Wit'ch Star (v5)

  In his face now, she didn’t see a knight or guardian or liegeman, simply a man who loved her, and feared for her. His eyes bored into her, as if willing her safe. But he knew he could not walk this next path with her.

  Tears welling, she turned away. She could look no longer. She hurried to the center of the dark confluence and stepped into the column of moonshine. She clutched the book tighter and held her breath. The ground shook again, showering rock dust from the roof.

  I’m ready, she whispered.

  As if hearing her, the floor under her suddenly grew darker. It started in the center and welled outward. Gasps arose.

  Elena stared down between her toes. A glassy well had opened under her, a darkness veined with streaks of crimson. She had seen such a view before, through the Spirit Gate. It was the center of the world. But the crystalline heart no longer shone. Illuminated by two bright wisps that swirled around it, the stone was dark, empty of whatever had once given it life.

  Words reached her from the depths of this well. Elena . . . the time comes . . .

  She lifted the Diary, reaching to her magick, blooming it bright in her hands. She felt the mix of fire and ice.

  Down below, the dance of wisps grew wilder. Spinning and whirling, the blend of light became a cloud, shining with a clarity that spoke of life beyond existence.

  Elena did not breathe. Tears flowed down her cheeks.

  Such beauty could not exist. It did not belong in this plane of reality.

  Then a flash of brilliance destroyed all. The concussion lit the entire well. Elena’s cloak and hair billowed as something passed through her from below.

  Now! The single note rang through her being.

  With a gasp, Elena unleashed all her magick into the book between her palms. Wit’ch fire and coldfire fused into a violence as brilliant as below. Magicks ripped into the binding, the ancient spell, the pages. But, tied to her magick, she knew her mistake.

  She stared into her hands with horror. Sand fell from between her palms. Sand . . . It had not been the Blood Diary, but mere illusion.

  Her eyes lifted as she spun around. “Joach!”

  Across the way, her brother fell to his knees. Their eyes met for a fraction of a heartbeat—then the blast wave of magicks struck her, carrying her away.

  Er’ril lunged forward with Elena’s scream. But up from below, a vast shaft of light blazed forth, encompassing the entire floor. A force came with it. He was lifted off his feet and thrown against the wall, pinned in place. For this moment, the confluence again turned silver before him, blinding all in its brilliance. An immense pressure crushed outward. It threatened to tear the spirit from his body. He felt his moorings stretched and strained.

  Such a force could not be contained, not even by this vast room.

  He felt something give—not in himself, but in the world.

  The pressure popped, and he slid down the wall, crumpling to the stone floor along with the others. All around, their faces were masks of fear.

  Tol’chuk was the first to regain his feet. He gaped upward. Others followed the direction of his gaze. The roof of the cavern was gone—not crashed down, simply gone, vanished. Far above, a cloud-streaked night sky shone upon them. Stars glowed. The silver face of the full moon had fallen halfway down the sky.

  Meric spoke into the stunned quiet. His words sounded muffled, as if heard through water. “Where’s Elena?”

  Er’ril had no answer. The floor had gone black again. Elena was gone, vanished as surely as the roof overhead. He fell upon Joach. “What did you do?” He had meant his words to be fierce, but they came out a scream of rage. “What did you do?”

  Joach faced the plainsman’s wrath. He had no choice—he could not get his legs to move. He knelt where he had fallen, head hanging. He barely saw the others. His mind’s eye was still full of Elena’s face as she had swung toward him. Then . . . then she was gone. He had seen the blast of magick eat her away, consuming her in a heartbeat from below.

  He covered his face. He had killed her. His grief was beyond tears.

  “What did you do?” Er’ril grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet. He was thrown against the wall again, not by magickal forces, but by simple fury.

  Joach fumbled into his cloak and pulled out the Blood Diary. “I couldn’t . . .” Words died.

  Er’ril snatched the book, releasing him. Joach slumped to the ground.

