Death After Death

Chapter 402 - An Ever Smaller World

Many things went through Simon’s head then, but giving away what few cards he had wasn’t a good idea, so that ruled honesty out. “I just followed the signs that said caution, evil fairy on the loose, and here we are.”

“False,” the cloud buzzed, apparently missing the joke entirely. “I am no faerie, and there were no signs. Tell me again, how did you thread your way through my woods and make it to this grove?”

“You tell me about these little mushrooms, and I’ll think about it,” Simon answered, trying to get something out of the situation.

“The ring? It just lets my world write over the rules of yours a bit,” the fae boasted. It didn’t seem to like the word faerie, but it's clear that’s what it was.

Could it be a demon after all? Simon wondered. Just another type? Every fiber of his being told him that wasn’t the case. The colors and the feelings of the energy were wrong. This was a spirit of this world, though not any sort he’d ever come in contact with before.

He reached out and touched the boundary. It gave, but only like soft foam.

“You won’t be getting out that way,” the speaker taunted as the fireflies swirled and danced in a complicated pattern. “All the time I take from you builds that wall, and the harder you push, the faster you’ll fall!”

Simon wasn’t sure what that meant, but pulled his hand back just to be on the safe side. “I followed you through our connection. When you cursed, or as you say, tasted my squire, you connected with him indelibly. I could follow you anywhere until you release him.”

This answer seemed to satisfy him, and the fae was quiet for a moment as he considered Simon’s offer. “Why? I could leave you in there forever,” the leaves whispered, “I could steal your time for centuries, and let you emerge only to find your grandchildren were old and gray and all you’ve worked for was dust.”

“I’d need children to have grandchildren,” Simon said, eyeing the mushroom circle again as he searched for meaning among the complicated, swirling patterns.

He’d read stories about faerie circles, but until this moment, he wouldn’t have called any of them credible. Now, well, his mind raced at the possibilities. He’d carved words into trees, but making limbs or roots grow into the shape of runes? There were so many experiments he could try.

They were almost like words of power, but not quite, and he wished he could take a picture, but he recalled myths involving faeries and mirrors, and he wasn’t about to complicate things further.

“Oh, but you do, you do,” the fireflies sang, “But we don’t want to torment you or your kin… not really… we want your strength and your strength is time. Perhaps we could make a trade. What would you give me for your drab life, such as it is?”

“Here’s my trade,” Simon answered with an icy voice. “You release your hold on my squire and everyone else you’ve ‘sampled,’ and I won’t burn your forest down.”

“How can you burn when you are frozen in place?” the voice taunted.

When the lights broke up the outline of the fae man vanished, but neither his voice nor his laughter stopped. He was some kind of distributed intelligence, and while not as powerful as a demon, he was still obviously a force to be reckoned with.

Unfortunately for him, his threat was misplaced. While he probably could lock Simon in here for an age, all that would do was ruin his current run. The only damage he would do would be to leave Varten all alone in this world. While Simon didn’t want that, he could bear it.

“You claim to know when I speak the truth and when I speak falsely,” Simon said when the spirit finally reformed into a single entity. He didn’t know whether he was more or less vulnerable in that state, but he preferred a target he could see. “So know this. No matter how long you keep me here. No matter how you kill me, I will return and burn this forest to ash if you provoke me. I will find your heart, and I will pierce it. No enemy is beyond my reach. That is my promise to you. Peace or annihilation.”

That got a reaction. The fireflies didn’t swirl this time. They came apart in a cloud before coming back together again. “How?” it asked. This was the first time its leafy voice sounded anything but sonorous and amused. “If I bottle you up, you can do nothing to me, and yet you will. Your words are true, but impossible. Explain yourself. Is this tied to all the extra time you have? Where did you get it?”

“Prevent them,” Simon countered. “Agree to my demands and save yourself.”

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“You think I would simply give up my taste for mortals? How? They are simply too delicious,” the voice answered, full of as much mirth as anger. “We might negotiate on the one you call squire, but everyone else, if they live in my woods, well—”

Simon didn’t wait for him to finish. With the hand he was holding behind his back, he tried to use magic by gesture instead of with words or with runes. His first attempt was unsuccessful, and so was his second, but the fae didn’t seem to realize what he was trying to do, and when he tried for a third time, he felt a jolt as the magic brushed against him and rippled outward.

