Ensnared (Sorcery and Science Book 5) (9 page)

“I take it that if you’ve already found two of the books, this tapestry can be used to find the third?” she asked Jason.

“So the priests claim. As I have yet to make sense of it, I remain skeptical,” he replied.

“You could have asked them to figure it out. Then we wouldn’t be missing lunch.”

Jason gave Cameron a stony stare. “They weren’t even able to get the symbols to move. Even their best Cipher proved ineffectual.”

“I think we’re going about this in the wrong way,” said Isis, moving within a hand’s reach of the tapestry. “The three books are named for the Elition gifts of Memory, Vision, and Prophecy. Perhaps only together can a Prior, a Phantom, and a Prophet solve the puzzle.” She turned to Jason. “Where did you find the Book of Vision?”

“The Temple of the Veil.”

“Ok, the Temple of the Veil.” She pointed at three symbols in turn: a cloud filled with tiny dots, a bundle of five silver-green lines, and a golden square. “The cloud is the weather. That puts it in the northern part of Elitia, where the air is overcast and moist. The five lines represent the evergreens of the Elition kingdom of Mist Veil, the vast area of never-ending forests. The square is the golden-stoned walls of the temple. Jason, please drag those three symbols next to the eye.”

He swept a finger across the tapestry, sliding each symbol beside the eye. They drifted slowly, their ink darkening from grey to pure black as they locked into place.

“Ok, now the Book of Memory. That was taken from Orion. Cameron, if you please.”

Jason stepped aside to allow him access to the tapestry. Isis indicated three new floating symbols.

“That is Lake Orion,” she explained, and sure enough the shape perfectly matched the form of the lake along the Selpe capital.

As Cameron’s finger touched the symbol, his skin buzzed. It continued to pop and pulse as he moved the lake beside the book symbol.

“The northeast wind that bombards the Orion Peninsula.”

Cameron slid the symbol of four diagonal lines across the tapestry until it bounced gently off the book.

Isis pointed to two horizontal swiveling lines with a blue dot at each tip. “And finally, the two rivers that flow from the west coast all the way into Lake Orion.”

Once again, the symbols darkened, and they and the book settled into place. The remaining symbols all across the tapestry continued to float and wiggle for a few seconds, then three darkened as everything else faded. Isis pushed them over to the sphere, and the dozens of faded symbols vanished completely from the tapestry, leaving only twelve.

“And here we have the location of the temple holding the Book of Prophecy,” declared Isis.

“Where?” Cameron asked.

The Prophecy sphere wafted between three symbols: a curvy pale grey line, a blue-green evergreen, and a picture of three steep spikes with two touching circles beneath.

“The grey line is the twisting coastline of the Strand of Aurelia. The bluish evergreen puts the temple in the northwestern part of the kingdom, close to Mist Veil. And the spikes could only be the peaks of Aurelia’s Crown. The circles are the Lakes of Almira and Yvonne,” she explained.

“Aurelia’s children,” Cameron muttered.

“Who is Aurelia?” Everett asked.

“Aurelia was an Elition queen,” Cameron told him. “Legend tells us that she sealed Elitia off from the rest of the world so that we could all live in our own peaceful world. But she’d only completed the first part of the ritual, the creation of the invisible pockets of Elition civilization, when the powerful magic she wielded cost her her life. As she died, she cried out, knowing that she had no heir to carry on her work and complete the ritual, which would create portals to travel between the distant pockets, connecting the Elition villages. Her tears became the Lakes Almira and Yvonne, out of which emerged the fully-grown twins. Her children.

“The first sight Almira and Yvonne’s new eyes beheld was the death of their mother. They vowed to finish her work and connect the now isolated Elition villages. So they spent years traveling, pinpointing every pocket. Finally, by the end of their long journey, they’d woven the strands of the portal web, completing the ritual their mother had begun.”

“How…impossible,” Everett commented.
 

