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Faerie Apocalypse

Page 17

by Franks, Jason;


  “The Tree Queen? Is my uncle responsible for this conflict, as well?”

  “Yes,” said the Queen of the Ore-lands. “In part. So, too, is the magus. But there is no love lost between the Ore-lands and the Forests. Our conflict is renewed periodically, with or without mortal intervention.”

  “I…”

  “I have no more time for you,” said the Queen of the Ore-lands. “Show yourself out.”

  23. A Battle

  The mortal left the City of the Ore-lands and retreated to a hill with a vantage over the field of battle. On her right, the Ore-Lands host marched out of the city gates to a fanfare of brass and drums. With much ceremony they formed up in columns; foot soldiers flanked by cavalry. Mounted knights rode upon a variety of armoured beasts: horses and jungle cats and elephants and other creatures too strange and monstrous to identify; lumbering about or floating above the Ore Queen’s army like dirigible squids.

  On her left was the forest. It was difficult to discern where the forest ended and the Tree Queen’s host began, for her warriors were themselves trees, to varying degrees. The Tree Queen’s army was the larger of the two. Ranks of archers stood in front of spearmen; swordsmen and halberdiers marched on either quarter.

  “Salutations.”

  The mortal turned without alarm to see who had come to watch the battle with her: a hunched and emaciated being clad all in dark robes. Its hands were black with burn-scars, and its face was concealed in the shadows of its cowl.

  “Hi,” she replied. She thought about asking if the candy bar was open, but decided against it. “Do you happen to know the cause of this conflict?”

  “This disagreement is the result of a longstanding chain of grudges,” replied her new companion. Its voice was oddly polyphonic, though the bass was the strongest tone.

  “What are the most recent links?”

  “Some time ago, when the Tree Queen wanted an alliance to bring down one of her enemies, the Queen of the Ore-lands refused to join the coalition. Later, the Queen of the Ore-lands gave aid to a mortal, who caused much harm to the court of the Tree folk. The Tree folk have finally instated a new royal line and restored order to their Realm, and now they are looking for reparations.”

  “What will happen if one nation is destroyed?”

  “Neither nation will be destroyed on this battlefield,” said the cowled figure. “Lives will be ended, resources will be squandered. Perhaps a Queen will fall, and thence be replaced…perhaps not. But the dispute will end, leaving only bitterness for both parties. This will slowly fester until it must be lanced by a further act of warfare.”

  “It sounds rather a waste.”

  “That is the nature of warfare.”

  “And you, sir? In what capacity do you witness this battle?”

  “I was not dispatched here to observe this conflict. I am here to treat with you.”

  The mortal took a moment to scrutinize her companion. It was remarkably still. Its robes did not shift in the breeze. It cast no shadow. It was like a cheap CGI effect in a B movie. “Well, alright then.”

  “I bid you welcome, on behalf of the Council of the Magi.”

  “Thanks.”

  “The Council recognizes your heritage and your power, and we fear the damage you might cause—but we also recognize that you have committed no crimes since you began your travels in the Realms of the Faerie.”

  “I’m on my best behaviour.”

  “Yet the Council is concerned about your wellbeing. We wish to advise you that your deeds here are not without consequence. This Land is a dangerous place, and though you yourself are not malicious, you are yet a dangerous individual.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You should not have come to the Land,” said the emissary of the Council of the Magi. “You are only here on the flimsiest wisp of madness; you are ill-equipped to survive in these Realms. Hurry and conclude your journey, before some grievous wrong befalls you.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  The emissary drew closer to her without engaging in any actual motion. “You believe this to be a game,” it said. “You believe that this world…this fairyland…exists only for your amusement. You believe it is a construct that you have built to resemble the lunatic dreams of your uncle, and you believe that you are the only true sentience here.”

  She could not deny it.

  “You must understand that this Land is as real as you are. You do not believe yourself to be truly present here, but you are mistaken. You are here in every way that counts.”

  “Then why,” the mortal asked, smiling, “can I do this?” Her avatar reached out with impossible speed, and grabbed the emissary with impossible strength. She raised it over her head and tossed it away. The emissary did not resist. Its image spun through the air like a piece of cardboard, vanishing whenever its rotation showed her the back face of it.

  “That you have some power over the Land does not make it any less real.” The emissary’s voice came from behind her. She turned around, but there was no one there. “But you are not the only one with power, and you have more enemies than you know.”

  The voice remained behind her, no matter how she turned.

  “Take your leave of this Land and these Realms. Your welcome has been retracted.”

  “Yeah, bollocks to you, too,” she said.

  There was no reply.

  On the field of battle before her, the Ore-lands’ vanguard, bristling with arrows and spear-shafts, smashed its way through the ranks of the Tree Queen’s host. Archers continued to pepper them while halberdiers were rushing in from the flanks. The Ore-lands’ bizarre cavalry was waiting for the signal to charge.

  The mortal watched folk of both nations die in vast numbers: stabbed, cut down, arrowshot, burned, trampled. She watched them fall, bleeding and screaming, limbs hacked off, guts flopping, skulls crushed, spines snapped. She watched until the horror wore off and the carnage grew boring. It did not take as long as she might have expected.

