by Greg Curtis
“I tested it first. Using the globe and the last of the blood I had left over from ten years before, on a small shrine the city guards found. It worked! The effect was a hundred times more powerful. But still it was not powerful enough. The curse became a plague that spread. And it grew an army for me. But I still needed more. In time the curse would have failed. The plague would have burnt out.”
“And then the guards found me, acting on your instructions, Priest, and I knew.” He smirked in triumph at Father Argen. “I needed more blood. The king was dead and the queen's blood wasn't enough on its own. I had no idea where the princes were, but I knew the temple cared for them. So I knew that you would be able to find them for me. And I knew you could be relied upon to track down Long as well. All I had to do was give you a reason.”
“Callum here made me young again so I could become Marclan for a time. I fabricated the journals. And you believed every word. You did everything I wanted and never once guessed the truth.”
“There were problems. The barbarians were a nuisance. Even though the curse gave me a large number of wolves, the barbarians killed so many that my growing army still shrank for a time. They had to go. And happily Callum here could do that for me. He would do anything I wanted to restore himself to his true form. Wizards! They really are fools!”
“And then there was his old master. I knew he could be trouble, and I knew he was talking to Callum. So I had to have an effective defence if Zo’or managed to turn Callum. It took a while to source the witch bane. But I would have needed it for Callum here in time when he realised the truth anyway.”
Callum's response was only to make an angry sound as he knelt there on the ground. almost doubled over. But he didn't seem to have the strength to so much as lift his head.
“I may have used too much on him.” Barachalla pretended sorrow. “Pity. He was useful. He controlled my army as it grew in Abylon while I was away. And he brought it with him here, to overcome the defences of Morphia's Forbidden Forest.”
“What defences?”
“Monsters of course. She stocks her forest with monsters. But even monsters have a weakness. Even the ones that are unkillable. They only kill to eat. Throw enough meat their way and they're perfectly content to let the rest go by. They ate my army but it served its purpose.”
Briagh closed his eyes in pain as he heard that. Meat! Just meat! All those wolves. All those people as they had once been. Deliberately being given as meals to the killer trees. Nothing more than food. And just so Barachalla could pass through the forest. What sort of coldness did it take to do such a thing? He actually made the barbarians seem civilised. Briagh struggled harder against his bonds. Because he knew that anyone who would do that, would not hesitate to do everything else he threatened.
“You're mad!” Callum spoke up from where he knelt, broken. But it was too little and too late. “Stop this now! No god is going to bargain with you.”
“And what do you want from her anyway?” Briagh finally managed to get his mouth loose from the vine that had been covering it, and blurted it out. Maybe he thought, there was hope. The vines were finally starting to yield to him. Though he was exhausted, his strength all but gone, they were giving way. He could feel it. Without Callum's magic to sustain them they had started weakening.
“I want her to love me. Again!” Barachalla yelled it at him, his voice filled with unexpected pain.
“Love you again?” Briagh managed to finally free a shoulder, twisting it somehow under the vines and with it managing to get some movement of the arm. Unfortunately, it had taken everything he had. Still, he had no time. The globe was glowing so brightly that it couldn't be much longer before Barachalla placed it on the stand.
“She loves me! She promised me!”
“She promised you?” That he truly didn't get. But with his shoulder and his upper arm free, he was getting more movement of the rest of his arm and his back. That was the only thing that mattered. That and the fact that Barachalla didn't seem to notice the way he was struggling.
“Long ago. She said I was beautiful. She said she could watch me forever. Listen to my songs forever.”
Had he slipped completely into madness? Into poppy dreams and delusion? Because what he was saying didn't make any sense. Not to Briagh. But he continued working the rest of his arm free and then started work on wriggling free of the rest of the bonds. They too were loosening. Obviously with Callum down, the monster’s tendrils weren't as tough as they had been.
“Gods don't speak to mortals!” He shouted it and then shifted, quickly changing into a panther, wriggling a little, and then shifting back. Finally the tactic was working for more than just healing. Things were coming free.
His words weren't entirely true. The gods did sometimes speak to mortals. But on their own terms and only for their own reasons. Never because they were asked to. And certainly never because they were somehow bullied into it.
“She did to me! She said she loved my words! My songs!” The technologist screamed it at him, at them all, as if it was pure pain. The pain of longing unfulfilled. Of a child not understanding. “She called me her precious one!”
In that moment Briagh finally understood Barachalla. They weren't dealing with a madman after all. Not really. Not the way they thought. They were dealing with a heartbroken child. A child who would do anything to have his family back. Briagh understood that pain only too well. What would he have done in those first few weeks, months and years after finding his family dead to have them back? Anything? More? Truthfully he didn't want to answer that question. Because Barachalla was just like he had been fifteen years ago. Wounded and hurting as he could never have described. Barachalla just hadn't grown up. Learned to cope with the pain. The only thing he didn't understand was when and how Barachalla had met the Goddess. How he could have been so broken by her departure.
