Chapter 4
Marci was frozen in the dark.
It was like the first moments after she’d died. Once again, she was trapped in nothing, stuck in infinite blackness that had no end or beginning, except now, instead of merely a voice in her head or a hand in her mind, Ghost was right in front of her, looming over her in the shadowy soldier’s body of the Empty Wind. But while he looked exactly as she remembered, right down to the ancient Roman Centurion armor, his face was no longer just two glowing blue-white eyes floating in the dark of his helmet. Or, rather, the eyes were still there, watching her fearfully, but the dark behind them was no longer merely shadow.
It was nothing.
There was no other way to describe it. Marci had looked the Empty Wind in the face countless times now, and while seeing two floating eyes gleaming in the dark had never exactly been comforting, looking at him now was like staring into death itself. Not the bloody death of the body, either. True death. The nothing that came after all trace of your life was gone and even the dust of your bones had been broken down into its component atoms. His face was what it meant to be utterly forgotten, and the moment Marci saw it, she knew that was her future, too.
The sudden truth hit her like a dive into cold water. Being dead, she’d thought she understood what it felt like, but she hadn’t known anything. Her death had been a place of warmth and love, a place where she was remembered. It had been a pause, not an end, but this was different. All their fighting, their struggles, the desperate clinging to life, this was what it came to: nothing. Even dragons died. Lakes silted up, and their spirits slowly vanished. The whole human race would eventually be fossils on a tiny speck of rock flinging through the infinite dark of space, and when even that was devoured by their exploding sun, this—this spirit right here in front of her—was what they’d be.
Nothing.
Cold, silent nothing, as though they’d never existed at all.
Marci was still trying to process that—assuming something like this could be processed by the mortal mind—when the Empty Wind turned away, breaking the spell. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, stepping away. “I didn’t want you to see.”
It took Marci a while to recover enough of her wits to speak. When she did, though, it was in awe. “Dude, that was insane. You’re a walking existential crisis! All that ‘look into the void, void looks back’ Nietzsche stuff.”
The spirit’s see-through body stilled. “You’re not afraid?”
“Oh no, I’m terrified,” Marci said honestly. “I don’t think anyone could go face to face with the truth of mortality and not be. But we’ve been together for a while now, so this wasn’t totally unexpected. You don’t team up with the Spirit of the Forgotten Dead without understanding that you’re going to be in for some uncomfortable truths.”
“But you’re not afraid of me?”
He asked this as if it were the most important question in the world. For her part, though, Marci couldn’t understand how it was a question at all.
“Of course not,” she said, insulted. “Everyone’s afraid of being forgotten. That’s why you exist. But while I won’t deny I have a normal, healthy, human fear of the concept you represent, I’m not afraid of you. You’re my spirit, and let’s not forget how we got here.” She smiled at him. “It’s kind of hard to be scared of someone who rescued you from death.”
After all they’d been through together, she felt this should have been obvious, but Ghost still hadn’t turned around. If anything, his broad back was set more squarely to her than ever. That was when Marci decided it was time to take matters into her own hands. It was hard to move when you had no sense of your body or space, but she managed to inch herself around, scooting forward bit by bit until she was kneeling in front of him.
“Ghost, look at me.”
The Empty Wind obeyed, dropping his head to reveal the void of his true face once again. It was impossible not to flinch, so Marci didn’t try. She just focused on his glowing eyes, glaring into them until she was positive she had the spirit’s full attention.
“I know you,” she said sternly. “I knew you were a face of death before I knew your real name or heard the words ‘Mortal Spirit.’ That’s always been a little creepy, but it’s never changed what you are to me. You’re my cat, my spirit, my partner, and my friend. Always were, always will be. And if you think for one second that anything is going to change that, you haven’t been paying attention.”
The Empty Wind stared at her for a long time. Then, at last, his glowing eyes closed in relief. “I knew I was right to choose you.”
“Like there was any doubt,” Marci said, holding out her hands so he could help her up. “We’re a power team, remember? Not even death can break us up.”
And speaking of death...
“Where are we?” she asked as he hauled her to her feet. “Amelia said my death was at the bottom of the Sea of Magic, but I don’t—” She stopped, hand shooting to her shoulder. Or where she assumed her shoulder was. “Where’s Amelia?!”
“She’s here.”
“Where?” Marci asked, getting more alarmed by the second. “I can’t see anything but you and dark.”
“That’s because I had to close your eyes again,” the Empty Wind explained. “This isn’t your world. I didn’t want you to have to deal with it and me at the same time.”
That was thoughtful of him, but Marci didn’t have time to be coddled. She couldn’t actually remember who’d taught her the trick of opening her eyes the first time, but she was already working on doing it again, blinking rapidly until, at last, the dark was replaced by something infinitely more terrifying.
