All Things True

by Greg James

  Why had it been passed along to her?

  She disturbed the silence of Barrowdwell by calling out her name.

  “Lamia!”

  The wind rose to a bluster, offended, snatching the sound away, discarding it far off. It was not this girl’s place to call on the mistress of this defiled city. She kept on calling, because she needed the sound, to hear something, even her own voice in this unquiet place. Also, because this place needed to remember what it had once been before it was abandoned and ruined. They came to a bridge spanning a final abyss. Beyond it was a portal that would lead outside, to Mount Norn and its evil crown – the Lamia’s citadel. The black wind that ran through the city seemed to originate in the abyss below. It snatched and pulled at Willow and Nastonik as they slowly crossed the narrow bridge, mindful of the fatal depths below. However, at the midway point something seemed to change. The wind died away and the air grew noticeably warmer. An aura of crimson suffused their surroundings. Nastonik grabbed Willow by the collar and dragged her back until the red glow faded. “It’s a bloodward!”

  “What’s a bloodward?”

  “A cruel form of magic that lets the way ahead appear clear but once you have passed a certain distance through it, you die.”

  Willow drew the thule, walked carefully ahead, holding out the blade until she began to see the redness again. It sparked over the blade. There was a bright flash. When Willow opened her eyes, the thule was rust falling apart in her fingers.

  “It’s too strong.” She said, returning to Nastonik.

  “There is one means by which we might pass it.”

  “Well?”

  “If I go first, its powers will be focused upon me as they were on the thule. As it drains my life, the strength of the ward may be weakened enough that you can pass through it alive.”

  “No, Nastonik, please. I can’t bear to lose you as well.”

  “Yes, you can, Willow. Because I am your friend. What other choice do we have now?”

  Willow nodded, numb, “We have none.”

  Nastonik cast his short sword into the abyss. “I won’t need this any longer.”

  The Beorhan went ahead and she followed. Again, the wind died and everything turned red. Willow leaned forward as if she were pushing through a fierce wind. Her skin stung and burned as if she were roasting under the sun on a hot summer’s day – or stranded in Hell. She could feel a familiar tiredness suffusing her bones and her ears were ringing. Through the tinnitus, she thought that she heard a scream from far away.

  And then, she was out the other side of the bloodward, collapsing on the ground; gasping for breath. She looked around for Nastonik. There was no-one. She looked back, in time to see a skull and a few bones scattered about. The Beorhan had become dust.

  She collapsed and sobbed, rocking back and forth on her hands and knees.

  How much more would there be? Was there to be no end to life’s loss?

  Willow looked down and saw her reflection in puddle of mountain water. She was a girl again. The bloodward had stripped her of premature womanhood and given something else back as well. Her head hurt, and her body ached, pains she’d hoped were gone forever. The cancer was back. The bloodward had done its evil work.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Cold, black winds droned around Mount Norn as Willow ran through its snow, clawing and dragging herself up the narrow path ahead. Her teeth chattered, and her head ached as the cold battered at her in the same way the tumour pounded inside her skull. She could taste blood in her mouth and feel hot streams of it running from her nose. Flicking long strands of hair from her eyes, she tried to see more clearly where she was going to no avail. The streaming currents of snow and high-altitude fog that swam in obscured everything. When she was not grasping at outcrops to keep her balance, she held her arms tight across her chest, trying vainly to keep some trace of warmth within her body. She had never felt such cold before, nor been in such a place, not in all her life.

  Willow knew the old saying that a pinch should be enough to awaken someone from a bad dream, but this was no simple bad dream. This was something else, something deeper and more profound, and she had to see it through to the end.

  Something was rising out of the rocks above. A change in the nature of her surroundings. The Lamia’s citadel was was waiting for her. She could see the greenish shimmering of evil energies flowing through it as blood flows through veins. There was an opening ahead, smooth and arched with embossed runes drawn upon it. The intricate, coiling script was nothing man or woman could hope to decipher. Her insides felt cold, fluid and empty as she realised how alien the runes were. A stray stream of atmosphere came from beyond the archway, a dry mustiness that made her hack and cough. The citadel of the Lamia stank like an open tomb and yet she entered all the same, feeling the cold but no longer feeling fear.

  She ventured through smooth passages where the only ghosts were the answering echoes of her footsteps. The citadel was made of no ordinary masonry. The stone of the mountain had been shaped and polished until it was like the most exquisite vermillion. The moonlight filtering through the stained-glass prisms of the windows illuminated veins and arteries of phosphorescent light.

  Willow wasn't sure how long she walked through the halls alone until a wave of exhaustion washed over her, making her fall. She sat, shaking violently, on the ground. She rubbed hard at her arms, hands and feet. Blinking her eyes, wanting to stay awake as darkness flickered at the fringes of her sight. She could still feel the bite of the cold wind, only now it was somewhere deep inside her. She knew that to fall asleep here would mean death. Tears ran from her eyes.

  I thought I was cured, at least. I thought I’d beaten it.

