* * *
Aloise woke up slowly, very slowly, as the fog around her mind began to dissipate. Her head was throbbing; not a painful, pounding sensation, but a slow, easy beat that was more curious than irritating. At first, she did not wish to wake at all, and instead rolled to her other side and shut her eyes tighter, as if willing the morning to delay its approach.
It didn’t work.
After what must have been minutes of rolling, repositioning, and shifting, Aloise finally gave up and decided it was time to begin the day. She was still a bit groggy, and as she worked her way up to a sitting position, she momentarily forgot where she was. That moment passed quickly enough as she remembered the previous evening, but even realizing she was in the Governess’s mansion did little to assuage her confusion.
She sat in bed for some time then, trying to piece together what had happened. She remembered arriving at the mansion, she remembered the meal, and she remembered music being played and songs being sung over a particularly delicious dessert, but that’s when things got fuzzy. She could not remember how the evening had ended, how she and Beryl had made it to their room, or how she had changed into her bed clothes. She was not even entirely certain she had brought her bed clothes along with her, but she was wearing them now, so somehow or another, the Governess must have arranged it.
Aloise yawned and stretched. She looked around the massive bedroom, so large that it contained two canopy beds, and spotted Beryl sleeping soundly in the other one. Aloise smiled. The night must have been good. She and Beryl had been sharing a room for some time now, and Beryl never really slept soundly. There were some nights that were better than others, but even in the most peaceful nights, Beryl’s repose was never really still. Now, though, she wasn’t making a sound.
Not wanting to interrupt Beryl’s sleep, Aloise very quietly slid out of bed and changed into her day clothes. After that, she took a few moments to reflect on the previous day, still trying to remember what exactly had happened. After a while, though, she decided it was time for both of them to get their day started. Although she hated to do it, she gently called out “Beryl, time to get up.”
Beryl didn’t move.
Aloise frowned slightly. Beryl was not a heavy sleeper, and usually even a whisper in the same room would wake her, unless she were in the middle of a nightmare. But Beryl was never motionless during a nightmare. She took a few steps closer, and noticed that her own heartbeat was speeding up, although she was not entirely sure why.
“Alright, Beryl,” she said louder. “It’s morning.”
There was no movement, not even a twitch. Aloise froze. She stood there for a moment, staring at Beryl under her covers. The room was silent, apart from Aloise’s heartbeat, which was starting to sound more like thunder in her ears. She only hesitated a moment before rushing to the side of Beryl’s bed. She placed her hands gently on Beryl’s shoulders and shook.
“Beryl! Beryl, please, wake up!”
There was no response. Beryl just lay there, her good eye closed and refusing to open, her other eye open but, as always, unseeing. Aloise felt something grip her chest, no, not her chest. Her heart. She panicked then, for just an instant, and shook Beryl again, but there was no effect. She leaned down quickly, placing her ear right above Beryl’s heart. At first she thought she heard a beat, but it was only the echo of her own. She took a deep breath, forced herself to be calm, and listened. There was nothing.
Beryl Trevanei was dead.
Aloise sprung instantly into action. She tried every trick she knew, magical or otherwise, to bring Beryl back. She breathed her own air into Beryl’s lungs and tried to encourage a heartbeat. She cast spells of healing and of vitality, but none of them worked. She cried and pleaded with Beryl’s body to wake, but it did not. Finally, seeing that this was something beyond her ability, Aloise scrambled off the bed and ran out the door, desperate to find someone to help her.
The mansion was built something like a labyrinth, but each servant she found pointed her onward, and eventually she burst into the dining room, where the Governess was having breakfast with a number of her attendants.
“You have to help me!” Aloise yelled, running straight for the Governess’s chair.
The Governess looked over at her calmly. “Good morning, Aloise,” she said. “Did you have a pleasant evening?”
“It’s Beryl!” Aloise said, grabbing the Governess’s arm and trying to pull her from her chair. “Something is seriously wrong! Please, I need your help.”
“Everything is alright,” the Governess said, not standing up. “Just calm down, and I’m certain we can get to the bottom of this.”
“It’s Beryl!” Aloise repeated. “I think she’s…please, you have to come quickly!”
The Governess looked around at her staff, watching her expectantly. She cleared her throat and spoke to them. “If you would all please excuse me, I must have a private chat with our guest.”
Without a word, the attendants and other servants left, leaving Aloise alone with the Governess. Aloise watched them go in silent awe, unable to think straight as she wondered why the Governess was not believing her. She was about to ask, but as the last of the servants left the room and closed the door, the Governess spoke first.
“Now, Ms. Hartley, there is something that you need to understand.”
“There’s no time! I think Beryl might be in serious trouble. I tried to-”
“She is,” the Governess said, holding up one gloved hand. After a moment of silence, she sighed heavily. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Aloise, but Beryl Trevanei will never awaken.”
Aloise’s eyes grew wide. “What are you saying?”
The Governess indicated toward a nearby chair. When she spoke, her voice was almost motherly. “Sit down, Aloise. We need to have a talk.”
“There’s no time! There has to be a way to-”
“Sit down,” the Governess said again. This time, there was a command in her voice that told Aloise that she did not truly have a choice. After Aloise had – reluctantly – sat down, the Governess turned her head down and to the side and slowly exhaled. After a moment, she refocused on Aloise, her blue eyes piercing. “How much do you remember about last night?”
