The Severed Realm

by Michael G. Manning

  The elder’s will seeped through my shield and was still strong enough to make my knees feel like jelly. I couldn’t even respond with my usual witty repartee. Any effort to communicate would have opened me up even further to its oppressive domination.

  You must be examined. The words echoed through my mind, making it even more difficult to think. But I didn’t need to think much; it wasn’t my first time in such a situation. Marshalling my concentration, I prepared to seek the mind of stone.

  A flash of pain struck as something pierced the soles of my feet. Horrified, I discovered thin white, root-like tendrils had gone through the skin and were winding their way up my legs, on the inside.

  The fruit has matured. Relax child. Together we may yet save this world.

  My defense collapsed. With direct contact the elder had bypassed every defense I possessed, and I could barely think beyond its powerful compulsion. Its roots were growing upward, lacing and twining through my legs and into my torso. In short order, they would reach my brain and I had little doubt what would happen then.

  “You’re killing me,” I gasped.

  Tyrion’s power, the Illeniel gift, and Thillmarius’ corruption have met and joined in you, child. Only through this sacrifice may the world be saved. Rejoice at the honor you have received.

  Abandoning my efforts to resist, I opened my mind and reached out for the earth, seeking the solace of stone. My pain faded to insignificance and my self grew. Calling out, I drew the bedrock up, severing the roots beneath us and surrounding Rose and me in a massive stone dome.

  But the elder wasn’t giving up easily. With roots that seemed harder than iron, it bored into the stone, tearing and crushing its way toward us. Tyrion’s power will not suffice, child. Only Thillmarius’ corruption can save us, said the elder.

  I needed more, but if I went too far I might lose myself, or worse, kill Rose through sheer negligence. I need space, I realized. So I began walking forward, toward the tree, letting my flesh and blood body pass through the shell that protected us.

  Beneath the mountains were rivers of fire, I would call them if necessary.

  Still you fail, warned the elder. Burn us and the world dies, for I am Kion.

  Kion? That name gave me pause, for it was the Erollith word for ‘gate.’ The Dark Gods had been called the kionthara, or gatekeepers.

  Now you begin to see, said the elder in my mind. Kill me and the world will be shattered. Nothing will survive. You bear the corrupted fruit. Give it to me that I might fulfill the destiny of ages. Only through your death will the world be saved.

  I needed to think, and that was getting difficult, so I contracted, withdrawing from the deeper parts of the earth, shrinking until I was just a man—and a small amount more, balancing myself between being human and the mind of the stone. The elder’s roots found me again and began boring into my flesh, but my mind was beyond its reach. I was a thing of pure reason and little emotion.

  Several things clicked together in my mind. If this elder was the gate, then it might well be the lynchpin that controlled the dimensional boundary that divided the world into a multitude of pieces. Destroying Kion might cause the entire thing to unravel, which would very probably lead to a catastrophe. The elder’s warning might not be hyperbole.

  The corruption he kept referencing was probably the taint of the void, that lingering trace of the shiggreth I had never quite been able to erase. For some reason the elder wanted it, and consuming me seemed to be its preferred method of attaining it.

  Very well, I thought. You want the void, I’ll give it to you, but I’ll do the devouring. My physical body was mostly gone now—it had become a confusing collection of meat, bones, and vines—but somehow, the heart was still beating.

  So I turned my attention to the song of death and let my heart stop. As I felt the cold touch of the void, my mind became more human, oddly enough. Death is a part of life, a thing that lies at the end of every existence. It was no stranger. The mind of the stone faded, and my anger returned, bitter and cruel.

  Yes! cried the elder. Feed it. Give us the fruit of corruption.

  I’ve always been a people pleaser, but today I decided to branch out and become a tree pleaser. I’ll be happy to share, I announced mentally. But not as you expect.

  Latching onto the roots of the elder, which were now throughout my body, I began to drink in its life, consuming it like a man dying of thirst.

