by Ryk E. Spoor
At his quiet rebuke, she glanced at him with momentary fury in the poison-green eyes. But the fury vanished back under the cloak of her control, and she nodded unwillingly. “I… I suppose you are right.”
“I am right, Amanita. We both made the same mistakes before. It would be very well for us both to remember that. We need each other’s power, and we need each other to keep us both from making those mistakes again.”
She stared at him unreadably for a moment, and then suddenly stepped up and kissed his cheek. “You are right, as you say. I should remember that.” For a moment, he thought she actually meant it. She certainly could not forget centuries as a Green Monkey. “Now I will go to the Great Binding and send out the call through the Spirits.”
“Indeed. Go then, and tell me as soon as they return.”
He watched her go, and shuddered as the door closed behind her. The Great Binding was the thing that most frightened him about Amanita Verdant; her greatest triumph, source of her power…and an abomination that even he found distasteful. When they had laid their plans, they knew they needed more power, to arrange certain events to occur in sequence very swiftly after they made their first detectable moves. Amanita had sought out certain other enemies of Oz, including the most powerful dark Faeries of all, the Phanfasms. Deprived of much of their memories in the climactic end of their attempt to invade Oz (and not so simply as the mortal books had depicted it), the Phanfasms had no real knowledge of who they had been, though they were no less powerful than before. They were mischievous, sometimes cruel children in their minds, and Amanita’s beauty and words had captivated them. She had whispered pieces of the truth to them, awakened vague memories and rage, and they had sworn to assist her at the proper moment. She had even promised that this time they need not even march to battle.
And — as she always did — she had kept her promise. As Ugu cast the spell which was intended to bring down the Curse of Stone on their enemies, they had known great and powerful defenses would resist such a direct strike. Amanita called the Phanfasms in to “assist in the ritual,” lending their power to the enchantment.
But the pentacle and runic circles she had inscribed had been a trap, something even Ugu had not fully recognized. With the First and Foremost, leader of the Phanfasms, in the center, and all the mass of his people gathered within focused on a task of malice and destruction, she had enacted a terrifying transformation -- a combination of ritual magic and Yookoohoo power that bound the very essences of the dark Faeries into a swirling vortex of power, filled with hate and rage and dismay, that she could draw upon. So far, she had used scarcely any of that mass of power which, as far as Ugu was concerned, was the closest thing in Faerie to the power of Hell.
He closed his eyes, then shrugged. As long as there was an external enemy, he needed her — and she would be focused outside, not inside.
And it was not as though he, Ugu the Unbowed, did not have his own reserves. When he no longer needed Amanita, there were ways to remove her. Perhaps even taking that tempting abomination for himself.
He smiled, and turned back towards the hall to his workshop.
First Vision:
Light.
She tried to turn away, but the light surrounded her. Not the bright and piercing warmth of the sun, the green-white of deep forest illuminance, the rosy color of castle lamps or pale white of the moon. It was the sick blazing actinic hue of daylight to one suffering a headache, the color of burning steel. There was nowhere to turn, no escape from the roiling unrelieved soundless conflagration of stabbing brilliance.
She tried to cry out, but she had no voice, she had no mouth, she had no self. There was only the terrible light and behind it the sense of loss, of failure. The pain of the people who counted on her, who looked to her in times of trouble, who needed her. Something monstrous had happened, but she was barely able to be aware of that fact, scarcely capable of realizing with molasses-slow thought that she, too, was caught in a trap, a web of deceit and diabolical purpose whose nature was all too clear, now that she could do nothing whatsoever.
And the light continued, searing into her. It was the light of prison, the light of torment, the light…
…the light of enslavement. Even as she thought it, she could feel it now, her own connection with the world being reversed, flowing from her, through her, at the will of another. She could not fight it; the binding was complete. Only something so utterly opposed to her enslavers that it lay completely beyond their knowledge or understanding could possibly break that binding…and it would then, of course, be something that could have no knowledge of how to do such a thing.