Too shocked by the Governess’s demeanor to argue, Aloise quickly told her everything she remembered, up to the point where her memory started lapsing.
“Do you remember singing for us?” The Governess asked.
“Vaguely.”
The Governess nodded. “The song that you sang, and that Beryl sang, is a magical song. You may remember when my song mages came into the room? At first they soothed the two of you, compelled you. Then, they led you in the Truthsong, the song that revealed who you are, and what you have done. I needed to know what sort of people you and Beryl were.”
“What? Why?”
“I told you yesterday that Ceolré sings differently when there are planeswalkers about. Its song becomes more guarded, more fearful. There is good reason for that. Ceolré’s history is not as peaceful as her present, and it has been hurt by planeswalkers before.” Her face darkened. “As I have.”
“Neither Beryl nor I meant you or Ceolré any harm!”
The Governess regarded her with a warm – if patronizing – smile. “I had to know. And your song, Aloise, revealed who you are. Yours was a song of light, and love, and hope. You, Aloise Hartley, are a truly good person.” Aloise could see as the Governess set her jaw. “Beryl’s song, however, was something different. Hers was a song of flames, a song of death and destruction, and power beyond measure or restraint. Her song showed the things she has done, and the things she might yet do, had she not been stopped.”
“No…” Aloise breathed.
“I sentenced Beryl Trevanei to death last night, and my Dirgemages carried out my sentence.”
“No!” Aloise yelled, pushing her chair away from the table as she practically jumped to her feet. “That’s not Beryl at all! You don’t know her! She has a good heart!”
“Please, Aloise, calm down,” the Governess soothed – unsuccessfully. “Your devotion to her is admirable, but she does not deserve such honor. I have seen the things she has done. She was a monster-”
“No!” Aloise screamed. “Beryl’s no monster! She has a good heart, and I love her!”
Suddenly, the Governess was on her feet, too, and, for the first time since Aloise had known her, she was furious. “You love her? And what good does that do? Tell me! Tell me how your love gives back the lives she’s taken! Tell me how loving her makes her even the slightest bit better! Love doesn’t change a monster, Aloise! It just blinds us to them. Trust me.” She paused, breathing heavily. When she spoke again, her voice was slow, and cold. “I know.”
Aloise stared at the Governess, her eyes wide and threatened with tears. “You don’t know her,” she managed.
“I’m sure that it hurts now,” the Governess said, “but I assure you, it’s for the best. You are free now. She would have led you down a monstrous path. Now you are free to walk your own, one of goodness, and light.”
“My path is with Beryl!” Aloise said, crying freely now. “You can’t do this.”
The Governess shook her head. “It is already done, as I know it needed to be.” She moved to put a comforting hand on Aloise’s arm, but the younger planeswalker shrugged it away. “For what it is worth, she did not suffer. Her death was calm, peaceful, and painless. She walks the Rúndatollán now, and when she completes her path, she will know eternal peace. It is better this way.”
Aloise’s head snapped up. “What do you mean, ‘when she completes her path?’ You mean, she’s not dead?”
“She is dead,” the Governess said, harshly. “Her spirit just needs…”
“I’ll save her!” Aloise said defiantly. “She’s not a monster, and she’s not dead yet!” Aloise thought back to what the artist Fenella had told them about the Rúndatollán. She had said something about the spirit’s journey, and now the Governess had hinted that, perhaps, there was still time. “You’re wrong, Governess. Beryl is a good person! And I’m going to bring her back, even if I have to take her place to do it!”
Without waiting for the Governess’s response, she turned around and ran back to the bedroom. She ran straight to Beryl’s body, still lying motionlessly in the same place. “Don’t worry, Beryl. I’m going to help you. Just stick with me, okay? Promise me you’ll stay with me!” She then began to maneuver Beryl out of the bed. Although Beryl was not a large woman, being generally thin and relatively short, it was exceedingly awkward to manipulate her limp and lifeless body. Aloise, being both unfamiliar with moving dead bodies and cautious to not hurt Beryl, struggled extensively.
“Help her,” a strong, sad voice said from the doorway.
Aloise looked up to see the Governess and three of her attendants just inside the door. At their mistress’s command, the attendants moved to help Aloise carry Beryl.
Aloise looked at the Governess hopefully. “You’ll help me then?”
But the Governess shook her head. “No. I have done what I know is right, and you are wasting your time, anyway. But,” she said with a small shrug, “it is yours to waste. In time, you will see that this is only your grief, but I will not keep you from the lesson.” She turned to her attendants. “Bring her to the stables, and give her a horse and one of the carts.” She turned back to Aloise. “You are a good person, Aloise. When you have accepted her death and the rightness of it, feel free to return. I should like to call you a friend when this is all over.”
Aloise said nothing, but simply helped the attendants bring Beryl’s body out to the stables, where she commandeered a cart and sped away, desperate to find a way to bring Beryl back.
* * *
“But you’re not real,” Beryl said, after a long time passed in silence. “None of this is real.”
Astria shrugged her shoulders.
