The Hemlock Queen, page 35
“See what?” Caeliar asked, arching a brow.
He grinned. “The Fount.”
“No.” Hestraon shook his head, his dour look perking into a grin despite himself as he tore his gaze from Nyxara. “There’s no possible way you actually found It. I thought you just wanted us to see the island?”
“I guess you’ll have to come look for yourself.” Apollius started off into the trees. It was uncanny, the forest on either side of them, how it dropped into open air where the plateau ended. One more otherworldly thing about this place, one more way it seemed outside of regular rules. Nyxara supposed that if one were to find the Fount, it’d be in a place like this.
The trees broke, opening up into a clearing. Crumbling stone columns held up the remains of a roof, the cracks in the rock filled in with moss and a profusion of blooming flowers. The ruined structure looked similar to the plazas built in every city, all housing a small fountain of their own, homage paid to the thing that had created their world.
But the fountain in the center of this ruined plaza was both finer and simpler than any Nyxara had ever seen. The pale stone gleamed with seams of gold, as if woven through with sun rays. A series of tiny carvings ringed the lip. A sun, a moon, a leaf, the swirl of a wind gust, the crest of a wave. A small jet of water burbled in the fountain’s center. She couldn’t see where it came from; there didn’t appear to be any mechanism within the fountain that would propel the water upward. And the water around it wasn’t disturbed, remaining flat and shining as a mirror.
Her ears rang as she drew closer, almost resolving into song—
A hand on her arm. Hestraon. He tugged her back to his side, away from the fountain, looking troubled.
“That’s It?” Braxtos didn’t sound convinced.
“Sure is.” Apollius eyed the fountain before them like one might watch an oncoming army, with a sort of grim excitement. “The source of the world. The essence of everything. All here.”
They stared at It, the six of them, awe stilling their tongues.
“How can you be sure?” Hestraon, ever the skeptic, who’d dropped Nyxara’s arm like it burned him. “I mean, yes, it’s a fountain on an island, but how do you know it’s the fountain on the island?”
“I asked It a question,” Apollius said. “And It knew the answer.”
Hestraon’s eyes slid to Nyxara’s, understanding a rope drawn taut between them. The three of them had known one another the longest, the best. They both knew what kind of question Apollius would ask the Fount, the reason he was searching for It in the first place.
“Well?” Lereal widened blue eyes, their ethereal face curious. “What was the question?”
“What happens after you die,” Apollius said, still staring at the Fount. That strange look had come back over his face, the darkness Nyxara had caught a glimpse of down on the beach. Part of her was surprised that he’d give up the question that had long pulled at his heart so easily, but this place felt like one that wouldn’t tolerate untruth. Like any question asked here would get the correct answer, even if it wasn’t one you could understand at first.
“Care to share what It said, then?” Caeliar twisted a strand of hair around her finger, trying to look bored, though her eyes were keen.
The shadow stayed on Apollius’s face, his green eyes narrowing at the golden fountain he’d brought them to, the supposed source of all power the earth was made from. He snorted half a laugh. “I said It knew the answer,” he said. “Not that It told me. It said I wasn’t ready. That no one living should know what happens before their turn.”
Braxtos crossed his arms. “So you’re back at the beginning, then. Found the Fount, but It’s useless.”
“Not useless.” Apollius stepped forward, tugging Nyxara along with him. She didn’t really want to get any closer to the Fount, or whatever It was, but his grip on her hand didn’t give her much choice. Hestraon stepped forward, too, his hand rising toward her before he made it fall back to his side.
Her jaw set tight as a prison lock. Both of them did this, all the time. Acted like they knew best, like she was something that needed protecting, something fragile. As if her own mind were a mystery to her, and both of them knew it better than she ever could.
It was exhausting, sometimes. She knew herself just fine.
“The Fount wouldn’t give me Its answers,” Apollius said, turning to face the friends he’d brought here, the ones he’d chosen to share this with. “But It has them. Somewhere inside. And we can find them.”
