Mother of Slag Read online

  Chapter 5

  Nora grimaced, remembering the little girl’s screaming. That was real, she told herself, edging forward, one steadying hand on the side of the cliff. The suffering had always been real. Only now, she was the one causing it. She and the Blade, acting on behalf of her fury, lashing out at whatever stood in her way. The towering temple had fallen at her wish, burying the city beneath it, taking gods knew how many lives. All her life she had hated the people who had set out newborn twins because they believed in the babies’ inherent cursedness, and hated those who stood by and watched even more. How many people had she killed by crashing heaps of stone on top of them? How many children? She needed to talk to Owen. He had to be there—just had to.

  She turned the last corner and stepped out of the woods and into Owen’s Ridge, a one-road village, the smithy on her left, the inn on her right, then a few wooden houses on both sides and the baker’s kiln at the end.

  Or rather, that was what it was supposed to look like. The map of her home on her soul.

  Instead, she saw nothing but ruin beyond the small square between the smithy and the inn. The inn was a charred shell. Smoke hung over the destruction along the main street, covering the dead and empty places with a shroud. And beyond, roving black clouds of nightmares circled the night sky, seeking.

  The only house still standing was her home, and the forge. It loomed dark and silent. She’d have to go inside, and she knew what would be waiting for her. The headless body of her foster father, maggot ridden, bursting with reproach. Her eyes skipped to the narrow window on the upper floor. What if Owen wasn’t there? His window was dark, just like her own next to it. But that’s where she’d have to go, right? If she wanted to find him.

  To get there, though, she’d have to make her way through the silent crowd of people, all staring at her. She saw familiar faces and unfamiliar ones.

  The little girl stood here, and the ruined man, and Shade. But also Garreth waited just behind Shade, and Sallima, the baker’s wife. They were all there, everyone she had done violence to, everyone she’d killed, everyone she had ever disappointed. Oh gods. That was a lot of people.

  A woman with golden hair stood foremost, overlooking the crowd, she had her back turned to Nora. When Nora hesitated, the woman seemed to sense it. Her dark blue skirts rippled as her head swiveled around to face Nora.

  Mother Sara.

  She was covered in blood. Her dress was torn open, and her bloody entrails hung from her gashed abdomen. Globs of shivering flesh clung to her exposed guts as she shuffled towards Nora, her arms wide, a motherly embrace.

  Nora took a step back, but underneath her heel, the cliff made an abrupt descent. Looking over her shoulder, she watched the pathway she had just climbed fall away into a deep, black hole. Another churning mass of blackness waited for her at the bottom.

  All right, then. This was how it was going to be. Only way forward was through. Nora took a deep breath, and reached for the flickering fire inside of her.

  “Curse you, Nora,” Mother Sara whispered, her hands turning into claws as she reached for Nora’s shoulders. “Curse you as you cursed me.”

  “I didn’t curse you,” Nora muttered, and pushed Mother Sara away as gently as she could. She wasn’t real. She had died years ago.

  The dangling chunks of gore bumped against Nora’s legs, and she shuddered when she looked down. Twisted, broken little babies with closed eyes and angry little pouts were swinging amid Mother Sara’s entrails. Nora squeezed her eyes shut.

  No, there was no curse. She hadn’t cursed anyone just by being alive.

  The rest of the crowd had come forward, too, and barred her way to the smithy’s door.

  “Curse you, Nora,” the baker’s wife said and spat in Nora’s face. “This is all your fault, child of Death.”

  “You should have died in your mother’s womb.” Mother Sara pressed against Nora’s back and hissed in her ear. “I should have left you to die when I found you.”

  “Killer,” Garreth strode towards her, fists raised.

  “Wanton,” Shade added.

  “Shut up,” Nora pushed him away, eyes fixed on the smithy door.

  She smacked away hands that tried to grab her. The crowd surged against her. She was supposed to go over into the darkness, plummet over the cliff into the roiling black below to never come back out again.