“Your repetition on that point feels pedantic at best,” Astria’s ghost said, rolling her eyes. “But, if you insist on splitting philosophical hairs, then, no, none of this is ‘real,’ strictly speaking.” Her pale lips curled into a smile. “Except, of course, for the part where you’re dead. That part is real enough.”
In the painted distance, an unseen pipe wailed its reedy wails, and the funeral drums pounded out their dirge. Beryl shivered. Gods, but she was cold.
“This is all a bad dream,” Beryl said.
Again, Astria shrugged.
“Not strictly speaking, no,” Astria said. “If we’re going to be pedantic. But, if it helps you to think of it that way? Then fine.” She waved one hand dismissively. “This is all a dream. It’s just a dream from which you never wake up.”
“That isn’t how dreams work,” Beryl said.
“Between the two of us,” Astria said, “I don’t think you’re the one to be lecturing me about death.”
Beryl opened her mouth to reply. But then she closed it, saying nothing.
Astria waited in silence, her sardonic smile frozen in place. The mourning pipes moaned in the distance. The drums beat like a shattering heart.
It was all up to Beryl to speak.
“What do you want?” was what she finally said.
Astria laughed.
“What do I want?” she said. “What do you want, that’s the question. After all, you’re the one who summoned me, not the other way round.”
“I summoned you?” Beryl looked confused.
Astria nodded.
“That doesn’t seem like something I would do,” Beryl said.
“No,” Astria said. “On that we agree. But, then, I never understood half of the choices you made,” she said, “and I bet that you didn’t, either.” The ghost grinned. “Besides, I always suspected you had a masochistic streak. Maybe that’s why I’m here.”
“Maybe,” Beryl said.
“Maybe you want to be hurt,” Astria said. “Maybe you want to be punished.”
“Please stop,” Beryl said, but Astria kept on talking.
“You were always happiest playing the martyr,” Astria said. “And I always did know how to hurt you. But then you knew how to hurt me, too. After all, that’s what family is for.”
“Stop!” Beryl said. The word echoed from the painted walls.
“It suits me fine,” Astria said, “if you’d prefer to do this on your own.” And her specter began to fade.
“Wait,” Beryl said. “Stop!”
Astria’s form flickered, caught somewhere between darkness and light. The specter crossed its arms expectantly.
“Wait,” Beryl said. “Don’t go.” She swallowed to clear her throat. “Don’t leave me here by myself. I… I don’t want to die all alone.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Astria nodded, and her silhouette regained its opacity.
“Just so long as we’re clear,” Astria said, “about who is imposing on whom.”
Beryl bit her tongue. It was useless to argue.
“What do we do now?” she said.
Astria shook her head.
“Not ‘we,’” Astria said. “You. What do you do now – that’s the question. After all, this is your Rúndatollán.”
“I don’t know what that is,” Beryl said. “It’s just a name on a painting.”
Astria sighed, and shook her head.
“The Rúndatollán is a metaphor,” she said, “for the journey from life into death. Or, more accurately, from death into the formless beyond.” She waved one hand at the painted cave, where thinner dripped from the stalactites, and rippled the water below. Astria walked in Beryl’s direction, leaving eerie blue footprints along the oily shore. With every step, the gash in her robe shifted, oozing out bright tempera red. “Death works differently on different worlds,” Astria said. “On Ceolré, it takes the form of the Rúndatollán. On Aliavelli, it was different back when you killed me.”
“I didn’t kill you,” Beryl said.
“So you keep telling yourself,” Astria said. “But that’s not what you say in your dreams.”
“I was trying to save you,” Beryl said.
“Of course you were,” Astria said, and laughed. “Beryl nameless, patron saint of good intentions – they should carve that on the tombstones of everyone you tried to save.”
Beryl bit her lip to keep from shouting. She had to close her eye, and count to ten.
“Astria,” Beryl said, her good eye still squeezed shut, “I am prepared to bear your company, but not to have this conversation.”
When Beryl opened her eye again, Astria was waiting.
“Whatever you say,” Astria’s specter said, and smiled. “Just remember, I’m only here because you called me. You know as well as I do that I’m dead, my body burned. This is your Rúndatollán – if I exist, it’s because you brought me. And any conversation I have with you is a conversation you have with yourself.”
“You make my head hurt,” Beryl said, and rubbed her temple.
“You tore my heart out. Now we’re even.”
“I didn’t do that,” Beryl said. “I never meant for that to happen.”
“Remember,” Astria said, “it’s not me saying that – it’s you.”
“Fine,” Beryl said, “fine.” She clutched at her throbbing head. Maybe it wasn’t Astria’s ghost that was hurting her – maybe it was the drums, booming in the distance. With every passing second, they seemed to be getting louder – their beating echoed in her ears, until she thought it would drive her crazy. “What do I do?” Beryl said, shouting to be heard over the droning of the dirge.
Astria crossed her arms. “This is your Rúndatollán,” she said. “You tell me.”
Beryl thought back to Fenella’s painting, and to the ghostly figure it depicted, journeying into the light. But there was no light in the cave that surrounded her. Just the endless, dripping shore, and the dark, oily-blue water, and the hovering bridge of painted fire.
The bridge of painted fire.
