A warning to all. A rhyming fairy tale to turn away the faint of heart.
Zilok floated there for a moment. He could see the tools beyond, laying about the room like lounging prostitutes in a pleasure house. There was the scythe, flat on the floor. The three books were piled on a black stone table, and the gnarled oak staff leaned against the wall. Two floating spheres of different sizes—the small one clear, the large one filled with swirling blue smoke—hung in the middle of the room. An ancient wand lay next to a jeweled dagger on a shelf that stuck out from the wall. And there at the back of the room, on its own little pedestal, sat a crown made of green vines grasping upright crystals.
Natra’s Crown.
This was it. Never step backward. Always step forward. It was time to play his gamble.
Zilok entered the room.
He heard a sigh in his mind, sad. The sigh passed through him like a breath.
The obsidian guardians fell from the ceiling and walls in the hallway behind him, black boulders thumping to the floor, unfurling into the humanoid obsidian guardians. These creatures weren’t mortal, weren’t natural, and their speed was not to be believed. They charged ahead even as Zilok flew at the crystal crown.
He felt the jerk as they severed the ethereal cord that led back to Orem, his anchor to this mortal plane. Zilok couldn’t see the Godgate here in the Coreworld, but it yanked him upward immediately.
Zilok let loose all of the GodSpill he had brought with him, using it all to wrap himself up and push his spirit into those crystals. This was the moment. If Zilok had made a mistake, if the crown didn’t do what he thought it did, then Medophae had won. There would be no final battle. The Godgate would pull Zilok upward, into its greedy maw, and he would die.
The crystals in the crown flickered a soft magenta light. They took hold of the GodSpill and it drew it in. The call of the Godgate was powerful, but it was nothing like this. Natra’s Crown sucked in the GodSpill and Zilok with it. He swirled into those magenta crystals, which were as vast as a kingdom.
He lashed himself to the inside of the crown, creating a new anchor, and looked out onto Natra’s treasure room through a magenta-tinged, crystal lens.
The obsidians turned, searching for him, then began making their way back to the hall outside, thinking their job was finished, thinking they had dispatched the invader. If Zilok had had breath, he would have laughed. The GodSpill he had brought swirled inside the crystals of the crown, holding his spirit.
Zilok lifted the crown into the air, and the obsidian guardians turned as one, stunned. He saw their essence clearly now, how this entire cavern was a solid construct of pure GodSpill, unbound by threads. It was why the obsidian guardians had so easily been able to sever his cord, why threadweavers could not even touch them. The obsidian rock was all one organism, and each humanoid “guardian” was like a tentacle.
They leapt at him.
He used the power of the crown, sucking the GodSpill from each of the humanoid guardians. They dropped like lumps of mud, no longer animate.
He raced back through the hallways, the crown floating behind him, until he reached the spot where he could escape to the mortal world, back to the tapestry Natra had created using this very crown.
Obsidian guardians plopped onto the ground and unfurled.
He expected them to run after him, to reach out toward him, try to swat him down, perhaps to drop from the ceiling on top of him, but they didn’t. They only stood there, at attention, watching.
Zilok reached his arrival spot, that one area he’d discovered long ago, and pushed himself through the needle-thin portal out of the Coreworld. The crown bent with him, flattening, spiraling, and pouring through the portal as though it had as little form as he did.
He appeared on the grassy plain north of the ruins of Belshra. Floating next to him was Natra’s Crown, the green vines writhing and moving about in a circlet, intertwining with the six tall, pointed crystals that formed the front of the crown.
He lifted it and put it on his insubstantial head, but he could feel the writhing of the vines as though he still had a mortal head. It touched him like it recognized him, settled onto his nonexistent brow as though it had been made for him.
There were entire mountains of caverns inside those crystals, waiting to be filled with the energy of a god.
Zilok formed the vision of his once-mortal body, black vest, and pants and boots, and he stood there, looking out over the plains.
