Circle of Reign (47 page)

The remaining winged creature screeched from above but the sound was far in the distance and fading. It had fled.

“And you were in a Triarch tree yourself, yes?” Jayden asked firmly.

“Yes,” Reign answered, coming out of her dream-like state.

Jayden brought her hands together in front of her mouth. She was considering something heavily by the look that played across her face.

“Reign, listen to me.” She again took her hands. “Why do you hurt so much inside?”

“Because I killed him,” she muttered.

“Hardly, dear. Truth, Reign. Why are you searing with pain inside?”

“He left me! He promised he never would! He abandoned me!”

“We both know that’s not true, child. Why did he fight so fiercely? It wasn’t for his own life. Why did he die for you?”

“Because…” Reign began but hesitated.

“Say it, child.”

Reign bit her lower lip. “He loved me,” she said simply.

“And?”

For Reign Kerr, all the past years of her life flashed before her in an instant. All the fear and hardship after Thannuel died, the sorrow and regret, the guilt and anguish, the endless longing; all the joys of her early childhood, the times she giggled as her father held her, the safety she felt in his arms, the times she ran to him for reassurance after a nightmare, and learning to speak with trees for the first time. She faced the memories as they rushed forth, the dam she built so long ago bursting in her mind, the rubble of fear being washed away until she caught the vision of her father’s face in her mind’s eye. She did not thrust it aside as she might have before, but held it before her. His auburn brown hair, gentle eyes and firmly set jaw faced her. She remembered how he always smiled with the left side of his face first before breaking out with a laugh, the way he kindly smiled upon her now. “Reign,” the image whispered.

“I loved him,” Reign said, choking back a sob. “I still love him.” That love surfaced within her, cresting and breaking through her hardened emotional barrier.

“Love will let him finally find a place in you after all these years.”

The force that had seemed a plague to Reign for so many years presented itself yet again. It was not aggressive, but gentle, as if seeking permission. Reign pursed her lips, trying not to let them quiver, and closed her eyes tightly to hold back the tears. She finally understood.

“Will you let him in, child?” Jayden asked softly. “Let him stand free from the shadows of your heart.”

All Reign could do was nod.

A howling warm wind came up from within the cottage and swirled around Reign. She was lifted into the air gently and felt the pressure push against her. This time, she did not fight. A light enveloped her until Reign herself became luminescent. She opened herself completely to the impetus and into her mind cascaded all
her father’s last breath. All his memories, all his fears, all his joys, all his skills and strength, all his knowledge and wisdom, all his abilities, the flood of power all consuming. Her mind threatened to fracture under the stress, but it held. Thannuel’s last breath lodged itself in a cavern within Reign’s mind, not overtaking or controlling it, but rather becoming a well, a reservoir of power and wisdom and strength to be drawn upon.

When it was over, Reign’s feet again touched the ground but it felt almost foreign to her, like it was her first time standing on her own. As she opened her eyes, she saw the world anew.

The soft, kind voice of Jayden sounded in the now quiet night. “Welcome back, Thannuel.”

THIRTY-FOUR

Ryall

Day 28 of 1
^st
Dimming 412 A.U.

RYALL JUMPED AT THE TOUCH
on his left shoulder and knocked into the obsidian tablet in front of which he crouched. The echo of a scream was heard reverberating through the vast cavernous library. Its decrescendo seemed to languish on with unnatural length, as if the echo was determined to make its brief life last as long as possible before fading below decibels of an audible threshold. Ryall realized that he had been the screamer. Breathing fast and shallow, he whirled around to see the silent terror that would no doubt now use some forbidden Influence to make him disappear to a realm of interminable pain or perhaps turn his body inside out before devouring him whole. Neither happened.

Holden stood before him, wearing a smug expression on his face.

“Did you actually think I was sleeping, genius?” the stockier boy asked. “I swear you’re so predictable.”