The first thing that happened was that his sight dimmed. He’d expected that. The Oracle had even warned him that it would. Speaking words of power ruined one's sight, and using them with gestures harmed it, while writing them down seemed to do little at all. Simon’s theory was that it was all a matter of where the magic occurred, and that the further away it was from the soul, the less it churned and twisted the clarity of that soul.

Right now, that didn’t matter; what did was that the fae, as Simon saw it, vanished. At first, he wasn’t sure if he simply couldn't see the creature anymore. It was only when the fireflies winked out, though, and the glow around the mushrooms faded away, that he knew he’d been successful.

The forest still stood, but he was alone in it now. He’d dispelled the monster that had done all this, which was a shame. He would have liked to learn more about what it was.

“Next time,” he told himself, as he went back the way he came and tried to think of a lie to tell his squire about what had happened. First, though, he pulled a mirror from his pocket and made a note that Weylera had the meaning of time.

The fae version of the word he drew looked strange in his collection of other words, but he certainly deserved further research. It was easy to imagine what he might do if he could harvest and use time itself. His mind flicked to his doppelganger at the very idea.

Is that where all of this starts? He wondered. Do I play with the past or the future and end up incarnating another version of myself? Why would I stop at one? Why not a hundred or a thousand? An army of Simons could conquer the pit in a day!

He chuckled at that as he discarded the lunatic idea. “The last thing the world needs is more Simons.”

In the end, he opted to tell his squire a version of the truth. It wouldn’t help the boy in the future to be lied to all the time. Plus, whatever he told the order when they returned, he’d have to match, so he needed to keep that in mind.

“Last night, you were marked by the witch we hunted,” he explained. “You fell into a deep sleep, but I followed her trail and confronted her.” From there, he told how the strange swarm of fireflies threatened to lock him away for a thousand years, and that Simon ultimately bested the entity with the power of prayer.

The boy was wide-eyed about that and insisted on fasting to purify himself even though the mark was gone. When they returned to Drumond, all the marks were. At least, Simon was pretty sure that was the case.

That single word of power had blurred the world significantly. He could see colors and shapes, but no detail. Still, there were no malignant dark blotches on any of those he’d previously inspected, and while the damage wasn’t magically undone, everyone agreed that the ongoing symptoms had stopped. Seeing the farmer that had been trying to sleep his life away up and around, or watching Wildon actually win a round of dice in the tavern that night, was all the proof that Simon needed anyway. If his curse was broken, then everything was normal enough.

Simon spent a lot of time the next few days contemplating what a fae really was. This was spurred on by Varten’s questions, which flowed like water after the event for the first time in a long time.

It didn’t seem to be a singular entity. If he had to guess, the woods were closer to its body than its dwelling, but the lights had been the creature itself. He was sure of that much. Were they visible without sight? He didn't know. He'd been too focused to experiment there.

By day, he answered Varten’s questions, but by night, he wrote down those answers, as well as any other musings he had on the subject, as they started back south to the trade roads so they could head west to the mountains again.

What was a faerie? How did they mark people? Did they eat people’s souls? Was his soul damaged? Would the Whitecloaks burn him at the stake because of what happened?

That last question took a long time to get to, but the boy eventually got there; that one he answered vociferously. “Absolutely not,” he told the boy. “You’re just fine.”

And if anyone tries, I’ll burn down the whole damn castle for the second time, he added silently. Just because he hadn’t used the word of greater greater fire in lifetimes didn’t mean that he couldn’t drop it like a bomb and wipe out an entire courtyard full of Whitecloaks.

The rest of the questions were more complicated, and he tried to explain how the marks stole a little bit of a trait like life or youth, like a tick or mosquito.

“Some people have more of certain things than others,” Simon explained.

“So it stole strength from the blacksmith?” the boy asked.

“Something like that,” Simon agreed. “But remember, someone could steal strength from a goblin, too. I just don’t think they’d like the results.”

“Strength from a goblin?” Varten laughed, picturing it. “That’s like stealing beauty from a… a…” he struggled to find a good word. “From a leper!”

“It is,” Simon nodded, remembering how ghastly his experiment had made him look. “But there’s a little bit of strength in every weakness in the same way that there’s a little bit of gold in the dust of your shoes.”

That made Varten look at his boots. The denials that followed were vociferous. He declared such things impossible, but Simon stood firm. “One day I’ll show you,” he agreed, wondering if the real secret to life might be that there was a little bit of gold in everything. “But for now, we’ve got to get to the border so we can go home. The masters will want to hear about our adventure.”