Citizens milled around the Agris hours before the sky's first lightening. Some men and women, including a few young ones barely old enough to drink, mingled cheerfully, stirred by a sudden, morbid sense of community. They patted each other on the back and congratulated themselves for purging the unclean element from their beloved Lo.
Others stood apart from the crowds, their faces stark and gray as the night's passage into morning. These were the stony faces of loss - the widows and widowers and mothers of murdered children still reeling from the emptiness in their homes and beds. These were the ones who had seen their hopes die with the last breaths of their loved ones. Their eyes confessed sickness and bone-weariness, but their mouths never would.
Her mother had kept to her word and separated them, even in the low hell of the dungeons. Isolde waited silently in her cell, appreciative of the cold that sapped the nervous fire from her skin. She didn't feel afraid of what was to come. Rather, she felt a sense of peaceful release. Ombra would be safe with his people - his kin, she corrected herself. Garreth had said so. Her mind gave thanks for that much reassurance. It had been enough for her to know that he still lived, after three painful weeks of believing him dead, slaughtered by the raiding mobs.
But Alba...and Garreth...
She quieted her burgeoning tears. She would see them again - both of them - soon.
At the first deep blue striping of dawn, two guards - her mother's personal guards, both female - came for her. She stood, greeting them with quiet dignity even as they stripped her of her gown and cloak. She shivered in the darkness as they dressed her in the garb of Lo's damned - wide strips of unbleached cloth bound round her breasts and hips.
"Your gown is heavy," one of the guards said. She brushed back her brilliant auburn hair and stuffed the dress into a sack.
"It'll burn slowly and prolong your suffering."
"So it's to be burning, then?"
Red-hair nodded.
"This way," the other one said as she wrapped another strip of cloth around Isolde's breasts, "it's quicker. Nothing between you and the fire." They said nothing more to her as they slipped ropes around her wrists and led her up into the light. She looked straight ahead until she emerged onto the Agris.
The sight of Isolde, stripped of her finery and bound in prisoner's garb, stunned her people into silence. They stared unabashedly, unable to rip their eyes away as the Chancellor's daughter allowed herself to be led up a torch-lined path in ropes and bound to the stake they all thought was for her husband.
A moment later Garreth emerged from the dungeon, but the same people who had only a moment earlier allowed Isolde to pass unmolested now pelted him with stones and sticks and rotted fruit. He didn't allow their disdain to touch him, but kept his eyes on Isolde, moving toward his wife with solemn dignity. Him, too, they bound to the stake so that he could not even look upon her face.
By now the sky had turned a lush violet, the moon still shining proudly in spite of the approaching daylight. Atop the monument to Thene, the Chancellor now raised her hands for silence. Sick to her stomach, Isolde noticed her father was nowhere to be found.
Had she murdered him, too?
"Good people," she said, for the Chancellor's voice was such that she never had to shout to be heard.
"With this final act of vengeance, we cleanse our beloved Lo forever."
Some applause, surely not as much as the Chancellor had anticipated, swept through the crowd. Isolde's fingers flapped around beneath the ropes, scrambling for Garreth's. He met her fingers, brushing them with his own. It was all he could do.
"You're a very stupid girl," he reproached, his words hot and red at the edges. "You might still live if you beg her forgiveness now. Tell her I've placed you under a spell. Tell her I drugged your food. Tell her something, Isolde! There is no need for you to die here with me!"
"She would never forgive me now," Isolde answered. "I've wounded her pride."
The Chancellor's audience shuffled restlessly. These people could smell blood not yet spilled. Some truly wanted expiation; others had only come for the gruesome entertainment; still others had come to watch Garreth's death and pretend that their loved ones' blood stained his hands, and not their own.
"Our battles began a thousand years ago, with a flight of owls and the death of a child. In the weeks past, we have seen it happen again. A single child. A grim betrayal. Overnight, Lo, our home and sanctuary from all things that would do us evil, had become a haven for what we hated most. But we fought. We persevered. We won. Our battles are not waged only against the unnatural creatures that leeched their way into our lives. Our battles are with those who would sympathize with the enemy. With those who have helped them at every step, and sought to ensure the destruction of our beautiful valley. It is to my shame that such a person should be my own daughter."
