Chapter 132

Ripples Crossing and Fusing

“I’ve certainly heard more tempting proposals,” I say, with a wry smile. “Why do you think I would be so eager to throw away my power? My… life… my death? To destroy what I have built? What is it to me if the whole world dies? I am content as I am.”

I say it like I mean it, but the panic rises inside of me, at the thought of losing everything. I love my life, the new life I have built for myself. I love the world. As long as everyone bows down to me I am happy as it is. I want the colour, the mess, the chaos, the calm, the life, and the death. I want it all.

Watching me knowingly, as if she can read every feeling from the twitch in my fingers, the Green Lady stirs the pond. The water swirls and changes once more. I lean over and watch as the dead god’s tomb melts away to be replaced… to be replaced by an aerial view of Downing Forest.

It is a scene I have looked down at fondly, many times, from broomstick, or bone lizard or beastie. My forest, my soul’s home, the dark patches radiating out like a hungry star, speckled by the gleam of my ghost and draugr plantations.

“You would not be throwing it away,” says the Green Lady. “You would be leaving it to thrive.

“A garden must be tended to thrive,” I counter.

“But not a forest,” says the Lady. But she nods her head, conceding my point. “Let me rephrase. The time you have is limited. You are created in your god’s image, from his power, both the good and the bad. You have inside you the magic of death, and the parasitic energy of a lich. That energy that does not belong here. It is alien. It is destruction. It is an anathema to life. The darkness is eating you from the inside out. Stay this path, and slowly but surely you will lose everything that makes you you, until nothing is left but a slathering beast desperate for violence held in check only by the Whisperer’s leash. This process has already begun. You know this.”

I do not respond, sitting tight lipped.

“Is that the future you want? It would be long and tortuous.”

“You know it is not, but I do not see how charging off through some godforsaken portal will help me avoid it? I had much better enjoy the time that I have. Actually - that’s a good point - why now? The Whisperer has been this way for…” I pause. My religious history is a little lacking although I have taken more of an interest in the gods since I died. “...a goodly long time. These events of which you speak are ancient history. The cult of the dead goddess is old. Centuries old. So this dire parasite has existed in Einheath for hundreds of years.”

Over by the bridge I see the forgotten elf seer nodding her head.

“I have seen the remains of ancient liches,” I continue. “I have met their minions. Why the sudden urgency?”

The Green Lady’s eyes are intent. She pauses before she answers.

“My brother, the divinity you refer to as the Wavewalker, has had visions of the future. As have I. What we see is bleak. A crossroad approaches. Our feet hover on the threshold. This is Lilian’s providence - a time of change, the time of transformation. But she is not here to guide our steps and so we must judge for ourselves. My family does not agree on a course of action-”

“Of course,” I mumble. The Blind Queen followers have made her animosity plain, but I persist with my question. I will not be manipulated by divine obfustication. “But why the sudden urgency?”

“Liches have always been a threat. The god touched have worked hard to keep their power in check, but you yourself have been particularly efficient in the spread of your power. Then you created Jenkins.”

Jenkins sits up, looking proud. The Green Lady smiles at him.

“Jenkins is an excellent lich, as he was an excellent cat. But he alone has decimated the population of fae living in Downing to create a small army of undead. While I understand your heart created him from a place of love, left unchecked he is a serious menace to the living.”

I tickle the menace’s ears. She has a point but I am not sorry.

“Still-”

“The Whisperer gathers his power indirectly. He is like the queen of a deadly hive, and you are the worker bees, gathering him the sweet dead. In the past he has limited himself to one lich at a time. In the last year he has created four.”

“Four?”

“Four.”

“Myself, Janvier, Jenkins and -?”

“A combined army of god touched defeated another female lich in the Quellec Isles just six months ago. At great cost.”

“No wonder they seem so unfriendly,” I murmur to myself, and then to the Lady. “But why so many liches? I mean Jenkins is a work of art, but still. Janvier was a waste of everything.”

The Green Lady shrugs.