It took a moment for his words to sink in, for them to understand what exactly he was suggesting. Lereal realized first. They shook their head. “You want us to go in there?”
“Not go in,” Apollius said. “We drink from It. Take part of It into ourselves.” He glared at the flat surface of the water, his reflection beaming the anger back at him. “Then It won’t be able to hide things from us.”
Lereal tugged nervously at the ends of their golden hair. “Sorry, Apollius, but I really don’t want to do that.”
No one seemed particularly enthused by the idea. Braxtos and Hestraon hung back at the edge of the ruined plaza, casting wary glances between them. Caeliar frowned at Apollius like she thought she hadn’t heard him correctly.
But Nyxara stared only at the Fount. She thought of power, of being someone that wouldn’t be underestimated, someone that no one would think they needed to protect. Protection was just control, in the end. A leash held by a benevolent hand was still a leash.
She shook free of Apollius’s grip.
He glanced at her, brow furrowed, before looking back at Lereal. “Do you know the way home, Lereal?”
Not a threat. Not yet. But the potential hung there, and it could alchemize at any moment.
Braxtos didn’t let it. He always said things in plain language. “You’re saying if we don’t drink, you won’t show us the way home.”
“Technically, you said it.” Apollius smiled, though his eyes stayed narrowed and flinty.
“Why?” Caeliar crossed her arms and canted her hips, though the posture didn’t dim the avid look in her eyes. “You want the answer, you drink.”
“I tried that already,” Apollius said quickly. But there was a tic in his neck, a strain in his jaw. “It needs more than just me.”
Hestraon stared at him, then Nyxara. They knew he was lying, at least partially. But what was there to say?
“I hate you sometimes,” Hestraon said to Apollius, and it didn’t sound like he was joking. Odd, how easily hate and love could fade into each other, passion in fluid forms.
Another not-quite-smile from Apollius, then he gestured at the Fount. “I’ll go first, take another drink. Show you there’s nothing to be afraid of. And you’ll come after me.”
And there was no question that they would, no matter how uneasy the five of them looked. Apollius had been the leader of their small group for so long; none of them really thought to gainsay him. There was something about his presence, like it held more weight than anyone else, like he took up all the air in a room. Since he’d returned from his journey, telling them all he’d finally found the Fount, that personal gravity had only grown heavier.
Apollius stepped up to the golden ledge. There was no chalice—he reached in with his hands, cupping them in the glass-clear water, disturbing the placid shine. The ripples expanded, reached the sides, kept going like a tide, as if the Fount had its own rhythms. As if a cycle started here was unending.
Water streamed from Apollius’s hands as he lifted them, shining in his palms. He closed his eyes. “You will give me what I need,” he murmured, almost a threat. “I will know all the answers.”
And that sounded so good, to have something that couldn’t lie to you. To know the secrets of the world, so it could never take you off guard.
Nyxara ran up to Apollius’s side as he lifted his hands to his mouth. She pressed her face near his, and opened her lips, and drank at the same time he did.
He startled, but just for a moment. Then he pressed closer to her, and she lifted her hands, too, so the water wouldn’t escape, and they both drank deep. It felt like they were even closer than they had been moments before, when he was inside her, his mouth on her own. This felt like they were two sides of the same coin, the sun and the moon, the light and the dark.
A rumble through the ground. The faintest sound of something cracking.
“One more,” Apollius murmured to her, tipping the rest of the water toward her mouth even as it streamed through his fingers. “Take one more.”
And she did. Two sips, singing through her like lightning.
Apollius’s wet hands came to either side of Nyxara’s face, cradling it like she was something precious. “I will never be apart from you,” he said, the waters of the Fount streaming from his mouth. “You will be mine forever, and you will never speak against me, never share my secrets or betray me. You will never try to leave me, ever.”