Murmurs among the crowds, sudden intakes of breath like the soft hissing of rain. She extended her arm, and the red-haired guard placed a stout torch in her hand.
"I prove myself a champion to my people with this sacrifice. No one - not even my own blood - will endanger the eternal spirit of Lo."
She hauled back and threw the torch, which landed in the pile of sticks and branches and twigs with a dry crunch. For a long time, nothing happened. Isolde closed her eyes and wept, while Garreth did his best to cover her fingers with his own. Within moments of sunrise, acrid gray smoke and small licking flames crackled up from the parched wood. Isolde watched the flames grow and leap until the smoke became too much for her, searing her nostrils and burning her eyes. She could hear Garreth gasping as the smoke rose up and around them in great billowy sails. She choked his name, slumping against the ropes, which held her fast.
"Don't be scared of the fire, Isolde," he gasped. "It will be over soon."
She breathed in smoky air. Her head felt thick and heavy, as it did when she'd had too much wine to drink. If she blacked out now, she wondered, would she feel the fire burning her through to the bone? She looked up as cool wind brushed her face, fanning the smoky pillars away. She feared that in a moment it would return, twice as dense, and then she would be truly gone.
The flames had grown higher, nearly just below her feet now, but the smoke had cleared around her and Garreth. What she saw up in the sky, through the quickly shifting billows of smoke, made the words stick in her throat.
A parliament of owls hovered over Lo, thick enough to shelter them from the dawning sky. White owls, black owls, brown and spotted...a million different owls of endless variety pumped their wings, creating strong winds that fanned the smoke away from the town center and dissipated it quickly.
Garreth hooted, screeching happily up at them, and a million deafening cries came back in answer. "They've come for us!" he cried, squeezing Isolde's hand as best he could. "They've been waiting for this, watching Lo since Ombra came to them! They've come to take us home!"
The Chancellor looked on in horror as several owls swooped low, nipping with curved beaks at the ropes that bound Garreth and Isolde. Others used their razored talons to tear at the dry fibers until the ropes lay in shreds.
"Kill them!" the Chancellor shrieked. "Kill them all! They cannot live!"
Swords drawn, the guards rushed forward.
So did the owls.
The scene on the Agris this morning mirrored the beautiful woodcuts tucked safely away in the temple libraries. Humans and owls met in this in-between place, surreal and dreamlike even as their blood mingled and flowed, locked in deadly embrace until one or both fell. The owls pecked and ripped, plucking out eyes as easily as berries from a bush. Isolde winced at the sight of one of her mother's guards dead at her feet, her tongue gone and her eyes missing from their yawning sockets. She recognized the woman only by her flaming red hair.
Garreth took his wife by the shoulders, forcing her to look at him alone. All around her, screams pierced the rising dawn, shattering the normal sleepy morning peace.
"Isolde, stay with me!" He shook her shoulders gently, keeping a cap on his own fear.
"We're going to get out of here. Take my hand and don't let go. Do you understand?"
She nodded, jumping as an owl crash-landed at her feet, one blood-soaked wing hanging sad and useless from its body. It fluttered momentarily in the dust, then uttered a last pitiful wail and went still. Isolde choked back a sob for the pitiable thing.
"Isolde!"
She looked back at the sound of her mother's voice. A congregation of owls hovered about her like a cloud of pesky mosquitoes, dipping low to get their digs in. Their calls rang out, laughter in the tumult all around.
"Isolde help me PLEASE!" Dagger-sharp talons lashed out, ripping her regal robes and scoring the skin below with vicious furrows. Her scarlet blood splattered as she waved her arms wildly, shielding herself from the attack.
"Garreth-" Isolde pleaded, resisting as he pulled her toward Mount Ornithon, where their son waited for them. "She's my mother!"