If the blackness before had felt like endless nothing, this was endless everything. All around them, things were in motion, spinning and colliding and bouncing off each other like debris in a tornado. It was still too dark to see clearly what was happening, but just the impression of so much movement was enough to make Marci’s stomach lurch. An impressive feat considering she didn’t technically have a stomach anymore.
“What is this?” she asked, grabbing Ghost before she fell into the chaos.
“Magic!” cried an excited voice above her.
The cry made her jump, and Marci looked up just in time for Amelia to land on her head. “We made it, Marci!” she cried, sparks flying out of her mouth in her excitement as she craned her long neck in every direction. “This is the Sea of Magic! We’re inside the primal power that drives everything magical that happens in the world!”
That would explain why everything looked so crazy. But while Marci was definitely excited about being inside something she’d previously assumed was a metaphor, she mostly felt like she was going to hurl.
“It’s okay,” Ghost said, pulling her tighter against the wall of his mercifully still chest. “Humans never can stand it here. Every soul I’ve rescued hates this part of the journey.”
“Journey? You mean we’re moving?” Because with all the other swirling, she couldn’t tell.
“We’re flying!” Amelia said happily, tail twitching. “Your spirit is a freaking jet! I’d always thought they’d be slow and pokey since they were so big and chained to their vessels, but this is something else.”
“I don’t see why you’re so surprised,” he said grumpily. “Serving the forgotten requires speed, and I am a wind.”
The little dragon’s eyes grew huge. “Wait, you mean literally? I thought that was just part of your name!”
“Spirits are always called what we are,” the Empty Wind said authoritatively. “That’s how we know our names without being told. I can’t remember anything from before I woke this time, but I know I’ve always been the Empty Wind. The only one who’s ever called me anything different is Marci, and only because I wasn’t large enough to know my name when she bound me.”
“You’re definitely more ‘wind’ than ‘ghost’ in this place,” Amelia agreed, leaning out as far as she could off Marci’s shoulder. “Can you go any faster?”
“No,” Marci said. When they both looked at her, she swallowed. “Please, I can barely take this much. I just want to get back on solid ground.”
As if it were trying to prove her point for her, the churning chaos chose that moment to lurch in a brand-new nauseating direction. Marci turned back to Ghost with a groan, squeezing her eyes shut as she squashed her face into his freezing skin. “Where are we going, anyway?”
The answer rumbled through the spirit’s chest. “The Gate of the Merlins.”
Her eyes popped open again. “What?”
“That’s a real thing?” Amelia said at the same time.
“Of course it’s real,” he said, looking down at Marci. “Remember when you were dying, and I told you I could see what we’d been looking for? The way to becoming a Merlin? That’s where I’m taking you.”
“Wait,” Marci said, still confused. “It’s a place?”
He nodded excitedly. “I must have flown by it hundreds of times, but I couldn’t see it until your mortal body started to die. The moment you began crossing over into death, the door appeared right in front of me, like it was waiting for us.”
Marci still couldn’t believe it. “So you’re telling me there’s a literal Merlin Gate, and we’re flying to it? Do I just walk through and get my Merlin license or something?”
“I’m sure it won’t be that simple,” Ghost said. “Nothing else about this has been. But that’s what it looks like.”
“Fits what I’ve heard, too,” Amelia added. “The Merlins I knew in the few decades I was alive before the drought hit wouldn’t tell me squat because they were miserly, secretive bastards, but the way they talked made it sound like being a Merlin was more than just being a Merlin. They always acted like they were a part of some kind of larger organization. If that’s true, then having the gate on this side makes perfect sense. Where better to hide the Guild Hall for a secret society of mages and spirits than inside magic itself?”
“It would also explain why the gate didn’t appear until you started to die,” the Empty Wind added. “This is the realm of immortal spirits. You can’t even move through the magic of this place without one of us to guide you, which I couldn’t do until you got closer to my domain.”
“Which is death,” Marci finished, glancing up at the nauseating swirls of magic shimmering like the rainbow sheen of oil on whirlpools of black water all around them. “So if I touch this without your protection—”
“You’ll be burned away.”
“Right,” she said, remembering how just the brief brush with the circle of pure, undulating magic at the top of her death had been enough to nearly dissolve her hand before Ghost had yanked her to safety. Her fingers looked all right now, thank goodness, but it wasn’t an experience she was eager to repeat. “Guess I’m sticking to you, then. Not that I’d do anything else, but how are we going to deal with the gate? Do you carry me over the threshold or something?”
Her spirit shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never done anything like this. But we’ll find out soon enough.”
He nodded ahead of them, and Marci turned to look before she remembered that any movement in this place made her ill. Sure enough, she had to fight not to hurl as the asymmetrical whirlpools filled her vision, making the whole world spin in five different directions. Awful as she felt, though, Marci didn’t close her eyes. No amount of magical seasickness was going to keep her from getting her first glimpse of whatever a Merlin Gate was. She forced herself to keep looking, straining to see through the liquid chaos of the constantly moving magic.
