Crimson

by Warren Fahy

  Thirty marmosets huddled in her small room at her feet, shivering and looking up at Neuvia. She heard a strange thunder rising in the depths of the island.

  “The Queen must warn the King,” she heard a familiar voice whisper and looking down she saw the Pearl Snake emerging snow-white from her boot.

  “I knew it! Toy!”

  The marmosets parted as the serpent crossed the floor. Toy climbed Neuvia’s arm and braided himself around her neck as she pulled on her moccasins. Without a moment to waste, she took Gieron’s scepter and leaped onto the ladder.

  The bronze bell tolled frantically as she rode the swaying ladder to the ground and found the beaver waiting for her, holding Pigg’s elk. She reached out a fearless hand and stroked the beaver’s paw, kissing his head, and he spluttered a toothy chortle and waddled through the trembling woods to repair his dam as she jumped onto the elk and urged it slightly. It sprang off through the woods toward the Lightstone Tower.

  She found the main path and flew south down the overgrown avenue as the bells and chimes clamored like a pitched battle overlapping in a menacing drone. Riding radiant through the forest, her ebony hair blown like a storm, Toy at her throat, and black lines of soot inscribing her body, Neuvia held Gieron’s golden scepter high as the Spell of Protection rang clear in her mind. She saw the light at the edge of the forest and spurred the good elk forward, gripping its antlers to keep it steady.

  Before she reached the edge of the woods, she saw Trevin in his red robe already passing over the broken gate of the tower’s stairway on the far side of the greensward.

  The trees and clouds tore open as she emerged on the field.

  The valiant elk did not lose its footing on the quaking earth as the marble statues of Poladoris Martharr toppled from their plinths. She saw Trevin climb the stairway as cracks streaked the white marble around him. Stampeding across the lawn, a contingent of rams threatened to block her from reaching him, and she spurred her leaping mount, betting it all on beating them to the gate.

  A moan rose from the Lightstone Tower as it rippled in the sky over her. The bleating charge of rams sped ahead of her at the finish line and she pulled back, cursing even as a chasm opened in the field and devoured them all in a single swallow. A wall of steam rose between her and Trevin, and the elk threw her on the grass beside the fissure, dashing across the field. As the wall of steam subsided, Neuvia saw Trevin sitting in the middle of the crumbling stairway.

  The blue horizon suddenly climbed higher in the sky around them.

  The waves had changed direction, curling away from the Dimrok now as chunks slid from its shores. The island was sinking!

  Chapter 16

  Checkmate

  Trevin pointed the Scepter at the quavering tower, but the Cronus Star was cold, his power bled pale. He slumped on the steps as the red steam subsided, and then at last he saw her, on the other side of the yawning crack. “It is you!”

  She met his eyes.

  “You were here?” he cried.

  “You never saw me!”

  “Did I see you there?”

  “Yes, my love. Run to the tower and meet me there before it is too late!”

  Another wall of steam vented between them as she raised the scepter of Gieron and finally she incanted the Spell of Protection.

  And it was the very sounds pronounced by her mouth that seemed to set in motion an agreement between light and sky and the quaking earth itself. The diamond seemed to comb these forces with her voice into channels of power that formed a purple lance that touched the tip of the Lightstone Tower, setting it aglow like a giant candle. The high-pitched drone buzzing inside the tower was muffled and made to seem distant, though the ground still rocked all around it. The lavender ray from her scepter shifted then, pouring into the quaking gorge that was opening wider between them.

  Deep into the Dimrok’s roots her nourishing will flowed then, binding, mending, and fusing foundations as it closed intermediary gates Trevin had torn open so that the Dimrok was calmed and brought back from the brink. But the broken piece upon which Trevin sat continued to slide away from her.

  The light in her scepter faded, leaving her spent and faint on the other side of the chasm. She fell to her knees and saw two great waves of seawater roll slowly from either side, smashing together four hundred feet below. A thunder of mist blasted into the sky as, with a gravelly roar, the fragment of the Dimrok fell into the frothing sea.

