A Lament of Moonlight (13 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Abigail was not sure what she was expecting the Winter Court to look like. She supposed that some part of her just expected to see a spiraling tower of ice, but instead what she was looking at was nothing of the sort. The Winter Court was just that, a courtyard of sculpted ice in forms of animals and plants too rare for Abigail to even understand. All of the sculptures looked tragic, in pain, or at least in the last throws of life, trying desperately to cling to a soul which could not survive in such temperatures.

Once they passed through the huge, ivory gates they expected to see something fantastic. They expected to see fairies and dragons and all manner of sprites. When they voiced that to Samarra she smiled sadly.

“They used to live here, but they do not any longer. The only remains of them are the statues that froze with the coming winter, those that stayed behind to tend the tree. The others escaped through the tear into your world, to live there. Maybe they will return once Evyndelle returns to normal.”

The courtyard was large, though the only building that it sported was the Ice Castle in the very center with roads leading to and from it. The castle was not the sort one would find in fairytales, but instead one like Melvin might read about in his books of war with foundations strong enough to face a mighty onslaught.

B
ehind the Ice Castle the image of the tree Melvin saw on the horizon was made real. It was not an image of fantasy brought on by the telling of the tale or the diamond dust in the air, but instead it was the actual Tree of Life.

The tree was even grander than they could have imagined. It stood like a great testament to the splendor that once lived in the Garden at Eget Row. When the ice had come it must have been fast and relentless for the leaves and apples were still clinging to the tree in slivers and gold. In the sunlight the leaves and apples glimmered like holy gems above the Ice Castle that looked imposing, evil, and rank beneath it, like a cancer growing on its roots.

The tree was indeed tall, for as massive as the Ice Castle was it didn’t even crest the lowest branches of the tree. Below the castle Melvin and the others could see a large stone wall that surrounded the tree, as if the tree didn’t grow from the ground, but instead up through this stone wall. It was also from this stone wall that the Ice Castle rose, as if whatever substance had once been inside the stone wall had lifted up and froze solid creating the ice castle.

“It
is the Well of Wyrding
,” Samarra told them all, lifting the moon scepter and pointing ahead, and if they squinted they could tell that the wall was precisely what Samarra told them it was. True enough, the wall was not that at all but a great well.

No matter how beautiful the tree was there was something terrifying about it that none of them could place. Maybe it was the legends and tales that surrounded it, or maybe it was the fact that they were
in a different place
that was so alien, yet so mirrored their own.

Ruby couldn’t imagine that the terror they felt from the tree was because of any of those things, but instead because the very image of this tree represented a truth to them that shattered the lies they had previously lived with such utter totality that there was no possible way to deny what they had seen.

Samarra didn’t give them long to absorb the image of the tree, the Ice Castle or the well it all grew out of before she started the long trek down the icy hill which led to their destination.

They tried to follow as best as they could, but the snow was packed down and nothing more than a sheet of ice. This must be a main road leading to the court for it seemed to have seen a lot of traffic.

“One moment,” Samarra said and with her scepter of moonlight that seemed so out of place in daylight she tapped each foot and spikes grew out of the souls of their shoes. “That will help you grip the ice better,” she informed them and continued on.

There were many queer sights to behold in the Winter Court. Melvin could tell they were no longer on O for many reasons, but one of the greatest reasons being that the suns were much farther away in this world than theirs had been. They seemed not so much as burning spheres in the sky like back home, but instead like large stars glaring radiance from twice as far away as it did on O. Still the light of the suns were brilliant here in the Winter Court, and Melvin trudged on along the ice. Though Samarra had placed the spikes on their shoes they still had to watch their step for it was still easy enough to slip if you were careless.

As they walked a third sun rose, and where the others had been far away this one
was very close
. It was green, a light pale green that reminded them of the color of white sage, a pale frosted green that intermingled with the yellow and blue of the previous suns. It was then when the three suns had rose that there appeared a star in the sky somewhere between all the suns, as if it were the pinnacle of a pyramid created by the three suns, as if it where the very tip, watching down on all of them.

Light beamed out of the star and struck each sun, and as the light danced between the four points there was singing. The song was not human in the least, but the Bordeaux youths would have recognized it if they had ever heard whales sing. Instead what they heard was a deep resonance that thrummed through the air as if the very molecules around them were alive and reverberating off one another, creating the song.

The music lived in them.

They traveled on for a time, wondering what the music and light was created by, but figured it was nothing important since Samarra seemed unfazed by it and Luna and Mama Coon continued on all the same.

A wind picked up, and Melvin shivered, wrapping his arms around him, tucking the hammer farther away from his body for the head of the hammer was cold and would not help in keeping his temperature up.

Not long after this action Melvin thought he could see the air to his right shimmer in gold, as if heat were rising off the surface there, but when he turned to look there was nothing occupying the space.

Several times this happened, and Melvin thought that soon he could also see a beam of light shooting out of one of the stars or bisecting lines to alight on the ground near him, where he would then see a vague golden shimmer until he turned his attention on it.

“The golden light you are seeing are guardians of the tree, they will not harm us unless we get too close to the Evyndelle.
Even
though all of Eget Row is in ruin, they keep constant vigil over the Evyndelle.” Samarra
told them.

Now that he knew what they were, Melvin kept trying to catch a glimpse of the beings within the gathering golden light. There must have been hundreds of them, but he couldn’t see any of them when he tried. Eventually he resigned to not look at them and for a time he thought they were people, but only some of them were.