It really was like trying to look through the deep ocean. Other than Ghost’s glowing eyes and Amelia’s fire, there was no light in this place. Thankfully, that didn’t seem to be too much of a problem now that she’d shed the limitations of physical eyes. She couldn’t do anything about the churning chaos, but eventually, her vision adapted, filtering out the waves and swirls and black-on-black motion of the magic rushing by to see what was actually changing.
Just like before, the first thing she saw was Ghost. The real Ghost, not the human-shaped shadow she clung to. That must have been just for her comfort, because the longer Marci looked, the more she realized that the cold calm surrounding them wasn’t coming from the Sea of Magic. It was all him. She wasn’t standing next to Ghost—they were inside him, inside the shelter of the Empty Wind’s own magic as he cut through the black depths like a shark toward a much larger, darker shape Marci could now see looming in front of them.
Ghost had called it a gate, so that was the shape Marci had been expecting, but the reality looked more like a column. A huge, round, black pillar rising straight up like a post from the rolling expanse of the sea floor. It got even bigger as they flew closer, which explained why Ghost had seen it the moment it appeared. Even in a place as big, dark, and chaotic as this, something that big was hard to miss. Still, Marci didn’t understand how anyone could possibly call it a gate until Ghost landed in front of it.
“Stay close,” he whispered as they set down on the flat, seemingly rocky ground that formed the floor of the Sea of Magic. “The currents are strong here.”
She could feel them. Now that they’d stopped moving forward, she realized that the black swirls were more than just nauseating movements. They were forces, swirling balls of magical torque that wrenched and pushed against her spirit’s edges, bowing the faintly glimmering barrier of his wind inward.
“What are they?” Amelia asked, her voice excited as she leaned perilously close to one of the bulges. “I mean, clearly, they’re disturbances in the magic, but what’s causing them?”
“I don’t know,” the Empty Wind said, tightening his grip on Marci’s shoulder. “The Sea of Magic is always restless, but it’s been especially volatile since Algonquin’s attempt to raise a Mortal Spirit from dragon blood in Reclamation Land failed.”
“Guess she made waves in more ways than one,” Marci muttered, crossing her arms over her chest to keep as far as possible from the chaotic flows of power banging on Ghost’s edges. “Where now?”
The Empty Wind pointed at the column in front of them. This close, the curving surface looked more like a flat, featureless wall, its face polished smooth by the constantly battering currents. Between the dark and the swirls of magic that rolled through it like thicker shadows, it was nearly impossible to make out what Ghost was trying to show her. Eventually, though, she spotted a gap in the pillar’s flat stone face.
It wasn’t what Marci would have called a gate. The small, rectangular dent in the pillar’s surface was neither grand nor obvious. It was no taller than she was, a hole that was cut less than an inch deep into the stone and blocked by a door that looked as if it had been stolen from a medieval kitchen: a tight-set slab of rough-hewn wooden planks held together with tar and iron banding. There was no knocker, no handle, no knob, no announcements or decorations of any sort. If it weren’t for the fact that it was so clearly out of place in this world of swirling, nonphysical chaos, Marci wouldn’t have thought it was special at all.
“Is that it?” Amelia asked skeptically.
“I think so,” the Empty Wind said. “I’ve never been closer than this, but it feels right.”
Marci thought it felt like a letdown. Still, if there was anything she’d learned from Ghost, it was to never judge on appearances. Especially if that appearance happened to be the only opening in the base of what was clearly an artificial, man-made structure poking out of the otherwise flat floor of the Sea of Magic.
“Guess we should give it a try,” Marci said, holding out her hand to Ghost.
He took it, wrapping his freezing fingers around hers as they walked together to the pillar. When they were both standing on the threshold, Marci took a final breath of the Empty Wind’s cold magic before lifting her shivering hand to knock.
And high above, hidden in the chaos, an enormous swirl of magic shaped like a raven nodded in satisfaction before nipping back into the land of the living.
***
Emily?
General Emily Jackson, commanding officer of the UN’s Magical Disaster Response Team, and current prisoner of Algonquin, shifted her aching head.
What, no hello?
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. It almost looked 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. Not actually sick. 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 than any mortal 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 are out of 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.
“It was failure,” Algonquin said angrily. “But at least I was doing something. If I’d left our survival up to all of you, we’d sit complacent as stones while the rising tide of human madness swallowed us whole. But I am not complacent. I will never surrender my water again, and I have already found another possible solution, as my new head mage will now explain.”
