21. Vireth #3
I seize the spell with thousands of filaments, but it burns.
Oh, oh! How it burns! The pain might be the worst pain I have ever known—worse than every cut, broken bone, slap, or heartbreak I’ve felt in my fae body.
This is so much worse—this sharp, sterile bite of something that refuses change, and the wretched thing resists me with all the desperation Arden poured into it.
The soil turns to black sludge, and the filaments I have sent deep beneath Valehar blacken and snap.
I scream in pain and rage—a primal scream that this is the source of the corruption, this small, pathetic man who thinks he is above everything, including the natural order of the world.
Walls start to shudder, and chimneys collapse in the lower quarter.
The dry fountain in the center of the courtyard bursts apart as carpets of slime mold seep out of the stone like water.
In the courtyard, people fall to their knees as the ground heaves and shudders violently beneath them.
The scaffold tilts, and one corner drops with a splintering shriek.
I’m pleased to see the chopping block, that ought to boast a new chip from my death, crack in two.
The Blight Mother’s will coils around mine, another hand tugging at the rope of wrongness.
Pull, child.
“I am trying,” I snarl.
Harder.
I dig deeper, as deep as I dare to go. Every filament I have becomes one more insult I’ve weathered, one more embarrassment I’ve caused.
This spell clings to the soil of the kingdom with misplaced determination, threaded through root hair and grain husk and the mineral memory of water.
I feel Arden’s blood in it—it feels cold and calculating and haughty, just as I know him to be. I think of Renard, of his strength.
Again, I pull… and something tears. The world around me, around us, convulses.
A sound like a thousand screams splitting open fills my head.
Orchards collapse with the sharp crack of splintering trees, no longer bowed beneath all that beautiful, inedible fruit.
Across the valley and through the distant fields, every stalk of cursed wheat shivers, then disintegrates as the unnatural life drains out of it.
I pull again, and this time, the knot rips free. For one breath, Valehar is silent. Phantom pressure lifts, as though a brewing storm has decided to pass over us, and the earth beneath the kingdom exhales so deeply that I cannot help but weep.
It is done, I think, but the Blight Mother does not loosen her grip.
No, child, she says, her tone firm. It is begun.
Dread gathers in me, and despite the sheer exhaustion of using my powers to such an extent, I clamor toward her—finding her crouched and waiting in the land of gray mist.
“No,” I whisper.
The corruption is rooted out, she says. Now the wound must be cleansed.
The courtyard comes back into focus around me, and all I see is devastation—people are screaming, huddled together in terror, choking and coughing on the falling spores.
The mushrooms have grown taller than trees now, their massive poisonous caps blotting out what little morning light had managed to filter down the clouds.
Delicate lacework of white mycelium crawls over whatever stones haven’t been cracked and crumbled into gravel.
Arden is nowhere to be found—of course the coward has turned tail and fled. I should’ve known the wretch wouldn’t stick around to reap what he’d sown.
“No,” I say again, stronger. “The spell is gone.”
The kingdom remains.
“These people are innocent,” I argue. “They should not be held responsible for the cruel actions of one man.”
Penance must be paid. Lessons must be taught today. The humans always forget too quickly.
“I will not stand by and let you destroy a kingdom that deserves a fighting chance. If you destroy it all now, you will be no better than Arden!” I scream.
Silence, she bellows.
She pushes against my will—I push back, but it’s like shoving against a mountain.
The goddess doesn’t rage or argue any more, she simply takes control of my body, folding my limbs beneath her will, drawing my sight away from the courtyard and into that gray mist that I’ve already come to know too well.
“No!” I scream, but my mouth doesn’t open. My body stands beneath the mushroom canopy, beautiful and terrible and no longer mine, while the rest of me is thrown into the gray.
The dream world closes around me with the wet, cold embrace of gray mist. Pushing against the Blight Mother is damn near useless, and every time I do so, the mist thickens until I can barely see my hands in front of me.
The Blight Mother reigns, and through her eyes, I see Valehar begin to come apart.
The courtyard was merely the starting place for the Blight Mother’s vengeance, and her destruction races through the streets like a stampede.
Mushrooms burst from rooftops and pulsing slime molds crawl over every surface that still stands.