  She could have joined in, she supposed. Perhaps the Ore Queen would like her better if she proved herself in battle. The mortal’s avatar was impossibly strong and fast and immune to any form of harm—there was no risk involved. Better yet, she could have hacked the landscape, or manipulated the flow of time to benefit one side or the other.

  But wargames had never been her style.

  The mortal turned away from the raging battle and considered how next to proceed. Perhaps she would quest for the dark tower, after all. She had nothing better to do.

  24. In the Tower

  The Tower grew above a basin that had once held a vast sea. Now the seabed was dry and empty, filled only with the cartilaginous remains of the great, vile fish-things that had formerly prowled its depths.

  Malo walked through the flats, kicking and stomping his way between the piles of leviathans’ bones. The salt crust cracked beneath his every step. He climbed out of the seabed below the tower, scrambling over the razored volcanic rocks, hand over bleeding hand. When at last he came to stand at the base of the tower, his skin was filigreed with wounds both new and old.

  Malo had no way to calculate the tower's magnitude. He walked its circumference, but he found no entrance in its twisted and puckered surface. When he laid his hands upon it, the film of slime that coated it oozed between his fingers. The obsidian shaft would not yield to him.

  In the highest room in the tower, the magus looked up from his texts. He rose from his desk and went to the window. The tower was the grandest of his achievements, and the vilest, and there was little in the worlds outside of it that concerned him now. Evil was his only abiding interest, and he had yet to encounter anything as talented in that regard as he himself.

  The magus looked out of the tower, at the Land he had blighted, at the Realms he had harmed. He looked at the seabed he had
sought to fill and populate. He looked at the skies, whose Queen he was not yet mad enough to contest with. One day, perhaps.

  The magus looked down the length of the tower, and saw the mortal man who stood before it, and he knew that man for his son.

  The magus considered Malo against the countless abominations he had wrought. He examined the boy’s deeds, measured his heart, and rifled through the damaged lobes of his mind.

  “Feh,” said the magus, disgusted. “Can’t even bloody well speak English.”

  The magus spat on the ichor-slick floor and returned once more to his books and his spellcraft, and he never again thought of his son, the Bad Little Dog.

  Malo raged and railed against the tower, but it stood firm beneath his onslaught. He could not harm it, not with his fists, nor with his bizarre and jagged powers. The tower was older than the magus who had raised it, in its present form, and it was infused with an evil that could never be fully expressed with any kind of words or symbols.

  Spent and defeated, Malo staggered away from the tower; and what little remained of his ego was finally consumed by rage and despair.

  25. Husks

  The Warrior Queen stood at the entrance to a small wooden dwelling, in a place where faerie creatures such as she no longer existed.

  Plants grew wild all around the house. Birds and insects made soft, unmusical sounds. There was a distinct lack of magic in the humid air, and the stink of death lingered sweetly in its place. Hardy though she was, the Warrior Queen wondered how long she could survive in so desolate a place.

  The house stood on stilts, two feet above the ground. Its weatherboard face was grey and sagging. Broken windows were covered over with curling wire mesh. The corrugated iron roof was rusty and lopsided. The Warrior Queen pushed through the listing door and stepped across the threshold.

  Inside, the house stank of rot and ashes. The floorboards were water-stained and soft. The husks of dead insects lay everywhere.

  The Warrior Queen moved amongst the smashed furnishings, upholstered in fabrics that were neither skins nor weaves. A rectangular altar made of a smooth substance that looked like wood, but was not, stood on a low table. The glass plate in the front of it was broken, and its hollowed-out gut was filled with the sooty remains of some burnt offering.

  The Warrior Queen wondered what sort of gods or demons it was dedicated to, but only briefly. Faerie folk were immortal and without souls: religion was of little interest to them.

  Books lay stacked on every flat surface. The Warrior Queen took one from the top of a pile and examined its clothbound cover. It had no illustration upon it, and the words were inscribed in a mortal tongue she could not read well. The pages crumbled in her fingers when she tried to turn them.

  She kicked her way through to the kitchen and exited the dwelling through the back door. The decking behind the house had long since collapsed, but she leapt lightly down and moved out into the wayward garden.

  Some distance from the house stood a metal gantry. A bamboo box hung from it, suspended by fraying ropes and rusted chains.

  A boy had lost his childhood in that cage. A boy who had grown into a powerful man; who had ventured to the boundaries of this very world, and beyond. The man had died as far from that box as his power could take him, but the boy…

  The boy remained locked inside that box, forever.

  There was an unfamiliar, prickling sensation at the base of her neck, accompanied by an emotion that the Warrior Queen thought might be fear.

  “Magus,” she said. “Will you speak with me?”

  Words whispered inside her head. She did not know how the voice had insinuated itself inside her psychic shields. The voice which spoke was that of a child, as well as that of something timeless and filthy.

