The Tower of the Forgotten (12 page)

It
quickened, incrementally, almost too subtle to notice as it happened. The
gleaming lights flooded the dark sky above. Not just dark, but blank, Portia
realized. There, in the margins of the worlds, she could see familiar
constellations above her—the archer, the great
bear, the dragon—as if viewing them
through a sheer mesh fabric, but she could also see the strange shifting sky
lights of Salus, borealis-like and as fitful as lightning. They overlaid one
another in places where the two worlds met. But gaps in the barrier were
forming, tearing at the edges of the great rent that the tower had made for
itself.

The
tower shuddered and Nigel frowned. "You wouldn’t be interfering with the plan, would you, Portia?"

He
turned and she saw, too late, the black stiletto in his hand, the same one
Imogen had concealed in her flesh and used to divide Nigel from Kanika.

He
looked at her then, frankly and directly, gazing straight into her eyes. It was
something, Portia realized, that she did not think he had ever done before. Nigel’s interactions were primarily of the sidelong variety, the
not-quite-making-eye-contact sort that drove Portia and everyone else in
Penemue mad. Nigel always comported himself like a liar, and this sudden,
honest connection stilled her tongue in her mouth.

In
the space between heartbeats, he whipped his right arm around and slammed the
hell-blade stiletto into her chest.

"You’re not going to understand, but one of you has to die, maybe
both. I don’t know yet."

The
pain surprised her, lancing through her body in a sudden wave, followed by an
ebbing sense of coldness. The chill emanated from the stick of metal and
rendered her immobile. Her left arm quickly grew numb. Her chest spasmed and
her lungs contracted painfully, expelling her breath in a plume of bloody
sputum.

Imogen
screamed, a chilling sound that Portia thought could have woken the dead. But
it really was not helping her. Her eyelids fluttered, then slowed into a series
of long, slow blinks before sagging half-closed. Her knees gave way in a slow,
melting sensation, and she droped to the floor. Paralyzed, she lay quiet and
peaceful; within her, the panic subsided as her heart flagged in its beating.
She floated in an icy prison of her own body.

She
struggled to roll over onto her side, but her body would not respond. With her
right hand, she managed to jerkily pluck at the wound, but the stiletto had
sunk below her skin, caught between ribs and muscle. Blood darkened the silk of
her tunic.

Imogen
struggled in Nigel’s grasp. He snatched the
axe up from the floor and brought its point under her chin. She pushed it aside
and fell to her knees, trying to dig the metal out of her beloved’s chest.

"Well, that ought to keep you busy
enough for the time being. The
both
of you." He set the axe across
his shoulders and strolled, whistling, out of the room.

"Portia, I’m here, I’m here, darling."

Portia
made another attempt to draw her wings beneath her to lever herself up, but it
was no use. Imogen’s beautiful face faded
in and out of her vision, and she could not remember if her lover was alive or
had that all been a dream? She reached for Imogen’s
hand, catching hold of familiar fingers, slender and strong and gentle. Maybe
this lovely stranger could help her call Lady Hester. She would know what to
do.

Portia
licked her lips and tried to speak, but instead of words, only a growl came
forth.

The
last connection between mind and body unraveled and snapped.

She had no medallions, no incantations, no
clever tricks with which to save herself. Her last prayer echoed through her
skull,
Imogen…

Clouds crept across her vision and the
world went dark.

—
9
—

"PORTIA! PORTIA, WAKE UP!"

She wanted to answer. The voice came from a
long way off, echoing slightly through Portia’s ears. She did not think she
could reach it. There was chanting, a low, urgent murmuring that brought Portia
inch by inch into consciousness.

Something
loosened around her body, slowly, like a fist unclenching.

Nimble
fingers investigated her wound and the pain flared, rekindled behind a thick
curtain of chill.

"Imogen…" she mumbled, making her lips form the words. She forced
open an eyelid. "Oh, Radinka. You always
wanted to be a healer."

"You’re amazingly perceptive when you’re unconscious." Radinka’s concerned face came into hazy view. "Hold still, this is going to hurt. A lot."

"I
can’t move, so do what you must," Portia rasped.