Beryl looked out across the bridge, and – for a moment – the Rúndatollán shifted around her, and she was someplace else. She was not in an underground cave, but on the bridge between worlds. She felt fire beneath her bare feet, and she felt warm instead of cold, and – for that one moment – the pounding of the funeral drums stopped, and Ceolré’s dirge was replaced by a different song entirely. For just that one moment, Beryl heard the sound of a single voice singing. She heard the sound of a lone priestess’s song, singing out to the fire between worlds.
Then Beryl blinked, and it was gone. She was back in the Rúndatollán again, and the funeral dirge was droning, and Astria’s ghost was staring at her with arms crossed impatiently.
“I know what I have to do,” Beryl said, and she stepped onto the painted bridge. The cadmium red flames were not warm, but oily, and the paint squished cold between her toes. But Beryl put her head down and, slowly – determinedly – she began to walk across the bridge, and into the painted blackness beyond, where the unseen drummers drummed, and the ghostly pipers piped.
“You know it had to be this way,” Astria said, falling into step just behind Beryl. “You’ve followed the fire your entire life. Why should your death be any different?”
Beryl said nothing, but tried to remember the priestess’s song.
* * *
A cart’s wheel struck a divot in the road, and the cart, and everyone and everything inside it, shook violently. Aloise, who was driving the cart like a madwoman through the streets of Bailain, was jarred out of her thoughts, and she forced herself to slow down. She reined the horse down to a trot, and looked into the back of the cart. There Beryl lay, her head propped up slightly against a small pile of straw that had been in the cart, her body covered by a thin blanket that had been given to her by the healer.
The third healer she had seen since leaving the Mansion. The third healer who had told her that there was nothing that could be done to save Beryl.
The only thing keeping Aloise from crying was the knowledge that there was no time. She did not understand the Rúndatollán, not fully, but what she had pieced together was that Beryl would not truly die until her spirit completed the journey. Every moment that Aloise wasted must be bringing Beryl that much closer to her true death. Aloise was determined to save her before that could happen.
It was a curious thing, although none of the healers seemed to think anything of it. Beryl was dead, surely. She did not breathe; she did not move; her heart did not beat. And yet, she had not grown cold. Her limbs were not yet becoming rigid with death, as they would have by now on other planes. Ceolré was a magical plane, and its song, which even now Aloise could hear and feel in the air, was a beautiful thing. Perhaps its beauty kept hold of people longer, when the silence of other planes would have already let them go.
And yet, all three healers Aloise had found had told her the same thing. All three healers, and an apothecary besides, had told her that Beryl was dead and that the only thing to be done now was to mourn. Aloise had thanked them, made Beryl’s body as comfortable as she could, and gone on to the next one. Their advice, though doubtlessly well-intentioned, was unacceptable. It was unthinkable. And that was a word that Aloise Hartley did not believe in. Ceolré was a magical plane, and with magic, nothing was impossible.
The healers, though, would be no help. There was no point in trying any more of them; they all said the same thing. Any more visits to healers would waste time that Beryl might not have left to her. If Aloise was going to save Beryl, she needed to know more about the Rúndatollán, and there was only one person she could think of who might be able to help her.
Aloise pulled up in front of the artist Fenella’s studio just as the woman was saying goodbye to some admirers of her work. She waved a friendly greeting as Aloise swung down from the cart’s driver’s seat and rushed over.
“Hello, Aloise! Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”
Inwardly cringing at her own rudeness, Aloise ignored the artist’s question. “Fenella, I need your help badly!”
The artist was taken aback, but recovered quickly. “I…I don’t know what I might be able to help with, but I’ll try.”
Aloise took Fenella by the wrist and led her over to the cart, where Beryl’s body was. Fenella gasped. “What happened to her?”
“That’s a long story,” Aloise said hurriedly. “We don’t have time right now. Please, tell me everything you know about the Rúndatollán.”
Fenella covered her mouth with one hand. “Oh, my. You mean, she’s…dead?”
“No,” Aloise said resolutely. “Well, I mean, the healers say that she is, but… never mind. If her spirit is in the Rúndatollán, then how do I save her from it?”
“Save her? She’s…dead. It has nothing to do with saving her. If her spirit walks the Rúndatollán, then she’s gone. Let her…let her go in peace.”
“There must be a way!” Aloise implored. “Please, anything you can tell me might be useful. Anything at all. You painted it, you must know something about it. Please!”
“Aloise,” Fenella said, trying to calm both of them, “I know this must be very hard for you, and I am very sorry for your loss, but the Rúndatollán’s not a place, it’s just…it’s just…I don’t know, it’s a spiritual journey. There’s no,” she hesitated, then shook her head and continued, “no way to save them.”
Aloise eyed the artist carefully. Something about the woman’s hesitation bothered her. “There’s got to be a way. You must have heard of something.”
Fenella looked away, unwilling to meet Aloise’s gaze. She did not answer.
“Fenella,” Aloise said simply, then waited for the other woman to look up at her again. “Fenella, where did you get the inspiration for your painting?”
Fenella looked away again. “Every…everybody knows about the Rúndatollán.”
“Please,” Aloise said, then gestured toward Beryl. “I can’t let her die. Please, tell me what you know.”