  In the past, I had thought devouring a human life to be the ultimate pleasure. Just the memory of it had given me nightmares. Horrifying dreams that I feared and simultaneously craved. Devouring a She’Har elder was much more satisfying.

  Kion struggled, first attempting to withdraw its roots and then screaming into my mind, begging me to stop. Do not! If you do this, the woman dies!

  The elder didn’t understand my mindset, though. In the void, other people weren’t much of a moral concern for me. In fact, if I’d had some time to think about it, I would probably have given Rose a new name, ‘dessert.’ At that moment I cared about very little, other than drowning myself in the elder’s life.

  But my reason remained, and I knew I didn’t really want her death, though it seemed illogical to me at that moment. Let us leave, or I will kill both of you, I warned.

  I felt the elder’s surrender, but it took a significant effort of personal discipline to stop feeding on it. Perhaps the only reason I managed it was that I had taken in an enormous quantity of its aythar already. The void was always hungry, but just then, I wasn’t truly ravenous. Somehow, I stopped.

  I studied Kion with my magesight and something darker—the lifesense that became so vivid whenever I allowed the void to have its way with me. The Illeniel elder was badly weakened. If I had gone on much longer, it would have died, whether I stopped or not. The aythar that had thrummed so powerfully around it before now vibrated feebly.

  By contrast, I felt positively wonderful. The power singing in my veins was so strong that I had no doubt that if I surrendered the void and attempted to return to my old human self I would probably burn up in a flash of aythar, leaving my body little more than a pile of ash. Good thing I don’t need to be human, I thought to myself. “Why be human, when you can be a god?” I muttered with a wicked smile on my face.

  You have doomed us all, said the elder. The machines are coming.

  “You doomed yourself, Kion,” I said. “You should never have touched me.” Then I remembered Rose. With a thought, I cracked open the stone dome surrounding her. Some part of me wanted to go to her, but I didn’t dare get too close. With as much power as I currently had, I could probably avoid draining her life, but I feared the slightest touch might incinerate her.

  I was a being of light and fire intertwined with a hunger for more. No matter which way I used my power, to give or take, it would destroy her. Turning my gaze to the massive tree, I commanded, “Take care of her. See that she is healthy and whole, fed and maintained. I will return. If she is not sound of mind and body, I will finish what I have begun with you.”

  Then I launched myself into the air.

  Where are you going? asked Kion weakly.

  To find the machines, I answered. I need something to burn.

  Epilogue

  Matthew was waiting outside the boundary between Lancaster and what he thought of as the ‘real’ world, even though he knew they were one and the same, when he felt something strange. His stomach lurched, and a sensation of vertigo washed over him. The dimensional boundary shivered next to him, and then it started to fade. To his normal eyes, he began to see flashes of both places intermittently, but it wasn’t just the boundary that flashed.

  The ground he stood on was shifting back and forth as well. In principle, it felt a bit like an earthquake, except nothing was moving. Reality was shifting and warping, back and forth. The feeling was so intense that he became nauseated, but be
fore he started to vomit, it stopped. He found himself swaying on his feet even though the ground below him was perfectly stable.

  He studied the boundary again, but the shiver that had passed through it was gone. What was that? he wondered. Is it starting to fail? The bigger question in his mind was what would happen if it did.

  “Reconstructing the original world is one thing,” he said to himself, “but if the boundary collapses all at once…” His mind refused to give him a satisfactory answer, but he knew it would be bad.

  ***

  David Airedale went to bed tired and irritable. Several more of his staff had come down ill over the past few days, leaving his household understaffed, but that wasn’t what bothered him. To be honest, he didn’t know what was bothering him. He just felt out of sorts.

  Normally he preferred to go to bed late, but tonight his fatigue wouldn’t be denied, so he retired early. The few servants he passed all seemed to be yawning, so it wasn’t just him. Then again, they were all lazy—he knew that. It was the bane of the nobility, being forced to manage the activities of the vulgar and lazy common class.

