Tundra

Deep in the endless Everglade forest, there was a grove where no birds no called, nor did any crickets chirp or vermin crawl. Nothing moved, except time and reality. The magnificent standing stones were polished and white as ivory, carved with deeply etched spirals and images of the Morrígan. Spirits flitted in and out of the trees; the ghosts of wolves and foxes weaving through and woven of mist. Some had fish tails. Others had the flukes of whales. Some had antlers tall and mossy like branches, or the paws and claws of bears. Others had horns or pricked ears. These were the spirits of the Dreaming that only came out at solstice and equinox– usually.

Erasmus was here, at long last, in the place where the druid slept awake, the one they called corrupt. He had the wild look about him, a maned and antlered look, like a ferocious lion crossed with a kingly stag, but other parts of him were more vegetable than animal. In particular, his feet seemed rooted to the ground, his toes long and sabred, but woody as tubers. Both immortal and capable of manipulating his universe, this grotesque was everything the young, indestructible human had ever wished to be.

Climbing out of the fringe of saplings into the clearing where this other sat meditating, Erasmus helped himself to a spot on the smooth, cleared ground upholstered with moss.

‘Your guards are dead,’ he said.

The druid’s eyes snapped open, and in them, in place of pupils, were tiny crescent moons on Samhain yellow. ‘My guards cannot be killed. They are creatures of spirit, not this temporary flesh.’

‘Well then, I have severed their connection to the flesh,’ Erasmus rephrased. ‘It’s just you and me.’

‘A temporary setback only,’ the druid rumbled.

‘Maybe,’ Erasmus conceded, inclining his head but not lowering his eyes, which remained locked in a fixated stare with the monster’s own. ‘Do you know why I’m here?

‘Mossen Grove sent you to kill me.’ The antlered one shook his head. ‘Such fools they are. If only they knew what I knew, they would bow down and worship me.’

Erasmus contained his surprise. ‘I’m not here to kill you. Quite the reverse, actually.’

‘Oh?’

‘Your… colleagues? Acolytes? How do you think of other druids?’

‘I don’t. I am as far beyond them as you are beyond the beasts of the field.’

’Regardless, they tell me that you have a way to harness the power of the Otherworld without it controlling you. I want to know your secret.’

A bushy eyebrow raised itself. ‘And you’ve come to beat it out of me?’

‘No. What I did to your guards was by way of a demonstration. I’ve come to make you an offer.’

The druid kept his stance, arms resting and legs folded. ‘Go on.’

‘You fear Mossen Grove is moving against you.’

‘I fear no man.’

‘Then why are you out here in the middle of nowhere? You know Mossen Grove will turn their magic against you. If not them, someone else will. Your peers are very much aware of what you’re doing out here. I am immune to their magic. I am something that has never been seen in the North before, and if you help me, I will make sure we both get what we want.’

‘I’m interested… One thing, though. I know why I want life everlasting. Why do you want it?’

‘How much do you know about the south?’

‘Lots of sand. No real seasons. Wizards who have to learn their magic from books rather than the proper way.’

‘That’s a fair assessment. Where I’m from, one can be born a slave, and live one’s whole life in the shadow of the tombs of one’s betters. I was a building slave. As soon as I could lift a trowel, my life was fetch this, carry that, with never a moment’s respite. My first twenty years I spent erecting the pyramid of a king whose name would live forever because of it, while my name would disappear with the shifting sands, and I realised that all my suffering and hard work, living in constant hunger and fear of the lash would be for nothing. All I was doing was ensuring that Kathet would be remembered and Erasmus would be forgotten.’

‘So that’s what you want? To be king and have a monument?’

‘No. Why settle for that? I don’t want to be just another king. I don’t want a monument. I want to be my own monument. In centuries to come, people won’t know me by my works – they will know me by my person. I am Erasmus, and I will be known throughout eternity.’

‘Heh. Well then. You seem like someone I can work with. Come closer. Kneel and make obeisance before the herald of the Otherworld.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘I am not a slave anymore, and I call no man master. Not you, not anyone, not even Death himself. If you and I are to work together, it must be as equals. I will accept nothing less.’

‘Well then,’ the druid grumbled, a smile bared in the teeth of his fox-face like a morsel. ‘Equals it is.’