  Curse you, curse you. The crowd of her inner demons took up the chant. It echoed across the small village square, bouncing off of the broken walls of her home, until the words ran together and all Nora heard was the crowd’s curses and the Blade’s crack strike break rend

  Nora shoved back. She pressed farther, harder, elbowing and kicking her way through the crowd. Getting through the door was the only thing that mattered. Someone snagged a handful of her hair and yanked her head. She thrust her head back violently, heard the snap of nose cartilage, and pulled her head free.

  Curse you curse you curse you curse you curse

  “Fuck off!” she screamed.

  She rammed another elbow at the baker’s wife trying to bring her down, punched a farmer in the gut, bit a gnarled hand that tried to gouge her eye. She couldn’t go down. Not now. It would be tantamount to giving up. It’d be suicide. She’d get to this fucking door, and go through it, and behind it she’d find Owen, and together they’d find some way out of this hellhole. There were cracks in the charcoal clamp of her soul, she could feel the heat leaking. Let it burn. Let them all burn.

  She growled and headbutted Becca’s father, the innkeep, who was in her way. At last she reached the door. She turned around and saw a sheet of fire engulf the first rows of the pressing crowd. Shrieks broke the curse you chant. Crackling flame jumped from one twitching body to the next.

  For a moment she pressed herself to the door, to escape the heat. Gathering her wits, she pushed the door open, jumped through, and closed it behind her as far as it would go on its broken hinge. She leaned her forehead against it, let the fire inside her calm a little, stop clamoring for blood.

  It was quiet inside her old kitchen. Silence fell heavily on her ears. The wails and screams, the chanting—she couldn’t hear them in here. She only heard her rasping breath and the occasional drip of her blood on the wooden floor.

  The table she had awoken on, where the baker’s wife had saved her, still stood in the center of the kitchen, still laden with the bloody furs she had been wrapped in when the baker’s wife had saved her. The furs were still clotted with her blood—just as she had seen them last. The back door was gone completely, a faint blood mark where she had rested her head against the frame, deciding what to do, where to go. How long ago was that now? A year? A year and a half? And here she was, still at the same threshold.

  A creak of wood from above drew her gaze to the staircase.

  Owen—he’d be upstairs, reading by candlelight in his room. Even though she hadn’t seen any light in his window, she was certain she’d find him. She pushed herself away from the door, and stumbled toward the steep staircase.

  Another creak of wood. This time from behind her.

  She glanced over her shoulder, towards the door that led to the forge, knowing full well who would be behind it.

  She continued towards the staircase. It was seven paces from the front door, she knew by heart and memory. Only seven paces, but she had already taken double that number, and still the dark gaping staircase loomed on the other side of the room.

  Keep going, don’t look back.

  But behind her she heard the forge door slowly swing open. She heard heavy breathing, a whistling inhale.

  “Nora.” Rannoch, her foster father, spoke.

  Despite herself, she looked back.

  Rannoch stood in the doorway to the forge. She could just make out the shadow of the anvil behind him. His head was gone, and the stump of his severed neck bled white wriggling maggots. Black buzzing things that might have been flies, clung to the ragged gore. Even without a head, he spoke.


  “Come here, Nora.”

  She kept walking towards the stairs, heard him dragging his feet over the wooden floorboards.

  “Nora, take me with you.” he said. “Don’t leave me behind this time.”

  “Stay the fuck away,” she screamed. She knew she should have reached the staircase already but it was still across the room.

  Rannoch lumbered closer, his strange wheezing accompanied by the buzz of the nightmare flies circling his open throat. She saw several deep slashes in the flesh of his arms and the palm of his hands. He must have fought the bandits who overran the village, her village, after she and Owen had left. They had run away, and Rannoch had stayed. He still had rope tied around his wrists.

  Nora had seen these wounds before, but now it felt as if she had caused them. As if this creature had assembled its broken self from her memories of loss and shame.

  The flame inside her withered slightly.

  “Nora, please stay with me,” he said, gaining on her.

  “Owen!” she called towards the stairs.

