The Night Parade

Myrmeen thought of her return to her childhood home, the Tower Arms. The building had been in ruins except for her old quarters. They had been perfectly, impossibly restored to the way she remembered them. Then she recalled the nightmare, the screeching monstrosities her parents had become, and their horrible words:… we told you the other one was dead and you would be our one and only. Yousmiled. Youthoughtwe didn 't see you, but we did and it cut our hearts out.

Not true, she thought. Please, it's not true.

Then she remembered when she first had heard of the Night Parade. Her mother had been explaining what had happened to her baby sister. She had been taken to a place where she would be loved and happy, where she would be with her own kind.

Where she would be a monster.

'You're my sister,' Myrmeen said breathlessly, her emotions going numb at the realization.

Tamara nodded. 'Twenty-eight years ago, two members of the Night Parade wanted a child but could not conceive one. In this plane they cannot reproduce by natural means. They purchased a child and brought it to the Festival of Renewal. It was placed with the others, so many others.

'Myrmeen, the apparatus transforms human children into Night Parade creatures. I was raised to believe I was one of them, given the traits during the Draw of my adopted parents, themselves part human, part spider. Many years later, they died. Zeal, who was ten years older than me and had loved me from the first time he saw me, told me the truth. It was difficult to learn the names of my human parents, but I found them, and I found you. I came to you many times, but I could not bring myself to confront you.'

'The nightmares,' Myrmeen whispered. 'The people with limbs of spiders-'

'My parents,' Tamara said softly, 'and me.'

'Wait,' Krystin said as she looked at Myrmeen. 'You said your sister was stillborn, that your mother told you-'

'She lied,' Tamara said bitterly. 'I had been born sickly, and the physicians gave me only a few hours to live. The slavers came and offered our parents a fortune for a child that would die soon anyway. They looked to their other child, to you, Myrmeen, who was starving because they could not provide for her, and accepted the slavers' gold.'

'You should have come to me,' Myrmeen said. 'You should have told me.'

Tamara shook her head. 'I tracked you. I watched you with envy, my human sister who could go where she wished, do as she liked, and experience this world as a native creature, not a predator. As much as I wanted to be human, I had needs and appetites that were not.'

Myrmeen's lips curled slightly in disgust.

The muscles in Tamara's face tightened. 'I did not think I would be able to› bear seeing your revulsion. It's strange, sister. Somehow it doesn't bother me.'

Covering her face with her hands, Myrmeen said, 'I'm sorry.'

'You can't help it,' Tamara said. 'I understand. Besides, would you have believed me if I had told you the truth then?'

'I don't know,' Myrmeen said honestly. 'Why did you try to kill me at Shandower's retreat?'

Tamara shook her head. 'I thought you had been party to the sale of your child. All my life I had convinced myself that you were noble and decent. When Dak sold the baby I thought you were party to the deal, that you had done to this innocent what our parents had done to me. I thought you had chosen to abandon her.'

'I never would have done that,' Myrmeen said.

Tamara glanced at Krystin, then back at her sister. 'I know that now.'

Hardness returned to Myrmeen's eyes, the golden slivers within the deep, troubled sea of her pupils shining like avenging swords. 'What happened to my child?'

'Zeal and I wanted a baby,' Tamara said. 'We purchased yours.'

'No, please,' Myrmeen said. 'My baby can't be like you, it can't be, please-'

'It's not,' Tamara said. 'I wanted to raise your daughter myself. Her place was arranged for at the Draw, but then it all came to me, the horrors I had witnessed and the evil inside me. Sanity overwhelmed me. Somehow I was able to be merciful. I told Zeal to give the baby to a human. He chose one from the Council of Mages in Suldolphor who could not have children. He and his wife have provided the child with the life of a princess. Your daughter is royalty.'

Krystin took Myrmeen's hand and squeezed it as Tamara gave Myrmeen the name of the man who had raised her child.

Tamara whispered, 'I was angry with you for giving up your baby, Myrmeen. If I had known you had been deceived, that you wanted the child, I would have taken you to her long ago. I thought you came back to Calimport only to cover up your dirty secret. But when I saw you with this one,' she said, pointing weakly at Krystin, 'I began to wonder if I was wrong. And later I came to know I was. I'm sorry, Myrmeen.'

'Why did you want to kill Lord Sixx?' Myrmeen asked.

'For the children,' she croaked. 'With Sixx dead, it would be decades before another rose to power and made the journey to our homeland to learn the secrets of the apparatus and the Draw-decades of life for children that would have suffered my fate.'

Tamara shuddered. Death was close. Suddenly the images she had glimpsed in the emerald made sense; they had been of her life after death, had revealed her soul's destination. She was pleasantly surprised to learn that she did not face the dark gods of the Night Parade's world, but instead the peaceful kingdoms, the afterlife to which humans aspired. In that moment, she knew where she belonged. She knew she had always been human, despite the evil that had been pumped into her veins, the darkness imposed over her soul.

'Take care of your daughters,' Tamara said urgently, then surrendered to death, leaving Myrmeen to question the nature of her final statement.

Light flared from the docks, an explosion of blue-white flame racing high into the air.

'Come on,' Myrmeen said, taking Krystin's hand.

'We can't just leave her,' the girl said, gesturing at Tamara's body. 'She's your sister.'

'We'll be back for her,' Myrmeen said as she saw bright green strands of lightning lick the sky. She followed the length of the warehouse and peered around the corner to witness a sight that her mind could not at first assimilate. When the shock subsided and she understood what she was looking at, Myrmeen finally began to cry.

Twenty-Three

Throughout the city, the human resistance grew stronger. The members of the Night Parade had not been prepared to fight a war. They had been lazy, confident in their abilities. Bel-lophat's music had made them drunk with thoughts of their own power. They had never dreamt that the humans' sheer numbers would prove to be their doom.

Human parents fought like wild animals to save their children's lives. The rich battled alongside the poor to destroy the nightmare people. The militia rallied the citizens into troops of fighting men and woman. Petty squabbles were put aside as they faced their common enemy. Buildings where the monsters had been trapped were set to the torch without a second thought. The streets filled with people whose fear had caused them to turn away from the day-to-day horrors of life in Calim-port, people who refused to allow fear to control their lives any longer.

There were losses, of course. Some members of the Night Parade proved to be vulnerable to steel, and they died as easily as their human prey. Other creatures took a dozen or more human lives before they surrendered to death, while still others could be hacked into a dozen pieces, then rise to escape or slaughter their tormentors.

Despite the high cost of victory, the humans fought and won against the nightmare people. Each time one of the monsters was killed, the humans cheered and howled in triumph. They had no idea that near the docks, a drama was being played out that would decide all their fates.

Myrmeen and Krystin stared in horror from the mouth of the alley as they saw that the temple of Sharess had