Final Solstice (8 page)

“Eventually is too long!” Solomon countered. “And it won’t work. Because ultimately it’s false. The earth doesn’t care, as Morris here so eloquently said, and I agree. Man has been around for such a short time as to be almost unnoticed in the two billion years of this planet’s tumultuous history.”

“See?” Morris blushed and grinned. “As I keep saying, and you all keep shushing me.”

“All your efforts,” Solomon said, stealing his thunder, “what are they for? Maybe people will become self-conscious enough someday to stop driving SUVs, and maybe someone will find a way to make a cost-efficient electric car or make ethanol or wind power actually a viable alternative. But what of it? One more volcano erupts in the Philippines and spews more CO2 into the atmosphere than China produces in a decade, and we’re back to square one. Or the sun flares up in a sunburst that blankets the planet in radiation and blasts through widening holes in our ozone layer, and all those efforts are for nothing.”

“So what are you suggesting, Solomon?” Palavar tapped his gnarled fingers on the table, tracing a groove in the ancient wood. “That we give up? That we turn our back on our role as stewards?”

“No, I merely suggest expanding the role. Or perhaps … earning that title instead of playing at it.”

“Watch yourself, Solomon. You overstep your limits.”

“As we all should. Otherwise …” He glanced around at the others in the room, at the chairs and the arrangements, the vines and trunks, the leafy canopy overhead and the buzzing of insects and fluttering of butterfly wings. “We don’t deserve the power that goes with this responsibility.”

Heidi stiffened and frowned. “But if the earth defends itself, if it shakes off the pollution, the ravaging of its resources …”

“It does,” Solomon said. “Over thousands, millions of years … In those terms—the only terms the earth deals in—we will be nothing but a memory. Pollution? Hell, unleash every nuclear warhead, and destroy ourselves ten times over, and the earth will recover and it will be as if it never happened in a few thousand years. She hosts species after species and then they either die out or she kills them, and moves on.”

“So again I ask: what is it you are fighting?” Palavar shook his head, exasperated. “You espouse the glory of nature and how ineffective we are in the face of its power, as is only right, and yet you sit there meeting after meeting asking to do more to punish humanity. Towards what end?” He narrowed his eyes, and his hand went from the table to his own staff—gnarled and twisted and ancient—leaning against his chair. “Do you seek then to upset the balance? To gain power and glory for the
now
, to force Nature to focus and take notice of this tiny moment in time when she is accustomed to seeing only vast epochs?”

In the ensuing silence, Solomon rolled up his sleeve and checked his timepiece—a gold Rolex with a black face and a digital readout behind the spinning gears.

It was almost time.

“That, Palavar and dear Council, is exactly what I intend.” He sighed and looked at them all in turn before staring back at the arch-druid. “We may be newly upon the scene, but we were given a role—and the power to back it up. Power that is wasted on the likes of this …” He made a gesture toward the agenda on the iPad screen. “We can do so much more. The Green Kingdom can be restored. And just perhaps, we are meant to do exactly that.”

Belgar frowned at him and Morris again cleared his throat. “I apologize, but as much as the idea intrigues, you said it—it can’t happen. Stop the pests, the rampant consumption and the runaway polluters and the destruction of resources, and nature will just step in and take up the battle, a hundred times stronger.” He shook his head. “There will soon be no green, the way things are going. No matter what anyone does about it. And what, do you propose damming the volcanoes and controlling the sun?”

Solomon smiled. “Now you are thinking like a true steward.” He never took his eyes off Palavar. “Like a true druid.”

“Enough!” Palavar spoke through grit teeth, yellowed and cracked. “We are tired of this endless debate. We know your objections, and you know ours. The mission is unchanged. We will work as always, behind the scenes.”

“As always?” Solomon chuckled. “I know our history is a little vague and purposely shrouded in mystery, but I prefer to honor the one historical anecdote we do have passed down to us. When the Romans came marching into Britain, it wasn’t the local peasants and ragtag armies that eventually sent them packing. It wasn’t dumb luck that severed the head of the greatest empire at the time and decimated their lands with drought and froze their troops and starved their children and swept away their homes in avalanches of mud and ravaged their farms with wildfire. Ruined their economy and stretched their forces thin and hungry.”

