Prisoner of Fate (39 page)

‘It’s passed. I’ll take the first watch,’ Meg said firmly. ‘You get some sleep. I’ll keep the fire going.’

She moved away from the firelight as the others settled to sleep, her mind troubled by the terrifying possibilities in what she had learned. Treasure Goodenough. Had she found her lost son in his children? Had she, after so many fruitless and wasteful years, found her grandchildren? Was fate so cruel and so kind that it had brought them all together in the hunt for the truth?
And what is the truth
? she wondered, staring back at the reclined figures by the fire. If she told them that she thought she was their grandmother, what then? How would they react?
Swift would deny it
, she decided ruefully.
She’d think it was the ravings of a desperate
and demented old woman.
Swift had spirit, more spirit than she had at the same age.
I was happy
, she reminisced.
I was married, I had children, I was in Summerbrook.
Tears filled the corners of her eyes.
I thought I was past this
, she thought bitterly, and she stifled a sob.
Am I really becoming just an old fool
?

She sat on a chunk of marble at the edge of the shelter and sniffed back a tear. ‘It’s possible they are my grandchildren,’ she whispered, consoling herself, ‘but how can I be sure? How can I be sure?’ She wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth gently, silently arguing the logic of chance operating so randomly that it had brought them together, listening to the soft rain whispering through the trees.

The dream had never been so clear. The man seated in the chair in the oval room she recognised immediately as the shadow man in the library, but she could see his boyish features in his dark complexion, his sparkling dark eyes and a shock of jet-black hair. ‘I don’t get visitors,’ he said in greeting. And it was then she realised that Whisper was curled in his lap. ‘She’s been waiting for you,’ the young man told her. ‘You have to believe in the key.’

‘What does that mean?’ she asked.

‘If you believe, you will know what it means,’ he said, and the light surrounding him faded until she was embraced in darkness.

S
he woke to a black world filled with the noise of cicadas. The rain had stopped. The fire was dead. She’d slept on her watch. She conjured a light sphere and stood, willing the sphere to rise and illuminate the tiny camp site. All three companions were asleep, lying against each other for warmth. Wahim was snoring. So was Swift, softly. Chase was curled in a ball, like a baby, his blanket beside him, and she felt a strong maternal urge to cover him. She crept to his side and carefully drew the blanket over his torso and smiled, admiring his stubbled face. If Emma had lived, her boy—if the child was a boy—would be a similar age. The sad thought kept her standing over Chase for a moment and a tear welled in her eye. The possibility that Chase really was her grandson made her retreat several paces to fight back her emotions.

When she was composed, she crept from the camp into the ruin where Whisper had been digging that morning, the floating sphere lighting her way. The air was chilly, and a glance skyward showed her that the sky was filled with invisible clouds that blocked the starlight. The marble rubble threatened to clatter and wake the others, but she moved with great care
until she reached the block bearing the inscription, which she read again. ‘Believe,’ she murmured. That had always been her greatest challenge—to believe in the amber. The magic had brought too much pain, too much loss for her to believe in it. Memories of Se’Treya filled her mind, the encounters with A Ahmud Ki.

‘Where did you go?’ she whispered. She let go of the thought and focussed on where she was.
I have to believe
, she reminded herself. Closing her eyes, she clutched the amber against her chest with both hands and concentrated her thought on the place where she’d met the man in her dream.
I believe
, she thought.
I do believe.

Suffering the same destabilising effect as she remembered from her travels to Se’Treya, she suppressed nausea as she opened her eyes and found that she was standing in an oval room, lit by a floating light sphere similar to the kind she created. Facing her was a young man seated in a plush dark-red armchair, wearing a black robe, with a shock of jet-black hair surrounding a dark face. She instinctively looked in the folds of the robe and saw Whisper, almost invisible, curled asleep in his lap. ‘You came,’ the young man said. ‘I was expecting you.’

Meg felt the giddiness subside. ‘I wasn’t sure if this would work.’

