Chapter 11

Chapter 11

His wings ached. His bones ached. His leg was a shrill agony, an absence of flesh, and nerve, or even still, stars. Not even the phantom blackness the stars had rested in remained. The absent limb throbbed mercilessly. He hauled himself out of his chair in the library, using his crutches for support. He’d tried to fly the night before when his leg started to fade, and ended collapsed in the corridor screaming. It was all tied together somehow now. If he pulled on the gift that gave him flight, that kind of flight, it pulled on all the gifts the Song and the Tribunal had linked to it during his flight between the stars.  

He stumped down the corridor grumbling, occasionally casting a dour look at wings that were surely heavier than they should have been. If Paul and Brent were talking to him, he would stop by their cabin to ask for a little help with the pain. He couldn’t ask Randall again. He couldn’t take another round of worried conversations and tears. Randall’s emotions were off the chart, and almost any amount of pain was worth not setting him off.  

Michael sighed deeper and made his way to the flight deck. He sat in the navigator’s chair with a graceless thud, then magicked his crutches to their holding place outside the door.  He magicked the door shut as well, making sure to leave it keyed so that Ra’Cha could open it. It was her ship, and MIchael was determined to show her that he knew that. He his hands on the arms of his chair, and opened the viewscreen ahead of him. It took some fiddling with the controls before he was viewing Earth. He twisted the angles, searching, and saw what he was looking for. The flare of their departure from Earth. He hung his head trying to decide. If they went back now, there was a chance they could surprise everyone. They could get back minutes after they left, ready to fight back, ready to take action to save their world. Or they could teleport right into a trap.  

Was he ready?  Physical complaints aside, his spellcraft had never been better. Using his connection to the Song, he could cast both more precisely and more organically than ever before. He could tell what was possible to an extent he had never imagined, on scales would never dare to touch.  He shuddered thinking about the casual power Jo used, and expected him to use without pause.  But more, he worried that they were not ready as a group. Although Paul and Brent had been helping with his practice, outside of it, they hadn’t spoken a word to him since he’d agreed to what Jo wanted. And they were far more at peace with it than Master Gryth. The old mage had cussed him up one side and down the other, and left him with a set of scars on his right arm, a reminder of a panicked moment when his own master thought he might have been possessed, or gone rogue.

He shuddered again, feeling the light seeping from Gryth’s claws under his skin, searching for corruption to burn, thankfully finding no purchase. He wasn’t sure at all what to do to re-earn his family’s trust. They’d been through so much together, and to lose it at this point stung worse than the rest of his aches and pains together.  When the door slid open, he unconsciously hunched his shoulders against whatever new condemnation he’d earned today. He finally turned his head to see who entered, since no one spoke.

Paul shook his head at him, then sat in the pilot’s chair, facing Michael, put his elbows on his knees, his chin and his hands and stared for a long few minutes. “You look like shit, Michael.”

“It’s been a rough week.”

Paul half snorted. “I came to say I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Good. Because I just don’t feel like it. I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry that we got angry because you took a risk no one should take without warning your pack. I’m not sorry.”

Michael nodded. “*I’m* sorry.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be. Damn it. I want to tell you that you should be. I want to SOOOOO badly.  But it’s just not true. You did the right thing. You saw the call, you answered it, and you did it without a word of freaking complaint. And everyone around you lost their shit. And did you cave? Did you get mad or sit around pouting? Nope. You just soldiered on and did what you had to do. You insufferable prick.”

“Wow.”

“I’m kind of out of words for how mad I am, MIchael. If we get through this, we need to have a long talk. Because you can’t do this. You can’t keep doing this. You’ll end up like your grandfather. You’ll be batshit insane in that damn tower, mad at the world for the choices you felt you had to make. And sooner or later, you’ll have to choose between the world and everything and everyone you love, and you’ll choose the world. And I pity the world when you do. Because the crap the world goes through now is nothing compared to the shit you’ll rain down on us.”