That must have been Myron’s cue. He stepped forward with a confident smile, nodding at the monsters as if they were just another audience at one of his conferences. “Spirits of the Land and Animals, I am Sir Myron Rollins, head of magical research and policy for the United Nations and one of the primary spellwork architects of the Phoenix Project. Or, as she is better known to many of you, Raven’s Construct.”
He motioned with his hand, and the Leviathan obeyed, lowering Emily until she was dangling in front of him.
“Though initiated by Raven, General Jackson here is the work of many hands,” Myron continued, reaching out to trail his fingers through the exposed silver ribbons of spellwork dangling like streamers from Emily’s sundered chest. “Despite no longer possessing any of her original mortal body, her soul retains the unique human ability to move magic. If she were a mage, this would mean she could pull in magic from the world around her to power her construct chassis and weapons, which, as you can see here, are all spellwork-based. However, General Jackson is not a mage. She cannot use her own spellwork, nor does she have conscious control over the magic required to power her body.”
“Then how does she work?” the eel spirit demanded. “How does the wind-up toy move if she can’t wind herself?”
Myron grinned. “The answer to that question is why we’re here. Raven was a very clever bird. He chose General Jackson precisely because she was not a mage. A mage could have fought him for control, a very undesirable trait in a puppet. A normal human, though, wouldn’t be able get in his way. She could only control the results of the spellwork—the weapons and the body’s movements and such—not the mechanisms behind them. Think of her as the pilot in a fighter jet. She can fly the plane, but she can’t do anything about the engine or the fuel that powers it.”
“But we can,” Algonquin said.
“Exactly,” Myron agreed, grabbing one of the thin strips of spellwork-covered metal ribbon dangling from Emily’s chest. “The Phoenix is a powerful and intelligent weapon, but because she is not a mage, she can’t pull in the magic she needs to power her body on her own. To overcome this limitation, Raven devised a mechanism that utilizes the unique human ability to push magic without requiring a mage’s capacity for control. By wiring his spellwork”—he held up the metal ribbon—“directly into the parts of her brain that regulate the subconscious human ability to manipulate magic, Raven gave himself the power to push his magic into her instead. It’s just like how doctors use electrical impulses to force limbs to move even if the patient has no control over them. He simply offers up his magic, and the spellwork inside her body automatically grabs it and turns it into fuel.”
“Leave it to Raven to turn himself into food for his puppet,” Wolf said with a sneer. “He never had any pride.”
“His lack of pride is our ticket,” Myron said. “In his desire to create a foolproof puppet who wouldn’t fight him magically but would still be capable of operating independently for long periods of time, Raven created something unique: a magical battery. Raven’s Construct isn’t just a weapon. She’s a vessel capable of passively accepting magic from a donor spirit and storing it inside her spellwork, creating a stable well of power that she can access at will. That alone is huge, but what makes General Jackson really special isn’t just that she’s the only spellwork construct in existence who passively accepts magic rather than having to pull it in, it’s how much power she can hold.”
He pulled the ribbon of spellworked metal through his fingers, unraveling it down from inside Emily’s chest to show them just how long it was. “Mages can pull down magic all day long, but even with the largest circles, there’s only so much we can control without burning ourselves out. Spirits are different. You routinely command magic in sums that would obliterate a human mage. However, since Raven built the Phoenix with his magic in mind, not hers, her spellwork was designed to processes magic on a spirit level. We’re talking about thousands of times more power than any human mage could safely handle, placed in the hands of one woman.”
“I think you mean a good soldier,” Emily growled. “One who’s loyal to our cause. Unlike certain traitors I could mention.”
“There’s loyal, and then there’s fanatical,” Myron said coldly. “You were willing to shoot a potential Merlin in the back rather than risk her falling into the hands of a spirit who did not match your narrow vision of the greater human good. I’m far more practical. The world needs a Merlin, and that requires a Mortal Spirit. If Algonquin wants to raise one, that puts us on the same side.”
“What part of this is our side?” Emily cried, fighting the Leviathan’s hold. “I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but Algonquin’s killed more humans than all the modern dragons combined. She’s not our ally. She’s a—”
A slimy black tentacle slid over Emily’s face, silencing her. Down below, Algonquin’s water burbled angrily. “Ignore her,” the lake spirit commanded. “She is nothing. And you.” She turned her reflective face back to Myron. “We’re not here for a lesson. You’ve said enough about how the Phoenix functions. Now tell them why she matters.”
“I was getting to that,” Myron said irritably, shooting a final glare at Emily as he turned to face the crowd of spirits again. “Emily Jackson isn’t just a combat construct backed by the magic of one of the most active animal spirits. She’s a unique creation, a spellwork machine capable of absorbing and containing magic on a spirit scale and placing it under the command of a human will. If Raven were a Mortal Spirit, General Jackson would effectively be his Merlin, and that is where she becomes useful to us.”
