“Yes, I know,” Shion said. “He joined the magics together, somehow.”
“He used fire to bind them,” Phae explained. “I’ve taken that away. If you drink from the pool, your body will separate the Plague from the quicksilver.” She closed her eyes, sorting through the memories. “You must suffer the effects of the Plague in order to rid it from the pool. It will be painful.”
He looked her in the eye. “It must be done.” He gripped the stone chalice and dipped it into the calm mirror surface. The liquid rippled and filled the cup.
Shion raised it to his lips and drank it down, wincing with each swallow. Phae watched a series of hives appear on his face and skin, boils that swelled and turned livid. He groaned with pain, staring at his arms, his hands, watching the pustules ripple and quiver. He shuddered, his entire body trembling like a tree shaken in a windstorm. Before the first effects of the Plague had run their course, he dipped the cup a second time into the pool and drank it down. Phae watched in mute horror as another Plague was unleashed on him. Then another.
She clung to him and wept.
“This is the last one,” Phae whispered, tearstains on her cheeks. The pool was almost empty.
“Help . . . me. Please. To drink . . . it.” He lay trembling, exhausted—blistered and pocked.
She dipped the chalice into the dwindled, shallow pool, a volcanic pockmark in the dim green haze of phosphorescent light. Small beads of quicksilver seemed to draw themselves into the stone cup when she tipped it down at the bottom to gather the last. The final Plague sat quivering in the dregs of silver. She stared at it, wondering if she should drink it herself.
“No,” Shion said, choking, his face puffy and ravaged. His bloodshot eyes were full of suffering and also with the knowledge that she was tempted to drink it herself. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and gently raised the cup to his mouth, tilting it so that he drank the final bit, the dregs of the Plague.
He winced, sputtering and choking, his body trembling under the multiple and varied symptoms of the Plagues of mortality. His breath was in shallow gasps, his forehead wrinkled with unbearable agony. He looked at her pleadingly, his expression begging it to be over. Vomit stained his shirt and purple bruises covered his lumpy skin in patches. Every breath brought a pained shudder.
“It is done,” she said.
Shirikant sat across from them, staring at the empty pool. He sat in brooding silence, watching but not understanding. He had asked a few questions, but nothing they said made sense to him. He watched, uncomprehending that his entire plan for destroying the world was being purged, sip by sip.
Shion struggled to sit, then leaned against Phae as he trembled with fever and chills. He was as weak as a kitten, spent and broken.
“Help me . . .” he begged.
Phae pulled him up gently, helping him face the pool. He planted his hands on the liquid’s edge, his arm muscles quivering as if the effort were more than he could bear. His whole body bucked and heaved, and Phae watched in shocked silence as tiny beads of silver began to gather from the pores of his skin. Little specks trickled down his arms and began filling the pool. He shuddered violently and groaned, experiencing wave after wave of nausea and anguish, and she watched the pool begin to fill with quicksilver. His skin bubbled and popped, thick pustules of silver emerging. It looked agonizing as she watched, her stomach churning with disgust. The stream came faster, and with it, the distant sound of rushing waters began to echo inside the chamber. It was a sound she recognized, the rushing of the waters coming from the tree in the garden in Mirrowen.
A halo of light filled the gruesome chamber, driving away all the shadows. The smell of salt and the sea filled the air, and a breeze tousled Phae’s hair. With the light came a feeling of immense peace and relief. Joy exploded inside her heart.
“Isic, I think it is over!” she said, beaming through her tears. “It is finished!”
A window to another world opened up from inside the pool. It was so bright that Phae shielded her eyes for a moment. Shirikant shrank from it, fleeing to one of the edges of the chamber, staring at the light with shock and dread. He cowered in fear.
The Seneschal, Melchisedeq, stepped through the portal and entered her world.
“Well done,” he said with a broad smile. “Well done!”
He set his hand on Shion’s head and said, Calvariae!
The word seemed to gush out from him in a whisper that could be heard anywhere throughout the world. Strength filled Shion’s arms and legs and the boils and rashes on his skin were healed. As she stared at him, she saw that the scars from the Fear Liath were still there . . . small and hardly noticeable unless she really looked hard to see them.