54. Many Things Happen MoreLess At Once

54. Many Things Happen More or Less at Once

Hawthorn poked her head out into the Passage. Blue was lost in smoke; the pinnacles of Black foundered in it, and now the wind changed so that the burning of Grey hid everything up to the edge of the stairs. The air was choking with fumes; the palace was an old, dry tinderbox. There were cries, confusion, and the shuddering booms of the Beast's rampage. It had to have reached Black by now. She hoped Elder was able to do something, hold her own, even just survive . In the meantime, Hawthorn might have failed, but she would never give up. There might be a way to get the Beast's attention. The thing might respond to a challenge. She'd need to be visible for that.

"Come on," she said. "If we get to the tower—"

Over the thick smell of smoke, she caught a whiff of something sweet.

Frin stood amid the torn-up paving stones. He had uncorked the vial of honey and was staring at it as if gathering his courage. He met Hawthorn's eyes.

"Don't," she said. "Not now. Just run ."

"I'm here to protect you," said Frin, and he put the vial to his lips.

The Beast roared again. The wind shifted. Out of the wreck of Blue, a head emerged. Its jaws worked upon dangling red legs. Wide wet nostrils opened. Their snuffling was audible even across the river. A set of eyes followed, then narrowed, and Hawthorn knew instantly that it was looking at them .

"It smells the honey!" she said. "Put it away! Put it away! "

But Frin had already drunk some and corked the vial. His eyes rolled back in his skull, replaced by a feral golden light. He collapsed, thrashing, cold flames running along his veins. The Beast coiled at the edge of the South Passage, ready to spring.

"Frin!" Hawthorn shouted. "Frin!"

The flames became arcs of light, whipping out of Frin's body and back in again. They crackled with thorns, forming and dissolving. Bones twitched and worked beneath his clothes. He screamed.

The shadow of the Beast fell over them both, and Frin became very bright. The colossal body was springing up and up, unwinding into the sky from across the river. Its heads breached the smoke, letting in the noon sun. Parrots zipped around it, crying garbled words, their feathers flickering in the light. A dragonfly landed on Frin's back and was absorbed. Green chitin began to spread across his shoulder blades. One of Frin's arms seized on the shadow and darkened, lengthened, becoming a long, ornamented spire of jet. His cries and thrashing eased. Eyes aglow, he looked at Hawthorn in triumph. And the endless leap of the Beast ended.

Tertius wheeled up over the head of the stairs just as the Beast dove for the floor of the Passage. The Beast squealed and arched over the hollowman, but could not stop, and tumbled heads over tails over eyes down the Passage toward Grey Tower. In the confusion was a faint cry. The wind shifted the smoke, and Yarrow saw Hawthorn stagger out from shelter and kneel over Frin's body.

"Oh my North, " she gasped, and let down the ladder.

A spar of rock had caught Frin across the abdomen, shattering his ribs and crushing everything within. His eyes fluttered open, he saw the look on Hawthorn's face, and he tried to prop himself up on his elbows. His hands gripped uselessly at the stone and slid back to the ground just as she reached him.

"Can you," said Hawthorn. "Frin, I…"

She put her hands on his cheeks. He laid his hands over hers. He wasn't breathing. A prickly warmth shuddered through his veins. Thorns burst through his skin and crumbled into fine black ash. His ribs were half-fused to the stone. In his blood there was a fading glow. It must have been the honey. Powerful—powerful enough?

No. His hands dropped.

"You shouldn't have taken it," said Hawthorn. Her voice cracked on the last syllables. "If anyone—It was — I'm here to protect you ."

Frin smiled faintly and shook his head. He drew half a choking breath. His tongue began to form a sound. The sound never came. Instead, Frin drew Hawthorn's hand to the onyx vial where it rested on his chest. His heartbeat lightly brushed her palm, like the wing of an insect flicking past on a summer night. Then stillness.