The artist sighed heavily. “Alright, look. I had heard…rumors. I overheard someone talking about an old woman who, in her youth…” she glanced up nervously at Aloise, “had survived the Rúndatollán.”
Aloise’s eyes widened. “Really? So it is possible! Who? Who is she? Where is she?”
“I don’t want to give you any false hope.”
“Hope is hope,” Aloise said. “I’ll take any kind I can get.”
“You say that now,” Fenella said, shaking her head. “Her name is Mhairi. She lives in a small cabin outside of town to the east, on the lee of a hill there. Says she can’t stand the view of the loch anymore.”
The color drained slightly from Aloise’s face. “Outside of town? But, the time…”
“The road leads right by there,” Fenella said. “But it won’t matter. I’m sorry, Aloise, but I don’t think her story is true. She’s just a crazy old lady. I liked her description well enough to paint, but…it can’t be true. It can’t.”
“It has to be,” Aloise said and she climbed back into the cart. “Thank you for everything, Fenella. I’ll be back…” she caught herself. “Beryl and I will be back to thank you later!”
Aloise urged the horse onward, off toward the city gates. Behind her, Fenella brushed off a tear forming in her eyes, and then walked into her studio to begin work on her newest painting, which she would call “The Championed Corpse.”
* * *
“What was it like?” Beryl said, quietly, as cold paint squished between her toes. They had been walking in silence for a long time – or at least it had felt like a long time to Beryl. The monotonous pounding of the funeral drums and the featureless expanse of the landscape made it difficult to judge the passage of time – if indeed time was passing at all.
Beryl wasn’t sure. She did not know how things like time worked in the Rúndatollán.
“What was what like?” Astria asked, hovering alongside.
Beryl shot the ghost a look. “You know what I mean,” she said.
“Of course I do,” Astria said, her bloodless lips curled into a diffident smile. “But I want to hear you say it.”
Beryl closed her eye and counted ten, as she remembered why she and the ghost had stopped talking.
“Dying,” Beryl said. Her count was finished, and she reopened her eye. “What was dying like?”
Now it was the ghost’s turn to be silent. In the long distance, the keening pipes wailed. In the oily water all around them, glowing jellies rippled the surface. They hovered in swarms around the bridge, as if drawn by curiosity to the painted fire, but they solemnly kept their distance.
“It hurt,” the ghost eventually said.
“I’m sorry,” Beryl said. She reached out to take Astria’s hand, but the ghost drew back.
“Well, that makes it all better, then, doesn’t it?” Astria said. Beryl watched as the ghost drew itself up slightly, assuming that posture of regal indifference that Beryl remembered so well from life. The folds of Astria’s robe shifted, revealing the dark stain across her chest. Pigment dripped red from the wound.
“I know it doesn’t make anything better,” Beryl said. “But I’m still sorry.” Again, she reached for the ghost’s hand, and, again, the ghost flinched back, like a child burned by touching a stove.
“You wanted to know how it felt?” Astria said, and she drew her robe back, so that Beryl could see where her heart had been torn. “It felt like a hand, reaching inside my body, and ripping me apart from the inside. It felt like everything that made me me was being violated, and destroyed. I don’t have words to describe the pain. No one who has ever lived has the words to describe that pain. And, for you, it probably looked like it was over in a moment. But, for me?” Astria laughed – a cold, hollow laugh. “For me, it felt like eternity. Entire generations were born and died between the moment I felt Him enter my body, and the moment my heart stopped beating. I would have cried for joy, at the end, if I had the strength to speak. But He wanted me to suffer, and, by the Gods, did I suffer.”
“Astria, I—” Beryl started to say.
“And do you know what I saw?” Astria said. She was hovering close to Beryl now, her words coming out in a tumble, the red paint dripping from her chest in a crimson cataract. “Do you know what the last thing was that I saw, before everything faded to black, and the pain finally went away?” She pointed at Beryl. “I saw your face. I saw you – standing there – with this look of bovine surprise on your face, as though you couldn’t believe what was happening.” The ghost jabbed a finger at Beryl’s chest, and Beryl – who was already blue with cold – felt herself shiver. “You looked so stupid,” Astria said. “So surprised. As though you couldn’t believe what was happening to me. As though this wasn’t exactly what you had known would happen, from the moment you walked into that room, and turned them all against me. As though this wasn’t exactly what you had wanted to happen, ever since you’ve been old enough to speak.”
“That’s not fair,” Beryl said. She could feel herself flush, and yet her skin remained cold. “You know that’s not fair.”
“Oh, it’s not fair, is it?” Astria said. “It’s not fair to you?” The ghost laughed. “Tell me again about how it’s not fair to you. Tell me again about how you’re the real victim in all this.”
“I didn’t want any of this to happen,” Beryl said.
“Of course you didn’t!” Astria laughed again, and the sound send fresh shivers down Beryl’s spine. “You never do, do you? You never mean for any of it to happen. But it always happens anyway. Poor Beryl, patron saint of good intentions – none of it is ever your fault, but it always happens.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You left me defenseless!” Astria screamed. “You took away my power, and you left me at their mercy! You promised that you would protect me, and then you let me die! You watched Him kill me!”
“I didn’t mean to!” Beryl shouted back. She tried to grab Astria’s arm, but her fingers passed straight through. “I wanted to save you!”
