Twilight of the Gods (The Harbingers of Light Book 7) Read online

  Leona didn’t think it was futile, however, and soldiered on. “You took control of Daniken. You tried to kill me!”

  “I was searching for my father, and for my brother. The two of you always like to flit off and play with your little humans.”

  “And you’d have them back, whatever the cause?” Leona fired back.

  “Yes. At the time, ‘whatever the cause’ that was keeping them from the Ever After, was the darkling tide,” Vilda told her. “I thought opening the scepters was the best way.”

  “You didn’t see what it was going to do?” Skye wondered.

  “No, the body I inhabited told me that it was the right thing to do. Daniken’s memories fully believed opening the scepters would rid the nine worlds of the darkling tide, and so I worked toward that end, no matter the cost.”

  “You were lied to,” Leona said.

  “No,” Vilda told her. “To lie to me she would have had to know what was going to happen, and she would have had to feed me falsehoods. That would have been impossible.”

  “How is that impossible?” Leona wondered. “She was a darkling, lying is second nature to her.”

  “No, Daniken was never a darkling, she was only misled. She fully believed what she thought. It is impossible to hide your true beliefs from a god that takes residence in your body.”

  “So you were played?” Leona wondered. Some of the heat had left her voice. Leona knew exactly what it was like to be played by Daniken. As Abagail remembered, Daniken had hooked both Leona and Rorick in her lies . . . at least at first.

  “Anthros played me for a fool, yes,” Vilda said. “I thought opening the scepters would clear the nine worlds of the darkling tide, and I found it odd that he went along with it. As it turns out, he knew the truth of what it would do, and he went along with it to bring about Ragnarok.”

  “Huh,” Leona said, ponderingly.

  “You can ask the ravens. They will tell you the truth of it.”

  There was silence at the end of the line. Abagail felt a slight buzzing sensation on her mind, as if she could feel the ravens thinking about what they’d been told, or trying to divine the truth of Vilda’s words.

  “She tells the truth,” Huginn said.

  “Huh,” Leona said.

  Abagail recognized her sister’s tone. She may know now that Vilda hadn’t truly meant ill, but she still didn’t trust her.

  Without a word, Baba Yaga started to slow. It wasn’t until the hag stopped that Abagail saw a large silver archway in the path before them.

  Abagail recognized the blackened surface of a mirror that greeted them. It was recessed in a silver arch, and the darkness of its reflective surface seemed to eddy and whorl as if it weren’t completely substantial. Her father had used a similar mirror so long ago when he sent her through to Agaranth in search of Rowan—who he’d said was her aunt. She reached a hand toward it, but Baba Yaga slapped it away with a hand much more powerful than it looked.

  “Ow,” Abagail groused, pulling her hand back.

  The hag ignored her, and instead pulled an etched iron dagger from the folds of her robe. Without preamble, she jabbed the tip into her palm, and then smeared her blood on the black mirror. The darkness seemed to condense around her splayed fingers, as if it wanted every drop of blood she had to offer. The surface roiled and began to bubble, and then it burst apart in a dazzling white display of blinding light.

  Baba Yaga motioned her to the archway.

  “But the rainbow road is destroyed,” Abagail said, wondering what the hag was up to. Was she really a darkling, and waiting for Abagail to go through the light and be destroyed in the chaos of the Void?

  “Not all of the mirrors lead to Eget Row,” Baba Yaga said. “You didn’t think I lived under all the water of Elivigar, did you?”

  Abagail stared at the mirror. “You go first,” she said.

  “Dear child, the moment I leave this path, the mirror will close, and Elivigar will come rushing back to the tunnel I’ve created. I dare think the darkling wyrd will have you then.”

  “I will go,” Rorick said, and pushed past them and through the mirror. Moments later he stuck his hand back through, his fingers wiggling excitedly, and motioned for them to follow.

  Abagail didn’t wait. She stepped through the mirror, through the familiar, icy mist of the white light held within the arch. When she emerged, it was into a dining room.