  For himself, though, he was bone tired. Perhaps I’ve been working too hard, he thought as he entered his bedroom.

  A glance told him that Marcella, his wife, was already fast asleep, which was something of a relief. He didn’t have the energy for her mindless chatter. Wearily, he struggled out of his clothes and dropped into the bed beside her. He dragged the heavy blankets over himself and was asleep almost before his eyes had closed.

  When he awoke, it wasn’t morning. There was no light coming from the expensive windows that Marcella had insisted upon. The glass was black, with no hint of sunshine. I was so tired I forgot to pull the curtains, he thought groggily. That would have been annoying. Their bedroom windows faced east, and given their late habits, the morning sunshine was rarely welcome.

  I should close the curtains, he decided.

  Sitting up proved to be a monumental chore, however, so he settled for propping himself up against the headboard. “Marcella,” he said, his tongue strangely numb. “Wake up.”

  His wife didn’t move, though, so after a few more repeated verbal attempts, he shook her shoulder with one hand. Her body was limp and unresponsive. “How much did you drink?” he mumbled.

  “Not too much, Lord Airedale, never fear,” came a woman’s voice close to his ear.

  He jerked his head around in alarm, or rather, he tried to—everything seemed to happen slower than it should. There was a figure sitting unnoticed at his bedside, an old woman who appeared to have borrowed his wife’s dressing table stool. She gave him a friendly smile as their eyes met. “Who are you?” he asked, wishing he could put the proper emphasis in his voice. He was too numb to vent the outrage he felt.

  “An old friend,” she answered. “You’ll understand soon enough.” Leaning forward, the crone lifted a damp cloth and wiped something from his lips and chin. Then she stood and went to the hearth, where she tossed the cloth into the fire.

  As he watched, he realized two things. One, someone had put extra wood on the fire; otherwise it would have been embers already, for he hadn’t added any when he came to bed. Second, the old woman wore a pair of heavy leather work gloves. After burning the cloth, she removed her gloves and added those to the fire as well, taking time to arrange them so they would burn completely.

  “I don’t know who you are, but I’m about to call for a guard,” said Airedale. “You’ll be whipped for entering my bedroom unannounced.”

  The old woman laughed. “Go ahead. They are about as likely to appear as your wife is to wake up. Everyone is sleeping very soundly tonight, my dear Count.”

  Not to be cowed, he did, yelling as loudly as he could. David Airedale was a man of voluminous lungs, and though he didn’t quite have the strength of voice he normally possessed, he was still quite loud. Everyone in the house would show up in a moment.

  But they didn’t. After his voice died away, the halls were ominously silent. The old woman returned to her seat by the bedside, then drew on a second pair of gloves. They were a closer-fitting pair of doehide gloves more suitable for a lady than this woman.

  Then he recognized her. It was the new laundress they had hired a week ago. “I know you!” he exclaimed. “Where did you steal those gloves?”

  The old woman smiled again, then held up her hand to admire the fine leather. “Oh, I’ve had these for years and years. My late-husband had them made for me. I wouldn’t ordinarily wear them for something like this, but they’re just a precaution.”

  Something about her manner, her lack of fear or respect, and strangely, the gloves, sent a shiver of fear through Count Airedale’s heart. “Who are you? What do you want?” He tried again to rise, but the woman pushed him down again before he was halfway up. He felt as weak as a kitten.

  “An old friend of your father’s,” she replied enigmatically. “He was a customer of mine for a while, though I doubt he mentioned me. Few men brag about their whoring to their sons.”

  “My father’s dead,” protested David, “and he wouldn’t have been interested in an old hag if he were alive.”

  The crone began to cackle. “Oh, I was much younger back then. This was decades before the Queen decided to shorten your departed father’s life.”

