381. The Farthest Stars
The mana which made up all of Liv poured out of the bridge, through the pulsing black orb which hung, vibrating, beneath the surface of the moon. For a moment, she swirled about the enormous cavern, tracing ghostly fingers of consciousness along the broken machinery which had opened the way to the Last City.
Where her soul touched, Vædic glyphs pulsed brightly, and then died again. Her passage told her enough to realize that no one would be using any of these enchantments again, not without months or years of repair work, and perhaps more salvaged parts than existed in all the rifts of the world. The orb, however, would remain – just as Bælris had promised. Of that, she was certain. A way left open for her people to, someday, escape.
For all Liv had known, while she stood beneath that strange sun, it could have taken her an hour, a week, or a month to cross the bridge. She’d prepared herself for the likelihood that there would be no one waiting for her beneath the surface of the moon: that her friends, family, and companions would have returned to Bald Peak, and that they might have given her up for dead. She’d tried not to think about the tears her daughter would be shedding each night that she was gone, wondering whether or not Liv would ever come back.
But there, sitting in front of the orb, were Keri and her father, with Sidonie and Arjun standing behind them, speaking in low tones to Matthew and Triss. Perhaps twenty feet away even, for some inexplicable reason that Liv could already tell was going to set her eye to twitching, Henriette and her young friends.
“We need to at least move everyone who’s wounded down to Bald Peak for treatment,” Arjun said, his voice low. Without ears, Liv heard him clearly. “We can leave a set of guards up here to wait for her to come back, but it could be hours yet. It could be days.”
“Look at them,” Triss said, nodding her head in the direction of where Keri and Liv’s father sat next to each other, eyes fixed on the orb. “They’re not ready to leave. You’re just going to have an argument if you push them. I’ll take the kids down, and Matthew can stay.”
Before Liv had a chance to pull a new body together for herself, she brushed a swirl of mana, her soul and her Authority, up against Keri’s. She could feel the pain shooting through his body, up from those arms which looked so horrifically burned that even Arjun had only begun to heal them. At her touch, he lifted his head, and his eyes opened.
“Liv?”
The conversation between Arjun, Sidonie, Triss and Matthew paused, and even Ettie and her friends looked over at Keri. Sidonie furrowed her brow. “I feel something, but –”
Keri rose. “She’s here. I can feel her.”
For the second time, Liv focused on rebuilding a body for herself, piece by piece, out of pure mana. From the tips of her toes to her fingers, to each strand of white hair, unbound, until Liv could once again take a breath of air into lungs which had never before been used. She wrapped herself in a white dress, which was easy enough to make, but there was so much she’d lost and could not simply will into existence. Her guild ring, the set of bracelet and rings that she’d won from Milisant so long ago, the pearl from the King Tide at Coral Bay – but what made her ache the most was knowing that Julianne’s stormwand was gone forever.
Liv hardly had time to open her new eyes before Keri had wrapped his arms around her awkwardly. He didn’t actually place his hands on her back, but instead held his burnt forearms away from making contact. “I knew you’d come back,” her husband murmured, but Liv could feel the desperate relief in the lines of his body.
“I’m here,” she told him, and pressed a quick kiss to his lips. No sooner had Keri released her than Liv’s father caught her up in his arms, and then Matthew, Triss, and even Henriette in turn. Liv felt herself pressed against one member of her family after another, and with each embrace in turn, she felt the tension of battle bleed away. Only once they’d all had a chance to assure themselves that she was alive did Liv actually get a chance to explain what had happened.
“Ractia is finally dead,” Liv told them, wrapping her fingers around Keri’s hand. “She won’t ever be coming back.”
“How can you be sure?” Henriette asked. Liv’s niece and her friends looked like they’d been through a lot more fighting than she was comfortable with – they’d gotten jack-of-plate in Alliance colors, somewhere or other, and each of them was bruised, scraped, bandaged, and soaked in sweat. “She came back once already, didn’t she? How do we know that won’t happen again?”
Liv took a moment to consider how to answer that, and when she finally spoke, she turned to look Keri in the eye, first. It was his ancestor, after all. “I spoke to Bælris. There were actually quite a few Vædim, where we ended up. They called it the Last City, and it was – well, anyway, after I told them I was married to one of his descendants, all the rest of them left him to deal with me. I think he tried to help as best he could, actually, once I told him about you and Rianne.”
“Ractia fled back to all the other gods, and they let you kill her?” Valtteri asked. “I would have thought they might have something to say about that, one way or another.” He crossed his arms.