And the light burned on and on, wearing her away, ever thinner, yet never quite able to vanish, never able to die or be destroyed. She would have wept, had she tears or eyes to cry them. Despair was foreign to her kind, but she recognized that in the end even she would fall to it, with no help or hope remaining for her people, her land, and herself. Already she could feel it, an aching emptiness that, once fully opened, could never be filled again.
And then there was a single point of dark. So faint, so distant, but it was there, a negation of fever-brightness and hateful brilliance.
And without lips or face, still she smiled, because the name of the color of dark was Hope.
Chapter 8.
He gazed tensely at the smoke and dust before him. The detonation had been even greater than he had expected, a blast that had cracked the nearest columns and left a choking cloud obscuring the area of impact entirely. Have I ended it even as it began? Or…
A figure was becoming visible. The smoke suddenly cleared, and his gaze was caught and held by ice-blue eyes, filled with anger and shock, staring furiously from a salt-white face. The glare from those eyes was of startling intensity, and Iris Mirabilis found himself momentarily seized by an impulse to step back, even as a great tide of relief washed through him. He remembered how he had brought down the lightnings; fear had galvanized the smaller figure, but instead of fleeing, this Erik Medon had merely thrown up one hand to protect his face, the rest of his body poised in stubborn, unyielding resistance. “Before destruction he will stand unbowed…”
“Well done,” he said as the last of the smoke dissipated. “Faced by danger, you do not turn your back upon it, showing that for you fear is weakness. You stand, you face that which would destroy you.”
The mortal was breathing hard, but the glare — while slightly lessened — was not withdrawn. “You hit me with a goddamned lightning ball just to find out if I run or not? This was just some stupid special-effect test?” The man’s voice, raised in anger, was surprisingly powerful; no match for the Rainbow Lord’s own, but nonetheless sending resonant echoes of outrage chasing themselves around the throne room.
Iris shook his head. “Vastly more than that, mortal man, and vastly more important, important enough that I had no choice but to risk ending our hope in the moment it arrived. Look you down.”
Now the anger in the face changed, yielding to astonishment and shock as the blond man realized that he stood on a narrow pinnacle of marble, barely wider than his own body, in the center of a still-smoldering crater sixty feet wide and reaching nearly ten feet in depth. “W-what the hell?”
The Rainbow Lord gestured; iridescent light coalesced in the hole, solidified to marble, leaving no trace of the devastation save the smell of scorched stone and the scarred columns on either side. “Come, Erik Medon. Sit with me, and I will explain. And in that explanation, I hope, you will come to understand that my actions were necessary.”
He caused a chair to appear near the throne, and seated himself on the throne as his guest — still clearly shaky from the sudden attack — lowered himself into the newly-formed seat.
“Okay,” Erik said finally. “Explain.”
“I have no doubt my daughter explained to you that it was our expectation that the hero she sought must be a mortal. But there is mortal, and then there is mortal.”
The blond head, w
ith its somewhat receding hair, nodded. “Yes. She mentioned that most of the so-called mortals in Oz had at least some small amount of fairy blood, which was why they could end up finding their way here.”
Iris nodded. “Precisely. Moreover, those which appear mortal here in the realms of Faerie are themselves descended of such mixed blood. They are perhaps not possessed, for the most part, of any of the powers of the more pure of blood, but the key part is that the existence of that blood makes it possible for them to connect with the realms of Faerie…and for the power of Faerie to connect to them.”
The mortal’s understanding was swift; he saw the blue eyes flick back to the place where the crater had been, the brows draw close, then rise. “But one of truly pure mortal blood…” he began, slowly.
