Chapter 16. Yesterday and Tomorrow

“Come along, it’s just through here,” Dukemot said. Behind him were a pair of glass doors carved with twirling designs of vines and roots. He put out his hand and pressed the doors into the hallway behind them and waited for Manie to enter.

Further in, beyond her father’s arm, outside the glass tunnel, Manie could see trees. “What is this place?”

“I ordered it built some time ago. It's a chamber where a piece of the past can remain alive. A mere seed of what I allowed to be destroyed.” Her father’s eyes were hard as limestone and lost in shadows.

Manie felt nothing but cold in her heart.

“Come,” Dukemot said. “I know a place where we can sit. It’s very peaceful.”

Manie went into the hallway beyond her father’s arm. She found herself in a glass tunnel, surrounded on all sides by massive roots of trees like muscley arms twisting and bending around her. The grass and flowers looked like something out of a fairy tale book. Blue beams of moonlight shone down, sparkling through the glass and leaves, barely visible beyond the massive root system controlling the chamber.

Dukemot let the foggy glass door shut behind them and resumed his slow stride. As they went further in, the trees shortened and the roots fell away, revealing a wide open grassland of ponds and creeks. There were frogs in the water, fireflies among the grass, and birds nesting in the trees. Among the lilies and violets was a little Torch-Wing, a girl, resting with her back against a tree. She looked tired. The flame in her wings had gone white, like the ones in Musoni before the Beacons fell. She was dying.

“Is this some kind of a sanctuary?” Manie asked, her voice as soft as the trickling streams.

“Something of the sort. A monument to the past. It helps me to remember that our actions can have far-reaching effects on the world around us, as well as the ones we love,” he looked down at Manie with eyes as soft as moonlight. “I come here more often than I once did as of late.”

“It’s beautiful,” Manie said.

“It is,” her father agreed, looking at the vines and roots hanging over them. “Quite so.”

They came to another set of doors, and like before, Dukemot held them open for Manie. This time they were at the end of the glass tunnel, and when Manie went through, she emerged into a hidden world in the trees: a memory of nature and the Torch-Wings’ home.

High over the tips of the reaching pines was a pyramid of glass that reached high and wide across the entire glass room, from foot to foot of the massive spires towering high above her father’s mansion, like a mountain of foggy ice. The glass ceiling roared with rain as thousands of droplets fell from swirling, dark clouds, and lightning ripped the sky to pieces. Within the glass vessel was the beauty Manie remembered from her childhood, the beauty Veronica showed her, kept safe, even if it was only an imitation. An echo of what once was.

Manie turned to her father as he emerged from the hallway behind her. “Why did you build this place after everything you did..? I don’t understand.”

Dukemot slowly shut the door behind him. “Sometimes I’m not sure I do either,” he said, his voice a rolling groan of regret. He went to Manie and stood beside her, looking out across the jungle of vines and trees. “Once I became certain that I couldn’t stop Duncan and his Renjin from finishing what I began, I suppose I felt I had to preserve a piece of their world somehow. Keep it alive, if I could.”

“That’s why you built this? To try and save them?” Manie asked, unable to believe her ears. The prison of jars flashed inside her mind.

“It is,” Dukemot said back, his eyes drifting away from hers. “I know it sounds foolish, but I mean to explain why.” Dukemot put out his arm and Manie allowed him to lead her.

They went down a path of small stones that weaved between the trees, their edges raised by grass and beautiful red flowers. Iron holders were bolted into the trunks of some trees, bearing small torches, the flames lighting the details of the bark, outlining every splinter. The path was strewn with leaves and thistles drying against the stones, crunching as Manie and her father stepped over them.

On the other side of a large boulder hugging the path, Manie and her father found a white tree in the center of a stone circle. Water circled the moat along its base and flowed out into the river that ran beside them. A marble bench was ahead, and behind it was a stone sculpture of Milly at the base of the tree. At her feet were dozens of stone Torch-Wings intermixed with melted stumps of candles. The platform they were resting on was crying cooled wax, forming hundreds of little stalactites that hung down to where more Torch-wings had been set to rest.

“Not all of them survived the death of their forests,” Dukemot said, his voice dragged down by guilt. “With each passing day, I found more of the statues strewn amongst the garden. Nothing I did could save them. They were lost, like a breath in the night wind. When the Beacons fell, so did their cloaks of protection, and I was allowed to see what I had unleashed. They lost the color in their wings. They quit flying. And then they turned to stone…”

Dukemot went to the statue of Milly and brought out two candles from his pocket. He set them amongst other burning candles and brought the flame of one to another, to replenish the dying flames.

“I tried to find a cure to the Gray Death many years ago, but it was a fruitless task. That’s why I turned to her. I thought I could force Milly to help us. I thought that if I set a doom upon her world not unlike our own, she’d find a way to save us all. ”

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“But she couldn’t,” Manie said. “She never could have saved us. It was all in your mind. Milly was just as lost as the rest of us were.”

“I know that now,” Dukemot said. “I was afraid…and desperate. I made a monumental misjudgment. After you rescued the Torch-Wings from the jars and escaped your tower, I was so…angry. I was willing to do anything to stop the Gray Death, to have you back, to make your mother pay for what she’d done. So I set loose that creature Duncan and allowed it to release its rage on Milly’s forests.”

Manie lost her breath. She’d known the truth before, but hearing it from her father was more difficult than she thought. So much pain and death had been unleashed because of that decision. Perhaps it never would have happened if I’d stayed home, and let Veronica take the Crystal.

