"Leo," I said, before I forgot. "What happened to the Eyes after you had Tully swallow them?"
He fished them out of his pocket as though they were a pile of old coins and not artifacts of ancient power.
We stared at them for a good moment, getting lost in their depths.
"Safe and sound," my cousin announced, obviously quite pleased with his efforts. "Why'd you want to them all of the sudden, Miraj?"
"Just a feeling…" my voice drifted off. "I feel as though I've seen them before."
"Where?" Marvin asked. "Were they a part of some stories told back at the Tribe?"
"No. At least not any stories I've heard of." I shrugged. "It's hard to explain. Maybe it's because I'm Shaman now; maybe it's nothing. But it feels as though I know them, like a distant dream you can't quite shake after you wake up in the morning. I don't know. I'm starting to think I might be imagining things."
Marvin sighed and stretched across the table. "After everything Jiki said about there being no such thing as coincidence, I don’t know if I can believe in chance anymore. If you say you think you know the Eyes from somewhere then I say it's true until proven otherwise."
"I agree," said Will, much to our collective surprise. "I remember Koronos telling me that luck is made every day, but most people are too stupid to realize it. Marvin being Inval's reincarnation. Their phobias lining up perfectly. His mother suddenly turning out to be a Shaman. Miraj becoming a Shaman and a demon, and somehow this ties back to Inval all over again with this Ghostwalker nonsense… everything is interconnected. Only now it's becoming clear that we've been strung along."
"But by whom?" asked Leo.
"Or what?" Marvin countered.
I cradled the Eyes in the palms of my hands, staring into them as the Crone once did. I saw mist and fire. I wondered whether it was the same for her.
We left the table shortly after that. Purilo and Jiki had already gathered and packed of all the supplies we could need on our journey. I quick nod to my father, Larry, about summed up any extraneous farewells. Jiki was left in charge of the surviving necromancers. They lined the halls on our exit, silently wishing us well.
The sun was setting as we started out on our journey, on a quest to rid me of the hourglass that would lead to my premature demise, a journey that might also bring us answers we desperately needed.
What was a Ghostwalker? How did Inval know Ayasha? Who was Neith?
I knew in my heart that if we ever found this woman known as the Ice Empress, all these questions and more would be answered.
15: Frozen Reception
Crossing the Howling Desert was a grueling task when the days were long and we had a man walking on skeletal stumps to account for.
But finally, after nineteen days of trudging through the sand, we reached green fields and spotted the Faespeare Wood in front of us.
It was a viridian bulwark, with evergreens lining the horizon as far as the eye could see. Will shook the remaining sand out from his joints and sockets. Leo charged into the nearby brook, and Marvin and I sat heaving on the grass, grateful to be out of the difficult terrain.
"After this is over with," I started, "promise me that we'll settle on some nice solid land."
Marvin smiled through a gruff breath. "No roaming the plains for you, Miraj?"
"It'd be inconvenient for you to get medical supplies without a steady source," I thought aloud. "We can make one of those farm things. I always wanted to try them out."
"An underground-"
"A house," I corrected. "But we can have a nice dark basement if it makes you feel any better."
"Compromise," he sighed. "The things I do for love."
We exchanged amused looks, twining our fingers together on the lawn.
"Come, O' come to the Gildengrove…"
All of us stopped and listened. A pleasant voice rang from between the trees ahead. It was female, at any rate. But whether or not she was human I couldn't say.
"A palace of stars in the sylvan scene…"
Koronos reared his presence in the back of my mind like a bear awoken from its long slumber.
Be on your guard. Whatever it is, it's more powerful than everyone here combined.
I didn't need to relay his message. Everyone, even Will, had some magical sense about them. We knew that whoever was approaching was not to be trifled with.
I spotted a young figure charging out onto the lawn. It was a boy. A youth on the cusp of adolescence. His ruddy expression fell a bit once his eyes settled on our group. His gaze became stern, aging him by a solid five years in the process.
"Ian, I thought I told you not to run off like-"
A female elf appeared not long afterwards; her long white hair fastened by a ribbon at the base of her neck. She wore a plain dress with a white apron around her waist. Apart from her slanted ears and striking features, she looked the picture of a young housewife.
She handed the basket in her arms, filled with mushrooms and nuts, to the boy beside her. The elf clapped her hands and came forward.
"Faespeare doesn't get many visitors," she said. "It's not a good idea to go in there."
Leo made a face. "If you can survive then I'm sure we can outwit or outrun anything that lives there."
The woman, fortunately, did not seem to take offense to that callous remark. She reminded me of Formosa, her stillness and her certainty in particular.
The elf's eyes hovered on me for a long moment, but she chose not to make a comment on my appearance. She didn't even seem to care after her initial glance.
"Excuse me," Marvin cut in. "I know this might seem like a bit of a long shot, but we were thinking that the Ice Empress lives in these woods. Do you happen to know if she does?"
A faint smile spread across her sylvan face.
"Might I ask who's looking for her?"
"A couple of people who need her help."
"With?"