I don't know what to do, Yarrow thought. I don't know how to help. I don't know what they were.

Frin looked very small. One of Yarrow's hands reached out to Hawthorn, brushed her dirty shoulder, and curled back.

"I'm sorry," Yarrow whispered.

Hawthorn tenderly lifted the little amulet from the body. She settled it around her neck and raised her eyes to the chaos of the palace.

Blue was shattered, the tower smoking. Black had lost at least one proud arm. The Beast, caught in rubble, writhed among the ruins of Grey, breaking its way toward them again. A Guardian protects. This Guardian has failed in her duty. They faced the end. Hawthorn took the vial from Frin's nerveless hand.

"There's only one thing to do," Hawthorn said, not to Yarrow, not caring if Yarrow heard. There was a little left in the vial. Perhaps not enough. Her arm was broken, or at least useless, and she held out the vial to Yarrow for help. Yarrow opened it and drew in a breath of amazement at the smell.

Hawthorn drank, and heat thrummed through every fiber of her muscles, setting her marrow aflame, throwing new and alarming colors into her eyes. But it was not quite enough: already she felt the dose subsiding.

Far away, the Beast roared again and righted itself. Its heads were combining and fusing, eyes coming together like drops of oil. Now it was like a great three-headed serpent lined with many wings.

As it plunged toward them, Hawthorn leaned over Frin and kissed him deeply. He had not quite swallowed all the honey. She only got a little, but it tipped the scales of her being. Light and heat overtook her, washing out his face. Then something smashed the back of her head and everything went dark.

Yarrow had dodged into an empty doorway as the Beast attacked a second time. As before, its approach was overeager, and its own fury swept it over the canyon wall and down toward the bridge. After it passed, Yarrow peered out. Where was Hawthorn?

There, several feet away at the foot of a statue of the Grey Lady. Hawthorn lay on her side, twisted, with a gash down the center of her face. Even from a distance, her skull looked wrong. Flickers of light were running along her veins and fizzing in her wounds.

She was still alive. Yarrow could see that much. But it was just as obvious that Hawthorn did not have much time. Yarrow ran to her and dragged her behind the statue. No time to be concerned about further injury. From her pack she drew the shattered, sweet remains of the crock, where one last piece of mellified man stuck to shards of pottery. Quickly she picked off the broken pieces and popped the chunk of meat into Hawthorn's mouth. Hawthorn began to thrash.

Down in the South Passage, the Beast's voice sounded again. The bones of the palace rattled. Claws as big as turrets gripped the head of the stairs.

Leaving her pack beside Hawthorn's, Yarrow walked out onto the scarred floor of the West Passage and stood in the center. Her ears rang. The claws tightened. The huge, maddening shape of the Beast rose before her, and rose, and rose, and rose. In the spines of its body she saw echoes of Black Tower. In the dark teeth and claws she saw the Blue Lady's features. In the green light shining on its scales she saw the ruff of the Yellow Lady's gown. Its fire was Red Tower's. And it came and went from Grey.

Yarrow saw a Lady, and she began to sing.

Hush now, little girl

In the waving reeds

Mother's gone to fetch the moon

Father's gone to sow the stars

Sleep now, little girl

In the waving reeds

For the river sings

All the song you need

She stepped back as the Beast crawled into the Passage. All its eyes turned to her. They were very human. The gusts of its breath slowed. The fires in its mouth died to embers.

And slowly the Sixth Sister settled to the floor of the West Passage, and her eyes narrowed.

Sister, she said.

With one claw she wrote on the broken stones a word in golden light.

In the hush, Yarrow heard the distinct click of apes' teeth and saw the holy image, the holy name, the holy chain. Old Yarrow's stories trembled in her veins. She bent and touched the flickering word.