  She ran her fingers over her face, her brow, her cheekbones, her chin, pressing through the skin and muscle until she felt the hard bone of her skull. The patient face of death was there waiting underneath as it always had been. Had it been waiting for this moment, for this point in time?

  With every muscle screaming, Willow hauled herself to her feet and staggered on, wiping the blood from nose. Running could not happen now as much as she tried to will harder and surer motion from her dragging limbs. Her shoulders sagged as sense and sight began to fade away. She hurled herself forward one last time – and found she was standing in an open space, which extended away from her to a singular encircling wall veined with flickering lines of the glowing green fire she had seen outside, but these were as thick as tree roots and shining as bright as a full moon.

  Above her was a web of thickly-threaded web of jagged crystal studded with glittering pods where the nascent forms of No-men twisted and turned; the sum of all the bitterness, rage and hate in the world magnified, concentrated and turned into pure, writhing anti-life, almost ready to be born. The web spread downwards at the centre of the chamber where it connected with an edifice immense, angular, dark and grey.

  Willow drew in a sharp breath as she looked upon this, the Lamia’s throne.

  It cast a shadow broad and long, reaching to the trembling tips of her toes. And, as she moved closer, allowing herself to be swallowed up by its shadow, she saw a shape upon the throne; composed of an even greater darkness, which rose to its feet and descended the throne’s steps. Willow came face to face with the Lamia’s true form.

  She looked into her own face, her own eyes, and saw herself smile evilly.

  The Lamia was her and she was the Lamia.

  “I should have known.”

  “Yes, you should have, dear. All this time and still you denied me. Now, I will consume you. All the pain will be taken away in a moment. You know that none of this is real. That you were only ever running from yourself and the guilt over things you’ve thought, said, and done. You are here and not here, as this world is and is not real. We are the one truth of it all. You and me. Connected as life is to death. You did not think that a cure could be so easily found, did you? It was a dream, as much as this is. You come to me alone because death can only ever be f
aced alone.”

  “Maybe that’s true,” Willow said, “but my belief kept this world going. I believed in Henu, and Nualan, Nastonik, Viril, and the Pale Ship, all of them, and at times when I thought I didn’t. Without that belief, it would all have fallen into nothing, even you. And here we are, on the boundary between reality and dream, deciding what happens next.”

  “So, what will you do now then?” the Lamia asked.

  “A friend once said to me that where there’s life, there’s hope.”

  A hand rested on her shoulder. She turned to look and Henu was there, standing behind her with a smile on his face. “I am proud of you, Greychild. You have done well.”

  “I’m bringing it all back,” smiling, she said, turning back to the Lamia, “Everything you have destroyed, because this is the land of my imagination and I am the only god.”

  “You cannot do that!”

  “I can because I give myself up for them willingly. It’s my time. No-one lives forever.”

  “But I can keep you alive, I can, I promise, if you will but let me!”

  “No, it’s time for me to let go of my Self.”

  “But they’re dreams, fantasies, not real. Why die for something that doesn’t exist?”

  “Because the things that don’t really exist are sometimes the only things worth dying for.”

  The Lamia shrieked as their surroundings began to quietly fade away.

  “This is it, the end,” Willow said, “No, it’s a beginning. From darkness we come into the light and then, one day, we return to the dark. It is the way of things and can’t be changed. I understand that now. There is enough hope in the world because there can be no more than there is. From nothing comes something, and after a time it must return unto nothing.”

  And Willow saw the Lamia revealed as a frail, walking form of rot; eating away at itself, corrosive and vile. She stepped towards it as it reached out withered, crumbling arms in a last feeble attempt to absorb her. Willow whispered where the Lamia’s ear had once been, “This is my story, not yours. Why is there something when there should be nothing? Because we all must turn to dust someday.”

  The last traces of the Lamia fell away, turning to dust and ashes. Everything around Willow dispersed for a brief moment and then reformed anew.

  It’s not death, if you accept it.

  She rose through the air and watched the sun rise swiftly over the reborn land. Ascending, up, up, and up until she was over the distant heights of newly-grown mountains, looking down upon Tirlane and the shores of the Bound Sea, with the islands there, reaching off towards the horizon. Young trees sprouted and the grass was green was once more. There were droves of centaurs elegantly crossing the plains, Beorhans in their villages, Wealdsmen and Holtsmen wandering in the groves of their woodland realms. There was peace and harmony restored.

  We may die but our dreams can live on, if we want them to.

  And with that, Willow Grey – Greychild, Walker between Worlds, Dimwielder – was gone.

  Chapter Seventeen

  In the critical care ward of the hospital, Willow’s body rested in bed, hooked up to a number of machines that were keeping her alive. The only sounds in the ward were low breathing, the beeping of life support, and the squeak of rubber-soles shoes.