Will stepped between them. "Why should we answer to you? For all we know you could be one of those monsters from Faespeare sent to lure travelers in."
Her smile grew, unsettling us as a whole.
"Clearly you're the brains of this operation if you managed to figure that one out." She paused here, looking off to the side at someone who didn't exist. "What? I'm telling the truth, aren't I? … Misleading? How so?"
"She's a nutcase," Leo whispered.
I don't know what scared me more. The fact that this came from Leo or the fact that it made sense.
"AUNT SIL!"
The elf spun on her heel. Everyone watched as Ian dropped the basket in his hands. A root burst from the ground and lunged towards him.
She swung her arm in an arc; a wall of ice stopped the errant appendage in its tracks. I had never seen such a blatant, large, showy kind of magic before. Most tiny spells performed by wandering performers took a lot out of them. They were usually incapacitated for the rest of the evening. This display should have killed the woman.
Instead she acted as though it were only a minor inconvenience.
We waned as a whole once we spotted the source of this attack. The Crone, in her sickly, toxic glory, emerged from between the trees. Taking her particular plant-based affinity into consideration, my guess was that she grew from a pod somewhere in the wood.
The elf didn't take her eyes off this new opponent.
"Is this the problem you needed helping with?"
"One of them," I piped up. "She's trying to steal my husband's soul."
The woman didn't question my words, instead she sighed as though this was a problem she had far too often. The Crone's gilded eyes narrowed into dangerous slits as she surveyed the unexpected stranger. Koronos made a low growl.
If she has any sense she'll try to avoid a fight.
"I have no quarrel with you," said the Crone.
See? She knows power when she sees it.
"Give me that man behind you and I'll be on my way."
"This woman," said the elf, motioning to me,
"tells me you're after his soul. Has this man struck a deal with you?" she asked pointedly. The Crone thought long and hard about how to answer that question. I was no longer sure over who was the greater monster before us.
"His… predecessor did."
"Then you have no claim."
"He's his reincarnate," the Crone argued. I watched as her flowers bloomed across her body, releasing their poisonous fumes, like a threatened animal rising on its haunches in a show of defiance. "His soul was mine to take!"
"So why didn't you?" the elf wondered. I could've sworn that the air was getting colder. I wrapped my arms around myself. Marvin placed a hand on my shoulder. He was freezing too.
"He became a Ghostwalker."
"Ahh," the woman breathed, as though everything suddenly made all the sense in the world. "Are you talking about Inval, perchance?"
The Crone paused, as did we.
"Do you happen to know a woman named Diana Galatea?" the elf maid asked, stepping forward.
"She's poisonous!" I shouted across the grass.
She stopped long enough to look back over her shoulder, her blue eyes laughing. Her smile was brimming with warmth and certainty. Looking at her, it felt as though we were the safest people in the world.
"Poison has no effect on me."
The Crone took a step back, thorns sprouting from the ground at her feet as a barrier to separate her from the woman approaching.
"I know Diana."
"Is she dead or alive?"
"Dead."
"Bring her spirit here." It was a command and a warning rolled into four little words. I wondered what had happened to Diana after we left Nethermountain. Her soul was tied to the coffin in the attic. I knew, in my heart, that no spirit could tread far from the object they were bound to.
"That… is not possible."
"And why is that?"
"I devoured her."
The elf stopped, only a foot away from the nearest razor-sharp branch. We watched in wonder as an arctic mist gathered around her. The thorns were quickly limned in frost, growing brittle and withering before our eyes.
The youth, Ian, shook his head at the scene before us.
"Wrong answer."
Ohh, I'm going to enjoy seeing this.
I wanted to tell Koronos not to say anything, but the truth was that I was also eager to see justice visited upon the foul demoness. The elf brought what looked to be a glass orb from the pocket of her apron. She dropped it on the ground.
We waited for something to happen… only nothing did.
The Crone took a breath of relief.
And then her head flew off.
Black blood gushed from the wound. The elf standing before the roots disappeared. It looked like that was only an illusion, as the real one became visible as the demon's corpse fell forward and was impaled on its own thorns.
The woman dropped a frozen dagger in the grass, grimacing at the ichor pooling at her feet.
"You," Will said, feeling more than a little stupid in his tone, "you're the Ice Empress?"
"That's what they call me these days," she replied, entirely blasé over the fact that she killed a demon mere seconds ago. I took a step back in spite of myself, feeling, for lack of a better word, in awe of this person. She was powerful. More powerful, perhaps, than the Eyes of the Leviathan.
"Ian," she called, looking the boy over. "Are you alright?"
"Yup."
"Would you go gather up the mushrooms, please?"
The boy nodded and went off to do as she asked, shooting us a final, curious glance back over his shoulder as he ran.
The Ice Empress set her sights on Marvin. He looked particularly lost at the news of Diana's fate. I, too, was crestfallen. Diana was different. Gruff, in some ways, tender in others. She risked much to help us escape Nethermountain.
And she lost everything because of it.
"I'm Silhouette," she introduced herself. "Is that thing back there the reason you were looking for me?"