“As to why now? We know not. Perhaps Erisis is finally succumbing to the parasite that consumes him. Perhaps, all these years, he was protecting us in his own way, and he is no longer winning. Or perhaps he suddenly has need of additional power, for reasons unknowable. But I know he must be stopped, and soon, or our realm will become a dead world. Like this one, apart from this tiny oasis.”

We all look up at the gleaming trees.

“It used to look like this? Everywhere? The Whisperer’s desert?”

“Oh yes. The elves’ first home. This desolation is the fate that awaits your beloved Einheath.”

I ponder these words intently.

I search my own feelings. It is not that I do not trust the Green Lady but I have grown to trust my instincts more. This brings me to a contradiction in her tale.

“What you said before - that I would lose myself to the parasite. I remember the coldness. I remember it was, at first, a blessing, shielding me from the pain of my death, and the trauma of the necromancer’s slaughter. I embraced it and I felt nothing. That is the coldness of which you speak?”

“It is.”

“But I feel more myself, more confident, more at ease than when I first woke as a lich. Surely, if what you say is true the reverse would be the case?”

“Your fledgling divinity protects you,” says the Green Lady. “The power you glean from the worship of others is yours and yours alone. But there is nothing to save you if the Whisperer destroys your cult.”

“And he is already suspicious.” I hear the note of worry in my own voice.

“Guard them well,” says the Green Lady. “They are the key to your survival, though their presence might hasten your demise.” She shrugs. “That game is yours to play. I cannot see how it will end. But lose your worshippers and you will revert. And quickly.”

“Alright. I have heard everything you say, but answer me this. Why me? Why do you need me specifically to go through the portal? Why not you? Why not a god? Surely you are more powerful than I?”

“We gods do not dare, not since we have lost two of our number to the monsters that lurk within. The Bright One sent his paladins-”

I snort.

“They did not return. I assume their bones still lie on the plains beyond. The Wavewalker’s blessed disciples fell to the curse. The Blind Queen’s Acolyte’s… Here, let me show you.”

The pool clears once more to show the silver portal. The gods stand before it, in full battle array. I recognise them now. Their faces are those of the mortals, but they now appear as they do in legend. The Bright One is immediately visible by his shining armour, the Blind Queen recognisable by her ruined eyes, and surprisingly short stature. The tattooed Wavewalker drips on the cavern floor. I spot a figure in green, lurking at the back: the Green Lady, a witch braid twisting nervously in her hands as she stares at the door. The Whisperer is gone. Corrupted already.

They are all staring at the door.

No sound crosses over from the pool, we can watch only, but the Bright One clearly shouts out: “Someone comes!”

The gods cluster around the door, each of them hesitating, as if afraid to touch it.

It inches open, and they leap back.

I almost fall into the pool in my eagerness to see who, or what is coming through but there is no one there. The gods are clearly confused. The Bright One yanks the door further open, taking care to keep his distance, and bellowing through it.

For a moment it swings carelessly, on its hinges. There is nothing but empty air.

A trickle of mist escapes, wafting nervously across the cavern floor to pool around the dead god’s corpse. I catch a glimpse of dusty rocks, and an oily pond? It is hard to see beyond. The mist distorts everything. A pale hand appears at the top of the doorframe, grabbing it so hard the nails scrape the metal.

The Wavewalker exclaims, pointing his staff. The gods leap backwards. It is strange to see them anxious, like mortals. Who is coming through the doorway? The Bright One draws his gleaming sword. The Blind Queen is screaming, pointing and clutching her chest.

The pale hand is followed by a long pale arm, scratched and bleeding. Then the face of a young woman dressed in Acolyte's robes appears at the top of the doorframe.

Long, stringy hair hangs down, covering her features. With unnatural arachnid grace she moves quickly. Scuttling, shifting her body up and over the door frame in seconds. She squats on the cavern wall like a grotesque spider, leering down at the open mouthed gods below. A second woman scuttles after her through the portal, then a man. Each of them dressed in acolyte’s robes, each of them moving sideways, limbs splayed.

