by Joe Ducie
“I need to think about this,” I said. And talk to Tal.
“Of course, I would hope to see the grove in bloom,” Alexas, the immortal Everlasting, said. A clever not-lie. “But knowing my seed is planted, I could die happy.” He chuckled, a deep rolling barrel of a laugh. “I would speak with you more, Declan Hale, perhaps over ale?”
He held out his hand for the celestial illusion. I gave a weapon capable of annihilating worlds back to one of my greatest enemies somewhat reluctantly.
*~*~*~*
I looked for Tal that night, to speak of Axis and the possibility of growing a cache of celestial illusion. If I could do such a thing, hide it away, then in the future, back in my own time, the war against the Everlasting would be a lot less… uncertain. I could burn them from creation. Kill them all.
I looked for Tal in the markets, sent a messenger to find her, but she was not to be found. Perhaps she had returned to Atlantis for the day, I didn’t know, but I wasn’t worried. We’d spent much of the last three months together here in the eternal bright night of the Atlantean academy, the Vale Celestia. Shared dinners, walked hand in hand, rested and relaxed, though events moved around us ever more swiftly.
I wasn’t off my guard, never that, and I felt the future tugging at me, the petal in my heart urging me to return to my proper time. But the workings of a very cunning plan had taken seed in my mind, a way to leverage ten thousand years of useless time. Above all, I wanted the war with the Everlasting to be swift, brutal, ended. Ten millennia to prepare for that, given what I knew, what I suspected, felt like more than enough. Generous, even.
I could almost glimpse the whole picture, the years I spent fighting the Tome Wars, the inevitability of releasing Lord Oblivion in the ruins of Atlantis, the battles that followed, my death, my resurrection, my son born to Fair Astoria in the ruins of Voraskel on the outskirts of the Tomb of the Sleeping Goddess. On the tip of my tongue, in the back of my mind, I saw the whole convoluted outline, the story from beginning to end. I wasn’t just a character on the page, the Everlasting weren’t just the bad guys, we were more of an orchestra, each playing our parts. What I did in the Tome Wars, the years fighting after, would only come about because of what I did now in the past. I created myself, my enemies.
If I was willing to accept my fate, my warmongering, then I had to own it.
But then the glimpse faded, the orchestra fell silent, I lost the bigger picture and felt stupid for thinking anything I did effected events on such a timeless, universal scale. It was all disorder and madness and sheer dumb luck, wasn’t it? Perhaps the truth, as it so often did, fell somewhere between the certain and the chaos.
I couldn’t find Tal, so I had dinner with pixie-faced Fix instead. My translator for all things I couldn’t enchant or bullshit here in the past. In the four months I had been here, Fix had become more than a colleague—we had become friends. At five feet and change, purple spiky hair and bright blue eyes, pale-faced and always smiling, Fix was a tense coil of busy happiness. I enjoyed being near her, basking in some of her reflected light. Where life had crushed me—and I had taken some crushing—she had flourished.
“Always looking so serious,” Fix said. “Storm clouds following you around, creased lines in your brow, sad old Declan.”
We were in a quaint little tavern, just off the main thoroughfare of markets and on the road to the academy buildings. Warm and cosy and rustic. I pulled a bar stool over to the high table Fix had saved for us and took a seat.
I adopted my most severe frown, deep creases in my surly brow. “You make that dress look good,” I said.
Fix grinned and flicked the skirts of her blue, strapless dress. A black shawl covered her shoulders. “And, surprise, surprise, you’re in that same black shirt and waistcoat combination. Thanks for making an effort. A girl could think you didn’t care.”
“Hey, in the future, this get up of mine is all the rage.” No, it wasn’t, but I was slowly bringing it back.
“No, it isn’t,” Fix said.
I raised my palms in defeat. “You look nice, anyway. Plans tonight?”
She shrugged a delicate shoulder. “Sometimes it’s just nice to dress up and pretend I have a social life, plenty of friends, a dozen invites to parties across the Vale Celestia and Atlantis.”