“What are you doing here?” Ryall demanded. “You scared the Fallen Heavens out of me!”

“Watch your tongue. You are an adherent, after all. And, I’m not so sure you have any right to be asking me what
I’m
doing here.”

The fright on Ryall’s face was slowly replaced by a smile. “Wait, you came because you can’t ignore it either. You’re as tempted by this place as I am.”

“Hardly,” Holden countered. “I came to make you see reason. And if that won’t work, I’m prepared to knock some sense into you.”

Ryall rolled his eyes. The two had been at odds with how to handle their discovery.

“Listen to me, Ryall. You don’t know what this place is. It’s amazing, I’ll give you that, but can’t you see it’s been sealed off? And no doubt for a good reason.”

Ryall had heard this before and knew what his friend would say next, so he mouthed the words as Holden spoke them. “If we’re caught here, they’re not going to make us mop the monastery as punishment. This is more serious than our little pranks.”

“Yes, Mother, thank you, Mother, I’ll do better, Mother.”

Holden punched him in the arm, hard. “I am not kidding about this. I followed you here because I’m your friend, jackass, not your mother.”

To this, Ryall started braying louder and louder, mocking his friend.

“Dimming Light, you are an idiot! And what’s worse, I think you know it!” Holden’s frustration soared.

“Now who needs to watch his mouth?” Ryall jeered.

Their voices carried, meshing and creating dissonant echoes as their verbal volleys increased, overlapping each other.

“Do you even know what’s down here? Aren’t you even curious? Who cares if it’s been walled up and sealed off! That’s the reason I’m here! Why was it hidden? That’s the question!” Ryall yelled at a volume loud enough to overcome Holden’s incessant scolding. He realized his voice was reaching dangerous levels and their arguing could be their undoing. Holden looked away, abashed, as if realizing the same thing.

“We’re both idiots,” Holden confessed, still looking away. He exhaled a long breath that seemed to be apologetic. “I’m sorry, alright? I’m just worried.”

“And scared,” Ryall added.

“And scared.”

“I am too, actually. But I just can’t let this go. Not yet.” His tone had lost its sarcastic edge. “But it’s not because of some immature curiosity, contrary to what you might believe, Holden. Not anymore. Let me show you what I found.”

Holden raised his head and then closed his eyes. “When they burn us at the stake for this, I’ll curse your name. Then, when we awaken in the Ancient Darkness after we’re dead, I’m going to stone your head in. I swear.”

Ryall smiled, knowing this was his friend’s way of consenting to his request.

“Deal! Now look.” Ryall moved his torch to illuminate the rows of large obsidian tablets. Holden’s eyes grew larger as he took in the sight.

“What are they?” Holden asked in wonder.

“Archiver tablets.”

Holden looked skeptical. “Then, why aren’t they in the Jarwyn Mountains?”

Ryall shrugged. “No idea, but check this out.” Ryall showed him how the glyphs at the top of the first tablet of each row matched to a glyph of an inlet, and how the number of tablets in a given row matched the number of scrolls in an inlet with a corresponding glyph. Holden’s interest rose.

“I’ve been down here almost all night, reading as many tablets as I can. Most of it’s so boring, but when’s the last time someone actually saw this stuff? Kind of neat to think we might be the first people in decades, maybe centuries!” Ryall nearly shouted.

“Shh! Second moon will set soon and the sun will rise not long after. We’ll come back tonight.”

“No, wait. Just a little more time,” Ryall said.

“You’ve got my attention, all right? We’ll come back, tonight. Let’s not be stupid about this and get caught now. Well, let’s not be more stupid than we’re already being.”

Just after the final bell of the evening sounded, signaling the beginning of night and end of all activity in the monastery, Holden and Ryall found themselves back in the cavern. They each lit a torch and carried one more in reserve. Ryall tried to hold back a laugh.

“What?” Holden asked behind a long yawn.

