The liquid tornado danced throughout the zombie merlegion, pulling them in one-by-one. It wouldn't hold them forever, but it bought us some time. It allowed me to put a little more space between myself and the zombies.
Until I'd met Agwe, I wasn't used to having a Loa on my side. All I knew was having one working against you was an absolute nightmare. And now, with Marinette determined to see us dealt with quickly, it was good we had a good Loa to balance things out.
Agwe came with a few special abilities. I only had a little magic in my medallion. Thankfully I hadn't used that when I tried to lend Cleo's power to Nammu. But, aside from draining Cleo of all the magic she had left, which wasn't a viable option, it was all I had. Enough for a solid spell or two, maybe a good shift if I was lucky. Perhaps a healing spell.
Using it was a last resort. So long as Agwe's ability to command the sea was at our disposal, it seemed we'd be able to deal with Marinette's undead horde of legionaries. But if we couldn't. If I got bit, I needed whatever magic I had left to stop the rot from reaching my heart.
I still couldn't believe what had happened. King Conand, possessed by Marinette, wiped out the entire merlegion... just to turn them into zombie slaves. I couldn't believe the king would have agreed to that. Not if he realized what Marinette would do once she took over.
Then again, King Conand had given himself up to the bokors, allowed himself to be possessed by a nastier than average Loa who was apparently on board with the bokors and their whole world rebuilding scheme... all under the pretense that his sacrifice would eventually make him and his resurrected nephew kings in the new world the bokors hoped to make. All because he was mourning.
What sort of king does that? Maybe turning his entire legion into zombies wasn't so far beyond the realm of possibility.
He was afraid. That was the most likely explanation. He might have suspected the bokors would win no matter what. That the voidbringer couldn't be stopped. So, why not secure for himself a special place in the new world? But it could have been a lust for power, too. Sure, he was a king now. But he was the king of a hidden, underwater domain. He was a secret king. To be a king, more like an emperor, who ruled a whole world was a power that would intoxicate anyone susceptible to that kind of craving. Even if it would have been at the behest and whims of the bokors...
Or maybe it was just a simple obsession with revenge. He wanted vengeance on Agwe. Why not take it out on the rest of the world?
One thing I knew for sure—so long as Agwe possessed the king's nephew, Marinette wouldn't hurt him. At least not in any direct way that would damage his body. If she'd made a bargain, she'd stick to it. Sure, there might be some loopholes she'd exploit that Conand hadn't predicted. But, in her way, she'd keep to whatever deal the bokors had exacted that led to her possessing the former marking. That meant, more than likely, not allowing Cahel's body to be harmed. Minus some kind of exorcism, Agwe was the only one of us who was safe.
The rest of us, well, we were probably brains for breakfast if we got caught.
Agwe moved to the rear while we swam. More whirlpools, forceful currents, all sent in the direction of the zombies. It was pretty impressive, really. A part of me wondered why he didn't use these abilities more often.
Agwe waived his trident overhead, spinning it faster and faster. As he did, his whirlpools followed suit and picked up velocity. They grew larger... until they had so much force they'd enveloped the whole zombie legion.
I floated there, my jaw halfway to the ocean floor.
"Impressive!" I exclaimed.
Agwe turned and grinned out of the corner of his mouth. "It is, isn't it?"
"Humility is a virtue," I piped back.
"And so is a willingness to agree with a woman," Agwe laughed, a hint of sarcasm in his voice. "Far be it from me to contradict you."
I snorted. "How noble of you! To agree with a compliment?"
Agwe shrugged. "Especially so! Why would I argue with you about a compliment?"
"What the hell are we going to do now?" Tahlia asked, interrupting our banter.
"With the power of the wyrm, the voidbringer is stronger," Cleo said. "If we don't do something, the firmament protecting Fomoria won't last long. Gate tethering the city to another time notwithstanding, if the voidbringer gets through the firmament, it will absorb the whole city one piece at a time."