A faint line drew between Nyxara’s brows. The words twisted around her mind like serpents, like shackles.
Another crack. She looked to the Fount. Faint hairline fractures slithered between two of the small carvings. The sun and the moon.
Another rumble through the ground, a gentle earthquake. It never resolved into anything larger, but something about the atmosphere—broke, became a little less stable, knocked slightly off its axis.
Apollius sat down, hard, his hands falling away from her, staring into nothing. “I know,” he said, and she couldn’t tell if it was in despair or exultation. “I know.”
And Nyxara’s vision spangled.
The water of the Fount spun her out into composite parts, sliced her to trailing ribbons. She had no sense of her body, no sense of anything, all her awareness flung far and made diffuse.
The world was reduced, too, simmered to its most basic components, surrounding her in a miasma of matter and magic. Shreds of power, of worlds that had come before this one, worlds that might come after. The soul of the earth, gathered here, boiling and mutating and renewing itself all the time.
Here, reduced, all her previous ideas about herself were sloughed away, replaced by a shining certainty with no room for such rudimentary emotions as shame, jealousy, hope. The sad girl who clung to anything that gave her warmth, even if it burned. The woman who wasn’t afraid of the dark. The person who loved a man obsessed with finding a way out of death, when she herself thought, sometimes, how nice it sounded. How peaceful and quiet.
Something that represented all those things flowed past her in the miasmic sea the Fount had made of the world. Something that felt like maybe it could be hers.
She didn’t think. She reached out and grabbed that thread of magic, of power, and she didn’t let go, and it didn’t struggle.
The thread twisted into her, gathering up the far-flung pieces she’d become. Her being reconstituted around it, the Fount allowing her to take part of Itself and lay claim.
Do you have a question, too? Not a voice, not anything she could understand. Something speaking into her mind, reordering itself into language so it could communicate. Is that why you grip such a thing and try to make it yours? You want power, like him?
“Yes,” Nyxara replied, feeling as if she spoke, though in this state she wasn’t sure she even had a mouth. Power was what she wanted, wasn’t it? To be unassailable. Sovereign, and her own.
At least you are honest, the Fount said. What is your question, then?
“Will he have some peace now?” She saw once again that flash of darkness on Apollius’s face. “Will you finally tell him what happens after someone dies?”
His father, his mother, his siblings. All massacred in a senseless killing, a border squabble between minor lords. He’d been obsessed with knowing ever since, after seeing how easily death came for you, how it slipped up like a lover and smothered you out in seconds, on a day that seemed like any other.
No one had a concept of anything coming after; when you were gone, you were gone. Apollius didn’t accept that. Apollius wanted the world to bend around him, he wanted to know its secrets, and change them if they weren’t what he wanted.
We told him he could not know while he was human, the Fount said. So now he takes in power that can house itself in no human. And he will know.
“No human?” Nyxara asked, but not with any kind of surprise.
You take it, too, the Fount replied. All of you, hungry for something more. This power will make you more than human, but even not-human things come to an end. Do you understand?
“Yes.” And she did, even as her body restructured itself into what she would become. Darkness and moonglow, the peace of long rest. Not human, but still mortal, because death was the unshakable caveat to life, and there was no true escape.
You will go, one day, the Fount said. But this power gives you two lives, two deaths. One for the human you were, one for the god you’ve become. The power will always find a new vessel, and until your second death, you will be tied to it, unable to rest. Do you understand?
“Yes.” But she didn’t, not really. Who could?
Then become.
For a brief moment, for an eternity, she knew the answers Apollius had been looking for. Death opened itself to her, its new Queen, and she saw all the way through to its ending.
But then it was gone, locked away deep inside her.
And then she knew nothing.
the goddess
What can I do to make you happy?”
The refrain could be pleading, had it come from anyone else’s mouth. But from Apollius, it would always sound like an order.
