Oubliette (Cloud Prophet Trilogy) (12 page)

“I just had a vision,” I said. “I know why they left Zelor’s house standing.”

Mark waited.

“It’s the fireplace,” I explained. “It leads somewhere. It’s a portal, like the one I came through to get here.”

“But I thought portals were created with the gift when someone needed to move from one place to another. Like Nemison did when you came here.”

“No,” I said. “Remember at Johna’s cottage? That wall was an existing portal. It’s why she never hung anything on it. Her herbs would have gotten in the way, or at least fallen every time the portal was open. It would have been quite a mess to clean up. The fireplace is a portal too.”

“What exactly did you see in your vision?” Mark asked.

“I saw you, and me, going through the portal. We passed through, but I don’t know where we landed. It was so dark.” I paused. “That was it. It’s the shortest vision I’ve ever had. They just keep getting shorter. When I was younger, I would spend hours telling Kandek my stories. But for some reason, the visions now are just choppy. Pieces of the future. Not entire stories.”

I hit my fist on the arm of the chair. This kept getting harder. Why couldn’t it get easier? I was supposed to be this great Prophet, but my gift wouldn’t cooperate.

“It’s okay,” Mark said.

“No, it’s not. But it will have to do because it’s all I’ve got.”

I let go of his hand and stood up. “Are you ready?”

“Ready?” he asked.

“We have to go back to his house. Now. We have to see this through.”

“I don’t know how to use portals. Do you?”

“No.” I ran over to the bookshelf, crowded with volumes they expected me to read day in and day out. I’d been through so many of them, even read a few of them twice, but I’d found nothing useful, nothing that taught me how to use my gift of prophecy. However, I had found a few books that taught the basics of using a gift, utilizing techniques any gifted person could use. I hadn’t been able to do much with any of the skills, but there was one that might help us.

I ran my fingers along the spines, scanning each title until I found what I was looking for. I grabbed the book and pulled it off the shelf. A whirl of dust flew up and tickled my nose.

“This is it,” I said. I held the title up.
Portals: Creating, Using, Destroying
.

“Do you think it will be that easy?” Mark asked.

“No,” I said with a smile. “It never is for us.”

I thumbed through the opening of the book, looking for information on how to activate a portal. We’d been standing next to one in Zelor’s cottage and hadn’t even noticed it was there. It was months before I knew about the portal in Johna’s cottage too. It still amazed me how much I had to learn about my gift. I wondered if I’d ever fully understand it all.

“Stop.” Mark stuck his finger in between two pages. “Look at this right here. Opening a Portal. Let’s read that.”

He put his chin on my shoulder, looking at the book, his breath tickling my neck. It was distracting, but I forced myself to concentrate on the words in front of me, hoping to learn how I could use the hidden portal in the prophet’s house.

“Any person with copious amounts of the gift can learn to open a portal,” Mark read. “If a gifted person has been to a place once, he can travel back any time he chooses.”

“He?” I asked.

“They obviously thought a great Prophet, such as yourself, wouldn’t need to read about it in the book. It’s for the dumb guys, like me.”

I smacked Mark lightly on the arm. “Keep reading.”

“He needs to focus his gift on the place he wishes to enter. Eyes closed and body still. A focused mind leads to faster portal creation.”

I interrupted again. “Nemison must be very focused. He opened the portal while we were running away from the guards.”

Mark laughed and continued, “While focusing on the destination, he should raise his hands and flick his fingers. A portal appears. Step through and close from the other side by holding the hand out and drawing the fingers back together again.”

I shut the book. “It sounds easy, doesn’t it?”

“Only if you have copious amounts of the gift,” Mark said. “How much is that anyway?”

“Nemison said I was stronger than him, I just didn’t know how to use my gift. If he can open one while running, surely I can open one while standing still.”

I closed my eyes and thought about the prophet’s home. I saw the dark room, the fireplace and the empty floors. I raised my hand and flicked my fingers in front of me. Opening one eye, I saw nothing but the chair and window in front of me. I knew it wouldn’t work. I’d tried a week ago to create a portal, but it didn’t work.