"Which would be worse than if the tether broke," Agwe said. "If that happened, Fomoria would be transplanted into the void, exorcised from this world in a manner of speaking."
I pressed my face into my hands. "But we don't have the wyrm anymore... and the voidbringer has their strength within him. I don't see any way at all..."
"There must be a way," Agwe said. "I don't think it was a coincidence at all Merlin sent us to Haiti, where Marinette and the zombified merlegion had assembled."
I scratched my head. "If that's the case, Merlin knew what Conand was... he knew about Marinette."
Agwe nodded. "Which means he had a plan. He wouldn't have sent us here and taken the void spawn himself if he didn't believe we had what we needed to handle this."
Tahlia shook her head. "But Merlin didn't know the voidbringer was going to absorb the wyrm."
I bit my lip. "Maybe he did."
"What are you thinking, Joni?" Cleo asked.
"Merlin is always a little bit cryptic when he has a message for me. Whenever he's had something to tell me before, whether it was old Merlin or not, he's left subtle clues I could pick up on. Clues I'd be able to figure out, but obscure enough, they wouldn't be easily deciphered by someone else."
"And since he knew we'd have to engage what we thought was King Conand," Agwe said. "He didn't want us to speak up and spoil the end game."
"But why wouldn't he tell us about King Conand?" Tahlia asked.
"Would have made things easier," I said. "But maybe that's the point. Maybe we needed to fail. We needed to lose the wyrms to the voidbringer."
"Why would he want that to happen?" Cleo asked.
I shook my head. "I'm trying to recall everything he told me... before he left. The answer has to be there somewhere. If only I had Nammu here. She was able to read my mind, pick up on things I'd forgotten."
Agwe scratched his shoulder. "Maybe you can do that, too."
"What do you mean?" I asked, raising both of my eyebrows.
"Nammu connected to you through the dragon's essence... the void within you... did she not? That's how she accessed your mind."
"Yeah," I said. "Totally different than me using it to access my own memories."
Agwe shrugged. "I don't see why it would be. Approach your memory through the lens of the dragon, through the void inside of you..."
I bit my cheek. "I don't know how to even start doing that."
"You shifted into dragon form before," Tahlia said. "When we were at the surface. Again when you went after Nammu in Old Fomoria."
"Yeah, so?" I shrugged my shoulders.
"Don't use the dragon's essence as a pattern to shift your body, simply draw on it with your mind. Speak to it, ask it to vivify your memories."
I sighed. "I can try. But when Merlin was leaving, I was so distraught I was so occupied thinking about how to stop him from doing what he was doing I barely paid attention."
"But you heard what he said," Cleo said. "That means the memory is there."
40
I ALLOWED THE essence of the dragon, the void itself, to course through me. I wasn't beneath the firmament. And I didn't have the wyrm to keep its urges at bay. Unleashing it felt... freeing...
I didn't use it to shift. I needed to draw on some magic for that, and I was saving what I had. But I let down my guard... I let it move within in me, coursing through my mind, massaging my soul...
I focused on Merlin. The last moment I saw him when, having siphoned the voidbringer, he dove into the gateway...
The gate that took us home... but sent him to the void.
What was it he told me? He said
I'd have to go back. I'd have to take out the voidbringer... but there was something else.
Then it came to me.
Remember what it's like to be a mother...
I cocked my head. How the hell was that going to work? To be a mother... how in the world was I going to mother the voidbringer into submission?
I mean, moms can be intimidating creatures. Especially if they're pissed off. But I didn't think that's what he was saying.
What did he mean?
Maybe put the voidbringer in time out. Tell it to go to its room and think about what it just did...
"What did you see?" Cleo asked.
Agwe also put his hand on my back.
I shook my head. "It doesn't make sense."
"But what did he say?" Tahlia asked.
I sighed. "He told me to remember what it's like to be a mother."
Agwe grinned. "So think about how it feels. As a mother."
"I don't know how it feels," I said, honestly. "Most of my experience as a mother has been consumed with worry and regret."