Cameron shrugged. “It’s just a myth. A metaphor. And I’ve always thought Almira and Yvonne were not really Aurelia’s children, but more like fragments of herself split off from her as she died. Though that’s not how the tale goes.”

“Fascinating. I like your interpretation,” Isis said.

“The priests never cared to hear my version. They found it fanciful and preposterous.”

“That’s precisely what makes it interesting. And makes you a good storyteller,” she told him.

Everett was shaking his head slowly. “But not all Elition lands are hidden away in these pockets. Eclipse is, but the rest of Elitia is right out there in front of our eyes.”

“The Shroud that concealed the Elition lands was torn centuries ago,” Cameron explained. “Very few hidden pockets remain. Eclipse is one of them.”

Jason turned to Isis, pointing at the tapestry. “That was remarkable.”

The remaining symbols had locked back into place, and now color was quickly spreading over the entire surface of the fabric. Soon, it would look like any other tapestry.

“Thank you.”

“The Temple of Aurelia,” he said.

“So it would seem.”

“Do you know the best path there?”

She bit her lip. “There’s nothing truly direct. Is there a portal from Eclipse to Pegasus?”

“Yes. It will bring us to the forest between Rosewater and Chrysalis,” Jason told her.

“Ok. There’s a portal from the Pegasus coast to the Strand of Aurelia. We’ll have to hike a bit, but we should be able to make it to the Temple of Aurelia in a few days.”

Cameron perked up. “Then we can leave this afternoon.” After lunch, of course.

“We’ll be facing an elite order of assassins and the Avans, probably led by Nemesis. I think you should stay behind. It’s not safe,” Isis told him.

“What? No!” he shouted. “She’s
my
sister, Isis.”

Everett’s mouth gaped open. He looked from Jason to Cameron, smashing his palm against his forehead. “Sister. Of course. It all makes sense now.”

Oops.
Cameron sighed.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.

“You are the son of the high king of Elitia.”

Maybe.
Cameron sealed his lips.

“Sorin Storm, the missing Elition boy. You, my friend, are worth one hundred thousand Crowns.”

“I’m not a boy,” Cameron grumbled.

“A man then,” Everett said, giving him a congenial smile.

Cameron hoped he wasn’t already mentally spending the reward money.

Jason positioned himself between them, his eyes cold and dark. “Do we have a problem here, mercenary?”

“Actually, yes.” Everett’s eyes shifted from Cameron to Jason and back again. “I’m completely confused. What exactly is your name then?” he chuckled.

Jason stepped back. The tension melted off of Cameron’s body. Everett wasn’t going to turn him in. He’d become too intertwined in their lives. He wasn’t Elition, but he was one of them now. A man of Eclipse.

“It’s complicated,” said Cameron.

“Elition things always are.”

Cameron couldn’t argue with that. “I was born Sorin Storm, though I don’t have any memories of those early months. The Revs who found me named me Cameron. I decided to stick with it.”

“But you took on Storm for your last name?” Everett asked.

“The Revs didn’t know my lineage, and they didn’t bother making up a last name for me. I was just Cameron. I’d always wanted a last name. Everyone else had them. So when I found out who my family really was, I became Cameron Storm. Or, to be more precise, Mythos Cameron Cross Storm.”

“Long,” said Everett.

“Elition naming is designed to track family lines through the generations,” Jason told him. “That necessitates some complexity.”

“Where does ‘Mythos’ come in?”

“It’s my formal name, the one used with those not close to me,” said Cameron. “Elitions get a power name around the age of twelve, when we go through the Passing.”

“Passing?” Everett asked.

“Elitions are not born with all our abilities turned on,” explained Cameron. “Our senses improve gradually for the first decade of life, then by the time we reach adolescence, our individual gifts have surfaced. This is also the same time our physical attributes change, giving us a distinctively Elition appearance.”

“Like not-quite-human hair,” Isis said, twirling a pink-blonde lock around her finger.

