Tobi Ogundiran - [BCS282 S02] - Fael (html) Read online

  “You see, I wondered why she insisted on being buried here. It was a mystery to me, and I’ve spent every day of fifty years since her death puzzling out the answer. But now I know why. This was where she landed when she came, here in Kishi. She didn’t hide her light, at least not in the way I thought. It had always been with her, cloaked. That was what caused me to lose my form when I turned her into a Faêl. But now I know where it is, and I will claim it for myself.”

  Elehua dropped to one knee; produced a Sithan dagger, its black blade shimmering with effervescence. He cupped Shiera’s head, aimed the dagger at her eye—

  “What are you doing?”

  —and brought it down. Bright sparks rose off the point of impact, spraying off in colourful divergent lines. Elehua raised the dagger again and Sùr lunged for him. He waved a lazy hand, barely looking at Sùr. The force of the magic knocked Sùr off his tangent, sending him crashing into the wall where a huge tree branch snatched his leg, coiling around him like a great white snake. He struggled against the branch, ripping it into two with a resounding crack.

  The crypt came alive.

  Vines slithered over each other like a thousand writhing snakes, curling around his ankles, his neck, his arms. Sùr snatched and ripped them off him, snarling and howling in anger even as the witch-king savaged Shiera’s body. The great white baobab was the greatest snake of all; its white limbs and roots lashed out and whipped him mercilessly. Still Sùr fought, his Faêl strength lending him much needed advantage. A huge limb curled around his neck, lifted him off his feet, and slapped him hard into a pillar, even as other limbs speedily pinned his struggling form. He could hardly breathe. The tree was choking him, choking—

  “Elehua! STOP IT!”

  The witch-king attacked Shiera’s corpse, stabbing at her eye until his hands were nothing but a blur amidst the shower of colourful sparks. Shiera’s body had begun to glow; a single spot of white light bled, spreading throughout her body until it was a luminescent piece of crystalline statue.

  (the moon, the white moon, that is what it looked like)

  A flash of white light rent the air as Shiera’s eye popped out of her socket—except it wasn’t an eye; it was a bright stone gem, glowing as white as the rest of her body. Elehua seized it as it came hurtling down and slapped it into his eye socket.

  That was when Godo’s body melted away, peeling off like honey to pool around Elehua’s feet as he revealed himself in his true form. The witch-king presented a terrible image: horribly emaciated, his skin blue and stretched over corded muscles. Runes covered every inch of his body, and what was most terrible were his eyes. There were six sockets in his face, five of them filled with glowing gemstones—blue sapphire, turquoise, and the crystalline white of Shiera’s light. Thin white hair shot out the back of his skull, billowing in the wind. He curled and flapped, jerking and stretching to reveal himself in all his revolting magnificence. He brought down the dagger one last time and drove it through Shiera’s skull.

  Her head shattered into a thousand pieces of white crystal. The wind was a great scythe that took off the roofs of the crypt in one clinical stroke. The huge weathered columns crashed to the floor in puffs of putrid dust and boulders, and the great white baobab gave an earthly, eerily human groan as its roots came tearing out of the ground and it keeled over. Sùr was screaming. His leg was twisted underneath him in an impossible position and his torso was crushed beneath the bestial trunk of the baobab, the tree’s gaunt fingers scratching at his face.

  But he wasn’t screaming alone.

  Elehua was screaming. The sound was inhuman and bloodcurdling. Sùr turned his head to see the witch-king tearing at his eyes, at the brilliantly glowing gemstones in the sockets. He was ensconced in a massive colourful vortex. It spun and spun around him in a ball of white, red, yellow, orange, turquoise. There were shapes in the vortex; iridescent wraiths, barely there, just a suggestion of a form or two or three. Three shapes, dancing around the screaming witch-king.

  Three sisters.

  The ache in Sùr’s bones told him he was human again. He pushed himself to his feet, untangling himself from the dead vines and tendrils. The great white baobab was a looming carcass behind him. But in the centre of it was a single green stalk. Slender and supple with life, it rose like a phoenix amidst the sea of decay and death around it. Sùr stared dumbfounded for a few moments, hardly able to believe his eyes. A plant.

  He started towards it, then stopped when a baby’s gurgling drew his attention. The baby was wrapped in leaves, chubby arms and legs flailing in the air. Sur picked it up and it quieted, looking up at him through big brown eyes. For a moment, Sùr thought he saw three light spots deep in the pools of the baby’s eyes until he realized that they were reflections. He looked up and smiled at the sight of the three moons in the sky, turquoise, blue sapphire, and crystal white, their brilliant wash of colours lighting a sky which had known darkness for a thousand years.

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