No guardians chased him. Nothing came to challenge him.
And nothing ever would again.
He laughed.
28
Ynisaan
Ynisaan stood in the shadows, aghast. It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t possible.
She watched the Obsidians converge on Zilok Morth, and she felt joy at his foolishness. The Obsidians were immune to threadweaving. They would crush him, and with Zilok Morth destroyed, shepherding Medophae would be easier.
Then she had watched Zilok reach Natra’s Crown and use it to turn the Obsidians to mud. He fled, squeezing out of the Coreworld into the mortal world.
With Natra’s Crown.
She forced herself to control her breathing, but she couldn’t put down her panic.
Natra’s Crown was an unimaginably powerful weapon. Natra had ruled the other gods with it. She couldn’t even conceive of what Zilok might do with it.
How had he made it past the Obsidians? Why hadn’t the curse destroyed him?
Get yourself together. Move past your incredulity. Act. Somehow, he has done it. Now you must see what that means.
From the shadows, she breathed deeply and opened her special unicorn’s sight, viewing the possible destinies of those cracks beneath her feet, behind her on the wall, overhead on the ceiling. They appeared as ghost lines meandering ahead of each crack, showing her the destinies of those the cracks represented.
They had all changed.
By the gods...
Down the hallway and two rooms away was the crack that represented Medophae, intertwined with the crack that represented Mirolah, the threadweaver. Ynisaan longed to gallop to that room, to see what had changed, but she couldn’t. She was an intruder here as surely as Zilok Morth. If the Obsidians caught her, they’d kill her, so she waited.
The Obsidians roamed about looking for Zilok, and Ynisaan stayed in her supernatural shadow, safe for the moment. She thought of the future she had seen just moments ago. Medophae and Mirolah’s futures.
They would have braced Zilok Morth in the kingdom of Teni’sia, and there they would have defeated him. There had been dozens of possibilities for that outcome. Afterward, Medophae would have prepared the kingdom of Teni’sia for Avakketh’s attack.
Ynisaan had seen the best scenario. Under the thread of unleashing Oedandus, Avakketh would have agreed to a parley, an agreement on set boundaries between the lands of Irgakth and Amarion. They could have avoided a war altogether.
After settling that, Medophae and Mirolah would have married. Mirolah would soon wrestle her overwhelming threadweaving talent under control, and the two of them would become stewards of Amarion’s reconstruction, traveling from kingdom to kingdom with knowledge and assistance. They would make a lifetime of happy memories before Mirolah died at age eighty-seven.
After an hour of fruitless searching, the Obsidians finally curled into lumps. Some flew up and splatted against the ceiling, vanishing into the darkness. Some leapt into the walls and got reabsorbed. Some sank directly into the floor.
It was quiet in the Coreworld.
Ynisaan crept from her hiding place to the room with the two cracks that mattered above all others: Medophae’s and Mirolah’s. She stood over the many cracks in the room and looked at those two with her unicorn’s vision...
No. Oh, no....
Every bright possibility was gone. Zilok Morth won the conflict at Teni’sia in every scenario. Ynisaan searched frantically, looking deeper. Sometimes, an unlikely future would appear if she
searched the lives of the most unlikely people, finding a secret moment where, if they could just be nudged to help Medophae, things would change.
But all of it was gone, and Ynisaan searched frantically for the best possible scenario.
No matter how she followed the ghostly lines, all of them ended with Zilok Morth’s victory, Medophae’s elimination from the war, and humankind’s subsequent destruction at the hands of Avakketh.
She strained, her brain reaching its breaking point, but she couldn’t stop. Finding unlikely possibilities required that she hold all the other possibilities in her head while she searched. If she let go, they’d all vanish. She had to hold them until she found...until she found...
...a way through. There!
She paused, seeing it now, the grisly pathway through this horrible turn of events. There was one. Only one.
Ynisaan bowed her head. Not for the first time, she loathed who she was, that she knew who must be sacrificed so that humankind might survive.
