The operation of a ballista is a simple thing. A man in possession of a ballista first turns and turns and turns the winch, then he pces the bolt, he aims the ballista, and at the right moment he sps the lever that sends the bolt flying into the air. No further effort is required. The man does not need to strain and heave to make the bolt fly through the air, for it already has all the speed it will ever have; nor does he need to watch it to ensure that the thing does not veer to the side. He could, for all it matters, sit down on the floor and take a nap, and the bolt would arrive at its target, or miss, entirely on its own.

  Shirrin felt as though she had struck the lever weeks and weeks ago, sending a bolt into the air. She had sent so many bolts into the air. And now, at st, her bolts were beginning to impact, spearing bodies and rupturing rooftops as they crashed down upon targets which she no longer wished to destroy. Eteocles was dead because of an earring and a story. The Senate had rescinded all of Peleus’s accodes, tacitly approving any challenger who might come to overthrow him and take his pce. A thousand miles away, Shirrin’s hand-chosen spy was conniving to create just such a challenger.

  All power had left her. Shirrin had nothing, was nothing. An icy grip had taken hold of her heart and would not let go, would not allow her to go forward or back, growing stronger with each new trial and challenge. There were times when Shirrin thought that she was surely about to die, the forces with which she had bargained to grant her her witchcraft ready at any moment to call her oathbreaker and undo her with a word. But they never did. Somehow that made the guilt only worse, that there was still time to complete what she had begun, time she was allowing to slip through her fingers.

  Shirrin y in her room with the curtains shut, tears staining her mattress. She was hungry, thirsty, exhausted, but cked any desire to sate those needs, broken and befuddled as she was. How long Shirrin had been in that state, it was impossible to say. When the door opened, spilling daylight into the chamber, it was as though she had emerged from a voyage to the bottom of the deepest sea.

  “Witch-Queen!” he said, his voice sharp with urgency. “The Empress needs you!”

  Shirrin rubbed her eyes, confusion still melting away before the sudden light of panic. “What? Why? What has happened?”

  “I don’t know. She is ill, deathly ill. The doctors are attending to her, but I thought… She does not have much time left.”

  It was impossible. Shirrin had seen Athan just before falling into her most recent slump, and although she had shied away from the Empress almost as soon as seeing her, Athan had been perfectly healthy. Was there a disease that could progress so quickly? Or had she been cocooned in her chamber for so long…

  Shirrin’s mouth was bone-dry, and her head swam. Still, she straightened her back and with all avaible gravitas said, “Bring me to her.”

  Shirrin was harangued by doubt and exhaustion, the twin demons threatening to tear her mind apart piece by piece. For Athan, she forced herself together, driving strength into her limbs and focus into her mind. If the Empress died, then… No. Athan would not die.

  Shirrin entered Athan’s private bedchamber like a fell northern wind, bursting open the doors and sending a wave of trembling shock through all present. And there were many present; Athan was surrounded first by a yer of doctors and schors, and then a yer of courtiers and servants who looked on in horror. The Empress herself was entirely hidden from view.

  Shirrin did not allow herself to be distracted by the terror her arrival brought. Instead, she shoved through the useless gawkers, and seized the nearest doctor by the shoulder. “What ails her?”

  “Her heart has given out,” said the man. “Emotional strain.”

  “No, no, you fool! It’s clearly a fever of some kind!”

  “A fever of the brain!”

  “No, no, obviously not. A conventional fever, brought about by miasma, would easily expin all of her symptoms.”

  They knew nothing, then. “Let me examine her,” Shirrin said. Her voice caused the room to shiver, as though it had brought with it a killing frost, and as one the doctors parted. Shirrin raced to Athan’s side.

  The servant who summoned Shirrin had, if anything, understated the severity of Athan’s condition. For a terrifying moment, Shirrin thought that the Empress had died while the doctors squabbled. Immediately, Shirrin opened the top of Athan’s dress, baring the delicate chest, and pressed her ear to Athan’s sternum while the doctors looked away in horror. Her heart was still beating, but in a state of unimaginable weakness.

  Shirrin took a step back and observed more carefully. The weakness of Athan’s heart, whatever had caused it, left the blood to stagnate in her veins: her skin was impossibly pale, turning blue at pces. She was shiny with sweat, and her breathing was so shallow as to be completely invisible. Then Athan moved.

  It was the smallest shift, like the adjustment a sleeper makes to alleviate some minor discomfort, but by the expression on Athan’s face it took all of her strength. She murmured something to herself, so quietly that Shirrin could not hear all the words. But she distinctly heard “sorry” amongst them, as well as, “never” and “light.” Athan was conscious, still, even at that extremity of condition, but only barely; she was simply so weak that she could not open her eyes, and too delirious to acknowledge the others in her room.

  The word “light” caught Shirrin’s attention. Athan had moaned it as though it were a compint. The room was shadowy, sunlight entering it only through two small windows. Why, then, would the Empress compin about too much light? On a hunch, Shirrin once again leaned in close, and with one of her thumbs, lifted Athan’s eyelid. The eye underneath appeared to have turned from emerald green to bck: but it was merely because her pupils were fully dited.

