by Greg Curtis
So he headed to the west side of the woodland nearest the sea, and started cutting in ditches to carry the water away. Naturally that took more time, but after a few hours he had a dozen drainage ditches that would over time become small rivers, heading for the cliff. And with a little luck, every time it rained from now on, the water would run through the woodland, carry away the eggs and sweep them off the cliff and into the sea far below. No doubt the fish would enjoy them.
By then the sun was settling over the distant horizon and things were growing a little cooler. He was grateful for the breeze as it had been a long hard day by then. Glad too as he walked out of the woods to see that there were people there with water to drink. He gladly accepted a pottery mug from one of them and downed its contents in a few thirsty gulps.
But even as he was about to accept another mug, he noticed something unexpected. One of the men had great welts running down his back.
“Was that from the dragonflies?” he asked, forgetting that these people couldn't really speak Common. He could have used his magic to teach them the spellcasters' tongue, but there didn't seem much point. There were no casters here and no people from other worlds.
“No. Wings,” the man answered him in his heavily accented attempt at Common. “Fell off.”
“Ahh.” Chy nodded, understanding what the man meant. He was one of the freed slaves. Maybe even an overseer judging from how long the welts were. He had surely had some huge wings.
He was surprised to see one of them. Though he had heard stories that they were coming back little by little. Returning to their old homes, often many years after they'd been abducted by them. So maybe it was a good sign. There was hope. The slaves were coming home. The shades were being freed and starting to find new lives for themselves. And they were battling the endless problems that arose as the portal walls came down. Eventually things would find a new balance. Maybe.
“I'm glad you've made it home,” he told the man, though Chy doubted he understood a lot of what he said. Then he handed him his mug feeling somewhat renewed by the drink and the sight of the freed slave, and headed off towards the portal that would take him home.
There was hope, he thought. Elodie would return to him. Maybe even now that there was no Temple left, she would stay with him. And the rest of the world would be returned to how it was meant to be in time. He felt good if a little bitten.
That was of course a mistake. He discovered that at almost the same moment he walked off his portal in his yard just in time to be knocked over by a snorting, panicking, winged pig which was being chased by a couple of dryad children who were busy laughing and yelling happily.
Run over by a damned pig?! There was no hope, he decided as he picked himself up off the grass and then started dusting himself off while all around him people laughed. Other children mostly. Even the damned cat, stretched out on the cobbles to enjoy the sunshine, was laughing at him. But then the cat would. She was evil!
“Don't look at me like that Porky,” he growled at the furry little monster as he headed to the house, “or I'll introduce you to the worst word in the entire world – diet!”
Naturally growling at her didn't help. She just glared a little more evilly at him. Maybe she was from one of the underworlds! He'd wondered about that. She did after all have the nature of a demon! Even if she wasn't, wherever she was from, it was becoming obvious to him that he was doomed! Fate, the underworlds, the gods and probably the demons – and most especially the cats – they all hated him!
Chapter Forty Nine
Travel was slow through the endless forest, and not just because of her injuries. They slowed her down for certain as every part of her body was battered and bruised and not much worked properly. But the forest itself was the larger problem as the ground was uneven and slippery and she constantly had to find her way around obstacles. But even so, after four days spent travelling, Elodie would have expected to be further away from the volcano. At the least it should have been out of sight. But it wasn't. It was just a tiny little bump on the horizon that glowed, especially at night.
That made her wonder every time she saw it if she'd started walking in circles at some point. Or hobbled in circles in truth.
Still as she sat on a fallen tree on a rise in the endless forest and stared back at where she'd come from, and saw the volcano still stubbornly refusing to vanish, at least she knew she was safe. The volcano had erupted, it was still shaking the ground even as far away as it was, and there was lava coating it from cone to base. But it hadn't completely exploded. It was still more or less the same shape it had always been. There was no ash falling on her. And the smell of brimstone was only faint. It would quiet down in time.
As for the dangerous creatures that she'd imagined would be all around, she hadn't run across any. There were plenty of birds and lots of little creatures that climbed the trees. She saw their eyes often enough in the night when she had her fire burning. She'd heard the yapping of foxes in the distance and even seen a couple of tree snakes. But there had been no wolves and nor bears. No big cats either. This was actually quite a peaceful place.
It seemed unlikely in the middle of the endless forest, but she was safe.
That mattered to Elodie. She was young. She had been happy. And she didn't want to die. She didn't know what she wanted to do, save leave. Go home and bathe perhaps. Find a nice comfortable bed. Sleep for a week or two. But which bed? Her old family home which she'd left over a decade before? But that would be like returning to her childhood. Her bed in the Temple was obviously gone along with the Temple. And she missed that bed. And her friends. Or maybe Chy's bed – but that seemed forward. Improper. They'd lain together as a man and a woman, and that had been good. But to live under the same roof as a man – that was something else. Her family would be shocked.
