnificent quilt. It stretched past the horizon and shined brighter than the sun. It was all so beautiful she wanted to cry.

The entirety of her life stretched out before her, reeling itself backward in a barely comprehensible blur. She saw Cantrall possessing her. She saw herself burning the harvenger, saw herself holding hands with Trell, saw running, fighting, dueling Aryn.

Her memories took her through long nights shelving books in Solyr’s library, experiments with eye-changing glyphs, and lessons from Halde and Cantrall. This was how she had become a mage. This was how she would save everyone she loved.

Scenes from her memory zipped past, and her first years at Solyr passed in less time than it took to blink. She and Byn played in Boon and sailed the waves. Ona smiled at her in her spare wooden crib. Her memories slipped on to before she was born. These were the memories bound to her family’s blood.

A slim young man with long brown hair was staring at a young woman who looked just like Kara. Smiling at her. Kara saw the woman blush even as she kept her eyes on others. She knew this man was looking. She wanted him to look.

Kara was seeing her mother, young as she was, and the dress Ona wore was scandalizing. Ona had never let her wear something that low cut! The man moved through the harvest dance crowd with ease and Ona glanced at him. Just once. Then she shrugged and turned away.

That young man wasn’t Rance. It wasn’t her father. It was someone else. Who was he? Some man Ona had dallied with before she was born?

A memory entered her mind. “
I love you so much. Take care of yourself. Take care of your mother.”
That man’s name was Xander.

Kara saw Xander arguing with his own father, Varyn. Saw Xander leaving their small cabin in the night. She saw Varyn being born, saw a woman with blond hair and a stern face staring down at her son. Tears in her eyes.

Then that woman was young again, as young as Kara, and standing somewhere dark. Screaming at a tall man in red Solyr robes. As that man pulled his hood back, Kara realized he was too young to earn those robes. Twenty? Twenty-five?

The two of them stood before an archway. Beyond it was a nightmare, a realm of purple clouds filled with screams and shrieks from things inhuman. That gateway led into the Underside. Torn Honuron was going to step right through it.

Melyssa screamed, beat on his chest, tugged at his arm and did all she could to move him. Torn would not move. He watched her spend her energy and when she was done, he hugged her.

Melyssa trembled as Torn kissed the top of her head. Even in the vision, Kara knew this man held power she could barely comprehend. If she was a candle, he was a bonfire.

Melyssa pushed back. Nodded. Bit her lip so hard it bled. Then Torn dived through the howling gate. Once through, he turned and raised his arms. The gateway thundered closed.

Melyssa fell to her knees and wept.

Kara could not deny the chain of blood memories leading back to Terras. She
was
Torn’s great-grandchild. Cantrall
could
use her to open the gates at Terras.

A blow ripped the light away and nearly took Kara’s sanity with it. The dark blue clouds that replaced the light sounded like a thousand people screaming in terror. The sound of the damned and the tormented. The sound of the Underside.

Kara sat up, coughing against the smell of ash-filled air. Something in her gut wrenched horribly, dredging up bile and gunk. She fell onto her stomach, hacking up phlegm and blood.

“Carrow root, Kara,” her own lips said. “We’ll be fine soon.”

Her body scrambled to its feet, but she did not make it do that. She remembered then what she had done. “Cantrall!”

Cantrall walked her body forward with invisible limbs. His arms and legs were inside hers, moving them as he wished.

“Look around, Kara. See what will happen if you don’t save us.” Cantrall’s words came unbidden from her own mouth. He lifted her face to a sky roiling with purple clouds and lightning.

The land around them bore some similarity to Solyr’s shaded Commons, but only just. Twisted and blackened trees rose like rack-stretched arms. Terras’ mage stone walls had collapsed and its buildings were shattered like pottery. Blown apart.

Crystals littered the ground of Terras, and Kara remembered what they were. Memorials. One crystal for every soul that had died when the Mavoureen invaded Terras. They covered the academy grounds like flakes of frozen snow.

“Don’t do this,” Kara whispered. “I’m not Torn’s descendent.”

“Don’t lie to me.” Her own lips spoke back. “I know your memories. I showed them to you. You saw what I saw.”

“Then you must know how crazy you are!”

“Soon you will know the truth, as I do.” Cantrall made her body walk past one ruined building after another. “You’re going to meet the Mavoureen. You’ll also meet your great-grandfather.”

Kara pulled at her body, trying to seize control from the madman who had possessed her. She would have more luck lifting a ruined building. His control was absolute because she had made it so.

“I wish I could show you the wonders of this place.” Cantrall stepped her over a blackened skeleton half melted into the tiles. “I’ve not been idle in the years since Torn saved me and sent me back. I’ve worked here at Terras in my free time. I’ve read every book in its massive library. There’s just so much none of us ever know.”

Kara had not seen a single intact building, let alone one large enough to house the mammoth store of knowledge at Terras. This land had been abandoned for seventy years.

“It’s underground,” Cantrall said. “I wish I could show it to you. I’ve tormented you and those you love. If I could make it up to you, I would, but I’m just a tool and a tool must not break.”

“I’d never forgive you!”

“You don’t have to. Torn has.”

They walked past what Kara realized must have been the Terras cafeteria. Rubble and broken wooden supports rested upon shattered bones and skulls. What remained looked like the outer rim of a bowl shattered by a mace.

Kara could imagine these students laughing, smiling, eating. Joking. She could hear their shrieks as the ceiling collapsed. She could hear the moans that had leaked from beneath the rubble.

Those unlucky enough to live through the first crushing blows had bled to death or starved over the next few days. No one had been alive to rescue them.

“This will happen again,” Kara said. “To Solyr, to Tarna. The Mavoureen will devour the souls of everyone in our world.”

Cantrall shook Kara’s head. “You’re wrong. They aren’t your enemy. The demons you should truly fear are the Alcedi. They are the true terror of the Underside, stronger than you can imagine.”

He was being crazy again. “Alcedi?”

“I’ve given you a name you’ve not yet heard, haven’t I? I don’t speak it anywhere but here. They listen, always.”

“Like the man in your head?”

“Not like Torn. The Alcedi wait beyond the borders of our world to devour it, just as they have devoured countless worlds before ours. The Mavoureen are the only army that can stand against them.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“It is the Alcedi who made us believe the Mavoureen were evil. They tricked our elders and tricked Torn.

“I’m going to kill you. I’ll kill us both!”

“You must see why Torn’s wards must be undone. This apocalypse you so fear will come from the Alcedi. Nothing will remain once they invade, unless the Mavoureen stop them.”

Despair gripped Kara. She could not reach him. Threats, pleas, and logic meant nothing to Cantrall. He was a true believer. A lunatic to the end.

“You’re going to shatter our world and everyone in it.”

Cantrall made her smile. He stopped her before a massive chunk of concrete resting against a broken wall. He cut her fingers open and scribed a set of glyphs.