“This time of physical and mental metamorphosis is highlighted by a ceremony called the Passing,” Cameron continued. “For every Elition twelve-year-old, there comes a day when he or she is summoned to the temple. It is the day each of us is tested.”

“What kind of test?” asked Everett.

Isis raised a trembling hand to her cheek. “A difficult one.” She dropped her hand quickly, hiding it behind her back. “But we do not speak of it.”

“To humans?”

“To anyone,” she replied. “Even to other Elitions. It is a deeply personal experience. The only other people who know the details of an Elition’s Trials of Passing are the priests overseeing it, and they are sworn to secrecy.”

“Based on the results of the Trials of Passing, the priests give us a power name that’s supposed to represent our abilities,” Cameron said. “Any Elition who hears the name Mythos will instantly identify me as a Prior.”

“Really?”

“Really, really.”

“As a very strong Prior actually,” Jason added. “The name not only identifies the talent but the strength of said talent.”

“Huh.”

“Jason is Magus. You may have heard Elitions calling him that,” Cameron said.

Everett nodded.

“Magus is a strong name. It is absolutely fitting for the Elite Phantom,” Cameron explained further.

“If you say so. They all sound much the same to me. I have a hard time even identifying the talent from the name.”

“Prophets are the easiest,” Jason told him. “They have names like Fate and Serendipity. Or Isis’s friend Destiny. Or…”

He looked at Isis. She bit down on her lip and said nothing. For a while, Cameron thought she would not, in fact, answer him.

“Oracle,” she finally whispered.

Jason stared at her. “That is a powerful name.”

This time, she actually did remain silent.

“Well, I think that’s all the Elition sociology I can absorb for this day.” Everett rubbed his temples, as though it hurt to think. “Or this year,” he added under his breath.

“Then let’s eat,” suggested Cameron. “And enjoy it while we can. Soon it will be nothing but sandwiches.”

Everett frowned. “I thought you liked my sandwiches.”

“I do. But not three times a day for weeks at a time.”

“You don’t have to come,” Isis pointed out.

“Yes, I really do,” Cameron insisted. He couldn’t just sit there while his sister was being hunted. It would drive him mad.

“It’s not safe,” she repeated.

“I think Cameron has handled himself quite well these past few months. Besides, he deserves to go, to finally meet his sister,” Everett voiced.

Cameron smiled. “Thanks, Everett.”

Isis’s smile bore icicles. “Yes, thank you, indeed.” She turned to Jason. “Jason?”

Cameron held his breath. For as long as they’d known each other, Jason had insisted that it was better for Cameron to be safe than to be free. ‘Safe’ to Jason meant high stone walls and posted guards. After the tenth or so time of tracking him down inside the Wilderness and depositing him back at Black Moss, he’d even threatened iron bars.

“It is his right,” Jason said to Isis.

When his shock had faded, Cameron grinned. Isis crossed her arms against her chest and sighed. She didn’t look by any means pleased that she’d been so overwhelmingly outvoted.

CHAPTER NINE

~
Broken Prophets ~

526AX August 20, Eclipse

THE STORM CLOUDS were nearly black when Isis came to see Jason at his cabin. Leaves rustled in the wind and rain rattled hard against his roof, the autumn sounds masking the steps of her approach. It was only the gentle tug at his mind that preceded the knock at the door. Jason set his book down on the side table and stood from the sofa.

Her dark silhouette stood framed against a smokey-grey sky as he opened the door. Isis must have retreated several steps back since knocking, and she now stood exposed to the rain. She wrung her hands and shifted her weight uneasily between her feet, oblivious to the shower of water droplets bombarding her hooded head.

Jason motioned her in and shut the storm out behind her. She dropped her hood, splattering the wall behind her. Her drenched boots squeaked and squelched, then came to an abrupt halt as she noticed the trail of puddles she’d left in her wake. Offering an apologetic half-smile, she didn’t move another step. Jason didn’t mention the trail of water streaming down her jacket onto the arm of his sofa.