"Counsel of Queens" by Chris A Jackson

Counsel of Queens

By

Chris A. Jackson

The elements of the universe are, as we all know, Life, Death, Light, Darkness, the Sea and Magic. 

At least they were. 

Then man came with his artificial divisions of Earth, Air, Fire and Water.  What foolishness!  But man in his ignorance and mortality has bent these elements to his will with the magic of metal and tools that no mind of the primordial world could have imagined. 

I am Galina, Empress of the Sea, not perhaps the first to feel man’s probing touch, but as my waters were raked with his nets I felt the violation most keenly.  All the waters of the world are mine, yet this intruder has probed its depths to consume my children, heedless of the damage.  I could not stand by and do nothing about this young, impetuous race.  I lifted the Conch of Ages and blew the call.  We would hold counsel.

It was to be the last Counsel of Queens, though none of us knew it.

I remember it as if it were yesterday…

Nothingness coalesced into primordial ether at the touch of Her, solidifying further into discrete splinters of the elements; wedges of temporary reality to accommodate each of us.  The counsel chamber.

Five doors opened between these realities and our realms.

We were drawn like moths to flame into this place, this artificially constructed reality, the one place we could meet.  The need, the wanting of our kind to be among others like ourselves despite our indifference or outright loathing for one another, was compelling beyond our ability to decline.  A counsel had been called; none could say nay.

I was the first, for I had called the counsel.  Only She who was the magic that had created the chamber was there to greet me.  I breathed deeply; the water was fine, if somewhat sterile.

“Welcome Queen Galina of the Sea!” She who was Magic said without speaking.

“Thank you,” I returned, inclining my head and taking my seat, a throne of coral and shell encrusted with living anemones and flutter worms.

Darkness seeped into the place.  As palpable and thick as the water through my gills, it coalesced and flowed into shape and being.  Nailah took her seat, a sultry shape clothed in swirling ebony and crimson.  She stretched out one languid hand, accepted a goblet from a scurrying minion and sipped.

“Welcome Queen Nailah of Rabiah, one with the Darkness.”  Her voice was as clear to me as to the newcomer, and though I could detect no malice in it, Nailah reacted as if she’d been slapped.

“I am not welcome, and we all know it!”  She reclined and swirled the liquid in her goblet, I was unsure if it could be called wine, and sipped.  “Let us abandon our pretenses, shall we?”

I was going to reply when a chill eddied through the water and the darkness of Nailah’s realm became suddenly less so, if only by comparison.  Four skeletal minions entered another of the wedges of reality, each hefting one long bony handle of the sedan chair which bore the Coffin Queen.  Her own four slim arms caressed the polished skulls of the undead minions as they placed the chair upon the floor and knelt.  Her smile bore all the heat of a glacier as her dead eyes raked the three of us as if gauging our height and girth for the right sized box.

“Welcome Coffin Queen, ruler of the dead,” She said, bowing and smiling, her translucent wings fluttering in the suddenly chill air, sending a shower of fairy dust snow flakes cascading down around her wispy legs.

“Death is rarely welcome, One of Light and Magic, but I accept the intent of your greeting.”   She bowed around the room.   “One of us is still absent.  Do we wait like children, or begin our discussion?”

“This counsel cannot begin until all are--”

Two huge beasts leapt through the portal to my left, roaring so loudly that the water surrounding me shook.  I was expecting the dramatic entrance, for I knew Jolrael well, and still I jumped.  The others started as well, even She, but none would have admitted it. 

Jolrael strode into the chamber like the empress she was, a thick growth of vines and leaves sprouting at her feet, carpeting the splinter of reality that mimicked her realm.  A throne of vines sprang from the earth as she reclined, enveloping her in their living embrace.  She laughed aloud, a rich warm laugh, as she surveyed the four of us, and the strength in her flowed out and through us.  She was earth, land and life, and even the Coffin Queen had no real power against her.  As death overcame life, so death also nurtured new life.  It was the way of things, and always had been.

But would it continue to be?

“Welcome Jolrael, Empress of Beasts and Queen of Life and the living.  This counsel is convened,” She said, floating down into her throne of light.  “We have been called by Galina, Empress of the Sea.”  She turned to me.  “What concerns you so that you deem it necessary to convene a counsel?”

“Man concerns me,” I said, and the scoffs of ridicule met my acclamation from all but Jolrael, who frowned darkly a low growl emanating from deep in her breast.

“And what warrants this concern?” She asked when the scorn had subsided.  “Humans are short lived and inept at magic.  They die by the thousands at every new disease and blight.  How is Man a threat?”

“They are dangerous in their rapacious appetite for conquest, control and dominion over all else.  They wantonly destroy life even when it serves them no purpose.  They despoil the sea with their poisons and the filth of their own wastes.  They gouge the earth for metals, and have minds that invent machines that do the process more efficiently than any hammer chisel, pick or shovel.  Yes, they are short lived, but they are more fecund than rats, and strive to master even those weaknesses.”

“Man is no threat,” the Coffin Queen said, her tone as confident as mine was ardent.  “They fall like wheat to a scythe.  They cough and sniffle and die from plagues and injuries and floods.  Thousands join me every day, barely into their fourth or fifth decade.”