  “For this?” Er’ril yelled. “You sacrificed your sister for this!”

  He kept his head hung. It was too heavy. His heart was a boulder in his chest, squeezing his breath, dragging him to the ground.

  “Look at it!” Er’ril tore open the covers and waved it before his face. “You slew her for no reason.”

  Joach didn’t understand. Then he saw the pages inside. They were covered with lines and lines of pigeon-scratched ink. The Void was gone.

  “It’s my brother’s diary, returned again.” This last was spoken as a sob. Er’ril sank to his knees before Joach. The fury had burned away, leaving only grief. He flung the book away. “The magick is gone. Whatever you sought is gone.”

  Both men knew what this meant. Elena was truly dead.

  Er’ril stared at him, his eyes moist. “Why?”

  Joach shook his head. There was no answer to the plainsman’s question. He could not explain it himself. Something dark lurked in his heart. It had started as love, but grief and pain and power and pride had blackened it, soured it. It had led him to betray those who truly loved him, while he chased after phantoms.

  He stared at Er’ril, but he no longer saw him. He saw Elena. Beyond the anguish and despair in her eyes in that last moment, he had seen something else, something that pained him even more: understanding and love.

  Joach closed his eyes . . . and his heart.

  His sister was gone.

  Cascades of light rolled like storm seas, surging through the vast nothingness . . . Stars spun in a dance that defied time but also defined it . . .

  She rolled amid the chaos and symmetry. She was too large, too vast. None could see her.

  . . . small sparks zipped in furious clouds around a tiny heart . . . Fundamental forces played within the core, blurring where energy ended and substance began . . . One iota bonded to another and another, forming a single bit of granite.

  She sailed amid simplicity and complexity. She was a mote in the substrata of life. None knew she was there, not even herself.

  As she stretched between the vast and the insignificant, a small corner of consciousness remained.

  I am, she thought.

  Power sailed through her, expanding her farther outward and more inward. Would she ever stop flowing? Was there no end to existence? As she grew smaller, form turned to energy. As she grew larger, energy took form. She named this stretch of nothingness: Void. She filled this Void, fueled by energy that silvered over her and scintillated through her.

  From nothingness, she was born and now had returned.

  All else was mere Substance.

  As she pondered her new perspective, a voice reached her. Elena.

  She named this other in turn, knowing it as she knew herself. Cho.

  A swirl of moonlight answered her. The time is at hand, Elena. I am at an end, already ended. You must choose the world or yourself.

  Identity filled in the corners of her consciousness. And with it came memory. I must not, she answered. I must not choose.

  The other faded. Then the choice will be made for you. You will continue to swell through the Void, becoming the harmony that is nothingness. You must choose.

  Elena felt a flicker of fear at these words. Ancient warnings rang in her ears. And a cautionary retort:

  Look to your heart.

  Look to the friends you love.

  Find your own path out of the darkness—

  A path that none but you will see.

  These thoughts echoed through her, and her desire became reality. Elena stood in a chamber
open to the sky. Others gathered near. None saw her. She was wrapped in raging gales of ghostfire, flaming over her form. She floated a span above a black floor.

  She watched two men fight, then both collapse to knees.

  Look to your heart.

  Elena named these men, for they were in her heart. Joach . . . and Er’ril.

  Look to the friends you love.

  She turned to the others. She knew them, too. She saw them at all the levels of existence, from solid substance down to nothingness. But between those two states, there existed a silvery energy, their lifeforces. Some flared brighter, more elemental to this basic energy. Others less so. Still, one and all, they shone with such beauty.

  But one of them drew her attention back.

  Er’ril.

  He filled her heart and sight. He had saved her once before, drawn her back with his touch and love. But the power here was too great. He could not save her this time.

  Find your own path out of the darkness.

  Here she must indeed go alone. She stared at all of them again, frozen in a place without time. She saw the traceries of lifeforce, winding among them and outward. She reached a filament of her own energy and touched a vibrating thread.