Garreth's eyes shifted uneasily from their path over to the Chancellor, who was quickly losing ground beneath the onslaught. Garreth threw back his head and screeched at her attackers, his call white and chilling. Isolde looked on in amazement as they retreated grudgingly, and moved on to another target.
The Chancellor stared at Isolde and Garreth, seeing nothing. Her headdress was gone now and Isolde could plainly see the scratches marring the white field of her forehead. Her black hair stuck out in tangled snarls.
"They won't stay away from her forever," he told Isolde, dragging her along.
"They know her too well. Don't look back again, love. You won't like what you see."
"Isolde!" she called behind them. "Isolde, wait-!"
"Goodbye, Mother," she whispered, even as the woman's screams started up again behind them. Not a single human could claim immunity - every face, every body, bore some sign of attack. Townspeople ran in blind panic, slamming into one another, waving torches with foolish abandon and setting fire to neighbor and kin.
An old woman in flaming rags stumbled around, her face contorted in pain so great no sound escaped her lips. All around similar scenes played out: an owl fluttered at the end of a pitchfork thrust into a wooden gate; hysterical children huddled together as a group of owls clustered triumphantly over their mother's weak, struggling body. A gang of white owls dug their talons into a screaming man's wrists until he dropped his sword, then held him fast as others ripped savagely at his breast and torso. One made away with his heart; another took his liver. So the owls' assault continued, brutal and methodical.
Garreth and Isolde moved through it all like travelers in a dreamworld, touching nothing, taking nothing, leaving everything. Only a few straggling bodies had been able to make it far from the Agris, where they could see the smoke and dark rings of owls, but they could no longer hear the tortured cries of the townspeople. They looked at one another, and found hope amidst the exhaustion and fear. The city gates were still some way off, but if they stayed together and did not stray from their purpose-
"You would bring the city to dust, and then leave?"
Isolde stopped abruptly, and Garreth jerked back when her arm went taut. She turned, the rattling voice still thick in her ears. Cullen Marst raised the fire-tube that had taken Lyta down with one explosive shot. He gripped the weapon tightly, his quaking, withered hands unusually steady and sure as he pointed it at Garreth's heart.
"Get behind me, Isolde!" Garreth hissed, watching Cullen's fingers move closer to the trigger.
But Isolde moved forward, raising her hands in surrender. "Cullen," she pleaded, "don't do this. Let us go."
His ancient eyes glared at Garreth before wandering wearily to Isolde.
"There was a time I'd have given everything I own to see you look at me once the way you look at him. I would have, you know. I loved you so."
"I know," she told him, though she remembered the look in his eyes as anything but tender. "I know you did."
"But you didn't want me," he went on flatly.
"And why would you want an old man? Sick, feeble...I wouldn't have been nearly as good a lover to you as your young owl, I suppose..."
"What do you want from me, Cullen? I can't change any of that now."
He blinked, surprised. Isolde cringed as he chuckled dryly. "Can't you? What did you think? That I wouldn't want you because you've been an owl's whore for all these years? No, Isolde. I'm a better man than that. I'd still have you."
Garreth snarled and made a move in the old man's direction, but Isolde grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back.
"Don't," she whispered. "You have to trust me."
She slipped around him and moved toward Cullen. She placed her hand on the tube. The metal felt warm beneath her fingers, and she caught a whiff of strong sulfur and burnt powder as she made him lower it gently, but persistently. She wondered if his last victim had been man or owl. Or, like Garreth, both.
"I will stay with you, if you swear to me that you will let him go unharmed."
"Isolde," Garreth breathed. "No-"
Cullen's shriveled eyelids blinked once, twice in surprise. Was she actually using herself to bargain for the life of that...creature?
"No games, Cullen. He's no threat to you. Let Garreth go, and I'll stay with you as your wife. In deed, if not in name," she managed.
His eyes darted back and forth between them, scouting for tricks and schemes. She could smell the distrust on him.