  Shirrin staggered back. Paralysis of the heart, sweat-soaked skin, delirium, and dited pupils. There was only one thing she knew of that caused those symptoms.

  “Nightshade,” Shirrin said through trembling lips. “Nightshade, it’s nightshade, she’s been poisoned!”

  A cacophony of noise erupted into the bedchamber. The murder of Eteocles was bad enough, a horror that disrupted the very fabric of Chrysopolis. But for the Empress to die of poison? Either Peleus had done it, in which case he had truly abandoned all morality, or it had been done by an enemy, a crime so heinous that war would be the least of its repercussions.

  Shirrin was only faintly aware of these considerations, for as her body stood frozen, her mind worked furiously to the only goal left to it: save Athan’s life. There were drugs that could cure nightshade poisoning, which was better than could be said for, say, hemlock. But Shirrin had none of those compounds on hand, and to acquire them would take her days when Athan could be dead in a matter of minutes. The only option, then, was to go to extremes, to call upon magics as ancient as they were powerful.

  “Everyone out! Out, at once! I can save her, but not if I have you damnable fools distracting me!”

  Several of the onlookers left at once, but many others remained, doctors who compined about being upstaged and courtiers too haughty to listen to a Trabakondai. So Shirrin took matters into her own hands. Literally. She was tall, and though scrawny, still had enough strength to begin grabbing smaller men by the shoulders and heaving them towards the door. Bit by bit, the room emptied out, until it was just the two of them together in the silent dark.

  Shirrin colpsed to Athan’s side, and pressed her lips very closely to the Empress’s ear. This next was the most difficult stage.

  “Athan? Athan, can you hear me? I can save you, but I need your permission. This next magic does not work on an unwilling target.”

  Shirrin waited, pulse pounding, a desperate prayer in her mind that Athan was not too far gone. Slowly, the dying woman turned her head, then with an even weaker whisper, replied.

  “Hector? Is that you?”

  Shirrin bit her lip to stop from gasping. Was it that obvious? Had Athan known all along somehow? Or was this merely evidence that, in her final hour, Athan’s mind still turned to her long-dead betrothed? Either way, if that was what it took, then Shirrin was willing to do anything. She lowered her voice as best she could, and tried to remember the person she had once been.

  “Yes, my love, it is I. Please, let me work my power on you, I—”

  “Is this death, then? I feel so awful…”

  “No, no, you are not dead yet,” Shirrin replied. “I can save you.”

  “But it was all my fault,” Athan said. “I should have done something…”

  Shirrin forgot, for a moment, how to speak. The poison had been self-administered. “None of it was your fault. None of it. You do not deserve to die, and if you let me, I will not permit you to die. Please, my love. Please do not die.”

  Athan made a horrible, croaking sound, and for a moment Shirrin thought it her death rattle. “Very well,” she whispered. A single tear crept down the Empress’s cheek.

  That was all Shirrin needed, in the end. She pressed her hand to the middle of Athan’s chest, and with a single exertion of thought, the woman was no more. In her pce was a stone statue, carved finer than the work of any human hand, replicating every fold and contour of her skin and her clothing. The poison was still there, ready to express itself the moment that she returned to flesh, but it would not progress.

  Two more transformations ensued: the witch into a huge gull, and the statue into a much smaller version of itself, suitable for carriage within a gull’s beak. The gull had to hope that nobody would enter the chamber for a few hours to find the Empress vanished; only the gods knew what sort of consequences might be at hand were that to happen. Speed was her ally; and so she took off at once, soaring as quickly as her wings could allow her in the direction of the only pce nearby where she might have any solitude at all.

  Nearly all the nd within a weeks’ travel of Chrysopolis had been cleared and tamed, turned into farmnd for crops or pasture for vast herds of sheep, cattle, and pigs. There was one exception, one pce which remained semi-wild. It was a huge hill by the sea, too rocky and too uneven to make into anything besides a forest, the pce where Shirrin had destroyed the amulet with which she had cursed Aissa with sickness; it was there that Shirrin would perform another great work.

  The gull nded carefully on a patch of smooth, soft soil, and carefully pced the tiny statue down. Then there was a burst of magic. The gull unfolded into a terror-stricken Shirrin, and the statue unfolded into a rger version of itself. For the first stage of the preparations, Athan could remain a piece of stone.

  Shirrin worked as quickly as she could, carving ancient marks into the soil, arranging stones, and other such things. She would much prefer to have her ritual markings in silver and fine wood, the air saturated with sacred incense rather than pine resin, but strength of will and desperation would suffice where preparation was cking. A blood sacrifice also helped: Shirrin used a minor trick of magic to call forth a wild rabbit from the woods, then caught it and let its raw blood spill onto the soil.

  Already, a charge of magic was beginning to form. Once the right words were spoken, the spell would be complete. But for it to cure Athan, there was one more necessary step.

  Shirrin turned Athan back to flesh, wincing as the Empress gasped from the sudden, unfamiliar sensation of forest floor on her back. A water-clock had begun to empty from the moment the transformation was undone: every instant which passed from then to the completion of the ritual was a moment which brought Athan closer to death.