  She had been found at the bottom of the cellar steps after her father’s accident. There’d been a fire in the house, no-one was sure how it started, but a passing truck driver had raised the alarm and called the fire service. Willow had been dragged from the ruin of the house by two firemen; lucky to survive, the fall to the bottom of the steps had kept her alive as she’d been able to breathe from the air at floor level in the cellar.

  However, she’d hit her head and the pressure on her brain from the tumour had been severely increased. She’d been in a coma ever since.

  The hospital staff should have turned off the life support equipment by now, realistically, but they could not bring themselves to do it because she kept fighting. Willow Grey kept on breathing as if she were waiting, holding on for something, for the time to be right. If the time can ever be right for such a thing.

  Every couple of days, she would be visited by a doctor who would record no change and make the recommendation for her to be disconnected. No-one was going to pay the bills after she died. There were other patients in need of the facilities – but still none of the staff touched a switch or unhooked a single drip. It was as if they were waiting for something to happen but didn’t know what it might be. A sign though none of them would’ve testified to that.

  So, Willow and the hospital staff waited.

  Over a year passed by and then, one night, on Christmas Eve, an unfamiliar nurse entered the ward. She wasn’t noticed by the orderlies, which was surprising as she was a radiant blonde with crystal-blue eyes and a warm smile. A strange look of serenity settled over the faces of sleeping patients as she entered the critical care ward. For a short while, they were delivered from pain and enjoyed natural, untroubled slumber. Also, someone might have noticed that her rubber-soled shoes did not squeak upon the linoleum. This was most likely because she was barefoot and walked on the air, an inch or so above the floor. The nurse came to Willow Grey’s bedside and laid a smooth hand on the girl’s brow. There was no cure, of course, for what ailed her. There never had been but that did not mean hope and a dream could not be a balm against what was to come.

  Willow Grey had found peace in another world, another time – and, at that moment, she opened her eyes, saw the nurse and smiled slightly. Somewhere close by, machines let out a series of high-pitched whines as the smile settled and became still on Willow Grey’s lips. The nurse gently closed the girl’s eyes though she was weeping from her own. Finally, she leaned in close and whispered something in Willow Grey’s ear; a last few kind words. “Death is not the end.”

  The End

  Epilogue – a short poem

  ~ For N. Kaleva ~

  At the end of a life,

  there are bags to pack,

  and tears to be shed,

  and the need to find,

  a place to rest.

  Close to the trees,

  far from the road,

  from the rush,

  and the fuss,

  to remember joys,

  not our woes.

  To rest in peace,

  For the years to come,

  at the end of a life,

  we are together,

  as one.

  Map

  Glossary

  People and Creatures

  Willow Grey – a teenager from our world.

  Henu – the Wealdsman of Beam Weald.

  No-men – servants of the Lamia.

  Behemoths – creatures of the Lamia.

  Lamia – the Prime Evil of Tirlane.

  Scaithe – the Holtsman of Ravensholt.

  Viril – a centaur.

  Kirrick – a centaur.

  Laene – a centaur maiden.

  Yirae – a centaur maiden.

  Nastonik – a Beorhan wanderer.

  The Stone Legion – ancient protectors of Tirlane.

  Centaurs – the folk of the Plains.

  Beorhans – the folk of the Western Hills.

  The Wisps – spirits of Tirlane.

  The Kindlings – scions of the Wisps.

  Places

  Seaforth Flats – the coastal shores of Tirlane.

  Kotkan Castle – an abandoned castle built by Kotkan settlers.

  Summerdowns – a burial ground.

  Gastenholt – the black forest.

  Grove of the Archtree – realm of the first tree and life-giver.

  Fenriver Lodge – home of Starababa.

  Beorhn’s Hills – home to the Beorhans.

  Barrowdwell – the mountain-city of the Giants.

  Harrowclave – a sacred meeting place.

  Mount Norn – site of the Lamia’s citadel.

  The Bound Sea – the sea that encircles Tirlane.
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br />   Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank the following people for their help and contributions to the Willow Grey trilogy;

  Lora and Henry – Thank you both, with lots of love.

  Robyn Porter, Ed McNally, Heather Marie Adkins, Julie Cassar, Dani Brown, Andrew Lawston, Adrian Chamberlin, Cheryl Bradshaw, Alisa Tangredi Autumn Christian, Robyn Walker & Jason D. Brawn – my authorial friends, confidantes and practitioners in the art of much-needed booze.

  Erang – the man behind the music that made these books possible.

  Finally, to all of my friends, fellow authors and fans that I have not mentioned above – thank you for your support.

  Author’s Note

  Thank you for reading All Things True. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have a moment, I would also greatly appreciate it if you left a review on the site where you purchased this ebook. No matter how big or small it is, every review counts and matters to a writer because without you, the readers, we are nothing.

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  Titles available by Greg James

  The Age of the Flame Trilogy – YA Fantasy

  The Sword of Sighs

  The Sceptre of Storms

  The Stone of Sorrows

  The Chronicles of Willow Grey – YA Fantasy

  The Door of Dreams

  Voyage of the Pale Ship

  All Things True