Isle of Wysteria: The Monolith Crumbles (20 page)

Without thinking, she released Alder’s hand and stepped into this new chamber, standing on a small platform that hung out over the water.

Alder stepped in as well from his chamber, and they stood together, marveling at the beauty of it. Light reflected off the water on the walls and floor, covering them with ribbons of reflection that seemed to caress every inch of their bodies.

Instinctively they held hands again, Ash giggling happily at the light.

Athel closed her eyes and allowed the radiance to soak into her. It warmed her to the very core. It was more refreshing than water, more satisfying than bread. It was like pure youth was pouring into her.

She could only recall one other time in her life that she had felt like this. It was the moment when they were married, sealed together through Deutzia. She gave Alder’s hand a little squeeze, and he squeezed hers back.

“A chamber beyond, only accessible by a wife and husband together…” Athel said aloud.

“What is this place?” Alder asked, marveling.

Athel could not help but laugh. “This place should not exist. There is nothing more sacred than Milia’s altar. Why would there be something beyond it?”

Beneath the water on the far wall, was a carving within the pearl. A flawless circle, containing two rivers. The river on top flowed up and then branched, like the trunk and branches of a mighty tree. The river below gathered together from tributaries, forming a mighty river, like the roots and trunk of a tree.

“What is this carving?” Alder asked.

“The top half I know. That is the holy symbol for Milia. But the bottom half…I have never seen before.”

Alder opened his mouth. “It is the symbol for a god.

“Another god? But who?”

“The god of the faceless constellation. The missing god. The god of the men of Wysteria.”

Athel covered her mouth in astonishment. There was only one reason for this carving to exist in the royal tree. Because the goddess herself put it here. “Can you read it, Aldi?”

Alder barely had the presence of mind to answer her. “It is a symbol, it cannot be read phonetically.”

“Right.”

Athel felt light-headed. She had to lean on her husband to keep from falling over. “A second god in Wysteria,” she whispered. “A companion to Milia. How could I have not known about this?”

Alder looked up. At the center of the ceiling lay a golden seal of three rose carvings, intertwined like a wreath. “Athi, do you see that?”

She looked up and recognized it instantly. “A red Cliffthorn rose, a white Holly Rose, and a yellow Dragon Rose. It’s the royal meridian.”

Alder nodded. “Do you know what this means? This chamber lies directly beneath the Throne of Wysteria.”

Athel’s eyes went wide. “Is this what Spirea meant?”

Moltens grimaced with exertion, his hands trembling as he forced his magic into the crystal before him. Standing opposite to him was Migistra of Lahiti, his lion-like mane drooping with sweat as he did the same. For generations their fathers and uncles, grandfathers and great-grandfathers had made war on one another. Now they cast their magic, not in opposition, but in cooperation.

“Clear your minds, boys,” Mina cautioned as she watched over the synergy. “Make your heart as clear as glass. Your magic must be free of any emotional impurity or the energies will rebound instead of flow together.”

The crystal bent and warped, struggling to maintain its shape as light and knowledge were forced one grain at a time into its form. Moltens grit his teeth and forced himself to set aside his hatred for Lahitians, if only for a moment. He thought instead of his homeland. The beautiful desert spires, deep cool caves of glowing ore, sweet dry breezes through the rocky arches, and juicy cactus root. He reminded himself of everything he wanted to protect. The clear ringing of brass trumpets on feast days, the glowing flicker of hanging lanterns, the rhythmic stomping of dancing feet and clapping tails. His lovely wife wearing a wreath of flowers around her long slender neck, the bright colors picked to match her tamba dress. Their children clinging happily to his feet and wrapping their tails around his legs when he stepped through the cave entrance.

For them, and for a thousand others, he set aside his hate for the lion-man before him, and then it happened.

The beam of yellow sunlight and the gout of grey fire fused together with a crack like lightning. The crystal shrieked in joy, tripling in size as is grew into the shape of a curved crescent of pulsating indigo.

“That’s it!” Mina cheered.

Moltens dropped his arms, then fell to his knees, gasping for breath. Migistra wobbled on his hind paws, and reached out to steady himself on Queen Forsythia, but her guards caught his paw before it touched her shoulder.

“Does it always drain you this much?” Moltens asked Mina as she inspected the synergy.

“Every time, sweetie,” she winked before tossing him a piece of candy. “Try sucking on this, the sugar helps.”

“Why do I feel like she is rewarding a loyal pet?” Migistra snickered as he was thrown a piece of his own. The two men glanced at each other for a moment, then shared a deep belly laugh together.

Mina took the glowing crescent and placed it in the device. Nothing like it had ever existed in Aetria. A rotating Almanian clockwork turret, on which was mounted an oversized telescope. The design of the telescope was unmistakably Timmeroniese, but the lenses themselves were made from Sutorian hard-light. Mina attached the crescent to the back of the telescope and clamped it into place.