  In the center of the room sat a thick wooden table, stained and weathered with time. To her right, against the wall stood a wood-fueled cooking stove like she remembered having in Haven when her and Leona had lived together with Rorick. Each of the other three walls held doorways, and the walls between the doorways were filled with shelves of powders, herbs, cereals, and other things Abagail couldn’t describe. The ceiling reflected light, and when she looked up, she saw a giant white orb glowing above her.

  Curious, she edged toward one of the windows as Skye emerged from the opening behind her. Outside the window she peered down through a multitude of branches. The leaves were discolored, as if in fall, and as she watched, a great wind shook the tree branches, and a cascade of leaves fluttered down. She tried to follow their path, but they were so far up in the tree that she couldn’t see ground.

  A sense of vertigo took her, and if it hadn’t been for Skye’s steadying hands leading her to a chair, Abagail might have fallen. As she regained her equilibrium, the rest of the group filed in.

  It was then others joined them from the same portal they’d stepped through, though they hadn’t been traveling with Abagail’s group through the depths of Elivigar.

  Celeste stepped in, her pale skin and golden hair just as pristine as Abagail remembered. The elf’s face lit up with a dazzling smile when she saw all of her old friends in one place. Her sun scepter—that had been opened with Abagail’s own dying blood—was slung over her back. Her seafoam gown shimmered in the light of the Ever After.

  Behind her, the meek elf Mari came. She was looking to her feet, as she normally did, and her hair hung loose around her, like a curtain that obscured the view of her face.

  Behind her came a short, pale woman not much older than Abagail. Her leather armor was all black and Abagail got the sense of shadows moving with her. Her hair was short and black and upon her back rested twin blades.

  “Camilla?” Rorick said, and dashed to the woman, scooping her up in his arms.

  Abagail frowned, her stomach twisting as if the floor just gave out beneath her feet. She struggled to push the rush of jealousy aside. She took Skye’s hand, and he squeezed back. No matter what she’d once felt for Rorick, she couldn’t imagine ever being with him. She’d loved him once, but that seemed so long ago. Even so, the feelings she’d had for him paled in comparison to what she felt for Skye.

  “Where’s Olik?” Rowan asked, settling herself in a sturdy chair at the table.

  Leona was talking to Mari and Celeste, but the ravens also took seats at the table, to either side of Abagail and Skye.

  “We will get to that,” Baba Yaga said, puttering around at the stove over a pan Abagail hadn’t noticed before.

  “Where are we?” Rorick wondered. As he crossed to the window Abagail had just left, Camilla took a seat at the table.

  “The world tree,” Baba Yaga said, offhandedly, as if it wasn’t one of the greatest pronouncements she’d made yet. She pointed up at the glass ceiling. “That’s the Ever After.”

  “Where are the darklings?” Vilda wondered, peering up through the ceiling from her seat.

  “Can’t see them from here,” Baba Yaga said.

  Rorick came back to the table, taking a space beside Camilla. As if taking their que from everyone else, Leona, Celeste, and Mari settled at the table as well. Baba Yaga broke her attention from the stove and waved a hand at the portal. Moments before it collapsed, a soft lavender light flashed into the room. Squeaks and chimes of protest followed the pixie as she settled on top of Celeste’s head. She didn’t stop chatterin
g, and soon started rolling about on Celeste’s hair, as if she were happy to see her once more.

  Celeste laughed, a tinkle of sound in the warm room. “I missed you too, Daphne.”

  Now that the portal had closed, it looked like any other doorway that surrounded the room. Abagail wondered where the other doors around the chamber might lead.

  “Are you okay?” Skye asked, smoothing a hand over Abagail’s back.

  What was she supposed to say? She most certainly wasn’t okay, and it had nothing to do with Rorick. She wasn’t okay because this was the end. The end of everything. She’d heard enough stories to know that when the dust of Ragnarok settled, when the fires had consumed everything, there would only be two who survived. She had seen in her dream that she was Lifthrasir, so at least she would survive, but at what cost? Everyone in this room was to die, and that didn’t settle well with her. In fact, thinking about it made her stomach churn, and her head light. She wanted to scream and cry, and toss herself from the high limbs of the tree. She didn’t want this. All of these people, gone. What was the point of living if everything she knew would be gone forever? So long she’d struggled to protect her sister, but here they were, facing the end together, and Leona wouldn’t make it through.

