Eventually, the green path led him to the palace.
Much like the other buildings, it rose like smoke to the sky, its black spires disappearing into the haze of twilight. The gates hung open, their weight sagging on rusted hinges, the great steps cracked. The grassy thread continued, undeterred by the landscape. If anything, it seemed to thicken, braiding into a rope of vine and blossom as it climbed the broken stairs. Holland climbed with it, one hand pressed to his aching ribs.
The palace doors swung open beneath his touch, the air inside still and stagnant as a tomb, the vaulted ceilings reminiscent of White London’s churchlike castle, but with smoother edges. The way the glassy stone continued inside and out, without sign of forge or seam, made it seem ethereal, impossible. This entire place had been made with magic.
The path of green persisted in front of him, winding over stone floors and beneath another pair of doors, massive panes of tinted glass with withered flowers trapped inside. Holland pushed the doors open, and found himself staring at a king.
His breath caught, before he realized the man before him, cast in shadows, wasn’t made of flesh and blood, but glassy black stone.
Just a statue seated on a throne.
But unlike the statues that filled the Stone Forest in front of the Danes’ palace, this one was clothed. And the clothes seemed to move. The cloak around the king’s shoulders fluttered, as if caught by a wind, and the king’s hair, though carved, seemed to rustle gently in the breeze (even though there was no breeze in the room). A crown sat atop the king’s head, and a wisp of grey a shade lighter than the stone itself swirled in the statue’s open eyes. At first Holland thought it was simply part of the rock, but then the swirl of grey twitched, and moved. It coiled into pupils that drifted until they found Holland, and stopped.
Holland tensed.
The statue was alive.
Not in the way of men, perhaps, but alive all the same, in a simple, enduring way, like the grass at his feet. Natural. And yet entirely unnatural.
“Oshoc,” murmured Holland. A word for a piece of magic that broke away, became something more, something with a mind of its own. A will.
The statue said nothing. The wisps of grey smoke watched him from the king’s face, and the thread of green trailed up the dais, wound itself around the oshoc’s throne and over one sculpted boot. Holland found himself stepping forward, until his shoes grazed the bottom of the throne’s platform.
And then, at last, the statue spoke.
Not out loud, but in Holland’s mind.
Antari.
“Who are you?” asked Holland.
I am king.
“Do you have a name?”
Again, the illusion of movement. The faintest gesture: a tightening of fingers on the throne, a tipping of the head, as if this were a riddle. All things have names.
“There was a stone found in my city,” continued Holland, “and it called itself Vitari.”
A smile seemed to flicker like light against the creature’s petrified face. I am not Vitari, he said smoothly. But Vitari was me. Holland frowned, and the creature seemed to relish his confusion. A leaf to a tree, he said, indulgently.
Holland stiffened. The idea that the stone’s power was a mere leaf compared to the thing that sat before him—the thing with its stone face and its calm manner and its eyes as old as the world …
My name, said the creature, is Osaron.
It was an old word, an Antari word, meaning shadow.
Holland opened his mouth to speak, but his air was cut off as another spasm of pain lurched through his chest. The grey smoke twisted.
Your body is weak.
Sweat slid down Holland’s cheek, but he forced himself to straighten.
I saved you.
Holland didn’t know if the oshoc meant that he’d saved his life once, or that he was still saving it. “Why?” he choked.
I was alone. Now we are together.
A shiver went through him. This was the thing that had feasted on an entire world of magicians. And now, somehow, Holland had woken it.
Another spasm of pain, and he felt one knee threaten to buckle.
You live because of me. But you are still dying.
Holland’s vision slid in and out of focus. He swallowed, and tasted blood. “What happened to this world?” he asked.
The statue looked at him levelly. It died.
“Did you kill it?” Holland had always assumed that the Black London plague was something vast and un-fightable, that it was born from weakness and greed and hunger. It had never occurred to him that it could be a thing, an entity. An oshoc.
It died, repeated the shadow. As all things do.
“How?” demanded Holland. “How did it die?”
I … did not know, it said, that humans were such fragile things. I have learned … how to be more careful. But …
But it was too late, thought Holland. There was no one left.
I saved you, it said again, as if making a point.
“What do you want?”
To make a deal. The invisible wind around Holland picked up, and the statue of Osaron seemed to lean forward. What do you want, Antari?
He tried to steel his mind against the question, but answers poured through like smoke. To live. To be free. And then he thought of his world, starving for power, for life. Thought of it dying—not like this place, but slowly, painfully.
What do you want, Holland?
He wanted to save his world. Behind his eyes, the image began to change as London—his London—came back to life. He saw himself on the throne, staring up through a roofless palace at a bright blue sky, the warmth of the sun against his skin, and—