MARBLE 6.5: POISONS

“I am the luck that you can pray for. I am the perseverance that pays off. I am the dream-guardian at the gate of nightmare. I am Lady Fortune.”

– from the Belestaean Creed

I couldn’t see it in their actual faces yet, but Wenlyworth was wheezing worse than he had been before. He’d be the first to go, in around eight minutes’ time.

I forced myself to smile.

Then I jolted to my feet, a huge part of my being shaken to its core as Zel departed from my flesh – I cast about, looking beneath the chair, the table, using crummy mortal eyes –

“Somethin’ wrong, Feychilde?” Spirit asked.

“Yeah! – I just lost –“

“Feychilde, is something wrong?” Em asked.

“No – I just – I dropped something –“

“Hey!” Spirit cried, jumping to his feet, glaring at Lovebright. “What the drop did you just do to him? I felt that!”

I ignored him, whoever had said something, bending forwards and reaching out my arm, grasping for something under the table. I picked something up, and went to put something back in my robe’s pocket. Nothing of significance.

But it was as I leaned forwards that I realised, from the way the chain about my neck shifted, its burden tapping lightly into the underside of my chin.

I was no longer wearing Lovebright’s amulet – just my healing elixir.

And as I straightened up, the strangest thing happened.

Within my circle, without causing me any impediment or bearing me any ill-will, a green seam opened, a gate wide enough to swallow me whole. As I rose, my head and shoulders went through and, on the other side, in the otherworld, there was –

A fairy, floating in an ethereal glade of tall glowing trees and lily-covered ponds. I knew her, once, though her name escaped me now.

Tiny. Miniscule, really. Sunflower-blonde pigtails; a neat, triangular little dress of seamless blue skies. Her perfect delicate face a contortion of emotion. Fear and anguish and horror.

Why did I feel this ridiculous sensation of unease, coupled with trust?

Trust? I had to be enchanted.

In her dainty hands, my chain. My pendant.

The urge to put it back on was strong. She was only ten feet away.

Lovebright surged forwards, trying to step within the portal. “No!” she hissed.

But I grabbed the seams with my hands, pulling myself fully through to the otherworld, even as I focussed those internal energies that would dismiss my wraith. I would deal with this troublesome fey creature in the glade, retrieve my amulet and, once I was protected again, I would return. Who knew what effects the three politicians might have employed against our minds, otherwise? It would be stupid of me to rely on Bor and Jo’s constant vigilance when the alternative was so much better.

It was valiant of the enchantress to try to come with me, though, and touching that she would fret about me, but she – I – had nothing to fear from a lowly fairy – she didn’t even bear me ill-will…

The seam snapped to beneath me, the gate transporting me. My gremlin and sylph coalesced at my sides.

Recognition flooded in.

Not just recognition of the fairy queen, my faithful advisor, my firmament…

“Z… Z… Zel…” I croaked.

“I know, Feychilde,” she replied. “This is bad. Really bad. She slipped up, though. I heard your thoughts that she’d been hiding from me.”

“But she… she…“

“Yep. For months. Maybe years.”

“And she –“

“I know. Almost all of them.” She hurled the necklace to the ground. “Every champion that wears one of those.”

“What’s going on, Feychilde?” Zab whined. “Zel?”

I met Zel’s eyes.

“Are the glasses poisoned?” Then I had a flash of inspiration. “Ah – I’ll check with Flood –“

“No!” Zel snapped. “There’s no way he could tell you whether they were actually poisoned and don’t you dare try to summon him here, now. You’d have to open a bridge across Materium and that would let her influence back in! It’s range-based; we’re currently a plane away, but if you open the jadeway even for a second, that might be long enough for her to adjust her spell, make you decide to head back.”

I had no way to be certain I could save all of them –

“But – if Em, and the others – if they die…”

Zel cut in: “I find it highly unlikely she put it in everyone’s drink, if she did do that – why would she –”

“Make me think I’d killed my girlfriend? Make the city think I’d killed the First Lady?”

“We can talk about this but we have to move. They’ll put you in Zyger! She could bring Direcrown –“

“I don’t think he wears her amulet,” I muttered, shaking my head.

