Isle of Wysteria: Throne of Chains

by Aaron Lee Yeager

  “I’d say you’re not alone then,” Mandi mentioned, motioning off to the guards nearby watching.

  Athel sighed. “They know that I know that if I die, Alder’s curse will be lifted. They just want to make sure I don’t try to hurt myself.”

  “Or, if your tree died, it would have the same effect.”

  Athel shot her daggers with her eyes.

  “Sorry, sorry, Kabal agents are trained to be pragmatic. Force of habit. Forgive me for suggesting it.”

  “What do you want, Overtin? Shouldn’t you be with your kid?”

  “She’s taking a nap.”

  Mandi took a bite of peach and looked around. “You know, there’s healthy trees all over this grove, why do you insist on leaning up against a dead stump?”

  “Because I understand it.”

  Mandi crinkled her nose.

  “You wouldn’t understand, Overtin.”

  “I just might. You and I have a lot in common.”

  “Did you come out here just to insult me?”

  “No, I mean it,” Mandi said, picking a shady spot to sit down. “You and I both betrayed our people to do what was right.”

  Athel’s eyes opened angrily. “I didn’t betray my people.”

  “Oh please. If you had just towed the line and allowed the men to keep being mistreated and killed, the other women never would have deposed you.”

  “I couldn’t have done that.”

  Mandi pointed a finger. “Exactly. You had to choose, and you made the right choice, but that doesn’t make it painless. We both know what it means to be born into evil traditions. You hate them, you abhor them, you wish they would change, but you still find comfort in them. They were a part of you, a part of your upbringing, and the people who still cling to them, as misguided as they are, remain your family, and you mourn turning your back on them. We both know how much it hurts to see your kin wallow in darkness. You wonder why you even bother to care. You’d like to just claim you have nothing to do with them, cast them away from your heart forever. But in the end, they remain dear to you, and if they asked you to come back, you’d desperately want to.”

  Athel opened her mouth to protest, but closed it again. “I guess you do understand.”

  Mandi took another bite. “So, tell me about this stump of yours.”

  There was a sucking sound as Ash finished his bottle. Athel draped the spit up rag across her shoulder the way Alder had taught her, then propped him up and began patting his soft little back.

  “This is only a stump now,” she explained. “Not too long ago she was full and lush, tall and beautiful. All the rest of the trees in this grove are Uloks, poisonous from top to bottom.”

  Mandi yanked her hand away from the bark of the tree she was leaning against.

  Athel looked at the stump. “But not her. She was a Thalas tree. Thalas don’t have poison, or any defenses for that matter. The scholars around here will tell you it’s because Thalas trees originate in colder climes where they don’t need them, but those scholars are idiots. Thalas trees don’t have poison because they choose not to.”

  Ash let out a big roaring burp. Athel took him and wrapped him up. He yawned adorably and burrowed his face into her chest, falling into a peaceful slumber.

  Athel swayed side to side, humming gently, as her own mother had done for her.

  Mandi looked the stump over carefully. “So, what are you saying?”

  Athel ran her finger along the dead wood. “I’m saying this tree wanted to help others. She let birds pick her leaves to make nests for their young, she let river chucks burrow deep in her bark to hibernate safely during the snows, she let yveelis dig up her roots to feed their newborn. She gave of herself freely.”

  A piece of the bark broke free and crumbled to the ground.

  Athel’s grey eyes became cold. “But, you can’t live that way. You can’t just give of yourself without any thought for your own needs. Eventually you will break, and that is what happened to her. She gave and gave until there was nothing left to give. She became a hollowed-out shell, and what did she get in return? Nothing. None of these birds think kindly on her, no yveelis sings her song, no river chucks feel gratitude, because that’s not how the world works. She just gave and gave to the void until she died.”

  Athel closed her eyes. “She should have looked out for herself.”

  “Some would say that what she did was very honorable.”

  Athel scoffed. “Honor? Let me tell you about honor. The world honors people who are selfless and giving. Why? Because people like that give you things for free. They protect you from harm so you don’t have to fight; they provide for you so you don’t have to work. Of course people like them; they give them what they want for free. But it’s not because they’re an example, and it’s not because people aspire to be like them. That’s just something people say. No, they just want their free stuff. In the end, honor is just selfishness masquerading as gratitude. It’s as empty as the husks it creates.”

  Mandi took another bite of peach. “Do you think Alder is that way?”

  Athel placed her hand over her stitches. “No…he’s the real deal. He really does care. He loves with all his heart. That’s why I am worried about him. If something doesn’t change, he’ll become a dried out old husk like this tree.”

  Mandi nodded. “When I cast my spell on him, I couldn’t believe what I found. I had convinced myself that true love was impossible. In a very real way, he set me on the path that led me to leave the Kabal and join you guys.”

  “Lucky us.”

  Mandi studied Athel carefully. “But you’re not talking about Alder, not really, are you? You feel like your own ideals betrayed you, don’t you?”

  Her comment surprised Athel. She moved to deny it, but then changed her mind. “Yes, I do.”

  She looked away, her eyes pained.