Nyxara didn’t answer. She had a few times before—told him that it would make her happy if she could leave this island, told him it’d make her happy if he’d told them the truth of what would happen when they drank from the Fount. Though that part wasn’t exactly fair, which he’d wasted no time in pointing out. He hadn’t forced them. They’d drunk of their own free will. She doubted it would’ve worked, if they hadn’t.
Doubted the Fount would’ve made them all gods. Would’ve trapped them all here on this island as it rapidly decayed, the power they’d stripped from the soul of the world tipping it off balance.
They should’ve known that day, when the edge of the Fount broke, three pieces bearing carvings splintering from the whole. A sun, a moon, another piece with the leaf and wave and wind gust. They’d left them where they’d fallen.
She didn’t answer Apollius. She kept quiet and dangled her feet from the rocky overlook, staring out at the blue-on-blue horizon. The trees had thinned since they’d taken from the Fount, some fallen ill, others growing in stilted, unnatural shapes, as if the island sickened from the essence the six of them had taken. It cleared the view enough for Nyxara to see straight down to the shoreline.
Boats were arriving. Small ones, but full of people who’d heard of the Fount, of the gods on the mountain. It’d been a strange thing, when they were discovered, what felt both like years and like days after they’d drunk from the Fount. Time had no meaning here.
At least, it hadn’t until the sailors came. They’d washed up on the shore one night, tossed here by an unseasonably tempestuous ocean. Caeliar still didn’t have the trick of smoothing the waters, making them follow their proper order. She and Nyxara worked together for the tides, and those were off, too. They held the reins of the world, but didn’t know how to ride.
Apollius healed the sailors. Braxtos and Hestraon repaired the ship. And Lereal sent it home with a gust of wind—one of the first they’d managed to send in the right direction, rather than stirring up a storm.
The pilgrims came soon after.
Often, they just came to pray, but some of them stayed, built huts along the southern-facing shore. Nyxara and the others didn’t like it, and didn’t have much to do with the people who came, but Apollius did. He’d heal them, let them cry at his feet in gratitude. He’d go walk among the huts of the ones who stayed, gathering followers, letting them sing songs composed in his honor. When some would leave, he would raise one hand and watch as their boats faded into the horizon.
Nyxara was always filled with near-painful jealousy when she watched the human penitents leave.
She didn’t go down among the pilgrims often. Just as well. The powers the Fount had given her were not the kind they’d want to see. None of them needed night to fall faster, or the moon to wax or wane out of season.
None of them needed her to raise a dead body.
She’d only done that once, one of the first times a boat full of people had come to the island, after the sailors. It’d been a child. That was why she tried. A child who’d taken sick and passed before he and his mother could make it here for healing. But either Nyxara did something wrong, or raising people back to their fullness was a power beyond her own, because the child had been a horror, black-eyed and with an unhinged jaw, and the mother had screamed at her to undo it, undo it, it was worse.
She didn’t interact much with the people who came after that.
“Nyxara.” Her name sounded like a prayer. The thought was uncomfortable, given the trajectory of her earlier thoughts; she shook it off. Apollius lowered himself to sit beside her. A moment, a deep breath. “I’ve told you I’m sorry. I didn’t know what the Fount would do—”
“But you knew it would do something,” she murmured. “You knew it would do something, and you didn’t want to be alone with whatever it did, so you dragged us into it, too. Why did you do that? Why could you never just learn to face your own consequences?”
They kept discussing this, over and over, long after she probably should’ve just accepted it. They were gods; they had penitents. She’d come to see Apollius at the Fount more than once—the ruined plaza now new-built and gleaming, thanks to human hands, the broken pieces picked up and set in places of honor—and seen him poring over a manuscript with one person or another, offering advice. They always stopped when she approached.
This was what he’d wanted. In a slanted way, at least. Divinity was the price he paid for his answers. It’d been unfair of him to make the rest of them pay for it, too. To use their love and twist it into chains.