“Tell me.” Briagh started freeing his other arm. Once the vines on one side had freed he could feel the others loosening and the rest were coming free.
“No! It's time! She's coming! You'll see!” The globe flashed in his hands, giving out a blinding white light, and then Barachalla turned with it and went to the altar.
Briagh screamed, shifted and roared. The time was up. Because he knew what would happen when the technologist placed that globe in its stand. And he knew he couldn't let it happen. And this time, the vines finally gave way.
He burst free of them and ran for the technologist and the globe. He forced every ounce of strength he had into his legs, and the ground actually blurred beneath him as he ran. But Barachalla had only a few feet to cross and a few inches to go to set the globe in its stand. He was going to get there first!
Briagh roared as no panther ever had before, trying to make the technologist turn around. Or at least to hesitate. He would do anything he could to buy himself enough time. But there wasn't enough time. And even as leapt the last fifteen feet between them, paws outstretched in front of him, he watched as the globe settled into the stand.
After that everything stopped. There was an explosion of whiteness. So bright that it blinded him. It must have blinded the entire world. There was screaming – most of it his he suspected. He felt an instant burning pain.
And then there was peace.
That caught him by surprise. It wasn't what Endorian had described. Not even close. It wasn't pain and he didn’t feel his body tearing itself apart. It wasn't fear either. If anything he felt comforted. Abruptly Briagh opened his eyes to find that things had changed.
The globe was still in the stand, but it wasn't glowing any more. Rather, it seemed to be dead. The prisoners remained chained to the altar, but at least they were alive. Barachalla was still standing where he had been, but was now looking confused. Callum had fallen the rest of the way to the ground, but he too was alive. And when he turned around to check, the others were alive too. Still bound to the cliff face, but all of them breathing.
As for himself Briagh found that he was now standing on two leg
s, half a dozen feet from the globe. And yet he’d been in panther form and in mid-leap when the globe had been placed on the stand. His momentum should have carried him on. He should have hit Barachalla and the globe. And yet here he was, back in human form, and now standing a little way away from the altar.
Then the woman appeared and he understood. Stark naked but clothed in light, standing on the very tip of the overhang, thousands of feet of fall behind her. And everyone knew she was no simple woman. Briagh realised the instant he laid eyes on her that she was no simple anything. She was the Goddess. And though she appeared as a woman, she was anything but.
She could have been any age. A few seconds old. Or older than time. In appearance she could have been of any race. Human, fae, dwarf. She could be of all of them. And just as she was of any race, she was of every creature. He saw her standing there on two legs, but he knew that that wasn't her. Just a simple shift of his thoughts and she was on four legs or eight. She had wings and scales or hooves and horns. Everything was possible within her.
He couldn’t comprehend what his eyes showed him. But he did understand one thing about her that he had never truly understood. She was a mother. Before almost anything else – Goddess, mortal, creature, human – she was a mother. And that did not bode well for Barachalla.
“Is this better Racha? Could you not see me above? Could you not simply speak to me? Tell me of your pain? Was all of this necessary?”
Racha? Briagh knew that name, though it took him a second or two to remember where he had heard it. And then came to him. Racha was the bard! The minstrel of the Goddess. The one who had composed all those ballads to her centuries before. He was part of the faith. But could the decrepit technologist be the even older bard? It didn't make any sense.
“You came!” Something in Barachalla seemed to crumble as he cried out. A look appeared on his face of pure adoration. “You finally came!”
“Of course I came. I always came to hear you sing. You had such music in you. But then you changed.” She stepped off the precipice and walked toward him, her expression impossible to truly describe. It was dignified, and filled with sympathy. But also with sorrow and anger. Regret and hurt. It was all of those things and more. Maybe it was simply a mother confronting a difficult child who had done wrong? “You stopped singing.”
“You did not come.” Barachalla suddenly sounded like a small child as he said it. An abandoned child.
“Of course I came. But you did not see me anymore.”
“Make it work!” Barachalla ignored her words and raised the now dead globe up out of its stand as she approached, pleading with her like a small child with a broken toy.
“It does work. It always has.” She waved her arm and the globe was suddenly gone and Barachalla was left standing there with his hands filled with air and a look of horror on his face. “It was simply never meant for you.”
But then as if to belie her words she went to him and held him. Wrapping him up in her arms and made soothing noises as she would to a baby. And that was the truth of the technologist Briagh realised. In a way, as old as he was, he was a child crying out for his mother.
“It was never for any of you.” She stared at Callum and Zo'or in turn and both of them found themselves suddenly standing before her. “My favour is only ever for the one I love. Shame on you for ever thinking otherwise!”
