White Queen's Pawn
It would come back to her at the strangest times. She might be deep in her studies, or sitting out on the terrace overlooking Haven, thinking of her lifemate and child. Morning, night, all the long hours in between: eventually, unbidden, her thoughts would return to Pool’s curse.
I don’t know who I pity more, you or your child. But I know this: with you as its mother, it is already doomed. Your very soul is rotten, and just as you can only Recognize death, so you can only birth it. The question is how many will have to die.
Melati had grown up under the weight of her sire’s hatred. She had sworn she would give her own child a better start in life. They had travelled far away from Abode, and Pool’s malevolent ghost, away from the living elves who had so delighted in judging her, in twisting her motives, in seeing the worst in all she tried to do. They had brought Naga up surrounded by elves who understood, who nurtured her gifts, who taught her there was nothing wrong in challenging every limit set before you.
And when Naga’s magic had grown faster than her will to master it, when it had become a danger to Naga and all those around her, they had sent her somewhere safe, where she could rest and regain her focus. It had been Haken’s choice – but the right one, Melati was certain of it. Naga had gone reluctantly, as any child would. She longed for the comforts of home. She couldn’t understand the fears haunting her mother. And she never would. Melati would make sure of that.
“She thinks she’s disappointed you,” Beast warned, the day he left with Naga for Abode. “She thinks you’ve given up on her.”
He was wrong. Naga knew better. Or she would, when she was no longer ruled by the bloodsong.
Beast sent to her at first, using the power of the Egg to carry his thoughts to Homestead. But he had no news for her, only pleas to convince Lord Haken to welcome Naga back. Each refusal left him more embittered. At length, he had fallen silent, and when she reached out to him, he would only answer in clipped replies. No, Naga had shown no improvement. No, Naga was not adjusting to life at the Egg. No, he did not agree that this was necessary.
As the days rolled by, she began to wonder whether Beast would ever forgive her.
It wasn’t a sending that finally reached her – more a feeling. A blow to the stomach, as if something had pummeled her, followed by the nausea and dizziness of her whole world spinning sideways.
Beast… Naga… her family was in danger.
Pool’s curse was coming true.
* * *
Cheipar awoke at the first crackle of stone scraping on stone. His first instinct was to throw himself over Weatherbird’s sleeping form; his second was to send to his son.
Weatherbird let out a yelp of surprise, following by a higher-pitched shriek as their stone bed dropped beneath them. No, their entire room dropped, falling several handspans before striking the latticework of the shell beneath it. Then the horizontal shaking began, jostling them across their featherdown mattress, as tiny pebbles and flakes rained down on Cheipar’s shoulders like hailstones.
He sent again to Bluestar, but heard no reply. Weatherbird began to murmur “Oh no, no, no, no!”
Next Cheipar tried to reach his heart-father. His spirit reached out for Aurek’s, but instead of the familiar presence, he felt only a dim echo.
A cry of defiance, echoing through the rock.
This is not how it ends!
The floor dropped out from under them again, a shorter distance this time. The landing was still hard enough to rattle their teeth. A chunk of the ceiling came down, and a jagged finger of rock pierced the pillow where Cheipar’s head had been resting only moments before.
**Send for the Palace!** Cheipar directed.
The trembling slowed. Silence fell, only for the distant cries of injured and frightened elves to rise into the void. Cheipar felt the wet heat of fresh blood on his back. He began to lift his head, only for the shaking to start anew. Cursing, he reached for the trailing edge of a fur and tried to pull it up over them both.
It had been perhaps a hundred panicked heartbeats since the crisis began.
**Bluestar! Where are you?**
Weatherbird answered in an anguished whisper. “She took him…”
Before Cheipar could ask what she meant, the ceiling opened up. Brilliant, piercing light flooded their chamber, and Cheipar instinctively clutched Weatherbird tighter against the newest threat.
**Climb!** came the open sending. **Climb to the light! Send if you can’t move and we will find you, but those who can: CLIMB!**
Swift. Cheipar could have wept had there been time.
He sat up tall and squinted up into the light. A tunnel had been cut through the rock as if by the light itself. It angled upwards towards air that smelled of fresh ozone and autumn frost.
“Up!” He lifted his stunned mate from the bed. Weatherbird blinked, and he saw her eyes had the glassy look of one trying to send and speak at once. He wondered how many frantic conversations she was trying to maintain at once, between all the frightened elves above and beneath them.
