Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 (23 page)

G
limmer lay still in Kert’s arms, her eyes closed, watching the threads of the possible futures expand. Only one factor controlled these changes and Glimmer was surprised to recognise it as her brother’s emotional state. He was struggling in the void between the worlds, desperate to reach Ennae. But strong though his Guardian power was, it would not be enough. She must decide whether to save him or let him be lost, and for some inexplicable reason his emotional state appeared to be the axis upon which most of the future threads hinged.

Glimmer had never before seen a nexus placed at an emotional juncture. Could she use this knowledge for her own benefit? And further, was this the very reason she’d been allowed to fall in love with Kert in the first place: to experience emotions. Love appeared to be thwarting her destiny, but the part of her that existed outside linear time had allowed it to happen, putting her into contact with the talisman and thereby the emotion stream, which had led her emotions to lock onto Kert.

She was evolving, and the intuition that was slowly replacing her logical mind told her that if she allowed her brother’s destiny to unfold, more would be revealed. Even as she watched, almost every thread that dealt with joining the Four Worlds altered to contain her brother.

He had suddenly become important beyond the role he had been destined to play in her separation from Kert — a future she consciously avoided viewing — and Glimmer tensed as she felt Vandal’s control slipping. He was close to being trapped in the void forever. It was time to decide.

Kert stirred at her movement, and his sleep-heavy hand slid up her ribs to cup a breast. Glimmer’s body tingled in anticipation and he made a murmuring sound as the pleasure from her skin, expressed as a white light, seeped into his own body where they touched. The desire to forget everything but Kert swept over her, yet she resisted it.

‘My brother,’ she said softly to Kert, knowing what she must do.

The day of her reunion with Vandal had always been predestined, but Glimmer hadn’t expected it to be so soon. The birth of the Fire God’s child had hastened the future she must face, and though she had been Kert’s lover for three years, she wasn’t ready to let him go. Yet neither could she afford to lose Vandal in the void between the worlds if he was to be her counterpart, so she reached out with her mind to disengage his wildly flailing power before blanketing him in her own and bringing him into their cave.

Firesparks came and went, and when Kert saw that an unconscious man had appeared in their grassy bower he hurried to leave her embrace and dress. Glimmer smiled at that. She hadn’t seen him dressed for some time and had forgotten about modesty. Perhaps she should dress herself before her brother awoke.

‘This is Vandal,’ she said, clothing herself in an eye-blink. Jeans and a T-shirt. She preferred to watch Kert’s slower progress with a lover’s eye.

He looked up from buttoning his breeches. ‘He is the image of … Is this Pagan’s son with the Magorian woman?’

‘The same,’ Glimmer agreed. ‘He was raised as my brother though we are not related. He bears the Guardian blood of his father and was just now attempting to cross from Magoria to Ennae.’

Kert frowned. ‘To what purpose?’

‘Unknown,’ she lied. ‘But I will need his power.’

Kert eyed the boy warily, from his matted hair to the dirt that encrusted his clothes and skin. ‘Are there not already two Guardians who could assist you?’

‘In the future I foresaw, he was not required to join the Four Worlds. Now the paths converge differently and he will come into play.’

‘Must he stay here with us?’

Glimmer saw the way Kert was looking at her and deduced that his thoughts were sexual. He was worried that Vandal would ruin their intimacy, which was all that had interested them both these last idyllic years. But the future was changing rapidly. While she had been satisfying her obsession with Kert, the fate of the Four Worlds had been hurtling towards disaster. The longer she was away from Ennae, the harder the joining would become.

While it had not yet reached the point where a joining would be impossible, she had deluded herself into thinking she was husbanding her strength, preparing herself for the end. In reality, she should have been on Ennae securing the anchors, tempering the Maelstrom and readying the people. But Ennae moved ten times slower than Haddash and she’d wanted all the time she could steal with Kert.

As usual, love remained foremost in her mind. ‘Vandal has a role in joining the Four Worlds. He must not die,’ she said.

‘Is that why he was born on Magoria? To keep him safe?’ Kert asked.

