The Kingdom of Eternal Sorrow (The Golden Mage Book 1) (9 page)

“Ah! Not so loud!” he exclaimed, flashing her a pained look. “You don't
need to think so hard. Only the barest sliver of a thought is needed in order
to be heard. Your thoughts are like your voice—you control the volume in which
you desire to be heard. You can send emotions through your thoughts, as well,
but that lesson is for another time. For now, is there anything you wish to ask
me?”

“Yes…” Allison said hesitantly. “You—you say that I’m this ‘Golden Mage’
person. What exactly does that mean? What is it that you plan to do with me
because of it?”

“I’m not certain how King Diryan will proceed with the situation,”
Aidric replied thoughtfully after a moment’s silence. “Your presence here in
our kingdom was unexpected. It’s a delicate matter—one that will require much
more consideration and discussion. According to our prophecy, the Golden Mage
is said to possess great power that can be very dangerous if it’s not
controlled. More than likely, the king will assign you to me as an apprentice
since I am really the only one qualified to teach you to control your mage
abilities.”

“And after you teach me, what then?” she asked warily.

“You will be sworn as a sacred mage of Seni by our Horae, the priests
of politics and warfare. A feast will be held in your honor in the palace as
you are presented before the entire order of all classes of mages, but you need
not be concerned with any of the ceremonial aspects just yet. Mage lessons
usually take two to three years to complete.”

Feeling the ground crumbling beneath her, Allison pressed her lips
together firmly and turned her gaze away from Aidric to the plain, granite
wall, wistfully longing for a window to gaze out of, but the room oddly
contained none. She turned so quickly that he did not see the shimmer of tears
beginning to form in her eyes.

Allison felt a hand hesitantly rest on her shoulder, but this time, she
didn’t flinch away. The warmth of his hand through the material of her blouse gave
her a little comfort, and she found that he no longer frightened her so much as
made her feel unsettled.

“I was going to be a councilor you know,” she said softly into the
silence, her gaze still turned to the wall.

He said nothing.

“I had such big plans,” she continued, her voice wavering dangerously. “I
wanted to help other traumatized children the way a councilor once helped me.”

“Allison—” Aidric began.

She continued on as if she hadn’t heard him. “Then this happens. Suddenly
I’m whisked off and abandoned in an alien world by a god whose name I’ve never
even heard before and given some super scary powers that I have no idea how to
control. Now, instead of the councilor I’ve worked so hard to become, I have no
choice but to become something I’m not sure I want to be.”

As the tears that had been swelling in her eyes began to slowly fall
down her cheeks, Allison turned her head back around to face Aidric, her eyes
heavy with a heart-wrenching sorrow. His expression somber, Aidric lowered his
hand from her shoulder and gently cupped her folded hands into his own. He
looked at her as if he wanted to speak, but he seemed at a loss for words.

As the tears continued to fall in eternal streams down the curves of
her face, she whispered, “I’m nobody. There’s nothing at all remarkable about
me, so why…?”

“Seni has many reasons for his actions,” Aidric replied quietly,
“though He is not overly fond of disclosing them. Take heart, Allison. I don’t believe
you were brought here only to fulfill the role of our prophecy. Nothing is ever
so cut and dry as that. We must simply have faith that all will be well in the
end and accept the task given to us.”

Allison regarded Aidric’s serene expression when he spoke of Seni with a
sense of wonder. There was no doubt that he was every bit as devoted to his god
as her stepfather was, if not more so, and yet, he didn’t show the same
severity that her father did, the fanaticism. There was only a sense of peace
around him, and total devotion to the god he called Seni as though it was the
most natural thing in the world.

“You’re really devoted to your god,” Allison said, pulling her hands
from his and wiping away all the stray tears on her face. “Is that why the king
seemed insulted and furious when I told him that I didn’t know who Seni was?”

Aidric nodded. “Though, it isn’t just Lamia who is devoted. All
kingdoms to the ends of the world devote their lives to Seni, for it is He whom
we truly serve. As for the king, the anger he showed is a bit more complicated
than a matter of your ignorance. His Majesty has lost much to the will of Seni,
more than he cares to admit, and the thought of someone from our world that was
spared the burden of devotion, of absolute obedience, by her ignorance
infuriated him. That’s why he softened when he learned that you came from a
different world, but regrettably, the story of his woes is a long one. Maybe
someday I’ll tell it to you, but for now it is better left unsaid.”

“Of course—I didn’t mean to—it’s none of my business—” Allison stammered,
feeling her pulse speed up with renewed anxiety. She hadn’t considered that it
might be taboo or even against the law to ask personal questions about the
king.

“You don’t have to look so worried, milady,” Aidric said gently. “You
may ask me anything.”

“It’s because I have no idea why you’re being so, well, so
nice
to me,” she blurted, his assurances making her feel even more agitated. “You,
yourself, said that I was dangerous, that everyone was scared of what I might
do. Unless that prophecy spells everything out about my life up until now, you
don’t even know what kind of person I am. Yet here you are patiently answering
my probably inappropriate questions instead of demanding answers. Even when I
tried to escape, you were nothing but gentle to me when I expected punishment.”