“Sen!” he commanded, his voice soft but implacable. The use of her soulname brought her around. He waited until she gave him a nod, then he lifted her none-too-gently upwards.
Naked and shivering, she dug fingers and toes into the edge of the tunnel. She nearly fell back when he released her. But she steadied herself, and with a hoarse cry of effort, she began to climb.
Cheipar scrambled up behind her. He could see forms in the tunnel above them – survivors from the upper shells. Some were dressed as if they’d only just ended their days’ work, others wore hastily-donned scraps of clothing, and still others were naked as infants, their skin glowing in the starstone light.
Swift’s opening sending rang through his mind over and over, exhorting the walking wounded to climb to safety. Cheipar wondered how many tunnels had been dug simultaneously, how many survivors were now making their way to the light, and how many lay broken under stone.
**Aurek! Why can’t you hear me?**
He scuffed his knees and scraped his bleeding back on the rough tunnel wall. Yet the climbing grew easier the closer they came to the surface. The worldpull seemed to be losing its hold on them. For the last few elfspans, they were practically floating.
Weatherbird disappeared above him, and he saw stars. A moment later the walls peeled away, and he was pulling himself up into the frosty night air. Someone was at his side, pressing a length of cloth at him. It was the thin cotton of the rainforest elves, woefully inadequate for a night in the Painted Mountains. But he wrapped it gratefully around his shoulders all the same.
“Come away,” someone else was saying. “Come to the Palace. Away from the loose rocks. That’s it.”
The Palace. Cheipar lifted his head. The entire Palace had transported to the site of the Egg. It perched on the rubble, radiating both light and heat. Eights upon eights of stunned survivors were shuffling towards it.
The rubble… Cheipar looked at his bloodied feet, and the broken scree beneath them. He turned and cast a glance over his shoulder.
He knew what he would see. He had seen sending pictures of old Blue Mountain enough times. But his heart still sank.
First Shell was gone. The beautiful nested eggshells had collapsed inward, crushed and grinding all the delicate stonework to ruin. The cracked and listing Second Shell was covered in a jumble of broken rocks.
The rocks were moving! They continued to shift and writhe as if the Egg was still in motion. The magical aura holding them was so strong as to be visible.
Light overhead caught his attention. A second edifice of starstone had appeared and was now hovering over the wreckage. Now a third joined it: Ark-pods from Homestead. Their off-world kin had heard their cries.
Scarcely had the pods appeared than shapes floated down: more elves joining the rescue effort. Sending stars bounced off the magic-infused rocks, as loved ones called to each other. So many overlapping open sendings strained Cheipar’s telepathy. It was hard to isolate one voice among the screams.
**Beast! – Where are you?! – Toss-Stone? – I’m here! – I’m afraid! – Answer me, my child! – He’s not here! – Can’t you hear? – Who did this? – It’s his doing! The rocks! – Hold fast, we’re coming as fast as we can!**
The fear and pain and panic hung heavy on the air like a stench. He felt his arms ache from phantom injuries, and his left leg dragged, though it was the right that was more battered from the climb. Cheipar felt the sending star of his brother Littlefire brushing against him, and he replied with a wordless sending of reassurance.
“BEAST!” Melati’s desperate voice echoed over the mountain, in voice and in sending. A tremor sent the rubble skittering as somewhere among the ruins, worldpull won against magic, setting off a rockslide.
“Weatherbird! Cheipar!”
Swift herself ran up to them, her long legs carrying her over the broken ground. Cheipar watched her approach in a detached daze. He always forgot how tall she’d become.
Weatherbird was barely able to remain standing; with a soft mewl, she fell into her grandmother’s arms. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” Swift soothed. “You all right? Where’s Bluestar?”
“Gone!” Weatherbird keened. “She took him! Swift – she did this!”
Swift’s open expression of sympathy closed up into one of cold fury. The old Wolfrider chief knew better than to ask for confirmation.
Nor did she need to ask who “she” was.
“This way,” Swift half-led, half-carried Weatherbird over to the nearest expanse of nearly flat earth. Cheipar followed. It was warm close to the Palace’s walls, and he wrapped the cotton sheet about his hips to leave his arms free. The pain in his back was beginning to ebb; he felt the magic aura of the starstone and its many attendant spirits washing over him, healing minor cuts and scrapes.