“How so?” the eel asked, his drowned face sour. “Every Merlin I’ve met has been the master of their spirit, but the Phoenix is a puppet, and a famously loyal one at that. You might have her tied and supplicant, but Raven’s still in control. He’ll never allow his construct to be used against his precious humans. If you pump her full of magic, she’ll just use it to turn on you the second she gets free.”
“She would,” Myron agreed, “if I left her in control. But you’ll recall I said the magic that powers her is under the control of ‘a human will,’ not ‘her will.’ Her body serves as the vessel, but again, Emily is not a mage. She has her hands on the controls, but she’s not the one who commands her magic. That’s all handled by spellwork, and that spellwork, the millions of lines of logic that determines who has mastery over the Phoenix’s vast stores of power, is controlled by a single variable. A hard-coded one, but still only one. Change that variable, and the spells controlling all that magic shift to obey whomever we point them at.”
By the time he finished, Emily was seeing red. The single-variable spellwork that determined control over her body was a known security vulnerability. One that, ironically, Myron had been brought in to fix. Now he was handing it to the enemy right in front of her, and that stabbed deeper than anything else could.
“You traitor!” she screamed, ripping her face free of the Leviathan’s tentacle. “You’re dead, Myron! Do you hear me? You’re— ”
She was cut off with a strangled choke as the Leviathan’s tentacle snapped back with a vengeance, wrapping all the way around her jaw and down her neck. She was still fighting it when a flash of light caught her attention, and she tore her eyes away from the slimy tentacle pressed against her cheeks to see Algonquin’s flat, reflective waterfall of a face hovering right in front of her.
“You have no place to call anyone traitor, little tool,” the lake whispered. “It is because of you that we are in this deplorable situation to begin with. I had the human who commanded the Mortal Spirit under my full control when you killed her. Now we have nothing. Not the spirit I was building, nor Marci Novalli’s, nor the dragons needed to rebuild our losses. You were the one who put our backs to this wall, and it is only fair that you should prove the solution.”
“But what problem will she solve?” the eel spirit said, rising from the water at last to glare at Algonquin with wary, clouded eyes. “I see where you are going, lake water. Raven’s Construct is indeed a lovely tool. A deep bucket that can hold all the magic you need to rebuild your lost Mortal Spirit and place it under the command of your new human stooge.” He nodded at Myron, who bristled. “But a bucket is useless without something to fill it. We know what you plan to do with it, but you have yet to say where all this magic is coming from, Algonquin.”
“He’s right,” Wolf agreed, showing his teeth. “The Mortal Spirits have always been a problem of scale. Even when the humans numbered only in the millions, the gouges their fears carved into the magical landscape were bigger than the mountains. Now there are billions of terrified mortals, and the holes they dig are bigger than ever. You know this. You asked for our children to help power the circles that funneled the magic of the entire DFZ into Reclamation Land, and you still needed all the dragons in your city plus the blood of all Three Sisters to come even close to filling a Mortal Spirit. But that blood is spilled. You have to start building that magic all over again, and while I’m sure Raven’s Construct makes an excellently wide mouth, I will promise nothing until you tell us what manner of food you plan on shoving down it.”
“The only kind we have left,” Algonquin said sadly. “Us.”
The cavern went silent. For several heartbeats, none of the spirits moved, and then the eel with the dead man’s face hissed like a snake. “Have you gone mad?”
“Not at all,” the water said, reaching out a tendril to her Leviathan. “Madness would be to ignore the doom we can all see building. I’m trying to stop it, which makes me the sanest one here.”
“You are not sane,” the eel said, taking shelter behind the rock. “No one sane would suggest killing the souls of the land to save it.”
“And who is the land?” Algonquin demanded, drawing herself up. “Who speaks for us? You, bottom crawler?”
The eel hissed again and retreated to the darkness behind the rock, leaving Algonquin alone before the gathered spirits.
“I know how much I ask,” she said, calmly now. “I am the spirit of Algonquin, the once-great lake that is now five. I protected and loved my water for millions of years before the first humans appeared on my shores. When they came, I welcomed them as I would any other animal, and I have paid for that choice ever since. We have all paid.”
A murmur of agreement rose from the crowd, and Algonquin’s water twisted into something like a smile. “They use us,” she said. “Even before they grew plentiful enough to turn their fears into gods, they took from the land. They killed our children, burned and raped and dumped their trash into our bodies. They took our magic and forced us into sleep, and when we finally woke a thousand years later, what did they leave for us? Poison. Destruction. A whole world gleefully sacrificed to their endless greed. Just look what they did to my lakes. To my beautiful water.”
Her voice was shaking by the end, and Algonquin folded, her silvery current curling into itself with a hollow, mournful sound. She wasn’t alone, either. All the spirits were shaking, filling the cavern with their grief for what was lost. It was such a sad sound, even Emily’s eyes started to blur. She was fighting it when Algonquin spoke again.