“Of course My Lady.” Master Zo'or bowed to her as well as he could without his staff to support him. Callum said nothing. He still looked exhausted.
“This one,” she indicated Barachalla who was still standing there in her arms in shock, “rightly or wrongly is besotted with me. His affections, no matter how disastrously shown, are true. But you,’ she said looking sternly at Zo’or and Callum, “had no affection for me at all. Only for what you thought my favour could make you. You tried to take what would have been freely given. My love.”
“True again My Lady.” Mater Zo'or bowed again. “But this one's mistakes were my doing.” He indicated Callum. “He was my student and I failed him. Terribly. His punishment should be mine instead.”
The wildred's words stopped the Goddess for a moment, and made her study him for a moment or two, considering. Meanwhile the student turned and stared at his former master in shock. After what he had done the last thing he had surely expected was mercy. It was the last thing he could have asked for.
“But at least you show you are learning. Let us hope that that continues.” With that the two wildred were gone, standing once again beside the cliff where Zo'or had been bound only moments before. Now however they were free of the vines. Both looked confused.
“You should help with that little one.” Abruptly the Goddess addressed Abel, who suddenly appeared in front of her. “You need to be taught your magic. The wildred need to be taught what is right and proper. Shine your light on their souls.” A heartbeat later the young apprentice was also standing by the cliff, also looking just as confused.
“And you three,” she turned to face the princes and their mother, all of whom were still chained to the altar, but finally looking something other than mad. “You were guilty of the same folly as the wildred. You thought to cement your rule through my favour. To create a lineage that could never be anything other than royal. That would rule by divine right. Shame on you too!”
“No!” The Princess suddenly screamed out from where she was still bound to the cliff, her voice filled with anger and denial, and most of all fear.
But what was she frightened of Briagh wondered? That the Goddess would punish her family? That her family truly had brought this doom down upon their own heads? That they had done it out of some sort of terrible desire for even greater power? Or that they had completely forgotten her in their desires? He suspected it was the latter.
“Princess.” The Goddess waved her arm and Princess Elan was suddenly no longer bound to the cliff, but rather standing beside her. “You are not my child and I have no place to lecture you. And you have committed no crime against me. You have though against my child though, for which I am sure you will apologise in time. But you are as much a victim of my bard's disturbed desires as any others. And of your family's unworthy desires. And this wardrobe does not become you.”
With a sweep of her fingers the Princess was no longer dressed in her leather and chain armour. Her weapons were gone, as were the layers of dirt that had been covering her. Instead she was in some sort of palace dress and looking exactly like a princess should. Of course, while the dress might be appropriate, Briagh felt sure it would cause her some small headache when it came time to climb back down the mountain.
“The Goddess resumed talking to the wolf mother and former queen. “As I was saying, the divine right of kings as you call it was an abomination. A sickness that destroyed empires for a thousand years. It was no gift, but rather a curse. A curse of slavery. That you should even think it desirable shows how unworthy you are to rule anyone. Think on that as you apologise for your crimes. The only bonds that may ever be allowed are those of the heart and of the blood. Of love and family.”
A heartbeat later the princess found herself back by the cliff, but with her family. Both she and her family were wearing identical expressions of confusion. But if the former queen and the two princes seemed confused then that surely meant they were starting to think again instead of simply howl like dogs. In fact, it looked as though they were trying to speak.
But Briagh thought they would be best not to try. Not to defend themselves. Morphia was the Goddess of Freedom. Slavery was the very greatest evil she knew, and she would not allow it. The thought that others would try to bring it about in her name must have angered her immensely.
“Father Argen.” It was the priest's turn to abruptly find himself standing before her. But unlike the others who had gone before him, he seemed calm. “These people are in great need of your counsel. And please give my regards to your Lord.” With that he too was sent back to the cliff to stand with the royal family.
And then the Princess screamed startling everyone. Making Briagh turn. A wordless sound of horror and betrayal that tore across the very sky. Briagh hadn't heard what had caused her to scream like that. What had caused her such pain. But when he saw her mother's head bowed, and the Princess' look of shock and horror etched into her face, he knew. The entire tragedy was there in front of him, for all the world to see. Her mother had just confessed her crime. And in doing so she had ripped her own daughter's heart to pieces.
Briagh didn't like the Princess. In fact he hated her. But in that moment he knew only sorrow for her. Terrible sorrow. She had been betrayed by her own family. By those she loved most in the world.
No one should have to suffer such pain. Even the Goddess seemed moved as she stared at the royal family. Enough that she was quiet for a moment.
“And now you, my children.”
Briagh found himself standing immediately in front of the Goddess, Endorian beside him. And strangely he didn't know what to think as he stared into her face. He was far beyond that point. All he really knew was that he saw in her the one thing he had not seen in a very long time; family. He did not know the Goddess at all. Her face was unfamiliar to him. But in his heart he knew her.