Some were dancing golden people while others were other beings of myth like centaurs and fauns and other winged beings. Mostly they were just wisps of golden smoke though.

The castle was something amazing in itself. It didn’t look like one might expect it to, like snow hardened into ice, but instead like it had been formed instantly out of the clearest water. The Ice Castle was brilliant silver which caught the light of the sun and tossed it about gaily as if the ice and the light were dancing together, casting rainbow shadows all around the snow within the Winter Court. The youths could not help but stare i
n awe at the light around them.

As they climbed the stairs, the Lunarian shone against the dark blue steps like an opal at night, the light of her skin shimmering off the surfaces of the castle and the snow around it. She didn’t knock on the door, she didn’t need to, for the door swung open seemingly of
its
own accord. But it hadn’t swung open by itself, for there stood an old lady seeming chiseled out of sapphire, glaring at them. She was draped in white furs much like the furs.

“The children,” she croaked. “Ah yes, do come in.” She opened the door wider, and Samarra just stared at her. It seemed as
though
the Lunarian did not expect this.

Samarra nodded graciously as if she were visiting an old friend
and climbed the rest of the stairs into the Ice Castle.

Slowly the door closed behind them on creaking hinges. It closed with the finality of a tomb door closing. Abigail jumped, and couldn’t tell if the shivering she felt was out of fear or cold.

“You are awful accepting of us
knowing why we are here
,” Samarra said as
Cailleach Bheur
walked by her.

“I am not worried moon being, because
I cannot die. T
he Dark
Goddess
protects me,”
Cailleach Bheur
said in her crocking voice, the icy white dress she wore slithering across the ground behind her in a trail.

“Your goddess is nowhere around to keep you safe
,” Abigail
noted
.

“
She is powerful enough she doesn’t need to be here,”
Cailleach Bheur
said, turning back to look at them. She held in her hand what appeared to be a long, gnarled icicle, but one that glowed blue-green casting mystic light across the frozen floor. That was the necrotic staff, Melvin knew without a doubt. “Let me show you
of the world’s us shadkin are making fit for our Gods
.”
Cailleach Bheur
spread her hands wide, and blew into the air between them. An eerie light began to form from the staff in her right hand, and though there was a spectacular scene unveiling between her hands Melvin could not take his eyes off the necrotic staff, the key to her power. Was it this very staff that allowed her to freeze Eget Row?

The light flashed in waves, like heat wavering above a fire, yet there was no construing what passed from staff to hand as heat. Slowly the air began to audibly freeze between her hands with snaps and pops that seemed a perversion more than a noise, air should not be able to freeze so utterly as if it were water, and it cowed Melvin for he didn’t realize that
Cailleach Bheur
held that kind of power.

Eventually the air between her hands formed a plate of black ice that shimmered and shone at certain points here and there. “These are the other worlds
we inhabit
,”
Cailleach Bheur
said stepping around the ice plate suspended in mid-air. There were too many glimmering points of light on the ice for Melvin to count, or even hazard a guess. He remembered then that the universe was thought to be limitless, this must be the reason the lights kept flashing here and there in random patterns, there were simply too many worlds for the ice plate to show at once, so the pin points of light were fading and shifting to show where all the other worlds were.

Eerily he began to realize that some of the points of light were fading out before they shifted to other worlds, other planets. “You may have noticed,” Cailleach Bheur said before he had even finished his thought. “There are some worlds being blocked out, they are stil
l there, but are now homes of the Dark Gods
. Now watch,” she passed her hands over the ice plate, her blue frosty hair crackling around her with the effort. “This is your galaxy,” she told them and as they watched they saw a field of flickering lights like stars form on the ice plate. “That one there in the center, next to the pulsating red star, your sun, that is your planet,” but their attention was drawn away from O, for all along the edges of the ice plate darkness was overtaking the planets, the other worlds, and moving toward the center, toward O at rapid speed.

“
Shadkin as powerful as me are like gods ourselves. Our Dark Gods have promised us equal power with them, and so they have granted it.
” Cailleach Bheur said smugly turning back to the group.

“
You are not
a God
,” Melvin replied shocking all of them. “God
s also have
the ability to create, all you can do is attack and pervert what God
s have
already put into place, which ma
kes you a parasite. If there were
no
Dark
God
s
you would not exist.”

“All the same,” Cailleach Bheur laughed. “I cannot be killed.”

“Yes you can,” Mel
vin told her.

Cailleach Bheur went for Melvin but Samarra intercepted her.

They didn’t think such a thing could happen, and they were confused as to how it was at all possible, but a silver liquid bloomed across Samarra’s back, and she fell to the ground gasping, clutching at her chest. Cailleach Bheur stepped back, pulling the necrotic staff from the chest of the fallen Lunarian and in a flash Samarra was gone just as she had first come into their lives that night.

The recent kill didn’t stop Cailleach Bheur from her original target though, and while they were all dumbfounded at the death of the beautiful Lunarian Cailleach Bheur went for Melvin again her claws raking at the air, but Abigail was faster. In a moment she had withdrawn the fire wand and was shooting a flame at the Winter Queen from the tip of the wand. It struck her in the face and Cailleach Bheur wheeled back, stumbling and falling backwards into her chair. Liquid had appeared across the surface of her face, and her features looked slightly muted as if th
ey had been melted by the fire.