Without another word, Catriona shifted to falcon form and flew away. Jett could levitate himself out the way they came, but she didn’t have time to wait for him. As she flew up and over the lake, she could see how the water was already churning as the undead stirred and began to rise from their aquatic bed. The people of the village, seeing what was happening, began screaming and running away from the lake. Now that they been awakened, the undead would kill every last person, just as Ulvarius ordered three centuries ago. Others would come; other settlers, friends and relatives, and the undead would kill them, too.
More than likely, some people would escape, but the undead could be very literal when it came to following orders. If they had been told to kill anyone with knowledge of this place, they would hunt down those who escaped. When the undead reached the next town, they would have no way of knowing who the escapees might have told, so they would slaughter the whole town, just in case, and use their innate magic to turn many of those people into True Undead, like them. Thus, their numbers would swell as they spread like a plague to overrun more and more settlements.
And Catriona knew all those deaths would be her fault because she woke them up. Jett may have opened the door, but he never would have been there if not for her. She couldn’t let this happen. She had to stop it here and now.
Staying in her falcon form, then, she caused the water around the edge of the lake to rise up into a cylinder of ice that would hopefully keep the village safe for a few moments, while she did what she had to do. Underground, the undead would try to escape the passage they were in, and no doubt, given time and their numbers, they would tunnel their way out. She wasn’t going to give them that time.
Coming to a halt, high above the Lake of Tears, she shifted back, standing on one of her Windy Steps. The undead were hacking at her ice wall and cracks were beginning to form. Given the size of the lake, there could be hundreds of undead down there, maybe thousands, and no wall of ice or even rock could stand against that for long, so she needed to hurry.
She focussed her magical senses on the vial of Holy Water in her hand, probing, analysing.
“Now, Blessed Alycia,” she said aloud, “I really need your help to save all these people. I need you to take my analysis of the water in this vial, and when I pour it into the lake down there, I need you to make all that water like this. This has to work. It will work.”
Taking a deep breath, she kissed the vial once more and then broke it, tipping out the contents. As the Holy Water fell like raindrops, Jett levitated over to join her.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Watch,” she said, determined that her magic would function as she envisioned it.
There was nothing visible about the change to the water, but all of a sudden, the undead began writhing in silent agony as the replicated Holy Water seeped into their bones, attacking the magic that animated them. As long as they were immersed, they would be weakened, but if they should escape, it wouldn’t take them long to dry out. It was imperative they should be contained until the `Blessing` magic could overcome the animation spell. Unfortunately, there was no way of telling how long that would take. Many years. Decades. Maybe centuries.
“That’s all very well for that lot,” Jett conceded, “but what about the ones underground? They’re still strong enough to break out and when they do, even if these are still contained, they’ll shatter your ice walls, and all this will be for nothing.”
“I know. This is the part where you hate me.”
“Why? What are you going to do? I still don’t get it!”
“Jett,” she said, “I think you’re forgetting where we are. What’s below us?” she prompted.
“The Lake of Tears,” he answered.
“And what’s below that?” she asked. “What’s directly below that?”
At last, the wizard caught on. “No!” he gasped.
Cat nodded, sadly. “I told you, you’d hate me.”
“You can’t!”
“I have to.”
The lake was directly above the ancient repository, like an enormous bath full of Holy Water. All she needed to do was let the plug out. Put a big enough hole in the bottom and all the undead would be flushed down to join their fellows. The repository was easily big enough. The water would flood every chamber and the adjoining tunnels, drowning the undead. When the lake was no more, she could fill in the hole, reseal the tunnels and the undead would be trapped.
“But all that water…all those books! They’ll be destroyed. Ruined! All that knowledge, lost.”
“I know,” Cat nodded.
As she’d said, she hated herself for thinking it, but there was no other way. Even if some scraps miraculously survived, there was no way to be sure how long it would take for every last undead creature to become inert, permanently at rest. If somebody tried to open it up, believing it had been long enough, and they were wrong, they would be killed and the undead would escape their watery prison. No. The repository would have to remain sealed and flooded, effectively forever.
“This would always have happened,” Cat said. Was she trying to convince Jett or herself? “Sooner or later, somebody would have uncovered that repository and the undead would have risen to stop them. Ulvarius made sure of that. Three hundred years ago, a petty, jealous man learned of that place, full of ancient knowledge, and he decided that if he couldn’t have it, nobody could. Not ever.”
