Weldon's Arc

Chapter 5 of 9

Pluto brought Weldon back to the garden before the torches were lit. Mercury was gone. The pen was still warm in his pocket. He went straight to the Queen and told her his father had accepted her terms, and that his father wanted to meet her in person to seal it. He did not soften the request. He said his father was thin and would not last another winter without her. Queen Serenity listened without moving. Then she said, "I will go myself." Pluto lowered her staff. "You should not go alone," she said. "Avalon is small, and what hunts it is not." The Queen did not argue. She named the number before Weldon could ask: five thousand troops through the Gate, and twenty-three senshi called in from across the galaxy to help defend and repair what was left. "Your kingdom will not be a footnote," she told Weldon. "It will be a post." Weldon felt his throat close. He had come asking for paper. She was sending an army. Weldon went ahead through the Gate to prepare. His father met him in the hall and did not waste breath. The masons started at dawn. By the second day a reception pavilion stood at the edge of the old orchard, its dome bright, its glass walls planted inside with the pale flowers that only grew in Avalon's western valleys. His father wanted the Queen to see something living first, not the cracked walls behind it. On the rise above the pavilion they raised a slender tower of silver crystal and glass, wrapped in a spiral frame, lit from inside so it could be seen from the border. Beside it they set a small chalet on a wooden platform, its fabric walls reinforced, its arch carved from raw crystal pulled out of the hills that morning. A queen had to have somewhere to sleep that was not a throne. Pluto opened the Gate at noon on the third day. The troops came through in even ranks, five thousand in clean formation, and behind them the called senshi walked in twos and threes, twenty-three in all, from worlds Weldon could not have named a week ago. Then the Queen stepped through, alone, her white robe untouched by the dust her army had raised. Weldon's father came down from the hall on his own feet. He was thinner than Weldon had warned. He knelt once, briefly, and the Queen lifted him before he could finish. "Stand," she said. "We are allies now." In the pavilion they spoke quietly. His father signed first. The Queen signed second and pressed her seal beside his name. Outside, the senshi were already walking the broken walls, marking what to mend. When it was done, the Queen turned to Weldon. "Your kingdom is safe," she said. "Now I need to know who in mine wanted it not to be."