  “I thought that if I saved everyone, I would be spared the pain of hurting others. But I still hurt people, lots of people, an inconceivably high number of people. And because I tried to save everyone while my opponents did not, those that got hurt were almost exclusively from my side. What kind of victory is that? If I’m going to be a monster either way, I should have prioritized saving my own people and not theirs. I made victory ten times harder to achieve because I was afraid of spilling blood. Well, blood got spilled anyway, but it was the blood of the people I loved, not the people we fought against. My own ideals became an obstacle. My desire to become a hero became my enemy. I should have slaughtered my enemies and protected my own. Then I would still be a monster, but at least I’d be a monster who saved my own.”

  Mandi looked her over carefully. “I know you think you failed back on Boeth, but you really didn’t.”

  Athel scoffed.

  “No, I’m serious. I’ve never been more serious. I’ve been a member of the Kabal my entire life. When you first opposed them, they had a worldwide organization; they controlled nearly every government and throne from behind the scenes. Those they didn’t control, they dominated by fear and intimidation. They had a vast army and navy. Thousands of secret police and enforcers. They didn’t just control the world, they were the world.”

  She held up her finger. “But you--you turned their servants against them, you made whole islands rebel. You destroyed their economy. You battered them, isolated them, backed them into a corner. You came so close to winning, you don’t even realize it. When not even the threat of the gods could turn you, you made them truly, truly desperate. To slip away from you, they were forced to liquidate nearly every resource they had. What was once an enormous organization with millions of soldiers and servants is now only a handful of people sitting at the bottom of the ocean. You’ve reduced them to almost nothing.”

  Mandi scooted closer. “They did not defeat you, Athel Forsythia, you defeated them.”

  At
hel struggled against this new information. “Even if I did, the price was too high.”

  Mandi leaned back and regarded her anew. “Do you know what your problem is?”

  “Oh, this should be good.”

  “Your problem is that you still think you can be forgiven.”

  Athel’s grey eyes lowered. “There’s no forgiveness for what I’ve done.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  Athel prickled at this. “That wasn’t exactly what I expected to hear.”

  She shrugged. “I’m tired of lying for a living. It’s kind of nice to just tell the truth. Fewer stories to keep track of.”

  “How convenient for you.”

  Mandi pulled up her knees and grew quiet. “No, it’s not. The truth is, your sins are just a drop in the bucket compared to mine. I’ve killed millions, Athel. Millions of people, over dozens of centuries. And not in pursuit of any noble goal like you had. But I don’t ask forgiveness for any of what I’ve done. Do you know why?”

  “Because changelings don’t feel remorse?”

  Mandi sighed. “If only that were true. No, it’s because I’ve accepted that I will never be forgiven. That’s the difference between you and me. Deep down, you still wish to be forgiven. You wish to go back to being clean, like you were as a child. That’s what’s holding you back.”

  “So, what are you saying? Just accept that I’m damned?”

  “Yes.”

  “And is that supposed to comfort me?”

  “No, it’s supposed to give you clarity.”

  Mandi got on her knees and leaned in close. “I can see the wheels turning inside you. So much of your mind is still bent towards how to make things right, how to atone for the unforgiveable, how to repair the irreparable. Even when your conscious mind is still, the rest of your gears are spinning as fast as they can, searching for an answer that can’t be found. It’s eating you away from the inside. I can see it.”

  Athel was frozen in place, shocked to be seen so intimately.

  Mandi placed two fingers against Athel’s sternum. “You need to let go of it, Athel. Because, once you accept it, truly in your heart, once you get over your fear of condemning yourself further, all you are left with is a simple question.”

  Athel swallowed. “And what’s that?”

  “What do you want to do with the time you have left? Do you think I’m here because I give a flying crap about the Tomani or the Tirrakians? No, I am here because I want to save one little girl. That’s it. That’s my whole grand scheme. It isn’t any more complicated than that, it doesn’t go any deeper, and it doesn’t have to. I want to save Molly’s life…and that is enough for me.”

  Mandi stood up, leaving Athel stunned.

  Mandi stretched and looked back. “It’s too late for me, but I can still save Molly. It may be too late for you too, but isn’t there anyone left who you’d like to protect, Athel? Isn’t there anyone whose life you’d like to save?”

  Athel watched as Mandi strolled back to the ship.

  * * *

  Ellie opened her eyes lazily. It was hard to sleep when it was always light out. She sat up in her bed, her hair a tangled mess, her eyes droopy. She glanced out her window at the beautiful capital city of Madaringa. Of course, it was now no longer one city, but two. The inner and outer districts separated by an unimaginably large, egg-shaped bubble of shifting colors and prismatic shards. She stretched and glanced at the clock on the wall. Its pendulum swung back and forth, sappily keeping time. A little clockwork bird danced out and chirped mid-morning.

  “I hate that bird.”

  She walked over to her wash stand and looked at her haggard reflection. The room had originally been outfitted with a full length mirror, but she had traded it away. She barely tolerated this little vanity mirror that reflected only her face. She noticed a trace of scars poking up from beneath her collar, and tightened her pajamas to hide them.

  “I overslept.”