“Are we ready for a field test?” Queen Forsythia asked dispassionately.

Mina nodded enthusiastically. She pulled the release lever on the turret and the clockworks whirred to life, turning the telescope to the east and raising it slightly.

“The sibling pendant in the tube is paired with the pendant on other prototype mounted on the deck of the St. Downing,” Mina explained to the dignitaries present, pointing past the treetops around them towards the airship floating distantly on the horizon. “No matter how far away they are, they will always point straight at one another.”

Mina’s long white tail swished confidently as she placed her hand on the crescent, but then she paused.

“Is something wrong?” Queen Forsythia asked.

“What? Oh, no, it’s just that, this will be the first message ever sent by light-carrier. I feel like it should kind of be momentous, but I’m not sure what the message should say.”

Queen Forsythia thought for a moment. “Tell them, ‘this day, the people of the world kindle a light in the darkness.’”

“Oh, I like that,” Rachael cooed, scribbling it down on her notepad.

The assembled dignitaries nodded enthusiastically to one another.

Nikki blossomed with esteem. She reached up and touched the Alliance patch on her uniform. “We should add that to the Alliance crest,” she suggested.

Alder leaned in and whispered to his wife. “Should we tell them that you just quoted
The Hourglass
?”

“Shhh.”

Mina spoke the message aloud into the synthesis crescent and it purred to life. A thin beam of light shot out from the device, pulsing dozens of colors in quick succession, translating the phrase into a code of light that the crescent on the other end would interpret. A heartbeat later, it was done.

“Now to see if the message was received.”

For several moments, they all waited with baited breath. Then, a signal flare rose up from the St. Downing. It exploded in the air, the burning embers forming into words. The message hung there in the air, exactly as Mina had spoken it, and everyone cheered.

Even the Queen allowed herself a satisfied grin. “Well done, everyone,” she praised sincerely.

The exhausted men and women of the build-team all thanked her.

“Now, we can begin mass production,” she announced.

“What?” Moltens asked, the color draining out of his scales.

“I need fifty such devices by the end of the week.”

The build-team all looked at each other in horror.

“Did you say fifteen or fifty?” Eilsa the clockwork master asked, hoping she had heard wrong as grease dripped off the tips of her heavy work gloves.

“Fifty.”

The Almanian woman looked like she might pass out.

“We’re going to need a lot more candy,” Mina realized.

Kahn Alakaneezer slapped Kaiser Duncan on the shoulder with his great white paw, sending the man’s top-hat spinning down into the branches below. “Now is the time for drinking!” he shouted. “We’re going to find the surliest pub we can. The first person to pass out, loses!”

Several of the delegates cheered wildly.

“Oh, not again,” Duke Relivan murmured, drawing his cape in around him as if it were a blanket. “My head is still spinning from last night’s bender.”

Alakaneezer gave a deep belly laugh and scooped the men up as if they were nothing more than toys, carrying them off while their flustered attendants scurried after them. “Come on, ladies! Where is the courage your people showed in the thirty-years war now? Ah, ha ha haaaaaa!”

The Queen politely declined the invitation to join them, then turned to her own attendants.

“Dahoon, please clear my schedule for the next hour.”

Normally, this would have caused the court official to go into a nervous breakdown. Sadly, such reschedulings were becoming so common under her reign that he found he was beginning to develop a tolerance for them.

“It shall be done,” he said smartly as he scurried off, clearly having no idea of how it could be accomplished.

As Alder drew close to her, he saw her eyes focused on a distant point at the center of the forest, nearly hidden by the taller, younger growth that hedged it in. The trees there were faded and withered, having seen so many winters that spring could no longer fully rejuvenate them.

“You mean to speak to the Elder directly?” Alder whispered.

Queen Forsythia nodded. “Male trees normally avoid the link, but never before has a tree completely ignored me like this. If he will not answer my calls through the link then I will speak to him face to face.”

A few minutes later, the Queen and her entourage arrived at ‘emu’ilaa, the oldest part of the forest. The only place in all of Wysteria where male trees still stood.

The air here was thick with memory. Protected from the wind by the taller younger trees, everything was eerily still, allowing a blanket of dust and pollen that accumulated like fallen grey snow. No birds made their nests here, nor flicker beetles their pods. It felt like a place frozen in time. A picture of eras long past when male and female trees grew freely one with another. Thick cobwebs bound the branches together like great, webbed hands that seemed poised to reach out and grab from every direction.

It was so menacing that Alder could not help but take a half step behind his wife for protection. He gave off a quick, painful cough as her guards leered at him disapprovingly.