  The Rannoch-shaped thing drew closer, the buzz of the flies grew louder. Nora felt a slight tingle on her shoulder as his fingers brushed her naked skin. The maggots his touch left on her wriggled towards her wounds. She slapped them off and dodged towards the hearth, bringing the table between Rannoch and herself. She pushed it against him, and he swayed for balance.

  “I said stay away,” she shouted.

  He stopped and the headless body swiveled towards her once more, so close she realized that the buzzing of the flies was the faint chorus of the chanting Blade.

  Tie bind own possess slash rip tear

  “You!” she screamed at the Blade. “You’re not Rannoch. You’re not Shade. You’re not any of these people. You are a liar and a murderer and nothing but darkness.”

  “I am you. We are all you now,” Rannoch made the ward against evil as his headless body took up the chant. “Liar. Murderer. Monster. Curse you.”

  “Curse your fucking self!”

  She jumped onto the table and tackled the Blade, but she dove right through the curling shadows, and thudded onto the floor. A silver ripple ran like a current over her body, making her teeth rattle. The silver stung with a thousand tiny fires that pooled in the palms of her hands when she unclenched her fists. Burn it. Burn all of it.

  No. She clenched her teeth. The temple. She had to remember that she had brought down the temple. Ignore the Blade egging her on.

  Behind her, Rannoch’s midriff spiraled into black swirls where she had punched through, then started to mend itself with patches of darkness pulled from the corners of the room, from cracks in the floorboards. A pale, overlarge bird skull appeared above the maggot-infested neck, smoky tendrils waving upon its shoulders like live serpents.

  “Surrender to us,” the two-faced wraith-Nora emerged from the dark broil that poured out of the Rannoch-skull’s empty eye-sockets. “There is nothing for you here.”

  “I will fight you.” Nora pushed herself up to her feet and slung the balls of fire at the monstrous figure. A snarl and it stumbled to a knee with the blow. “With everything I have. And then I will tear you apart.”

  Two-Face laughed in reply.

  Nora’s hands lit with silver sparks and she pummeled the thing that had grown out of her foster father. It twisted around her, dispersed in wreaths of thick smoke, trying to trap her, smother her. But when she hit it with the light, it recoiled, broke apart, fragmented. She kicked and punched the writhing shadows, sometimes striking the air, sometimes feeling a shuddering impact, until she saw an opening in the dark mists. There! The stairs. The fight had pushed her across the room. She was so close to them now. She shouted at the nightmarish creature of mists before her, a battle cry of rage, and the silver light burned brighter. It cast the darkness away from her, dispelled it to the far side of the room. Nora took her chance, turned and fled up the stairs, leaping up into the darkness two steps at a time.

  There was Owen’s door.

  Light spilled through the crack underneath.

  Nora took the last steps in one bound. The silver flames died in her hand and she was plunged back into darkness, illuminated only by the light from below the door.

  She heard the groan of the wooden steps as the Rannoch-creature stepped on the first one.

  She rattled the door handle. Locked.

  “Owen! Open the door!”

  But the door remained closed. It had never been locked in any of her memories.

  “Owen! Please!”

  She beat a fist against the door, listening as the headless creature labored up the stairs.

  She slammed her hip against the door. Once, twice, three—and it gave way. The light stung her eyes.

  She entered Owen’s room blindly, and closed the door behind her, making sure to turn the key in the lock.

  Her gaze swept the room. Owen’s bed, his desk and chair. A trunk for his clothes. But he was nowhere to be seen.

  A single candle burned on top of his desk, the dancing flame casting wild shadows into the corners.

  Nora sank down and leaned her back against the rattling door.

  She had been so sure. She had been so sure that he’d be here, waiting for her. Where the fuck was he?

  For a moment she was overcome with grief. She had fought so hard, and been so brave, and all she had wanted was to—

  A shovel appeared, leaning against Owen’s bed.

  The door shook behind her, and she heard scratching noises, something with claws and sharp teeth, trying to get in.

