She let the silence answer for her. It was impossible to tell how much time had passed since Algonquin’s Leviathan had grabbed her from the field in Reclamation Land, but she’d spent most of it underwater. She was still there now, wrapped up like a mummy in the Leviathan’s smothering tentacles. Technically, that wasn’t an excuse for staying silent. As a magical construct, she didn’t actually need the oxygen she was hoarding in her lungs, but the air pressure helped keep the water from making its way through her sundered chest and into her brain cavity, where it could actually cause problems. She certainly wasn’t going to waste it opening her mouth to talk, and it wasn’t as though Raven needed a partner for his conversations.
I see how it is,the spirit grumbled.Just take me for granted. Never mind that I’m risking my life visiting you in the heart of enemy territory. And speaking of enemies…Wings fluttered over her mind to nudge her eyes.Open up. I need to see what’s going on.
Emily wasn’t sure if she could. Unbidden, her hands twitched, but the movement was only in her head, because she didn’t have hands anymore. She didn’t have arms, either, or legs. It was hard to tell how much she’d lost since she’d been trapped in the Leviathan’s smothering embrace the entire time, but going by the few sensors that were still reporting, Emily was reasonably certain that she was down to just her ribcage, shoulders, and head. The rest was gone. Under Myron’s direction, Algonquin’s mages had picked her apart, meticulously undoing the metal ribbons of coiled spellwork that gave her life. She’d been conscious for all of it, held down by the Leviathan’s implacable weight. Keeping her eyes shut was the only way she’d maintained mental stability as they picked her apart. If she opened them now…
My poor girl,Raven whispered.You’re afraid.
Of course she was afraid. She might not be flesh and blood anymore, but Emily’s mind at least was still human, and every human feared death. Being the Phoenix only made things worse. Having died before, she knew exactly how much there was to be afraid of. If she didn’t look, though, Raven would have no information. No information meant no rescue, and so, since the only thing worse than dying was the fear of it being forever this time, Emily forced herself to obey, prying her eyes open.
And saw something new.
She jerked in surprise. The few other times she’d worked up the courage to open her eyes, there’d been nothing to see but black flesh and slime. The Leviathan’s smothering tentacles must have relaxed a little after the last unraveling, though, because now she could see light shining down through the murky water. Italmostlooked like sunlight, but just as her hopes started to rise, a familiar voice trickled through the murk.
“Bring her up.”
The Leviathan obeyed, thrusting Emily up, up, up out of the cold water and into the light, but not the sun. The light she’d seen came from a rack of halogen floodlights set up on the stone ledge of what appeared to be a rocky cavern somewhere underground. After a few seconds, Emily recognized the place from the few grainy pictures their spies had smuggled out. She was in the cave beneath Algonquin Tower, the one Algonquin reportedly used to move things she didn’t want anyone seeing between her lake and her fortress.
Considering how many times Emily had tried and failed to infiltrate this place, that should have kicked off a serious investigation, but she barely spared the cavern a glance. Her attention was stuck on the man standing beneath the rack of blinding yellow-white floodlights. The one she’d once called partner.
“Myron,” she growled, letting the air out of her lungs at last. “Decided to finish me off?”
“Not yet,” the mage said, reaching between the Leviathan’s tentacles to check the lines of spellworked metal ribbon hanging from what was left of her chest. When he’d touched each one, he turned to the stream of clear, constantly moving water bubbling up from the stone beside him. “Ready when you are.”
The water twisted as he spoke, rising up to peer into Emily’s face, giving her a horrifying glimpse of her own startled reflection in the mirror-flat waterfall that was Algonquin’s face.
“Excellent,” the spirit said, the word burbling like a stream. “Hoist her up so they can see.”
Before Emily could look to see what “they” Algonquin was talking about, the Leviathan jerked her up, shoving what was left of her body high into the air. After so long underwater, the light and movement made her feel sick. Notactuallysick. Even before Myron and his mages had removed that part of her body, Emily hadn’t had a real stomach in decades. Just like her twitching fingers, though, the need to throw up didn’t vanish with the associated organs. Thankfully, it was over quickly. Seconds after it started, the Leviathan had thrust her to the top of the cavern, dangling her like a grotesque chandelier above what Emily could now see was a very large, and very strange, crowd.
