Spirit Speaker

I didn't sleep that night. Couldn't. I needed to destroy those bottles. If the king saw that he died, or Anna saw that I married her mother, or if the queen…gods, that would be the worst-case scenario. 

I tossed and turned. And gave up. It was pointless to sleep. I needed answers, answers about the weave. 

Which meant I needed to contact a priest. 

I hated priests. 

I slipped out of bed and dressed hurriedly. Then dashed down the passageway, past surprised guards and servants. 

I sprinted through the gardens, past the open palace gates, and into the night. I needed to reach the temple district, and I needed to be back at the palace before sunrise. 

I didn't stop running until I stood in front of the temple of the Weaver. 

I paused to catch my breath, almost passed out from lack of oxygen, and then forced my way up the steps. 

By law, temples were open round the clock, with a priest manning the doors to the temples at all hours. 

"Not every day we get a mage walking through these doors." The priest holding vigil said when he saw me.

"You know me?" I wheezed. 

"Not me. The Weaver does. I simply act as a mouthpiece."

I didn't have the energy to argue. 

"I need guidance on the weave. You crackpots are the world's leading authority on it."

"Sure, sure. Come in, the abbot's been waiting for you. He said that you'd be coming in."

Sure he did.

The abbot was a small man, bald and old, with heavy grey eyebrows and a friendly smile. 

"Master Lukas. You're here. Finally. Come, come sit down."

The abbot patted a chair in front of him. I sat down. 

"Good, now the Weaver didn't tell me why you were coming, only that you were coming tonight. And that I needed to keep an eye out for you."

He peered at me curiously. "So…how can I help you?"

"Tell me about the future, priest," I said, feeling a little tired of being whisked around. 

"A grand topic indeed," The abbot laughed, his eyes sparkling. "Though a little broad to cover in just one evening. Is there a particular part of the future that you wish to talk about?"

"Does the Weaver grant you access to the weaves of another?"

"With permission," The abbot said, carefully. "Though we can only see it. We can't manipulate it in any way."

"What do you see in me?" I stared at the abbot.

The abbot hummed as he got up and stood before me. He pulled up a wooden stool from somewhere and sat down. 

"Alright. Open your eyes, let me take a look." 

He grabbed the medallion around his neck and hummed a tune. The medallion began to glow. He used the light of the medallion to look into my eye. 

"That's…interesting." He dropped the medallion and sat down next to me. 

"So, not only do you know what's wrong with your weave, but you also informed me of it so that we didn't waste any time."

"How can I help you, Mage? You already know the future. You lived it after all."

"Can it be changed?" 

"Of course, the future can be changed, lad." The priest laughed. "You didn't visit me in your last life did you?"

"But the Spirit King is supposed to have a plan for all of us. How can he have a plan if we determine our own fate?"

The abbot sat back on the stool and breathed out.

"Now that's a hell of a question. I have an answer for you, but you're not going to like it."

"I watched this world burn to the ground around me, priest. I watched my apprentice pierce my chest with a spear and then cut off my head. I held my daughter in my arms as she breathed her last breath. I think I can handle it."

"Alright, Lukas, but you're really not going to like what I have to say." He smiled. "No hitting, and definitely no fireballs. This is an old temple. I don't think it would be able to handle it."

"Priest." My voice was low. I was losing my patience. 

The abbot raised his hands in supplication. "Do you have your focus on you?"

I shook my head. "My staff is at the Academy."

"Pity. We'll have to use this then." He removed the medallion from his neck and whispered to it softly. 

Then he waved it through the air until a faint trail of white light was left behind it. 

"He's a little old." The abbot said with a smile. "He needs a shake every now and then." 

He then traced a line in the air with the amulet, and a white trail of smoke was left behind, in a perfect line. 

"This is the timeline." He said. He drew a straight line, with an arrow on one side, "This is the past." And then he drew another arrow on the other side. "And this is the future." 

He then drew several pillars below the line, supporting it. 

"Many people think that time is a path or a road. But it's not. It's a bridge. And it's held up by key events." He stabbed at the line, leaving small dots above the pillars. 

"Each of these key events is orchestrated by the Spirit King, and the Seven so that the world moves along according to plan." 

"Now, sometimes, a key event doesn't happen the way it was supposed to, and the world is shaken to its core. Major changes happen, and the plan has to be adjusted to compensate."

"One such change was when the first land spirit contacted a mortal." He ticked off a point. "Another was when the old empire fell, and the continents cracked and split apart." He ticked off a second point. 

