I knew that I shrieked, but I could not hear myself or the others, all of whom also shouted, but now not at Cian, at my cutting off my left hand.
The harrowing pain that shot up my arm into every bit of me that had the ability to feel nearly crushed me. My knees buckled and I began to slide down the wall, no air going in or out of my lungs, my body’s functions completely stopped, as if I was sinking into a quicksand that robbed me of a heartbeat, a breath. The excruciation was like a pulse, pumping so hard that it numbed me and then, at a galloping pace, pumped into me again.
Keep your right hand steady before and after. That is the trick of it.
I was dimly aware of Cian’s shock at my action causing him to lose control of the moving wall and of the clatter of hundreds of rocks shattering to the ground. I knew that my husband was stepping over the rocks as fast as he could to get to me. But these were distant things to me, my mind barely able to process the intensity of what I had just done to myself.
Do not let the pain fill your mind.
Yes, I thought. Yes. There was one more part of this. The left will deliver and the right will command. I had but seconds of strength left before my eventual yielding to the agony. My heels drove into the mossy rock beneath my feet and my knees stiffened, thighs quivering as I used my legs to push me back to standing. I was howling with the pain, making inhuman sounds with my mouth. I had brought the amputated wrist to my chest so I could not see the mess of flesh and blood and vein and bone. Once, my feet were more steadily under me, I forced my death grip on the sagaris handle to loosen, my right fingers jerkily opening to drop the bloody thing to the ground. Towards the sea, looking past all of the movement around me, Cian having regained his magic, building another wall to protect himself from the soldiers and two royals who advanced on him, Hinnom chorusing out a battlecry that sounded almost happy, I focused in on those five drake rocks. I looked past Alric as he climbed and struggled towards me and held up that shaking right hand, blurring out the figures before me so that all I could see was my hand close to me and in the distance, the five drake rocks standing up out of the sea.
And I made a fist.
That is when my spirit mostly left my body. A part of me knew Alric was kneeling next to me, as I had slid down the watchtower wall again. He pulled me away from the wall so he could hold my left shoulder and head against him, his lips moving, but I could not hear what he said. He was removing my belt and apron, tying the belt around the end of my stump to stop the bleeding. But another part of me, most of me, could look above my body and see that my eyes, while closed, were rolling in my head. My time with that body was drawing to an end and my spirit had work to do.
She becomes a mistral, ever twirling into oblivion. She hunts thunder and vanishes in it.
And then, from where I hovered over my body and my husband, I looked out to the Tintarian sea and saw it, saw the surface of the water quake, but with more than the tide, with magic. All five drake rocks where shaking violently, little by little rising and rising even higher out of the water.
“Bloody gods!” Hinnom shouted, again a near glee in him. “The stone drakes of Tintar!The fucking drakes.” He turned to Cian. “Oh, cousin, you have failed before you begin. For you forget from whence you came. Tintar will hold! It will hold now. Look at that might out there, before us. Look! What is a Perpatanian army to a god’s drake made of stone? Bless the Farthest Four! For they have cursed you, cousin.” And the king bellowed in laughter.
Everyone on the terrace, except Alric, was looking out to the sea, awestruck as each drake rock splintered apart into countless black and gray shards, cast up into the crystal blue sky. On their downward trajectory they began to stack themselves, first in simple pillars, but then into legs and bodies and heads and tails, each one a different magical mutation of earth magic. From where they all stood it must have appeared to be five strange children playing with a fleet of paper boats in a shallow stream.
But Thalia and Yro now looked over their shoulders at me, understanding on her face and expectation on his. This was a potent magic that came only from a ghastly offering. This was not the Farthest Four rescuing Tintar. This was them acknowledging what I had surrendered.
And then my spirit had to depart the bluffs and go towards the sea, over the mouth of the bluff where all the warships converged. My spirit had to split itself into five.
My view changed from a crowd of leaders on stone to an eternal blue, green and gray expanse, on which eighteen large warships bore seven thousand men towards a place I had now begun to call home.
Each drake was unlike the next. All of them were crude renderings of creatures done in shards and crags, more rough shapes then detail, but each one of those men on those ships could see five different colossal beasts of magic rock and stone, hovering over their ships. One was as a drake, a wingless dragon with a powerful tail and short horns on its head. The second was as a wildcat of Nyossa, slinky and ready to pounce. The third was a lizard, more serpentine than the first drake with a snakelike tail, undulating just above the surface of the sea, a thread that if it descended would wipe out many. The fourth was the smallest, a forest fox with dainty paws and a pointed noise, bringing that point down to nuzzle the sails of the warships, the screams of fear from the deck barely a squeak in the cacophony of rocks scraping and waves crashing. The fifth was a mountain bear, hulking, the only drake to stand on its back legs, the rest of them having four limbs planted in the sea.