I chuckled and grabbed a menu. “And you don’t have that?”
“Not tonight. My sister wants to get together and discuss her latest boyfriend.” Fix rolled her eyes. “She’ll be here later, if you’re still around.”
Fix and I chatted the evening away, enjoying food and drink (soda and lime for me, which was enough, these days), and polite conversation. She held my hand across the table a few times, brushed her foot against mine, giving off all the signs that this evening could be far more pleasant, if I wanted. I had to admit, I loved her smile and purple eyes.
Somewhere toward the later hours of that evening, a familiar woman entered the tavern and spied us at our table. I thought, for a moment, she was here for me, but in that I was wrong.
In many things, most things, I was wrong.
Emily Grace—Fair Astoria—put an arm around Fix’s shoulders and gave me a polite, oh so polite, smile. Her eyes danced with laughter.
“Declan,” Fix said, and shattered my happy little world, “this is my sister, Astoria.”
“We’ve met, briefly,” Astoria said. “A few months back. I wanted to talk to the man from the future.”
“He’s pretty tight-lipped about most of that,” Fix said, frowning and wagging her finger at me.
I almost ordered a drink, and tried very hard to keep the shock and surprise from my face. If Emily and Fix were sisters, as she had claimed earlier in the evening and then again to introduce Emily, then Fix… my little pixie-faced Fix, who I thought had quite the crush on me, was another of the Everlasting.
Which made the crush dangerous—deceptive. I had a strong feeling I was messing in matters I didn’t even begin to understand.
But I would understand. I would outlast them. So I ordered another plate of chicken wings and mozzarella sticks, the Atlantean equivalent, and had a late evening snack with two elder gods.
With two lovely women older than the planet beneath our feet.
*~*~*~*
“Which one is she?” I asked. “You’re all here, aren’t you? Every one of the Everlasting. Well, at least three of you.”
Emily swung her bare feet back and forth in the cool waters of the Elm River, a trickling stream near the university buildings, more of a bubbling brook in the forest where we’d taken our walk that morning—though the endless galactic night sky overhead gave the word morning only a passing nod. It was ten o’clock, brunch, and we were bathed in interstellar light. My dinner with Fix, where I had learned the truth, had been the night before.
“In one form or another, yes, my brothers and sisters are all here on True Earth, Declan,” Fair Astoria/Emily said.
Less and less I could discern between the two, less and less I wanted to make the distinction. Emily Grace was Fair Astoria, infinitely ageless and wise. Fair Astoria was Emily Grace, ruthless and kind.
I ran a hand back through my hair and straightened my eye patch. Playing for time, to think my dark thoughts, I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “What is it you all want?”
I feared I knew the answer to that, but better to hear it.
Emily kicked a spray of water droplets at me sideways and said nothing. From where we sat on the edge of a wooden bridge, close enough to embrace, I gazed downstream at the glittering lights and spires of the Vale Celestia.
“You want what you’ve always wanted,” I answered my own question. “Power, dominion over True Earth and by extension, the Story Thread. Every world charted and uncharted in every possible universe under an Everlasting heel.”
“We want to protect those worlds,” Fair Astoria said. She wore a lovely white gown, her shoes held by the heels in one hand. “Don’t you?”
“I
think we’ve different, vastly different, ideas on just what that might look like.”
“What am I in your future, Declan?” Astoria asked. “A friend?” She stroked my cheek. “More than a lover?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“I am… curious.”
I laughed, but the sound of my laughter wasn’t kind. Perhaps I was bitter, more than a little, but what this woman, this fading god, would put me through in years to come and years recently past… Was it fair to blame someone for something they hadn’t done yet? Time travel really needed to come with a handbook on morality.