“There was a time before Goroth when the fires which ate away at the land were no more than a smear of red upon the clouds and stars in distant horizons; but after Duncan took that monster under its control, the Teeth of the Earth glowed red with the heat of a boiling firestorm every night for years. The entirety of the South seemed to have been ignited in a fortnight. Clouds of ash and smoke spilled down from the Rims, choking those who lived in Denengear’s streets, confining others indoors. By dawn, the air would become a toxic green, and at dusk, a lantern was hardly visible in front of your face. The only time the sun could be seen in the city was during short intervals at sunrise and sunset when its rays could pierce between the clouds and mountains, reaching into our world of darkness and death.”

The look in her father’s eyes was horrific to see. Manie could sense that he was no longer here–he had stepped backward in time to relive that terrible moment, to arm himself with the knowledge needed to understand his mistakes.

“The Gray Death devoured our people; the smoke suffocated them; the fires trapped them. Everywhere I looked was death, destruction, and the cold grip of lightless despair…” Dukemot brought in a slow breath to fill his lungs. “And all through this disaster, our people looked to me…" His eyes went back to Manie, starved of life and hope.

Manie felt as lost as her father. She couldn’t decide if she was responsible, or if he was. The weight was almost as heavy as the guilt she carried from Veronica.

"Our people would come to blame me for all their pain,” Dukemot said. “Mothers and fathers carrying dead children, brothers weeping over lost sisters, family lines that had been completely wiped out. They called me a tyrant, a kidnapper, a murderer. Very often the mobs turned violent, and who could blame them for it? I’d stolen their future.

"I remember a girl who came to me, once, sick with Gray Death," Dukemot said, his voice a low trickle. "She was near your age, maybe younger. She arrived when the fires were at their worst–at a time when food couldn't even be brought in from the mainlands because all our ports were burning. Maybe it was only driven out by the intense hunger, but there was something left of the girl, a piece of who she once was. She stumbled to the steps below Talmoria’s throne and collapsed at my feet. Her legs were like twigs, and her arms were much worse.

“I tried to help the girl stand, but she had no strength. All she could do was stare up at me, eyes pleading for help. I held that girl in my arms for what seemed like an eternity, knowing I could do nothing for her. I begged her to speak–to say anything, even just her name. But she never said a word. After a short time, the girl climbed down from my arms and rested her head on the marble floors of my hall, and died right there beside me… There was nothing I could do to save her. Not even with all the gold and jewels in the world could I have bought her life. The most powerful kingdom the world had ever seen, undone by sickness."

The breath seemed to flee from Dukemot’s lungs. The horror of that nightmarish moment filled his eyes with darkness. He looked like a wraith in king’s clothing, doomed to relive his mistakes until the grinding end of time. He stared into the dark forest of the greenhouse around him, but clearly, his mind was still trapped in the memories.

"A way to stop this disease is out there," Dukemot said, breaking the momentary silence. "A second option which no one has yet seen. And no one can find it but me.”

Manie didn’t understand what that meant. “I can help you. We can find a cure, together.” She already knew where to find it, but how could she tell her father that without letting her allegiances be known?

“There’s no need to worry yourself with such things,” Dukemot said. “For now you need to rest, and learn to smile like you once did.”

Manie let a deep breath out of her lungs, overwhelmed by the weight of her responsibility. She had taken on a King’s debt–to cleanse his lost legacy and bring peace to a world that had been undone.

Dukemot looked down at Manie, his face carved by guilt. As he began to speak his eyes fell shut. “Before your sister died, she asked me to make her a promise. She told me I had to forgive you–for everything you did the night you left your tower, including her own death.”

A cold shard of glass slid up the back of Manie’s throat. “How..?” she asked, fighting not to cry. “She fell…”

“She survived… for three days.”

“She wasn’t dead?” Manie hadn’t even stopped to check if Veronica was still breathing after she fell, she just stepped over her sister’s corpse and walked away.

“She wasn’t in any pain, I made sure of that,” Dukemot said. “She was full of regret and sadness over what she’d done to you… She told me almost everything that happened, how she snuck into your room, how she tried to take Mikhail’s Crystal while you slept.” Dukemot rolled up Manie’s sleeve and traced the outline of the scar on her forearm with his thumb, saying nothing.

Manie could feel the burn of the cut as if it just happened. Give me the Crystal! She heard her sister’s voice scream. Chills raced up Manie’s spine and she yanked her arm away, pulling down her sleeve to cover the cut. The tears came to Manie’s eyes and fell. “I never wanted power, I just wanted my family back.” It was almost too painful for Manie to speak. She heard a different version of Veronica’s voice, shining through the darkness like a ray of golden sun. We’re sisters. Sisters always stick together. Only one of those people was real. The other had been corrupted by the Crystal.

“I know,” Dukemot said, his voice like whispering sand. “So did I.” He turned to Manie and smiled. “I’m just grateful I still have my daughter.” He grabbed Manie behind the shoulder and pulled her against his side, smiling.

Manie couldn’t fight the burn in her eyes any longer. She lunged at her father and grabbed him as tight as she could. “I’m so sorry I left, Dad. I never should have fought Veronica. I should have just let her take the Crystal and then none of this would have happened… I destroyed all my memories.”

“Shh, no Manie. Hush now… What happened that night was beyond your control. Those days have gone behind us, now. We’re together again. We can build our memories anew.” Dukemot grabbed Manie’s face and looked into her eyes, wiping away her tears with his thumbs. “I couldn’t be more proud of who you’ve become. And I know Veronica would feel the same if she was here with us now. You saved the Torch-Wings.”

Manie’s face was hot and throbbing, and the room seemed to be spinning around her.

“Thank you,” she managed to say before her lip quivered and tears rushed from her eyes again. “I just tried to do what I thought was right...”

“You did, Manie,” Dukemot softly said. “Better than I ever could.” He looked around at the cold forest around them, rain battering the glass ceiling above, watching the colorless Torch-Wings fly. “Let us leave this place behind.”