  “Run!” Neuvia cried. “To the tower!”

  “I will not!” His voice echoed across the gorge. He clung to the cracking marble.

  “You will be safe there!”

  “My love, what kept us apart?”

  “I waited too long!”

  “I deserve to die.”

  “How dare you say it! Go!”

  He jumped down the steps, as if to leap into the abyss before her, and he stumbled, rolling and catching hold on the brink.

  “Go to the tower,” she cried. “Or I shall hate you!”

  He climbed onto the last step. “I betrayed you! And everything!”

  “It’s the fear you began with. Save yourself now!”

  “Alas, I will. But only for you.”

  He turned and lunged over the last steps even as they fell away under his feet, and he hugged the edge of breaking rock, pulling himself onto the marble verandah that encircled the tower. He looked at her one last time and then ran through the doors of the Lightstone Tower, which slammed closed behind him and shimmered with the purple seal of Neuvia’s magic.

  She sat in the grass at the smoking edge of the Dimrok, weeping as dusk fell. Dazed, she watched the waves breach the stoneworks of the tower. Soon, the ocean filled the highest courtyard and closed over the verandah, foaming around the tower itself.

  She watched as the sea overtook the shining spire and finally the red glow of Trevin’s scepter as it spiraled upward. Finally the waves closed over the pinnacle and the long green banner of Ameulis, which waved like a strand of seaweed until it, too, was dragged under.

  The stars raked the sky, and the gold crescent of the First Moon rose before she shook herself from her grief and horror.

  “Toy, what shall I do?” She bowed her head. “I waited too long!”

  “He is safe,” Toy said. “Go home now.”

  “Safe?” She sobbed.

  “You have done well, my lady. Very well. There is one chance left for him now, instead of none.”

  She staggered across the field and into the forest, using no path to the treehouse she had hidden too well from him.

  Clutching the colorless Scepter, he fell onto his bed as the sea engulfed him.

  His mind wandered in a delirium between sleep and wakefulness for hours he did not care to count as the air grew dark and cold around him. When he opened his eyes he could barely make out a dappled blue radiance inside the walls. Was he in Wynder? No. And he dare not go there now. He could not face her there.

  The room was tilted, and only his desk and chair stood upright, moved to the center of the floor. The four windows were shuttered, glowing purple. He stared through the ceiling until his eyes pierced it. A filigree of clouds rode high up in the sky touched by the golden dawn. Then he realized it was not rippling clouds that he was seeing but currents upon the surface of the sea hundreds of feet above him. The Cronus Star turned black and the Scepter turned so cold it burned his hand. He dropped it on the thick silken carpet by his bed.

  By degrees, he became aware that someone else was present with him in his chamber.

  He sat up as he noticed a hulking, umber ghost sitting in the chair by his desk. Grinning with seven mouths, it glared at Trevin with 30 eyes. All seven mouths opened, then, and all its eyes closed as seven voices rumbled. “I am Drewgor.”

  Trevin felt his heart freeze.

  The phantom played with six black nipples on his crimson chest with four nine-fingered hands. “I am the Khalwairn General of Nekkros, Drewgor Enalis Akiol, slayer of Elwyn, slayer
of your mother Conilair when she bore you into this world, and slayer of your doltish father Selwyn who spent his days gawking at the morrows, and even the slayer of your bastard brother whom you will never know. And when you are gone, your grandfather’s curse shall finally be lifted, and I shall be free. For when Elwyn’s bloodline runs dry, the lock on the gates of Hala will crack—and I shall return. You never solved your riddle, did you, young king?” Drewgor’s mouths grinned and smirked with seven versions of contempt.

  Trevin found he could not form a single word with his panting white breath.

  “I called to you in the Serrid Strait,” the demon mentioned. “Do you remember? I surprised you, hiding in the diamond crown of an ancient Winteg. I would have had you then, for you would have found the crown and tried it on. But the Gairanor intervened, alas, and sent a wave to take you away, and I followed, filling your sail all the way to the Dimrok. I tricked the Gairanor into thinking I was the ghost of a Winteg king. I was the wind that tore Selwyn’s stubborn grip from Hala that night. But he had a few words for you at the end. That riddle he left you—you never found its answer.”