“And how many humans currently live in the world, Jolrael?”

“Some one hundred millions or so.”

There was no laughter or scorn at this.

“And have their numbers ever declined appreciably?”

“Not really.  They decline some when disease or drought decimate their crops, or kill their children, but they are remarkably resilient.”

“And how many elves are there?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“Some two millions or so.”

“And dwarves?”

“About five millions.”

“And dragons?”

“Fifty four.”

“I will tell you that the great leviathans of the sea have been unaffected by humans thus far, but the populations of my other children, especially in the Far East, have been seriously impacted.  The Mer and Locantha have fled the areas around the Empires of the East, for they are hunted.  Man’s ships ply the oceans with impunity, his nets drag through the depths, killing millions to feed his ravenous hunger.”

“But in the lands of the west, he is fewer, and lives in harmony with nature.”

I looked to Jolrael in shock, never expecting her to stand up for human kind.  “But there he has yet learned to work metal.  He does not live in opposition to the land.”

“No, he worships the land as the living thing it is.  He has not been corrupted by the concept of power or wealth.  His wars are small, and usually short.  Humans are one with the land there.”

“Because they are isolated.  The great seas keep them in their infancy, keep them clean and true to the world.  What of the rest?  What have you felt in the areas of the old world, the east and the middle lands?”

“Man is driving all other races out.”

“And why should this concern us?” Nailah asked, feigning boredom.  “The strong overcome the weak.  Power shifts.  Things change.  We are immortal; where once we held dominion over other races, we will hold dominion over Man.”

“Man is inept at wielding magic,” She said, her crystalline gaze shining on us all in turn.  “When the last elf is gone, the last faerie dead, magic will die as well.  I will only have dominion over the light.”

“Man is a living thing, like all living things.  He will do as he is wont to do, as nature has designed him to do.”  Jolrael shrugged, making a helpless gesture with one hand.  “How can we gainsay what has come to be a part of the world?”

“Easily,” I countered, rising from my throne of coral and startling its denizens into their coralline homes.  “Man will not suffer our dominion.  He is rapacious and willful, and does not care for the balance of the sea and land, life and death, light and darkness.  What can be made, can be unmade.  Man is not so powerful yet that he cannot be eradicated.”

There was a long silence, or what would have been silence save for the rumble of the two great felines at Jolrael’s feet.

“How?” She asked, the color of her gaze darkening a shade, from piercing white to amber.

“Seas may rise, volcanoes erupt, faults shift, beasts attack.  The denizens of the darkness may rise, and death may walk the land.  We can do this, if we act as one, and soon.”

“Why?” Nailah asked, her long nails scratching at the arms of her throne leaving furrows in the stone.  “Why should we interfere?  You’re talking about killing millions.”

“I’m talking about preserving the world.  Man is a threat to the balance.  We must eliminate that threat, or perish.”

“Perish?”  The Coffin Queen laughed coldly, causing ice to form at the edges of my wedge of reality.  “You are amusing, Galina.  We are immortal, or has that fact escaped you?”

“And what is immortality but a prison, if all you hold dear is destroyed?”  I spoke directly to each of them in turn.  “The elder races are diminishing, and will cease to exist.  Man ignores magic, and will use his machines to perform the trades of wizards and sorcerers.  The land will be raped and pillaged, despoiled and burned.  All living creatures will be tamed, enslaved or destroyed.  The deep places of the earth will be delved, and all who dwell there rooted out like moles.  The darkness will be sliced open and laid bare by fire.  Man will delve the oceans, poison the waters, kill the great leviathans for sport or food.  The seas will die.” 

Lastly I turned to the Coffin Queen.  “You are the only one who stands to profit by Man’s conquest and dominion, though there may even be a way to cheat death of its due.  When man becomes immortal, and there are ten billions of them crowding the world, you too may fall from power.”

A long silence ensued.  Discussion was at an end; there was only one more step for the counsel to take.

“A vote,” I said, hoping beyond hope that reason would bring forth unity.

“A vote,” She agreed.  “Those who say Yea vote to intercede and bring the demise of human kind.  Those who say Nay vote to do nothing and let maters take their own course.  How say you?”

She looked first to me, for everyone knew my answer.  “Yea.”

Coffin Queen, to my right, was next and predictably said, “Nay.”

Nailah also did not surprise me, for it was plain to me that she had minions aplenty among men.  “Nay.”

“And I say Yea,” She said, turning to Jolrael for the final vote.  “With your vote lies our decision, Jolrael.”

I held my gills tightly closed in anticipation.

“The progression of life is not to be thwarted.  I vote Nay.”

My heart was broken by that one word.

She said a few things, thanking the others for their attendance, but I did not hear; my ears roared with the distant surf, the rolling currents, one day to dwindle and still.  It is no coincidence that the sea and tears are much the same.  None of the others knew my true anguish.

I reside now deep in my trench, away from all light and what little life remains in my realm.  I hear the roar of propellers, jet drives, reactors and engines of all types.  I taste the offal of six billion humans with every breath.  I breathe in the poisons of a million different chemicals and pollutants cast into the sea for disposal.  I am immortal, and I am forever entombed in my own dead realm.  There will be no future Counsel of Queens, for there is no magic, and no life over which Man does not have dominion.