“We must fight back,” she whispered, her water uncurling. “Humanity has done more damage in the last thousand years than anything we’ve seen since the mass extinctions, and that’s without their gods. Now the magic is back, filling not just us, but the canyons of humanity’s hate and fear. When they are full, the Mortal Spirits will return even greater than before. What do you think will become of the land then? What will become of us?”
No one said a word. All the spirits just pulled further into themselves, shrinking down against the wet stone as Algonquin moved in for the kill.
“We will be trampled,” she whispered. “You all know how much magic it takes to form even one Mortal Spirit. That sort of power doesn’t just go away. Even if every human on the planet dies of their own greed, their Mortal Spirits will remain for millions of years, just like the rest of humanity’s pollution. When that happens, our beautiful world will be a wasteland, a hell of mad gods, and we, the immortal spirits, will have no escape. We don’t even have the mercy of death to save us from what is coming. We will be forever trapped beneath the boot of monsters we cannot fight or control. That is our destiny. That is what is coming if we do not act now, while we still can.”
By the time she finished, the room was so silent, Emily could hear the drip, drip of water sliding down the Leviathan’s glistening flesh. Even Myron was holding his breath, watching Algonquin with an expression Emily couldn’t read. Then, like a wave breaking, the gathered spirits lowered their heads in defeat.
“You’re right,” Wolf whispered. “But what can we do?”
“What we have always done,” Algonquin said bitterly. “Fight to survive. I called you all here specifically because you are the spirits who have suffered the most at human hands. Some of you woke to find your children hunted to near extinction. Others have had their domains stolen entirely, the land of their roots literally mined out from under them. I know your pain, because I’ve lived it, too. When I woke, my water was poison and my fish were dying all around me, but I was not a helpless victim. I rose up and fought back against the cities that had hurt me, killed them as they sought to kill me. I took Detroit for myself and forged a new future, one where I was in control. That is what we must all do now, because we are the future. We are the land. We were here before words were spoken or history written. We are the living magic of this world, and we must take back control of what is ours before we lose it forever.”
Her water spread as she spoke, flowing out from the puddle at her feet over the rocky ledge to embrace the spirits in a glowing tide. “We already have what we require,” she said as the glowing water crept higher. “You asked how I would get enough power to fill Raven’s Construct, but the answer is right in front of you. We have all the magic we need right here in this cavern to fill a Mortal Spirit, and this time, we have a secure vessel to hold it.”
One of her glowing tendrils slid up the Leviathan to brush Emily’s cheek. “Even the dragons can’t harm Raven’s Construct. It will push her to her limits, but Myron assures me her spellwork can contain the power we need long enough to spark a Mortal Spirit. Better still, by growing it inside the prison of the Phoenix’s spellwork, our spirit will awaken under the control of my mage, which means we won’t need to wait for it to choose a Merlin. This Mortal Spirit will be born into chains, and we will be the ones holding them.”
“Don’t you mean him?” Wolf said, baring his teeth at Myron, who took a wary step back. “I’ve always applauded your daring, Algonquin, but this is reckless even for you. Your mage has already betrayed his own kind. What makes you think he won’t do the same to us?”
“Because we have what he wants most,” Algonquin said sweetly, turning her mirror-smooth face toward Myron. “A chance to be Merlin. His last chance. It’s hard to tell mortal ages, but Sir Myron here is old. There’s a very good chance another Mortal Spirit will never rise again in his lifetime. Even if one did, his chance of being in the right place at the right time to claim it is next to zero. We are the only path left to his dream, which means he’s ours, bought and paid for.” Her water rippled in something like a smile. “Ambitious humans have always been the easiest to control.”
Emily expected Myron to balk at that. Algonquin was absolutely right about his ambitions, but he was equally arrogant. Too arrogant to swallow such open mockery, or at least that was what she’d thought. To her amazement, though, the mage was nodding along with the spirit, smiling as if this was exactly what he wanted.
“So long as I become Merlin, nothing else matters,” he assured Algonquin. “I will be the first human in a thousand years to open the Merlin Gate, and I swear to use whatever power I find there to make sure I’m also the last. You aren’t the only ones who fear Mortal Spirits. I was there when Marci Novalli’s pet death invaded Reclamation Land. I saw firsthand the horror and destruction powers like him are capable of, and he wasn’t even fully grown. That’s not something I can allow to happen again.”
“It can never be allowed,” Algonquin agreed. “The end of Mortal Spirits is the only way any of us survive, including humanity. Normally, their plight wouldn’t concern me, but we cannot do this without them. We’ve always known it was Merlins who caused the drought, but we’ve never known how. Whatever they did to block the flow of magic is hidden behind the Merlin Gate, which none but a Merlin may enter. Now, though, with Myron Rollins as our inside man, we can turn their weapons to our cause. As Merlin, he can enter the gate and cap the flood of magic back to what it was right after it returned. Back when there was only enough power for us, and the vast hollows of the Mortal Spirits were empty. When that happens, we shall once again be the only spirits, and the world will be ours again, just as it was before. Is that not what we’ve fought for all these years?”