And I knew then, that these, the great beasts of old stories were not monsters, but mothers each of them, risen from earth and sea to protect cub, egg and kit.
101. Might
Take no life, came that dulcet tone I had heard earlier on the bluff.If you can, take none.
Sister Sea, I said in my spirit, not speaking aloud without use of a mouth.
We are allied, she and I,said my goddess.We are allies in the defense of Tintar. As are the brother and the father. But it is we, the two goddesses, who bear the weight of shielding our children. We are with you and these drakes are your sentinels. You have some life left to command them as the demigods of Tintar. Your right hand is still fisted back on the bluff.
She is strong as you have said, said Sister Sea to Mother Earth.
She is my daughter, said my goddess.
And then my mind and spirit truly split into five states, one a drake, one a wildcat, one a lizard, one a fox and one a mother bear. As the drake, I opened my maw, flashing the jagged, uneven chunks of my dragon’s teeth, the yawn of it expanding over them in threat of an imminent devouring. As the wildcat, I batted, with an indolent but adroit paw, one warship against another, repeating this until they were all turned around on the water. As the lizard, I flicked my long serpent of a tail over the ships, whipping up a host of hurricanes that twirled and whined above the ships. As the fox, I dipped my snout in between each ship and snapped my stubby dog teeth next to them as if to bite their hulls. And as the mother bear I stood over the other four drake creatures made of quaking rock, and let out a roar erupting from inside my gargantuan drake body that obliterated all other sounds along the whole coast of the continent. It was the roar of the mother when a child is in danger.
And in these five guardians, I saw my family. In the nimble wildcat, I saw Quinn’s quiet intelligence and Catrin’s elegance. In the rabid lizard, I saw all of Mischa’s unexplained anger at the world, her determination to remain independent. In the fox, I saw River’s ever inquisitive mind and Maureen’s youthful wonder at the life before her. In the bear, I saw my Helena, a bastion of maternal strength, her hand resting on her pregnant belly as I last looked upon her in my life. In the drake, I saw myself, angry and unloved once upon a time and now, surrounded by the love of these six in the conjured-up bodies of the four other drakes.
Their love poured into me and I thanked my goddess and her sister and even the air and fire gods for this strength, for this magic I could use to protect Tintar from falling to the gold and greed of Perpatane. I stormed and smashed and squalled around the ships, never truly making contact with them, only creating a frenzy of wind above them and water under them, waves slapping up on the decks, Perpatanian soldiers flinging themselves against masts for purchase, crying out prayers to Rodwin.
At this I, as the drake rock, laughed. It sounded like thunder from another world. And the four other versions of myself began to laugh, the bear’s holler drowning out the hiss of the lizard, the purr of the wildcat and the chirrup of the fox. All five of me emitted a battlecry of bitterness and indignation. Pray to Rodwin? He had never answered. The fools.
A part of my spirit flitted back to the bluff, to look over my body. Alric knelt over me, saying something, tightening the belt around my bloodied wrist. On the other side of me, Thrush knelt, hand on my right arm, saying something to my face over Alric’s prayers. I thought I heard Alric saying, “I claim her. I claim her life.”
Realizing he was not alone in his vigil over me, Alric looked across me at Thrush, naked wrath on those sharp features. He leaned over my body, pulled the dagger from Thrush’s scabbard and blindly stabbed my former husband in the shoulder, shouting something I could not make out, pushing him away from my body. It was too far from any vulnerable area to have killed him, but Thrush fell back, hands on the wound, yelling. Thatcher sped towards my body, Perch close behind him, and grabbed one of Thrush’s arms, telling Perch to grab the other. As if through a cloth that was muffling my ears, I heard Thatcher say, “we are going to watch your body break on the rocks on the way down.” And the two sergeants dragged my first husband, kicking, reaching out to scattered boulders to cling to, towards the edge of the bluff and the two men, both with a strength that only comes from a life of hard work, hurled him over it into the jagged rock and sea below.
The rest of my spirit called me back to the five drakes thrashing in the sea, but I stayed to watch, wanting to look at as much of Alric as I could.
