The Abhorsen approached. Elena filled with hope and terror.
Elena could still remember her name, and the names of her family, especially the twins. Without memory, she could have no pride. Without pride, she was nothing. The Pulvarian outcasts in her town had a saying, "Nobody is dead while their name is remembered."
"Abhorsen," Chlorr hissed, voice tight with nervousness or jealousy.
Rebel fighters had turned the town of Walasia into smoldering rubble. Ash filled the fields that had once born rich corn and hops. Brick dust and shrapnel choked the Helver Memorial Fountain. The Pulvarian outcasts had been shot first.
Chlorr raised her hand and pointed one long finger. Her backward-facing legs tensed up before she could think. "The Abhorsen in waiting will try to protect the defenseless. She is careless. The dog…" Chlorr shuddered. "Go for the children. Do not be hasty. Their screams will distract the Abhorsen."
Elena could remember for Walasia, its grim-faced but enduring people and its indigo-roofed villas. Elena could remember her name and her gender. This body was male, but that was the least of its problems. The backwards-jointed legs didn't quite fit the hip sockets. She swayed back and forth with every step, like a Turgish clock. She felt ridiculous.
The rich smell of life wafted in. Life. Electric, tangy, sweet, minty, sharp life. Life that she had once possessed. Life that had belonged to her son. Not the other son. His name was Erin. Of course she remembered his name! The other shambling abominations around her forgot everything, their minds washed clean by that unfathomable river. The river that shouldn't exist. All the bearded wise men and sages had said she should encounter the waterless depths of the underworld, or the halls of judgment.
"Hungry! Thirst! Weak! Hungry!" the abominations moaned. She kept her jaw shut. She wouldn't demean herself. These things were no longer human. The river of death had wiped away their memories, their loves, their fears, everything but the hunger for life. Sweet, burning life. Life. Living prey waited ahead.
She wouldn't give in to the call of the terrible bell. It knew her name. Had her bad son given away her name, or did the bell reveal it?
Elena's triple-jointed hand snatched a squirrel from a low branch. Without her choice, without her permission, it stuffed the wriggling animal into her mouth. Sweet, hot, guilty life gushed into her.
Chlorr had explained the names and uses of those evil pan pipes to Rapheal. Her son. Elena's other son. Erin's twin brother. She must remember her family. What was missing?
Confusion gave way to rage. She recalled Raphael's treachery. He had seen them, struggling on the shore, and stayed in the water, waving a burning rowan branch, and tried to barter with Chlorr. The masked nightmare had said she didn't want to waste him.
Her unhinged jaw worked. She spat fur and bone. Black dust dribbled from her shredded lips. No, not her shredded lips. Her lips had been full and beautiful. She had hated the rest of her face, the fishy eyes, the jutting cheek bones, the whispy blond hair. Well, maybe not the hair. No, that golden hair was beautiful.
She touched a whole in this face. It dripped black slime. Maybe she hadn't been so ugly after all.
They emerged from the trees into brilliant moonlight. Life glimmered in hot salt bodies. Gunshots pelted into her. She laughed. A knife jutted from her chest. She pulled it out and admired the glint of moonlight on fine steel. Never waste good steel. She tried to shove it into her pocket, but this body had a kilt, no pockets, so she settled for driving it into her stiffened thigh muscles. They worked as well as a sheath.
Rocks cracked her skull. Wet stuff dribbled out. The countrymen, some from Walasia, but most of them foreign devils, circled around the young bright lives. She popped open her jaw. Life tasted sweet.
Elena thought about stopping, as they screamed and prayed to the saints of her homeland. Saroneth disagreed. Her limbs tore guts. Her jaw unhinged and closed on scarf-covered necks. Sadness and confusion slowed her popping joints. She felt bad, but she couldn't remember why. Sweet life flowed into her. Prey flapped and ended. She must remember.
Remember what?
Moonlight gleamed off of a blond head at the center of the life circle, a young, bright life, bright like the sun. It was bright like Erin, her good son, the one she should have paid more attention to. She had tried to hold on to Erin when the wave hit, in that river, that grey, cold river. The cruel water had torn his blazing spirit from her ghostly hands and taken him away forever. Then the dead thing had come, a giant shadow of a spider with a head like a horse, casting out its claws to hook spirits. The note had sung and called her into this ruined flesh.
She had to remember something, something new. She was Elena, daughter of Count Marduke and Maryanne, mother of Erin and that hellspawn Raphael. She remembered the bells.
Saroneth told her to attack, but Chlorr had said not to be hasty. She might eventually attack the children, but their was no reason she couldn't trip up the squat revenant to her left.
There was no reason she couldn't rip the five-eyed head off the dead hand in front of her and fling it into the river. Chlorr of the Mask had never explicitly forbidden her from gleefully rending the slow-witted abominations that lurched alongside her.
The children kept screaming. She tried to reassure them, as she fought back the monster…no, her fellow monsters, the crimes against life that she was one of. Gurgles and hissing noises came out of her mouth, no words.
She called to the Abhorsen. She prayed to the Abhorsen, blasphemy be damned, no saints waited at the end of the grey river. Save the child, Abhorsen! Save the child! I can help hold them off! They won't harm a golden hair on his head!
From her ruined lips, a demented cackle and a chunk of squirrel fur emerged. None of her desperate prayers escaped into the night air. Her fellow revenants began to catch on. The pulled her limbs back. They bit into her flesh, pausing, spitting out the putrid muck, and then forgetting themselves and digging in again. They didn't understand that "enemy" was not always the same as "prey."
Then the Abhorsen came.
Golden fire burned. She thought it had been intense, when the native mystic chanted. She had thought it terrible and beautiful then. This burned her soul. This radiance reminded her of her place in the world, that she had no place in the world, that she was a crime against life to be abolished immediately.
She pointed a finger at Belgiaure, the speaker, the pipe that could restore her voice. She mewled and gurgled. The finger was too long. It broke off, but she had seven more on this hand.
The painful light attacked her. She tried to defend herself. Now she only had one hand with three fingers. Dizzy with pain and fear, tripping on her own rotting feet, she kept pointing at the speaker bell. Now she had no hands or arms. She lurched back on unsteady feet. She would give the Abhorsen no more trouble.
The Abhorsen concentrated her attacks on the other dead. They forgot about attacking the traitor in her ranks, and swarmed after burning delicious life.
When the pipe sounded, not the speaker, but the other pipe, Elena slipped back into the grey river. She welcomed the force that pushed her down and on, deep into the strong current. Mosrael sang, but she ignored its call. Other dead things swam towards and around her, coming upstream. She grabbed onto something like a centipede with a hog's head.
She was doomed. The roaring waters called her name. Maybe she could send a message back. She tried to communicate her will, to tell it to pass on her hatred and ill-wishes to her living son. It squealed and flailed, but she grasped tight, weighing it down as the current buffeted them. It had to fight against the current, while her dancing legs followed the easiest path downstream. The river aided her progress, buoying up her steps.
She burned into it with her blazing spirit eyes. Elena no longer had flesh, or tongue, and she might not even have a mouth, but her will dripped into the beast's panicked gaze. Only when it stopped struggling and squealed acquiescence did she release it.
As she galloped through the first gate, she wondered if she should have sent a message to her husband, the hero who had warned them of the poison, the coward who had abandoned his family in the flight for the river. She shook her head. She couldn't put those feelings into words, even if she had a worthy messenger to deliver them or a tongue to speak them. Elena lifted her head and searched the grey depths for Erin's haloed face.