Lancelot unwrapped the box. The ribbon fell away as he pulled the bow, drifting featherlike to the ground. The black on black of ribbon on earth was strangely beautiful, a stark vision of the future that held an appeal that was disconcertingly strong. It would be so easy to give up, he thought. It will be so hard to keep going.
Then, as if in answer, he heard a voice speak in his mind. “But you must continue. You must fight. You must win.” And Billy knew that he was hearing, for the first time, his father’s voice. The voice of Arthur, calling to him through time, from whatever place he was.
I am Billy, he thought in reply. I am the Messenger, I am the Seeker. And I will come for you, Father.
Billy didn’t hear anything further, but got the sense that Arthur was satisfied.
Lancelot was looking at Billy as though requesting permission to continue. Billy nodded to him.
Lancelot drew back the top of the box.
Billy gasped.
“Who is it?” said Lancelot after a moment of looking into the small box.
Billy couldn’t speak. He heard footsteps and saw that his mother, Mrs. Russet, and Tempus had drawn close. Mrs. Russet and Tempus supported Fulgora between them and it looked like the Red Lady had only just managed to rouse herself to semi-consciousness. Still, she looked into the box with the rest of them.
And screamed.
Her scream went on forever, it seemed, an eternity in which she shouted all her pain and loss at the sky.
The sky said nothing back.
Tempus managed to pull her away after a while. She was sobbing – something that Billy never thought he would live to see.
“Is that what I think it is, Mr. Jones?” asked Mrs. Russet.
Billy nodded. “It’s Vester’s hand.” He gulped.
“But it’s… it’s moving,” she said. “How can that be? We were told that he was… that Eva….” She couldn’t finish.
“I don’t think she was lying,” said Billy. “At least, not intentionally. She thought she had killed him. But she has never really been in charge. It’s been Mordrecai all the time. Probably he was behind the rise of Wolfen, as well, each time trying to push the Powers at each other.”
“For what?” she asked. “Why would he try to get the Powers to fight?”
“Not to fight,” said Lancelot. He stood up and took a deep breath. “To annihilate each other. Mordrecai is the truest servant of Death, and his goal has been nothing less than the destruction of all life so that he can reign over the dead forever.”
“So Vester, he’s not dead?” said Mrs. Russet. Fulgora looked up as she said that, hope shining in her eyes.
Billy hated to say what he did, but he couldn’t string the Red Lady along. “Not dead. But not alive, either.” He saw that she didn’t understand, so he added, “If anyone could stop someone from dying, if anyone could find some twisted way to keep Death itself at bay, yet at once to forbid Life to return, it would be Mordrecai.”
Mrs. Russet shuddered. “So Vester’s doomed to just suffer for eternity, pulled apart and permanently in agony? He can’t even die?”
Billy shook his head. “Not unless I return the White King’s arms and armor,” he said.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
Billy looked away from the package and its grisly contents. “What I must,” he whispered.
EPILOGUE
Billy appeared with Mrs. Russet on the street where his family had lived. It was changed. The sky, even in the short time it had been since the Greens had been killed, had taken on a sooty tone, like there was a forest fire covering most of the earth.
People were on the street. They walked like survivors of a bombing attack, like shell-shocked victims of war. And that, he supposed, was what they were. People everywhere had seen the oceans rise in vast walls that threatened to flood the earth. They had seen the plants wilt and die and disappear in the course of only hours. They had felt the earth writhe and the sky burn as Billy clashed with Mordrecai on the far-off Powers Island.
“There’s no hiding the world of the Powers now,” he said.
“No,” agreed Mrs. Russet. She was silent for a time, then asked, “What’s happened to you?”
Billy frowned, trying to think of the best way to explain it. “Remember the first time you saw me Glimmer?” he said.
“Taking the test in school,” she answered with a nod. “How could I forget? But it was a strange kind of Glimmer.”