“I see you have the essence of it. Your mortal blood denies you any chance to have found Oz through the random events that brought others here. But it also denies Faerie power any chance to affect you without your direct and willing cooperation.” Iris gazed outward as he continued. “Mortals live in the world of the physical, of the solid. The essence of your soul is there purely as the structure of life, the necessary spark that differentiates you from the base materials of which you are made. Contrariwise, the Faerie are beings of energy, of spirit, with a far slighter connection to the world of mundane matter.”
“So what you’re saying is that you Faerie types can’t hurt me.”
He laughed. “Do not make that mistake, my would-be hero. We cannot hurt you with magic — we cannot impress the pure will of our souls and powers on you. But I assure you, a hard-driven blade wielded by my hand, or that of any warrior of Oz or other Faerie realm, will kill you as surely as if it were wielded by mortal hands. You are not invulnerable, merely protected from certain forces in a way that no Faerie can be.”
Erik Medon nodded. “I understand. Still, that’s a pretty big advantage.”
“A necessary one, in fact.”
“Necessary?”
The Rainbow Lord leaned forward. “Understand me well, Erik Medon. You have passed the tests of prophecy, and now we step beyond the point where another might be chosen. If you cannot do what must be done, we shall fail, or at least be forced into a long and bitter war whose effects shall recoil upon the mortal world as well.
“Yet the prophecies of the Bear give neither you, nor I, certain paths to victory. Today I will tell you what I may — and what I must. But it will be still up to you to make the right choices. Some actions are clear. Some are not.” He sighed, and for a moment he could not keep the worry from his face. “And the best of paths will still not be easy.”
He looked down, to see the blue eyes meeting his with a surprising understanding. The mortal’s mouth quirked upwards in a sad smile, and he spoke.
“I’m going to die, aren’t I?”
Chapter 9.
For a minute I thought he wasn’t going to answer me directly. His storm-violet eyes started to turn away; then they closed, reopened, looked back down at me.
“Erik Medon, this is one of the great uncertainties. Your precise fate…” He paused, face tense yet so controlled that I could not tell what lay behind the tension, then continued, “…your precise fate lies beyond any prophecy. The prophecy, in fact, ends at the moment you confront our true enemies. And as I have already told you, even the path to that confrontation is fraught with uncertainty. Die you may, and that well before we have reached even a chance for victory. Or you may fail in some less dramatic but no less final manner.” He held up a hand as I was about to speak. “But I know that you mean to ask about the ultimate end of this adventure, and to that I can say: you may well die then.”
He reached down beside his throne and lifted up a little pink stuffed bear with a crank protruding from its side. The crank began to turn of its own accord, and the little head turned jerkily and one paw came up. “Hail, Erik Medon!” the Pink Bear said in a high-pitched, semi-mechanical voice.
Now I understood; The Lost Princess of Oz had only shown the Bear to be a clairvoyant, but it made all too much sense that he was, in fact, a prophet as well.
“Hail, Pink Bear.” I kept my expression grave, though I did have a momentary impulse to giggle; the poor thing looked so absurd. “My condolences on your losses.” I saw the Rainbow Lord raise a startled eyebrow, and I continued, “For I see that your King is not here, and only his destruction would have allowed that.”
“My thanks.” The Pink Bear moved with clumsy dignity from the arm of the throne to the Rainbow Lord and took a seat on one massive knee, gazing down at me from button eyes that still, somehow, seemed alive. “My condolences on what you are to suffer.”
“Don’t,” I said. “I’ve already had two lifelong dreams granted.”
“Tell him of the ending,” said Iris Mirabilis firmly. “He desires to know what will be, if past all the perils set between now and the end he has traveled.”
“As the Lord desires,” the Pink Bear said quietly. He then turned to me and spoke, in childish verse appropriate to a stuffed prophet:
Now he comes to the end, few his friends, alone
Held by words and chains before the Warlock’s throne.
Sorely wounded shall he be, and then his fate be known;
If struck through the heart and silent,
unable he to call
then Ozma’s power sealed forever
and darkness shall rule all;
Bathed in his heart’s blood but still with voice
Ozma’s name he calls;
Her power lifts him up, burns his soul away
But in those final moments he may win the day.