  Why was a shovel leaning against Owen’s bed? Nora pushed herself up to her feet and walked over to the shovel.

  It was a charcoaler’s spade. Her spade. It fit her hands perfectly. As she took hold of it, her old midnight-black clothes wrapped around her as good as new. She felt her wounds heal, the gash in her chest seal together.

  A thundering boom shook the door and the entire wall.

  Nora grasped the shovel with both hands. It seemed to be the most natural, most comfortable thing in the world. She had come here to find her twin. But instead she had found … a spade? A scent of old leather, ink, and parchments filled the room.

  “Owen?” She whispered. The screams of a thousand voices shattered the door, wooden shards exploding into the room.

  A swirling, writhing mass of darkness squeezed up through the bent floorboards, warping the planks as it filled the room. Shards of souls wailed and flapped clawed wings at her face, biting at her with gaping maws and pointed fangs.

  Nora clutched the spade. She ran at the narrow window over Owen’s bed, holding the spade like a shield, and leapt.

  She crashed through the window and tumbled onto the grass below. When she looked up, she saw the enormous, fragmented black cloud billowing out of the window into the night sky, taking on Owen’s face for a brief second.

  “You can’t fool me with that shit,” Nora shouted. “Take on as many forms as you like. I see you. I know what you are now.”

  “You know nothing,” the blackness whispered in a chorus of voices as it circled above her, threatening to engulf her. “We are you.”

  “No.” Nora braced herself. “You’re the Blade and you’re just using the darkness inside of me to torment me into submission. I’ve known you all my life. I’ve fought you every day of my life. I won’t stop now.”

  She looked into the darkness of her twin face.

  “I know you. And you won’t scare me anymore.”

  She saw the cloud burst in a raging hiss, and cascading from the broken sky, a torrent of the Blade’s remains rained towards her. The impact of the deluge on the ground made it shake and rip open. She was falling into the opening fissure below her. The spade clattered against the shuddering earth; a short drop and a sudden stop. She howled as her weight wrenched her shoulder, but held on to the spade now wedged in the chasm. Still the Blade poured down. A thousand fragments of souls cut into her like brittle glass. It took tremendous
effort to raise her head and look up into the darkness, the rush pushing her down to drown. She saw the silver light skip across the metal of the spade, only to flicker and vanish under the onslaught of black. The colossal tidal wave engulfed her, crushed her, filled her veins with ice, made her muscles freeze up. The spade’s wooden handle cracked. The splinters jabbed into her hand.

  She let go.

  She plummeted.

  Chapter 6

  Nora awoke with the fierce heat of the sun burning her face. Every move hurt, but the worst was the pounding in her head. She coughed, and her lungs burned. She spat out a gob of sand and saliva, rolled onto her elbows, and slowly sat up. She tried to swallow. Her mouth felt as parched as her red desert surroundings. She tried getting to her feet, but collapsed onto her knees on the sand.

  “Are you fucking kidding me, you fucking fuckers?” she croaked. “Is this how it’s going to be? Do you think this is funny?”

  There was no answer.

  She found herself kneeling in a washed out river bed on a broad, stony plain bounded within the rim of distant hills. The hills were a deep red in the wavering heat, and a spattering of clouds hung above them in the otherwise pristine blue desert sky. There was no wind, not much of anything except stones and rocks, patches of dead brown grass and brambles, and she sat in silence, looking across the barren country to the red hills. To the west she saw some larger stones. They rose out of the desert wasteland like boundary markers. Or monuments to the fools who had come to this dry place and died. Bulbous at the top, their slender trunks carved in furrows by wind and time, the stones resembled mushrooms. Meager bushes, dried and blackened, grew in the small shadows at their feet, stretching their thorned limbs towards Nora.

  There were no chanting Whisperers. And in the blinding sunlight, there was no heaving darkness. So, this was … real? Maybe? How could she tell? Had she gone south? South from Arrun? That’s where the desert began. The sun-kissed lands of Shinar.