  Trevin stared, his mind and senses encased now in a glacier of horror.

  “What was the thing closest to Trevin’s heart?” Drewgor Enalis Akiol mused, speaking with one mouth after another. Then he chuckled with all seven mouths. “Do you know the answer now, sad king?”

  Trevin did not know. He dreaded the answer.

  “Have you thought, perhaps, that it was your vainglory, young Gheldron?” Drewgor said. “Your dearest love of power? For it was your insatiable lust for stones of sorcery, after all, that troubled your own teachers. And it was your mindless lust for magic, surely, that enticed you to your destruction. You gave up all else quite readily to pursue your violent acts of sorcery as soon as your lustful hand grasped the Cronus Star.”

  Trevin bowed his head at the charges, persuaded readily by his damnation.

  “Yes,” Drewgor laughed softly with a different mouth. “Such honesty befits a Gheldron. But perhaps, O King, I am wrong? Surely, it was not lust for power but love for your queen that kept you here, always fighting to get back to her in Wynder. The Queen was closest to your heart, after all, my romantic fool, and behold what evil you have wrought to reach her! Truly, ’twas she that enticed you to your doom.”

  Trevin trembled, undone by the demon’s reason.

  “Or was it for your love of Ameulis that you banished yourself, good King, for fear that you might bring harm to that fair realm?” Drewgor suggested, with yet another mouth that was equally persuasive.

  Trevin nodded at each of his verdicts, for all seemed just.

  Drewgor howled in glee with all seven mouths. “Or was it, in the end, your love of Wynder, dear king? For surely you sacrificed Hala to earn your precious moments in that dream-world and now, behold: here are the wages of that trade!”

  Trevin felt a helplessness he had never imagined with the power of the stars in his veins, for this phantom was invincibly confident as he tinkered with his heart like a child’s plaything. “Demon, are you playing a game?” he whispered.

  Drewgor flashed 199 ruby fangs as he erupted in a chorus of laughter. “Your conceit is complete. Innocence itself! But have you not ever thought, righteous king, that your dearest love and accursed nature is the secret that you fear most of all? Perhaps your deepest love is of evil? Wasn’t it your lust to harm this Hala World with magical violence that you placed above all else? Behold the horror your evil has hatched! Look around you now at what you have wrought, O wretched king!”

  Trevin was pale as the dead before the glistening ghost who peeled his flesh with scornful omniscience, and he bowed his head in shame before him.

  Drewgor clapped his four broad hands once in triumph. His eyes narrowed. “Vain fool,” his voices purred like a pride of lions. “’Twas not Ameulis nor Wynder nor Neuvia nor power nor evil itself that were dearest to you, my poor little Gheldron,” he sneered. “For I had only to cast a single aspersion on your vainglorious soul, one stain upon a stone, and your closest love, your consuming love, your crowning love of goodness, proud King, made you give up all and everything, including yourself! Only one who loves goodness above all else would worry over sin so greatly as to sentence himself to a life in exile away from all that he loves for fear that he might harm the world! An evil man would not care—indeed, he would require his victims! I had merely to hint what harm you might cause, in any direction that you turned, and you closed the trap upon yourself! You held onto your moral pride lest it be spotted with any crime, whilst the walls grew taller around your freedom, your love, your kingdom, and your own life, O pathetic king! You gave even your life lest you bruise your precious virtue!” Drewgor leaned forward in his chair. “And you gave the world to me!”

  “You are evil,” Trevin whispered.

  Drewgor laughed with all his mouths.

  “You are evil…” Trevin marveled as the words fell into place, illuminating everything.

  “Indeed, my Hala child, that is the very power that I have over this world. Whilst the good wonder, doubting their own hearts, I reach in, take all, and laugh in their amazed faces as I demand more, and point the finger of blame at them, which they all too readily accept.” Drewgor regarded him with generous pity.

  As the revelation flooded through him, Trevin repeated with renewing confidence, “You are evil!”