“So this is all because you think I’m gonna lose it.”

“Yes. No. A little. We worry about you Michael.  A month ago, you were our new little brother. A little socially retarded maybe, but great. And then... went and hero’d up like 15 ways from Friday. And now you’re going to be the next best thing to a god. You’ve made yourself one of the ancient angels, the legends made out of the fall of the San. You’re an inch from not being a person, and I’m not ready to let the person go. I’m not ready to let you be something we can’t touch.”

“I won’t be. I promise.” Tears were stuck in Michael’s eye, blurring the room in a salty haze. “I won’t.”

“Won’t you?” Paul’s tone was arch. “You can promise that? Can you really promise that?”

Michael shook his head. “I promise I’ll try. I’ll do everything I can. For Randall and the baby. For you and Brent and Gryth and Ra’Cha and Ryan. I have so many reasons to stay me. To be a person, not a thing. I can promise I’ll try. That I’ll fight for it.”

“I guess that’ll have to do. How long do we have?”

“A day. Maybe. We just left. We can go back now without causing that kind of problem.”

“Are you ready?”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be ready. But I’m as close as I’m going to get.”

“We should probably tell the others. Stuff to do, right? Get you in your pretty metal shirt, get the bone sword out, check the plan again, kiss Randall goodbye.  Maybe even make sure you aren’t walking around half-crippled with pain because Brent and I are dumbasses and you’ve gotten too good at lying to Randall.”

Michael stared down at the floor guiltily.

“You know damn well you can’t lie to me. I saw you stumping down here. Let’s get you to where we can take a better look.”

Michael nodded, and started to magick his crutches to himself, but Paul smacked his hand. “Save your energy. I can fetch stuff just fine.”  He brought Michael his crutches, then helped him up, then nearly crushed him in a hug. “You dumbass kid.”  

Michael nodded.

In the end, it took all of them who were going home to manage it. Michael to push the ship through the Nav matrix, Gryth to pinpoint their location within the shield, and Brent and Paul working together with Ra’Cha to keep their arrival hidden. It would have been impossible, even then, if it hadn’t been for Jo. The shield was still there, but she barely seemed to notice. She wove Michael’s magic into her song, and attached it to some other part of herself, and it was like the shield wasn’t there at all. Gryth was, all things considered, pretty upset about it.  

Brent approached him about it later, only to receive a snarled “Well, we didn’t know there WAS a song, now DID we?” Brent had hastily changed the subject and they hadn’t brought it up again.

It had been a long 5 day trip back to Michael’s house, followed by a short portal to just outside the Archmage’s city. Gryth looked around for a second and sighed. “I never know where to look. Jo?”

Her voice came from right in front of him. “Look anywhere. I’m a song, silly. Better to listen.”

He closed his eyes for a moment to exercise restraint. “Can you sense it? Can you track whatever like he has so we can unbind it?”

“Oh yes. Of course.”

“Can you take us to her?”

“...I don’t understand.”

“Can you take us to your sister so we can undo this?”

“But she’s here.”

Gryth snarled lightly.

Michael coughed. “I think what he means to ask is “Is there a locus where it would be easiest to unbind the spells without getting stomped on by the archmage?””  

“Oh.  No. I don’t think there is. But we should probably attempt it from near her physical manifestation. I can spot it now that I can see his binding.”

The volume of Gryth’s snarling increased noticeably.

“Alright. Tell me where, and I’ll get us on our way. Just call me portal boy.”

“I don’t know why you would bother to portal to it. It’s right there in the monument with the statue.”

Michael hung his head. “Of course she is. I guess I’d better go get Ryan.”

He prepared to open a portal to Ryan, glimmers of spells catching on his fingers, when the city walls exploded outward toward them, caught a bare instant before it was too late by Paul and Brent’s combined efforts.