“No portal,” I said. “You try.”

“Me?” Mark asked. “If you can’t do it, how can I?”

“Your gift is strong too.”

“Not as strong as yours,” he said.

“Afraid?” I asked, teasing him.

Mark closed his eyes and raised his hand. With one flick of his fingers, a portal shimmered in front of us. I gasped, stunned at how quickly he’d done it. What was wrong with me?

“I don’t understand,” Mark stammered. “How?”

“Who cares?” I said, grabbing his hand and still holding the book in my other. “Let’s go through.”

“Wait a second,” he said, glancing at my clothes. A blush spread over my face when I realized I was still in my bedclothes.

“I should change,” I said, fingering my robe.

“You should,” he said. “Do you need help?” His wide-eyed innocent look stood in stark contrast to his wolfish smile.

“Can you step out of the room for a minute?” I asked.

Mark shook his head and pointed towards the portal with his thumb. “I’m not leaving you alone with an open portal. Go ahead and use your dressing screen. I promise not to peek.”

He winked at me and I hit him with the book.

I scurried over to the wardrobe and chose a brown gown. I knew it wasn’t the most flattering dress, but I’d be crawling around a fireplace looking for portals, not prancing around at a ball.

Before slipping behind the dressing screen I looked at Mark again. He was busy reading the book and completely ignoring me. I didn’t want to feel weird changing in front of him again, but last night it had been so dark. I felt more exposed in the morning light even though I had more cover this time.

I emerged from behind the screen and Mark was still staring at the same page he’d had open before I’d changed.

“Interesting page?” I asked, flicking his hand with my fingertips. I looked over at the book and realized he’d been holding it upside down the whole time. “Hmmm….do you learn better when you read it like that?”

His neck blushed red as he shut the book. I giggled and looked at the portal. “You ready?” I asked. Mark nodded. He stepped through the portal, disappearing instantly. Before I entered I reached into the portal, pinched my fingers together, and tugged. A tiny string, invisible to the eye, but easily felt by my fingertips pulled free. I couldn’t create a portal, but I’d learned one small bit of information.

Then I stepped into the void with one foot and emerged in the prophet’s home with the other. I crouched down on the floor, hoping the guards outside wouldn’t notice the two people suddenly standing in the home they protected. Mark flicked his fingers together and the portal closed.

“Now how do we open the portal through the fireplace?” I asked, feeling stupid that we’d neglected to read that before leaving my chamber.

Mark grabbed the book from me and in the filtered morning light he flipped until he came to the chapter titled, “Static Portals: Discovering, Using, Destroying.”

“It says here that we can use our gifts to detect the portal. It’s a matter of focusing again. We can’t focus on where it leads, because we don’t always know, but focusing instead on discovering the portal itself. If we close our eyes and see with our minds, we should be able to see the portal shimmering. Then we step up to it, flick our fingers outward, and it should appear.”

“Give it a try,” I said.

“Don’t you want to?” Mark asked, his hand on my shoulder.

I shook my head. We didn’t have time for experimenting. Mark could do it, that much we knew.

We crawled in front of the fireplace, still afraid of being discovered by the guards. Mark closed his eyes and scooted closer. He flicked his fingers and again, a portal appeared. He grasped my hand and we crawled through together, not knowing what waited on the other side.

Chapter Sixteen

My knees stung as we crawled through the portal. My rough dress didn’t protect them when we switched from a worn wooden floor to pebble-littered ground, but I was so grateful I hadn’t chosen silk.

Mark quickly crawled through behind me, popped his fingertips back together and the portal closed. I looked around at the room before me. Not a room, I quickly realized, a cave, shimmering with stalactites and stalagmites, baring their teeth at us.

“Where are we?” Mark asked, his voice cracking with wonder.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But wherever we are, someone went to great trouble to hide it.”

Mark stood, stretching his legs out. He held out a hand to help me up. I gratefully took it and joined him in standing. But as I stood, my wig caught on a rock next to me and ripped it off my head.