I was afraid of this,Raven whispered, his eyes darting quickly behind hers.It seems we’re the last to arrive.
Emily nodded, trying not to shudder. The cavern at the base of the Algonquin’s tower was filled with monsters. They were packed in like sardines. Other than the circle of water surrounding the rock where Algonquin and Myron were standing, every inch was filled with limbs, branches, furry paws, and other things Emily didn’t have names for. Even the ceiling was occupied, the stone crowded with things clinging to the arch of the roof like lichen or hanging upside down from it like bats. They were so many, so different, and so piled on top of each other, it took Emily an embarrassingly long time to realize she was looking at spirits. Hundreds of them. More than she’d seen in all her missions combined.
More thananymortal has seen,Raven said, his presence shifting to the front of her mind like a bird scooting to the tip of a branch.But we always knew Algonquin had pull. What I want to know is what did she promise to lure them all here?
Emily was wondering the same thing. Now that she’d realized what she was looking at, she actually recognized some of the spirits from Raven’s reports. Particularly Wolf, who appeared as a ten-foot-long timber wolf sitting on its haunches at the front of the mob. Coyote and Eagle were similarly easy to spot, though not nearly as large. But while the animal spirits were easy to spot, others were complete unknowns. Some—like the large pile of moss crawling up the back wall—looked relatively harmless. Others—particularly the long, eel-like creature with a man’s face lurking in the murky water beside the Leviathan’s tentacles—seemed decidedly more dangerous. It was impossible to get a head count when only a few of them had heads and some didn’t even have definable edges, but Emily estimated there were at least three dozen spirits here that were large enough to meet the UN’s definition of a national-level threat. This included Algonquin herself, who’d risen higher from the water, turning to address the crowd like a queen welcoming her court.
“Friends,” she said, her watery voice colder and more inhuman than Emily had ever heard it. “I know many of you have left delicate domains to be here. Thank you all for coming so far on such short notice.”
“Save your platitudes, lake water,” Wolf growled. “You called, we came. Now tell us what’s so important.”
“I hope it’s not her,” the eel spirit in the water burbled, his deep voice smooth and treacherous as he turned his drowned-man’s face to stare at Emily. “We’ve complications enough without wasting our time on Raven’s wind-up toy.”
Wind-up toy, indeed,Raven huffed.He’s never made anything in his life.
“Raven is the least of our problems,” Algonquin said, her water splitting into two spouts so she could face the wolf and the eel at the same time. “And I called you because we areoutof time.”
“Out of time?” rumbled one of the giant trees in the back. “Impossible. We are the land, the immortal spirits. Time is the one thing we can never run out of.”
“Normally, yes,” Algonquin said as her split water came back together. “But things haven’t been normal for ten centuries, and if we don’t act quickly, they never will be again.”
She paused there, but no one seemed to have a comeback this time, and eventually, Algonquin continued. “We are at a critical juncture. As many of you already know, the first Mortal Spirit has risen, and he is not ours.”
“How can that be?” Wolf growled. “We gave you our children precisely so that you could build your own Mortal Spirit before anything rose naturally. How did you get beaten? What have you been doing?”
“Exactly what I said I would,” Algonquin replied. “We were actually ahead of schedule thanks to the Three Sisters and the culling of the dragons, but it is impossible to raise the magic of a specific place without spillover, and it seems I underestimated the mortal fascination with death. The combination of these two elements was a rogue Mortal Spirit of the Forgotten Dead who, sadly, could not be controlled. But though I was able to put him down again, his bound mortal and her dragon allies did a great deal of damage on their way out, spilling the dragon blood I’d gathered and destroying months of work. Now, with our reserves wasted and no dragons left in the DFZ to harvest, the window to build up the magic necessary to achieve critical mass on our chosen Mortal Spirit before another rises naturally is rapidly closing.”
“Sounds like failure to me,” the eel spirit said with a sneer.