“But where is our victory?” whispered a spirit from the back, one of the piles of moss, who hadn’t spoken before. “Even if your mage keeps his word, your plan uses us as the fuel that fills Raven’s Construct and grows your Mortal Spirit. You may succeed in stopping the humans’ gods, but we will still be all used up. Our vessels will be empty, and with the magic throttled to such a low level, how will we fill back up?”
“You will only be empty for a moment,” Algonquin promised. “I will not insult you by pretending I ask a small thing. For this to work, I need all of your magic, but though the sacrifice is great, it will not be long. Once it’s served its purpose, Myron’s Mortal Spirit will no longer be needed, and with the chains of its Merlin to hold it down, my mage can simply give you your magic back. The return won’t be a hundred percent, obviously, but there are many, many ways to get magic. Once the world is safely ours again, I will be free to pursue them for you, starting with the second-greatest threat to our future, the dragons.”
Her voice grew hungry. “When this is over, I won’t have to worry about the DFZ or human politics anymore. Vann Jeger and I will be free to hunt snakes to our hearts’ content. When they are dead, I will drain their magic—magic they stole from living in our world—back into you, restoring you and raising you up above all others. So you see, my friends, I’m not asking you to degrade yourselves forever. There is no death for the deathless. This is just a short sleep, a pause compared to the full stop the Merlins sentenced us to. This time, though, when you wake, it will be into a better world. One where we are gods again.”
All the spirits chittered excitedly. Even Emily had to admit it wasn’t a bad plan. Algonquin’s hatred of dragons was no secret. Now she had the perfect excuse to hunt them and no one to stand in her way. But before Algonquin could clinch the favor that was swinging her way, a new voice rang out through the cavern.
“You were never a god.”
Algonquin whirled around, glaring at Emily, who was just as shocked. The words had indeed come from her mouth, but they weren’t hers. The deep, croaking voice speaking through her lips was Raven’s, and it was furious.
“Foolish lake,” he cawed. “Can you not see beyond your own banks? These are our brothers and sisters, the souls of the earth itself! They are not fodder for your paranoid ambitions. You strut and claim that you will cut off the magic and turn everything back to the time when it was only us, but time doesn’t work that way. We can never go back, Algonquin! The past is gone, and now you’re risking our future by gambling it on powers you have never understood. We will all suffer for your hubris if you do not stop!”
“You’re a fine one to talk of hubris, carrion feeder,” Algonquin snarled, her water surging up until Emily could see the reflection of her own wide eyes inches from her face. “You sold out to the humans ages ago, spilled our secrets for all to know. You even entangled yourself with a dragon, and you think you have the right to speak in this place? To tell us what we will suffer? We have already suffered! For a thousand years, we were tortured while we slept, abused when we were most powerless, but now it’s our turn. This time, we shall take the power, and they will be the ones to pay. All of them! We will strike down the Mortal Spirits before they can rise. Take back our magic from the humans, who damage everything they touch. Then, when it is done, we will use the dragons, who’ve never paid for anything, to recoup our costs. So you see, little bird, my plan risks nothing.”
“But it does!” Raven cried. “If you do this in our name, you make the entire world our enemy!”
“It’s far too late to worry about that,” Algonquin said. “This world has been my enemy from the moment I woke. I am sick and tired of being filthy, of being used. I am exhausted from seeing so much destruction, and yet, when I look forward, that’s all I see. More people, more dragons, more abuse, more death. If that’s our future, Raven, what does sacrifice matter? What does any of this matter if there’s nothing left to look forward to anyway?”
Raven’s shock and sadness at Algonquin’s words were enough to bring tears to Emily’s eyes, but the anger that followed was ten times worse. “I won’t let you do this,” he said, his voice rising like a gale. “We are the immortal land, the eternal magic itself! If we give up hope in the future and burn the present in a futile grab for the past, there will be nothing left for anyone.”
“There never was,” Algonquin said, reaching up to wrap her water around Emily’s throat. “Don’t you see, foolish bird? The die’s already been cast. This is our last stand. If we can’t turn back this tide, we will be trapped forever in a world that’s worse than death. A world where we are powerless, dirt for the mad gods to stomp on. I would sacrifice everything to avoid that, because if we lose here, if that is indeed our future, then I would rather have no future at all.”
She’d entwined her water entirely around the Leviathan by the time she finished, and deep in Emily’s mind, Raven began to tremble. “No,” he whispered. “I won’t allow it. I won’t let you make this our end.”