“But he doesn’t have to win!” Jett insisted. “We could let the undead out, put together an army, fight them out here. Then the repository would be safe.”
“At the cost of how many lives?” Cat challenged him.
“But you’re not with the Light!” Jett protested. “You’re not a hero. You’re a Red robe, like me. You’re supposed to value knowledge above all else.”
“I know,” Cat insisted, making it clear she wasn’t going to change her mind.
“Those books must have been buried for a reason,” Jett pointed out. “Those ancient people wouldn’t have gone to all that effort unless it was important. You saw the notes inside some of those books. They were trying to tell us something. For all we know, the knowledge they contain could be vital to the future, vital to the world!”
“You think I don’t know that?” Cat shot back, venomously. She’d replayed Jett’s argument in her head a dozen times before he spoke the words. It was a perfectly valid point. He could easily be right. By saving the present, she could be condemning the future. How could she know?
“You think I want to be making this choice?” Her voice cracked on the words. She wasn’t qualified to make this choice, she sure as hell wasn’t authorised, but the fact remained she was the one here making it. “If it were just a matter of our lives, I’d agree with you,” she told him. “I know if it were just me, I would give my life to protect that knowledge, to preserve it for future generations as our ancestors did a thousand years ago. I could make that choice and so could you, but what about everyone else? I can’t make that choice for them. I don’t have the right!”
She couldn’t know the future. All she could do was deal with the situation in front of her and do the right thing as best she could.
“I could stop you,” Jett told her in a quiet voice, filled with menace. A fireball flared and grew in his hand.
“Then do it now,” Cat replied, “because I’m out of time.”
Even in their weakened state, some of the undead in the lake were on the verge of breaking through her ice wall. It was time to pull the plug.
She worked her earthshaper magic, ripping the lakebed apart, delving deeper until she reached the roof of the tunnel. As she switched to stoneshaper, Jett’s expression darkened further. He drew his hand back, ready to unleash his magic at Catriona.
“Don’t make me do this!” he growled.
“Do as you will,” was Cat’s only reply.
She didn’t move. Didn’t try to stop him. She needed every bit of focus she could muster to execute her plan. If he chose to execute her in the process, well, maybe it was no more than she deserved.
At the crucial moment, however, Jett faltered and extinguished the flames.
“I can’t,” he said, shaking his head. “As much as I hate you for this, Catriona, I can’t murder you and you’re right, I can’t let others die, either.”
The druidess broke through at last and the lake began to drain away. She widened the gap as much as she dared, and then switched her focus to her wall, replenishing it and contracting its dimensions to force the undead around the edge to plunge down the plughole, down into the depths.
Catriona was in tears as she worked, weeping for all that lost knowledge and the efforts of countless people, so long ago, who tried to preserve it. Effort that was now wasted, all because of the vindictive actions of one small-minded man that forced her, a simple half-Faery druid girl to do this to save lives.
*****
A while later, when it was safe once more, community leader Solana approached Catriona as she stood exhausted on the bank, panting and leaning heavily on her staff.
Actually, she considered, could it still be ‘the bank’ if there was no longer a lake?
“You saved our village!” Solana cried, gathering Catriona up in an embrace.
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Jett grumbled.
“But what did you do to the lake?” she asked, stepping away.
“I drained it,” Cat answered, frowning in puzzlement at the question.
“Obviously,” Solana rolled her eyes, “but I mean, before that!”
“Oh, replicated Holy Water,” Cat replied.
Solana raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
“Neither did I until today,” Cat admitted. Then, catching Jett’s meaningful look, she excused herself, saying, “Look, we’d better go. There’s nothing more we can do here.”
She turned to leave, but Solana caught her arm to ask one last question. “What did you find down there?”
Cat opened her mouth, but Jett got in first, smoothly, to assure her, “Oh, just some ancient tunnels. Interesting, archaeologically speaking, but nothing worth facing Ulvarius’ legion of the undead for.”
Solana accepted that with a smile and a nod, and then shook both their hands before heading off to see what she could do to restore peace and order to her village.
When she was well out of earshot, Jett explained, “We can’t tell anyone what we really found. The temptation could be too great for some.”