“I still can’t believe you shaved your head again,” Mark said, rubbing his hand lightly on my scalp. I shivered from the cool, dry air passing over it ahead of his hand.

“I had to. I wanted to blend in. I didn’t want anyone to see me.” I shrugged. “Without that we probably wouldn’t have ended up here.”

“Where do we go now?” he asked, looking around. Water lazily dripped from the ceiling and flecks of light bounced off the smooth surfaces of the cave. If I hadn’t been so concerned about what we might find, I probably would have found it beautiful. Unfortunately there didn’t seem to be a clear path for us to follow.

“I say we move forward. If the portal pointed us in this direction, then perhaps that’s where we should go.”

I lifted up the bottom of my dress so it wouldn’t catch on any more rocks and left my wig behind. I didn’t need it, or want it. Mark could port us directly back to my chambers when we were done, where I could pick out another equally uncomfortable, itchy wig to wear. Krissin had supplied me with quite a few.

Stepping gingerly over the rocky ground we made our way deeper into the cave. To my surprise it didn’t get darker. The light continued to reflect off the stalactites, illuminating the way.

We walked for about a minute until we entered a glittering cavern. There were no stalactites for the light to bounce off of. In this room we were greeted by seven portals, all shimmering in full view.

“What in the name of Eloh?” Mark asked.

“I have no idea,” I whispered, feeling somehow that this wasn’t a place I should talk at the top of my voice. In between the stillness of the shimmering portals stood a platform, holding a book on it.

I moved forward, my hand out, as if I were in a trance, only focused on the book. Mark grabbed my hand, jerking me back to his arms.

“Don’t touch it,” he said.

“Why not?”

“We don’t know what’s going on here.”

“And I don’t think we will unless we take a look at this book,” I insisted. I broke away from him and jogged to the book.

The yellowed pages curled at the corner and the smell of leather barely touched the tips of my senses. Its soft, supple texture felt like heaven under my fingertips. The pages crinkled under my hand. I drew back, unsure what would happen if I turned the page. I didn’t want it to crumble.

I wrapped the sleeve of my dress around my hand to protect the book from the oils on my skin. Gently I turned the book to its first page.

This is my book, my gift and my warning. I leave it here in front of these seven portals. Six lead to death, one leads to the truth. The right portal leads to the truth of what I have wrought. The truth of the next Prophet. Beware which portal you enter because you can only return from one. But what lies inside is the greatest prize of all. Should you seek The Book of Secrets, be aware you are taking your life into your own hands.

I trembled. The Book of Secrets. Exactly what I’d been looking for was hiding through one of those portals. But which one? They all looked the same in size and color.

Mark leaned over my shoulder, afraid to touch the volume in front of us. I kept my covered finger on the bottom of the page, holding it down so he could see the words.

“What else does the book say?” he asked.

I carefully turned the page but the next page was blank. As well as the page after that and the page after that. I looked at Mark, confused.

“Maybe I should take it back to the palace with me and study it for clues. Maybe something in his previous volumes makes reference to this. There must be a clue somewhere.” I grasped the edge of the book and was taken aback when it wouldn’t lift off the stand. Forgetting my careful handling from before, I tugged and pulled but the book wouldn’t lift up.

“He must have bound it with his gift,” Mark said. “Not just as a cruel way to taunt anyone who found this room but perhaps also to warn anyone innocent who might stumble upon it.”

“But how will I figure out which portal to enter?” I paced back and forth. I walked the edge of the circle of portals, running my fingers just outside the edge.

“Reychel!” Mark yelled. “Don’t touch. You don’t know how much power they have.”

But I did. I could feel the pull from every portal. Part of me wanted to just choose one and jump in. But the odds were bad. Chances were that I’d have to face whatever horror lay beyond. I didn’t want that, but I so desperately wanted to know the truth. It was tempting.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Reychel,” Mark said gently. “We should go back. Now we know what the portal was all about. We can go back to your room and check the books. See if we can find something. We need to be prepared.”

I sighed, knowing he was right. What else could I do? I’d discovered one secret only to have it lead to another. Time was running short. If I was going to help anyone, I needed to find the answers.