Compass of the Nymphs (8 page)

“Don’t worry,” he said soothingly, “I’m sure
he’ll make his way here soon enough.”

Taisiya nodded and followed Ammon down the
steps to his library, but she had an uneasy feeling in the pit of
her stomach. Not long ago, she viewed Zara as nothing more than
another one of the queen’s terrible servants, but now that she had
gotten the chance to see his true colors, she began to worry about
his safety.

Ammon could sense Taisiya’s restlessness and
decided to not push her any further about what had happened.
Instead, he showed her an extremely comfortable plush couch for her
to rest on while he went and prepared something for them to eat. As
concerned as she was, Taisiya was also extremely famished, so she
sat down with ease and eagerly waited for whatever Ammon was
fixing. She was delighted and astounded when he came back with a
platter of swordfish—quite the delicacy—and two cups of rosé.

He sat the food down on one of the small
tables in front of Taisiya and then took a seat in one of the
chairs opposite her. Rather than try to make idle conversation,
they ate in awkward silence, their ears awaiting any sound of Zara
coming in the shack above. Their plates were soon empty and their
bellies full, but Zara had not yet arrived.

Taisiya was exhausted, and as much as she
wanted to be on the lookout for her friend, she couldn’t stay awake
any longer. As she began drifting off to sleep, Ammon went and got
a blanket to cover her. She curled up and rested, hoping that when
she awoke, Zara would be safe and sound.

CHAPTER SIX –

THE MYSTERIOUS COMPASS

“Good morning!” Ammon smiled as Taisiya began
waking up. She had no clue how he knew it was morning seeing as
there weren’t any windows in an underground house, but she didn’t
question him.

“Good morning to you, too,” she yawned
back.

Ammon was once again milling around his
kitchen, and soon he was bringing over plates for their breakfast.
He sat down three platefuls of delicious blueberries and yogurt
along with matching cups of water. It was nothing as fancy as the
supper they had eaten last night, but it still looked delicious.
Taisiya’s stomach rumbled with delight.

“This looks good,” she said, ready to dig in
and eat up. Ammon just stood there looking at her with a grin on
his face and his eyebrow cocked. She was confused. “Wait,
what?”

Ammon just chuckled and sat down, taking a
plate and pushing the third one to the opposite end of the
table.

“Who’s that for…?” Taisiya said, “No…is he…?
Did he?!” She couldn’t get the words out fast enough.

“It’s for your friend Zara,” Ammon said with
a laugh. “He got in a couple hours after you fell asleep.”

“Where is he?!” Taisiya said through a
mouthful of berries.

“He’s in the secret library,” Ammon said,
“looking through some special papers to help you two take down the
queen. He’s quite a nice fellow, you know. I’d been complaining as
I showed him around the library about my back hurting, and he
whipped out an ointment that did the trick. I can’t feel a thing,
but who cares! I even joked that it’d be much easier on me if I had
his body instead of this old one, and he said he’d work on it.”

They both laughed. A load of tension had been
taken off of Taisiya’s shoulders now that she knew Zara was
safe.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he snuck me a
love potion,” Ammon joked. “I’m quite enamored with him.”

Taisiya shook her head and gave a haughty
chuckle. “I watched him buying potions,” she said, “but when no one
was around, I tossed the love potions out.”

Ammon’s eyes twinkled. “I’d wonder why he was
buying love potions, but I guess the question answers itself—he
clearly is enamored with someone himself.”

Taisiya rolled her eyes. “How boring…love
potions. He probably was buying them for the queen; it wouldn’t
surprise me that she’d need them just to keep her servants able to
tolerate her!”

Ammon was about to reply when the door to the
secret library flew open and Zara came bounding out, his arms
filled with books. Taisiya and Ammon rushed over to help him carry
them all. When Zara saw Taisiya was awake, he smiled. “Miss
me?”

“No…” Taisiya lied smugly, “but I did worry.
What happened?”

“Come, come,” Ammon said, taking an armful of
old books, “we’ll discuss this as we eat. Food is energy; food is
life!”

