Grace grabbed at her head as an agonising roar tore through it. But then it died away, and left nothing but a ringing in her ears behind it.
He's dead, she thought, and she felt that it should have filled her with relief. But Ruidic's spell wasn't finished yet, though its bonds seemed to hum in the air around her. And while they were all part of it, she knew that there was a wrong note somewhere. Something was missing.
She saw, through the growing sense of wrongness, Roschan drop the mace. It struck the ground with a reverberating boom. He dropped to his knees in front of the fallen figure of the Queen and drew her head and shoulders up into his lap. His body was heaving and bucking, and she realised that he was crying, though she was staring up at him with a quiet smile.
He loves her, she thought, and realised that she shouldn't have been surprised. She remembered the fierce loyalty; the way he had snapped at her when she spoke against the Queen; and the way he had seemed torn in half by his duty to his city.
And that love had been part of the spell. Ruidic's spell was created from all of them, and their love, their hate, their fear – everything was part of it.
She saw Ma grab Benjamin towards her in a fierce hug, and realised that the love between Ma, and her, and Benjamin, was as much a part of the spell as Roschan's love for the Queen. But still that feeling of wrongness grew, until it was screaming in her head like a single mis-pitched note.
Edin was frozen in place, his eyes on the cold mage. She saw disbelief in his face, and anger. But then as she watched, it fell away and a vicious cunning took its place.
She tried to weave a spell, but he was quicker, and fresher. In a slow, hanging second, she could see that she wouldn't finish it in time. She could see, too, that he was close enough to Ruidic's hiding place to blast him with magic, and he was strong enough to hurt him; maybe even to kill him.
She had time to feel heavy and slow and desperate. Whatever he did, he would halt the spell, and the armies out in the snow would pour over the walls and kill all the living who stood in their way.
Then Edin flinched, as a shape erupted from behind the hanging vines that screened Ruidic. It was a dark shape, and so swift that her eyes couldn't follow it. It collided with Edin and sent him toppling over, to land face down in the mud, spitting. Grace didn't have to see who it was to know. The feeling of wrongness vanished into the air, and Grace was filled instead with a singing happiness.
Afi dropped downwards and pulled his brother's arms up behind his back, as Edin writhed and kicked at him. Grace met Afi's gaze, and the sad, tired smile he gave her was the last action that sealed the spell.
She felt everything click into place, and she looked over the burned waste of the garden and through the glass towards Mida. There were creatures on top of the wall, dozens of little black shapes she knew to be wolves and the warped apes the mage had made. They started to fall towards the city, and then a blinding flash of light burst from the wall and the creatures vanished into nothingness.
She walked towards the glass as she saw the light spread out beyond the wall, into the hordes waiting to climb up. As the light struck them they twisted and then winked out of existence, as if they had never been. But it wasn't just the wall that blazed with power. Dozens of beacons of light lit up in the city itself, making a dazzling pattern of buildings and bridges and houses that were made of the grey-white stone of the wall.
Grace lowered her gaze to the ruins of Kryzna and saw lights there too, shining brightly enough that they showed up even in the bright evening sun. The tower itself was shining too, and of the army that had been at its foot, there was no trace.
She smiled down at it, feeling so tired that she thought about lying down right there and sleeping. She heard a sigh from behind her, and she turned her head slowly to find Ruidic, standing where he had stood but visible to her now that she had passed by the tree he had hidden behind.
He gave her a strangely brilliant smile, and she saw that through his stormy eyes and his bedraggled hair there were blue and gold lights running, as if he still had the magic of the spell in him.
"You did it," she said. "Ruidic's Fire."
He laughed, but it was a distant laugh. He seemed to be seeing more than her when he looked at her.
"I should have done this earlier," he told her. "It's like standing on top of the world."
She shook her head at him. "Don't let it go to your head."
She realised, then, that there was nothing she had to do now. There were no more enemies to fight, nobody to rescue, and nobody to save. The thought left her strangely empty.
She heard a muffled sob, then, and remembered the Queen. The empty place in her was replaced by an ache.