“We are lovers,” I said, “although I’m not sure when. We are friends, although you killed me once. We are enemies, for a time, as you marry Morpheus Renegade and become his Immortal Queen. The first time we meet, I help you find a copy of a book called The Illusion of Separateness by Simon Van Booy and you genuinely love his words. I own a small bookshop around that time, because I was exiled from the Order of the Knights Infernal for ending a war I’m not certain you didn’t have a hand in starting.”
Astoria’s lips quirked. “Oh, is that all we are?”
I grinned in kind. “You are one of the Nine, one of the fabled Everlasting. Nine monsters, nine elder gods, that sometime between now and ten thousand years from now became so feared and hated by the peoples of the Story Thread that you descend into nightmarish myth. We sing songs about you and your brothers and sisters, sing warnings. We choose to believe you never existed and we forget how to fight you.”
“We cannot be fought,” Astoria said. “We cannot be killed.”
Oh, you’re wrong there, sweet thing. I held you in my arms as you died.
“Knight’s bite repels the blight, my dear. You give us mortals too little credit.” I sighed. “So what are we, Emily, when all’s said and done?”
Dead, I thought. Parents.
“Distant,” I said and waved at the sky. “Like the stars.”
She sighed softly. “You always sound so sad.”
“And you still haven’t answered my question.” I met her eyes, which was a conflict of emotions in and of itself. “Fix. Who is she?”
“My little sister. Ashaya D’levaney, seventh born of the Everlasting.”
I blinked, honestly surprised Emily had given up that information so easily. Perhaps she had lied, but I didn’t think so. I had a sneaking suspicion the Everlasting couldn’t lie. Bend the truth, change the subject, refuse to answer, certainly—but purposeful deceit? No. The idea was a dangerous one, an ass of an assumption, and entire worlds may burn for it, but I had my suspicion nevertheless.
“Ashaya…” Dread Ash. That old, painful children’s rhyme played through my mind:
Starless paths through the Lost Sight
Dread Ash turns cold day to night.
“What do you think of her?” Emily asked, a loaded question if ever I heard one.
I answered honestly. Capable of terrible lies and deceit, yes I was, but Emily deserved more than that. Still plenty of opportunities for us to be enemies before our dalliance and destruction in the future, I know, but in the end she’d die for me and our son, and her dying would be hard.
“I think she’s lovely,” I said. “I admire her… happiness. She inspires me to god awful cheerfulness.” I tossed a small pebble into the Elm. “I haven’t met her in the future, either. She’s new to me and not at all what I imagined.”
“Oh?” Emily’s lips quirked, she raised a delicate eyebrow, auburn hair falling from her shoulder. “What did you imagine?”
“Dread,” I said. “Fear… ice.” A fitting word slithered across my mind. “Scorn.”
Emily leaned against my arm, placed her head on my shoulder. Her hair carried the scent of wildflowers. I tried not to read too much into such easy, absent affection.
*~*~*~*
The months began to pile up in Atlantis and the Vale Celestia—Tal and I, though we never rekindled our intimate relationship, grew ever closer. Something beyond friends, beyond old lovers.
Our students competed in the tests and trials to hold their place at the Vale Celestia, all the high lords were in attendance, parades and crowds, and both our teams passed with flying colours. Tal and I ‘fought’ at the end of it, a duel of our powers against one another. We put on a show, shot off a few fireworks, and called it a draw.
Seven months since arriving in Atlantis, some months of time passing not quite concurrently in the future, as I occasionally checked in on Annie through our connection, and I found I didn’t want to go home. Not yet.
There was an opportunity here. A dark one, fraught with peril, but also purpose.
Three of the Everlasting were here in Atlantis, at least three, possibly more. One of them, Emily, I could almost consider trusting. I thought, perhaps, she was on my side. After all we’d shared, the memories of the future I’d shared with her, she was on my side.
It seemed a waste to, well, waste such an opportunity.
My sole purpose, all I hoped to achieve in my life, focused around overwhelming and annihilating the Everlasting. The so-called elder gods had caused me nothing but grief, hurt, loss. And here they didn’t know me yet, not really. Here in Atlantis I had the advantage.