  David Airedale’s father had been executed for treason against King James, and he didn’t like to be reminded of it. “Whatever game you’re playing, witch, your insolence will only increase the punishment.”

  The woman reached out and lifted Airedale’s left hand in her own, then examined it in the light. He was surprised to see he had a slight tremor. “It won’t be much longer now,” she remarked. “The drug is beginning its work.”

  “You poisoned me?” he sputtered, then glanced at his wife. “And Marcella?”

  The hag waved a hand dismissively at Marcella. “She’s only sleeping soundly. She’ll wake up feeling just fine in the morning, unlike you.”

  David Airedale sat up once more and this time she didn’t stop him. Lurching forward, he stumbled out of bed before falling to his knees on the floor. “You’ll be hanged for this,” he said bitterly. “Give me the antidote. I can pay you whatever you want.”

  “Please, call me Elise,” said the woman. “As an old acquaintance of your father’s, we should be on a first-name basis.”

  Staring up at her again, he studied her features, and slowly, understanding began to dawn on him. “Thornbear?”

  “That’s better,” said Elise. “The poison is beginning to wake up your mental faculties, counteracting the soporific I used to get you to bed early. That’s why you have that tremor. Eventually, it will begin to burn.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve been very naughty, David. You should know why,” Elise said mockingly.

  “The rumors?” he mumbled.

  Leaning forward, she patted the top of his head, as though he were a dog. “Good boy. The rumors were bad. I really don’t appreciate people taking advantage of my daughter-in-law’s kind nature. She isn’t crass enough to bring it up herself, but I could tell you hurt her feelings.”

  Desperate, he began to beg, “Please, forgive me. I can fix things for her. You don’t have to do this.”

  “Would you really?” asked Elise with what seemed to be genuine curiosity. Then she stood and went to the dressing table, taking the stool with her. “Come over here and sit down.”

  He tried to stand, but his legs were too unsteady, so he crawled instead, his face burning with humiliation. When he reached the stool, Elise got behind him and putting her hands beneath his arms, she helped him up far enough that he could sit down.

  “There’s a sheet of paper there. Sign it and I’ll consider saving you,” said Elise.

  On the table he could see two pieces of parchment, one atop the other. He started to lift one, but s
he pushed his hand aside. “No, you don’t get to read it. You just sign the bottom one,” she told him. “Then I’ll give you this.” She held up a small glass vial filled with an amber fluid.

  “I’m not signing anything,” he argued.

  “That’s a pity, David,” said Elise Thornbear. “I hoped you would be smarter. You don’t have much longer to decide. In a little while, the tremors will get much worse. You won’t have the option of signing when that happens. You’ll start to feel as though your body has been set on fire, with every nerve raw and aching. Eventually you’ll begin to seize. I imagine it’s very painful, but no one has ever been able to communicate well enough after the seizures start to describe the sensation for me.”

  “I’d rather die,” said Airedale proudly.

  Elise smiled maliciously. “Oh, you won’t die. Not right away, at least. The seizures will go on for hours. If you’re lucky, you’ll die, but there’s a fair chance you could live. You won’t be the same afterward, of course. The poison causes irreversible nerve damage. You’ll be crippled for life.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Did you know that the brain is essentially a giant collection of nerves, David?” Elise informed him. “Not only will you be weak and crippled, but inside, you’ll be a vegetable. You’ll spend your remaining days staring off into space and wondering when they’ll come to clean the feces out of your pants, if you’re capable of thinking even that much.”

  Airedale felt a faint burning sensation in one of his legs. “Give me the antidote!”

  Elise went to a side table and picked up the pen she had laid by there. Dipping it in an open inkwell, she held it up. “Sign it, David. You don’t have long before it’s too late.”

  “Alright! Fine! I will!” he screamed.

  She brought the pen over to him and placed it in his hand. “Make it as neat and legible as you can. I know your signature, David. Try to cheat me and you’ll regret it.” Then she assisted as he got his arm into position.