  Shirrin was struck by inspiration. She id her hand on Athan’s chest once more, and spoke another short spell. Something invisible and ephemeral flowed out of Athan, up Shirrin’s wrist and arm, and into her own chest, where it arrived with an unspeakable feeling of impending doom. This was an old, primal spell of healing, dividing the poison in half between Shirrin and Athan. Even a half-dose of nightshade was more than enough to kill, but Athan now had a few minutes more to live.

  Then, Shirrin turned her face skyward, and began to intone words as old as the world. At once the air responded, and the woods responded to the air, and the ground and the creatures who lived there all trembled with power. These words were not meant to be spoken by mortal mouths, so ancient were they; and for them to be heard in the realm of mortals was almost unthinkable.

  But Shirrin spoke the words anyway, with crity and unhesitatingly. Though she spoke them barely above normal volume, they made the whole world shake. Magic saturated the air, running rampant in ever-accelerating cycles through the rabbit’s blood she had shed and the crude circle she had carved. All across the nds around Chrysopolis, beasts and birds flew into a panic, horses balking their riders and fish leaping into the air unbidden. The very sky itself began to writhe and warp, bulging downward to the patch of forest where Shirrin knelt.

  Shirrin trembled, partly from the sheer magnitude of the power forming around her and partly as the poison coursing through her took its toll on her muscles. How long would she be able to continue casting the spell? Would the thing that she was calling forth even answer? Shirrin forced herself to continue believing; uncertainty had brought her to this pce, and uncertainty would kill her there if she let it.

  The charge of magic in the air built and built, like a noise growing louder and louder yet producing no sound, a fire growing brighter and brighter but producing no light, a miasma growing thicker and thicker but producing no stench. The world swelled, bucking and throbbing as if trying to knock Shirrin off of its surface. Still she remained, speaking words of absolute power, allowing every drop of magic she had to flow out of her dying body. Then the spell ended. Like a bent branch snapping back into pce, the magic vanished, and the world became normal again.

  Or, almost normal. Floating above Shirrin’s head was an invisible presence rger than a whale. Though He could not be seen or heard, Shirrin could tell where He was, and how He curled and coiled in on Himself, zily turning in circles.

  “Greetings and salutations, Lord Ethirus,” Shirrin said.

  “Greetings.”

  Lord Ethirus did not speak. Gods had no need for such things. But his words were understood nonetheless. Shirrin swallowed, realizing that He was not going to be doing any more than was necessary.

  “Lord Ethirus, I call upon you for a miracle. Empress Athan,” she gestured to the half-conscious woman, “and I, we are joined by the same poison. I call upon you, through the pact which we have established, to heal both of us of this one, shared, poison.”

  Lord Ethirus said nothing for a long time. Seconds only, perhaps, but a long time nonetheless. Shirrin could feel her heart giving out, and the dim shadows of the forest becoming brighter and brighter.

  “Lord Ethirus, I beseech, your vast power surely has within it the ability to cure two sufferers of a mortal poison. If I die, our pact will forever go unfulfilled, and you will never have—”

  “And what about her?”

  Shirrin gnced down at Athan. She was still alive. “We are dying of the same poison.”

  “Is she not one of your targets? To complete your revenge, should she not be allowed to die?”

  Shirrin swallowed, an act which was growing more difficult with each passing moment. Of course a god could see the contradiction that Shirrin herself refused to acknowledge. It would, in the end, be proper that Athan should die, her suicide yet another waypost on the road to Peleus’s complete destruction. But Shirrin could no longer countenance it. Athan would live. Athan would live through it all, surviving under Shirrin’s own protection because…

  “She is mine!” Shirrin said. “I will steal her from under Peleus’s nose, make her my prize! She is mine, do you understand? Now heal us both, while I still have the strength to make demands.”

  There was a thrum in the air, one that might almost be mistaken for distant, booming ughter. Again, Lord Ethirus waited.

  “How daring. Very well. But know this, Shirrin: I expect progress. You have had twelve years to build your revenge, and I expect you to hold up your end of the bargain very, very soon.”

  “It shall be done, Lord Ethirus,” said Shirrin, suppressing a shiver of fear.

  At once, there was a gust of wind, wind so cold that it felt to Shirrin as though the wind had passed right through her and chilled her heart. Lord Ethirus vanished, leaving the forest totally unmolested by any evidence of His having ever been there. For a few minutes, Shirrin did not dare to move, feeling the tension of her muscles and the steady beat of her heart. The poison was, indeed, gone. Athan stirred, and did so with just a touch more strength than before.

  Then Shirrin id a hand on Athan’s bare chest and turned her back to stone. Hopefully she would remember none of what had transpired, or more likely attribute it to the dreams said to be visited upon those on the edge of death.

  For the first time in all too long, Shirrin’s path was set. She had set her ambitions, made pin her position before no higher authority than a manifest god. Shirrin would continue, she would burn Chrysopolis to the ground, and Peleus with it. But she would do so with Athan made hers.

  SaffronDragon