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It was all too much for me, but it made too much sense to be untrue.

The memories she hadn’t had chance to fully remove yet. Killstop being sick. Timesnatcher’s weird shaking.

What the lords said to us. What I said to them.

Oh gods. She wants me flayed to death!

“Netherhame or Shallowlie, then! She’ll bring someone in, and open a gate – there could be people in the Palace she can use, and she has diviners – oh, Kas –“

“I take it that momentous events are afoot,” Avaelar hedged, gazing into my face.

“Perhaps – perhaps the most momentous of our time…” I licked my suddenly-dry lips. “I think… It seems the whole of Mund is under the control of a darkmage. A dark-enchantress.”

Then I felt the grin split my face, in spite of everything this meant for us, for the world.

“I knew it!” I crowed.

* * *

Eight minutes. I have probably six or seven minutes left before whatever move she’s made, whatever move she’s making, gets underway.

Not enough time.

“Well, if everything you’ve said is correct,” I mused aloud, “Lovebright will hardly be expecting me to go back right now, will she? She would have to be quick enough to lay the spell ag-”

“No, we have to move, and, again, you’re not listen-”

“Too late.”

I silently opened a tiny seam for less than a second, just enough to peek through with one eye. Nothing assailed my mind, not overtly in any case.

They were all seated around the table, champion and politician alike, their eyes closed; Killstop and Timesnatcher were stirring, resisting, limbs jerking like those of sleeping dogs; the guards were slumped over at their posts by the door; and Lovebright – the gold-robed enchantress was standing on the table in their midst, her face raised up towards the ceiling as though she communed with the gods.

The seam had only drifted a few feet from where I’d expected it to open, and I took a few steps across the glade.

“Kas!” Zel cried in a wheedling voice. “Don’t do that again! Pl-”

When I opened a portal around Tanra and yanked her bodily from her chair into the otherworld, at first I thought I’d pulled it off perfectly, but I soon realised my oversight.

One instant I was upright, feeling fine – I’d hunched over to grab her around the shoulders, so I was leaning forwards somewhat – and in the next, I was on my back in the spongy grass, the girl straddling me, fists raised mercilessly.

My face was broken in at least four places, mask pulverised, and I didn’t even see the blows, feel them as they landed – only when she stopped.

My vision blurred. My right eye swam painfully in its socket.

“Feychilde!” she snarled.

“Stop!” Zel screamed. “Tanra, no!”

It was only the contact between our bodies keeping the diviner here, so my shield wouldn’t work. Sending her back – it could be a death sentence for me. For us all.

I felt her breath coming from beneath the mask, saw her slight chest rising and falling rapidly – this kind of indecision, it could only mean one thing –

Tanra was fighting it, the impulse to kill me – then she raised her arm, opening the coat of her robe, exposing at least half-a-dozen glittering, sheathless knives –

She froze there again, struggling.

I had to try – Avaelar was moving to intervene, and he would die.

“’Uvvbrigh’!” I moaned through a floppy jaw, a burst lip. “’Ink abou’ ‘Uvvbrigh’!”

Tanra froze, the dagger of her selection raised, poised for the killing blow.

Then I felt the surge pass through her insides, and tried to dive aside as she croaked horribly, vomiting out another load of strawberry juice –

Too late. She didn’t move, or even cast off her mask this time – it gushed down, covering the both of us.

My fairy stopped twisting in the air and now dashed forwards, swiftly unclasped the diviner’s pendant, and flung it aside.

Tanra slowly fell back, panting, resting; she was still sitting on me but no longer in a threatening posture. She removed her mask, shook it clean.

“Tha’…” I said, “wa’ di’gusting.”

I snapped my healing potion off its chain, wiped it on my sleeve, then knocked back its contents in one.

“Holy – drop.” Tanra shuddered. “I can see again.” She looked around at an enhanced speed, head blurring atop her neck, then looked back to me. “We’re in the otherworld.”

“Welcome, fair maiden,” Zab said in his reedy voice.