“Dear Gods, help those of us who Beryl wanted to save,” Astria said, bitterly. “Because we’re all of us dead. And the only justice we’ll get now is that you’re dead, too.”
“That’s not fair,” Beryl said again, quieter this time.
“‘Fair,’” Astria repeated, and laughed. “There’s that word again.” She shook her head. “When was life ever unfair to you?”
Beryl exploded.
“You locked me in a room!” she screamed, balling her fists at her dead sister. “You locked me in a room, when I was eight years old! Eight! You took everything from me – everything I ever loved! You took my family, you took my name, you made it so that I never lived! You called me a monster, and then you turned me into one!”
“You were dangerous,” Astria said.
“I was scared!” Beryl said.
“You killed our mother.”
“I was eight!”
“I was thirteen!” Astria screamed back. “I was thirteen, and I was scared, too! I was on my own, in a city full of enemies, and I was scared, too! What was I supposed to do?”
“You weren’t alone,” Beryl said. “You had me.”
“I know,” Astria said. “And I hated you for it.”
Beryl’s next outburst died on her lips. In the distance, the drums were pounding louder than before. Her feet had sunk deep into the painted bridge. She had stopped walking. Something was ringing in her ears. Astria stared at her coldly.
When the ghost spoke again, all her malice was gone. Her voice was calm, and even – stating a fact.
“Our mother was the one who died, and you were the one who lived,” Astria said. “And I hated you for it. Do you think I didn’t know it wasn’t your fault?” She shook her head. “You were eight. I knew. And do you think I didn’t try to forgive you? That I didn’t try to love you anyway?” She shook her head again. “I tried. Gods know, Beryl, I tried. I tried every single night, after it happened. I tried to forgive you. I prayed to the Gods, for the strength to forgive you, because I knew it was what she wanted. I could see it in her eyes, in the moment before she died, that that was what she wanted – that she wanted me to forgive you. That she wanted me to love you. That she wanted you to know that she loved you, too.” Astria shook her head one more time. “And I tried, Beryl. Gods know, I tried. I tried to love you, the way she would have wanted me to love you. But I couldn’t. Because you took everything from me, and it was so easy to hate you. It was so, so easy to hate you. So I did what I needed to do. I did what I had to do to survive. Hating you kept me alive.”
Beryl closed her eye, and counted ten.
“I still loved you, Astria,” she said. “You know that, right? You know I never stopped loving you.”
“I know,” Astria said, quietly. “And look where that got me.” She re-tied her robe, covering the open wound. “Dead. Just like everyone else. Just like everyone you ever loved. We all end up dead.”
“No,” Beryl said, quietly. “Not everyone.”
“Maybe not yet,” Astria said. “But how long do you think it will be, if you let her keep trying to save you?” Astria shook her head. “Because that’s what she’s up there right now, trying to do: to save you. And it will kill her, Beryl. You know that. You know it will kill her. You know you will kill her. Just like you kill everyone else.”
Beryl’s mouth felt dry. She could feel the paint congealing around her feet. She tried to clear her throat, but couldn’t. She tried to speak, but the words came out like a cracked whisper.
“No,” she said. “I can still save her.”
The ghost nodded.
“Yes,” Astria said. “You can.” She nodded again, in the direction of the distant drums. “And you know what you have to do,” she said. “Don’t you?”
Beryl nodded back.
Then, once again, she began to walk.
* * *
Aloise had passed four different hills on the road leading out of Bailain, and none of them yet had hidden the cabin she was looking for. With each successive hill, Aloise had to fight that darkest demon of the human soul: fear. Had Fenella lied to her? Had she been mistaken? Or was the cabin of Mhairi just too far away? Was Beryl already…
No.
Aloise shook her head and hardened her face against the wind of the road. It wasn’t too late. It couldn’t be. Beryl was strong, and Beryl was brave, and Beryl, Aloise knew, was fighting. She was fighting for her life, for her soul. She was fighting for Aloise, and Aloise would fight for her until there was nothing left to give. And then Aloise would fight more, because that is the least of what Beryl deserved.
As the wagon rounded the next hill, Aloise finally saw the cabin. It was a simple structure, partially covered with large shrubs growing from the hill behind it. The paint on the door and the windowsills was old and chipped, and it looked like nobody had bothered with any sort of upkeep or mending for quite some time. The glass of the windows was all intact, but dirty and grimy so that she could not, at least from her vantage point, see in. Regardless, Aloise reined the horse to a halt and jumped down, almost slipping on the loose gravel of the path as she did. Undaunted, she spared only a brief moment to make sure Beryl had not started to lose color before sprinting up to the cabin’s door and pounding on it.
“Hello?” Aloise called. “Hello, is anyone here? Please, I need your help! Hello?”
There was no answer. Aloise waited there for a long, tense moment, debating with herself how to proceed. Torn between rudeness and desperation, Aloise bit her bottom lip and pounded on the door again.
“I know you’re in there,” Aloise called, which was not really the case, but she figured it wouldn’t hurt to try it. “Please, I need your help. It’s an emergency!”
She paused again, and was just about to pound on the door a third time when she heard a harsh, female voice from beyond the door. “If it’s an emergency, then get ye to a healer or the constabulary! I’ve nothin’ to give ye and nothin’ worth stealin’!”