After they were sure the books were all
safely stored on one of the reading tables, they all sat down and
continued eating. It was no longer awkward with Zara there. In
fact, the conversation flowed with ease as he told them what had
happened the night before.

Zara explained that once he’d set the fire,
it had caught on a little too quickly. Everyone was screaming and
drawing attention to the blaze before he could get back to safety.
As the queen’s patrolmen rushed over to see what had happened, one
had spotted him and ran after him.

The guard had chased Zara into the woods, and
Zara knocked him out. Their scuffle had drawn the attention of the
other guards, though. Zara decided it would be best for everyone if
he spent the night hiding out in the forest. Even if they found
him, Taisiya and Ammon would be safe.

Ammon wiped some crumbs from his mouth and
said, “You’re a very noble man.” Zara blushed, and Taisiya nodded
along in agreement.

“What are all the books for, though?” she
asked.

“Well,” Zara said, giving them both a wink,
“being the old nymph’s spy does have its advantages. I know what
she’s up to.”

“Nymph?” Ammon asked curiously, “are those
rumors true?”

“I’m afraid so,” Zara nodded grimly. “The
queen tries to keep that hushed, though. Adrasteia comes from a
whole family of them…Nymphs of Darkness, though, I’m afraid.”

He got up and walked over to the table where
they had deposited the books. He fingered through them until he
found a dilapidated old book with a torn forest green cover. The
title of the book was faded, making it hard to read that
Edafos Nymphai
was embossed on it in a
fancy script.

Zara brought the book and a map back with him
and sat it down on the table where Ammon had cleaned up their
breakfast. Getting down on his knees, he unrolled the map and
pointed to the book. “This,” he said, “is very old text, and in it
is the history of what many believe to be a sacred island. It’s
called Ethnymphai; its name literally means ‘Nymph Nation.’

“A very long time ago, the inhabitants of
Ethnymphai were at peace with one another and welcomed travelers.
Sadly, there was a schism among the nymphs, and as a result, they
decided to cut off their slice of the world from everyone else in
the hopes that no unprepared humans would fall victim to the evils
that one side of the schism was inflicting upon the other.

“They’ve put up a very strong deterrent, and
anyone that navigates towards their island gets confused and either
turns around or heads off in a different direction. Once you leave
Ethnymphai, it is very hard to get back. That’s why no maps today
even acknowledge that it’s a real place; many people even say it’s
made up, and the stories of evil nymphs are meant only to scare
children into behaving.”

He paused and pointed now at the map. “This
map,” he said, “is so old that it was scribed before the schism. Of
course, Adrasteia ordered it to be removed, but we’re lucky that
Ammon here saved it.”

“You mean the queen comes from that island of
nymphs?” Taisiya asked, looking at the map.

Zara nodded. “Yes,” he said, “but she’s
different than most. After the schism, it was the bad nymphs—those
who used their powers for things like vanity and control—that
stayed to dominate Ethnymphai. Adrasteia left willingly, you
see.”

“Why would she do that?” Ammon asked,
puzzled.

Zara shuddered. “She bragged about this quite
a lot. While the nymphs at Ethnymphai are evil, they were no match
for her. She sought more power, more domination than one island.
Adrasteia also knew that the evil nymphs would do nothing but
continue to quarrel and war amongst themselves until only one was
left standing. There were many evil sorceresses to get past in
Ethnymphai, but the rest of the world had much greater odds for
her. She left willingly, and has been using her powers to rise to
power ever since.”

Taisiya scratched her head. All this talk of
nymphs had flipped her world upside down. “Why did she pick here of
all places, though?”

“Ammon, do you remember when she took the
throne?” Zara asked, knowing the answer.

Ammon shook his head. “She’s been the queen
ever since I was born.”

Taisiya’s jaw dropped. Zara gave a little
laugh. “Exactly,” he said to her. “When Adrasteia left the island,
she quickly found out that the queen that was ruling over Solames
was in poor health, and so she came to the rescue. Adrasteia
disguised herself as a nurse, and so the king and queen allowed her
into their castle. She fooled them by using her powers to make the
queen get a little bit better.

