Rahn rose to her feet, shaking Wen off her like an annoying insect. Rage writhed in her beautiful face, but her hand looked frail without the Star.
The goddess lifted her hands above her head, and began to speak, Words of power falling fast from her lips.
They were dark Words. Evil Words, full of shadows and decay.
Talia felt them coiling toward her, circling her neck, choking her life away.
The Star blazed white where it had fallen in the sand, but Rahn didn’t reach for it. The earth shook beneath Talia’s feet, and a piercing wail sounded behind her. Then came the noise of cracking wood, so loud it nearly deafened her. The wail went on and on, and Talia realized it was coming from the Tree. The shard in her knapsack seemed to shudder.
“Do you think I need the Star to defeat you?” the goddess bellowed. “Do you think I need the Star, when I command the power of the Tree?”
Gnarled, bony roots rose up from the ground like sea serpents, twining around Talia’s ankles, yanking her down into the dust. Let me go, Talia whispered in her mind, scrabbling for the Tree-shard. Let me go, and I will free you. The roots loosened, but did not withdraw.
“The sea is mine,” cried Rahn, triumphant. “The world is mine. You will bow before me, and you will dance forever!”
From the corner of her eye, Talia saw Wen untangle himself from where Rahn had thrown him, and creep back toward the goddess, the Star-light pulsing in his hands.
He lunged at her, seizing her arm and yanking her down onto the ocean floor. Words poured from his lips, as powerful as Rahn’s but filled with music instead of fear. The Star-light pulsed as he spoke, giving him strength.
But Rahn knocked the Star-light from his hand. She shrieked a terrible Word and he was flung suddenly backward, landing in the dust with the crack of bones, his neck bent at a wrong angle.
Talia screamed, twisting her foot from the Tree root and yanking the splinter from her pack.
She looked up to see the shadow of her mother standing beside her. For an instant death faded away, and her mother’s skin grew brown and warm again, threads of black shimmering in her ethereal white hair. Her mother’s hand wrapped around her own, and holding the Tree-shard they leapt toward the fallen goddess.
Light seared at the edges of Talia’s vision—her mother had grabbed hold of the Star. It burned and burned, but it could not hurt her because she was already dead.
They hovered over Rahn, Star and Tree-shard held high, and Talia looked deep into the goddess’s eyes. “Your strength is ended. Your throne is broken. Now we command the power of the Star and the Tree.”
And then Talia and her mother drove the Tree-shard into Rahn’s heart.
Chapter Fifty-One
THE TREE STOPPED SCREAMING.
The Hall grew still.
Rahn stared up at them, eyes clouding over, pain creasing her beautiful face.
And then she was still, too.
Talia let go of the Tree-splinter, her arm numb and her body shaking. Her mother looked at her, a smile touching her lips. Then she sighed and dropped the Star, collapsing beside it.
Wen didn’t move in the dust where Rahn had flung him. He lay as still as her mother, as still as Rahn herself, nothing but shadows in the dark.
Die for the love of you, die for the love of you.
She turned to see the Waves striding toward the Star, their hair streaming over their shoulders, their bodies twisting and changing as they came. They shifted into the forms of nine horses, their nostrils blowing fire, manes rippling cerulean and pearl, coral and stone and seafoam.
They reached the Star, seething with flame, and fell upon it, striking it with their hooves. “We break the Star in pieces,” they spoke in unison. “We divide its light, we scatter it about the sea, that its true power may never again be wielded by one alone.”
Talia’s arm seared with pain from stabbing Rahn, and the weight of water suddenly overwhelmed her. She couldn’t breathe.
The last of the Words protecting her were gone.
Across the Hall, the Tree groaned and shook, and with a mighty crack of thunder, it split in two.
Around her, the ground gave way and the sea began to boil.
The dead wept, stumbling into one another and falling to the ground, no longer compelled to dance. They cried out in horror and fear.
And then the Billow Maidens turned to the dead, gathering them up into one swirling, shadowed mass. “We will bear you to your peace. We will bear you beyond the circles of the world, that you might find your rest at last.”
And in the wheel of the Waves’ music a vast chariot wavered into being, shining with the light of the fractured Star. The dead stepped into the chariot one by one, disappearing into its depths, and Talia watched them, spots of white-hot agony sparking behind her eyes. She could feel herself dying. Falling. Fading.
The shadow that was her mother got up from the ground, trembling and tenuous, fainter than mist. She climbed into the chariot, and for the space of three heartbeats, glanced back. She smiled, and Talia reached out for her, unable to bear being parted from her, here at the end of everything. Thank you, whispered her mother’s voice inside her head. Thank you for saving me.
“Wait! Mama, please wait.”
But with one final smile, her mother turned and disappeared into the ranks of the dead.
The chariot was full, the dead all accounted for. The Waves in their horse forms harnessed themselves to the chariot, and began to pull it away.
Endain looked back at her, and Talia saw she was whole again, her eyesight restored.
“Your sailor is waiting for you,” said Talia, the grief and the pain shaking her to pieces. “Beyond the circles of the world. He never forgot you.”
Endain smiled. “Thank you, my daughter. I go to him, now.”
Talia blinked, and the chariot vanished from sight.
And then she was slipping, sliding into the boiling ground, the sea overwhelming her.
Words poured from her mouth, Words of strength and protection. Words of healing and transformation.
She collapsed onto the ocean floor and the dark waters of the sea folded over her.
The Hall of the Dead fell into the depths of the earth, and was swallowed whole.
Chapter Fifty-Two
SO THE HALL OF THE DEAD SLIPPED into the earth, and the Tree shuddered and the sea moaned.
A young woman lay in the dust of bones and coral, half-transformed into a fish, a shining tail where her legs should have been. The waves whispered over her, caressing her face, as if mourning for a fallen queen.
Three paces from her a white seabird who had once been a man lifted his head and saw her laying there. She hadn’t had enough Words to save herself, but she had said enough to heal him, to change his form before hers.