The Pearl of the Soul of the World

11

Heart of Dust

The chill that poured through Aeriel as she listened to that voice vanquished the warmth of Solstar.

Turning, she saw the White Witch standing not far from the casement: her vantage from which to watch the coming battle, Aeriel guessed. Across the small chamber, Oriencor appraised her coolly. She was very tall, almost as tall as Ravenna, but whereas the Ancient had been a dark lady, all dusk and black and indigo, her daughter the White Witch was fair.

Her skin was as pale as Irrylath's had been when Aeriel had known him as a darkangel: bone white without any rose to the cheeks or lips, no blush of blood. Her frigid breath did not cloud the air. Her features were sharp and angular, coldly beautiful, like a merciless statue. Only her eyes had any color, pale green. A sorceress's eyes. The Witch's hair was long and white, straighter than Ravenna's. Colorless filament. Darkangel hair.

Her lips were thin, bowed, curling upward at the corners in malevolent amusement. She was wearing a long white gown that fell close about her figure, clinging to it. It was sewn with little bits of things: dogs'

teeth, cut diamonds, and freshwater pearls—twisted and baroque in shape, not round. Cats' claws and buttons of bone. Aeriel could not see the lorelei's feet. Her gown dragged the floor. Her white nails were very long and keen. Before her Aeriel felt stupid, clumsy, weak —as though the other could, with but a glance, read her to the heart.

Shivering, she answered, "I am not a sorceress."

The White Witch smiled. Her teeth were pointed, sharp as little spades.

"Perhaps not," she said, drawing nearer. The cold breathed from her as from a high mountainside in shadow. "But you have been a great difficulty to me. And you have lately visited my mother in NuRavenna. Tell me, is she well?"

"She's dead," said Aeriel, shaking, refusing to retreat.

She remembered vividly—the last breath of the Andentlady fading and the dark man bending his grief-stricken face to her hair. Ravenna's fair daughter laughed, wholly self-possessed, a bell-like, mocking sound.

"You are so earnest," she sighed. "I should not play with you. I know that she is dead. I saw the beacon of her funeral fire."

Aeriel stared at her. The coldness with which the other spoke astonished her. One swansdown eyebrow lifted.

"Do I shock you, little Aeriel, rejoicing in my own mother's death?"

Aeriel saw that one of the trinkets stitched to her gown was the mummified foot of some very small white creature: a lizard, a mole? Oriencor clenched one dagger-nailed hand. Her fingers were webbed, Aeriel realized suddenly. Gills slitted behind her ears.

"Fool. She could have made herself immortal, like me—if she had dared. Now her own mortality has claimed her at last, and the world is mine."

She spoke with such unflinching authority that Aeriel's hand went to the jewel at her brow, seeking reassurance—then froze there as the lorelei fastened her glass-green gaze upon the pearl.

"My mother gave you a gift, I see."

Terror swept through Aeriel as she realized that very soon she must give up the pearl. She had worn Ravenna's jewel so long she had almost forgotten existence without it. And yet, she told herself sternly, the pearl did not belong to her. It was meant for the world's heir. Still, the thought of parting with it was agony.

"A boon," she managed at last.

"A message capsule, by the look," the Witch remarked, as though not greatly interested. "After all these years, what could my mother possibly have to say to me?"

Aeriel shook her head. How to explain? Where to begin? She found her tongue growing thick and awkward in her mouth. Touching the pearl still, she could only manage, "Ravenna bade me bring it to you."

Oriencor shrugged. "How charming. But you keep it awhile, little sorceress, lest the cold kill you too soon. Time enough for me to savor my mother's dying breath after the battle." She smiled her wolfish smile. "After I've slaughtered all your people and devoured their souls."

Aeriel's knees grew weak. The other's voice was at once lovely and terrible, seductive to listen to.

Aeriel felt the moment—her chance to confront and persuade the Witch—slipping away. She drew breath to make some desperate last appeal—but a soft, inner voice intervened. Let it go, the voice murmured, already fading. Now is not the time. Not yet, but soon.

"Come," the lorelei said. "Watch the battle with me. It is about to be joined."

She beckoned Aeriel to a window. The sill there dripped with water in the sunlight's blaze.

"See them below us," Oriencor murmured. "Your forces and mine. All assembled. All arrayed. The victory will be mine, of course. It will be a pleasure to watch. I know so few pleasures these days. Watch with me."

Aeriel saw armies on the strand below. The small chamber in which she and Oriencor stood was indeed at a great height. The Witch's brood were massed upon the shore: jackals and weaselhounds and black birds; great, hunched creatures of vaguely human shape; and thin, wraithlike figures—rank upon rank of them, so many she could not count. The black waters of the Mere behind them teemed with more. Aeriel spotted the mudlick, bobbing near shore, and deeper out, circling the palace, the two enormous wakes of the Witch's water dragons.

Syllva's forces faced the Mere, fanned out in a crescent. Aeriel's heart lifted at the sight of them

—only to tighten suddenly as, for the first time, she perceived how pitifully small their numbers were in comparison to the Witch's vast horde. Above the allied warhost, a long yellow banner turned and fluttered on the breeze. The Lady stood foremost, surrounded by her bowwomen. Irrylath rode nearby, astride the winged Avarclon. Marelon, the Lithe Serpent of the Sea-of-Dust, undulated huge and vermilion, her vast coils lost among the throng. Erin stood farther back, the lyon Pendarlon pacing beside her. Aeriel saw the dark girl touch his mane. Beside her at the windowsill, Oriencor stirred.