“A hand or fellow, born sick and yellow?” Ryall heckled his friend.

“Shut up,” Holden snapped. “I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, remember?”

“You’re likely to get even less tonight, I’d guess. But still, you should have seen the look on your face! It wasn’t half as bad as the look on Vicar Johann’s face though. I thought he was going to chew you up and spit you out.”

“The words were blurring together, okay?” the redheaded boy answered. “It was sort of embarrassing.”

“That’s the best part!” his friend jabbed. “When have you ever misread a section of prose in literature forum?”

“Never,” was all Holden could get out. During their last class of the day, literature forum, students would study and recite passages from different texts. The delivery was as important as the words themselves. This half-span had been the Scrolls of Rebirth, ancient scriptures that predated the invasion of the Senthary and told of the Ancient Heavens’ cycling of the lands. During Holden’s assigned passage, one line read, “…a land more fallow, torn sick and sallow…” but Holden, in his wearied state, read aloud, “…a hand or fellow, born sick and yellow…” He had said it with such vigor and conviction, trying to mask his fading energy and still impress the Vicar.

“You should have seen yourself thundering the last words as if speaking to a crowd of thousands! Bravo!”

Holden just grimaced.

“At least you can redeem yourself now,” Ryall promised. “One of the things I can’t figure out is why there are scrolls in Hardacheon that match the Archiver tablets. Who wrote the scrolls? They
obviously contain our history and there are Archiver records in Sentharian, so why would someone take the trouble to translate them into Hardacheon?”

“Who says the Archiver tablets came first?” Holden asked. Ryall looked up at his friend. “Maybe they are translations of the scrolls.”

“Okay, good point I guess, but how could Hardacheons be recording our history after they were all destroyed? Even if a few still lived, why would they care to record the history of their conquerors?”

“Are you sure all the scrolls here line up with these tablets? I mean, look around. This place has thousands more scrolls than tablets. There’s what, seven or eight rows of tablets? There are hundreds if not thousands of these cubby things, each with at least one scroll from what we have seen.”

Ryall again was nonplussed. “Well, let’s at least figure out which scrolls line up with which rows of tablets. Then we’ll have a starting place, I suppose.”

“A starting place for what?” Holden asked. He knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“For translating the scrolls, what else? We’ve got several dozen tablets that line up with as many scrolls. We can read the tablets and probably decipher the other scrolls not related to them if we use them as a key of sorts,” Ryall said. “What else are we going to do for the next four-and-a-half years?”

An adherent was pronounced a Vicar of the Ancient Heavens at age twenty after completing six years at the Changrual Monastery and passing proficiency examinations in an expansive breadth of subject matter.

“How about get through our studies with drawing as little attention as possible? I’m certain we’ll have a harder time already due to our reputation,” Holden said. “So, you’ve read some of these Archiver tablets?”

“Nearly the first two rows. Did you know that the land our people came from was called Feylan? And that Brant Kearon and Oliver Wellyn were actually cousins?”

“They were related?” The revelation shocked Holden.

“First row, third tablet in. The first three tablets there talk about life in Feylan before the land cycled. It sounds very different than life here in Senthara. In fact, Oliver Wellyn wasn’t the ruler in Feylan, nor here when they first arrived for the invasion.”

“Who was the High Duke then? And does it say where Feylan is?” Holden asked.

“There was no High Duke then. Just someone who they called the Luminary of House Kearon.”

“Luminary?” Holden raised an eyebrow. “Kearon?”

Ryall shrugged. “It’s what it says. His words were very influential apparently. Some said he was the Living Light. Oh, he was bastard born, too.”

“You’re starting to bray again, jackass,” Holden said, obviously not believing his friend.

“Read for yourself,” Ryall said, unconcerned.

“Okay, so why, if we’re the Senthary people – and this land is named after us—why wouldn’t we have named this Feylan place Senthara as well? Why not call the land after us then like we do now?” Holden challenged.