“We don’t know the facts of that, and can’t ascribe—”

“We can, and we do,” Solomon insisted. “Those were men and women of action. Of defiance. Of power. They actually
controlled
the forces of nature, instead of just giving themselves titles over it.” He glared at Belgar and Morris. “Instead of sitting around in hollowed-out tree stumps debating the merits of passivity, they
acted
. As I have acted.”

He stood up, raising the staff slowly. “Jamaica, yes. Minneapolis, yes! San Diego and many more. And you have no idea what I have planned next, but I promise you this … the Green Kingdom is at hand.”

The room sank into stunned silence as Palavar reached for his staff, determination in his eyes. “Then I am sad,” he said, “that it has come to this. You have forsaken your oaths to protect the earth and its people. You have tarnished the name of this Council, betrayed its history and its purpose, betrayed your upbringing and your training, and—”

“And I call for a vote!” Solomon shouted over him. “As is the right of any member of this ‘Council.’” Solomon turned his staff sideways, perpendicular to his body, as he glared at Palavar. “I call for a vote of no confidence in Louis Palavar, that he be stripped of title and staff, and thrust out into the black forest to wander in grief and loss, forever.”

Palavar chuckled. “You may call for such a vote, as is your right. You know the rules, but you also know the consequences if such a challenge fails.” He glanced at the others around the table. “A motion has been raised. All in favor? And remember, you need a majority.”

Palavar tapped his fingers on the staff as he stood up slowly. And he turned his staff sideways as well, squaring off symmetrically against Solomon.

Overhead, the vines creaked and leaves rustled in a non-existent breeze. Solomon felt the earth under his shoes rumble. The soft dirt rippled as if roots moved beneath the table, assembling into position.

He turned his wrist slightly to see the time.

On schedule
, he thought, keeping his arm steady, the staff barely giving a tremble. Palavar was attempting the same but his arm had to be getting tired.

“All those in favor of Solomon’s vote?”

Silence. A lot of eyes turned downward. Morris alone was fidgeting. He licked his lips, opened his mouth, but then met Palavar’s cold eyes, and lowered his own. No one looked toward Solomon, but he didn’t expect them to.

A few more seconds ticked away.

And then he sighed. “I guess that’s it then,” Solomon said. “The Green Kingdom dies.…”

“No,” said Palavar. “Only you.”

He pulled his arm back, straightened his grip and turned the staff lengthwise, then slammed it down hard upon the floor.

Morris clenched his eyes and flinched as the others looked away. And at Palavar’s command, a mass of writhing vines shot out from the ceiling just as the dirt floor erupted with a battalion of roots. His legs encircled, and another thick root lassoed Solomon’s waist and dragged him back into the chair as a huge vine whipped around his staff and yanked it hard from his grasp.

As he sat with a thump and offered no struggle against the roots and vines wrapping around his body, pinning him to the chair, Solomon followed the vines that stripped him of his weapon and deposited it cleanly into the arch-druid’s free hand.

One vine snared his throat, snake-like, and squeezed.

“I’m sorry,” Palavar said quietly in the aftermath, as the ceiling swayed with dozens of vines at the ready, as the floor rippled and the walls churned with thorn-riddled branches preparing to defend or attack, whichever the case should be. “But you knew the consequences. You were unprepared, and now …”

“Now,” said Solomon, barely managing enough air in his windpipe.
“We get back on track.”

O O O

Palavar frowned, mouth open. He cocked his head, trying to fathom why his adversary—seconds away from death—still seemed so confident. Then he frowned and glanced at the new staff in his left hand.

The staff he assumed was Solomon’s—and his right to destroy as befits the winner in this challenge. Solomon would have known he’d take it.
Solomon would have known … known that he couldn’t win such a vote. Not with this council …

Palavar looked up sharply. Saw the smile, the glint in Solomon’s eyes, and he dropped the staff, just as he raised his own and focused his energies on the roots and the vines and the branches.
Attack—
he started to command, but there wasn’t time.

Solomon had it all planned too well.

