The Song of Eloh Saga (29 page)

I fought to maintain a cool expression. No one needed to know what Mark and I shared.

“I don’t know how deep your feelings run but I do want you to know that we are very grateful you chose to come to us over running off with the Sons of Silence. The Sons should be on the move to help us. Will you be able to contain your feelings if he does show up? I can’t have young love getting in the way of what we are building here.”

“It won’t be a problem,” I said. I wondered if I was assuring myself more than Jada. Only a few hours old, the hurt still stung. I had thought Mark would be with me now, that he would have come away with Nemison and me.

Bringing the Sons into our operation to break up the wedding instead of telling me first hurt. We’d spent time alone on the way to the castle. He could have told me, but he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t trust me enough, maybe I’d read too much into our relationship. If he would have given me a chance, trusted me, maybe we could have worked the Sons into the plan, a plan that didn’t involve violence and death.

After walking in silence for a few more minutes, we arrived at my chamber door.

“I want you to go in and relax for the rest of the evening. I’ll have Alia bring you some dinner. The sun will be down soon and you can sit by the fire or go to sleep early.”

“What will I be doing for the next couple weeks?” I asked, not sure what my role would be in this volatile land.

“Studying and learning more about your gift,” Jada said. “We have an amazing library containing the works of Zelor, the first Prophet. The man who told us you would come. You need to learn more about his gift and how he used it.”

“In hopes it will help me with mine?” I asked.

“Exactly. But I do need to warn you. Some of his writings are disturbing, to say the least. It’s believed Zelor went insane the last years of his life, rarely leaving his cottage and when he did people were left to deal with his mad rantings.”

“Do you really think there might be something in his journals that will help me?” I asked. I didn’t care how crazy he was. If I could learn to harness my gift, reading a madman’s journals would be worth it.

“We can only hope. Reychel, we need you. We need to, in essence, give you to the people as a beacon of hope. A prophecy of our success would only cement their belief and help to rally them to our side. It might even convince a few sympathetic, but cynical Malborn to our side. But I won’t have you lie. A false prophecy could be damaging to our cause. It undermines everything we’re trying to achieve. Honesty, peace, free will. Manipulating people is just as underhanded as anything the Malborn have done over the years.”

I pondered her words. It was true and I was in complete agreement with her. I didn’t want to lie to anyone, much less thousands of people who should trust me.

“Thank you, Jada,” I said. “The past year has been crazy. When Johna and Mark figured out who I was, who they believed I was, I was stunned. I hadn’t even heard of the prophecy until after my birthday.”

I was glad that tonight I’d be allowed to rest and process everything that had happened to me today. Jada reached out, as if we were old friends, and circled her arms around me. I collapsed into her embrace. If Krissin had greeted me this way, with compassion instead of with anger, this day might have been very different. Instead of frustrated and angry, I might have been more eager to learn more, but now I was just exhausted – mentally and physically.

“One more thing, Reychel,” Jada said, pulling back from the hug, but leaving her hands on my forearms. “I’m sorry about my father.”

“I’m sure Ivy soothed him,” I said. “It wasn’t his fault.”

Jada sighed. “It might have been. There’s no guarantee he was being soothed. None of us know for sure. My father has always been jealous of Nemison. He’s not as powerful. It wouldn’t surprise me if he saw a chance to usurp Nemison’s power. I just don’t think he counted on you spoiling his plans.”

I didn’t know what to say, whether to apologize or not.

“We don’t choose our parents, do we?” Jada asked with a smile on her face.

I thought of my own father, the man who’d kept me as a slave my entire life, who never allowed me out of the manor or to see the sky outside of his presence. The man who loved my mother, but killed her.

“No,” I agreed, “we don’t.”

Jada crossed to the other side of the room and placed her hands on a broad wooden table. “I think this should be about the right size.”

“For what?” I asked.

“Well, if you’re going to study those texts, we’ll need to have them brought in to you. No one knows you’re here and we can’t have people asking questions about you either. I’ll have a couple of slaves round up the journals. There’s nineteen of them,” she paused, “but we should have twenty.”

