Billy: Messenger of Powers (16 page)

“What was it?” asked Billy, enthralled.

“The purpose of the Powers,” said Tempus. Billy looked at the man. “To put it simply, the Darksiders believe that the Powers should rule the world, and subjugate all those who have no control of the Elements. The Dawnwalkers believe that the world of normal humans should govern itself, and that the Powers should not intervene in that world, but should only exercise their control over the Elements when among their own kind.”

“So the White King sat upon the Diamond Throne at the head of the Council,” said Vester.

“He judged in goodness and light,” added Ivy.

“Yes, but he was betrayed, it seems. One of his closest friends stabbed him grievously,” said Vester.

Billy almost spilled what little remained of his hot chocolate as his hand went to his mouth. “Someone murdered the White King?” he gasped.

None of the Powers in the room answered for a long time. Then Vester shrugged. “No one knows, really. The Book of Earth has confused accounts. Some say that he was murdered, others that he did not die, but went away into a land of his own making, there to walk eternally in the peace that he so craved.”

“But there were prophecies,” said Tempus, leaning forward. The stove’s firelight reflected off the Wind Power’s gray eyes, giving them a strange glow. Gone was the silly man in the Hawaiian shirt. Tempus was speaking now, not as a mere Power of Wind, but as a Prophet, speaking of other Prophets. “Prophecies that the White King himself made. That he would one day return. That he would come, and would save our world, and would do so by destroying it.” Tempus shook himself, awaking from his half-trance. He grinned that impish grin of his. “Prophecies can be funny things, though. Quite open to interpretation.”

“And that is where Wolfen comes in,” said Vester.

“Oh, do we have to speak of him?” asked Ivy.

“I’m afraid so,” said Vester. “I think that Billy will need to know of him in days to come.”

“So now
you’re
a Prophet, eh, Firewalker?” asked Tempus with a wink.

“No, it’s not prophecy, just a normal feeling I have,” responded Vester seriously. He turned to Billy. “After the White King disappeared, the Truce remained intact—barely. The Council held together, though disputes are not unusual. Part of what has held them together all these years is Powers Island itself.” He looked around the room, as though it were the entirety of the island. “There are always a certain number of Powers here…around twenty thousand or so. If there are not enough present, then more Powers will be summoned to the island. The number is split evenly, so that there are always an equal number of Darksiders and Dawnwalkers.” He indicated his badge. “That’s why we all go to the Accounting Room, and what it means to be Counted.”

Billy remembered something Mrs. Russet had said. “That’s the room in the tower where I first appeared. With the fortune teller things that gave me this.” He indicated his own badge, which said only “Billy” on it.

Vester nodded. “Right. The ‘fortune teller things’ are the Counters. They magically determine the alignment of every person who comes to Powers Island—whether that person is a Dawnwalker or a Darksider. That way, we can make sure that the numbers of Dawnwalkers and Darksiders on the island are always equal.”

“Why do they need to be equal?” asked Billy.

“Because that way,” answered Vester, “if either the Dawnwalkers or the Darksiders decide to void the Truce, there will likely be immediate destruction of a large number of the world’s Powers, on both sides.”

“It’s a terrible way to keep peace,” said Ivy.

“True,” said Vester. “But neither side will risk the destruction of so many of its subjects at once. Powers Island, if ripped apart, would probably weaken both sides to the point that they might never rise again. No Power, of the Dark or the Dawn, would ever risk that…until Wolfen.”

Ivy had stopped weaving her wreath of flowers some time ago. Now, at the mention of that name, the wreath seemed to wilt in her hands.

“Wolfen was an incredibly gifted Power,” continued Vester. “He ascended to the Council when he was only a few years older than you, Billy, sitting for a decade on the Black Throne. He was a Darksider, and everyone knew that he was for subjugating humanity. But after a period of rule, he disappeared for several years. When he returned, he claimed that he was the Messenger of the White King—the man foretold to lead in a new age—and called all Darksiders to his side. To war.”

“And they came?” asked Billy.

Vester nodded. “Yes, many of them.”

“But what about the balance here on the island?” asked Billy.

Vester shrugged again. “It happened so quickly that many of the Powers didn’t know it had happened until it was almost too late. And many of those who
did
know simply couldn’t believe it was happening, it had been so long since open hostility had been present among the Powers. Wolfen had somehow managed—all by himself—to craft his own island, Dark Isle. He and his followers gathered there, and then….” Vester drew a deep shuddering breath. He couldn’t go on.

“They attacked,” Ivy said simply.

“It was a terrible, terrible war,” said Tempus. “The Dawnwalkers were unorganized, unprepared to face a militant onslaught. Many of us were killed. Many more….” Tempus’s face grew even more gray. He reached to the hem of his shirt, and drew it upward. Billy gasped. Tempus’s stomach was a mass of terrible scars. But unlike most scars, these scars glowed a pale blue. “We were marked and herded like cattle, to be servants to the servants after the war ended and the Darksiders ruled.”

To Billy’s relief, Tempus lowered his shirt, and seemed to lapse into almost comatose silence.

“Wolfen lost, eventually,” said Vester. “But not before wreaking great destruction on our world. He was captured, and tried, and sentenced to death. But the Darksiders were still many, though leaderless. They offered to re-institute the Truce, if Wolfen’s life would be spared.” Vester grimaced. “The Council agreed. Full privileges were restored to the Darksiders, and the Dawnwalkers no longer feared torture or destruction in captivity.” He paused, then said, “Personally, I think they made a mistake. They should have killed Wolfen when they had him.”