  Then she was away and everywhere at once. That which was consciousness spread in all directions along a silvery web of energy. Before, when in her body, she had been too weak and confined. She had barely brushed the immensity of what lay beyond. But no longer. As with the Void, she expanded out from this single thread and into the web that composed life. She swelled into its myriad shapes and forms, its senses and textures. Voices filled her head. Lives ended and were born again, while new buds of lifeforce grew along the web, stretching out. She raced throughout this complexity, appreciating its simplicity. She stared down at its looming vastness and up through the faceted eyes of a single ant.

  She knew what she was seeing, the antithesis to the Void, but the same. A vastness untapped. She knew her answer then. She knew her path.

  She sailed from the web, from the room, from the world. But all the while, she trailed a cord of her own energy, a shining wake of ghostfire that led back to this living web.

  From a place near the moon, Elena hovered. Energy continued to flow into her. There was no escaping it, only releasing it. She was a font of incalculable magick. The choice was to keep it herself and ascend into the vastness of the Void, or send it down into the hollow heart of the world, giving the energy to that which was Substance, starting a new world.

  But she now saw a third choice. A path none but you will see.

  She took all the blasted energy of two spirits into herself, tying it in the skies over the world while still maintaining a cord to the lifeweb below. She spent an indeterminate amount of time in the boundary between both Void and Substance, balancing the tidal waves of power, matching the ebbs and flows.

  She acted and responded with instinct. But a part of her understood.

  The energy tied here would flow its magicks equally along the web. Once the Land finished its slow death, there would be no elementals versus ordinary folk. There would be no mages, wit’ches, or Dark Lords. Rather than the few surpassing the many, each and every living thing would be granted its own magick, its own unique talent. Maybe each gift wouldn’t be as strong as before, distributed and diluted throughout all life, but maybe it was as Ly’chuk had dreamed, time to end magick’s rule of their world and destiny. Maybe it was time for them to forge their own path.

  Elena finished her work, then glided down the silvery trail. She was spent, falling, and empty. Without the rage of magick inside her, her identity sharpened and focused back to herself. She stared up at the well of magick above her, glowing in the skies, feeding a constant flow of magick into the web of life below. She was amazed at her handiwork, but her knowledge of its creation was already fading. Her consciousness now was too small to encompass the vast enlightenment necessary to have birthed this new star.

  She sank back to the world, back to the web, back to the roofless cavern. She continued to study the twinkle of the star. As long as it shone, as long as its well of energy lasted, the magicks of the land would be balanced in all things, making each person equal to another. Though such talents would be smaller—such as the gift of sculpting clay, or an aptitude for baking, or an ability to understand another’s heart—each life would have its own unique and special gift, free to be recognized and nurtured or simply ignored.

  From this night onward, all would be equal.

  Elena stared around the room. There would be only one exception. As she touched the floor, a magick that she had prearranged ignited. With no conscious awareness of how it was done, she unfolded herself from the stream of energy, drawing her consciousness fully back to herself. She stepped out of nothingness and crossed back into the world, no longer a god, no longer even a wit’ch, simply a woman.

  Senses of the world overwhelmed her: the heat on her skin, the smell of brimstone and rain, the voices raised in surprise, the swirl of colors and lights. The world was too bright. She gasped and swooned, surprised at the intensity of sensations.

  Then he was there, holding her, filling all her senses. “Er’ril . . . ,” she whispered. She stared at him: the storm-gray of his eyes, the planes of his face, the single tear rolling down a stubbled cheek. He filled her.

  “Elena!” He sobbed her name, pulling her tight.

  She closed her eyes and sank into him. She sheltered in his arms, giving herself time to settle. She was like a basin of water, shaken and rocked. She needed a moment for her spirit to calm and reseat itself in her body.

  He held her.

  When she felt ready to face the new world, she pulled up and opened her eyes. Others gathered around: Tol’chuk and Harlequin, Meric and Nee’lahn, Kast and Sy-wen, Tyrus and Wennar, even Fardale in his wolf form.