**Haken!** Swift sent openly. **We’ve got them.** To the lifemates, she said simply, “Over here.”
Cheipar saw a figure huddled on the barren ground, surrounded by sympathetic elves. It seemed so small to have attracted such a crowd, a white doll’s face peeking out of a bearskin. Swift barked a command and the mob made way, save for Littlefire, kneeling at the figure’s side. Cheipar’s stunned mind finally registered that he was looking at his mother.
He ran ahead and dropped to her side. “Mama!” He embraced her tightly, burying his cheek in her hair. But she scarcely acknowledged him. She was as unyielding as stone underneath his arms.
He took her face in his hands and forced her to look at him. “Mama – where is Aurek?”
Her empty gaze was answer enough.
Cheipar had never been one to deny a hard truth. Yet he found himself shaking his head, he heard the helpless babble of protest spilling from his lips. Not Aurek. Not their Father of Memory. His father, in soul if not in blood. One of the few constants in his long and eventful life. One of the greatest living magic-users on the face of Abode. Grandson of High Ones. He had survived one Egg of Eight Spheres collapsing atop him. Why not survive another?
The words dissolved to hollow sobs. But Vaya couldn’t comfort him, save in being a pillar for him to collapse against.
It might have been an instant, or an age. But Littlefire’s gentle touch on his shoulder brought him back to himself. He heard his brother’s murmuring reassurances to them both.
“You’re safe now. It’s what he wanted. It’s why he did this.”
“W-what?” Cheipar asked. “What did he do?”
Vaya spoke at last. “He held on. He’s still holding on…”
“I know, Mama,” Littlefire soothed. “I can feel it.”
“I saw it… glowing…” she babbled. “Humming… buzzing… breaking apart… like fireflies…. He was glowing! I reached… but I couldn’t… my hand went right through him.”
“He went into the rocks,” Littlefire said. “Like Yurek. He couldn’t save you all… and hold his form. So he chose to be formless.”
“He’s gone!” she cried, as if only she truly understood.
“Not gone,” Littlefire vowed, though his own voice was constricted with grief. “Nothing ever disappears. It just changes.”
Vaya hung her head and sank deeper into the safety of the bearskin.
* * *
“Beast!” Melati probed through the rubble until she detected her lifemate’s heartbeat, deep under several layers of shattered seedrock. She waved her hand and the rock parted like liquid. A vortex of air pierced deep into the mountainside, until she could see, with her night-shaped eyes, an asymmetrical figure silhouetted against paler stone.
**Yosha!** she called.
His reply was anguished, the words dripping with pain of both flesh and heart. **I haven’t found her yet.**
**And you won’t! She’s not here.**
**I – I have to find her. I promised her I’d stay with her. I promised, Mel!**
She hadn’t time to argue. The escape tunnel was already beginning to buckle. Melati made another gesture and Beast let out an audible cry of protest. She had forgotten how much harder it was to cast on Abode. But with both Palace and Ark at her back, it was still easy enough to float Beast up the tunnel to safety, no matter how hard he struggled against the magic.
She dropped him on the ground, as gently as she could, and seized him when he would have gone back down the tunnel. Her healing glow surrounded him, sealing the many cuts and scrapes he had incurred scrambling through the collapsing hallways. The biggest one was a long gash across his skull where the old seams of scar tissue had given way.
Beast’s legs buckled and he dropped to the ground. Melati knelt with him, holding him tight, forcing the healing magic into his veins, even as he continued to struggle.
“I can’t just leave her!” he wept. “I’m not like you!”
His words left her reeling. She almost lost her hold on him. But instead she seized his arms tighter, adding a thread of pain to the healing, shocking him out of his hysteria.
“She’s left us!” she snarled back. “She’s gone! Can’t you feel it? She’s not here!”
Beast fought for breath. At length he grounded himself enough to extend his senses, and confirm the horrible truth.
“Beast, look at me! Did she do this?”
Beast shook his head. “No… NO! How could you think that? She was angry but–”
“Angry? Angry about what?” In her fear and impatience, she dug her nails deeper into his forearms. The scales on his right arm held her at bay, but she drew blood on the left.
With a hiss, he threw her hands off him. “Everything!” he shouted back. “We gave her every reason to be angry. But she didn’t do this! She couldn’t. She can’t even float a pebble! She can’t do anything! You and Haken pulled her claws and she knew she was in danger! I heard her!” He beat his chest. “I heard her begging Bluestar! She knew it was coming for her, and she couldn’t protect herself.”
Melati’s hands flew to her mouth. “What? What was coming for her?” She looked over the ruined mountains with new eyes.