“Vester!” said Ivy reproachfully.

Vester looked evenly at her. “If you had lost
your
father to the man, maybe you would understand my feelings better, Ivy.”

Ivy’s voice immediately softened. “Oh, Vester, I didn’t mean….”

He waved her off. “No matter. The Truce has continued. No Dawnwalker has ever confirmed that Wolfen is even still alive, let alone that he is contacting anyone amongst the Powers. And the Darksiders, of course, claim not to have heard from him since his exile.”

“What about the Dark Isle?” asked Billy.

“It disappeared,” said Vester, “the day Wolfen was captured.”

“And no one knows where it is?” said Billy.

“Perhaps the great Powers of the Blue Water might. But the Water Powers tend to align themselves with the Darksiders, so they would hardly volunteer to tell a Dawnwalker, would they?”

“That’s not fair of you, Vester,” said Ivy. “Until we have some proof that they are conspiring with Wolfen—”

“That’s a foolish policy,” snapped Vester. “Proof will only come when we’re attacked, and then it will be too late!”

Before Ivy could respond, the door to the anteroom opened. In the doorway stood a strange creature, gnarled and knotted. It stood on two legs, but where a head would have been on a man, there were only masses of branches and leaves. And instead of arms, there were two thick branch-like appendages that sprung out of the middle of what Billy could only call its trunk. “Billy Jones,” it said. The voice came from somewhere inside the creature, resounding as though in a drum, and its voice was deep and dark with hidden knowledge. “The Council has decided your fate.”

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

Billy’s stomach churned. His
fate
?

Then Ivy said, “Oh, Father,” in a tone both amused and mildly reproving.

The tree-like creature chuckled. “Allow me my small diversions, Ivy.” Then, to Billy’s amazement, the creature exploded in a mass of blossoms, tiny flowers of every color that fell slowly to the ground and then disappeared.

Ivy stood from her bean bag, rolling her eyes at Billy. “My father is like that,” she said.

“Did he—did your father just explode?” asked Billy.

“Oh, no, that wasn’t my father. It was just one of his Fizzles,” she answered. Then, when she saw Billy’s confused look, she added, “A Fizzle is a non-living creature that some of the Powers can manage. Like Vester’s little horsies made of lightning and fire.”

Billy glanced at Vester in awe. Vester held up a hand. “Mine are just little Fizzles. Can’t make them talk, and they have to be touching me or else they disappear within seconds.” At that, the tiny electric blue horse ran out of Vester’s pocket and re-assumed its perch on the fireman’s shoulder. It looked around for a moment, as though trying to find the other horse, the one of fire that had sacrificed itself to perfectly toast Billy’s marshmallow. Then, not finding its friend, it moved with tiny crackles of electric hooves to Vester’s other shoulder, where it settled down to sleep.

“But my fate?” asked Billy. “What does it mean, ‘The Council has decided my fate’?” He was dismayed to hear his voice—which was already too high for his own liking—starting to sound like a squeaky door.

“Could mean anything, my boy,” answered Tempus, who rose creakily to his feet, taking a last sip of his cocoa before reluctantly putting the mug down on the floor. “Could mean they’re just sending you home, could mean they’re going to shower you in gold and call you the new White King, could mean they’re going to feed you to a wyvern.”

Billy’s insides lurched. Vester frowned. “That’s not funny, Tempus.” He looked at Billy. “The Council hardly ever feeds anyone to a wyvern anymore.”

The three Powers in the room watched Billy as his face went through about three hundred different expressions, ranging from uncomfortable to worried to downright terrified. Then they laughed, and Ivy hugged him.

“Oh, you are a fun one, Billy Jones,” she said. She linked her arm through his. This close, Billy thought she looked much younger than old. He wondered what her real age was. If Veric, the Green Councilor, was her father, then she couldn’t be
too
old. But it was hard to tell. Her face had the same ageless quality as some plants: looking at it you couldn’t tell if it was one year old, or fifty. She squeezed Billy’s arm tightly. “Come on, let’s go see what the Council has planned for you.”

Billy looked at his hot chocolate, which he still held. “What do I do with this?” he asked.

“Just put it down anywhere,” answered Ivy. “There are Fizzles here who do the cleanup.” And as she said that, Billy saw a tiny creature come running out from under the pot-bellied stove. It looked something like a tiny stone snowman, its body made up of three small rocks stacked atop one another. But instead of stick arms and no legs, this little creature had about a dozen pairs of minute stone appendages sticking out in all directions, which it seemed to use interchangeably as hands or feet as the situation warranted.

The Fizzle scuttled along the ground, then hoisted Tempus’s cup in its small arms/legs, and precariously made its way across the anteroom floor, disappearing around the corner of the bar. There was a popping sound, and Billy knew that the rock Fizzle had just Transported to wherever the dishes got cleaned.

Billy put his mug down. He wanted to see if the same Fizzle would come to take his cup, too—anything to avoid finding out what the Council had to say to him—but Ivy drew him cheerfully back out onto the roof of the tower.

Outside of the anteroom the sky was now overcast, the tower completely cloaked in the eternal clouds that writhed about its heights. There was no sign of any beautiful blizzard, even though when Billy looked back through the open door to the anteroom, he could still see the wonderful snowflakes outside the cozy room, doing their magical dance. Several of the snowflakes appeared to swirl together into the form of a hand, waving goodbye as he watched.

Then Tempus and Vester stepped through the door. Vester shut it behind him, and as soon as he did, the golden door disappeared, leaving behind only the solid rock mass. Billy shook his head. He didn’t know if he would ever get used to such things.