  Abagail wondered if Leona had seen that with her foresight. Had the ravens made her glimpse the end? Gazing across the table where Leona laughed with the elves, and the ravens looked on with warmth, she doubted Leona knew what was truly to come. She reasoned it was better that way.

  “I wish I could tell you everything would be okay,” Skye told her. “But I don’t think that’s true.”

  “I know,” Abagail said.

  “But we can try to make it okay,” Skye said.

  “And there might still be time to do that,” Baba Yaga said, turning from the stove. It wasn’t until then that Abagail realized everyone was watching her and Skye. She blushed, and he gripped her afflicted hand with a smile on his lips.

  “And how do we do that?” Rowan asked the crone.

  “Vilda,” Baba Yaga said. “Would you help me set the table?”

  To Abagail’s surprise, Vilda stood, and helped the crone. With plates, mugs of mead, utensils, and platters of slow-cooked meats, potatoes, and cheeses before them, the goddess and the crone sat down and loaded their plates. Everyone followed their example.

  “First, to avoid what’s coming, we have to understand how it all began,” Baba Yaga said.

  “With Anthros sneaking into the All Father,” Abagail said.

  “No, that came much later,” Baba Yaga said with a shake of her head. “It began, with hate.” The crone gestured to Vilda, who frowned. “I know you don’t like admitting the gods were at fault, but the true start of it all was there.”

  “Very well,” Vilda said, folding her hands on the table before her. “This is the true account of how things went in the Ever After.”

  The All Father had long suspected that the birth golems he’d made for his children to play with, might be evil. While the gods Hafaress and Vilda had been born of the light of the Ever After, and the All Father’s will for children, their counterparts, their playmates, had been born of the sludge that came through after their births. He’d fashioned the playmates out of the sludge, and though he did it with love, there was a great fear within him that these counterparts would one day grow to be the embodiment of the darkness within the Void and the opposite of the gods they’d emerged after.

  Three playmates he’d made, though one was an accident. He’d made Olik for Hafaress, and Hilda for Vilda, but Gorjugan formed of his own accord out of the excess sludge the All Father had cast onto the ground. It was Gorjugan that brought more inklings that the birth-golems weren’t precisely good. How could something, the sludge of the Ever After, have formed of its own accord, with no will from the All Father. It was a thought that stayed with him, and the All Father began to wonder if the birth-golems had been fashioned by him at all, or if he was being used as a pawn of the Void to create the birth-golems against his will.

  He remembered another birth-golem, one that had been formed when the All Father first stepped from the light. This other birth-golem had been his playmate growing up, but as they aged, Anthros had grown apart from the All Father, turning to the mysteries of the darkness of the Void, where the All Father focused on the light that shown amidst the chaos of darkness.

  It was another fact that pointed to the birth-golems not being of his own construct, and that they, too, might turn to the dark mysteries of the Void. So it was, the All Father was aware of every bump and scrape Hafaress and Vilda suffered at the hands of the birth-golems. He refused to leave them alone with their playmates, though he knew Anthros had never done anything to intentionally hurt him, he was concerned that the same might not be true for his children of light.

  One among the three was different than the others—Olik was kind, he would watch the other children as if he were much older. He seemed a guardian of sorts, keeping them safe during their play and he would often act as a mediator among them.

  So it was, when the All Father walked in to see Gorjugan wrapped around the throat of Hafaress, and Hilda pinning Vilda down to make her watch as the snake tried to strangle the life from the thunder god, the All Father chose to let Olik stay, while he cast the others out of the Ever After.

  Olik, alone, had been trying to remove Gorjugan from Hafaress’ neck. He was crying, pleading with the other birth-golems to leave them alone, to stop what they were doing. He’d heard stories of the All Father’s wrath, of how he’d bound his own birth-golem, Anthros, to the root of the great tree to stay there for all time, to watch the stars and the Void and the light of the Ever After, but never again to roam through the cosmos, studying the dark.

