Billy: Messenger of Powers Read online

  “My name,” he said to Billy, “is Veric the Green.”

  Billy was surprised. He had been wondering that. Could the Green Power read minds?

  At the moment Billy thought this, Veric shook his head. “We of the Green cannot read minds. But we do sometimes sense feelings, and I have lived long enough to guess the likely questions that flow from your confusions.” He smiled again at Billy, then looked at Ivy. “Hello, Ivy,” he said.

  The young/old woman curtsied, her living dress flaring out and appearing to add to the depth of the bow. “Hello, Father,” she answered.

  Veric looked around at the seated Council. “All here?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” replied Mrs. Russet. Or, rather, Lumilla the Brown. Billy had trouble thinking of this as his history teacher when she sat in the brown throne, a living tapestry of all history swirling about her. The old woman nodded at the black throne. “We wait on Death.”

  “As do all creatures, great and small. All shall come to It eventually, and It is the greatest Power, which all other Powers serve,” replied a voice. Billy hoped the voice didn’t belong to who he thought it belonged to, but sure enough, as the orb reached out, its inky darkness seeping into the light that surrounded it, it gradually took human form, and became Mrs. Eva Black. She looked venomously at Billy as she took her seat.

  “A great Power,” agreed Mrs. Russet. “But the greatest? I think not.”

  “Do you claim Earth to be greater than Death?” asked Mrs. Black haughtily.

  “I do not claim it is, nor do I admit it is not,” responded Mrs. Russet. Then she nodded at the White Throne. “But I think we all can admit that the White is the greatest Element, and the White King the greatest Power of us all.”

  “Shall we agree to that? Shall we indeed?” taunted Mrs. Black. Billy hated it when she talked. It was like the angry edge of her voice was amplified when she sat in her throne.

  He noticed that she, of all the Council, wore only her regular clothing. As though the Death Power was one that wore no adornment, and came with no more than what it was. Billy shivered, and thought, And what it is, is quite enough. Adornment or not, Mrs. Black was clothed in her Element, and that Element was indeed dark and frightening.

  “The White King exists,” said Mrs. Russet, in a tone that brooked no argument. “And he will come again.”

  “If you say so,” said Mrs. Black.

  “Please, ladies, please,” said Veric, the Green Councilor. “We are not here to argue the truth or legend of the White King. We have convened the Council for another purpose, have we not?”

  He looked at Mrs. Russet, who nodded. She looked at Billy as though she were waiting for something. He didn’t know what she wanted, so he stood there, rooted to the spot. “Well,” she finally said. “Don’t just stand there like a stick figure.” She gestured for him to come to stand in the middle of the Council.

  Billy gulped. “Go on, my boy,” said Tempus. The jolly old Power of the Wind was grinning impishly at him. “No one has ever died in the midst of a Council session.” He winked. “At least, I don’t remember it ever happening, but then, we Wind folk have short memories.”

  Billy gulped again, hardly reassured by what he hoped was Tempus’s joke. But he managed to make his feet take several leaden steps toward the Diamond Dais. He didn’t have the benefit of Mrs. Russet’s power, so no stone steps rose to help him climb gracefully atop the raised podium. Instead, he had to clamber awkwardly up the side, no mean feat considering that the smooth dais was over half his height, with no handholds to help him.

  He looked over at Vester, hoping the fireman would see his trouble and give him a lift, but Vester was still staring at Fulgora, the Red Lady, apparently lost in love by the mere fact that she was near.

  Billy continued trying to hoist himself up, but instead just felt increasingly foolish. Here six of the most powerful people in this strange new world were waiting for him, and he was hanging off the edge of a diamond platform like a half-paralyzed monkey trying to climb a coconut tree. His ears burned, but he refused to give up.

  Suddenly, he felt something give him a boost, pushing him up by the seat of his pants. It pushed a bit too hard, in fact, sending Billy up over the lip of the stage, where he landed with an “oof.”

  He glanced at Tempus, and the old man winked as though to say “You’re welcome, kiddo.”

