The Song of Eloh Saga (36 page)

“I don’t know if I can untie my boots,” Ace said, reaching for his back again.

Krissin’s mouth curled into a tiny leer. “I think I can help you remove any article of clothing that’s giving you trouble.”

“Okay, you two, I think that’s enough,” Mark said, pulling Krissin’s arm out of Ace’s grasp. “Can we focus on what we’re here for? We’ve only got two days before we launch ourselves into war and we need to find out what Alia’s doing and why.”

“Hey, a man needs something to come home to after a war.” Ace winked at Krissin.

“Trust me, I understand that.” Mark looked over his shoulder at me. My heart warmed as I thought about someday, that boring future we both looked forward to. “But right now we need to focus.”

Ace strode over to Mark and clapped his hand on Mark’s shoulder. “You are my brother in the Sons,” Ace said. “You know better than anyone how serious, how deadly serious I can be about my work. I will find out what Alia is doing and we will win the upcoming war. I may not be gifted like your Prophet, but I am skilled in ways these girls could never imagine. I will do this. I swear it to you.”

I tried not to show my surprise. Ace didn’t know Mark was gifted. He had hid it well all these years, even from his best friend.

“And when we know what Alia is doing,” Krissin added, her eyes narrowing, “I will show her exactly what it means to face someone with a strong, more deadly gift.”

“What is your gift?” I’d never thought to ask before. She’d told me she was stronger than Nemison, probably as strong as me if not stronger, but never divulged her particular gift.

“You don’t want to know,” she said.

Chapter Fifteen

The next morning Mark knocked on my door before I’d even gotten out of bed. I pulled on a robe over my nightdress and opened the door.

“What now?” I asked under my breath as I yanked him into my room. I had tossed and turned all night and wasn’t ready to face the day yet. I’d rolled the options over in my head all night. We had to discover what Alia’s game was before Krissin revealed her plan to the people. Too much was at stake. Too much rested on my visions.

“What role does Krissin and Jada expect me to play if I haven’t seen anything yet? I’ve had one vision, a vision of death in the streets below us. That’s not enough. They want something bigger, something that will convince everyone to fight.”

“I don’t know.” He shut the door as I sank into the chair by the window. Mark walked over and kissed me on the cheek while I gazed out the window. The clouds rolled in from the west. Dark clouds, amassing like an army in the sky.

I felt the familiar dizziness and grabbed on to the arms of the chair. Relieved and frightened at the same time, this time I was prepared.

The vision flashed before my eyes and was over as quickly as it began. I rested my head on the back of the chair, letting my eyelids close as I processed what I’d seen.

“Reychel,” Mark asked, “are you okay?” He kneeled down and took my hand in his. I glanced at him as his eyes studied my face. I couldn’t help notice how handsome he was. Grateful I didn’t have nausea this time, I couldn’t stomach the thought of vomiting in front of him. This vision was shorter, lasting only a few seconds. Maybe that made a difference.

“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.