4. Vireth #2
The haunting words of the prophecy return to me, unbidden.
Blight Mother. Rot-Born Queen.
From the rot of mercy comes the mother of endings.
The words brand themselves across the inside of my skull and my pulse kicks up in a frenzy of anxiety.
She will love the world.
And in loving it, she will unmake it.
I press my palms against my temples, as if that will ease the painful ache building inside my head.
I do love this world, in spite of everything.
I love the way moss creeps along the northern walls.
I love having the ability to reduce things meant to last for ages—wood and steel—back to their most basic elements.
I love the way bones sink into loam and become something useful.
I love the truth—the raw honesty—of endings.
Is that so terrible? Or is that precisely the problem?
Prophecies are treacherous things. They’re not really instructions; they’re riddles that wait for desperate fools to fulfill them.
My mind returns for the thousandth time to the fae fortune teller.
Who’s to say her prophesies are true, anyway?
Maybe they never come to pass. Perhaps this is a cruel trick from one of the countless courtiers I’ve angered or disgusted.
Why did no one think to question her before she could make good her escape?
Why didn’t anyone sequester her to ask her what she meant?
Then again, perhaps no one cared to learn the truth because they found another easy reason to spurn me.
A plan begins to condense in my mind like mold in a forgotten cellar.
Leave the castle, find the fortune teller.
Persuade her to talk to me. Demand clarity.
If the gods are speaking through her, it’s possible they’ve had more to say since the feast. Or maybe she has experience interpreting their words for others, and she can lend me some more insight.
After ruining my life, it’s the least she could do.
Yes. Yes. The more I think through this plan, the better I like it, the more sense it makes to me.
First, however, I think I’ll pay a visit to the sages and squeeze out every bit of information they have about the Blight Mother—a name I’ve only heard in the occasional folk tale murmured to children at bedtime.
The gold door lock might have kept me in, had decay been my only companion. It isn’t.
I whistle for Nibblebones, who’s been tucked away in my armoire, snoozing.
The minute she hears me call for her, I hear her tiny paws rifling through clothes and scratching against the wood to find her way out.
She emerges in a tumble of lace and old silk.
Her narrow body undulates across the floor, patchy fur bristling, lichen blooming in soft green freckles along her spine.
Her eyes gleam like polished beetle shells.
“Hello, my darling,” I murmur, scooping her into my hands and pressing my lips briefly to her mossy back for a kiss. “I’ve a task for you.”
She chitters, eager, and for the first time all day, I smile.
“The door’s locked from the outside. I can’t rust through it. Can you do something clever?”
Nibblebones wriggles from my grasp and slinks toward the door. She examines the lock with solemn consideration, then—because she is a creature of unreasonable gifts—her body compresses.
Her ribs seem to ripple inward. Her patchy white and green fur flattens.
She shivers into sudden smallness, and then with a triumphant squeak, she slides into the keyhole.
There’s a faint metallic scrape, followed by a click, and then the lock falls open.
The door creaks open an inch, and I exhale slowly.
“Well done, my love.”
From then on, I move quickly—there’s no time to waste.
If anyone catches me, I suspect the comfort of a bedchamber with a lock will be out of the question.
Would Mother stick me in a dungeon? Hard to say, at this point.
Not out of sheer cruelty, of course, but if she believed it was for my safety, I could conceive it, certainly.
I drag out a small bag from beneath my bed and pack what I can without overburdening myself: a couple spare shirts, a second pair of trousers, a simple sleeping shift, a cloak woven from shadow spider silk.
My bloomday dagger from Ulfrid, the coward.
My gold-handled sword, still sharp. A whetstone, a flask, a comb, a roll of bandages and a tin of salve.
A coin purse filled with a handful of gold, silver, and copper coins and a few small gemstones.
I hesitate, then add the little white-gold comb Sephia gave me on our shared bloomday.
It’s impractical, but it feels wrong to leave it behind.
Nibblebones coils around my shoulders as I slip from my chamber. The corridors are surprisingly quiet for the late afternoon hour. Torches gutter in their brackets, resin popping softly. We move through the halls like the breath of the Death Goddess upon the lips of the dying.