Cat nodded. She understood that all too well. The lure of this place had been so strong for her. It was in her nature; she just had to know. She couldn’t help wondering how much trouble that attitude might get her into in the future. She didn’t dare tell him about the one thing that she had saved. The book of star charts that was now inside her pocket dimension.
“Much as I don’t like it,” Jett continued, “Solana’s right: you did save this village, perhaps the whole of Elvaria, and knowing you, you’ll probably go on to save the world.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she insisted, blushing. “I’m just a simple half-Faery druid girl.” Frankly, she didn’t want that responsibility.
“If you say so,” Jett shrugged. She might not believe it, but he did.
Then, to Catriona’s surprise, the wizard briefly hugged her.
“I don’t hate you,” he assured her as he pulled away again. “At least, I won’t once the open wound has had time to scab over. But it would probably be best if we didn’t see each other again. Sorry, but your face would always remind me of what was lost today, reopen this wound and I don’t think I could bear that. Besides, otherwise, people might start to wonder if we really did find something here.”
“That’s OK,” Cat accepted. “You know what the rumours are like. You’ll just end up being the latest in a long line of wizard lovers I’ve apparently had and broken up with.”
Giving her a crooked smile that failed to reach his eyes, he suggested, “There is a way we could help those rumours along, if you’re willing.”
When he explained, Cat replied, “That’s almost as bad as one of my ridiculous radical ideas. Let’s do it, but just before that, if I’m not going to see you again, can I just say, thank you and, well, I suppose, have a good life.”
“You, too,” he replied. “No hard feelings. Ready?” he asked.
Cat nodded.
Jett kissed her, full and long, and then, when she was sure they had attracted plenty of attention, Cat pulled away and slapped him.
With a huff, she shifted to falcon form and flew away, leaving Jett to find a horse and travel home the conventional way.
*****
That evening, when Dreya returned to the Black Tower after a Council session, she could immediately see Catriona’s haunted look as she gazed with unseeing eyes at what appeared to be a book of star charts.
“What’s wrong, Cat?” she asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Bit more than ghosts, I’m afraid, Dreya,” she replied with a weak smile. “Legacy of Ulvarius.”
Despite what Jett had said, she had to tell Dreya. That repository would hold no lure for her. There was no power in it.
*****
“Did I do the right thing?” Cat asked when she reached the end. “I mean, Jett had a point: I’m aligned with the Balance. That’s supposed to mean knowledge first.”
“Light, Dark, Balance – Life, Power, Knowledge,” Dreya began. “Are they so different in the end? To me, it’s just a question of emphasis. What’s the point of knowledge or power without people to use it? What’s the point of living without knowledge of reality, and the power to change it? That’s what I’m striving for with the Council – better co-operation between the factions so that we can move this world forward together. As I once told Laethyn, when I say I want to be the Greatest Mage Who Ever Lived, I want that to mean something. Tyrants like Ulvarius and threats like the shadow warriors cannot be allowed. The loss of that ancient repository is a sad victory for Ulvarius but letting his undead army loose would have been worse. You absolutely did the right thing, and you did it, as always, in a way only you could have possibly dreamed up. I’m proud of you.”
*****
In the days that immediately followed, gentle reader, my mother viewed that ancient book of star charts as a prized possession. Unfortunately, in practical terms, without any real context, it proved to be of little use, so after about a week, it simply sat untouched on a shelf. It would be many years before its value was truly realised.
There were many more grand adventures for my mother over the next year or two, though none quite as harrowing as the story I just told. Through it all, however, she could find no trace of her old friend, Mandalee. True to her word, she wasn’t actively trying to find her, but she never strayed far from her thoughts. Through her sympathic link, she could take solace in the knowledge that her old friend was alive somewhere. She just thought it would be nice to at least hear something about what her life was like, now.
My mother was going to have to wait a while longer, yet, but one day, when the world was held in the balance, their paths would cross again.
*****
It’s a great pity that my mother was forced to flood that repository, a thousand years ago. The knowledge we could have gained over the centuries might have told us much that would be relevant even in my time. If those books were recorded when the void storms started, they might also have documented how and why. Then we might have learned how to stop them.
