CHAPTER FOUR
2093 Words
CHAPTER FOUR
Again and again, Kate died.
Or “died” at least. Illusory weapons slid into her flesh, ghostly hands strangled her into unconsciousness. Arrows flickered into existence and shot through her. The weapons were only things formed from smoke, pulled into existence by Siobhan’s magic, but every one of them hurt as much as a real weapon would have.
They didn’t kill Kate, though. Instead, each moment of pain merely brought a sound of disappointment from Siobhan, who watched from the sidelines with what seemed to be a combination of amusement and exasperation at the slowness with which Kate was learning.
“Pay attention, Kate,” Siobhan said. “Do you think I’m summoning these dream fragments for my entertainment?”
The figure of a swordsman appeared in front of Kate, dressed for a duel rather than an all-out battle. He saluted her, leveling a rapier.
“This is the Finnochi derobement,” he said in the same flat monotone the others seemed to have. He thrust at her and Kate went to parry with her wooden practice sword, because she’d learned to do that much, at least. She was fast enough to see the moment when the fragment changed direction, but the move still caught her off guard, the ephemeral blade slipping through her heart.
“Again,” Siobhan said. “There is little time.”
In spite of what she said, there seemed to be more time than Kate could have imagined. The minutes seemed to stretch out in the wood, filled with opponents trying to kill her, and as they tried, Kate learned.
She learned to fight them, cutting them down with her practice sword because Siobhan had insisted that she set her real blade aside to avoid the risk of real injury. She learned to thrust and cut, parry and feint, because every time she made a mistake, the ghostly outline of a blade slid into her with a pain that felt all too real.
After the ones with swords were the ones with sticks or mauls, bows or muskets. Kate learned to kill a dozen ways with her hands, and to read the moment when a foe would fire a weapon, throwing herself flat. She learned to run through the forest, jumping from branch to branch, fleeing from foes as she dodged and hid.
She learned to hide and move silently, because every time she made a noise, the ephemeral enemies descended on her with more weapons than she could match.
“Couldn’t you just teach me?” Kate demanded of Siobhan, shouting it into the trees.
“I am teaching you,” she replied as she stepped from one of those nearby. “If you were here to learn magic, we could do that with tomes and gentle words, but you are here to become deadly. For that, pain is the greatest teacher there is.”
Kate gritted her teeth and kept going. At least here, there was a point to the pain, unlike in the House of the Unclaimed. She set off back into the forest, sticking to the shadows, learning to move without disturbing the least twig or leaf as she crept up on a fresh set of conjured foes.
Still she died.
Every time she succeeded, a new foe appeared, or a new threat. Each was harder than the last. When Kate learned to avoid human eyes, Siobhan conjured dogs whose skin seemed to billow into smoke with every step they took. When Kate learned to slip past the defenses of a duelist’s sword, the next foe wore armor so that she could only strike at the gaps between the plates.
Whenever she stopped, it seemed that Siobhan was there, with advice or hints, encouragement or just the kind of maddening amusement that spurred Kate on to do better. She was faster now, and stronger, but it seemed as though it wasn’t enough for the woman who controlled the fountain. She had the feeling that Siobhan was preparing her for something, but the other woman wouldn’t say what, or answer any questions that weren’t about what Kate needed to do next.
“You need to learn to use the talent that you were born with,” Siobhan said. “Learn to see the intent of a foe before they strike. Learn to pick out the location of your enemies before they find you.”
“How do I practice that when I’m fighting illusions?” Kate demanded.
“I direct them, so I will allow you to look at a fraction of my mind,” Siobhan said. “Be careful though. There are places you do not want to look.”
That caught Kate’s interest. She’d already come up against the walls the other woman kept in place to stop her from looking at her mind. Now she was going to get to peek? When she felt Siobhan’s walls shift, Kate plunged inside as far as the new boundaries would let her.
It wasn’t far, but it was still far enough to get a sense of an alien mind, as far from any normal person’s as Kate had ever seen. Kate recoiled from the sheer strangeness of it, pulling back. She did so just in time for an ephemeral foe to thrust a blade through her throat.
“I told you to be careful,” Siobhan said while Kate gagged. “Now, try again.”
There was another swordsman in front of Kate. She focused, and this time she caught the moment when Siobhan told it to attack. She ducked, cutting it down.
“Better,” Siobhan said. It was as close to praise as she came, but praise didn’t stop the constant testing. It just meant more foes, more work, more training. Siobhan pushed Kate until even with the new strength she had, she felt ready to collapse from exhaustion.
“Haven’t I learned enough?” Kate asked. “Haven’t I done enough?”
She watched Siobhan smile without amusement. “You think that you are ready, apprentice? Are you really that impatient?”
Kate shook her head. “It’s just—”
“That you think you have learned enough for one day. You think that you know what is coming, or what is needed.” Siobhan spread her hands. “Perhaps you are right. Perhaps you have mastered what I want you to learn.”
Kate could hear the note of annoyance then. Siobhan didn’t have the kind of patience as a teacher that Thomas had shown with her.
“I’m sorry,” Kate said.
“It’s too late for sorry,” Siobhan said. “I want to see what you’ve learned.” She clapped her hands. “A test. Come with me.”