‘It almost didn’t,’ the young man said. He gently lifted the sleeping bush rat from his lap and lowered her into his chair as he stood. ‘She’s getting older,’ he noted as he straightened. ‘I’m Erin.’

‘Meg,’ Meg responded.

‘Like my sister,’ Erin said. ‘Her name was Megen. She had blond hair. I had two sisters.’

‘What happened to them?’

‘Megen didn’t want to stay. She fell in love.’

‘And your other sister?’

Erin shook his head. ‘She died. And then she left too.’

‘Where am I?’ she asked, wondering if she’d correctly heard Erin’s last response about his second sister.

‘You’re in the catacombs of the Khvech Daas. This used to be the fortress of the Ashuak Khvechevik, the dragon priests, until it was destroyed.’

‘We’re under the rubble?’ she queried.

‘That is one way to describe it,’ he said. ‘I presume the city is still dead.’

‘Apart from the rabbits,’ Meg remarked. ‘How do you get in and out of here?’

‘I don’t,’ he replied.

His answer made no sense to her. Then she recalled A Ahmud Ki’s fate, bound by his enemy to the dragon statue in Se’Treya. ‘Are you being held prisoner?’

‘No.’ Erin ran his hand through his hair and looked down at Whisper. ‘I thought she would never come back.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Meg. ‘You’ve seen Whisper before?’

He chuckled to himself. ‘Oh, yes. I missed her when she left. I thought I’d never see her again.’

Meg stared at the sleeping bush rat and then at Erin. Nothing was making sense. ‘How long ago did you last see her?’ she asked tentatively.

He turned to her and rubbed his chin with his forefinger. ‘A long time ago. I don’t keep track of time any more. I tried, but it got tedious. It has to be at least three hundred years.’ Meg blinked.
Three hundred years
? she contemplated. She knew that Whisper was old, unnaturally old for an animal, having received her as a gift from Samuel Kushel when she was fifteen, but for the bush rat to have lived for three centuries? ‘You’re surprised, aren’t you?’ he asked.

‘I—it’s just, well, I know she’s unusual—’

‘Magical,’ Erin interjected. ‘She’s a magical construct. I made her.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she said, staring at Whisper.

‘My sister, Caetlyn—I told you that she died. She was murdered, by a man whom she refused to marry. Caetlyn was very gifted. She couldn’t speak aloud, but she could use mindspeak. She became the object of an Ukesu warrior’s love, but he couldn’t understand that she didn’t love him so he speared her out of spite. Friends brought her to me to save her life, but she was already dead. I tried to bring her back—’ He choked and paused to catch his breath. ‘I nearly lost myself in the shadows of death,’ he continued, ‘but I retrieved a spark of her and I put that spark inside the only living creature I had in these catacombs. A rat.’

‘Whisper is your sister?’

Erin looked at Meg, his dark eyes brimming with tears, and he laughed, a response that startled her. ‘It’s true. My sister is a rat,’ he said, and laughed again. When he saw Meg wasn’t laughing with him, he said, ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

‘I don’t know what to believe,’ she answered.

‘You probably think I’m mad or cruel for putting my sister’s essence, her being, inside a rat.’

‘I don’t know what to think,’ she said, caught in confusion and uncertainty of Erin’s mood.

‘I loved Caetlyn. I didn’t want to lose her. Megen had already gone. I didn’t want to be alone,’ he explained. ‘What would you have done?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I really don’t know.’

Erin turned to the chair and lifted the sleepy rat, cradling her in his arms. ‘That’s why she’s telepathic.’ He rolled her over and spread apart the fur on the underside of her neck. ‘You never found this, did you?’
Meg squinted, but all she could see was purple skin beneath the black fur. She shook her head. ‘No. It’s not easy to see if you don’t know it’s there,’ said Erin. ‘I buried a tiny sliver of amber under her skin. It sustains her. That’s why she’s so old and still alive. She carries a tiny piece of the Genesis Stone.’