Of course at the moment she was sleeping under the stars with no warm clothing, forced to drink from streams and eat whatever she could forage. Almost any bed would be better than that. She really needed to find somewhere to stay. And some warm clothes to buy. And of course, the ivory to pay for those things. Mostly though, she needed to find a portal out of this world.
Just one portal! That was all she needed. One portal would take her to another. And then that would take her to others further away again. In time she would be somewhere else entirely. Somewhere safe on another world. And not eating berries! But first she had to find that one portal. And maybe curse herself a little bit for never having learned how to craft a normal portal! It was so basic. But she'd never learned it – because what use did a guardian have for such a spell?! They had the grand portal! Damn she was stupid!
It was time to go though. She had rested long enough. So she stood up, put the volcano at her back, and set off.
A heartbeat later she stopped as a woman unexpectedly appeared in front of her. A pale skinned shade. And then she braced herself as she knew what the woman wanted. To battle her to the end.
“Stay back,” Elodie yelled at the shade, trying to sound threatening even though she was nothing but terrified. “I'm far too powerful for you!”
“Are you?” The shade stared at her in what looked like confusion. “Don't I know you?”
“Do you?” That seemed wrong to Elodie. “I don't know any of your kind, shade. Save for those locked away.”
“But I recognise your face.” The shade started turning her head from side to side, but keeping her eyes directly on Elodie, trying to get a clearer view. “I know it, as if I have seen it every day. And yet I don't recognise it.”
“That seems unlikely,” Elodie replied. But at least it didn't seem that the woman was about to attack her.
“It's as if it was in a dream. Or maybe this is a dream.”
“Really?” Elodie began to relax. Whoever this shade was, she seemed more lost and confused than dangerous. The sort that needed help. “Were you injured in the eruption?” Elodie asked. “Did you take a blow to the head? What's your name?”
&nbs
p; “I don't know that either. I keep looking for it. I've wandered for years, or maybe only hours, looking for it. And always it is there, just ahead of me. But I can never reach it. It keeps slipping away.”
“I see.” But Elodie didn't really see anything at all save that the woman was confused. Like a very old woman waking to a new day too slowly. Was she one of the shades that had been freed? And then got lost somehow? “But what do you know?”
“Bits and pieces. Voices in the dark. People screaming as I spoke to them. Nightmares. An eternity of dark dreams and night terrors. Pain and fear.”
Elodie believed the woman. But she didn't understand anything she was saying. Nor how the woman knew her. But it didn't seem that she was a shade. Or at least she wasn't thinking the way they did. But then they weren't thinking for the most part any more. Mostly from what she'd seen, they stood around staring vacantly, waiting for people to tell them what to do. Unless of course they hadn't been freed from the enchantment holding them. But time moved on, she guessed. Maybe the woman was one who had passed through that phase and started to wake up after however many years she had been bound by the shade enchantment. That could be why she was confused. Twenty, thirty, forty years under a spell, thinking only the thoughts she had been instructed to think. That would leave anyone confused.
“Do you remember their names?” Maybe if she knew who the woman dreamed of it would tell her something of who she was.
“No.” The shade shook her head. “There were so many.”
“Any markings on you? Tattoos?” She knew there would be nothing in her clothes to help, because what remained of them was little more than a simple dress that hung down straight from one shoulder. It had no pockets. It didn't even have a belt. It was just a one piece sack of linen. Probably white linen, at least at first. Now it was covered in soot and dirt.
“Yes!” The woman stared at her in surprise. Then she reached for the single stretch of material holding her garment over her shoulder and pushed it off letting it fall to the ground so that she stood there, naked in front of Elodie. “This!” She pointed at a mark on her front just above her collar bone.
“Praise be!” Elodie stared at the marking on the shade's pale skin, and understood at least some of it. Because she knew who she was. Just as she knew the woman couldn't possibly be her. Because she didn't exist. Or she was dead.
“You know me?” the woman asked, hope in her unexpectedly wide eyes. And maybe fear too.
“Yes.” Elodie nodded and then because she felt weak with shock, went back to the fallen tree and sat down. “I know you,” she whispered. “I know your mark.”
“Then?”
“You bear the mark of the glass unicorn prancing. You are Light. The throne.” Elodie didn't want to say it because she knew it couldn't be true. It wasn't possible. But she had seen that same marking, first on the base of the throne itself, then on the shoulder of the perfect elf who had wandered around the Temple. And now it was on the shoulder of a shade. Except that the woman wasn't a shade. She looked like one of them. But only because the shades had been reshaped somehow into the images of the ancients who had come before them. This woman, this confused, even frightened, ageing woman was the ancient who had somehow become the throne.