What could cause such devastation? Who on Abode had the power to bring down Aurek’s kingdom?
“No…” she shook her head. “No, they promised me she was gone!”
* * *
More survivors were gathering around Vaya and her sons. Swift and Weatherbird kept going silent as they coordinated the evacuation in sending. When Swift spoke again, it was with a new lightness to her voice.
“The lower shells are clear. Rayek and Skywise confirm it – everyone’s in Third Shell or higher, and making their way out. No deaths… except…” she trailed off.
“There wouldn’t be,” Littlefire said, pride audible beneath the anguish.
A deep tremor rumbled like thunder under their feet. Littlefire touched the rock and murmured softly to the stone. “Papa… I know you’re tired. You can let go now…”
“Are we sure there’s nothing we can do for Aurek?” Swift asked Weatherbird, in a too-loud whisper.
A rush of air buffeted their heads, even as the ground continued to quake. Cheipar looked up. The Lord of Oasis was descending from the Ark-pod.
As ever, Haken had no time for pleasantries. His feet had scarcely touched ground when he spun on Swift and Weatherbird. “My grandson is gone,” he said harshly.
“Yes,” Weatherbird confirmed.
“He’s here!” Littlefire protested. “Inside the rocks!”
“The worthless rocks!” Haken snapped. “The Egg’s core is gone – not a trace of starstone remains! Who has done this?”
Weatherbird looked at him bleakly. “You know.”
Haken took a step towards the diminutive elf threateningly. “You said she had left the Egg years past.”
“She had. But she came back for the starstone.”
“Why?” Haken snarled, wolf-like, for all his hatred of the beasts.
“Why does anyone want starstone?!” she snarled back.
Melati and Beast came running up. “Ah, you found him,” Haken nodded brusquely. “But what of Naga?”
“She was in the core,” Weatherbird said, before Melati could answer. “With Bluestar.”
“You let her around starstone?” Melati shrieked. “With only Bluestar guarding her?”
“No one “lets” either of those cubs do anything!”
“Where has she taken the core?” Haken interjected.
Weahterbird hesitated a moment before speaking. “To the Tree.”
Melati’s face turned ashen as the blood drained away in horror. “No… no, not to the Tree! Not to him! Haken–”
He waved his hand to silence her. “We’ll save her, child. I give you my word. Come, let us be off.”
Melati was immediately airborne, Beast floating up behind her with far less grace.
“Wait–” Swift began. “Haken, we’re still clearing survivors.”
“You can manage without me.” He held out his hand for Weatherbird. “Come.”
Weatherbird glanced at Cheipar. He nodded. **Bring him back,** he urged.
Without further hesitation. Weatherbird took the High One’s hand. “Wait!” Swift shouted again, even as the pair floated up to the Ark-pod, close behind Melati and Beast. No sooner had the four elves disappeared inside the silver-white walls, then the Ark-pod winked out of sight, leaving only Littlefire’s smaller starstone pod hovering in the air over the wreckage, like a miniature third moon.
Littlefire looked up at Swift. “You can’t let Haken handle this himself,” he warned.
Swift gave an inelegant snort. “And rain is wet. No, as soon as we’ve got everyone out, we’ll make a pod and follow.”
The Glider’s hand shot out and caught her about the wrist. “You cannot go! The Tree – Bearclaw – if he’s there…”
Swift bit her lip. “We’ve put off this fight long enough. The Palace should shield me – and High Ones know I don’t intend to be sending to that Tree.”
Another quake, violent enough to send Swift to her knees. Cheipar twisted around to see the crown of Second Shell crumble and tumble down the mountainside. Magic carried the rockfall safely away from the survivors.
“Sixth Shell…” Littlefire breathed. As the rumbling went on, he added, “Fifth… and Fourth is going.”
Swift got to her knees, facing the grief-shocked Go-Back. “Vaya? The grief… I know…”
“No… you don’t,” Vaya countered in a whisper.
“He chose. He gave himself to save you and everyone else. I know that can’t matter to you now. But know that we will never forget what Aurek did for us tonight. And all he’s done for us all his long life. We will howl for him. And when his spirit returns to us, we will hold such a dance as this World of Two Moons has never seen!”
Vaya looked down at the scattered pebbles at her feet. Some of the larger pieces bore the filigree carvings of the Egg. She picked up one and examined it. “If his spirit returns…”
“He will,” Swift vowed. “You’ll see. Death’s nothing but an annoyance to elves like him.”