Liv nodded. “I didn’t think any of them had much sympathy for her – apparently she broke quite a few rules. In any event, Bælris said something about hunting down pieces of dead Vædim, to bring them back. How they’d been looking for something left of the Lady of Time for ages now, without any luck, but they’d found Antris quick enough. So there may be, somewhere out among the stars, a piece of Ractia left. But even if there is, and even if they find it, she won’t be coming back here, because Bælris promised that our world will be off-limits for the next thousand years. He said it was like an apology, for everything they’d done to us.”
She turned to the black orb. “That will stay,” Liv explained. “It’s a bridge to the Last City. And in a thousand years, anyone who wants to, and anyone who can survive the journey, can come with me.”
“What does it take to survive?” Sidonie asked. She actually took a step toward the sphere, leaning over to examine it through her glasses. “Is it like using a waystone?”
“No.” Liv shook her head, trying to decide just how much to explain. “No, not quite. You have to be able to survive as just a soul bound to currents of mana, and then put your body back together afterward. That’s what it means to truly be one of them, as near as I can tell.”
“You are, then?” Shooting Star asked. The young Red Shield wilted slightly, when everyone turned to stare at him, but he didn’t back down from his question. “The Temple has been saying it for ages, but – you’re actually a goddess?”
Liv sighed. “They considered me one of them enough to hold me to their laws,” she said. “So I suppose that makes me one of the Vædim. Whether you can actually count them as gods is another question altogether.”
“If that thing’s going to wait for a thousand years,” Arjun said, finally speaking up, “then we will have more than enough time to discuss this later. Let’s get everyone back down to Bald Peak.”
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“Our soldiers?” Liv asked, keeping Keri’s hand in hers. “The Culling Mages, and – I assume we have prisoners?”
“All back at Bald Peak, save for a small guard set here,” Matthew promised her. “Kaija set a squad of your personal guard to watch over the shaft, and stop anyone else from coming down to this level.”
“She’s pretty upset that she wasn’t here with you,” Liv’s father warned her. “And she wanted to remain, but I told her they needed everyone they could get to preserve the worst of the wounded in ice.”
“Alright. Let’s gather everyone up and go, then,” Liv said. “And Elder Aira - what happened to her?”
At the mention of the Elder’s name, the faces of Liv’s friends and family fell. It wasn’t a surprise; Liv had felt her soul in the dark places between, but it hurt all the same.
“She died fighting Noghis, Liv,” Keri said, and he gave her hand a slight squeeze. “She helped me kill him. We had her remains brought down to Bald Peak, so that she can be returned to Al’Fenthia.”
Liv looked down at the ground and swallowed her tears. “Do we know how many, yet?” she asked. “How many died?”
“Fifty-seven soldiers of the Alliance,” Sidonie answered. “And twenty-three culling mages.”
“Those numbers will likely go up,” Arjun said. “We more than a hundred wounded, to varying degrees. Some of them won’t recover. I hope this was worth the cost.”
“It was,” Liv said. “I’ll want a list of names, so that I can write to their families. But yes – what happened here is worth it. Ractia won’t ever enslave any of our people again; there won’t be any more sacrifices to her, nor any more wars on her behalf. Whatever else happens from here on, her touch on our world is done.”
☙
When they appeared, from out of a flash of light, on the waystone beneath Bald Peak, Liv was only half-surprised to find that a crowd had gathered. Some were Alliance soldiers, including a unit of guards who’d maintained their places atop the walls which surrounded the stone itself. Others were the culling mages who were only lightly wounded, many of them sporting fresh bandages. Lia Every was there, and Professor Norris, both crammed atop the rampart which looked down on arrivals, shoulder to shoulder with the men and women who’d fought their way through the ruins at Liv’s command.
The moment that the light dimmed, and those who arrived could be seen clearly, whispers and murmurs ran through the crowd, spilling down from the fortifications to the mass of townsfolk who’d crowded outside the walls, only a portion of whom were visible through the open gate. Liv saw that some hours had passed, for the western sky was aflame with orange, red, and gold light from the setting of the sun. To the east, where the light had already died, the first stars had begun to glitter, and the great ring which surrounded their world shone silver.
“It’s the queen!”
“They’re alive!”
The four guards who’d been left to defend the shaft stepped out to surround Liv, Keri, and the rest of her family in a loose square as the entire crowd seemed to surge forward. Those atop the wall leaned over the crenellations, as if to get a better look, while the crowd outside the walls gave a cry and tried to squeeze their way in. The scattered voices rose into a chorus of cheers, as word of Liv’s return spread.
“There’s no point in even trying to get through the streets,” Liv’s father shouted in her ear. “Do you have enough mana left to get us up to the peak?”
The question was ridiculous, though he had no way of knowing it, and it made Liv smile. Her body still thrummed with all the dense mana of the Last City, and all the power that she’d consumed from Ractia. It came to her call eagerly, like a purring housecat at the scent of dinner, and it took only the barest effort to conjure a disc of golden mana beneath their feet. There was no point in concealing that particular trick any longer, and Liv lifted them all up.