  “And why did he do this?” Olik pleaded with his brother and sister golems. “Because Anthros was gaining too much darkness from the Void. Anthros was trying to rest the light from the All Father, to let the darkness of the Void in to claim Eget Row once and for all. You’re going down the same path!”

  So when the All Father gathered the wriggling snake in one hand, and Hilda in the other and cast them down to the river Elivigar, he allowed Olik to stay.

  As the birth-golems fell to the pristine waves of Elivigar, darkness bloomed along its surface. It was this darkness, this toxic, darkling wyrd, that trailed over Gorjugan and Hilda, marring them. The toxins seeped into Gorjugan, turning his teeth sharp, tipping them with poison. The darkling wyrd infected Hilda, marring one half to show the horror of her soul. While one half remained beautiful and young, the other half withered and rotted. One eye turned deathly white, half of her hair brittle and white, the skin along the same side became black and putrid with decay. It was the decay of her soul, the darkness she harbored in her mind for the gods of light.

  The All Father cried for the loss of the birth-golems, but he vowed never to let it happen again. When next he made a god, he would refuse the sludge that came from the Ever After. He would cast it away, burn it with godling fire. Never again would there be a birth-golem.

  But he’d made a mistake when he let Olik stay. Either the darkling wyrd within Olik took longer to emerge, or he had truly tricked the All Father with his kind words and gestures. The trespass of Olik was worse than anything Hilda or Gorjugan had tried, for his trespass included the death of a perfect mortal. A mortal that Hafaress loved. A mortal that had committed no crime other than loving an immortal.

  With her death, Olik had Surt forge a great hammer for Hafaress—the first God Slayer. Furthermore, afraid that he would meet the same end as Hilda and Gorjugan, Olik stole away the hammer, and fled Eget Row. He took to the nine worlds, traveling for a time, taking many names in his days, until he found love and settled with the name Dolan Bauer.

  But he was never a Bauer, and he was never as pure or as good as Dolan pretended to be. His days of corruption and lies would not end, but his days of trickery would follow him until his dying day.

  Eve
ryone was staring at Abagail when the story came to an end, and it was only then that she realized she’d been speaking. She’d taken over the story from Vilda—or rather, the All Father did. The other presence, the one she now knew was the All Father, slipped away from the forefront of her mind, back to the deepest recesses of her head where she couldn’t fully reach.

  “But Abagail is older,” Leona said, breaking the silence. Baba Yaga was finished eating, her plate trailed with gravy and bits of potato.

  Baba Yaga nodded. “It’s true that Hafaress left the Ever After first in search of Olik and the hammer, but it took him longer to find Mattelyn and Dolan than it did the All Father.”

  “So the darkling gods have a link with each of us?” Leona wondered.

  “That remains to be seen, really,” Vilda said. She pushed a bit of her cold potatoes around with her fork. “I’ve never felt Hilda’s influence, and I’m unsure if you’ve ever felt Gorjugan’s influence.”

  Leona shook her head. “Other than his ability to twist words and trick me.”

  Baba Yaga leaned back in her chair, her glass of mead cradled in her hands. “That’s not influence, that’s just his . . . talent.”

  “What about Olik,” Abagail said. “From the story we just heard, he’s never truly stopped being a trickster, but I don’t think his love for us was a trick at all.”

  Rowan didn’t look up when she spoke. “Sometimes our hearts don’t want to believe that someone we love so completely could ever deceive us.”

  “Very true,” Baba Yaga said. “Let me ask you this, instead. How did you come by the shadow plague?”

  Abagail remembered what Surt had told her, and she recounted that to the gathered group. The All Father had created Boran, the God of Peace, and he was a perfectly pure entity. He was of the light, there had been no darkness about him. But creating such a being, utterly devoid of darkling wyrd, fractured the Void. No creation could be without darkness, and the fact the All Father had made it so had caused a rift. The darkling wyrd needed to compensate; needed to balance out the power the All Father had wrought. When the All Father had Surt fashion another God Slayer and used it to kill Boran and make things right, he’d unknowingly infected himself with the shadow plague, and that’s how it came to be in Abagail.