“Light? Throne?” The woman stared at her looking even more confused than before. “I don't know those names. But I know you.”
“Yes. I was your … guardian. The last guardian. Elodie.”
“Guardian? Elodie?” The woman rolled the word around on her tongue a little, trying it out. “I know that name.”
“Yes. I brought worshippers to you – when you were a stone statue. They sat in your embrace and were shown the magic of the Heartfire. The shape of the magic of light.” Elodie took a deep breath. “Does any of that sound familiar?”
“They learned from me?” Light stared at her intently, something seeming to register behind her eyes.
“I remember children.”
“These were not children. Mostly. They were worshippers of all ages. Many were old. Men and women both.”
“No,” the ancient corrected her. “I remember children, sitting at their tables, struggling to learn this new magic. I remember the sun in the courtyard as I taught them. The hardness of the stones under my feet. I remember their smiles. Their hands raised in the air.”
Of course she did! She remembered the time from before she had become a throne. Before she had somehow been turned into stone. A time when she had been a teacher. And that made complete sense to Elodie. Because who else but a teacher would you turn to stone so that they could teach their magic for thousands of more years?
“But where are they now? Those children?”
“You should dress,” Elodie told her. “And then sit down and we will light a fire and talk.” But even as the woman did as she said, Elodie found herself wondering how she was supposed to tell her that what she remembered was thousands of years old. Tens of thousands of years. What would that news do to her?
And what of the others? The eleven other thrones. Were they now flesh and blood ancients, wandering the endless forest in a daze, not knowing what had happened to them? Had they escaped the volcano?
“You will tell me of the children?”
“I will tell you all I can,” Elodie replied. “But it may be hard to hear. It may be very hard.” And yet it was what she had to do. She was the last Guardian. This was her duty.
Chapter Fifty
Stonely had changed – again. That was Elodie's first thought as she walked off the portal with her new friends. It had grown, and much of what had been destroyed had been rebuilt. But not exactly as it had been. This was no longer a human town. It was a wizard's town.
Her next thought of course was for her companions, all of whom were standing there with her, looking around in wonder, not really understanding what they were seeing. It would only be a matter of time she guessed, before they started asking questions. They were curious, naturally enough. Who wouldn't be after ten thousand years spent somehow bound into stone? But she kept thinking that they were curious about the wrong things.
“So many strange people.” Strength was the first to begin as he looked around in wonder. “How can there be so many strange people?”
“I told you, this is not the world you left,” Elodie explained once more. “Tens of thousands of years have passed. The people have changed. Here and now it is you that are the strange ones.”
Unfortunately she doubted her words would sink in. Tomorrow he would undoubtedly ask the same questions once more. She wasn't sure if that was merely the effects of age, of tens of thousands of years being asleep if that was what he had been, or of the strange transformation that these twelve had undergone.
But at least there were twelve of them. They were together. She didn't know how they'd escaped the Temple as it had been destroyed. But at least they had come to her when she had called them. It had taken days, she had had to use all her magic to summon them, but one by one they had walked into her little camp in the endless forest while in the distance the volcano had continued to rumble and burn.
And they were improving. Slowly. They weren't quite as confused as they had been at the start. They remembered a little of what she'd told them. And they didn't look quite so lost and confused all the time. Something had started going right as they'd wandered Staal or Prima.
Now of course the wandering through the forest was over. After many more days spent wandering through the trees, and more nights spent explaining the same things over and over again, they had found a village and a portal, not to mention several thousand very worried ogres who believed they were shades. There had had to be a lot more explaining done after that. A lot of calming of fractured nerves.
Thankfully after she had told the ogres everything and in particular one thing – that they just wanted to leave – an arrangement had been reached. They would leave!
Now, after several more trips through portals, they were here – and no
one seemed to care. But why would they, she asked herself? This was Stonely. The place where it seemed all portals led to. And there were hundreds of others here who looked exactly the same as them. Admittedly they were shades, people who had been reshaped into the images of the ancients, while the thrones were actual ancients, but no one cared. The former shades were quiet. Largely forgotten.
“Mira would like it here,” Dimension announced. “So much strangeness. Colour and shape. So many people. She likes the new.”
Who Mira was of course, Elodie had no idea. The thrones usually talked about people and places they had known thousands of years ago. But a lot of what they said made little sense. And worse what they said made little sense even to them. They were some sort of broken memories that came to them in pieces whenever they saw or heard something that reminded them of their past. Not memories so much as echoes of them.