"You would give yourself to me in return for his freedom?"
"My love for his life," she bargained. "That's the deal."
He pondered her offer, coolly calculating his risks and gains. At last, he lowered the weapon to his side.
"Very well," he told her, and put out one gnarled, shaking hand. "I accept."
She dropped Garreth's hand.
Garreth shook his head grimly and snapped up her hand again, unwilling to let her go. The anger, the harsh betrayal in his eyes set her heart to violent palpitations.
"Just let me say goodbye to him," she told Cullen, a sad smile touching her lips.
"By all means." He held his arms wide in a sweeping gesture of welcome.
She embraced Garreth tightly, her lips against his ear. He buried his face in her neck so she could feel his hot tears against her skin. At this moment she wanted nothing more than to take his hand and run with him.
Garreth's voice held a throaty rasp. "Isolde, please don't-"
"I'll only slow you down," she whispered, her arms tightening around him.
"You can make it to Ornithon faster on wings than on foot. Find our son. Tell him his Mama loves him, and that I'll be along as soon as I can get away from here-"
"No," came Cullen's voice from close behind her. Too close not to have heard her whispering. "You won't."
The shot crossed near her ear, throwing her aside in a blast of white-hot pain. Her head vibrated with the sound of sirens, the ominous ringing sound that continued even after her life had exploded into a million fragments. She looked down, expecting to see a river of blood soaking the fabric that wrapped her body. But no...she felt nothing, save the persistent buzzing in her ear, like a wasps' nest on fire. The whole side of her face felt wet, hot and angry, and searing with powder burns.
But Garreth...
She screamed until her throat felt raw and mangled. Cullen had fired that hateful weapon while her back was turned, and there had been nothing she could do to stop him. Garreth lay on the ground now, the look of alarm as Cullen raised his weapon frozen in his eyes forever. She dropped to her knees beside him, her thoughts flashing quick and disorganized as an amateur sideshow.
His hair was a filthy nest of blood and bone. Trembling, she reached down to smooth a lock of crimson-stained flax from his eyes. She tended him with preternatural calm, as though she were elsewhere reading their story in a book or watching it performed on stage.
Anywhere but here, anytime but now, anything but this.
"What do you think of your owl lover now, my dear?" Cullen asked, preparing his weapon for a final shot.
She saw Cullen speaking - she knew he had opened his mouth and spoken to her - but she did not understand his words for the buzzing in her head. She could not hear how he laughed, how his last words mocked her, taunted her, and assumed that of the two of them, she was the one who had lost everything. But over the awful thrumming in her head, she could hear their approach. She felt their wingbeats fanning the side of her face, brushing and comforting with their soft, gentle wings. They scooped low, surrounding them - Cullen, Isolde, Garreth - until the sky was a dome made of owls.
Cullen shrieked, his palsied claws stuttering over the metal. He extended his weapon, dropped it, raised it, and aimed. But where do you aim when death surrounds you on all sides? He shifted with a cry as something dipped, nipped at the sagging flesh at his neck, and took wing again. He swung the fire-tube around as another swooped down and left him with a welling gash across his forehead.
Isolde saw none of this. She saw only the small white owl, so brilliant and crystal-clear, like a single perfect note amidst the noise in her head. It arced gracefully and came to hover curiously before her, its eyes blue and gold and oddly knowing...
His feathered body shifted and he stretched his wings, the pinfeathers shimmering opalescent even in the shadows of the owl-dome. Look, he seemed to say. Look what I've become!
"Ombra," she whispered, and he lit carefully upon her shoulder, caressing her bloody cheek tenderly with his wing. Could it be? Ombra, her dark and silent child, grown light and radiant in his becoming?
She stretched her arm out, and her sweet boy hopped along its smooth white length, oh-so-careful not to scratch her with his talons. He spread his wings on the end of her fingers, as if he wanted to take her hand and fly her away.
His message was clear enough: Time to go.
But not time enough.