"Nope," said Leo. "But it definitely solves a big problem."
"I see." Ian returned to her side. She ran an affectionate hand through his hair. I smiled wistfully at the way she looked upon him, so much like the way my mother once looked at me. Sometimes, it felt as though I only lost her yesterday. Other days it seemed like she was gone years ago. And every so often, like now, I could feel her right there next to me, as real and alive as my own flesh and blood.
"Ian, could you go ahead and set the table? We're going to have four extra guests. I have a feeling they'll stay with us a while."
"Alright," he said, stalking off into the woods.
Silhouette turned back to us. "I hope you don't mind?"
"No." Will was red in the face. "Um, sorry about before."
"I'm used to it," she shrugged. "No harm done. So why not tell me what really brings you to Faespeare? You're beyond lucky to have caught me when you did."
"I'm starting to think there's no such thing as luck."
The Ice Empress snorted under her breath at Marvin's comment. Clearly, she knew things we didn't. Clearly, we've come to the right person.
We entered the woods and were immediately startled by the fact that the trees closed the gaps behind us. It was no wonder that most people avoided the place, especially since the forest literally swallows them whole.
Despite the darkness of these woods, in Silhouette's company we felt perfectly safe. Even Koronos, suspicious and guarded as he was, could only find fault with the woman herself -for being stronger than he was, and therefore worthy of envy and admiration.
"If I had met you two years ago," the elf began, "I would've agreed with you, that there is no such thing as luck, coincidence, or chance. Not to play devil's advocate," she added. "But because this was an irrefutable fact."
She led us to a coiling stream. Fey creatures giggled on our approach. Silhouette waved them off, and their mirth was silenced. I watched as fairies dispersed from the area in trails of glittering mist.
Silhouette sat upon a rock, motioning for us to do the same on the logs before her. We took our seats.
I couldn't help but notice that she didn't seem real. Intangible would be a better way of putting it, I suppose. I couldn't read her emotions. I couldn't sense her heart. She sat in the patch of sun like a statue, an image as distant as it was lovely, as though she belonged in the pages of a fairytale.
"There was once an old and powerful being, a woman called Neith."
I sucked in a breath at the name in the Lost Verse. Silhouette's eyes flicked towards me. She shared a smile whose meaning I couldn't decipher.
"She was also known as the Weaver, because she wove an existence called the Tapestry of Fate. Like tapestries have patterns, so did we. History repeated itself for that reason. Follow one Thread long enough, and you find that everything is interconnected in a way that makes more sense the further you go along. So you're right," she said, again looking at Marvin. "Luck did not exist, because everything in this world, every action, every choice, every consequence, was destined to happen as Neith had designed."
"So what happened two years ago that changed everything?" Leo wondered.
"I killed her."
That simple sentence froze us stiff. Silhouette shook her head. I didn't know whether it was at us or her memories, or even both.
"You see, Neith was an obsessive, compulsive control freak. The Tapestry was her masterpiece, and she was hell-bent on destroying anything that threatened its integrity. Rather than wait for that to happen, she allowed for a new entity to be created, one that could notify her of weaknesses in her design so she could go back and strengthen them later. That entity was called a Ghostwalker,"
"Ghostwalkers," Silhouette continued, looking at the palms of her hands, "are aberrations. One is made when someone defies the destiny Neith set out for them. They die, but before their soul moves on they meet a spirit named Feyt. If she believes someone is qualified, she offers to resurrect them as a Ghostwalker, an
incomplete and artificial soul."
"Two souls in one body," I breathed.
Silhouette nodded. "You caught that quickly."
"That's the reason we're here."
The Ice Empress paused, her brow raised slightly in my direction. I motioned to my inhuman body.
"I… am a Shaman. I can commune with spirits. Even allow them to possess me. For one reason or another, my life was in danger, and the only way to save it was to fuse myself with the demon whose power I was borrowing at the time."
"Oh my."
"Yes." I felt my cheeks get hot, embarrassed that I had to discuss this matter with a stranger as though it were a conversation about the weather. "But the problem is-"
"-the body isn't meant to contain more than one soul." Silhouette took the words right out of my mouth. She sighed at the predicament. "You only bought time. Eventually your souls will reject one another and try to split. It'll kill you. That's quite the mess you're in."
"We came here," said Marvin, drawing her attention. "Because we heard that you found a way to live with your… condition. We hoped that your solution could also be used for Miraj."
Silhouette's lips ran a thin line. She stood up and walked over to me. The elf cupped my chin and my skin tingled at the power radiating from her body. She turned my head to one side, then another.
"It's different from becoming a Ghostwalker."
Hope sank like a rock in the ocean.
"But it's similar enough where I might be able to help."
My eyes lit up.
"How can I turn back to normal?"
"You can't."
I flinched.
"But you're normal."
"No." Silhouette's smile was a sad one. "I'm not."
As though to prove her point, she turned around and placed her hands over her heart. Her eyes closed, she breathed deeply. We watched in awe as she produced the hilt of a blade. Its edge was limned in shadow, darkening the surrounding area.
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