When I reach the library, I’m met with the familiar, comforting scent of vellum, dust, and ink, the sharp smell of books of magic—like lightning.
The doors, weathered and reinforced with iron, groan low as I push them open.
It’s bittersweet, coming here with the thought that I might never see this place again.
It takes effort for me to set my memories of childhood lessons aside and focus on the nascent determination snaking through my veins.
The three mages sit together at the center table, their heads bent over gods-know-what scroll or ancient text, arguing in hissing tones.
I catch references to the Blight Mother more than once, and my frown only deepens at the absence of my name—my true name—in the conversation.
So, I’ve already become the monster in their eyes.
Irritation climbs up my spine at the over-importance of these men who believe themselves guardians of knowledge rather than its gatekeepers. Typical. When the doors close behind me, the sound rolls outward through the stacks and their heads lift in unison.
Usually when I come to the library, I slink through the aisles and stacks to find what I want without bothering anyone, so when I stand at the threshold and wait for their acknowledgement, there’s apprehension on their faces.
“I require every text you have regarding the Blight Mother,” I say, and I hear in my own voice something new—an absence of apology. Goosebumps prickle down my arms with the thrill of it.
One of the mages stands—one of Sephia’s old tutors. His face has only just started to show the lines of age, and they deepen as he slowly shakes his head.
“I’m sorry, Lady Vireth,” he says. “There isn’t much here, and we haven’t finished studying what there is. The text cannot be spared.”
Frustration summons a fuzzy bloom of yellow mold that climbs up the carved oak doors behind me, winding its way toward the towering shelves of books.
When I reply, my voice remains proud and even. “I’m afraid that’s not good enough. As I am the subject of that text, I believe I have more of a right to it than any of you.”
A shelf to the left emits a low, splintering creak.
The mold is traveling with determined speed now, threading its way through the seemingly infinite leather-bound volumes stacked along the endless shelves.
Another mage stands quickly, his chair falling with a loud crash behind him, rushing toward my threat of destruction.
“I have spent most of my life being the subject of jokes, less-than-flattering stories, and rumors. I’ve been made an example of, brushed off, pushed aside, and spent countless hours being corrected into something more presentable.
I learned how to temper my tone, how to sweeten my expression, how to make my abilities less unsettling in mixed company.
I have been patient. I have been reasonable.
I have been quiet. And I have asked for very little in return. ”
It’s bittersweet—saying these words that I’ve been unable to voice for decades. It’s a triumph that I can say them now, but gods, why does it have to be when I am about to leave this place and all its judgments behind?
“You must do this for me,” I insist. “Give me the book, and let me take charge of my own fate.”
The mages exchange a look and my heart soars when the eldest one nods to the others. Without another word or any further protest, they disappear behind the labyrinth of bookshelves with jangling iron keys. Their frenzied whispers remind me of a soft breeze through the forest canopy.
In their momentary absence, I bask in the glow of the sputtering lamps and sense something within me settling into place, almost like a key finding the precise tumblers of a lock.
The fear is still there, certainly—I would be a fool if that were absent.
There’s a suspicious awareness that if I walk this path, I may find confirmation that I truly am something monstrous.
Yet those fears no longer outweigh the fury—deep and dark and persistent—that has taken root over years of careful, practiced diminishment.
If there is a prophecy, and I am at the heart of it, I refuse to have the world-altering words interpreted and legislated by anyone other than me. It’s my fate, after all.
The mages return, frowns heavier than the gravity of this room, and one of them clutches a single, pocket-sized book in his hands.
The cover is some sort of dark hide—gravemaw, I think—and rather than the impressive volumes rife with crackling magic and carved with ancient runes, this underwhelming text looks disappointingly like a simple diary.
It’s locked with a metal clasp etched with sigils I know are ancient, yet unfamiliar.
“This is all that remains,” the eldest mage says quietly. “If there were more than this at any point, I’m afraid they’ve been lost to time and the elements.”
I lay my palm against the cover, and warmth seeps into my skin—not heat exactly, but… something.