"What did you think at that moment?" Cleo asked. "When Merlin told you that?"
"I didn't want him to go. But if he did, I wanted to go with him. But there was no way..."
"That's it," Tahlia said. "To go with him... Merlin knew what your experience as a mother had been at this point in your life."
Agwe cocked his head. "Where are you going with this, Tahlia?"
"What if Merlin didn't go wherever he went just to imprison the void spawn," Tahlia rubbed her chin. "Spawn is a word for offspring, right?"
"The void spawn is the voidbringer's child," I said. "It could have gone straight for New Orleans. From there, it could have consumed the rest of the continent, the rest of the world, before messing with Fomoria... but why did it focus on Fomoria first?"
I shrugged. "Start with the biggest challenge first? Just get it out of the way?"
Cleo shook her head. "That might have been a part of it. But it wasn't the voidbringer's primary motivation. It was because its child, its spawn, was there."
I pressed my lips together. Made sense to me. If I thought my child was with something else, someone other than his father, someone who didn't share my values, I'd do anything to rescue him. "At least that's what the voidbringer believed. It had no way of knowing the void spawn had been taken through a gate on the inside."
"If you were a gatekeeper," Agwe said, scratching his head. "You could cast a gate to a recent time, a moment when the voidbringer was already here. That would send him straight to the void, would it not?"
"Maybe," I said. "But I'm not a gatekeeper. And the issue is that no soul can be in the same time and space twice. That's why I ended up in the cave, in the void, before. It's why Merlin went there, rather than here, when he went through the same gate. Because his infant self was already in this world at this time."
"And the voidbringer doesn't have a soul," Cleo said. "So even if you could cast a gate like that, it might not work."
"But you forget what Merlin said," Tahlia added. "What would a mother do?"
I nodded. "She'd do what she could to go wherever her child is."
"What we'd need," Agwe said, "is a gate to the void where he is."
I bit my lip. "But the voidbringer is a void unto himself. Why can't he just go there?"
Agwe cocked his head. "When you went into the void, was it really a void... like did you have a body, or were you floating through nothingness?"
I shook my head. "No, I had a body. It felt like a cave. Like the cave under Fomoria, the one that the voidbringer has consumed, now."
"So it's a piece of existence enveloped by the void, "Agwe said. "The cave you experienced wasn't technically nonexistence. The Fomoria as we know it is surrounded by the voidbringer and, therefore the void. It is a place where time is experienced outside of our domain of time and space."
"So what do we do?" Cleo asked. "Just allow the voidbringer to consume Fomoria?"
I shook my head. "That would end the lives of everyone inside, including Merlin. It would turn Fomoria into nonexistence itself."
"Can you create a gateway directly inside?" Tahlia asked. "Into the cave?"
"Again, I can't make a gateway," I sighed. "I'm not a gatekeeper."
"And how would we make sure if we got the voidbringer into that cave he wouldn't leave it and devour the rest of Fomoria anyway?"
"Another firmament," Agwe said. "I could create another firmament. This time, sealing the cave beneath where the king's spire used to be. The cave will become a part of the void..."
I shook my head. "It will be consumed by the void. It means Merlin will die."
Cleo put her hand on my shoulder. "It's what he accepted. It's why when he left us in Old Fomoria, he came back as an old man. And as a healer, I could sense it. He was dying already, Joni. He knew it, too."
I felt tears well up in my eyes. I know that everyone dies. And technically, at his age, my boy lived a whole life. But it's still traumatic to think about your own child's death. Even if he would, in some way, outlive me. And it was different. I knew Merlin in his old age. That was a part of my son, a piece of him that I loved.
"But what will happen to his soul in the void?" I asked.
"He will be gathered by the Ghede," Agwe said. "All souls, when the body dies, pass through the void into the thereafter."
I took a deep breath. I nodded. "It's what he wanted."
"But it's for naught," Agwe said. "If you can't create a gateway inside."