“No, wait, please! Are you Mhairi? I need the help of a woman named Mhairi, and I was told she lived here.” Aloise hoped she had the right cabin and the right hill.
There was a pause. “I don’t know who gave ye that name, but you’ve got the wrong house. I can’t help ye.”
“But are you Mhairi?”
Another pause. “Aye, I’m Mhairi, but that don’t mean I can help ye. I’m no healer, and I’m no guard, and I’m…”
“Please!” Aloise interrupted. “You’re the only one who can help her!”
“I told ye, I’m no healer. I can’t help-”
“But you’re the only one who’s been there and back!” Aloise yelled.
There was another long pause, and to Aloise, it almost seemed like the sounds of nature, and even Ceolré’s song, quieted as well. This time, though, the voice did not continue from the other side of the door.
“Mhairi? Mhairi, please, open the door.”
After another, mercifully shorter pause, the door squeaked open just enough for the old woman’s head to show. “So,” she said slowly. “Come to mock an old woman, have ye? Come to insult the Lunatic Lass of Loch Críoch? Well, get yer fill and get on with yer life, will ye?”
“What?” Aloise said, confused. “No, I’m here because Fenella said-”
“Fenella!” Mhairi exclaimed. “That painter woman? I should have known! Said she was ‘just curious.’ Said she was ‘lookin’ for paintings! Ha! Just another city lass wantin’ make a mockery a’ me.”
“No!” Aloise assured her. “She did paint the Rúndatollán! And I’m not here to mock you, really, I’m not!” Aloise was nearly in tears. “Please! You have to help her! You’re the only one who can.”
Mhairi shook her head and started to turn away, mumbling something to herself. Then she stopped suddenly, and her head snapped back up, sending a shake through her thinning, graying hair. “Wait. Help who?”
“Beryl!” Aloise said, pointing back toward the wagon. “Please!”
Mhairi eyed Aloise suspiciously, then opened the door fully and pushed past Aloise and walked with a limping gait toward where Beryl lay. The wagon was too high for the elderly woman to climb up into it, and the sides too tall for her to see over, so instead the old woman just stared at Beryl’s face, and then grabbed Beryl’s ankles lightly. She closed her eyes while Aloise just watched her. The moment seemed to drag on until, finally, Mhairi opened her eyes and stared directly into Aloise’s.
“Ye’d better hurry,” Mhairi said.
“I’m trying!” Aloise said with just a bit more edge to it than she had intended. “Please, tell me what I need to do!”
Mhairi lifted one wrinkled hand and pointed back toward the town. “Ye need to get to the Isle of Cailltinish,” she paused, then pointed to Beryl’s limp body. “Ye need to get her to Cailltinish, before, well, before she gets there.”
Aloise’s breath left her body as she looked back toward Bailain. All the way back toward Bailain, and across Loch Críoch to boot. And Beryl’s spirit had been walking the Rúndatollán for how long now?
“How…?” Aloise breathed, barely more than a whisper.
“What’s that?” Mhairi asked, holding one finger up behind her ear as if to point the ear in Aloise’s direction.
The planeswalker shook her head slightly. “How…how did you do it? How did you survive the Rúndatollán?”
Mhairi smiled slightly and shrugged. “I had a very good friend,” she said, almost dreamily, “and a very poor sense of direction.”
“I never thought that I would hope Beryl would get lost,” Aloise said, more to herself than to Mhairi, “but I’ll pray for it now.”
“I hope that yer friend also has a poor sense of direction,” Mhairi said.
Aloise’s face hardened again. “I’ll draw her a map straight back to me!”
She rushed back to the wagon’s driver’s seat and took up the reins, then twisted her body to look back at Mhairi. “Thank you so much. I need to hurry, but I owe you.”
“Ye can pay me back by not mentioning me to anyone back in town. I just want to be left alone. I don’t want to think about the Rúndatollán ever again, ‘til I walk it. One last time.”
“Thank you, Mhairi,” was all Aloise could manage before she found her hands cracking the reins again, and the horse, its driver, and the body it was hauling took off back toward Bailain, back toward Loch Críoch, toward Cailltinish, and toward Beryl.
* * *
The drums were growing louder. Beryl shivered as they echoed in her ears, and the walls of the impasto cavern seemed to shudder with every reverberation. The brushstroke rock seemed to stretch on forever, cast in their eerie, blended shadows that flickered in the carmine tint of the painted fires. Beryl had spent much of her life hiding from the flames, but this was the first time she had ever missed their heat.
Why did it have to be so cold? Beryl asked herself.
“Why not simply set the whole thing ablaze?” Astria’s specter asked her suddenly. Beryl shuddered, both at the words and their meaning. It seemed like an eternity since Astria had spoken, and Beryl had nearly managed to forget she was there.
“If I could go the rest of my life and never light another fire, I would.”
Astria laughed, and Beryl, despite herself, marveled at how the laugh somehow managed to grow crueler each time. “You have already gone the rest of your life, Beryl. There is no ‘rest of your life.’ And yet somehow,” Astria passed a single, translucent hand through one of the fires that seemed to almost hang in the air, “you still call the fire.”