"You have all been such a trial to me these last few dozen daymonths," she sighed, "resisting my conquest, refusing to acquiesce. I suppose I must be grateful, though: you assuaged my boredom."

Aeriel turned to see her gazing down hungrily at the prince of Avaric very far below. The White Witch smiled.

"Irrylath was the best. He was never boring. All of six years old when I procured him—too old, really, to ever come completely to heel. But that is why I loved him so. So independent! So surprising. It took me years to tame him."

A hot flame of anger rose in Aeriel. For a moment, it rivaled the warmth of the pearl. She remembered the brief glimpse the pearl had shown her: Oriencor, one fist in the young Irrylath's hair, commanding him ever so quietly, Yes, love. You will. Recklessly, Aeriel drew breath again to speak, but the other's merciless eyes turned and fixed her like a hawk's.

"I will never forgive you for taking him from me," the White Witch breathed, "even for a little time.

And I will have him back again. Before I drink his soul away, he will be mine."

Aeriel's skin flushed. "He will never belong to you again," she gasped. "He's mine. He loathes you."

Oriencor laughed. "He loves me. And I him."

"You don't," spat Aeriel. "You only want to rule him!" Memory of the lorelei's black birds tormenting her prisoners came back to Aeriel. She shuddered, sickened, and shoved the thought away. "You and your kind don't love anything. I don't think you can."

The Witch's smile soured. Her voice grew petulant, annoyed. "I loved the Ancients once," she murmured, "when I was young. I was capable of love then. But they left me."

Leaning back against the sill, studying Aeriel, Oriencor toyed with the low collar of her gown, stroking her own breastbone. Slowly, Aeriel realized what it was she fingered: a little seam running down, sewn up with silver, just like the one on Irrylath's breast when he had been a darkangel. Oriencor's bloodless lips pursed fretfully.

"It's true," she mused. "I can't love. I don't have a heart of flesh anymore. I took it out, after the Ancients deserted me, and replaced it with one of winterock."

She glanced over one shoulder. Aeriel followed her gaze. A crystal box rested in a niche across the room.

"I put the original away for safekeeping."

Warily, Aeriel eyed the box. Something dark lay inside, dimly visible through the colorless stone.

Oriencor shrugged.

"You may look at it, if you wish."

The pearl burned bright upon her brow. Aeriel felt an irresistible attraction drawing her to the box.

Slowly, she crossed the room and touched the lid. The crystal was bone chill: cold as the keep.

"Don't think you can harm it," the lorelei warned, still at the windowsill. "I'd never let you near it, if you could do it any harm."

Aeriel felt a stirring within the pearl, like something just beginning to wake—but it subsided at once.

She lifted the box's lid and halted, frowning. Nothing lay within the box but a layer of fine, dark grit.

Immediately, the pearl brightened.

"There's nothing in here," she said. "Nothing but dust."

Scowling, Ravenna's daughter bit her lip with one pointed tooth. "Won't you lie to flatter me, little sorceress?" she inquired. "Aren't you afraid of me yet?"

Aeriel turned to face her. "I'm very much afraid of you," she answered. No use to pretend otherwise.

The Ancient's daughter could read her with such ease. Still biting her lip, the White Witch smiled.

"So was Irrylath. And he said the same."

Despite the other's eyes upon her, Aeriel felt her own gaze, very gently, being directed once more to the fine sooty stuff in the bottom of the box, like ashes of the dead. Widün the pearl, something shifted again. She reached to touch the ash. It was cool and clung together like barely damp meal. Ravenna's pearl glowed. A strange, soft murmuring came into the back of Aeriel's mind. She tried to listen, but Oriencor's muttered words drowned it out.

"All the others told me what a fine heart it was, how beautifully preserved. They thought to please me.

Irrylath told me it was only wormwood. It's why he was my favorite. Of all the boys I ever made into darkangels, only Irrylath never lied."

The Witch's knifelike nails drummed the crystal of the windowsill, chipping and scoring it. They sounded like death beetles clicking in the walls. Taste it, the pearl was telling her, that I may know my daughter's heart. Almost without a thought, Aeriel touched a few grains of the Witch's dust to her tongue, and a sharp sensation went through her like a pinprick. It was the bitterest thing she had ever known. It tasted like despair. The pearl dimmed then, and its voice subsided. Aeriel forgot about it instantly as a sleeper, waking, forgets a dream. Across the room from her, Oriencor sighed.

"My heart fell away into dust long ago. I hadn't realized it would do that when I cut it out. The crystal was supposed to preserve it. Well, I was very young at sorcery then. But no matter. A heart would be too great a burden to bear with me across the Void."

Aeriel frowned, having lost the other's train of thought. Across the Void? But Oriencor only laughed and turned back to the window.

"Ah," she said softly. "So it starts."

Aeriel caught in her breath. Hastily she replaced the Witch's box in its niche and went to join Oriencor at the casement.

"Your lady's army comes forward," the lorelei murmured.

Gazing down, Aeriel saw the great crescent advancing now, comprising allies of every hue: blue Berneans, pale green Zambulans, Pirseans with coppery skin, pale Terraineans and gold-complected refugees from Avaric, the rose-skinned people of Rani and the teal-colored folk of Elver, dark Mariners, Isterners with plum-colored skin, and the cinnamon-colored wanderers of the desert lands. All at once, Aeriel understood what their yellow banner was. Above them all, her wedding sari floated, blazing in the light of Solstar.

Beside her at the window, Oriencor lifted her gaze. Winged figures—half a dozen of them— poised in the air about the keep. Smiling, she commanded them: "Begin."