Ages under the earth, she saw. The pressure of the palace above dragged at her, pressing her palms into the gritty ashes. The name was called, the name was danced, a sound she heard in her bones and felt in her ears, the name over and over, calling her up. Until the time was right, until she got a glimpse of light and a breath of air and opened her mouth to satisfy the hunger of her captivity. But the name had been taken for another, and she could not reclaim it, and she was killed and her power dragged from her body and she was banished below again, shapeless, to heal and hunger, until again the name was called enough and the name was danced enough and in their crannies the apes worshiped it enough, and her sisters were dead, and maybe they had done this, and maybe they had not, she could not remember, for she was nameless, and Yarrow's hot tears made mud in the palace's ashes. Ragged, out of tune, the song still poured from her lips, but for whom?

Behind her, Hawthorn stood. The Hawthorn Lady now, maybe. Hawthorn herself did not know. The honey's fire had subsided, but it had left her changed. Ebony had required regular doses, but Hawthorn, infused with lantern light, with mellified man, with the name of an ancient power, would not. The foundations of her being had shifted. She knew this as she knew the arrangement of her own limbs (four arms, three legs, perhaps more to come).

Her green overgown had shredded into hawthorn leaves. It trailed behind her, foamy with white, corpse-smelling flowers. Above her bare shoulders, her neck and head were porcelain suffused with a living yellow flame. The broken halves of the mask had replaced her face, and between them was the green eye of the amulet, now grown to huge proportions, and useful to see with. Behind the eye and the mask, that living fire spilled itself out endlessly.

She stooped to pick up the steel. The Beast lay dormant. A yellow scale was plainly visible. Hawthorn raised the steel.

Yarrow stopped singing.

"You can't kill her," she said. She pushed up from the ground, hands stained with light. The sight of Hawthorn was not surprising. She was too tired for surprise.

The Beast twitched a limb but did not awaken yet. Ashes fell. The sky churned with smoke. Away in the palace there were cries, shouts, one alarm bell tolling. As it always was when the Beast came. As it always would be.

"You can't, " said Yarrow.

I must, said Hawthorn. Then, "I must."

"Whatever happened, that was the Ladies' affair. Not ours. Whatever they did to her is done. I won't let her be banished again." The name of Hawthorn was pressure, restraint. Liquid light dripped from Yarrow's fingers as she understood, perhaps, what kept the Beast below.

I must pro "tect the palace," said Hawthorn. "Look at what she's done already."

"She tried not to hurt Tertius, twice . She's angry at her sisters, but they're all gone. The Five are dead . This isn't our fight. It's a relic of something else. The Five did this. They forged the chain. I don't know why. But it's wrong. It's wrong, and it's not ours, do you hear me?"

Hawthorn set the tip of the steel against the yellow scale. "This can end. I'll wish for her never to come back. This is what my master wanted."

"It will never end," said Yarrow. "Not if she's killed." The name scrawled at her feet wavered in an eddy of wind. "She'll just be dragged back. She'll never die and she'll never live. Do you hear me? All over the palace they call her and call her. Even I —" Yarrow shook her head. "As long as her name is called she'll come back and back. Not again. Not anymore. I'm breaking the chain."

There was nothing Yarrow could do to stop Hawthorn, and both of them knew it. Birds settled on the walls of the Passage as they glared at each other, woman and Lady. The Beast stirred, and its eyes opened, but it did nothing.

"I'm breaking the chain," Yarrow said again. "The palace has done her wrong, and we've all suffered for it. She deserves to live. She deserves a new name. This is over."

The Mother of Grey House always thought she knew best. For a moment, Hawthorn nearly drove the steel in out of spite. But she thought of the book Frin had given her. The pictures of ruin at the sisters' hands. Six crossed the river. One fell down, put in the ground. A Lady, imprisoned for thousands of years for no reason anyone could guess. Her body used to build the houses of her sisters, tower after tower. In whose name do the Sparrows dance? Writing with their bodies, calling her back for the slaughter. Ruin upon ruin, all so someone could make a wish upon her corpse. Hey nonny nonny.

Hawthorn dropped the steel and stepped back.