"Well,
that’s something that’s
gone well about this, isn’t it?"

Portia
moaned, trying to think through the last few moments, or hours. How long had
she been lying there?

"Did
Imogen bring you?"

"She
did. And you’ll have to thank her
later."

"Where
is she?"

"Went
after Nigel."

"What?" Portia’s body wanted nothing
more than to spring into action, but a tremor ran through her and her eyes
rolled up, leaving her gazing at the intricate mosaic on the ceiling. She came
back to herself with a painful twitch.

"Stay
with me, Portia." Radinka had an awful
dagger in her hand, its badly chipped black tip poised over the wound. "I found this on the steps outside. It was all there was at
hand."

The
pain in any other place and time would have been monstrous, but Portia reveled
in the sensation, gasping a deep and blood-drenched breath at the agony that
tore through her flesh as Radinka opened the wound track wider.

She
held onto the pain. It meant she was still alive.

Radinka’s prodding hands touched the stiletto, and it moved, sliding
deeper. Portia grit her teeth against the sick chill of it pricking into
untouched tissue. Radinka growled under her breath. "There is only one way I am getting this out of you."

"I
was afraid you’d say that."

Radinka
rolled Portia over onto her right side. She slid her fingers into the wound
alongside the stylus to guide it and pushed it through, forcing it out above
Portia’s left wing. It pinged against the stone
floor, sounding as innocent as a dropped fork.

A
corona of violet light exploded into Portia’s vision and her lungs
seized up again. Her muscles locked and her limbs shook. Her tongue threatened
to lodge in her throat, and she desperately tried to sit up.

"Hold
still. Believe it or not, that wasn’t the worst part."

"No,
I can’t breathe!"

Radinka
pushed her down, leaning all of her weight onto Portia’s shoulders. "You don’t need to breathe, and if you want to be able to walk, much
less fight Nigel, you’ll let me finish."

Portia
nodded, confused. She swallowed back the desperate urge to sit up and cough
until her lungs felt clear.

Radinka
smoothed Portia’s hair back from her
forehead. "I’ll do my best. But you
understand the risks, don’t you?"

She
laughed—a garbled, wet sound that might have been
mistaken for choking. "You might kill me, or I
can lie here and bleed to death."

"Right,
about that…oh, nevermind. Portia, do you know what
happens if someone dies while they’re here?"

"No.
Don’t want to find out."

Radinka
opened her mouth to speak, but shut it with a click and only nodded. She closed
her eyes. The aura that blossomed around her should have been vibrant: red,
yellow, orange, or even green, all the colors of life, but instead it glowed
pale blue. Portia had felt the healing touch of the Vedma many, many times
throughout her life. She thought she knew what to expect, but this was quite
different.

The
cold surprised her.

Radinka’s hands felt like ice as they pressed down over Portia’s solar plexus. The girl’s half-lidded eyes,
already such a pale, seawater green, paled to creamy white and glowed
ominously.

"I
told you," she whispered, "I can’t do this on the living."

"So,
you’re trying to tell me that I’m already dead?"

Radinka
sighed. "You catch on quick."

"I’ve apparently been dead for a while. Can’t expect me to be a hundred percent, can you?"

"I
don’t know if this will work."

Portia
held still. "I trust you." And she did, despite herself.

The
chill spread through her, freezing her inch by inch until she lay trapped in
icy languor, a hair’s breadth from losing
consciousness again. Radinka chanted a strange, sing-song sort of tune that
reminded Portia of the ditty Kanika had sung to ward off the trees. That seemed
a lifetime ago.

Memories
churned in a great dark sea, as black and cold as the waters beneath the
floating island, circling into a whirlpool with a hint of light at its center.
The light grew in intensity, like a great eye opening and gazing up at them. It
looked through Portia as if she were made of glass, and it looked up at
Radinka. Radinka’s baleful gaze remained
unflinching and unblinking as she exchanged some sort of communication with
whatever presence hovered there in the room with them, yet so far away. Some
accord was reached, and Radinka released Portia and sat back on her heels.