“Have you been hurt so deeply in the past that you are surprised to
find a little kindness in others?” he cut in with a frown.

Allison suddenly found her hands very interesting. “I’m just confused,”
she insisted, her voice tight with tension.

She could feel Aidric staring at her almost like a physical touch,
making her desperately want to dive under the blankets to hide like a
frightened child. She
hated
being scrutinized. It reminded her too much
of… Allison sucked in a sharp breath.
No
! She refused to allow her mind
to go
there
!

It’s not the same. It’s not the same!

“I sense a darkness in you,” Aidric abruptly said, making her nearly
jump out of her skin, “something that has been stirring in your soul for a long
while…”

Allison drew in a deep breath in an effort to calm her racing heart.
“You’re—very observant,” she said, attempting to keep her voice light, but the
slight tremors in her voice ruined the effect, “but I’d rather not talk about
it right now.”

She was relieved when he didn’t press.

Instead, Aidric suggested cheerfully, “Shall we speak about your homeland,
this Earth—or was it California?”

“Both,” Allison replied, this time managing to smile a little when he
actually pronounced California right unlike the king. “Like you call your world
simply ‘Seni’s World,’ we call ours Earth. I’m actually from a place called the
‘United States’—I guess it would be the equivalent of a kingdom here but ruled
differently. It’s broken up into fifty sections and the section, or ‘state,’ I
live in is called California. There’s so much to tell. Is there anything in
particular that you would like to know about Earth?”

“So much I don’t know where to begin,” Aidric said eagerly. “Does
anyone else in your world have golden hair as you do?”

She chuckled. “Yes, millions probably, but we call it ‘blonde.’”

“A rather harsh name for such beautiful locks,” he commented, fingering
a strand of her hair.

Allison blushed furiously. She never seemed to be able to handle
compliments gracefully. They always made her feel ashamed, a result of years of
her stepfather punishing her for the “sins” of all her supposed instances of
pride and vanity.

“And what about your own hair?” she asked quickly, eager to steer the
subject off herself. “I’ve never seen anyone as young as you look with white
hair.”

“Truly?” Aidric said with interest. “The hue of my hair is as common
here on both the youth and the ancient as the grass underfoot. It’s little
wonder why you looked at me so strangely. We must appear as foreign to you as
you do to us.”

“Not everyone,” Allison said. “Just you.”

“How so?”

“Besides their clothes, the others look like the people of my world,”
she explained. “Only you are visibly different with the colors of your hair and
eyes. I’ve never seen anyone with eyes your shade of pale-violet.”

“Indeed, not many people possess them here, either,” he said with
amusement. “I guess I’m just one who is full of oddities.”

“I didn’t mean to imply—” she stuttered, her cheeks coloring once again
in embarrassment.

“Of course you didn’t,” he said with a brisk laugh. “I was merely
teasing you. Forgive me. Sometimes even the Mage-general can forget his
manners.”

Before she could respond, the amusement suddenly left Aidric’s eyes,
and they became distant, as if he was deep in thought. Before she could ask him
what was wrong, the warmth flooded back into his eyes, and he regarded her with
a bemused expression.

“Don’t look so alarmed, milady,” he said. “I was only listening to King
Diryan’s Seneschal, Lord Ion. He has summoned me to the Council Room, no doubt
to discuss you. Unfortunately, I must leave you now. Feel free to wander about
my chambers as you please while I’m away, but I’m afraid that you cannot leave
my suite just yet.” He looked troubled as he explained all of this to her. “I
know that it sounds as if you are a prisoner here, but trust me when I say that
it’s for your own safety as well as ours.”

“I understand,” Allison assured him.

She was startled when he took one of her hands and lifted to his lips,
planting a light kiss onto the back of it.

“I’ll not be long,” he promised as he released her hand. “We have many
more conversations to engage in that I’ll be eagerly awaiting. There is so much
about your world that I wish to know, as I’m certain you have many questions
about mine. I should have better answers as to your status here as well. Until
then, please make yourself comfortable in my absence. If you are hungry, the
servants have left food in the sitting room. There are also countless books
there that you may want to explore. Many of them contain the histories of Lamia
and her surrounding kingdoms. I trust that you will find them of great
interest. Now, I must excuse myself. A
long
Council meeting demands my
attention.”

He smiled wryly and added, “And this was supposed to be my day off!”

Allison shyly returned the smile. Aidric gave her a slight bow before
he turned on his heel and briskly left the room. Only when she heard a door
bang shut in the distance did she slip from beneath the mass of warm blankets,
standing unsteadily in just her socks on the marble floor. Her knees felt as
wobbly as cooked spaghetti, not a good prognosis since she also felt a little
dizzy.

Now that Aidric was no longer there to capture all her attention,
Allison was able to assess her surroundings more thoroughly. A strange device
against the far wall immediately caught her eye as she gazed about the room. A
large and narrow, rectangular-shaped hole had been carved into the wall
starting about a foot from the floor and ending about a foot from the ceiling. Inside,
a glass tube as wide as her arm ran horizontally in the very center of the
rectangle, marked with numerous equally distanced black notches from top to
bottom, two of them thicker and more prominent than all the rest.