Thomas floated toward them on a pillar of blazing light, strangely constructed wards shimmering around him. “I think not. Let the little emperor be. I warned you about coming to call on my oaths.”

“We’re not here to call on your oaths, Grandfather. We’re here to talk to the lady. Will you deny us that?”

“Yes. You want to distract her. She’s not here for you. You were given your tasks. Go do them.”

“She told us to come.”

“You’re a liar, boy, as well as a fool. Go away.”

“Ask her, then.”

Thomas’s eyes narrowed. He turned from them and reached back into the city with a hooking gesture. A bright glow, almost unbearable to the eye, drifted toward them. His gaze was locked upon it, all his attention focused as Gryth yanked open the portal Michael had started and, behind cover of Michael’s wings, ripped a startled young merman through. He clamped his hand over Ryan’s mouth and pointed at Thomas. Ryan’s tail dissolved into legs, and he set himself firmly against the earth, trident firm in both hands.

When Thomas finally turned, the lady by his side, it was too late for him to stop. His face mottled with rage. “Tricks, Michael? You want to kill me with tricks?”

“I don’t want to kill you at all. I want you to release her.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Grandfather.” Michael’s tone was almost pitying. The tone one might use on a small child caught in an obvious lie. Michael rose on his wings, catching a spelled thermal, and spiraling gracefully into the air until his eyes were even with the old mage’s.

“We know. We can see it now. Would you like me to show everyone?”

“You don’t have what it takes, boy. Even if there were such a thing, it would be beyond you.”

“Would it truly?” The spellwork Michael layed out with his hands and wings wasn’t large. It wasn’t especially bright against the daylight, or against the lady’s glow. But it was intricate, soaring and graceful. It fell in gentle swoops and spirals though the air, like Michael’s own flight until it began to catch on what Thomas swore wasn’t there. And where it touched, it grabbed. It latched on and spread up and down the lines of a set of spells so tangled and complex Michael nearly cried. Thomas had been casting this for years. Decades. Since long before Michael was born. And it was a masterwork. Complicated, elegant, and strong like all his work, it was wrapped round and round them hundreds, maybe thousands of times. It was an order of magnitude more complicated than any spell Michael had ever seen.

Gryth gasped as the whole structure of it became clear. He tried not to look for Jo as he asked “Can you do anything?”

He was sure Thomas couldn’t hear her reply: “To act now would risk everything. Trust my avatar. Defend him, and hold the emperor clear until it is time.”  Gryth nodded.

Michael set himself against the air, and *listened* to the interaction of his spell and the dozens binding his grandfather to the lady. He shook his head trying to focus, to find the right point to start.

“Grandfather. Undo this. You know this is wrong.”

“Nonsense. She is mine. I am hers. It was always meant to be this way, wasn’t it, dear?”

The smile on the lady’s physical form was painful for Michael to see. It was so bright, so pure, and yet he could see the spellcraft that forced it, coerced it from so deep within her that it was almost impossible to tell. Her song resonated terribly, jangling out of tune. A tear ran down Michael’s face, certain of his own failure.  He lifted his face to the sky. And then he realized. There was no spell there. But there was light. He looked back at his grandfather incredulous. He listened intently to the song around him, and all around him, the Lady and the song were there.

He gathered himself and prayed to the tribunal that he wasn’t wrong, that he wasn’t dooming them all. Then he flew close to the lady and his grandfather, hand outstretched. “Please grandfather. Let this go. Be hers again like you were meant to be. As a child, as a champion, as a promise to our world.”

His grandfather shook his head, face thunderous and started to strike at Michael, but it was too late. Michael had, with his other hand, already buried the sword of bone deep within the Lady’s glowing chest. She smiled. This time Michael could tell it was her own smile. Then she exploded with light. Michael and Thomas were flung to the ground. His wings cracked against stone and his arm hung limp against his side bleeding. His hair smoked. But he was the better off. Thomas pulled himself off the ground in a flare of spellcraft, a smoldering nightmare. His body hung crooked in the air, and his skin was a burnt charnel house of torn meat.