"Can we save her?" she asked Ruidic, but he seemed not to hear her. He was gazing out at the wall, and she didn't have time to ask what he was seeing. She hurried past him, and pushed through the vines.
Roschan clung to her, twining his fingers through and through hers and pressing his head against her as he cried. The Queen herself seemed so calm, so still, that Grace thought she had already died, until she saw her lift a hand up to Roschan's dirty, blood-smeared face.
Grace met Afi's eye, where he held Edin – who had finally given up struggling – and she saw the tiny shake of his head. She knew what he meant. She knew that the Queen was dying. But she couldn't let her die when she had any power left in her.
Grace moved towards her, summoning up the Symbol of Healing, and hoping that she had enough power to work some kind of spell.
"Ma, help me," she said.
The Queen's head moved just enough to look at her, and she shook her head.
Grace felt as though she had walked into a wall. There was nothing in front of her, but she could go no further and the magic fizzled and died.
"I can help you!" she said, trying to push against the Queen's magic.
Ma didn't even start to move, and Grace wondered whether the Queen was stopping her too, or whether she had accepted that shake of the head.
"No," the Queen said, and breathed in with a shaking gasp. "I don't want to drag – my heart through this world – any more."
"Please, please live," Roschan said to her, and kissed her forehead. He left a smudge of black on the Queen's perfect white forehead.
"I can't, my Captain. There is – my death waiting – at last. And if there is – forgiveness in all of the – worlds, I hope I will see my Gregori again. At last."
Grace felt a warm wash of air beside her and she smiled, remembering a spell that was almost a boy, and how he had promised to help the Queen one last time.
"Here," she whispered, and she held out her hand, filling it with all the power she could drag from herself. As it flowed into the cloud of moving lights, they blazed, and span, and once they had settled they became a little dark-haired boy once more.
He ran to the Queen as if playing on the lush grass again, instead of scuffling through snow and fragments of ugly grey ash.
Grace saw the rush of joy on the Queen's face, and she tried to swallow a lump in her throat. It wasn't her place to cry over a woman she had hardly known. But she couldn't help the tears that blurred her vision. She had stood in front of the Cold Mage to save Ruidic.
"Gregori!" the Queen said, and drew him into a fierce cuddle over her chest. Roschan drew back and watched, with the water pouring down his cheeks and leaving clean patches amidst all the dirt and the blood. "You came back to me."
"Mommy," the spell child said. "I'm back now, Mommy."
"I missed you so much," the Queen said, and she kissed him, and kissed him, the kisses growing slower and further apart until with a last kiss on his forehead, she sagged back, the rapid movement of her chest stilling.
Grace expected Ori to vanish again at once, but instead he stayed wrapped in the Queen's lifeless arms. His body jerked and she realised with a shock that he was sobbing.
Roschan seemed as amazed as she was, but after a little while he held a hand out and stroked Ori's dark hair, that was so much like the Queen's in colour. Ori lifted his head, and then threw himself towards the Captain, who opened his arms and hugged him.
Grace watched the grieving Captain rock Ori, and the strangeness of the soldier comforting a spell he had feared was almost negated by the simplicity of a man hushing a child. The effect of it was to make her want, quite fiercely, to be held. But it was a confused want, because she wanted to be at home, with Dad giving her one of his bear-hugs; and at the same time she wanted Afi to wrap his arms around her and never let go.
She looked away from the man and the boy towards Afi, then, and she saw that he wanted to hold her just as much as she wanted to be held by him. It made her smile, with the tears still standing in her eyes.
Edin chose his moment well, while Afi's attention was on her. He drove his hands down into the snow and the ash and the charred earth, through to the stone of the tower beneath. She saw blue-white light course out from him like vines through the stone, with a tearing, cracking noise.
The floor beneath him gave way, and Edin disappeared from sight. Grace saw Afi topple as if he would fall, but his hand found the edge of the hole, and he hung on, swinging in the air.
She ran to him, and started to drag him upwards, astonished by how heavy he was. She heaved backwards, and then felt a tremor through her feet. For a sickening moment she thought that the ground she stood on was falling too. But then she realised that it was a shaking in the whole fabric of the tower.