On closer inspection, she saw what appeared to be a small amount of
dark sand the color of powdered cocoa falling down the tube to settle at the
bottom, falling from a hole where the top of the tube met the granite wall. The
depth of the sand at the bottom of the tube had already accumulated a little
higher than the nineteenth mark.

It could only be a clock. There was just no other logical explanation
for it. With a little imagination, it even vaguely resembled an hourglass,
though this clock obviously would not need to be flipped over every hour, which
brought up a pressing question. There were a lot more marks than twenty-four,
so how
did
they manage to tell time on it? For that matter, how did it
work? Was magic used? Allison certainly didn’t see any electrical outlets
anywhere in the room! She would have to remember to ask Aidric about it later.

Thinking about electrical outlets made her suddenly wonder what
illuminated the room. Without windows, it obviously was not sunlight. She
looked above her and gasped in surprise. A glass lantern hung suspended in the
air without the aid of any ceiling fixtures—more magic, no doubt—but that was
not what had her gaping up at it like a fool. The flame which the lantern
housed was
green

 She had not seen a green flame since her physics class in high school
when they had stuck wires dipped in different chemicals into the flames of
their Bunsen burners, though the result had looked nothing like
these
flames. The green flames seemed to pulse with energy, creating an uncanny
illusion that the flames were some kind of heart.

Allison suddenly had a powerful urge to get out of the room.

Can this day get any more messed up?
she thought dazedly as she
hurried out of the bedroom, down a hall, and then into a high-ceilinged chamber
almost four times the size of the bedroom. Her eyes widened as she drank in the
elegance of what could only be the sitting room Aidric had spoken of earlier. However,
“sitting room” hardly seemed fitting words to describe such a place.

As it was in the bedroom, the floor consisted of polished marble, but
that’s where the resemblance ended and the grandeur began. Four identical,
intricately carved marble columns stood at each of the four corners of the room.
Delicate swirls were painstakingly carved into the marble in complicated,
symmetrical patterns that resembled oceanic waves, beginning from the top of
the column to the very bottom. Amid the many swirls, what appeared to be gold
was embedded in concert with the patterns. On closer inspection, Allison found
that it was indeed gold.

Two smaller columns stood on either side of what was probably the front
door to his—apartment? Suite? She vaguely remembered Aidric saying that he was
a “court” mage. Did that mean he lived in the king’s palace? She filed that
question away as one of the thousands she would probably end up wanting to ask
Aidric when he returned.

Two creatures that greatly resembled lions, except for the folded wings
on their backs and their tall, pointed ears, protruded from either side of each
column where it met with the ceiling. They were both terrifying and beautiful
to behold. What impressed Allison the most was the fact that they were carved
entirely out of solid gold with two jewels that were possibly emeralds as eyes.

In wonder, her eyes drifted from the magnificence of the golden
sculptures to the colorful array of jewels embedded into two sets of
sapphire-blue curtains that hung over two small, but wide, windows.
At last!
The curtains appeared to consist of the same material as Aidric’s cape and
breeches.

Jeez
, Allison thought amazingly,
do these people have an
obsession with gold and precious stones? They seem to be everywhere!

Furniture-wise, the room was pretty bare. Only a couple of rather
plush, but comfortable-looking couches lined the walls on either side of the
front door. Two huge, cushioned chairs that matched the couches rested on
either side of the two windows.

—and a perfect spot for them. One could sit and gaze out of the
windows and dream—NO
! she scolded herself firmly
. You’re not going to
think about your dreams and what might have been. That life’s over now, and you
should be concentrating on coping with this new one. You did it before when Mom
and you finally escaped that asshole, and you damn well can do it again!

Before she could work herself up into a panic attack, Allison quickly
turned away from the windows and forced herself to once again focus her
attention on her inspection of the room. As Aidric had promised, rows upon rows
of bookshelves lined two of the walls, their presence adding a “homey” feeling
to an otherwise museum-like atmosphere.

She walked over to the set of bookshelves along the eastern wall and
began to scan its contents. Not surprisingly, given how she had ended up being
able to understand and speak the Lamian language, she found that she could read
the strange symbols on the spines of the books. Most of them were labeled as
spellbooks of various types, and something in her subconscious mind told her
that she should leave those particular books alone until Aidric offered to show
them to her.

The others were histories of what she guessed were past Lamian battles,
politics, and other related events. A few volumes contained what she assessed
by their titles to be local myths and legends. Eagerly, she pulled the thickest
of these folklore books off the shelf and began to thumb through it in hopes of
finding a section which explained the Prophecy of the Golden Mage. She really
knew nothing much about their prophecy, just that she was supposedly a powerful
mage that appeared from another world, identified by the color of her hair. Aidric
had been frustratingly vague when explaining the details of the prophecy,
though purposely, she was not certain. Maybe one of the books in his collection
would explain it to her more thoroughly.