Neither she nor Estred would make it out of Midrigar alive. The ghost-eater’s wolves leapt at the implacable command, rushing toward them, their excited chattering making Siora’s blood run cold. The ghost-eater might not be any more corporeal than those it considered food, but the pale hounds were solid, feral, and eager to rend her and Estred asunder with their clawed hands.
Command us, daughter, if you want to live,Skavol urged her.
To protect her father, Zaredis’s brother, and a whole host of spirits fleeing the ghost-eater, she’d had to enslave them. To command them now was to use them.
Gharek had tossed ethics out the window and done the dirty work of a twisted empress to protect his daughter and provide for her. It seemed Siora would see some small part from his perspective of what that was like, and for the same reason.
One of the wolves was nearly upon her when she called out in a loud voice. “To me! Defend! Protect!”
It was as if lightning suddenly struck, igniting the ethereal host so that they were no longer misty apparitions but fiery columns of light. Several shot toward the first attacking hunter, swallowing it whole in a shower of flame that showed hints of phantom hands, arms, and legs. Siora gasped in shock as the ghosts tore the creature apart until it was nothing more than tattered flags of bloodless flesh scattered across the plaza.
Its fate didn’t stop the others from attacking. Some met thesame end as the first. Others slammed headlong into an unbreachable wall of spirits, with Siora and Estred behind it, safe for the moment from the ghost-eater’s hounds.
The ghost-eater shrieked in glee.“You aren’t above me, witch! You destroy your own.”
Its words made no sense at first until she watched an invisible hand pluck one of the hunters off the ground, dangling it in mid-air. It was a bizarre, terrifying sight to behold. The creature’s mouth opened and closed with that same mad chittering noise. For a moment, a flicker of a different shape; a different, fully developed face superimposed itself over the hunter, and Siora’s stomach somersaulted in horror at the realization of what the ghost-eater’s taunt meant.
Its hounds had once been human.
“Is that a man or a woman?”
Siora turned from the ghastly sight to discover Estred’s gaze transfixed on the terrible chimera squirming in midair. “Close your eyes, love.” She covered the girl’s eyes with one hand. “You don’t want to dream about this.” She forced the words past a knot in her throat.Papa,she called and instantly Skavol was by her side.The ghost-eater can’t take you?
He shook his head.Not while we serve you.
And those wolves. Can you kill them? Destroy them utterly so the ghost-eater can no longer use them?Again he nodded.Do it,she said, allowing angry tears to slide down her cheeks.Show no mercy and obliterate every last one of them in this entire wretched place.
Had that been the fate of the missing folk in the Maesor? Not food for the ghost-eater, but hounds to serve its will? Would thishave been Gharek’s fate had she not knocked him unconscious and broken the ghost-eater’s bewitchment?
Two score or more of ghosts stayed with her, including Kalun. The others shot away in all directions, hunters themselves, and no longer so afraid as they tracked the ghost-eater’s minions.
Estred’s weight was an anvil in her arms, and the draining feel of sudden fatigue made Siora sway.
Kalun spoke next to her.You have to get out of Midrigar, Siora. All magic has costs. We serve you, but it’s your life force that shackles us to you, and we are many with an enemy doing its best to take us from you. Your first loyalty is to the living, not the dead. To Estred. Even to yourself.
He was right, though she dared not think beyond the idea of escaping Midrigar. How, in good conscience, could she release those ghosts bound to her when a terrifying fate awaited them? How could she, in good conscience, keep them in thrall to her, even to protect them?
She took his advice and began a jog to the gate, reluctant to turn her back on the temple now behind her, knowing the ghost-eater observed her every move. Her diminished entourage swelled in numbers again as they returned from their tasks of destroying the pale wolves. Her father had yet to reappear.
She wasn’t far from the gate when a familiar voice called her name. Estred jumped in Siora’s arms, squirming like an eel. “Papa!”
Siora could hardly believe her eyes. Gharek sprinted toward them, long legs effortlessly closing the distance. She lost her hold on Estred, who met Gharek halfway to jump into his embrace.
Siora gawked at him when he finally came to stand in front of her. The cat’s-paw, her lover, alive and well and reunited with hisdaughter in the worst possible place for the living and the dead to be at the moment. “How?” she asked, stunned.
“I’ll explain later,” he said. “Once we’re past the gate.”
She didn’t argue or ask if he saw the ghosts all around them. Instead she kept pace with him as they fled toward Midrigar’s shattered gates and the uncertain safety of the living world beyond them. Siora’s heart beat hard as they ran, a rhythm born of equal fear and joy even as the weight of responsibility dragged at her heels and the weight of a choice kindled the first sparks of a crazed idea surely bound to fail.
They reached the gates without a single hound snapping at their heels or the ghost-eater stopping them. Siora skidded to a halt right before the gates and exhaled a relieved sigh when Gharek crossed the city’s border, one foot in the woodland. It was late afternoon, but if she guessed rightly, of a different day than the one she’d left when the ghost-eater had taken her.
It only took a moment for Gharek to realize she was no longer beside him. He spun around to gawk at her. “Hurry, Siora.”
An odd ripple of air seemed to warp the broken gates even more. She offered him and Estred a melancholy smile. “Forgive me,” she said. “I must abandon you once more. My work here isn’t done.” She couldn’t leave, not while there was a sliver of hope that she might somehow save her father, Kalun, and all the dead she subjugated. Save the living as well from the parasite in Midrigar.
Gharek’s dark eyebrows crashed down in a ferocious scowl. He took a step toward the gate, glanced at Estred staring at Siora, and stopped, conflicted. “Don’t do this,” he implored. “Come through the gate. What binds you to Midrigar but not to us?”
His words seemed rushed, bleeding together. Tears blurred hervision. “My father. Hundreds of souls who don’t deserve the fate of those unfortunate ones who came before them, those who will be at risk of that same fate when they too die.”