  All the mouths on Drewgor’s face frowned at his stupidity. “Hala is not my home,” Drewgor said as if to a child, feeling grand in his moment of triumph over his dreadfully outmatched prey. “The largeness of my dreams is quite impossible here. But I will not obey men’s petty rules or nature’s stingy laws. I require men’s sacrifice to make up the difference between my desire and Hala’s shortcomings. The notion of morality might be your greatest strength, but it is surely your greatest weakness. This conscience you value so much is a beast that is easily burdened.”

  Trevin saw Drewgor as a new light seemed to shine upon his mind. “How long can you live by destroying what you depend on, Demon?” he asked.

  “I am the predator, cleverer, faster, stronger,” said Drewgor. “You are my prey. Somewhere men are always creating more to plunder and more necks to bite.”

  “But they are more than you,” said Trevin, meeting his many eyes now. “They do not need you. But you need them.”

  “So?”

  “You feed on their virtue. Without it there would be nothing to steal, except men’s meat and bones, and that would not get you far. Without their virtue, you are nothing. Yet you are their greatest enemy.”

  Drewgor blinked twice with his many eyes. “So?”

  Trevin smiled and his eyes blazed as he saw clearly for the first time. “You must live in terror, dull demon. You are the curse of all that gives you purpose, the doom of all that gives you hope. To survive you must do what was more dreadful to me than death. You are less than those you prey upon, for without them you would perish.”

  Some of Drewgor’s mouths smiled and some yawned. “A sharp tongue. And a philosophic mind. Good brains that I shall no doubt find useful when you die and they are mine. Then your dear Ameulis, that you are so afraid to damage, will see a new king. And where you hesitated, young Gheldron, I will seek out ways to cause it agony. For I have no doubts about my soul. I am as pure as you are weakened by your doubts.”

  As Trevin listened to the demon’s mouths, an unexpected peace was settling over his heart, an abiding sense of his power that was without shadow now, like the sun. For he realized that goodness must, in the end, overcome this villain’s victory, even if his own life was lost. And it made him strong to know that he would die soon. It made him, finally, fearless. “Hide, now, inside a doorway, old ghost,” Trevin said, waving his hand as though Drewgor was so much smoke. “Lest you be seen by the watching Gairanor. Shoo! For they will see you soon. And that will not suit your purposes, I wager.” Trevin said.

  Drewgor bared his ruby teeth
in livid wrath with all of his mouths. “They cannot see me in the Cronus Star!” he snarled.

  Trevin nodded. “Much may be said of evil’s strengths, its sure strokes, its single mind and simple strength. But one thing is certain: it has no future that is not full of horrors, all of its own making.”

  “Your future has arrived, Cirilen.”

  “Good lives on in ways evil can’t destroy.”

  “That is more false than you know. And pain is far less punishment than you believe.”

  “And pleasure far less reward, no doubt? You have squandered half of everything you could be.”

  “The good half?” Drewgor asked.

  “The future.”

  “I will take the present.”

  “The good is truth; you cannot escape it.”

  “The truth is what I make it until I stop.”

  “Until it stops you.” Trevin smiled.

  “It won’t matter, then.”

  “All is against you.”

  “I am against all.”

  “Is it anger, then, Demon? What grievous pain has the world done you?”

  “You’d vest me with such doubts?” Drewgor lashed Trevin with laughter. “Well, my dear King! I’m afraid I cannot wait for the Gairanor to spy me through this wall of sea. It is time I retire to the Cronus Star to await your death in safety. But know this: while your corpse is fresh, I will take it for my own, and I will walk the earth as you. You see, that was the purpose of my plan. I needed a Hala body and Elwyn’s curse ended. You gave me both.”

  Trevin eyed Drewgor inquisitively. “The Cronus Star was a fine fortress to hide in all these years?”

  “Indeed, it has suited my needs,” Drewgor nodded, studying him out of the corner of his many eyes now.

  “Where did you hide inside the stone? I never saw you there,” Trevin asked. “The chair was always empty when I passed.”