Vaya’s gaze turned angry. “You didn’t see. You don’t know!”
“I know he’ll fight his way through anything to get back to you.”
Cheipar looked over his mother’s head at his brother. He thought Littlefire, of all elves, would have a ready answer. His own lifemate had spent millennia inside his skin, before Melati had made her a new shell. He regularly communed with spirits of all ages, from the recently dead to those whose names had been lost to time. Surely, he could reassure them that Aurek would come back to them.
But Littlefire looked grave and furtive, like someone bearing a horrible secret.
“Wesh?” Cheipar pressed. **He can come back?**
Littlefire’s reply was in locksending. **Nothing ever ends. But everything has changed. He’s still here… he’s still holding on. But it’s hard. It’s so hard to keep fighting. Savah knows that. And Yurek. And all those who set down their selves to join the spirit pool.**
Cheipar felt his stomach constrict. **Savah is in the Tree!** he challenged. **No – no! He won’t. He’ll fight it. He won’t become another of the Tree’s spirit slaves!**
Littlefire stared back, his gaze steady now. **He’ll keep holding on,** he agreed. **To the rocks. To us. To himself. As long as he can.**
If Vaya felt their desperate locksending over her head, she gave no sign. She kept inspecting the little rock in her hands. “This isn’t how it ends…” she whispered.
“Vaya?” Swift prompted.
“His last words… I heard them…”
“We all heard them,” Weatherbird confirmed.
“He’s right. This isn’t the end. This is just the first blood drawn.” Vaya closed her fist tight about the rock, until her knuckles turned white. “No howls. No dances. Not yet. I’ll mourn as a Go-Back. No tears now: tears come later… tears of triumph.” She looked up at Swift, and she’d never looked more like the daughter of Kahvi. “When I’ve had my vengeance.”
Cheipar watched Swift carefully, waiting for her to protest, to placate. Instead the old chief gave a single nod.
* * *
Weatherbird was still struggling to wrap her cotton sheet into something approximating a dress as the Ark-pod reached the Tree. Melati drew in a sharp breath through her teeth as Sylas the Navigator turned the outer wall transparent. They hovered some hundred elf-spans above the forest canopy. Far on the horizon, autumn was turning the trees golden, but below them, the sprawl of oaks still wore rich green leaves: leagues upon square leagues of eternal spring. And in the center of it all…
Melati had seen sending-pictures of the Tree; Littlefire had shared the horrors of what had become of the old Wolfrider holt: a hideously overgrown colony of oaks, less a tree and more some enormous wooden spider. But this was something new entirely.
The Tree rose above the rest of the canopy, dwarfing the lesser oaks beneath it. Its twisted and burled trunk was studded with crystal shards. Motes of light drifted up its length, like fireflies, forming great luminous arteries. Colorful fungus colonized the edges of the shards, riots of pus-yellows and blood-reds, and the sickly purple of rotting dreamberries. And crowning the whole structure, leaves of starstone, forming a protective dome.
“Oh stars…” Weatherbird breathed. “She merged the core with it...”
“With it – with what?” Sylas demanded. “What is that? I’ve never felt such a hybrid of life-forces.”
“I can’t send to Bluestar,” Weatherbird said. “He’s down there – I can feel him! But I can’t send to him.”
“A shield?” Haken asked the Navigator.
Sylas nodded. “I cannot approach any further. Nor can I sense what’s underneath.”
“Naga is underneath!” Melati cried. “That mad High One has my daughter! Break her shield, Navigator! Break it down!”
“No-” Weatherbird began to protest, even as a bolt of light shot out from the Ark-pod. The bolt struck the shield and bounded back at the pod. Sylas waved his hand and the pod lurched to one side to avoid the ricochet.
“What is wrong with you?” Weatherbird shrieked. “You call yourselves High Ones? Even humans don’t charge headfirst into a solid wall!”
“Probe the shield,” Haken instructed. “Gently.”
“It will only deflect it again,” Weatherbird warned.
“Timmain cannot stand against us our combined power.”
“It’s not only Timmain! That the Evertree down there! The combined spirits of who-knows-how-many Wolfrider spirits.”
“Degraded spirits,” Haken sneered.
“Dangerous spirits! All the more so now that Pool has joined them–”
Melati rounded on her. “Pool! You told me he was dead!” she accused.
Weatherbird raised an eyebrow. “That means a lot less than it used to. You should know that.”