The Beast quivered, shook its flanks, and pushed up from the ground. Up it went, and kept going, rearing above them. The birds followed it, parrots and vultures, crows and sparrows, gulls and falcons, swirling, still crying out their greetings. A bearded vulture wheeled down and away, vanishing into the smoke.

You have vanquished me, said the Beast; and Hawthorn recognized the light in its eyes as her own, but green and steady. What is your wish?

Its tone was confused, as if it knew the words but not why it was saying them.

"Be as you want to be," said Yarrow.

At the same time, Hawthorn said: Be as you are.

The Sixth Sister shuddered and stretched. Her mouths opened in a scream of anguish. Yarrow's eyes met Hawthorn's. They saw each other thinking: We should not have wished at once.

She exploded upward to an unguessable height. Tails and limbs flailed, split, recombined. Amid the chaos, for a moment, was a vast green face, eyes wide open and sparking white fire. Then they closed, and the face settled into rest, and was gone from Yarrow's sight.

The Sixth Sister split into three stems, and from her skin burst long green thorns. A gush of sap filled the air with a springtime smell of growth and rot. Thorns arced to meet, met, became arches. The three stems twined around each other for hundreds of feet in the air, then bent away and split and split and split. The green scabbed over with rough brown. Eyes sank in and became windows; mouths became doors. Her feet and tails extended, burrowing into the ground of the West Passage, racing west and east, festooning the bridge with roots, reaching through the palace's ruins as far as Yarrow could see.

Her branches settled with a shiver and burst into greenery. The Sixth Sister had become a tree as tall as Black Tower, banded with windows and doors and architraves of wood, as if she had tried to become a tower as well. For a moment all was quiet. In the silence, frogs chirped. Then the two nearest trunks shivered and pulled apart slightly to make a high, broad door. Inside were steps of living wood, going up into cool shadow.

"I'm going inside," said Hawthorn. "I have to make sure it's not a threat. I don't think it is. That face looks like a sign to me."

She pointed up. Yarrow could not see it, just a sort of constellation of leaves that, from one angle, might look a little like the Guardians' mask. To Hawthorn's new eye, though, it was the mask, large and whole.

"Don't," said Yarrow. "Come back. Help me with… with whatever comes next." Her stomach was shaking like frog spawn. "Come home."

Hawthorn gently touched a bulging root of the tree. A tremor passed from her fiery head down her arms and into her rustling cloak of leaves. The root curved up against her hand like a cat under a caress. She looked for Frin's body a moment, but the roots of the tower had torn up and digested everything in their path except her, Yarrow, and Tertius. He was part of the tree now. Part of her.

"If there's no more Beast, then I'm not needed in Grey. Did I ever belong there, anyway?"

"No," said Yarrow nervously. "But."

Hawthorn stepped toward the tower door.

"Don't go in," said Yarrow. "You don't know what this is."

"That's what I need to find out," said Hawthorn. "While I still remember being Guardian, I have to see that everything was worth it. Go home, Mother Yarrow. I might see you again."

Yarrow stepped back. "We'll share some ortolans," she said. "Be safe, Hawthorn."

If there is danger, I will face it, said the Hawthorn Lady. If it is safe, I will make it safer.

She grew as she spoke, though to Yarrow it felt as if the earth itself shrank from Hawthorn.

You're right: I don't know what I'm doing, said the Lady. But I know who I'm doing it for.

She bent over to fit through the door and, just before going in, turned to Yarrow. She held out something to the woman. A stalk of fresh angelica.

"Think what fun you'll have," Hawthorn said. "Inventing new songs and all."

She went up the steps and out of view. The door closed behind her so fully that it seemed never to have been. Yarrow did not know what happened to her after that.

As Yarrow mounted Tertius and headed for Grey Tower, she heard a clamor behind her and stopped to look. All the birds of the palace, it seemed, were streaming in to nest in the tree's branches.