Oh, Mirolah... Sweet girl. You’re the best of them. It’s not fair.
Ynisaan touched her obsidian horn to the dark walls and pulled back from the Coreworld, leaving the cracks and their water of life behind. But she kept the memory of what must happen.
To turn aside Avakketh’s apocalypse, for humankind to have even a chance at survival, Mirolah must die. There wasn’t a single ghost line, no possible future for the survival of Amarion, in which Mirolah lived.
29
Mirolah
Mirolah pulled GodSpill from the threads outside the door, adding it to her body. It burned, filling her with vigor, but it also hurt. She could tame some of the wild GodSpill, but too much made her feel like she had needles on the inside of her skin, poking out.
She had spent hours analyzing every thread inside Zilok’s lair. It had to be midnight now, and she hadn’t found anything that told her where the vile spirit had taken Orem.
Again. Look again. There is a clue here. You just have to find it. Find the clue. Bridge the gap.
She drew a shaky breath. The GodSpill she had taken from the air and the street churned inside her. Her heart raced, and she couldn’t think straight.
Concentrate. Try again.
She reached into the threads of Orem’s manacles, seeking something else, perhaps the residue left behind by Zilok in this place. If she could catalogue it, identify it, memorize it, perhaps she could use it to track him, find him. But her threadweaver sight was fuzzy now. There was two of everything, and as she dove deeper into the tiny threads, and the fibers that made up those threads, and the fibers that made up those fibers, it just looked like a mass of writhing worms, all overlapped.
“Mirolah...”
No. She didn’t have time for Medophae. He kept coming to talk to her. He wouldn’t leave her alone.
Sniff, who lay unmoving at her side, raised his head and growled at Medophae. Sniff was the only one who understood how hard this was. Medophae came a step closer, and Sniff stood up, lowering his head and baring his teeth.
She forced herself to focus, to separate the different threads of the manacles. There was some clue she was overlooking. There had to be.
“There has to be...” she murmured. Because there was nothing else.
“Mirolah,” Medophae said again. “Tell Sniff to back down.”
The threads in the manacles, each doubled and blurry, began vibrating. She released them and let the bright bridge collapse. She slumped against the wall, put her hands to her face and sobbed.
Sniff whined and sat down, turning his head to look mournfully at Mirolah.
“I can’t...” she said. “I can’t find anything. There’s nothing here that can help us know where to go next.”
“You need to rest,” he said, slipping past Sniff, who no longer growled. Medophae crouched next to her.
“He’s out there right now,” she said. “He needs us, and I can’t find him.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s almost sunrise.”
She looked despondently out the door, and saw light brightening the sky. She hadn’t felt the coming of the sunrise. She’d thought it was midnight.
“Mirolah, you can’t help him like this—”
“I can’t help him at all!” she said.
“If you rest—”
“How long has that foul creature been using him, Medophae?” she said. “It’s been a week since Vaerdaro killed Sef. And Orem has been under Zilok’s thumb the whole time. I can only imagine...”
Sniff raised his head and howled. It started deep, in his belly, then stretched out into a high-pitched “Ooooooo...” as the dog ran out of breath.
“Zilok will keep him alive,” Medophae said.
“And what torture is he suffering now, with every passing moment that I fail? I’ve been mind-controlled before,” she said. “It’s so awful.... Zilok has him, just like Ethiel had me, making him do whatever he likes. It’s like having oil in your veins, slithering, sliding under your skin. It’s a hand squeezing your brain where you can’t reach it, where you can’t make it let you go. Everything hurts. Everything is wrong. Every step she makes you take, every time she makes you raise your foot, it’s like she’s sticking her arm down your throat, choking you....”
“She?”
She shook her head. “I mean Zilok.” But Mirolah could feel the Red Weaver inside her, saturating her threads, coating her insides with oil, making her dance like a marionette. She could feel it still, like it had just happened. It was the most horrible feeling she’d ever experienced.