“Don’t be clever with me! You told us Timmain had gone wandering. You said the Tree was quiet. You promised my daughter would be safe in the Egg! If I’d known–” she wrung her hands. “If I’d thought… Savah’s bones – I sent her to Abode to protect her!”
Weatherbird flinched at the mention of Savah. It was subtle – a mere flutter of the heart, an unwilling clench of involuntary muscles. But Melati saw it. So did Haken.
“What else have you hidden from us?” the Lord of Oasis challenged.
“The Tree has been… stirring,” she admitted. “Pulling in more spirits.”
“Savah’s spirit?” Haken guessed. “My Savah’s spirit! And you said nothing?”
“Of course not!” Weatherbird snapped back. “You’d have baked the whole continent away with death-light!”
“And any sensible elf would have thanked me!”
“When all those spirits started flying loose? Into the Palace – into the Ark?!” Weatherbird turned back to Melati. “Do you want Pool dropping by Homestead to settle old scores? Death hasn’t gentled him!”
“You’ve seen him,” Melati breathed.
“And Timmain?” Haken pressed. “Did you know she had made common cause with that rotten spirit-pool?”
Weatherbird averted her eyes. “Bluestar knew,” she admitted softly. “We didn’t listen…”
With a shriek, Melati threw herself upon her, fingers crooked and ready to deliver pain. Beast thrust himself in between the two, and he howled as her magic burned his nerves.
“Enough!” Haken barked. “This aids no one.”
“This is your fault!” Melati screamed at Weatherbird.
“It’s everyone's fault!” Beast shouted back. “You sent her to Abode – you and Haken and Sylas! And I let you! We should have kept her home. We should have kept her safe.”
“I was trying to! I was trying to help her!”
“By pushing her away?!”
“She couldn’t control her powers–”
“So you took them away from her? At least Pool left you your magic–”
She slapped him, hard, across the face. The crack echoed in the crystal pod.
**ENOUGH!** Haken sent, with just a touch of pain to the thought. Wincing, Melati staggered back. But she still glared at Beast resentfully. He clutched his reddened cheek, staring at her as if she’d lost her mind. As if he were the injured party.
“And where were you?” she charged. “When Timmain stole our daughter?”
Beast turned away. “Failing. Just like you.”
“How far does the shield extend?” Haken asked Sylas.
“Some distance. I will have to examine it further.”
“Do it. Softly. It seems Timmain shall dictate the terms of our battlefield. At least for the moment. I want to know those terms.”
Melati pressed her hand to the crystalline wall. **Naga…** she locksent. The only reply was a distant echo of her own telepathy. She closed her eyes tight against the prickle of tears. She could not afford weakness now. She could not allow herself to fall prey to the fear gnawing at her insides.
The words of Pool’s curse returned to her.
Your very soul is rotten, and just as you can only Recognize death, so you can only birth it. The question is how many will have to die.
Not my child, you monster, she vowed. I’ll burn this whole world before I let you have her!
* * *
Naga slowly awoke. The last thing she remembered was the lurch of the starstone core, the sound of cracking rocks. She was dizzy, dry-mouthed; how long had she been unconscious?
She heard a voice through the fog of drowsiness. Female, cool and silvery. She seemed to be conversing with a silent partner. “Have no fear, my bond. This is an old distress, born of older grudges. Let it go. Hmm? Yes… yes, I’ll admit I once shared it… ah, but that was before.”
Naga’s hair had fallen over her face. She used it to hide behind as she opened her eyes a fraction. Light surrounded her: neither firelight nor sunlight – nor even the white brilliance of starstone. It was cooler, green-tinged. She blinked rapidly, then squinted through the concealing tangle of hair. Dark walls, ribbed and rippling with an organic asymmetry. Shards of raw starstone stuck into the walls, half-buried in moss and lichens. The scent of rotting plant life tickled her nose.
The voice was still speaking. Timmain’s voice! Naga remembered now: the singing starstone; the High One’s cryptic words in the core; the whole world upending itself as they went flying into oblivion.
Bluestar! Where was he? Still unconscious somewhere nearby? He must be. He wouldn’t leave her alone willingly.
With a spasm of fear, she realized he could be dead, and she wouldn’t even know it. Once again, she cursed the World of Two Moons for its cruel, iron core.
“I told you I took precautions, that night fifteen years past,” Timmain continued. Naga struggled to force down her fear and focus on the words.
“You knew the risk as well as I. And for all your misplaced caution, you understand now the value of swift action.”
Who was she talking to? And what were they talking about?