"I would imagine you experienced such a change in your previous life." He ticked off another point, closest to the end of the line. "But something was different this time. This time the world ended?" 

I nodded. "The only living creatures left were myself and my apprentice. And then just my apprentice."

The abbot sat in thought for a second, and then pulled at the foundations of the bridge, making it collapse. 

"So, something happened that the Spirit King couldn't fix. And he sent you back to prevent it from happening again?" He tapped his medallion to his chin, then stood up and headed over to his desk. 

"You must be in a lot of turmoil, mage." The abbot said as he fished through his papers. "I can't begin to imagine what you're feeling right now."

I shrugged. "It's not so bad. I'm able to fix the mistakes of my past." 

"Yes, yes, but it can't be easy to spend your time with friends and family, knowing that they're just a few years away from devastation."

I didn't respond. The old man was right. 

"Ah, here it is." He grabbed an envelope from his desk, opened it and handed it to me. "An incantation to contact the Weaver. She's barely talking to me right now because of a prank one of my initiates pulled on her, but she should respond to you."

"So you can't help me," I said, taking the page. 

"That's not true at all lad. I can provide comfort and a listening ear. I can provide advice and a sanctuary to return to. But your problem is so immense that only the gods or the Spirit King himself can help you."

 I took the page from the kindly old abbot. I opened my mouth to say something and hesitated. 

"What is it, lad?"

"There's a memory spirit in Corel," I said. "It creates a wine that gives people a glimpse of the weave and lets them see their past. And sometimes their future."

The priest nodded. "Interesting. And?"

"And Tila- a friend of mine saw her future."

"The queen?"

"You know?"

"She was here just a few hours ago, asking the same questions you are."

"And you told her?"

"The same thing I'm going to tell you now. The future, except for those fixed points, is completely up to us. And even those fixed points are negotiable. Just because we know the future doesn't mean we're doomed to live it."

"Now, something I didn't tell her."

He waved his hand and the timeline appeared again. 

"What I believe happened is this." He waved his hand a second time, and a second bridge appeared, this one ending abruptly. They were superimposed on each other. 

"Memory spirits are connected directly to the mind of the Spirit King. They see everything the Spirit King has seen. I believe that when your queen drank the wine, the memory spirit pulled a memory from the other timeline."

He drew an arrow, from one timeline to the other. "So in a way, it was a memory, but of a version of her that didn't exist yet. And I believe that it was this that frightened her so badly."

He patted my shoulder and folded the page in my hand. "Talk to the Weaver, lad. She'll be able to help you."

I stood and offered my hand to the old man. "Thank you, abbot," I said. "That was helpful."

The old man shook it. "Anytime, Master Mage."

*

Later, with the early morning sunlight peeking just over the horizon, I placed the incantation in the middle of the magic circle in my room. 

I sat in front of it. Opened my mouth to speak, thought better of it, added a couple more lines and circles to the original circle, and then returned to my seated position. 

I was sceptical. The gods didn't exist. I studied the incantation carefully. It was a communication spell, but that was as far as I could tell. I wasn't well versed in godbotherer magic. 

I shrugged. What's the worst that could happen?

I took a deep breath and read the incantation. 

And was immediately pulled from my body. 

I looked down and saw my body sitting on the floor, eyes closed, head down. Sleeping. 

I looked up and saw a trap door in the ceiling. 

I willed myself to the door and opened it. 

It led to a small sitting room, lavishly decked out, in reds and purples and gold. 

"Lukas, it's about damn time you contacted one of us."

I looked around for the source of the voice and couldn't find it. 

"Hello?" 

"Behind you, mage." 

I turned and saw a black-haired woman sitting on a table, her purple dress falling around her legs. 

"Weaver." 

"In the flesh."

"Should I bow?"

"Do it and I'll flay the flesh from your bones." The Weaver stood up from the table, and walked towards me, her dark dress changing shade with every step. 

"I was told you have answers for me."

"You should have contacted one of us the moment you woke up. This is the problem with you mages. You don't think." 

She tapped my forehead, hard. "The Spirit King is also a little put out with you, Lukas."

"I have some questions for him too."

"That's not possible right now, mage. Though maybe, if you do your job right, you'll have every opportunity to ask them."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

The Weaver cocked her head, listening to something. Then shook her head. "Not yet, mage. Now, my question. Why haven't you killed the traitor yet?"