Once long ago he had had a name, but it had been so long it had been lost to history, and even now he himself had trouble remembering it if he did not bend his mind towards it for some time. Now he was known only as the Elder. At the base of his massive trunk, a small shrine and platform existed, placed so that any who wished to commune would be forced to look up at the gnarled old tree, but the Queen ignored it. Tapping her staff, a root grew up under her feet and lifted her aloft, so that she might face the Elder on equal footing.

Alder’s coughing grew worse and he weakened visibly, his hand reaching out for something to steady himself.

“Are you certain you are all right?” Queen Athel asked, glancing down at him from her high perch.

“Quite certain, my Queen,” Alder reassured weakly between coughs. “Just a bit of hayfever.”

Alder took out his handkerchief just in time to catch another volley of painful coughing.

Athel’s brow pinched in worry, but time was against her. “When we return to the palace I want you to see a healer. I am concerned about you.”

Alder bowed formally, trying to play it off, but even from this distance she could see his back trembling with discomfort. “Please do not worry about…”

“Have you come for any other reason rather than to disturb my dreams?” the twisted Nallorn tree grumbled, his bark groaning as he flexed his heavy branches towards her.

The Queen crossed one foot behind the other and gave a polite bow as she introduced herself. It was an extraordinary gesture, especially considering his discourtesy.

“Elder, I have come to you today with many questions.”

The tree gave off a long, wooden creaking sound, which Alder had learned from talking to Deutzia was the way trees moaned.

“The young always have questions,” he flickered.

Queen Forsythia reached into her sleeve and took out a drawing she had made. “We found this symbol beyond the sanctum, directly beneath the throne of the forest. The symbol of a second god in Wysteria, a companion to Milia. Who is he? What happened to him? Why does no one know about him?”

“Is that drawn in children’s chalk?” he shimmered dimly.

“Never mind that. You are the oldest tree in the forest. You must know something about this.”

The Elder stretched lazily, sheets of dust shifting from his branches and raining down on the poor people standing beneath him on the forest floor. The Treesingers grew a roof of vines to shield them from it, but poor Alder had no protection, and had several pounds of the stuff land directly on top of him, triggering a fresh round of coughing.

“Your mother was much more respectful of my privacy,” the elder complained.

“If you will answer my questions, I will leave you in peace for the remainder of my reign. I can give you my word on that.”

The old tree stood there motionless for a moment, as if considering her words.

“I cannot,” he blinked.

Queen Forsythia’s eyebrows lifted up in surprise. “What do you mean? The forest does not keep secrets from its Queen.”

“Until now.”

For a moment she stood there blankly, unsure of how to respond. It was inconceivable.

Taking her staff in her hands, she spoke out clearly in a commanding tone. Her mother’s voice. “As your Queen, I order you to answer my queries.”

The power of her voice shook the land. Every tree for miles trembled at the authority that flowed through it, but the elder remained still. Everywhere birds took flight, moving as one away from the epicenter where she stood.

“I cannot.”
The Queen’s mouth dropped open in surprise. Even the royal guards were visibly shocked by the declaration. “How can a tree defy the Queen of the forest?” one whispered to another.

“Tell me why you cannot answer your Queen!”

“I cannot tell you that, either.”

Setting decorum aside, the Queen grit her teeth and twisted her staff in her hands. “I’m sorry to have to do this to you, but you give me no alternative. If you will not tell me what I need to know, then I will extract the information from you.”

The forest bowed, all the trees in every direction, for hundreds of miles, all bent down towards the Queen. Holding out her staff, she channeled the will of every woman and every tree through her body. The entire song of the forest sang out a single note, a crescendo of a million voices all singing in unison. It emitted from her staff like a torrent of light, slamming into the elder in a hurricane of thought, washing over him and drilling into him.

It was all Alder could do to stay on his feet though it all. The clouds above parted from the force of it, the ground beneath churned from the rhythmic thumping of a million roots. It felt like reality itself might come apart.

Alder fell to the ground and covered his ears, but it did nothing to block out the magical energies swirling and thundering through the woods, blowing away the dust of ‘emu’ilaa with a breathless torrent of power. The scattered material spread out, farther and farther growing more and more faint as it expanded until it disappeared entirely.

As her spell subsided, all was silent. Only the steady, pulsating chuckle of the elder as he stood unmoved where he was rooted.

Slowly the trees of the forest righted themselves again. The Queen stood there on her root perch, breathing heavily, her eyes ablaze as the defiant tree laughed at her.

“How?” she gasped for breath. “How could you resist me? How could you deny the will of the entire realm?”

“Just who do you think taught that trick to your ancestors?” the elder snickered. “You are at least a thousand years too young to force an answer out of me, young one.”

Ashamed and humiliated, Queen Forsythia composed herself as best she could. With a tap of her staff, the root she stood on lowered her down to the forest floor, where her stunned guards stood waiting for her.

“It seems we shall have to solve this mystery another way,” the Queen explained in calm tones.