  Billy rolled his eyes at the gray man’s sense of humor. Then he slowly got to his feet. He felt incredibly awkward, standing in the center of this circle. Not only because it was a focus of the earth’s great Powers, but because no matter which way he was facing, he had at least two of them behind him. He had never before wondered what the back of his head looked like, but he suddenly had a crazy thought: I hope my hair is combed.

  Then, on the heels of that thought came another: Sure, you wouldn’t want these six wizards or Powers or whatever they call themselves to think you didn’t comb your hair this morning. I’m sure that would make a huge difference in whatever earth-shattering decision they’re about to make.

  He faced Mrs. Russet. While not exactly what he would call a “friendly” face, she at least had a face that he was used to, and more importantly it didn’t come with the almost frightening beauty of the Red Lady, or with the completely frightening look of Mrs. Black. He could feel the Death Power’s eyes fairly burning a pair of holes in the back of his neck, and resisted an urge to drop to the floor of the podium like a kid in a fire drill.

  “Very well, then, Lumilla,” said Veric, the kind-seeming Green Power. “You have us here, and you have this boy. The question we all have, I think, is why?”

  Mrs. Russet looked slowly around the ring. “We all know of the Prophecy. Of the return of the White King, and the ending of our world.”

  The Council members each nodded, some looking somber, others—like Mrs. Black—just looking bored or annoyed or both.

  Mrs. Russet took a breath, then said, “I believe that the One Prophecy has begun to come to pass.”

  At this, the Councilors all sat up straight in their thrones. “Explain yourself, Lumilla,” snapped Nehala, the Blue Power.

  Mrs. Russet held forth her crystal staff. She touched it again to the Diamond Dais, and Billy saw something rise up from below, ascending through the diamond like an air bubble in the ocean. Then the object emerged from the diamond.

  It was a book. A deep brown book that looked heavy as lead, and thick as all of life itself. He knew somehow that this book, like Mrs. Russet’s deep-colored cloak, held the sum of History in its pages. That it had come at Mrs. Russet’s call from the very center of the earth, and that in its pages he could find out anything that had ever happened before, from the beginning of existence to the present day.

  “The Book of the Earth,” said Mrs. Russet. She opened it, and read. “In the fourth Age of our Power, the White King came.” Mrs. Black snorted in derision at this, but Mrs. Russet ignored her. “He was the all-Power, the one Power who has ever been a master of all the Elements, and he ushered in an age of peace that lasted a generation.”

  “Folklore. Myth,” said Mrs. Black. Billy noted that the Blue and Gray Councilors nodded in agreement.

  Mrs. Russet frowned at them. “Do you dispute the Power of Earth here in the presence of its heart?” Billy again felt like dropping to the ground, this time because he sensed that an all-out fight was on the verge of breaking out, and he knew for a fact that he didn’t want to be in the middle of it.

  Mrs. Black and the two other Powers backed down, saying nothing. Mrs. Russet nodded. “As I was saying….” Her eyes went back to the book, reading from its pages. “And after the White King worked his Power upon the face of the world, he was loved and revered, until,” she turned a page. Billy thought he could almost hear the sound of the continents shifting when she turned the pages of that great book. “…until his closest friend attacked him, mortally wounding the White King. The King, in the midst of his pain, Prophesied. He Prophesied that he would
return. And that before he did, a boy would come forth, a boy who was of the Power, but held none in his control. A boy that the Earth would protect, and that Life would seek to reject. A boy with Death in his past, but Hope in his present.”

  She looked at Billy. “I believe this is that boy.”

  Billy was unprepared for the chaos that followed this statement. All the Councilors, it seemed, erupted from their seats, several of them literally, Nehara the Blue rising up on a small, agitated water spout that burst from his throne; and Dismus the Gray whipping about the Diamond Dais in a whirlwind that sprang into existence out of nowhere.

  Billy noted that only Fulgora, the Red Lady, remained calm, her sparkling eyes watching everything as though she were waiting for something, waiting for a special, perfect moment to occur. Billy had no idea what that moment would be, just that he got uneasy watching her. The fact that Vester loved her made Billy want to like her automatically, but he couldn’t help but be spooked by her for some reason.