“What happened to the missing journal?” I asked.

“It’s in the Prophet’s house. It still stands in the town. The Malborn have tried many times to knock the house down, but they can’t. Something, no one knows what, keeps it standing no matter what they do.”

I looked out the window into the town. The palace soared into the sky and they’d given me a room in one of the tallest spires. The view was dizzying; I’d never been up this high before. The cloudless sky stretched far to the mountains and beyond while the sun roasted the barren lands below. Trees marched their way to the horizon, filling the groves with every kind of fruit imaginable. It was a land so different from my home.

“But don’t worry about The Book of Secrets,” Jada continued. “It’s supposed to be inside the house but no one has ever found it. In fact, very few people even know it exists. Amazing considering it’s a one-room shack. Zelor certainly knew how to use his gift to hide things.”

I nodded, not sure what else to say about it. If I had nineteen volumes to read, I’d be too busy to worry about one missing journal.

“Get some rest,” Jada said. “When you wake up, just ring the bell and someone will be in to serve you.”

I didn’t turn from the window as she quietly left my room. I stared at the sky, hoping for a sign, for even the tiniest vision, but nothing came to me.

Chapter Five

Zelor’s Journals: Book One

The nights seem shorter now that I spend my time awake and the days seem longer because I am always trying to sleep. I need to block it out. I must or I don’t know what will happen to me. The visions, they come all the time now. A glance at a cloud is all it takes and I am bombarded with more images than I can handle. Much of it means nothing to me.

In the beginning my visions were of events of the utmost importance. Now I can see the farmer on the other side of the creek deliver a foal. I can feel the mare’s pain, the burning and tearing as the farmer reaches inside her to pull out the breech foal. She whinnies in pain, her legs kicking out behind her. Finally relief. The foal is delivered. She lies down on the hay and sleeps, never to awaken again.

How is this relevant? Why does Eloh send me these visions? They help no one, they do nothing to help my people who are being forced to succumb to the Malborn, the invaders who are quickly overtaking our land. Even our most gifted seem unable to stop them. My only gift, the gift of prophecy, has done so little. I did not see the Malborn coming; I did not see their domination of my people.

What good am I to my people?

Chapter Six

I ducked under the table as another bomb exploded. Burnt air drifted through my window, clearing away the fresh air I had welcomed not more than an hour ago.

“Clear!” The yell came from outside.

I crawled on my hands and knees like a child, hiding under the table. My nose wrinkled at the sulfur floating through the air. It was hard to study with all of the commotion outside but if they were going to raise an army, they needed firepower when the time came to fight. The head scientist, Grommel, spent hours each day inventing new artillery, anything to help when the time came to battle the Malborn. Krissin had placed men throughout all sections of the military to prepare for her war.

Sadly, the men firing off the bombs didn’t know they might be the first target. It was hard for me to put that out of my mind. Every day we moved closer to the takeover. A day closer to more bloodshed. I hadn’t said so, but I’d made it my mission to find a way around killing people for our freedom. There had to be another way and I would find it.

I’d spent hours each day at a beat up table studying texts from the past. It seemed Krissin tossed me a new tome every couple of hours, expecting me to find some gem of wisdom that would give me ultimate power over my visions. Unfortunately most of the journals didn’t make sense. Lines and lines of rambling texts about visions didn’t matter to my problem today. I needed to know how Zelor used the gift of prophecy.

I spent most of my time fighting the fatigue of sitting for hours on end. I’d spent my childhood doing endless chores from the time I woke until I went to bed and now that I had the luxury to sit all day, I wanted nothing more than to get up and wash a tub full of crusty dishes. I snaked myself out from underneath the table and stood, stretching my arms and legs.

“Reychel,” Krissin yelled as the door flew open. Her hands were hidden within the folds of her robe. She’d obviously used her gift to fling it open, otherwise her hands would still be on the door. Part of me surged with jealousy. I wanted to use mine with that kind of ease.

“Did you find it yet?” she asked. “The key?”