Orem was feeling that same horror right now.
She lurched to her feet, lost her balance, and banged into the wall. Her head swam. “I just need to take a walk, clear my head.” Sniff was suddenly there, and she put her hand on him. He was rock-steady, leaning into her, holding her upright.
“Mirolah—”
“What is the point of having all this power?” she shouted. “What is the point if I can’t save the ones I love!”
She swayed off balance again, away from Sniff, and she stumbled into Medophae. “Dammit!”
He caught her. She tried to get away, to stand on her own, but he embraced her.
“You have to stop,” he said.
“No!”
Sniff lowered his head and growled again.
“You can’t help him like this,” Medophae said softly. He lifted her up in his arms. She wanted to resist, but it felt so good to just lie there, to not move. She let out a breath, and Sniff stopped growling.
“We have to do something,” she murmured. It was hard to keep her eyes open.
“We will,” he said, leaving the house with Sniff following close behind. His nose was just a couple of holes on top of his toothy muzzle, but it came close, sniffing her hair. He whined.
“Attack?” he asked. “Where to attack?”
She felt his emotions flow into her. He was scared by her behavior. Angry at anyone who would stop her. He wanted to protect her. But he didn’t know where the enemy was.
“I can’t find him,” she murmured to Sniff, and somehow her head was leaning against Medophae’s shoulder now. His powerful strides were rhythmic, and they lulled her. Her eyes slid shut. “I can’t protect him....”
“Find,” Sniff said. “Protect.”
And she fell asleep.
30
Medophae
Medophae laid Mirolah down on her blankets by the river. The softly rushing water was natural and soothing. She’d rest well here; it had been a smart place to make camp. Once again, Stavark had proven to be exceptionally competent at everything he did.
Once Medophae had her covered, he started to rise, but Mirolah had hold of his hand. She murmured when he tried to remove it.
Stavark moved forward gracefully.
“You stay,” he said. “Elekkena and I have rested.”
“I don’t need to sleep,” Medophae said. “I can go for much longer than this without—”
“R
abasyvihrk,” Elekkena interrupted. “Your strength is mighty. Everyone knows. But it is not necessary for you to be strong right now. It is necessary for you to make her stronger, and she will feel stronger with you near.”
He looked down at Mirolah, then nodded. “Okay.” He gave a tired chuckle, giving Elekkena a glance as he settled himself down beside Mirolah.
The quicksilver girl stood by Sniff, who whined and watched Mirolah with singular focus. Her eyelids fluttered, hearing words in the dog’s noises. Elekkena put a hand on the skin dog’s shoulder. The creature flinched, whipping his big, toothy head around to look at her. She kept her hand there, and slowly he turned his gaze back to Mirolah. He stopped whining.
“Thank you,” Medophae said, watching her. “You’re very good with...” He couldn’t think of what he wanted to put at the end of that sentence. People? Animals? Everything? Elekkena was a calm presence in the background. She was like Bands in that way. His beloved had that same quality. Just her presence in a room made everyone feel secure.
“You remind me of...” he began, hesitating. “Of someone I once knew.”
“Was he your friend?” she asked.
“She was. Yes.”
“Was she wise?”
“Wise?” he said, smiling as he put his arms around Mirolah. “Beyond my ability to comprehend.”
“Then I am honored.”
“Is that what you want, Elekkena?” he asked. “To be wise?”
“It is what we all want,” she said. “But only the wise know this, I think.”
He gave a soft laugh and laid his head next to Mirolah’s. “You even sound like her.”
“Sleep, Rabasyvihrk.”
It was good advice. So he did.
Medophae begged for death.
Dervon’s appendages came from everywhere. Sharp, jagged spikes of black bone jutted up from the ground, lanced down from the sky. They stuck him through the belly, the chest, the neck, pinning him to the stone. They speared through his arms and legs. They speared through his head.
The GodSpill Page 20