I didn’t want to leave before I’d made full use of that. What I did here, today and now, could echo into the future… possibly as far as ten thousand years away.
I should have known better.
I don’t get to win without losing.
I stayed in Atlantis. I stayed with Tal.
I doomed us both.
CHAPTER NINE
BAT COUNTRY
(Never let them see you cry)
The meeting with the full council—minus Lord Winter—of the Atlas Lexicon lasted a good hour, during which I said my piece, restated my intentions to proceed with or without their blessing, weathered the arguments, the snide slurs (and the outright insults), and in the end was granted their ‘permission’ to save them from the Everlasting Dread Ash.
“I want Arlon and Caitlin back,” I said. “They’re good soldiers. Whatever you’re paying them, it isn’t enough.”
“They serve at the pleasure of the Lexicon,” Lord Tremaine snapped, a bitter fellow, early fifties, greying black hair, who had slung more than a little bit of mud at me during the meeting.
Chief Librarian Lady Waterwood, perhaps the only one at the table who felt anything but hate for me—and the organisation of cruel Knights Infernal I represented, and the worst of them at that—hushed him quiet and agreed to rouse my allies.
“What is your plan?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know any of you, not really, and the Everlasting can wear… well, any face they want, so I’ll keep that close to my chest for now. But to get us started, I need maps—all the maps of the Lexicon you can provide within a mile of the Vale Crystalis.”
“What are you looking for?” Lord Maerlyn asked. “What do you hope to find?”
“Something buried a long, long time ago.”
“You need to give us more than that,” Tremaine demanded.
“I don’t need to give you a damn thing,” I replied, getting a little tired of the resistance. “You called me, you need my help. Let’s stop jerking each other off and get to work.”
So ended this mighty meeting of the great and powerful.
*~*~*~*
I surveyed the maps surrounding the Atlas Lexicon, matching records to my far from perfect memory. What I was looking for was a needle in a haystack… a haystack that had been buried ten thousand years ago. So much had changed since then, forests had disappeared and towers had sprung up, though it had been just over a week for me—as Dread Ash, my pixie-faced Fix, had been all too eager to remind me when my plan faltered.
I’d get Tal back from her, as I had gotten Tal back from her brother, Lord Oblivion. Or die trying. Seems like everything I did was ‘or die trying’.
“What are you looking for?” Annie asked, lacing up her bo
ots.
We’d been given chance to shower in preparation for what lay ahead. After the food, the rest, and the wash, I felt almost normal. Still a little drained from the power exertion, and the minor headache from the shield, but as close to normal as I could get. Hell, I felt like I had a hangover—without the awesome night of drinking that’s meant to go along with that. It’s a cruel, unfair universe, often ironic in its malice.
“Or is it another of those things you don’t want to say aloud for now?” Annie finished with her boots and stood. She wandered over to the table and cast her pretty eye over the reams of parchment, the atlases, and modern print-outs of the region. With all power to the Lexicon down, this was the best we had.
“Partly,” I said. “We’re definitely being listened in on by someone—the room has basic surveillance enchantments, but I suspect its more benign than an attempt to move against us.”
“So whoever’s listening just heard you say you know they’re listening?”
I nodded. “I suspect Lord Tremaine, but I’m sure he’s got the best interests of the Atlas Lexicon at heart.”
I felt the air in the room change and Annie shivered. “Feel that? The eavesdropping enchantment was just removed.”
“Is that what that was? Felt like a tingle of electricity in the air.”
I tapped the map in front of me, a section of the city to the northwest, where a small forest climbed the foothills of the nearest mountain. A lot had changed in ten thousand years, but nothing so severe as a mountain. That took far more than ten lazy millenniums.
“Here,” I said. “We need to head over to this part of the city.”
Annie frowned and shook her head. “That’s all the way across town… and then some. What? Two miles? Through streets infested with dead and worse?”
