Poison (23 page)

But he was writing my tale
, she said.
And who knows my tale better than me?

She turned the pages of the tome, each one blank and empty, until she reached the very first page.

No tale can be read until it is finished
, she remembered. The Hierophant thought that he was writing the tale of how his new apprentice had been plucked from the obscurity of the Black Marshes, how she had fought her way through adversity to reach him at the castle. Perhaps, in his mind, the rest of the story had been her training and finally her succession to the post of Hierophant. But the story had changed. He had been murdered. And while the point of the tale was essentially the same, it was now going to be told in
her
way. For it had always been her tale, after all, and now it was ended, it had to be recorded.

She began to write.

Once upon a time there was a young lady who lived in a marsh, and her name was Poison.

Though she could not see the words, she knew they were there as clearly as if she could read them off the page. It seemed as good a beginning as any. She put the quill to the paper again, and the words came to her, flooding in almost as fast as she could transfer them to the page. It was as if the book had already been written, and she was merely tracing over sentences that were already there. It felt so natural, so easy, that a fierce grin spread across her face, and she hunched over the page, writing with a steadily growing fever.

She wrote, and wrote, and wrote. She remembered Fleet bringing her food and drink, which she took with one hand so that she did not have to slow down the torrent of words that gushed from her mind to the nib of the quill and on to the paper. Fleet never said anything, unwilling to disturb her. Though she learned later that she had been writing for the equivalent of two days and nights without a break, it felt like only moments to her. What Melcheron had started, she had
re
started; and when she turned the last leaf of the book, she realized with a shock that she was on her final few sentences. The amount of pages in the tome fitted her words exactly.

And so her tale came to an end. With its completion, it would be made legible for all. But it was only her
first
tale; that much she knew. What had Fleet said, back in the Great Library?
Some people have many tales.
Finishing this story was only the beginning. With the completion of this work, she would truly become the new Hierophant, and there was much to be done. The Realm of Man was still overrun by phaeries; humans still skulked in the low places and high peaks of the world, fearing to tread in their own land. All that would change. She would write them the tale of a leader, someone to take back what was theirs. Someone to make her race proud again. This was what Aelthar had feared; this was what she would do.

When the last words of the tale were written, she finished with a flourish, and as the final stroke was made, the words on the page emerged into being. The invisible lines of her quill turned black, and the story showed itself. She looked over what she had done, and sighed. So much had passed, and it had come to this. In the sentences and paragraphs of that tome were her sorrow, her triumph, her heart. She had trapped them all inside those bindings. Was she, too, trapped inside some greater bindings, written by another, greater Hierophant? And were they trapped also in that way, and so on, into infinity?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. All she could do was deal with the reality that was presented to her. And she had much to do.

Slowly, she closed the tome, and looked down at its embossed cover. There was a title there, where there had not been one before. She felt a smile tug her lips. A single word:
Poison.

It would suffice.

 

 

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First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2003
This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2014

 

Text copyright © Chris Wooding, 2003
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eISBN 978 1407 14388 0

 

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