Naga turned her attention to the floor on which she rested. It was spongy, like thick-pile velvet… or some sort of soft crystal-moss.
“I told you: you could rest easy. I have prevented uncertainty. Believe me, nothing has transpired that I have not foreseen.”
Slowly Naga recalled what little she knew of Timmain. She was a power-mad monster, a kin-killer and kin-maimer. For thousands of years she had ruled at the Egg, just as Lord Haken ruled first at Oasis, then Haven. But she had abandoned her own private realm some years ago, to return to wolf form and follow the inbred and degenerate Hunt back to the lands of their birth. Lands that were falling to the corrupted magic of something call the Tree. Something so disgusting and frightening that even Bluestar wouldn’t speak of it, save in the vaguest way: spirits of the long-dead bound to living trees, forcing root and bark to their whims, waging war against their still-breathing kin. It sounded like a bedtime tale to frighten little children.
The elf who’d sired her mother had been consumed by the Tree, shortly before Naga’s birth. Mother always said it was the one thing the Tree was good for.
Timmain had stopped talking. Then Naga heard another voice, rough and hoarse, alternately crackling and hissing. “It stirs…”
“‘It’ will be our greatest strength in the struggles to come.”
Her cover blown, Naga lifted her head, then her shoulders. Bit by bit, she forced herself up onto her hands and knees. Dizziness assailed her, and the stench of rotting plants formed a lump at the back of her throat, triggering a wave of nausea.
She coughed to clear her throat, and brought up a thin slick of bile. She spat and sat back, wiping her mouth. “Where am I?” she demanded, her voice a croak. “Where’s Bluestar? What did you do to him?”
Timmain slowly turned to face her. They had the room – such as it was – to themselves. It was the size of one of the living chambers in the Ark, but shaped from tree trunks and creepers instead of starstone. The glowing shards in the walls gave off the only light, through their veils of fungal lace. Naga looked up at the walls tapering upward into a ceiling high over her head. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she was inside a giant tree.
The Tree.
Timmain took a step towards her. “Welcome, child. Fear not, your companion is safe. He is in his own chamber, one much like this. The Gardeners are making him comfortable. But you slept on, and I did not wish to wake you prematurely.”
“We were in the core of the Egg.”
“I apologize for the distress I have caused. But we have a greater need of the starstone than the College.”
“They said it was your starstone. You could have just asked for it, instead of stealing it like a scavenger.”
“Do not malign the scavengers, child. They do the world a greater service than all the noble predators and the beloved prey.”
“I want to go back to the Egg!” Naga declared, struggling to her feet. “Take me back now. Bluestar too.”
“Again, I apologize for any pain this causes. It is not my intention – but it is a consequence all the same. I cannot return you to the Egg, for there is no Egg remaining. Without its core, it could not maintain balance.”
“No Egg?” It took a moment to understand. “What… you destroyed it? The College?”
“I did not destroy it. The worldpull–”
“My father! What did you do to him?!”
“Alas, I cannot say if he survived. I have never been able to follow him – not in the Scroll, not in the starstone, not in my own journeys in the Multitude. It is a consequence of the corruption within him–”
“My father’s not corrupt – don’t say that!”
“I do not refer to the shaping of his flesh, of course. But the infusion of degraded starstone into his blood, the night you were conceived.” Timmain cocked her head to one side. “I am curious. What have they told you of that night?”
“What – what does that matter? You – you – come in out of nowhere – you abduct me and Bluestar – you destroy the Egg – and you’re asking about my parents’ Recognition? You’re mad! Let me go, now! Or you’ll have to answer to Haken!”
“Oh, I have no doubt of that,” Timmain said with a secret smile.
“Let me go!” Naga screamed. She threw herself at Timmain, lashing out with her fists, since she had no magic to help her. The High One effortlessly caught her wrists and held her at arm’s length. Naga screamed and kicked and wept, calling down all the wrath of her elders on Timmain. Timmain didn’t so much as blink. She simply held on until Naga exhausted her, then released her with a little shove to put some distance between them.
**Master your instincts,** Timmain sent, with a disapproving bite to her words.
“Go poke yourself!” Naga fired back.
**You act like a hotblooded child. But you are so much more. Master yourself!**
The sending had the same effect as Haken’s harshest commands. Naga felt her knees lock, holding her in place. Against her will, her heartrate began to slow, and her arms hung slack at her sides as her breaths came more gently.