The
rushing of the whirlpool faded into the sound of the pulse throbbing in Portia’s ears. She breathed in a rush of air and it seared her
lungs. Coughing, she breathed again, forcing herself to remain calm as the pain
echoed back on itself through her whole body. But the bleeding had been
staunched and the torn flesh mended.

"What
was that?" Her voice creaked with congealed blood
and saliva.

Radinka’s eyes closed, and she rubbed them with trembling hands. "You don’t really want to know."

"I
do."

Radinka
shook her head. "I fear you’ll know soon enough, though. Come on, we are running out of
time."

It
took a few tries for Portia to get her feet beneath her. The effort left her
breathless, or at least gave her the feeling of breathlessness. She pressed her
palm to her chest to try to calm her racing heart that thrummed under her hand
with a bizarre hollow echo. The flesh beneath her hand was whole and smooth,
but stained with a purple star where the blade had penetrated. She knew there
would be a matching mark on her back as well. The skin felt tender to her
touch, but the healing was complete.

"You
do good work, Radinka."

"I’d better. It comes at a great cost."

Portia
did not press her, only nodded in mutual understanding. "Can you get back to the path? I think you should head back
to Alaric’s estate. It isn’t safe for you here."

"I’d rather stay with you. In case you need me again."

"That’s awfully noble, but no, you cannot. I have a feeling that
whatever favor was granted to you on my behalf is not likely to be repeated."

"It
was no favor, I assure you. I wish you wouldn’t
dismiss me like this."

"Hardly
a dismissal; that’s an order. And an
important one, too. Someone needs to live through this and I can’t guarantee it’s going to be me."

Radinka
turned away. "Well, you’ve already died! I don’t know what would be
worse, you coming home with us right now and to hell with the rest of the
world, or you going off to save everyone else and to hell with us."

"I didn’t choose this life, but I
made a promise to it. Imogen understands. You need to, as well. Now,
go
."
Portia gave her a little nudge. "Go find Kendrick. He needs you as much as you
need him. Imogen and I might have to sacrifice what we’ve got—we’ve done it
before, too damn many times now—but we know it must be done. You don’t have to,
you know that, right? You don’t have to give up your happiness."

Radinka’s shoulders rose and fell as if she
might reply, but she set off down the steps and said nothing. Portia went to
the balcony and looked out at the little seaside town. Night had fallen there,
and between the shifting billows of worlds that overlapped and broke apart like
waves, lights twinkled along the valley floor. Each one represented a life and
a world all its own. Above, the stars sparkled, almost indistinct behind a haze
of fog. There were places where there were no stars at all and the sky seemed
like it was full of holes.

Portia went off in search of Nigel and
Imogen. Whatever plan Imogen had hatched, Nigel was going to use it and her to
his own ends. Portia prayed that she was not too late.

—
10
—

PORTIA BACKTRACKED THROUGH the lower levels of the tower,
returning to Alaric’s study on an upper underground floor. The door stood open,
and the room was empty. Even the odor of smoke and sulphur was so faint as to
be barely noticeable, but the growling of the engine below still vibrated
through the floor.

What were Kitty and Kendrick doing? She
worried about them, feeling shortsighted and foolish to have sent the two of
them off alone. Shaking her head to clear it, she entered Alaric’s room. It was
nothing like the opulent study of his estate, but it was his, unmistakably; the
aura of privilege and the decanter of scotch told her as much. His recent
additions did not mesh well with the original architecture of the tower. The
room itself felt like an interloper in this place.

She
pushed aside the old tapestry, glancing at it with a sigh of nostalgia. It
depicted the tower, woven in glittering thread-of-silver, growing like a
magical tree from the center of an intricate hedge maze, promising safety and
solace. But it was all a lie and always had been. This place had just been
another of Belial’s playthings, held in
thrall by Celestine, who had swallowed lie after lie until even she believed
they were truths.

Portia
opened the narrow door behind the cloth and stepped through the short
passageway into a larger chamber. Great pillars held up the vaulted brick
ceiling. The startlingly empty room stretched into dark corners and held only
the dozen thick columns. There was not even a wisp of a cobweb nor a speck of
dust anywhere in the room. Nor were there any furnishings. Strange.