“They believed in her and trusted her. They
had no clue she was an evil nymph…not even after she killed the
queen. The king had become so infatuated with Adrasteia and was
convinced that she had done all she could to save his wife that he
decided to marry her. Not surprisingly, soon after their marriage,
the king himself died in his sleep and she has been ruling with an
iron fist ever since.”

Both Ammon and Taisiya shook their heads,
frowning. Queen Adrasteia was more evil than either one of them had
even begun to imagine. Zara got up and fetched another book,
bringing it back to them. The royal blue book was in slightly
better condition, and they could all read the title,
Everlasting Youth
, easily.

“Adrasteia has always been kidnapping
children from the villages,” Zara said matter-of-factly. “She feeds
on them. The only other copy of this book is in her castle. It
describes the very torturous ways that a nymph can use her powers
of the darkness to drain life out of others to prolong her own. It
is so evil, in fact, that the other dark nymphs on Ethnymphai don’t
even practice it.”

“Wow,” Taisiya said, grabbing the book and
flipping through it. Inside the pages were many illustrations
depicting children in various states of pain. Ammon leaned over and
looked at it with her.

“It’s incredible,” Zara said. “She even got
away with it for many years undetected. You see, back when she
first usurped the throne, she was much younger. She didn’t need
many children to keep up her youthful appearance. One child every
few months quickly turned into a child every month, and so on and
so on, as the years went by. She is so old now that she has
literally depleted all of the youth in Solames.”

Ammon looked over at Taisiya and gave her an
encouraging smile. “All but one,” he said hopefully. Zara looked
down at the floor to hide the fact that he was smiling, too.

He tried to change the subject. “She’s known
for a little while now that Solames is useless to her. When there
would be boys born in Solames, she wouldn’t feed upon them; she
would have them kept in her castle and raised to become warriors.
She now has quite an impressive army, as you’ve seen Taisiya. Now
that Solames has no hope for her, she plans to use her army and
invade other territories to keep herself alive.”

“But…how is it possible that she hasn’t
feasted on me, or whatever?” Taisiya asked. “I’m a girl…”

Zara’s face turned red once more. He started
to speak, but Ammon interrupted him. “Nothing is impossible!” Ammon
said, “Don’t ask why and just be thankful that you are here. It is
obviously for a reason.”

“I guess so,” Taisiya said pensively. She
couldn’t think of one reason why the queen wouldn’t have killed her
by now. Maybe she herself was a nymph too, and one nymph couldn’t
kill another? Either way, she had a feeling that with all the books
Zara had been researching, she’d soon find out.

“Do you think anyone in Solames is in danger,
now that there’s no children left?” Ammon asked.

Zara bit his lip. “I’m honestly not sure. I
would put nothing past her. All hope is not lost...I spent quite
some time looking at the books that she has had banned, and I think
that we have to somehow get to Ethnymphai. If we are lucky, the
nymphs there will be able to help us.

Adrasteia is too powerful to be defeated by
the two of us.”

Taisiya rolled her eyes. “The only problem
with that is the island has protection around it. There’s no way we
could get to it.”

Zara smiled, “Yes, I did realize that.” He
was prepared for any problems Taisiya had to throw at him. “I still
don’t think it, or anything for that matter, is impossible.”

“Just last night, I doubt you would have
believed in any of these stories as being real,” Ammon pointed
out.

Once again, Taisiya rolled her eyes and
crossed her arms. They both had good points, and it frustrated her.
She didn’t like it when she had no clue what she was going up
against, and it bothered her even more to think that the queen was
so powerful.

Zara hesitated incase Taisiya was going to
make a smart remark, but after a few seconds of her glaring at him
in silence, he went on. “See, I don’t think anyone has ever really
set out to look for Ethnymphai. The deterrent could just be
folklore.”

“You’re willing to go the distance in the
hopes that it’s just a lie?” Taisiya cocked an eyebrow and gave a
derisive laugh.

“No,” Zara said sharply, “I’m willing to go
the distance because I’m armed with knowledge. These maps and books
explain it all. You just have to have faith.”

“Faith alone never solves anything,” Taisiya
replied tartly.

It was Zara’s turn to roll his eyes at her.
“Fine,” he said, reaching in to his pocket.