Kate wanted to argue, but she could see that there was no point to it. Instead, she followed Siobhan to a spot where the forest opened out into a roughly circular clearing bordered by hawthorns and brambles, wild roses and stinging nettles. In the middle of it, a sword sat, balanced across a tree stump.
No, not just a sword. Kate instantly recognized the blade that Thomas and Will had made for her.
“How…” she began.
Siobhan jerked her head toward it. “Your blade was unfinished, as you were. I have finished it, as I am trying to improve you.”
The sword did look different now. It had a grip of swirling dark and light wood that Kate suspected would fit her hand perfectly. It had markings down the blade that were in no language she’d seen before, while now the blade shone with a wicked-looking edge.
“If you think you are ready,” Siobhan said, “all you have to do is walk in there and take your weapon. But if you do, know this: the danger is real in there. It is no game.”
If it had been another situation, Kate might have taken a step back. She might have told Siobhan that she wasn’t interested, and waited a little longer. Two things stopped her from doing that. One was the insufferable smile that never seemed to leave Siobhan’s face. It taunted Kate with the assurance that she wasn’t good enough yet. That she would never be quite good enough to live up to the standards Siobhan set for her. It was an expression that reminded her too much of the contempt the masked nuns had shown her.
In the face of that smile, Kate could feel her anger rising. She wanted to wipe the smile from Siobhan’s face. She wanted to show her that whatever magic the woman of the forest might possess, Kate was up to the tasks she set. She wanted some small measure of satisfaction for all the ghostly blades that had plunged into her.
The other reason was simpler: that sword was hers. It had been a gift from Will. Siobhan didn’t get to dictate when Kate got to take it.
Kate took a run up and leapt to a branch, then jumped over the ring of thorns surrounding the clearing. If this was the best that Siobhan could manage, she would take her blade and scramble back out as easily as walking along a country road. She dropped into a crouch as she landed, looking across to the sword that waited for her.
There was a figure holding it now, though, and Kate found herself staring at it. At herself.
It was definitely her, down to the last detail. The same short red hair. The same wiry litheness. This version of her, however, wore different clothes, dressed in the greens and browns of the forest. Her eyes were different too, leaf green from edge to edge and anything but human. As Kate watched, the other version of her drew Will’s blade, slicing it through the air as if testing it.
“You aren’t me,” Kate said.
“You aren’t me,” the other her said, with exactly the same inflection, exactly the same voice. “You’re just a cheap copy, not half as good.”
“Give me the sword,” Kate demanded.
The other her shook her head. “I think I’ll keep it. You don’t deserve it. You’re just scum from the orphanage. No wonder things didn’t work out with Will.”
Kate ran at her then, swinging her practice blade with all the strength and fury she could muster, as though she might break apart this thing with power of her attack. Instead, she found her practice blade met by the steel of the live one.
She thrust and she cut, feinted and beat, attacking with all the skills that she’d built up through Siobhan’s brutal teaching. Kate pushed to the edges of the strength the fountain had granted her, using all the speed she possessed to try to break through her opponent’s defenses.
The other version of her parried every attack perfectly, seeming to know every move as Kate made it. When she struck back, Kate barely deflected the strokes.
“You’re not good enough,” the other version of her said. “You’ll never be good enough. You’re weak.”
The words rattled through Kate almost as much as the impact of the sword blows against her practice weapon. They hurt, and they hurt most because they were everything Kate suspected might be the truth. How many times had they said it in the House of the Unclaimed? Hadn’t Will’s friends shown her the truth of it in their practice circle?
Kate shouted her anger and attacked again.
“No control,” the other her said as she deflected the blows. “No thought. Nothing but a little girl playing at being a warrior.”
Kate’s mirror image lashed out then, and Kate felt the pain of the sword cutting across her hip. For a moment, it felt no different from the ghostly blades that had stabbed her so many times, but this time the pain didn’t fade. This time, there was blood.
“How does it feel, knowing you’re going to die?” her opponent asked.
Terrifying. It felt terrifying, because the worst part of it was that Kate knew it was true. She couldn’t hope to beat this opponent. She couldn’t even hope to survive against her. She was going to die here, in this ring of thorns.
Kate ran for the edge of it then, casting aside her wooden blade as it slowed her down. She leapt for the edge of the circle, hearing her mirror image’s laughter behind her as she threw herself at it. Kate covered her face with her hands, shutting her eyes against the thorns and hoping that it would be enough.
They tore at her as she plunged through them, tearing at her clothes and the skin beneath. Kate could feel the blood beading as the thorns ripped into her, but she forced herself through the tangle of them, only daring to open her eyes when she came out the other side.
She looked back, half convinced that her mirror image would be following, but when Kate looked, the other version of her was gone, leaving the sword sitting on its tree stump as if she had never been there.
She collapsed then, her heart hammering with the effort of all that she’d just done. She was bleeding from a dozen places now, both from thorn scratches and from the wound on her hip. She rolled to her back, staring up at the forest canopy, the pain coming in waves.
Siobhan stepped into her field of vision, looking down at her with a mixture of disappointment and pity. Kate didn’t know which was worse.
“I told you that you weren’t ready,” she said. “Are you ready to listen now?”
- Writer