“It has been fifteen of this world’s turnings since we were parted,” Timmain continued, in her maddeningly placid tone.
“We were never parted – we never met!”
“Oh, but we did. The night you were conceived. I know you’re aware of your father’s past: his death, his incomplete revival, the many years he spent as a crippled soul… and the night he regained his true nature, when he killed the corrupted elf Kahvi.”
Naga nodded shakily. “He’s got starstone in his blood. So do I.”
“He drained the fragment called the Palacestone – used it to break down the scar tissue that had held Beast and Yosha separate for so long. And he completed the Recognition he and your mother had begun as children. A true Recognition – but would it produce a true offspring? That was the question that haunted Timmain.”
The High One began to pace restlessly. “You must understand: he thought himself to be fully restored, yet he was instead transformed… into what none could say. And with the corrupted starstone in his blood, he was rendered him invisible to the Scroll of Colors as Kahvi was. Such a threat – such an unknown – it troubled she whose purpose was Memory more than thoughts can convey. The world must be witnessed – it must be understood! But this defied all understanding – and the danger of a second – greater – anomaly…”
“Anomaly… you mean me!”
The scratching, rasping voice returned, speaking from the very walls.
“Recognition… the binding of two souls to birth a third… but one soul was rotten to the core, and the other crippled and poisoned…”
“I won’t be insulted by a maggot-ridden tree!” Naga shouted at the walls.
“What kind of child could they make, those parents? Pool called the child an innocent… but how it could remain so?”
“Pool? Is that you? You’re one to talk of rot and poison!”
“So… your mother has told you of Pool. We wondered if she would keep you in ignorance.”
“Peace, my bond,” Timmain said. “Now is not the time.”
“Now is always the time!”
“This is about more than Pool’s grievances. This is about the future of our race.” Timmain turned her attention back to Naga. “This is about you.” Her gaze turned almost loving, yet there was a predatory light in her eyes that chilled Naga to the marrow. Those flashing green eyes.
“Our greatest threat… and our greatest redemption.”
Naga shook her head vehemently. “I’m not your redemption. Don’t look at me like that! I’m nothing to do with you!”
“No, child – you are everything!”
Light sparkled around Timmain, little green-tinged motes, like fireflies. Her long hair began to lift, to flutter around her like silk on a breeze.
“All life understands the necessity of sacrifice. Of trading one outcome for another. At the moment of your conception, Timmain was there – watching, fearing. As her body sat in the Scroll Room, her spirit went out, drawn to the gathering energies of a Recognition almost concluded. Drawn to the starstone in the sire’s veins, and the memories in the dam’s soul – Timmain’s memories, memories of uncounted spirals of time, fading and fracturing but still there – precious echoes of untold lessons – lessons Timmain could not bear to lose!”
The light grew brighter, swallowing Timmain, turning her into a glowing silhouette. Naga watched spellbound as the High One’s form began to shift – growing smaller, changing shape. The long tendrils of light that had been her hair were writhing, twisting into loops.
**Timmain was there: she witnessed, she understood. Such a Recognition could not birth a proper soul… only memories, only reflections – chaotic fracturing of spirit and flesh. Timmain was there: she was reflected, she was shattered. At Recognition’s fulfillment, her soul split into twin flames. One returned to the skin in the Scroll Room. The other took on flesh and bone…**
The light withdrew into the new elfin form. Naga found herself staring at her own reflection.
The same long face and pinched chin, the same flurry of honey-red curls about her ears, the same slight brown figure just beginning to bud into maidenhood. The only difference were the eyes – brilliant green instead of soft silver.
“And became Naga,” the High One finished, Timmain’s ageless voice coming out of Naga’s mouth.
Naga shook her head. “You’re lying. You can’t…”
“I can. You are. We are.” The Naga-shaped High One smiled gently. “There has only ever been us. Two skins, one soul. Come,” she extended her hand. “Feel the truth for yourself.” **Rejoin Timmain. Become what you were always meant to be.**
The sending pressed hard against her faltering mental defenses. Naga drew back from the hand of her mirror-image. Her world spun around her. She felt everything grow dark.
**Naga…** the sending urged, using the particular pitch that was the key to her very soul.
Only one defense remained. Naga fainted dead away.
Elfquest copyright 2019 Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, all related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Some dialogue taken from Elfquest comics. All such dialogue copyright 2019 Warp Graphics, Inc. All rights reserved. Alternaverse characters and insanity copyright 2019 Jane Senese and Erin Roberts.