Beryl shook her head mournfully. “I am the woman who fire will not burn.”
“Of course not,” Astria said with more than a few drops of venom in her voice. “You’re just the woman whose fire will burn the rest of the world.”
Beryl stopped walking and shut her eye tightly, forcing herself to breathe slowly through her nose. “I never wanted any of it, Astria. You know that.”
“I know that you say that. You say it a lot, don’t you? But that didn’t matter to Aliavelli, did it? I wonder if the city is still burning to this day. It certainly didn’t matter much to me, as my lifeless body burned to ash. And I can’t imagine it-“
“Don’t, Astria,” Beryl interrupted. “Just don’t.”
Astria’s lip curled up into a cruel snarl. “I can’t imagine it mattered much to our mother.”
Beryl spun around, feeling her heel dig into the painted cavern floor as she came face to face with her sister’s ghost. “I said ‘don’t,’ Astria! I have lived with what happened to mother for my entire life! Every night as I try to sleep, every nightmare when I am sleeping, I see her face! I have watched my mother die day in and day out for longer than I can remember! I won’t! I won’t let you throw it in my face now that I’m dead!”
“What you will or will not allow means nothing to me!” Astria screamed back in her sister’s scarred face. “I watched her die too, remember! I was in the garden that day right along with you. But unlike you, I had no agency there! Unlike you, I was the victim!”
“It was an accident, and you know that!” Beryl yelled. “I was a child! A scared, horrified little girl who had just lost the only person who had ever loved her. And instead of helping me, you took more! You took everything I had left and you tormented me with its shadow!”
“I made you strong,” Astria countered. “If I hadn’t made you what you are, you could have never become the scourge of House Dentevi. You could have never-”
“If you had just been my sister, I never would have had to.”
“You ruined my life, Beryl.”
Beryl opened her mouth to respond, but stopped herself. She took a few steps away from the floating phantom that was her sister, listened as the squelching of her feet in the wet paint briefly reached her ears beyond the distant drumming. She closed her eye again, and reached out to run the fingers of one hand along the smooth stone, running in the opposite direction of the brushstrokes that made it up. When she opened her eye, the streaks her fingers had made were still there, and the painted stone seemed to weep to fill in the crevices. Finally, after a very long moment, Beryl turned back to her sister, keeping her voice calm as she spoke.
“Why do we keep doing this, Astria?” Beryl took a deep breath, and exhaled it in a long sigh. “We just keep having this argument, over and over. We had it when you took my name. We’ve had it in my shop. We had it when I visited you to tell you about the Dentevi slave collars. And we’ve already had it two or three times here.” Beryl spread her arms wide and indicated the endless painted reality she had found herself in. “You’re dead, Astria. You’re dead, mother’s dead, and now I’m dead, too. If we’re all joined together in death, can’t we just pretend to be a real family?”
Astria’s acrylic eyes seemed to flare in the matte darkness of the Rúndatollán. “Families don’t kill each other.”
Strangely, Beryl’s anger did not flare at her sister’s words. They were expected now. Beryl looked at her sister and, in that instant, saw beyond the paint. She saw through the painted robe and the blotted wound and the vitriol and the hate and she forced herself to see Astria not as she was, and not as she used to be, but as she at one time could have been. She saw her as her older sister. She saw her as their mother’s daughter. She saw her as a soul, lost and in pain.
Beryl closed her eye and felt a single tear escape from it. She reached up to brush it away and found the tear streak across her face, just another drop of paint on the canvas of her fate. “I loved you, Astria,” she said, keeping her eye closed. “I loved you, and I still love you. I don’t want to hate you anymore. I’m done with it. I’m done with it all. If you’re you, and you’re truly my sister, and if you ever, even before mother died, had any feeling for me, than I’m asking you to just let it all go. And if you’re me? If you’re just my lingering impression of you?” Beryl forced her eye open and stared directly at Astria. “Then I forgive you.”
The ghost stared at her for a long, long time. Then, cruelly, she laughed. “You forgive me? If I’m you, you forgive me? Well, congratulations, Beryl. I’m glad you can forgive yourself for all your murders. I’m glad those seven innocents who died when you burned down that tavern mean nothing to you anymore. I’m happy that you can neatly wash my blood from your hands. I’m ecstatic that you can wave away our mother’s death like shooing away some irritating insect. But I do have one question for you.”
Beryl breathed out slowly. “What is it, Astria?”
Her sister’s ghost smirked. “Will you forgive yourself when Aloise dies? Because she’s running herself to death right now, all because you are selfishly dragging your feet down here. You say I took away everything you had left? Well, I’m not the one slowing you down, am I? This is your Rúndatollán. We’re going at your pace, remember? And Beryl? We’re wasting time.”
Beryl stared at Astria, her jaw clenched. Astria always knew how to hurt her, but in this case, she was right. The drums were echoing down the painted cavern, growing ever louder, beckoning her onward. There was so much more she wanted to say, and so many things she wanted to do. But all that mattered now was Aloise. Everyone else Beryl loved was gone, and beyond her ability to save. But Aloise still lived. And maybe, just maybe, Beryl could stop her from killing herself trying to save Beryl. The only way to save Aloise, she realized darkly, was if there was nothing left of Beryl to save.
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