Glimmer nodded and took his hand. Immediately his tension dissolved and the languor of sensuality again governed his movements. As they stood gazing at the boy, Kert’s breaths slowed and his fingers began to caress her own. Glimmer didn’t need to look down to see that she had begun to glow again, nor to assure herself that Kert would be ready to join with her. But for the moment that would have to wait. ‘It could also be the reason Pagan fathered Vandal with Sarah,’ she said, ‘when his soul was fixed on Lae. Just so were my own parents strangers of the heart.’

‘Yet destiny forged the alliances.’ Kert appeared content with her explanation and Glimmer was grateful for that. She did not want to have to choose Vandal’s life over her beloved’s if a fight ensued.

She looked down at her filthy brother and decided he appeared as wild as the void he had so recently navigated. He was beginning to stir, so Glimmer cleansed him of the dirt that encrusted him and brought him to full wakefulness. When the firesparks settled, he opened his eyes to slits. Kert tensed at the expression he levelled at his sister but Glimmer merely watched him curiously. Vandal’s volatile emotions were akin to the fury she had seen in Kert the day she had saved him, when he had accused her of letting Lenid die. Vandal would be dangerous, but not unpredictable.

‘My mother is dead,’ he spat. ‘I have come here to kill my father and the woman who stole him from us.’

Glimmer felt her shoulders relax. Vandal’s vendetta would take him to Ennae, allowing them to retain their privacy. And the more his emotions were aroused, the more use he would be to her when she needed him most. She scanned the possible futures and saw little risk in allowing him to go. The fate of the Four Worlds was still controllable.

‘This is not Ennae,’ she told him, then glanced at Kert. ‘He speaks of Pagan and my half-sister, Lae of Be’uccdha.’

Kert’s hand came out of her own and a secrecy slid over his features such as she had not seen in all the years they had been lovers. Was it possible that he still loved Lae? Glimmer struggled not to let her insecurities resurface, but when Kert continued to remain silent she felt the bite of jealousy return.

‘Who is
he?
Vandal demanded and Glimmer found she did not like that tone directed towards her beloved. The boy struggled to raise himself on one elbow, limbs still weak from his taxing journey. Glimmer did not feel inclined to revive him fully. ‘And where am I?’

‘This is Kert Sh’hale,’ Glimmer told him, ‘and you are on Haddash.’

Vandal’s eyes narrowed. ‘The Fireworld?’ He looked around at the grassy replica of the royal ahroce gardens, then back to Glimmer. His breathing had quickened and she wasn’t sure why. Was he preparing to lash out at them? ‘I’m on another world?’ he said. ‘I got here myself?’

‘I brought you here to save you from losing yourself in the void. The Maelstrom’s growing force obstructed your passage.’

Vandal’s eyes narrowed again. ‘Bringing me here won’t change my mind. I’m going to Ennae to kill them.’

Still Kert said nothing, and that in itself was odd.

‘If you desire to go to Ennae, I will send you there myself,’ Glimmer said.

‘Do you not think,’ Kert interrupted, ‘that you would rather enjoy your brother’s company for a time?’

Glimmer turned to look at her love and saw that his face was almost unrecognisable to her. The open, sensual Kert had been replaced by a stranger.

‘
Are you not bored with me?’ he asked. ‘Surely your brother will be a welcome diversion.’

Behind them, Vandal struggled to rise. ‘I will kill the Be’uccdha whore who stole my father from us. It’s her fault that my mother …’ He trailed off without finishing, but Glimmer already knew of Petra’s murder and Sarah’s death.

These incidents were unfortunate, yet no worse than the tragedies occurring elsewhere on Magoria every second of the day. The fact that they had occurred to people she had lived with meant nothing to Glimmer. There was no compassion, no sadness. Only Kert stirred her emotions, and now his suggestion that they stop Vandal continuing to Ennae smacked of a desire to protect Lae whom he no longer loved, or so he had told Glimmer. Had that been a lie?

‘How will you kill her?’ Glimmer asked her brother, wondering whether his anger could be channelled productively.

‘Slowly,’ Vandal spat. ‘Painfully. I want my father to hurt … like we hurt before … and now.’ The boy was inarticulate with rage.

‘Steal her from Pagan first,’ Glimmer said to test Kert. ‘If he loves her, take that love.’

‘Then kill her.’ Vandal nodded, his expression grim.

‘That way you hurt your father twice.’ It would also keep Vandal busy longer and delay the crucial moment when she must return to Ennae.