Their robes hang in disrepair. They are dirty and torn, hair matted. The second woman has a long gash across her scalp. Then I catch a glimpse of their eye sockets. The Acolytes’ eyes are not just the blackened gaping ruin I am used to. These eyes are crawling with tiny wriggling lines. As I watch, squirming tendrils bulge out of their heads in a thrashing mass.

With a silent roar the infected Acolyte's throw themselves at the gods below, fingers extended like claws.

The Bright One knocks one of the women to the ground, and beheads the man with one fell chop of his blade. The head bounces across the floor in a spray of black blood. Ribbons of flesh…and more of the tendrils streak from the severed stump. Twitching and fluttering, as though they are still alive, or perhaps they are creatures all of their own, they start to inch their way across the floor, dragging the dead man’s head with them. With a cry, the Bright One stamps down on it, hard, crushing the head like a melon that explodes in a shower of gore and darkness.

The Bright One turns to the woman but the Wavewalker is there, beating her to a pulp with his staff. The last Acolyte is trapped, vines tethering her ankles, the Blind Queen’s chains binding her arms fast to her side. The Bright One advances, bloody sword dripping with gore, but the Green Lady shakes her head ‘no.’

The sole surviving Acolyte thrashes and screams, but cannot escape her dual bonds. The tendrils stream from her eyes, straining but there is nothing they can do. The gods gather around, and start to talk. The Blind Queen grabs the woman’s chin, speaking sternly. The Acolyte shouts something, her mouth moving rapidly, and then she falls limp.

“Dead,” says the Green Lady, next to me, and I jump, so enthralled was I by the vision.

“What did she say?” I ask, eagerly. “There at the end?”

“She said: ‘They hate us. We hate you. Give us everything. They left spells, written in the rock. At the heart of the ruined city, they wrote them there. The whole realm! The whole cursed realm is his soul. Destroy it, destroy them. Come closer that I might taste you, and you will know the real meaning of death.’

And then - she died, and we made sure she stayed that way.”

The silence stretches between us.

“You think the Acolyte retained her consciousness?” I ask at last.

“I do,” says the Green Lady. “Partially. Despite her distress I believe she was trying to communicate what they discovered.”

“The Whisperer is a lich?” I say, trying to process the meaning of the Acolyte’s garbled words. “An entire realm is his phylactery?”

“That is not implausible,” says the goddess. “Your phylactery is a forest.”

“Destroy the phylactery, destroy the god?”

The Green Lady shrugs. “I doubt it will be that simple. But we know that god’s can be destroyed. We have done it before.”

“And you need someone…already infected. To go through the door?”

The Green Lady nods, her face solemn.

“Someone infected but sane.” She smiles at me. “Mostly sane. The realm and its monsters will recognise you as their own.”

“Should,” I say.

She looks up, gesturing with her arms to take in the gleaming forest, the slowly circling singers.

“Should. Yes. Not that this means there is no danger. It is your choice to make, Maud of Downing Forest, Queen of Einheath and Defiler of the Fae Realms. I spoke for you, in the council of the gods. And now my own home is next to be harvested for souls. In truth it might be wiser if I smote you down, right here, right now.”

She looks at me with cold eyes, and my knees tremble.

“And yet -”

She nods.

“Perhaps you will take this chance and twist it to your own ends. Perhaps you will use it to advance your dominion. Perhaps I am wrong. But I do not think so, I, who have watched over you for so many years. Seek out the Whisperer’s secrets. Seek out his demise. Traverse the portal to the dead world, and return to us with the means to destroy your master once and for all.”

I stare up at my goddess, my innards compressing. I can refuse her, of course. But did I not come here for this very thing? To find a way to destroy him?

“I’ll think about it,” I say. “I need time.”

The Green Lady stands. A dozen beetles take flight from her skirts.

“Do not think too long,” she says. “Prepare yourself, Maud. When you are ready call to me. And I will open the way.”