"I've only been awake for a few weeks, I don't even know if he's been born yet."

"Oh, he's alive, the whole weave shuddered with his birth." She grabbed me by the collar and dragged me to a globe in the corner of the room. 

"Look." She said, pointing at the capital. It looked like an inkblot had been spilt on the globe. 

"Now, I'd bet my crown that that's where the traitor is. Or where he will be."

"You don't know for sure?"

"That darkness isn't your regular darkness, mage." She replied, "It's alive, and it's been attacking the weave itself."

"And it got its claws into Raethan?"

"Oh yes. About 3 years into his apprenticeship with you. He found something in the repository that definitely wasn't supposed to be there. You mages and your constant search for knowledge. It's infuriating. There are things you don't need to know."

"And what he found corrupted him?"

She shook her head. "No, it just gave him the capacity for corruption. I don't know what it was that turned him to darkness."

I thought for a few minutes. "I can't think of anything either."

She let go of my collar. "So? What are you going to do? Are you going to kill him?"

"The Winter Squall said that there's a chance he may make a different choice. That he could be saved." 

The goddess looked at me for a long moment. 

"Just a moment, Lukas." She said. "I'll be right back." 

And she vanished. 

Leaving me alone in the sitting room. 

I collapsed to the floor, my legs not working underneath me anymore. I'm in a goddess' sitting room. Which means the priests aren't crackpots.

And she wanted me to kill Raethan, which I was more than willing to do before I found out about the darkness. 

Now I'm wondering if maybe there was another way.

I stood up and walked over to the globe. It was exquisitely detailed. If I looked closely I could even see…people…moving.

I stepped back, suddenly overtaken by vertigo. 

This wasn't a globe. This was the globe. This was the world. 

I shivered as a sense of my own insignificance shattered my worldview. 

I looked away from the globe and noticed a bookshelf. 

Curious I made my way over to it, careful not to touch anything, just in case I brought about the end of the world accidentally. 

The books were leather bound, with dates written in gold on the covers. 

And I stepped away, again. I knew what those books were. And I wanted no part in them. It was the true history of the world. 

I decided to stand in the middle of the room, and not look at or touch anything. 

"Okay, so the old man says that if we can save him we should." The goddess appeared behind me. 

Carefully, I turned around. She was back to sitting on the table. And she wasn't happy if her expression was anything to go by.

"You just had to put that idea in the air, didn't you? Now instead of killing him, the Spirit King wants him alive."

"I'm sorry?" I hazarded. 

"Not your fault." The Weaver hopped off the table again and stood in front of me. "So? What's your plan?"

"My plan? You're the goddess here." 

"And you're the one with the twisted weave. That means you're special. You're outside the timeline. You have total control. You can do whatever you want."

"Then I want to save Anna, and prevent the end of the world."

"Yes, yes, I know that. How are you going to do that? You can't kill Raethan now, if you do, the Spirit King might just obliterate the both of us from the weave."

"Why you?"

"Because I was the one you contacted first. Now you're my responsibility. I'm going to kill that abbot when I get my hands on him." 

"If it's any consolation he's sorry about the prank?"

The goddess glared at me. 

"Look, your…highness? What do I call you?"

"Weaver's fine." She folded her arms. 

"Weaver, I have no idea what to do. Give me a few days and I'll probably think of something. But it's going to take time."

"We don't have time, Lukas. Every day we draw closer to the end of the world."

"And how much closer will we be if we make the wrong choice now?" 

"You do know you're arguing with a goddess right?"

"Ma'am, I've spent both my lives punching above my weight class. I'm not going to stop now."

A crooked half-grin crossed her face, just for a moment, before it was banished. 

"So what do you suggest?"

"Could you give me just a week? One week and I'll come up with a plan. Until then, can you do me a favour?"

"You're asking a favour of a goddess? You do know what that means right?"

"Nope, but I'm desperate enough to chance it."

"I'll consider it. What do you need, Lukas?"

"I need you to sever the connection to the other timeline. There's a bottle of wine in the king's cellar that gives people access to their memories from that time."

The goddess laughed. "You're kidding. Wine? We missed a bottle of wine."

"I think you missed a vineyard, ma'am." 

She nodded. "Fine. I'll sever the connection. We were only keeping it as a reference to work off of."

"Thank you, ma'am. Now…how do I get out of here?"

She grabbed my collar and pulled me back to the trap door. She pushed. 

I fell. 

The last thing I saw was that same crooked half-smile.