  The world was still too bright. The first rays of sunlight shone down into the chamber.

  “The star . . . ?” Meric asked, dropping to a knee. “Was that your doing?”

  Elena nodded. So it hadn’t been a dream. She searched the skies, but dawn had come and bathed the stars away. Still, she felt its glow beyond the horizon. She knew it would shine again this night. A new star.

  “A Wit’ch Star,” Meric said. This name echoed among the others, some with amusement, some with awe.

  “What does it signify?” Nee’lahn asked.

  Elena sighed, not ready to talk about that yet. She still had one last duty. She kissed Er’ril, a brief brush that promised a lifetime more, and stood. She crossed to the lone figure in the shadows by the wall. She stood in sunlight while he hid in darkness. He would not meet her face.

  “Joach,” she whispered. “It’s all right.” Deep in her heart, she touched a magick still locked there. The Wit’ch Star would eventually balance and level the magick of the world and make each person equal to another. But there would be one exception. She opened her heart and sailed this gift into her brother. She sensed he would need it—maybe not the way he had originally intended, but a necessity nonetheless.

  She passed the gift of immortality into him. His body jerked with the touch. His face lifted, with both surprise and horror. She tied the magick to his silvery lifeforce. As the connection was made, their two energies mixed, spreading to the web beyond. For a scintillating moment, they were connected to all in the room. Each one’s story, thoughts, feelings swelled into them.

  Joach gasped, crawling back, covering his face.

  Then it was over. The gift had been passed.

  Joach lowered his hands and stared up at her from his dark corner. “Wh-what have you done?”

  What had to be . . . , she thought silently, then whispered softly, “Whether curse or blessing, do with it what you want. But when the marching of years weighs too heavy, tell my story—tell my story true—and you will find your end.”

  He stared at her with horror and disbelief. A pained laugh escaped his throat. He turned from her.

&nb
sp; Elena stared down at him. How she longed to reach to him, but she didn’t. Instead she did the harder thing; she stepped back. A moment ago, she had been forced to find her own path out of darkness, a path that none but she could see. Now it was Joach’s turn. None could walk his path but himself.

  She turned and faced the new world. She lifted her pale hands into the sunlight. They remained pure and white, a woman’s hands.

  She found Er’ril staring at her. She smiled back at him.

  Here was magick enough for anyone.

  And so the story ends . . .

  From that moment, everything changed. We all left the heights of Winter’s Eyrie and entered a new world, one forged within a ruby fist. But what became of us all? I can’t truly say. I can only tell my own tale.

  Shame drove me west, past the mountains, past the Western Reaches, out to the lands beyond the setting sun. On this road, Elena’s last gift to me, her immortality, proved to be true. I didn’t age. I lived countless lifetimes, but only the first ever mattered to me. And though I had enough life energy to revive Kesla, I found I didn’t have the will. I didn’t even try. I was not worthy of her love. She was better off wherever she now slept—whether in the sands of her desert home or in the Mother’s gentle arms.

  Still, over time, even this choice was taken from me. My dreaming abilities faded, like all the strong magicks of the world. It took several generations, but slowly the world became a simpler and perhaps duller place. Under the glow of the Wit’ch Star, the og’res withdrew into their mountains, the mer’ai into their seas, and the elv’in clans were scattered, never to be found again.

  Perhaps someday when the Wit’ch Star dies, magick will return again, surging into peaks and valleys, but for now, it is an age of mankind in all its glory and misery. I’ve seen golden times and dark pass me by, and still I walked the roads, seeking answers that were always inside me.

  Now as I look back at the words I wrote at the beginning of this long tale, I see the anger in my heart. Elena had not cursed me, only given me the opportunity to walk down the dark path that I had started myself. It was a road too long to survive in the span of a single life. There were entire lifetimes of guilt, bitterness, and even madness to survive.