  The magus-child whispered to her that he had never laid his eyes upon her mother, much less sought her out and slain her. That was a different mortal—the one who had caused the magus’ own death, and many others besides.

  The magus whispered other things, insensible and irrelevant and evil. The Warrior Queen closed her ears, but she could hear the dead thing yet.

  She stood for a moment, breathing hard. There was sweat upon her brow, and her hair was cold against her scalp. The dead thing continued to burble its wordless evil.

  The Warrior Queen gathered her magic to her as best she could. It was the most difficult task she had ever attempted. She set the spell slowly, drawing the symbols with only one hand. The other was filled with her sword.

  The spell took and her vision flickered as she was transported home, to the Realms of the Land, where death came only as a consequence of violence or accident and magic swirled on every mote.

  She was far beyond the reach of the thing in the cage, and yet she could still hear its whispering. The Warrior Queen hoped the whispers were echoes, and would fade, but she feared that her own mind had taken up the chorus.

  Madness was a mortal affliction, but if it was a price she must pay for her own story-quest, the Warrior Queen was quite willing to pay it.

  26. The Son of

  the Magus

  The Warrior Queen went immediately before the Council of the Magi. “You pig-fuckers deceived me,” she said.

  The Speaker for the Council shook its head and told her: “No, Majesty. You deceived yourself.”

  “You knew that the magus was not the mortal who slew my mother.”

  “We tried to tell you, but you refused to hear our explanation,” said the Speaker. “You would not be counselled into some other course of action.”

  The Warrior Queen was silent for a moment. “You wanted someone independent and expendable to ascertain the whether the magus was truly dead.”

  The Speaker did not deny it. “If you desire it, we will show you how your mother was slain.”

  “Show me.”

  The Speaker conjured an image of a steep-walled mountain pass. Facets of that image were reflected upon all of the surfaces around the room, highlighting one or another detail, motif, or theme.

  In the pass, a rainbow-breasted lithophage stood in conversation with a bearded mortal. He was not the magus she had earlier sought. This grinning fool appeared to be charmed by the lithophage, having no sense of the peril it represented. The Warrior Queen’s mother, Zelioliah, emerged and slew the lithophage. Zelioliah conversed briefly with the mortal, who acquitted himself poorly.

  The scene faded and became another: the bearded mortal facing off against the dog-man in the shadow of an enormous tree. The worldtree. Zelioliah emerged to save the weakling a second time. Once the dog-man had fallen, the mortal took Zelioliah in his arms and showed her his gratitude with a straight-razor.

  “I’ll find him,” said the Warrior Queen. “I’ll go back to his world and I’ll find him and I’ll kill him, and then I will capture his mortal spirit and wear it like a cloak.”

  The Speaker for the Council shook its head. “This Council has tried many times to do just that, and failed. The mortal is but one soul amongst billions, and he sleeps so deep that we can find no trace of him. You will have no better luck than we.”

  “How is it that I was able to locate the magus’ dead soul, and you cannot find this live one?”

  “The magus never hid himself from us.”

  “Even so. This mortal is no sorcerer.”

  “We have become estranged from our allies in the mortal realm,” said the Speaker. “It is possible that they are protecting him.”

  “In that case, you should make war upon them.”

  “This Council cannot start a war between the mortal world and Faerie over the soul of a single miscreant.”

  “And yet you have searched for him.”

  The Speaker hesitated. “This mortal is invested with more power than one might expect,” it said. “And yet…though his quest here is done…he may one day
return.”

  The Warrior Queen was silent again. At last, she said: “I see what you have made of me.”

  “You have made yourself,” said the Speaker. “You were most insistent.”

  “You have conjoined our goals so that I must do what you need of me, knowing that I would otherwise deny you.”

  “It is your duty, as Queen of the Warriors and protector of the Realms of the Land.”

  “It is, and I must comply with your wishes, but I will not do so as your vassal. I want the magus’ seat upon this council.”

  “An you prove your skill in the manner of the other Councillors, the seat is yours,” said the Speaker.

  “I am royalty.”

  “That is so,” said the Speaker, “But the laws of the Council are quite specific.”

  “Then you had better fucking well change them,” said the Warrior Queen.

  “We cannot make an exception, even for such as you.”

  “You are magi. Making exceptions is the whole of your business.”

  “That is why we cannot; not in the matter of our own governance.”

  “I will not be attending Council sessions. I have no desire to govern the use of sorcery in the Realms. I have no interest in the civic matters of the territory of the magi. I have real work to do.” She put her hand on the hilt of her sword. “But if I must do your work, I will do it as your peer—or as your enemy.”

  “The laws of the Council—”

  “If the Council will not grant me my due I will destroy it. I will see your Realm torn asunder, and your magical repositories burned to ash. Sorcery will go ungoverned in this Land forevermore.”

  The Councillor on the Speaker’s right spoke up, though it did not use its voice. “Can she do that?”

  Another Councillor spoke, “She is a faerie, and bound as a faerie to this world and its order.”

  The Speaker shook its head. “Those bindings have weakened. I fear that they may yet be severed.”

 

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