It was silent in the throne room for several moments as I assimilated all of that. “Okay, that could have been better for me, I guess. I’m not sure what all of it means — par for the course with a prophecy, I guess. Either way, it sounds like I die.” I tried to say it lightly. It was, after all, a set of verses, and I didn’t have the capacity to see it as my final doom quite yet — though it might sink in later. “What’s the bit about Ozma’s power burning away my soul? Any idea?”
The Rainbow Lord gently set the Bear back down and stood; his pacing showed that he didn’t find this discussion much more pleasant than I did. “More than an idea, Erik Medon. It is possible — if you permit it, given that you are a True Mortal — for a Faerie ruler such as Ozma, or myself for that matter, to place our power, our very essence of self, within you and allow you to use it.
“But since you are, in fact, mortal, and we are beings of spirit, your soul must be the channel and director of that spirit. It takes a tremendous effort of will to do this, for it will be very painful — although, at the same time, it would be as the Bear says uplifting, transcendent. The passage of such pure spiritual power through a mortal soul wears it away swiftly.”
I nodded slowly. “Like…channeling hot water through a pipe of ice. The pipe can handle it, can even handle a lot of it…for a little while. But eventually it’s going to go to pieces. So I die either way.”
“Not necessarily.” Iris stopped and dropped to one knee, gazing at me earnestly. “Princess Ozma’s powers are vast, and if you can defeat your opponents swiftly enough, she may be able to return to her true self and heal you.”
“But she’s…sealed away. What’s the bit about my calling her name?”
The Rainbow Lord looked even grimmer. “I have spent many years in this research — perilous research, for merely delving into certain things could have warned Ugu and Amanita of what I sought — and I believe that these verses speak of a dark ritual which takes advantage of a True Mortal’s nature. Performed correctly, they would be able to simultaneously break the seal on Ozma while shattering her basic connection to Oz.”
“And that would mean,” I said, guessing, “that they would have permanent access to Oz’s power — and she’d just be another sacrifice or slave for them at that point.”
“Precisely so,” he affirmed. “All such great rituals req
uire some form of sacrifice — of a mortal or of a Faerie of some considerable power. No power is attained without price, no change in the Great Order permitted without great effort. A True Mortal’s blood is of great significance, as you might guess, as significant in its own way as that of a Faerie such as Ozma. But all such rituals are also very delicate things.”
“And so if I, the object of the sacrifice, call out to her, I’d…what? Bind her to me, in a way?”
“Give her the opportunity to escape into you, if you allowed it, and allow you to use her power against her enemies in ways she simply cannot, while still being defended in great part by the nature of your mortality.”
Now that made sense, in this weird mystical way. I’d be sort of null-magic powered armor for her spirit to wear. “And if I finished it quickly enough, there might be enough of her left to be able to fix the damage done to me?”
“That is my belief, yes.” His gaze was steady when he said that, so I thought he meant it; he wasn’t just trying to give me a forlorn hope.
“But if I push it too much, I’d burn myself out — destroy my soul.” A paraphrase of Disney’s Aladdin zipped through my mind: “Phenomenal cosmic power…itty-bitty circuit breaker.”
Iris Mirabilis looked at me sympathetically. “And along the way you will have to gain some idea of how you actually might wield this power. As you cannot wield magic in any other way, nor — in fact — allow yourself to be the subject of much significant magic without imperiling your protection, you will have to use her power with instinct and whatever insight you will have gained in your travels, for no one shall be able to train you.”
Of course. I’ll have to travel through numberless perils just to get to the point where someone stabs me through the heart, and then if I can manage to choke out the right word, use a Faerie Princess’ power — that I don’t know how to wield — to defeat two centuries-old, trained, super-powerful mages and all their minions, and do it really fast, but without burning myself up to a cinder. Piece of cake, really.