  The rest of the Council, though, was screaming and yelling at the tops of their lungs. Billy caught snatches of the exchanges, but couldn’t focus on any one thing in particular.

  “Impossible! The White King is a legend….”

  “How do you know this? Explain yourself, Lumilla!”

  “If Lumilla says it, I’m inclined to….”

  Around and around they went, a dizzying barrage of conversation that flew over and around Billy as though he were an innocent bystander in the middle of a firefight between two hostile armies.

  Nor did it seem at all likely that the arguing was going to stop any time soon. Instead, the verbal combatants seemed to be increasing the energy of their attacks. Louder and louder the Council became, until suddenly there was a great noise that silenced all of them.

  The Diamond Dais bucked under Billy’s feet, sending him falling down hard to the shining floor below him. He heard a scream, but couldn’t tell where or who it came from. Then the ground rolled again. He heard a great cracking far to his left, and thought with horror that it sounded as though one of the great stones that made up the great tower had separated from its moorings and would crash down to the island below.

  Again the ground swayed and rolled below Billy. He looked over and saw Vester, Tempus, and Ivy reel, trying to remain on their feet. The tiny blue and red horses made of lightning and fire which were still riding across Vester’s shoulders reared up in fear, then galloped into his pants pockets and disappeared.

  Billy had no time to reflect on the strangeness of the scene, because another great shiver ran through the ground. To Billy’s horror, the dais upon which he was so precariously perched began to crack below his hands and knees. A long, jagged fissure appeared below him, and Billy rolled to one side as the dais split in two, a four-inch crack running the length of the platform.

  Billy’s roll to the side was an instinctive move, nothing he consciously decided, but the move saved his life, as a long diamond shard erupted through the crack in the Diamond Dais, right where Billy had stood only a moment before. It speared four feet into the sky, a frighteningly sharp diamond shaft with a razor point at its tip.

  The ground continued its roller-coaster movement, and Billy almost rolled right off the podium, but caught himself at the last moment. He looked around in panic as the ground continued to quake. Several of the Councilors, he saw, were holding strange objects in tightly-clenched fists. Fulgora the Red was clutching a red rose, her mouth moving as though she were speaking rapidly, though Billy couldn’t hear what she was saying. Mrs. Black was rubbing her scarab broach wildly, clearly hoping that it would do something; just as clearly disappointed that whatever she was hoping would happen hadn’t happened yet.

  And Dismus was…. Billy blinked. The Gray Councilor was still whipping around the dais at full speed, but now he seemed out of control, as though something else was moving the wind, and he no longer had any say in its movements. The old man was swirling around the group faster and faster, in tighter and tighter circles… and he had an electric toothbrush in his hands the whole time.

  He’s worried about cavities? Billy thought in amazement as the ground rolled him around again, his body loose and limp as a piece of yarn. I don’t think gingivitis is really an issue right now.

  Then he remembered what Vester had said while Billy was caught in the cave. Tempus had asked where the Darksiders that had been a part of Billy’s death—Mrs. Black and the cold Blue Power, Wade—had disappeared to. Vester had mentioned that Mrs. Black’s broach was Imbued, and that she had grabbed it, then grabbed Wade and they had both disappeared.

  Of course, Billy thought. The broach, the rose, and Dismus’s tooth brush must all be like Mrs. Russet’s beehive key: they must be Imbued Objects that can take them away from here.

  Billy certainly couldn’t blame any of the three from trying to get away; he was quite certain that he would be doing the very same thing if he’d had any such magical object. But he did wonder why the objects weren’t working for the three Powers.

  Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the quaking stopped. Billy looked at Mrs. Russet, who alone among the Councilors had remained calmly seated at her throne during the great shaking of the tower. That made some sense, Billy realized: surely as a Power of Earth an earthquake wouldn’t particularly concern her. But then he noticed that the knuckles of the hand that still held her crystal staff were white and strained. She was afraid, too, he realized, and that thought alone was enough to scare him as much as anything that had happened this day. Mrs. Russet did not get scared. She could make others uneasy at times—during surprise quizzes, for example—but did not get scared herself.