Kert shook his head and was a moment speaking, as though scrabbling for an argument. ‘You told me he must not die. What if Pagan kills him to protect Lae?’ Her beloved sounded as though he hoped for such an outcome.

‘Pagan will not kill his own son,’ she declared. ‘And neither will he let anyone else.’ Glimmer had seen that in the future.

‘I’ll do it.’ Vandal said. ‘All of it. The pain … the hurt they deserve.’ He appeared resolute but Glimmer was unsure whether he would follow her plan or simply act on his anger.

‘You need maturity,’ she said, and waved a hand over him. ‘I give you two years.’ Firesparks glittered around Vandal, and she heard Kert’s swift intake of breath. Vandal’s hair was now long and sleek, his form filled out into that of a young man. At seventeen he was almost identical to the Pagan who had left Lae all those years ago to take The Catalyst into exile. If Vandal could hide his fury, Lae would think her betrothed had returned to her.

‘This is cruel deception,’ Kert said softly and Glimmer felt jealousy like acid in her stomach.

‘
And
I gift you the power to retain your Magorian memories, lest you forget your purpose,’ she said.

‘Don’t do this,’ Kert begged and Glimmer’s temper erupted.

She turned on him. ‘Why should you care?’ she asked. ‘Do you still love your wife?’

Kert glanced at Vandal and said, ‘I will not speak of these matters before a stranger.’

‘You are the stranger,’ she said to Kert, furious that after all the intimacies they had shared he still valued Lae’s life over their continuing pleasure. She turned to her brother. ‘I send you to Be’uccdha,’ she told him, ‘where you will find the woman you seek installed as The Dark. Your father is her Champion.’ She sent him on without another thought, all her attention on Kert now and not the firesparks that glittered and fell behind her. ‘Speak,’ she demanded.

‘I am not like you,’ he said, and frowned as though unsure how to tell his truth. If it was truth. ‘Though I am … bewitched by you and the pleasures we share, I do care for other people, that they not be harmed.’

‘You care for Lae,’ Glimmer spat.

Though he knew it would anger her, Kert nodded. ‘She was the mother of my son,’ he said. ‘Though I hated her to start, I came to —’

Glimmer clapped her hands over her ears. ‘I will not hear this,’ she shrilled. ‘I will not hear you speak of other women. How can you torment me so?’

Kert’s frown deepened. ‘Do you feel nothing for others? The boy said your Magorian mother was dead.’

Glimmer dropped her hands and shook her head, ‘I care only for you,’ she said and, characteristic of her wildly fluctuating emotions, she relented in her anger and reached out to touch his shoulder. The tight muscles relaxed as her skin began to glow and the familiar pleasure flowed into his body, ‘I should never have brought Vandal here,’ she said.

Kert took a step backwards, away from her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘For now he will live and Lae will die.’

‘Stop
talking
about her!’ Glimmer shouted. ‘Or I will kill her myself.’

Kert looked away and struggled to keep emotion from his features.

‘Can’t you just love
me
,’ Glimmer pleaded. ‘The others aren’t important. They’ll probably all be dead soon.’

‘How? The Maelstrom? Or the Serpent God’s child?’

Glimmer said nothing, as she did each time he mentioned Kraal’s child.

‘You should never have let him escape Haddash, should you?’

Glimmer knew she must not admit the truth, that the beast who called himself Teleqkraal had killed thousands of people she cared nothing for. But in her defence, if she had tried to stop him when he first emerged, she would have missed the opportunity Kert’s anger had provided her, to push past his defences and become his lover. Now she had her beloved in her arms whenever she chose.

As The Catalyst she must make the supreme sacrifice. Surely she deserved some pleasure beforehand?

‘You should have killed him,’ Kert said.

Despite his stiff stance, Glimmer moved in and wound her arms around his waist. ‘I will die soon,’ she said softly, knowing that this discovery would distract him. ‘I brought you here to Haddash so we might share the longest time together. But ultimately it will end.’

‘You will die?’ He pulled back to look down into her face, his own creased with worry. A Champion’s worry. ‘When?’

She leant up and he did not resist when she kissed him. ‘Not long now,’ she said, and rested her cheek against his shoulder. Her glow was stronger now and in response to that he held her closer. She took the opportunity to further her advantage, moving her hands to where pleasure could be given. ‘I want only for us to share the time I have remaining —’