He rose again on a pillar of spellcraft, but there was no light in it. The light shied away from him. Tendrils of spellcraft snatched at the air around him, and where it did, darkness flooded in as light abandoned the space. Michael’s skin crawled. He yelled for the other’s attention. “We’ve got to stop this. She’ll feel it. He’ll call her right to us.”

He raised his voice again. “LADY!  Please. Listen. You can’t leave us. You can’t leave him. I won’t let him touch bind you again, but you must not leave. She will come. Please. Stay with us.”

The lady answered his call. The light that cascaded downward was harsh and hot, punishing. It smashed against Thomas’s spells and crushed them, pushing them back to the edges of his smoldering skin. Then Thomas pushed back. Raw magic corruscated wildly against the light in enormous clashes of energy. Michael turned wildly, relieved to see his friends safely tucked behind massive, tight shields.

He pushed himself to his feet. He yelled, voice hoarse but strong. “Grandfather. Stop. You were wrong. You have done wrong. But you can stop. You can let this madness go. Let this GO. Be the man you were. The man your wife loved. Come back to us.”

Thomas turned on him. His face was terrible to look at. His voice ripped across the air between them in harsh whispers. “You. You did this. You tried to take it all away from me. I’ll have her back. I’ll have it all back. But first. I. Will. Kill. You.  And no stupid promise can stop me now. That could have killed me. Nearly killed me. And that was your last mistake. Nothing can save you from me now.”

He rose up further in the air and terrible reels of spells began spiraling around him on every axis. The light around him dimmed as he tried to pull against it, then withdrew out of his range, leaving him, dangling in a field of black. He reached out a hand toward Michael, hand poised to cast, and as he opened his mouth, a terrifying noise from behind Michael smashed his spell to a billion pieces.

Ryan stalked forward and stood in front of Michael.

“I warned you. I AM THE TIDE.”

He raised his trident in the air, and Michael could hear the song of it, Ryan’s song, strident in the air, suppressed, surging impossibly large, waiting to be let loose. Michael opened his wings to the light and to the Song, and knowing what he did, being who he was, he linked the light and the Song to Ryan’s song in a way neither of them could have imagined weeks before. When Ryan raised his voice, it was a cataclysm. Matter, light, and sound shattered on his scream. Thomas’s shields, slowly, desperately coming back together after Ryan’s initial attack, disappeared utterly. And the man behind them fared no better. Spell after spell flared and crumbled before the onslaught. Spells pushed themselves back into his skin and branded themselves there. Lines of his own spellcraft seared back into him, pushed inexorably by the tide of Ryan’s cry, and shards of spells sliced into him deeply, carrying away chunks of his still burning flesh.

From the moment Ryan raised his voice, there was no doubt how it would end. It took a long minuted before Thomas crashed to the earth before them, wrecked and broken. His breathing was a labored gasp. No part of him was unmarked by his own spells or Ryan’s wrath. His hands were unrecognizable, a charred mess of scrambled flesh and burnt bone. Some of his ribs lay exposed to the sun. And then Ryan shoved his trident inexorably down through his stomach and pinned him to the earth.

His face, Michael was shocked to see, was sad. His voice, although it carried perfectly, was soft.

“Not in a thousand thousand years has the wave been called to break the forsworn. Less than a handful of times, scattered across eons have we been called to shatter. But we answer the call, old one. As we always have, as we always will.  Your oaths were given, and for them, you were given great gifts. And for your forswearing, I take them.”

When he raised his voice this time it was different. It was not strident, but it was harsh. It ate at the air and it PULLED at Michael, even at the edges. In the center of it, it was a vortex, a raging torrent of sound and light rushing upward from Thomas and into the trident stuck through him into the earth. It was stunning amount of energy. It crackled on the handle of the trident terribly. The trident started to smoke against Ryan’s skin. Michael started to reach out but before he could help, a hand of light settled below Ryan’s on the Trident.