With a jostling of bodies and angry shouts, Kaija forced her way through the crowd and leapt up onto the rising platform. For a moment, her legs dangled and kicked out beneath them, until Valtteri caught her by the arm and yanked her up.
“Next time, I’m not being left behind,” the captain of Liv’s guard grumbled. “And what happened to your armor? Why aren’t you wearing a helm?”
Liv opened her mouth to answer, and then laughed. “Scattered somewhere between here and the farthest stars,” she said. “I’m sorry, Kaija. I lost it. I lost a lot of things, but it’s alright. We won.”
She let the golden disc rotate slowly as she lifted the entire group up over the walls which surrounded the waystone. From this height, Liv could see the extent of the crowd gathered around to wait for the returning soldiers and mages. She tried to imagine how it might feel for one of her people – a butcher or a baker, perhaps – to know that their army, their queen, and their prince had all gone to fight a goddess, leaving only a princess hardly old enough to read and write behind. She imagined that it would be frightening, from their point of view. What would have happened to the Alliance, to Bald Peak and Whitehill and all the rest, if Liv had never returned? The very least she could do was to ease their fears.
When she opened her lips to speak, Liv filtered her voice through the lens of her own mana, using her intent to shape the sounds which came out so that those below would hear both Lucanian and Vakansa at once. It wasn’t quite the trick Ractia had used, but then again Liv hadn’t had nearly that much time to practice.
“The Lady of Blood is dead, and her son as well!” Liv shouted, letting her echoing voice reverberate off the enchanted cobblestones of the streets, and the bricks of the shops and houses. “I have the word of Bælris, Vædic Lord of Light, that no other gods will come to our world for a thousand years! There will be no more cults, no more attacks by her worshippers, no more sacrifices in her name!”
At that, the crowd let out a roar.
“I think you have just declared today a holiday,” Keri said, having to nearly shout into Liv’s ear before she could hear him clearly.
“Let them all celebrate, then,” Liv shouted back, unable to keep herself from grinning. “I think we all have a good enough reason.”
She raised her arms theatrically, and the golden disc of conjured mana lifted up into the sky, soaring toward the curtain walls which encircled the peak at the very summit of the mountain. The cries from the city fell away beneath them, and a mountain breeze whipped around their bodies, catching up the strands of Liv’s hair and the hem of the dress she’d made for herself from mana. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sidonie, Triss, Henriette and Ronja each trying to brush their own hair out of their own faces. But so quickly did Liv carry them all up to the peak that the disc had soared over the walls and settled down in the courtyard before any of the women had a chance to make a new braid.
Kaija and the other four guards rushed off the disc first, before Liv had even allowed it to dissolve into golden motes of light, which drifted up into the sky, to be lost among the colors of the sunset. Long shadows stretched out behind the guards as Liv and the others followed them across the courtyard to the palace doors.
Before her bare feet had reached the lowest step, the doors burst open at a shove from within. Thora rushed out, and Liv’s grandmother Eila, as well as her mother. But Rei and Rianne pushed past all of them, the children scrambling down the steps. Rianne threw herself at Liv’s body, wrapping her arms around her mother’s hips, while even Reikis, for all of his additional years, showed himself not so grown up that he wouldn’t embrace his father.
Liv pulled her daughter up into her arms, settling the girl on one hip, and pressed half a dozen kisses into her silky hair. “I’m home, dove,” she said, and looked out over the girl’s head to the women who waited at the top of the stairs.
“You see? They’re all well enough.” Liv’s grandmother rested a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “A bit banged up, perhaps, but alive.” An enchanted brooch of mana stone was visible, secured to Margaret Brodbeck’s bodice.
“Not quite all of us,” Keri admitted, once his son had taken a step back. “Aira tär Keria is dead.”
Eila winced at that. “She will be missed. We’ll all have to go to Al’Fenthia to honor her memory, and see her spirit off.”
“Time for that tomorrow, I think,” Margaret Brodbeck said. “Why don’t you all come in, get yourselves cleaned up, and have something to eat.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Liv said, starting up the stairs with Rianne in her arms. For as long as she could remember, whenever she’d been sad, upset, or hurt, her mother had tried to make things better by cooking her something. There was something comforting about the fact that hadn’t changed.
“What happened to your arms?” Rei asked his father, as they turned to follow her into the palace.
“Burned by Noghis,” Keri answered. Liv could hear the pain that lingered in her husband’s voice. “It was worse, before. Arjun’s already done good work.”
At the hands of Liv’s guards, the doors of the palace swung shut behind her family as their voices echoed through the halls.