People flee through choking clouds of spores—some crawling, some carrying children, some too weak to do more than sob with their faces covered beneath threadbare sleeves.
“Stop!” I demand.
The mist swallows my voice.
“Stop,” I whisper, sobbing into the mist, devastated to witness the destructive power my magic is capable of. Her voice answers from far below—and everywhere around me.
The people of Valehar must learn, she repeats.
“No! They suffer because of one cruel man. They need not suffer any further. The balance has been restored—do you really think these poor people would attempt to subvert the natural order again? To forget which goddess has shown them divine retribution and terrifying consequences?”
The Blight Mother turns her attention away from me then, focused intently on her revenge.
I will ensure they remember this time.
The mist thickens, then a sound cuts through it. A chitter—small, and furious, and heartbreakingly familiar. My pulse kicks up.
“Nibblebones?”
The gray in front of me flickers a bit, shivering like ripples on the surface of a pond where a stone’s been thrown in.
Through the Blight Mother’s eyes, I see movement near the collapsed edge of the scaffold.
A streak of piebald fur darts between fallen planks and treacherous fungal roots.
My little corpse weasel leaps over a gap in the stones, lands badly, scrambles, then keeps running with something clutched in her mouth—not just one something, several somethings.
“Nibblebones!” I scream.
The Blight Mother’s attention turns, slow and irritated. Before the little creature can reach me, the courtyard doors slam open.
Arden emerges first, with Renard clutched in his arms.
My world stops—Renard is alive.
He looks wretched, and altogether a bit humiliated about allowing himself to be taken hostage.
Blood, both dried and fresh, mats the silver hair of his right temple.
His hands are bound before him, the skin of his wrists red and raw, leaking even more blood in slow droplets upon the stone.
His left eye is swollen shut, and he leans gingerly to one side, holding his ribs like he’s just been halfway down the gullet of another bogunder.
Arden stands behind him with a knife pressed to his throat, and my focus narrows to the small place where the edge of the blade draws a wet, red line along Renard’s skin.
“If you have enough of yourself left to hear me,” Arden calls, “I suggest you listen.”
The Blight Mother stills, more curious than anything, I think. I take the opportunity to slam myself against her from the inside—a feral animal against the bars of a new cage—until the gray mist finally tears open before me.
“Renard!” I scream through voiceless lips.
The gaze of his one good eye roves around the courtyard, finds my body, and something in his battered face breaks open—not fear, disgust, or shame, but relief.
He is relieved to find me, even being used by this damned goddess who wishes to wipe this pitiable kingdom from the face of the earth. My heart gives another pathetic thump.
“Vireth,” he rasps.
The knife digs in deeper, and Renard winces in fresh pain. My rage is blinding and I scream again in my prison of gray, the sound enough to make the Blight Mother chuckle.
“Careful,” Arden says, but his voice has lost its polished edge and elegant composure.
He’s panicked now—the cold blue of his eyes nearly swallowed by wide, black pupils.
His hair is messy, his well-made tunic no more than tatters beneath mold, and his hand practically vibrates with the strain. “Call off whatever this is.”
My body doesn’t answer, but I feel my head tilt. The Blight Mother studies him, like she is observing an insect.
A man with a blade, she says inside the gray. Is that… it?
“Don’t touch him,” I growl. “You cannot hurt Renard. You mustn’t allow him to hurt Renard!”
In answer, the mist presses me down—her vastness swatting at me like one might swat a gnat buzzing too close.
Arden drags Renard a step closer, and my heart squeezes at the pained grunts he emits. “I know you care for him, fae, though I confess I cannot imagine why. He has failed every woman foolish enough to love him.”
Renard flinches, and the Blight Mother’s amusement curls through me.
Men are such petty, simple creatures. I, myself, have never understood the appeal.
“Shut up,” I snarl, though I don’t know if I’m talking to Arden or her.
Before I can think of a way out of this, or a way through this, Nibblebones moves.
She darts up the scaffold remains, faster than any living thing ought to be.
Arden sees her too late. She launches herself at his knife hand and sinks her teeth into the soft flesh between thumb and forefinger with a feral shriek.
Arden screams and swears, and the knife jerks away from Renard’s throat.