The staff—the hollow cylinder packed with C4 and a timer—detonated at that exact moment, with such force that Palavar and half the council table exploded in a mass of smoking splinters, blood, bone and gore.

O O O

Solomon was ready, and the instant Palavar’s control vanished and his brain was blasted into nothingness, he assumed control. His chair blew backwards in the force of the explosion, but was held in place enough by the roots and vines to protect him from the blast.

The others—most would not be so fortunate. But Solomon couldn’t take that chance. He wriggled free of the smoking restraints, at the same time feeling out with his mind, caressing and controlling the vegetation’s, seeking into the very cellular structures of the roots and the branches and overgrowth; he felt the vegetation screaming in agony and shock, and he soothed where he could.

But first, he stood up and raised his hand, and through the smoke and the flames, he felt it: the arch-druid’s staff. It was smoking and burnt, but such a thing was tough, thrown across the room. He sought with his mind, found it and called it to him, and it came, hurled across the flames and over mangled bodies. It came on the winds and landed in his right hand.

Solomon breathed deep, then exhaled, harnessing the connection he now forged with this staff, this ancient thing carved from a tree more ancient than any still standing on the planet, a weapon and tool passed down through the millennia, from a time when wizards had shepherded the ignorant and brought them out of caves and taught them fire and astrology and ways to harness the elements, and were thought of as gods in their own right.

He gripped the staff tightly, then waved it twice across the wreckage of the council room. Snowflakes appeared in a gusty, icy wind that suffocated the fires and dissipated the smoke, and all became clear.

More than half the table was a splintered, smoldering wreck. Harrison Nye and Montgomery appeared to be decapitated; at least their bodies were not in sight, only the heads with bits of hair and skull and teeth with frost now on the hollow eye sockets.

Angelica and Belgar Tinman crawled and whimpered, covered in blood. Heidi had a sharp white bone sticking out through her shoulder, and seemed to be trying to sing some ancient healing ballad, but the verse never finished. She shuddered, coughed up a pint of blood and lay still.

Morris Tildershines, somehow among them all, seemed unfazed, with just a spray of someone’s blood on his forehead and snowflakes collecting on his spectacles. He opened his eyes and with dismay, turned toward Solomon.

“I …”

“I know,” Solomon said. “You’d like to change your vote.”

O O O

He regarded the three surviving members of the Council with indifference. “I could show contempt,” he addressed them. “Or seek vengeance, but that is for the petty. For those who lack vision, for those who can’t see the true path.”

“Please,” Morris said. He struggled in the block of ice that rooted him to the floor. The winds whipped and chilled, and icicles hung from his nose and the panes of his frosted glasses.

Beside him, Angelica seemed unfazed by the cold, but at least had given up her struggles. One eye had been blackened, hit with some burning shrapnel, and she struggled to see. “Solomon, don’t do this.”

“At least kill us,” Belgar said dourly. “I don’t like the cold.”

“I know,” Solomon said, “and I guess I’m sorry, but roots and vines? Well, they’re too unpredictable, and cold … cold can last forever under the right conditions, and ice can be as strong as steel. I’ve enchanted the circle … and what’s left of this cottage with a powerful charm. Combined with the existing cloaking spell, no one will ever find you. You will all sleep and hopefully, dream sweet cold dreams of how you could have shared in my glory, in the glory of a world restored. Of a Green Kingdom.”

“You’re insane,” Belgar spat, his wild curly hair frozen in place over his eyes. “We have followers, they will know. They will seek us, and—”

“Already on that,” Solomon said. “The word’s gone out. Change in leadership. Out with the old, in with the … bold.”

He raised his new staff, admiring the scorch marks that had given it added character. He’d have to decide what to do with his old one, which was waiting for him back in the limo, and not a meek instrument by any means. Maybe Gabriel might one day rise in worth to earn it.

But for now, it was time to move on. Free of the restraints of the past, free of those who had failed to see the truth, those blind to their true destiny.

“I’ll come back for you,” he said. “When my Kingdom has come and you can no longer affect its outcome. On that day, you will thank me and see that I am its deliverer, I am its savior—and yours.”

“But, Arch-Druid …” Morris spoke up, giving one last attempt at reverence and misplaced flattery. “We should—”