  Slowly, though, as everyone became more or less sure that the ground had stopped its violent flinging about, the Councilors settled back to their seats, sinking onto them with a mixture of relief and tightly coiled fear. Billy spared a glance to where Vester, Ivy, and Tempus had been before this all started and saw the three Powers climbing out of a net-like lattice of soft vines. Evidently Ivy—or perhaps her father, Veric, the Green Councilor—had called the plants up to protect them from the shaking.

  For a long moment, all were silent.

  Then Mrs. Russet picked up the Book of the Earth again. She opened it, then read in a somber voice: “And before the White King comes, shall come the Messenger. And with him, the Earth shall shake, and the Seats of Power shall tremble, and there shall be a great rending, even as of a diamond splitting in two.”

  She looked pointedly at the Diamond Dais on which the thrones all sat. The crack that had opened below Billy stretched the length of the podium, interrupted only by the gleaming spire that now thrust skyward out of its center. Billy noted that the diamond shard was so clear, so perfectly formed, that he could see through it and gaze upon many-faceted images of the Powers who sat on the other side.

  “I think,” said Mrs. Russet after a long silence, “that we can dispense with the idea that the White King is a legend.” She shut the book with the authority and awful certainty of a landslide crashing down. “I also think,” she continued, “that it appears certain that this boy,” and here she gestured at Billy with her crystal staff, “is the Messenger foretold.”

  There was another long pause. Then Fulgora said, “Not necessarily.” Her lips, as flame red as her throne, moved slowly, her words deliberate and careful. “He may be the Messenger,” she said. “Or this may have been coincidence.”

  “Coincidence?” shouted Dismus the Gray in shock, the electric toothbrush still whirring in his hands. “That wasn’t a coincidence! That was prophecy! And I should know! I’m of the Wind!” He harrumphed as though that settled the question, then seemed to notice his toothbrush for the first time. “Not only did the Diamond Dais crack, but the Wind was spinning me—me—without my being able to do a thing about it.” He shook his toothbrush at them all. “And my Transport key didn’t work. Nor did yours or yours,” he continued, looking at Mrs. Black and at Fulgora the Red in turn. “
Don’t deny it! I saw you grab your broach, Eva, and Fulgora still holds her rose in her hand! Something blocked us, something I’ve never heard of or felt before.” He took a few deep breaths, visibly calming himself. “I think Lumilla is right, and I don’t think,” he added, looking at Fulgora, “that this is a mere coincidence. That would strain belief.”

  And with that, Dismus crossed his arms and sat back on his throne of air, swaying ever so slightly as the wind of the chair moved him back and forth in its eddying breeze.

  “I agree that if this is a coincidence, then it is an extraordinary one,” said Fulgora. “But then, we don’t notice ordinary coincidences anyway, do we? So a coincidence, when anyone speaks of it, does tend to be an extraordinary occurrence. Nevertheless,” she said, holding up a hand to silence Dismus, who appeared about to go flying about on his tornado again, “I do agree that the odds against this being such a coincidence are high. But there is one other alternative.” She gazed around the Council. “You all know of what I speak. Of whom I speak.”

  “Wolfen was not the Messenger. He was exiled over twenty years ago, and no one has heard of him since,” said Mrs. Russet.

  “Wolfen the White was not exiled,” snapped Mrs. Black. Then, in an almost piteously sad voice, she said, “He left us.” Then she straightened. “But I heard the prophecy at the boy’s Gleaning. ‘He is returning,’ Tempus said. I believe he has. I believe that Wolfen is coming, if he is not already among us.” Billy heard Ivy gasp fearfully at this, and wondered who this Wolfen person might be.

  Mrs. Black continued. “And as for this boy, I don’t think this Billy Jones is a Messenger, or even a mere Power. We’re wasting our time with him.”