She told how the demon’s mark had begun flaking off everything it clung to, the scales blowing away like dead leaves and turning to rust, the little black eyes cracking and shrivelling. What was left beneath, when that covering was thrown back, had not been pretty. The trees and beasts and people of the Ordwood had been eaten away, blended, recombined in experimental ways as though by some mind that had no idea quite what they were or how they worked. Esha and Allwer could confirm every trace of the demon was disintegrating.
Which had left Nyrgoth Elder.
They had no way to help him. He seemed dead, but perhaps “dead” meant something different. Perhaps it meant something less permanent. If they only could . . .
Lyn had been shouting and screaming at the mute monster, demanding it help. Demanding it take the wizard’s body back to his tower, where his magic was strongest. It ignored her. It only spoke Wizard, Esha guessed. They knew the Elder had his own speech. Why would his familiar respond to the words of regular people?
And nobody spoke Wizard, of course, but Esha did speak every other language known within two hundred miles. All the trade speech and the guild speech, all the tangle of related cants and dialects that people had carried to every corner of the world. More, whenever the wizard had spoken in his own way, to himself or to the monster, she had listened just as she’d listen to any traveller from a distant land. So Esha catechised the monster with every manner of speech she knew, hunting out any words they had in common. Because she knew there were some words that were close as sisters in all languages. Basic words, fundamentally human words. Words even a monster might know. “Mother.” “Father.” Such a basic concept, and there were only a handful of ways to say it, in thirty different languages.
And something she said reached it. Some word so fundamental that humans and wizards alike shared it. “Home.” And the monster had been airborne again, carrying Lyn and Nyrgoth’s corpse, with her friends left behind. Which was why Lyn arrived at court long before them.
For Lyn, Esha’s arrival meant some slight lessening of her mother’s disregard, to find that her Fourth Daughter had not just been wandering starry-eyed through the forests fighting with sticks. And yet, as though something of the demon clung to her, too deep rooted to dig out, catharsis never came. Her mother never stopped scowling. As though defeating the demon and saving the Ordwood meant nothing. Lannesite didn’t really care about the Ordwood, Lyn realised. Or perhaps a weaker and more divided Ordwood might be preferable. Even with Esha’s testimony, she could see everyone still doubted the details. Esha had lost her edge years before, after all, and Allwer was no more than a criminal. Something had happened, and now it had stopped happening, but was it really plausible that Lynesse had a hand in any of it? Lynesse the simpleton, the dreamer?
*
In her chambers, barred from her mother’s presence, she clung to what she could. She had defeated the demon, whatever they believed. She had ridden the familiar monster all the way to its home, the tower. And there she had hauled the elder’s body to the door and yelled at it until its invisible guardian had opened it for her. Then she’d yelled at the empty interior that she’d brought its master back for burial, by whatever traditions sorcerers held to.
When at last it had opened a panel in the wall, revealing a coffin-space within, she had done the last part of her duty. Interred the last of the Elders in his place of power. Spoken some words. And left.
*
Nineteen days after Esha’s return, a messenger appeared at the palace, a woman whose voice shook as she recounted her missive. A monster had appeared to her, she said: a flying thing with a hide of metal and teeth of crystal. It had hung in the sky above her and spoken with a stone’s voice, calling that Lynesse Fourth Daughter come to the sorcerer’s tower, and that she bring Esha Free Mark and Allwer Once Exile with her, by the invitation of Nyrgoth Elder.
And Lyn had the profound satisfaction of standing before her mother and the whole court and saying, “Well?”
Nyr
THE SATELLITE ISN’T TALKING to me anymore.
I don’t know exactly if this is because, once it exercised the Ultimate Anti-contamination Measures, I just don’t exist to it anymore. After all, as far as it’s concerned, it’s just obliterated my body to stop the locals getting hold of it and all the precious technology it contains.
On the other hand, it might be the locator. It wasn’t my heart I actually ripped from my own chest, after all, but it was my beacon, that let the satellite know exactly where I was. I was right there, where the gateway stood, as far as it was concerned. And now I’m not here, because I don’t have a beacon anymore, so the satellite ignores my requests to link with it. My familiar spirit has been cut from me.