The World to Come
by Eildon Rhymer
What if the Dark had won at the end of Silver on the Tree? The world is sliding into darkness, and only tattered remnants of the Light remain. Will, Bran and the Drews grow to adulthood, and each to their own destiny in this World to Come.
Part three: chapter nineteen
High Magic
Darkness absolute crashed down on the hillside, and then even the hillside itself crumbled, and there was nothing but Light.
Will floated, a pinprick at the heart of the universe. All around him, like statues carved out of hard grey stone, were Lords of High Magic. He did not know their faces. It was only the human part of him that gave them faces at all. Beings such as these did not have human form, except in the eyes of one who still remained human.
"We have been here before," they said.
The Light faded, and became the grey of a misty summer morning. The tree was there, and Bran, hunched over the blossom. Gasping darkness melted from Will's throat, and around him, held in a ragged circle, the Signs blazed with defiant light.
"The last time we were gathered here," they said, "it was supposed to be the ending of the struggle for this world, but it was not."
"Twenty-four years of man," said another. "Twenty-four years of wrongness."
"A world should have both Light and Dark," they said, turning to the hosts of the Dark, "or it should have neither. All worlds must one day be ceded to their children. What you sought was wrong."
"Are we not allowed to use any tools we choose?" the Rider asked. "We acted within the law. You cannot stop us."
The lords inclined their heads. "True. But the Light, too, has acted within the law, to try to restore what should have been, to try to undo this wrong."
Grey mist sheeted across the sky, settling on everything like a quiet blanket. The Dark fell silent. Even Will was still. The only one moving was Bran, who slowly raised his head, the blossom clutched to his chest with one blistered hand.
A lord walked towards him, bare feet in the grass. "Which do you choose, my child?"
Bran's eyes flickered, but this was not Arthur. He stood up slowly, and his eyes met Will's, and there was something in them that Will could not read.
"The Light," Bran said. He said it as if it was a defeat.
The lord turned from Bran, and came to Will, a question in his infinite eyes.
Will looked at Bran, then met the eyes of this lord who looked wholly human to him now, but would never look like that again. "Yes," he said, in answer, and the deed was done.
End of part three: chapter nineteen