Weldon's Arc

Chapter 6 of 9

The treaty ink was barely dry when Queen Serenity walked out of the pavilion and into the cracked field beyond it. Weldon followed a step behind. His father stayed at the door, leaning on the frame. The Queen stopped at the center of the field and turned a slow circle, looking at the broken walls, the dry well, the orchard half-burned. "Your kingdom asked for paper," she said. "It needs more than paper." She drew the silver crystal from her sleeve and held it flat on her palm. The light came up out of the ground before it came out of the stone. Weldon felt it through his boots first, a low warmth, then a pull, as if the soil were breathing in. The dry well filled. The orchard's burned trees pushed new bark over the black. A road laid itself in clean pale stone from the pavilion to the hall. On the rise above, the slender tower his masons had raised three days ago grew taller, its spiral frame tightening into something his masons could not have built. A shrine figure rose at the road's bend, a carved likeness of the Queen with her hands pressed together, head bowed. Weldon's father stepped out of the doorway without his cane. He stared at his own hand. "She has given the land her crystal," Pluto said. She had come up beside Weldon without sound. "It will hold in the soil. Your people will live longer. Your witches will be stronger. You did not ask for this." Weldon could not answer. He watched his father walk, straight-backed, toward the Queen. Queen Serenity lowered the crystal. Her face was gray. "It is done," she said quietly. "Now the other matter." She turned to Pluto. "Bring her." Pluto opened the Gate at the edge of the new road. Sailor Mercury stepped through between two senshi Weldon did not know. Her hands were bound at the wrist with a thin silver cord. She did not look at Weldon. She looked at the Queen and waited. "I have read the accounts," Queen Serenity said. "The binding on Saturn. The orb on Luna Starcrest. The audience you arranged for a prince you meant to use." Mercury said, "Yes." One word. She did not soften it. The Queen lifted the crystal again. "I strip you of your powers," she said. "You will be returned to the cauldron and born again, somewhere else, as someone else." The light closed around Mercury. When it opened, the cord fell empty to the stone. The Queen lowered her hand. She looked older than she had an hour before. "You will not see her again," she told Weldon. "Whatever debt sat between you is closed." Weldon's throat hurt. He nodded. His father was already walking the new road, touching the wall of the well, testing the water with two fingers. Pluto stepped back toward the Gate and waited for Weldon's eyes. He met them. The heavier debt was still his.