I bit my lip. "Nammu could create wyrmholes... and she said the essence of a dragon and a wyrm is the same. When their essence touches existence, it engages elemental magic. The magic of air and fire make it a dragon. That must be why I turned to a dragon before. I was above the surface. Even if, the last time, I'd barely left the water. But if I shift here..."
"Then you'll become a wyrm," Tahlia said.
I nodded. "I should be able to make a wyrmhole."
41
WITH THE ZOMBIE legion still spinning in Agwe's whirlpool, we had to move fast.
Agwe was the Loa of the sea. Marinette was out of her element. She was powerful and plenty nasty, particularly under a bokor's summons, but this was Agwe's domain. She might be able to create some nasty creatures—like zombie merlegionaires—but she couldn't command the sea itself.
It was the only advantage we had. At least, so far.
And it allowed us to make our way back to Fomoria and the voidbringer.
It gave us a chance, anyway.
It would take the last of the Fomorian magic I had in my medallion, but it was our best chance.
I inhaled, drawing on most of the remaining magic from my medallion, and pulled it into the dragon's essence inside of me. It filled the void...
Sure enough...
Being underwater, I didn't sprout wings this time. My body lengthened. Not as long as Nammu or the other wyrm. I wasn't going to draw any extra mass into my form. And, so far as I knew, pure mass didn't have anything to do with my magical abilities in this form.
I'd only cast a gate in a dragon-like form once before. The very first time I took this form... when I was in the void cave, myself. And in dragon form, I wasn't able to draw on other magic, not like I could in human form. I could only wield dragon magic. I escaped the cave because, as gross as it might sound, when Merlin was expelled from my womb and my placenta with him, the placenta coursed with dragon magic. I used that magic, dragon magic, to create a dragon gate.
I could only hope I had some of that inside of me in this form. There wasn't much Fomorian magic in my medallion.
If there was any chance I could use it, I had to try.
Maybe in wyrm form, this was different...
When I was in the cave, before, I was a dragon. The cave wasn't submerged when I was there before. Thus, I was attuned to earthen magic. Drawing on Fomorian magic, based on the element of water, was foreign to that form. But now, as a wyrm...
It was on
ly a theory, but one worth testing.
I inhaled. Sure enough! I drew what I could from my medallion. I exhaled, attempting to cast a wyrmhole.
I formed the breach through my current place in the fabric of space and time... but I had to connect it to the other side... to the inside of the cave.
I could see it in my mind's eye. Darkness. And a violet light, likely representing my wyrmhole...
But every fold in the fabric of space or time was a part of this world, a part of Annwn or Guinee... but nothing reached the cave in the void.
Maybe if I left the wyrmhole unattached, it would dump us into the void itself...
I huffed. Too risky. This cave wasn't just a part of the void. It was a part of existence trapped within the void...
Can you do it? Tahlia asked. She'd shifted into eel form and slithered her ribbon-like body beside me. She was able to speak to Nammu and the other wyrm before, probably because of her eel nature. It was oddly comforting she took this shape... an act of solidarity. I appreciated it.
No... I can't connect to the cave... I can't find it...
I couldn't connect the wyrmhole to the cave. Something was in the way. Maybe it was the firmament. I mean, the wyrm couldn't get through the firmament before—that made sense. Perhaps I couldn't get through the voidbringer, and the firmament, and into the city. But no matter how well I visualized it, as clearly as I envisioned the cave and where I'd entered it beneath the now-toppled king's spire, nothing was working.
Then I tumbled head over tail. Something hit me.
"Marinette!" I heard Agwe shout.
Marinette's fingers tore into my body.
My hide was thick... she couldn't get through. Still, she was strong. It hurt like hell.
Then she extended her hand, summoned Conand's trident, and jammed it into my back.
I shrieked as I lost connection to the gate I was trying to make.
A slithered around and chomped at her face.
She slapped my face to the side with the edge of her trident.
And then she screamed.
Tahlia, in eel form, wrapped herself around Marinette's face, blinding her.
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