That wicked, deafening clap of gun-thunder again, and Isolde's body jerked. The shot hit like a thousand sharp stones crashing into her at once, and then a terrible, heavy frost overtook her. A sticky web of cold spread slow and thick through her limbs, numbing her senses and carrying her farther and farther from consciousness.
Behind her, Cullen Marst stood hand-over-mouth, the fire-tube still smoking in his grip. All around the owls had gone silent and stony, the beating of their wings an audible pulse in the shadowy dome. Ombra's heartbroken cry shattered the mantra as Isolde slumped to the ground.
As soon as he landed beside her, his snowy wings dissolved to childish flesh. He knelt over her, tears streaking the dust on his face, sobbing and crying "Mama!" as though his heart broke again and again. A gray owl, stately and ancient, dropped to Ombra's shaking shoulder and nipped softly, consolingly, at his ear.
The other owls, however, moved in a wave, closing around Cullen as a dark hand extinguishes a candle's flame. He swatted and swore, waving his arms like a madman though not a single one descended upon him. They watched him, their eyes flashing silver, glinting hurricanes as he raved, lunatic.
"Kill me!" he challenged, throwing the fire-tube down. "What are you waiting for?"
But still, no one moved.
Ombra wiped his arm across his nose, sniffling and snubbing as he stood and faced Cullen Marst. The elder owl passed Cullen a gleeful look before rejoining his kin in formation.
"They're not going to kill you."
Cullen, wide-eyed and ranting, looked down at the boy. He thought - just for a moment - he actually heard the taint of amusement in his voice!
"They aren't? Why not? What do you know? Speak to me, boy!"
He reached for Ombra, and the chilling shrieks of a million owls sliced through the air. Cullen clapped his hands to his ears and shrank back, suitably chastised.
"They say you don't deserve to die." Ombra's exhausted, frightened eyes skated over the old man's thunderstruck face.
"They say you deserve to live a long, long time and never forget what you've done."
The sound of wingbeats grew louder and more persistent until it melted into a single, sustained chant. He felt a sickening pull in his chest and dropped to one knee, fighting the unseen thing that worked to yank out his soul. Gasping, he gave a final wrench and tumbled into the dirt.
In a moment it was done. He looked no different, except perhaps a little darker around the eyes. But as most Strangers would have told you, externals rarely mattered. It was what you carried inside that really made you who you were.
As for Cullen, the space between his ribs and spine had become a great yawning void, silent and cavernous. He could no longer hear the blood pounding in his ears, adding percussion to the owls' ceaseless chanting. The pulse of life in his fingertips and chest had suddenly, horribly ceased.
And yet he lived. He lived.
"What have they done to me?" he whispered, his voice a shaky rattle.
"You don't deserve to die," he told him. "But you don't deserve to live, either. Now you'll just...go on."
Ombra turned from him for the last time. His small shoulders slumped, listless with shock and apathy. The change seemed a long time in coming, but eventually his soft boyskin shrank and ripened with bumpy flesh, springing up a crop of silky white feathers. He felt renewed as he left the heavy burden of flesh behind and took to the sky with his new family, heedless of the old man's hollow cries below.
Cullen watched pillars of thick black smoke rise from the distance, professing the end of Lo's history in a last foul breath. He closed his eyes and felt hot wind blow through him. His body felt transparent, filmy as sheer lace. He covered his face with twisted hands, tasting only dust and death and...
The quiet, gentle flavor of violets.
He spat, and the taste came back twice as strong, twice as potent. It filled his head, his nose, until it filled all of him and misted the world a pale, smoky purple. Not purple. Violet.
"What is this?" he demanded, his face screwed up in disgust. "What have you done to me!?!"
No answer came.
But something else did.
Something invited itself in and took up a seat in the back of his head, something persistent and lasting that left the sweet violet taste on his tongue just a touch bitter. It settled in, snug and comfy in that place where all our worst fears and darkest secrets collect to haunt us in the quiet moments before sleep. It settled down, spread its wings, and began to whisper.