  She didn’t care that much. There was no set schedule here. So long as she met her daily work quota, she could pretty much make her own hours, not that hours really meant anything anymore.

  She washed her face and did the best she could with her hair. She had been forced to cut it short after Hanner had blown off one of her pigtails with a volley pistol, and now it was just unruly.

  She shivered, remembering the disappointed look on Ryin’s face.

  She glanced up at her reflection and didn’t like what she saw. “Maybe I’ll grow it out.”

  After getting dressed, she stepped outside. The air was filled with the pinging of rock cutting hammers and the grunts of stone being hauled about.

  She looked beyond the bubble at the outer city, nearly frozen in place. The sun and clouds stuck in the same place they always were, the airships around the shipyards stuck in the same locations they had been since she had arrived.

  She walked up to the edge of the dome and looked at a small hummingbird hanging in the air beyond. Yesterday, it had been in almost the exact same spot. In what had had been a whole day for her, the small bird had only moved maybe an inch, its wings moving only half a beat. She wondered what she must look like from its point of view, or if it noticed her at all. In the outer district beyond, she saw the same people she always saw. The baker preparing to set down a tray on the cooling rack outside his bakery. She wondered how many weeks would pass for her before the tray was slid into place. A mother grabbing her son by the scruff of his neck, her finger pointing at his face, just like they had been for the last month.

  “That’s gotta be the longest scolding in history.”

  Shoppers frozen in mid-stride, a dog motionless in mid-bark, a cat hanging in the air as it jumped between two crystal lamp posts. It didn’t look like a city to her. It looked more like a model of a city, a miniature with dolls and figures crafted in an eerie imitation of life.

  She waved her hand and headed out to the breakfast hall. “Try to go easy on the kid, lady,” she called out. “He regrets it more than you know.”

  She threaded her way through the enormous lattice of scaffolding surrounding the west wall of the tower they were constructing. Cut stone hefted up ramps and lowered into place, runes etched into finished surfaces, obsidian inlays laid into the etchings. Every day, it crawled a little bit higher, the surfaces a little more polished, the angles a bit more refined. From the outside, it must have been remarkable to watch such a large structure grow so rapidly in a whirlwind of construction. To her, it was just slow, daily tedium.

  “Catalumbrah, Ellie,” Akar waved energetically as he oversaw a group of men squaring a corner.

  She lifted her hand and grunted a half-hearted response. The men of Wysteria irritated her. They were too chipper, especially this early in the day.

  “Good morning, Ellie,” Yarrow called out, his dark, tanned skin glistening in the sunlight.

  “Catalumbrah!” Hollis shouted, gathering his long red hair into a loose ponytail.

  Cane set down his chisel and bowed to her out of habit, but then caught himself and waved instead.

  They were so industrious, it galled her. They’d wake up early, whatever that meant, so they could get their daily quota in before noon. Then they’d spend the rest of the day working on their own houses, some of which were already becoming quite lavish. While Ellie had done nothing to the house allocated to her, save for sweeping it out a couple of times, the Wysterians spent their free time adding decorative moldings, planting flowerbeds and gardens, weaving rugs, painting murals, carving fountains and fashioning miniature aqueducts to bring clean water to each home.

  They added second stories to their homes with finely crafted spiral staircases and balconies with surprisingly proper tea sets. They built kilns and fired glass pottery, they constructed forges and smelted silverware. They frequently worked together to build playgrounds for the younger b
oys, and sports courts for the men. A few of the former house-husbands had even managed to cobble together fully functional libraries and classrooms, and spent a few hours each day teaching the other Wysterians, along with a few of the unlearned navy personnel, how to read and write.

  In just a month, they had transformed a decaying and rather unremarkable urban squall into a clean, managed, green, and downright pleasant place to live around the base of the tower. The whole place nearly overflowed with blooming flowers and the sweet smell of baking bread.

  It bugged her to no end how much pride they took in their cells.

  “Don’t they understand that this is supposed to be a prison?”

  A little black wisp of smoke floated by, giving an audible click as it registered Ellie for the midday head-count.

  Ellie entered the breakfast hall and found it full of sullen, chatting navy personnel. She felt more comfortable around them. Like her, they took a more reluctant approach to the work assigned them, usually putting it off until as late in the day as possible. This had the effect of the hall kind of moving through shifts, the Wysterians eating rapidly in the early morning, while everyone else lounged about until lunchtime.

  She had to admit, the food was really, really good here. The Kabal only provided them with basic food stocks, but oh the things those Wysterian men could do with them. The room was positively aromatic with spicy plum pudding, tart minced pies, smooth mint tea, sweet lemon drop cake, and eggs en cocotte.

  And that was just what was left over from the breakfast rush.

  Dwale stood there in his apron, like always. He had a somber way about him, as if he alone among the Wysterians thought of this place as a prison. Being blind, he was of little use as a stonecutter, but by carefully laying out the food trays on the counter before him in designated spots, he could make himself useful as an expediter for the kitchen.

  “Morning Dwale,” she said, looking over the remaining options.

  “Good day, Lady Ellie,” he responded, brightening up.

  “Kidney soufflé, eh?” she realized, crinkling her nose.