Her voice was unmistakable, bright and glorious, but sad. “Breaker. Let me. Yours is the duty, but mine was the making of it. Let me ease your burden. This power was once mine, and I can help you to take it in a way that will not harm you.” Ryan’s face was awed. He nodded. The terrible maelstrom he had created funneled gracefully into the trident, and it began to glow softly. Slowly, over time, it became bright, shining as bright as the lady’s hand.

Michael’s eye was drawn downward to his grandfather’s wrecked body, pinned to the earth. A soft voice murmured in his ear. “He will not last long. His mortality is set upon him, and he has suffered much today. If you can find forgiveness in your heart do it quickly.”

A tear rolled down Michael’s cheek. He knelt. “I’m sorry. Grandfather. I’m sorry for whatever it was that made you this way. Maybe past the edge of this life, you can find find what you miss.”

Thomas’s lungs worked. His throat tightened and his ruined jaw worked. Michael leaned in closer. “Burn in hell.” Michael flinched back.

Michael’s chance to forgive a living grandfather stopped there. Ryan’s trident, glowing like an iron from the forge, ripped free of Thomas and the earth, and flashed down again in a blaze, crushing the old man’s skull, smashing it against the stone beneath. He looked over at the lady. “My promise is fulfilled. The oathsworn is broken. The gifts are reclaimed.”  Then he turned to Michael. “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO? You’re broken all over again? Can’t I leave you alone for a minute? What were you THINKING?”

Brent managed a laugh. “What on earth would make you believe he was thinking?”

The Lady disappeared in droplets of spinning light that shimmered before MIchael for a moment. “You did well, chosen. I’m sorry this burden lay upon you. I am sorrier for your loss. For all the wrong he did, despite how he was broken, there was a time, almost longer ago than even I can see, when he was a good man. I know, I have seen, that your friends, and even you yourself, worry that you will become like him. Michael believe me. In all the way that matter to the making of what he became, you are not him. Always he craved power to hold, where you gain take power reluctantly, for its use. Never could he have thought to refuse my sister, and not for a moment would he have set aside the birthright she has given you. He would have flown here with stars in his wings and our father’s stars upon his lips and in his eyes and used that power even though it destroyed us utterly, confident in his own power to stop our sister.”

Her voice grew louder for all of them to hear. “This child is the heart of my sister, but he has also done me great service. My blessing is with him, and with all of you. But believe me. The burden we have laid before him is heavy and the way is long and difficult, and he will have need of all of you before it ends, just as he has needed you before. Do not look at him warily. To the heart of him, which I can see better than any, he is yours. Treasure him. Keep him safe.”

She turned back to Michael. “At the end, no matter what. Even should we lose utterly, you will be loved and remembered. Child of Song, Child of Stars, Child of Light. Like my sister, I love thee.”

Light swirled around Michael and then dissipated, brightening the sky around them.

Michael’s wings were healed, his arm no longer perilously dangled at his side, his skin was unblemished, and shone with a healthy tan. His hair, always a riot of mid-blond curls, was a shining gold. Jo’s voice laughed on the air. “Sister. He’s mine.”

The lady’s voice laughed back. “He was mine first. I’m not stealing him sister. Just leaving my mark.”

Their laughter swirled in the air for a moment, then grew quiet.   

Michael stood from beside his Grandfather’s ruined body, and with a sad, soft, murmured song, blew it to ash. The wind swirled and it was carried away in a blink.

He turned to his friends who stared at him. Ryan left his trident stuck in the ground where it had completed it’s terrible purpose only minutes before, and launched himself at Michael in a fierce hug. “You changed. I can tell. I don’t know how, but you changed. But it’s ok. You’re still my friend. Always.”

Michael bent down and picked Ryan up holding him tightly. A tear ran down his cheek where Ryan couldn’t see. “Always.”