I can see them now, as I gaze out of my window once more, burning brightly in the sky, though currently frozen in Time. In the millennium since my mother’s time, though they continue to wax and wane, their average intensity has gradually increased to the point where they can cause tremors and quakes, reactivate otherwise dormant volcanoes and cause flash floods. The magical techniques we now possess are usually enough to mitigate the worst of the damage and save lives, but for how much longer? How long before they grow too powerful for anyone do anything about it? How long before the tidal forces they generate rip our world apart? According to official calculations, we have, at best, about ten years. But others can’t see Time like I do. They can’t see the way the void storms are tearing the fabric of our world apart. I can’t prove it, but I know we don’t have ten years. It’s less than that. A lot less.
Unfortunately, we are unable to expend the resources we would need to combat this danger, because there is an even more imminent threat.
I wasn’t there when it began, that summer evening, but I’ve seen it many times, since. Too many.
The gleaming city of Walminster, home to more than a million residents and thousands of visitors, is much changed from my mother’s time. Only the historic Council building, with its Protected status, remains the same.
Gone are the standard medieval cottages, smoky chimneys and horses for transport. Residential buildings can be whatever shape, colour and style the owners wish. A few change that night, perhaps to make room for a new arrival. In the sky, transport pods race along roads that appear only when they need to, and teleport pods provide more long-distance options for those who can’t teleport themselves. A holographic concert is underway in the nearby arena, beamed live from another world. Others seek their own entertainment with smaller displays that appear above the palm of their hands and still more people are pulling up tourist information, as well as interactive map images and directions out of thin air, as well as news and weather reports.
A recreational park is pulled out of a pocket dimension, for people to enjoy the evening sunshine. Children are soon chatting, laughing, and playing with shapeshifting magic. Eventually, they decide to go somewhere else, so they all change into a variety of birds and fly away, meeting up with another group along the way, doubling the flock size.
The sky overhead grows black, as if it’s suddenly been ripped apart to reveal nothingness beyond. Out of that void, comes a Monster. The Monster that killed my mother’s parents.
The void-creature casually shoots the flock of birds below him. The children blink out of existence, and the blast continues, uninterrupted. A long travel pod train gets caught in the blast, vanishing as the power strikes the ground, where it leaves a quarter-mile diameter crater. The concert is obliterated. Emergency services respond, but they, too, are caught in the attack. Mages and fighters of all descriptions try to stop the void-creature, but the cannon rips through shields and armour, like they’re not there. He must be stopped.
Mandalee and the other Guardians arrive, fighting with Temporal magic, using every bit of skill and power they possess, and at last, something slows the creature down, but even they can’t stop it. Temporal shields that could hold back an Angel, buckle under the assault.
Aunt Mandalee finally calls me in – she probably should have called earlier, but she feared for my safety. I can sense the Temporal component of his weapon and try to wrap him in a Time bubble. After experimenting with various harmonic variations, I manage to nullify the Temporal aspect of his blasts. They still cause mass destruction, but I’m hopeful that the Guardians can find ways to undo much of that through some clinical Time Interventions.
At last, the tide of battle turns, and the void-creature slips through a portal. The Guardians are exhausted, but I give chase. I can’t let him damage Time, but by that same token, I must be careful – pitched battles between us through Time would make the ancient feud of the shadow warriors look like playground fighting.
He eventually flees somewhere even I cannot go, which should be impossible, but I have come to realise that the rules don’t apply to him, because his power comes, in part, from outside the Great Cosmic Sandwich. Somehow, he is channelling the chaotic power of IT.
We’ve been waging a war for over a year since that first day, and we’re powerless to do anything more than slow the void-creature down.
If this Monster is not stopped, we’ll never need to worry about the void storms, and if he’s not stopped quickly, the void storms will make our war magnificently irrelevant.
But where did this Monster come from and where does my desperate and dangerous plan fit into this? Why have I sent Mandalee back in time to fetch my father from the past, and why from that particular moment? To give you those answers, I must continue to hold back Time and keep the Red and Black Guardians from interfering.
Speaking of which, they’re giving me some trouble at the moment, and I’m afraid they might just break free if I don’t do something to discourage them. So, if you’ll excuse me, gentle reader, I shall go and deal with them. Then on my return, I shall tell you the story of how Daelen StormTiger, my father, first met my mother, and everything was set in motion.