“Too bad,” Algonquin said as the water she’d wrapped around Emily’s neck began to trickle down her body, toward her sundered chest. “You don’t get a choice. You already turned your back on us.”
The water moved deeper, winding through the coils of spellwork Myron hadn’t yet unwound to rest on the knot that was Emily’s heart. Not her literal heart—that had gone long ago—but the start of the spell that had given her new life. It was her very first knot, wound by Raven himself around a bit of twisted metal he’d plucked from the wreckage of her family home in Old Detroit. It was the core of the deal they’d struck all those years ago, and its battered surface still bore the scratched letters of Raven’s name. Letters Algonquin’s water was quickly scouring away.
“Farewell, carrion crow,” she said, her voice a singsong as her water wore away the last of the scratches. “And thank you for your contribution to our cause.”
“No!” Raven shouted through Emily’s mouth. “You can’t have her! She’s—”
His voice died as Algonquin scraped the last of his name away, leaving Emily alone in her head for the first time in over sixty years. She was still reeling when Algonquin’s water drained out of her.
“And that’s that,” the spirit said as the Leviathan’s tentacle uncurled, dumping Emily unceremoniously onto the stone at Myron’s feet. With no arms to catch herself, she landed hard, screaming silently as her spellwork began to slide out of control. If she’d been a mage, she could have stopped it, but as Myron had said countless times, she had no such power. Without Raven, Emily Jackson wasn’t the Phoenix. She was just another mortal. A dying one, her patchwork body disintegrating before her eyes. Then, just before she collapsed entirely, a new power scooped her up, folding her back together. She didn’t even recognize it as Myron’s Labyrinth magic until the glowing maze surrounded her completely, the neon forks forming an iridescent cage that held her in place. But while Emily was staring at her former partner’s sorcery, Myron was glaring at Algonquin.
“Some warning would have been nice,” he said, his chest heaving as he repositioned what was left of Emily into the center of his magic. “Did I not stress how important she was to our plan? Your tiff with Raven nearly destroyed our ticket!”
“She wasn’t our ticket so long as he lived inside her,” Algonquin reminded him, her watery face warping into an unflattering copy of Myron’s own. “Time to keep your end of the bargain, traitor mage. The Raven has been expunged, as promised. Now replace his name with yours and take control of his construct, and we shall see if you can live up to your boasting.”
Myron scowled one last time and turned back to Emily, but while his face was as haughty as ever, his hands were shaking. “I’ll do my part,” he said. “But are you sure you can do yours? We only get one shot at this.”
The lake spirit smiled his own smile back at him. “You’ll get your magic, have no fear. As I just told Raven, this is the only victory scenario we have left. If you want your share of it, mortal, you will do exactly as we discussed.”
“Of course,” Myron said after a moment’s hesitation. “Never thought otherwise.”
The Lady of the Lakes’ reflection smiled one more time, and then she let Myron’s face fall away, becoming just water again as she turned back to the gathered spirits.
There were no speeches this time. No warnings. The water lurking at the cavern’s edges simply welled up, flooding over the stone at the spirits’ feet.
A few fled when the lake reached them. The eel spirit in particular vanished so quickly he left a bubble under the water. Most of them, though, including Wolf, Eagle, and the other animals stayed put, their heads lowered in acceptance as Algonquin’s water rose higher and higher. It would have washed over Emily and Myron, too, but the Leviathan got there first, surrounding them in a protective cocoon of black tentacles.
Emily didn’t waste time after that. The moment the Leviathan hid them from Algonquin, she turned on Myron, opening her mouth in a last attempt to reason with him, but it was no use. Without Raven’s name to give her control, her body wouldn’t obey. All she could do was gasp silently as he set her down on the wet stone at his feet.
“Stop it,” he ordered, holding her still with his foot as he reached up to adjust the floodlights. “It’s over, Emily. This will be a lot easier on both of us if you don’t fight.”
Her answer to that was to spit at him, or at least try to. She was still trying to get her mouth to work when he knelt beside her again, leaning down to whisper in her ear.
“Be still and listen,” he ordered, pressing her down until she stopped twitching. “I know how this looks, but I wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t the only way. Algonquin’s right. The Mortal Spirits are rising. Marci Novalli’s cat was just the first, and you saw what a terror he was. The others will be worse. If we don’t get control of this situation, the spirits of the land won’t be the only ones in trouble. Trust me, Emily. This is for the best. I might not have come to it in the usual way, but I’ll be the Merlin this world needs. I swear it.”
Since she couldn’t speak to tell him what a load of bull that was, Emily looked away, clenching her teeth as Myron placed his hand inside the hole Raven’s absence had left in her chest.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “Brace yourself. This will probably hurt.”
She was trying to get enough control for one final rude gesture when Myron’s maze of magic pulled tight, yanking every line of her spellwork with it until the world went white with pain.