"Grace! Lena!" she heard Ruidic shout, urgently.
Afi hooked a leg over the edge of the floor and rolled onto it, and Grace was able to look up at Ruidic as he pushed his way through the screening vines.
"He's torn apart every spell holding the place together," he said, and she knew that he was seeing more than just her or Afi or even Ma and Benjamin. "I have power enough to hold the garden together and keep the spell alive, but I can't hold the tower up." He shook his head in frustration. "The place is impossibly fragile and illogical. There's too much to do to repair it."
Grace saw Ma's face as she looked at him, and some kind of understanding seemed to pass between them, but whatever it was, it was beyond her.
"We have to get everyone out," Ma said. But instead of leaving, she took five quick steps over to Ruidic and kissed him fiercely, her mouth on his.
Grace looked away, dizzy and furious and humiliated all at once. She found herself looking at Benjamin instead, who was staring at them both with his mouth open.
"Ma!" he said, and it seemed to break through to their mother. She let go of Ruidic, her cheeks burning with colour, and put her hand out to help Roschan to his feet. As he put his hand down to Ori, the little child smiled at him, and then with a rush like the wind he became just a cluster of lights again, that floated upwards and out of the open top of the tower.
Grace saw the confused desolation on the Captain's face as he looked after the retreating lights, and she wondered whether it was his connection to the Queen he missed, or whether he had loved little Ori more than he had let on. Ma tugged at his hand, and then reached for Benjamin, and the three of them began to hurry towards the intention wind disc.
"Grace!" Ma called after her, but Grace saw Ruidic hold his hand up to her, and she stayed where she was to listen to him.
"I have to stay, Grace," he said, and she could only stare at him for a moment.
"What do you mean, you have to stay?"
"The spell needs its riezehn," he said, and there was a strange little smile on his mouth. "I saw it the moment you explained it all to me. I'm woven into the spell, and it's woven into me too. I'm the centre of it, here where I created it, and it's all right. I'll stay, and I'll be just fine."
Grace looked around at the charred, snow-covered garden, and asked, "But what will you eat? What will you do?"
"I'll bring the garden back," he said, and the way he said it as he looked around showed Grace that he was seeing how it would be instead of how it was now.
There was a booming rumble below their feet. Grace felt Afi take hold of her wrist.
"We have to go," he said, quietly.
"But I was supposed to be the one who saved everyone," Grace said, humiliated to find hot, bitter tears running down her cheeks. "I was supposed to be the hero, and now you're sacrificing yourself instead and I'm just... I'm ashamed."
Ruidic seemed to understand more of what she meant than she was willing to admit. He smiled at her, and took her free hand.
"Grace," he said, "this will be the only truly great thing I've ever created in my life. Except for you."
She looked back at him, and then let go of Afi's hand to fling her arms around his neck.
"I'll come back and see you," she said. "I'll come and even if this place is out of reach, I'll get here so you aren't on your own."
"All right," he said into her ear, and she could tell from the way he said it that he didn't believe her.
"I will," she said, fiercely, and let him go to hold his gaze. "I promise I will."
Ruidic smiled at her, his age-old crooked smile. "I'll hold you to it. But you need to promise to do something else first."
"What?" Grace asked, almost relieved to feel like there was something else she could do, in spite of how tired she felt and how much she just wanted to lie down somewhere warm.
"Heal the boys," he said, quietly. "The ones who have lost their minds. I think you can do it... The healer comes..." he said, and there was a distant look in his eyes again.
"I – I haven't healed anyone," Grace said, as full of doubt as she had ever been.
"And you hadn't cast a spell until three days ago," he said, with a wry grin, "and now look at you."
She wanted to say more, but with a booming crack, the garden came free of the rest of the tower and tilted over dizzyingly. Grace's feet slipped from under her, and she was falling towards the hole in the floor that Edin had made, her feet and hands finding nothing to grip on the snowy ground.
"Afi!" she shouted, but as she tried to grab for him, her hands closed on empty air.