“Yes,” he said. “Like my father, I have it in me to control the Elements – all of them.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“For the same reason you saw me Glimmer strangely. When my father first saw Mordrecai’s intentions, and realized that he not only wanted to take my father’s throne – which meant killing me – but to destroy all life, he wanted to protect me and my mother, and also to send us to where we could prepare to fight Mordrecai when the time was right. So he sent us forward in time, with Merlin’s help. And he cloaked me in a dampening spell, which would last until I needed to stand at his side in final battle.” He smiled at her. “You saw the beginnings of that spell’s end. And with its end, came not only power, but knowledge. My father sent me forward in time, but did not send me without the knowledge I would need. I could answer the riddles that had been prepared for certain of the items of Pprophecy, and Blue let me take the shield for Lancelot’s sake.”
Mrs. Russet nodded, “The Lady of Shalott was in love with Lancelot,” she said.
“Yes. She sacrificed much to watch the shield. As did Taliesin – Serba – and my mother and Pellinore.”
“He’s dead,” said Mrs. Russet. “Pellinore.”
It wasn’t a question, but Billy nodded anyway. “Yes. The gift of Life, to be at its fullest, must be imparted in the shadow of Death. So Mordrecai, in causing all this destruction, actually helped forge the armor I wear, the armor I am.”
“And now?” Mrs. Russet asked, looking at the silent people who moved listlessly around them.
“Now we enter the final chapter,” he said.
“Here?”
“No,” he answered.
“Then what are we doing here?” she asked.
“In a moment,” he said. “I have to apologize first.”
“For what?”
“Remember when I rescued you?” he said. “From the Dread? From the library in your memory?” She nodded. Silent. He had pulled her out of her worst memories, and in so doing had broken the Dread’s hold over her. It had not been pleasant for either of them. “And you remember the book, the bound book that you couldn’t read?” Another nod. Billy took a breath. “The memory bound in that book… it was of me. I could not be completely hid from everyone. From most people, yes, but not from the keepers of the history of the Powers, not from the people who could read my life in the Book of the Earth.”
“Billy, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that Arthur is the one who locked that part of your mind. Arthur reached through time into the mind of every Brown Councilor who succeeded to the Throne of Earth and changed it so that it would not be able to perceive me as I was… until the time was right. Until Mordrecai came forth and the stage was set for Arthur’s return. That was why you knew who Serba was when he faced us, but soon after that you lost every memory of his existence: Arthur did not want anyone to know of the existence of his fellows, his guardians of the weapons.”
Mrs. Russet paled. Billy could understand why she would feel upset. She was a person of extraordinary intelligence, a person whose mind was her most important quality, her most powerful weapon. To be reached into and simply changed… it was a violation of what she held most dear. “Why tell me this?”
“So you’ll understand what’s at stake,” he said. “This battle isn’t about supremacy between Darksiders and Dawnwalkers. It isn’t about who gets to win, and who suffers defeat. It’s about nothing less than extinction.” He gestured down the street. “I know most of them. They’re th
e people who live near me, who smile at me in the apartment halls, who have been kind to my family.” He looked deep at Mrs. Russet. “And if necessary, I will destroy every single one of them. I will destroy you. I will destroy myself.”
He looked away from Mrs. Russet. She was looking at him like she didn’t know him, or worse like she did know him – but wished she didn’t. “Nothing matters except stopping Mordrecai,” he whispered.
For a long moment he stood there, silent, just watching the ghostly faces of his neighbors stumbling through the blasted street. He suddenly felt the enormity of his undertaking, and wanted to cry. He knew what he was supposed to do, and the knowledge was not respite, but only increased pain.
He felt something on his shoulder. Mrs. Russet’s hand. She patted him, and in the touch he felt strength. Mordrecai controlled Death itself. But he could be beaten.
He had to be beaten.
“But we’re doomed,” said Mrs. Russet.
“Why?” said Billy.
“How can we win if there are no Greens?” she asked. “How can we hope to survive without Life?”
Billy turned to her. His teacher and guide. His friend. “There is one Green left,” he said.
“Who?”
“My mother. The Lady Guenevere.” He looked up. The sun was setting, and in the smoky sky it cast a blood-red glow across the horizon. “There is still Life among us. Just a spark, a tiny ember. But it is something. It is hope.”
He looked back at Mrs. Russet. He smiled. “And hope, sometimes,” he said, “is enough.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michaelbrent Collings is an award-winning screenwriter and novelist. He has written numerous bestselling novels, including Apparition, The Loon, The Haunted, Rising Fears, and the #1 Bestseller RUN. Follow him on Facebook or on Twitter @mbcollings.
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