I shook my head, cracked my jaw back into place and activated the self-repair rune on my mask. “No time for that. We’ve got about five minutes until three of the top rulers of Mund start dropping down dead, maybe Em and Irimar with them, and I’d rather head that off if we can. Slow me down, please? Then we can get the others without as much risk.”

She nodded, and I felt it, like a pulse of lethargy slipping over our ethereal surroundings.

Zel, Avaelar, Zab. The glowing insect-things in the air. Even the wind itself.

Everything slowed, slowed. Stopped.

“I can’t bring you too deep – it’d tear you apart,” she said. “But we do have to be quick, relatively. If she’s clever she can trigger the wards, stop your portals –“

The seeress shifted her weight as though to get up –

“No!” I reached up, grabbed her hand. “Don’t get off me!”

“Oooh, Kas, really? Right now? With… my sick in your hair? You know that Em’s only a portal away –“

“If you get up, you’ll go ba-”

“I know perfectly well what you’re going to say,” she cut me off, “and you’re an oaf if you think I was going to break contact with you. My spell’s hard to maintain too, you know, and I’m going to sleep for a week after this even if I keep my hand on yours the whole time. Come on, get up.”

She straightened her knees, coming lithely to her feet, standing over me; then she planted her heels and leaned back, pulling me up. Her hand was holding mine at least as hard as mine was holding hers.

She was grinning, the way I must’ve been when I’d come through, when I’d realised what was going on. “Let’s get our friends, find out what’s been done to them, and put the screws on Lovebright.”

“Right.” I looked down at our conjoined hands. “I’ll need to scratch you, a little.”

“Oooh, Kas…”

“Tanra!” I barked.

“Sor-rr-rry,” she anti-apologised. She opened the fold of her robe with her free hand, exposing her weaponry. “Hmm – let’s go for something without incineration ensorcellments…”

“I thought they took your weapons.”

She just brayed laughter as though I’d told a joke.

“Where did you get hold of all those, anyway?” I asked.

“Here. There.” She glanced back at me. “What do you spend your earnings on?”

I shrugged with one shoulder. If I hadn’t figured out how to make explosive daggers, I’d still be buying them, in all likelihood. But most of these weapons were ensorcelled, which made them prohibitively expensive – even a champion’s bounties weren’t going to pay for all of them…

The last thing I wanted to do was antagonise her right now.

She retrieved a very plain-looking kitchen knife from one of the grooves sewn into the interior of the fabric, passed it to me.

Sharp, but not overly-so.

“Nice.” I started cutting the shape into meat of her forearm. “Sorry, if it hurts.”

“Been hurt worse.”

“Have you?”

“Just keep at it. Thinking.”

The girl stared off into the distance, tapping at her chin, seemingly studying the forest depths behind me by the way her eyes were moving minutely.

I looked back at my work.

“She’s got all of them, Tanra.” I couldn’t halt the words even if I’d been trying – what was on my mind had to vent itself, and my mouth was the only escape valve. “She’s… What does she want? I mean, she already has everything – why is she trying to make me and Spirit – and you, maybe? – tick off the highborn like this? She’s been putting pendants on us all, and –”

“She is Dream.”

The seeress’s voice had a tranquil quality, like that of someone trying to recall facts learned in childhood, almost forgotten but not yet gone – even still, the words shook me and I fell silent.

“Keep talking!” she snapped after a moment.

“I… Well that’s hardly a response…” I hedged, settling force-lines into my ‘F’-shaped sorcerer’s mark. “If she’s Dream, why wouldn’t Dream be able to get through my amulet, and Em’s? Any of ours? And that still doesn’t answer –“

“No – she has Dream. Dream… isn’t Dream…”

My mouth was dry. “Should we wait for the others to arrive?”

I released her; I was done with applying my seal.

But she wasn’t done. Her eyes still stared, searched.

“She laid her head upon the mound and thought her way down to us. Oh, oh Kas, oh no –“

Her hand shot out involuntarily, gripped me by the front of the robe.

“What? What is it?”

Her eyes met mine. They weren’t the eyes of the crazed inkatra-addict I’d seen when I’d first looked into them, but it was close.

“She’s a dragon.”

* * *