I sighed. The key. The one nugget of information that will unlock my gift. Zelor, my predecessor from seven generations of Serenians ago, had spent the last three years of his life locked away in his house, never venturing out into the world if there was a cloud in the sky. The visions were too painful for him, causing him headaches that would last for days with no relief.

During those years he wrote prolifically, expressing every idea, every vision, that he received. Many believed he fell into madness in those years, a possibility I considered with dread. If my powers were the same as his, I could suffer the same fate. He’d written of vomiting after every vision and as time went on he’d been plagued by headaches. So far I hadn’t experienced either, but it wasn’t clear what triggered the start of his illness.

I hadn’t had many visions yet either, not nearly the number he’d experienced. I’d also discovered that with greater exposure to the sky, a luxury I’d been deprived of for the first fifteen years of my life, I didn’t have visions with every cloud that drifted by. That puzzled me because up until recently every cloud sighting led to a trance and a vision. Now I just needed to learn how to bring them on. Great. One more thing to learn.

I looked up at Krissin. “No, I haven’t found the key.” I sighed. “If I had, do you think I’d still be looking through the library?”

Her eyebrows arched. “My, my for a girl who was so timid just a week ago you are certainly coming out of your shell, aren’t you?”

Yes, I had been timid. But after everything I’d seen in the last year, all of the friendships broken, and as all the lies unfurled, I was losing my innocence.

“Any news from the Sons?” I asked her.

“Nothing since yesterday’s report,” she said. “Nothing from Mark.”

“I didn’t ask about Mark.” I kept my eyes on the book.

“I know exactly what you were asking,” she said. Krissin walked over to the table and looked over my shoulder. “Maybe it’s time you took a break. You’ve been reading a lot. I’d hate to see you lose your eyesight, not just your supposed gift of prophecy.”

Again with the mocking. What was her problem? I laid a strip of cloth on the page I was reading and closed the book. I wasn’t quite sure what I’d do with a short break. I knew so few of the people who lived here. Those I did know, like Krissin or Jada, were busy with their own work. Besides, being with the girl who’d been nothing but rude since I met her didn’t sound like fun. I couldn’t go out because no one was supposed to know I was there. Trapped. Again.

Even Alia, who’d I’d tried to befriend could do little more than leave the room giggling.

“Any news of Nemison?” I asked Krissin. Even if she wouldn’t treat me with respect, I would give it to her. I wouldn’t let her change me. It wasn’t in me to strike back at her, no matter how much I wanted to. I’d asked every day over the last week, hoping for some word from him but so far, nothing. Though I hadn’t known it was possible to go back and save him, I still felt a constant pang of guilt.

“Nothing.” She’d finally come to accept it wasn’t my fault, but that didn’t make it easier for her. Krissin liked having someone to blame.

Jada ran through the doorway as Krissin and I eyed each other. We had little to say beyond Nemison and my lack of prophecy. I was grateful for the interruption. Jada waved a parchment in her hands.

“They’ll be here tomorrow,” she shouted, dancing around my room. “The Sons. Their messenger just arrived minutes ago.”

My hands clenched together in a wet embrace and my heart fluttered. If Mark was close, I didn’t know how I felt about it.

“He said their leader is a guy named Ace,” Jada continued. My heart dropped. Ace. The man who had revealed that Mark had sent his brothers to interrupt my plan at the wedding. The man who ordered his men to hold people at sword point. The man who ordered another’s death.

But the bigger question, was Mark still with him? They left Kandek’s wedding together, disappearing into the forest after their retreat.

“Ace?” Krissin said. “Really?” She squealed and twirled around my room, her silk dress floating up so high I almost glimpsed her under things. Definitely not becoming of a princess.

“You know Ace?” I asked.

“Know him?” Krissin giggled. I never thought I’d see that girl giggle. “I’m going to marry him.”

“You’re what?” I asked, stunned.

“She thinks she’s going to marry him,” Jada said narrowing her eyes. “Her father would not approve.”

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Krissin said. “It’s my life and I get to choose my husband. Ace is strong. Aren’t we fighting for our freedom here? Besides, he’s brave. He’s tall and handsome.” Her hand fluttered over her heart as she slumped on my bed.