Meg’s eyes widened as a host of things she never quite understood about Whisper’s uncanny abilities suddenly snapped into clarity—why Whisper was never injured in a fracas, how she was able to appear and disappear at crucial moments, why she could communicate, why she never aged. Whisper carried the amber too. Annoyed at the unwanted attention, the rat wriggled out of Erin’s grasp and jumped effortlessly to the floor. She sniffed Meg’s boots before she scampered out of the room.

A thousand questions spiralled through Meg’s mind, each begging to be answered, but the one that came first was, ‘So why did she end up with my great-uncle Samuel?’

‘I don’t know your great-uncle, but I’m guessing that my other sister, Megen, was your ancestor, related somewhere in your family tree.’

‘Why is that important?’

‘The amber,’ Erin said. ‘It all has to do with the amber.’

‘I can’t find her anywhere,’ said Chase as he met Wahim at the centre of the rubble. The rising sun’s rays were gilding the tree canopies and the ruin echoed to a cacophony of bird song.

‘Perhaps she’s gone into the city?’ Wahim suggested. ‘Without telling us? Why would she do that?’ Wahim shook his head. He looked up and saw Swift approaching from the south-east corner of the ruin. ‘Anything?’

‘Nothing,’ Swift said. ‘No tracks, not even into the tunnel we came through.’

‘She can’t just have vanished?’ Chase argued.

‘Oh yes she can,’ Swift retorted. ‘First her rat disappeared yesterday, and now she disappears overnight.’ She swore and squatted on her haunches.

‘We can’t have missed anything,’ said Wahim. ‘We’ve searched everywhere.’

‘Three times,’ said Chase. ‘I vote we go into the city. She has to be there.’

‘What if she really has used her magic to leave us here?’ Swift asked.

‘I don’t see the sense in that,’ Wahim argued. ‘What reason would she have?’

Swift shrugged. ‘The old woman is strange at any time. Who knows her reasons?’

‘So what will we do?’ asked Chase.

‘We wait,’ Swift replied and swore.

‘Let’s catch some rabbits while we’re waiting,’ Wahim suggested. ‘I could eat some cooked meat.’

‘I sailed with Julian Kushel for a year,’ Erin explained as he led Meg along a short stone passage, a light sphere floating above them. ‘His grandfather was Sardek Kushel, a famous sea captain in Ashuak and Jaru history. My sister sailed with Julian Kushel after she left here, so I was told, and loved him for at least long enough to have a son to him. Then she went her own way again. I never heard anything else about her, but if your name is Kushel, as you say, then that would explain why Whisper has come to you. You have one of the surviving shards of amber that Alwyn took from the last Dragonkin. Megen left it with her son.’ He finished as they entered an octagonal room with openings in every wall. ‘Welcome to the stored knowledge of the known world up until the collapse of the Ashuak
Empire, and some beyond then that I collected,’ he announced, and the sphere brightened as it reached the ceiling. ‘Where do you want to go? Sekesu?’ He pointed to one opening. ‘Chekisu, perhaps,’ and he indicated another opening.

‘What’s through the openings?’ Meg asked.

‘Books,’ he said. ‘The oldest libraries, collected from the first writings on stone to the paper collections the Western Shess kings began to accumulate. If it was written down somewhere in the world, a copy of it will be stored down here.’

‘You said I have one of the surviving shards of amber,’ Meg stated. ‘How many others are there?’

Erin looked at her as if he was assessing her intention, before he replied, ‘Just me.’

‘You?’

He touched his chest. ‘I’m the only other amber shard. That’s why Whisper followed you. She was charged to protect the second shard, the one Megen took with her. Wherever that shard was passed, Whisper was to protect it, or retrieve it if it was stolen or lost.’

Meg considered the choice of openings. ‘Does one of these lead to Andrak?’

Erin shook his head. ‘Not Andrak. Perhaps you mean Andrakis?’

‘That was its old name.’

‘This way,’ Erin gestured, and he directed her along a short corridor into another octagonal room, one much larger than the initial chamber, its walls filled from floor to ceiling with shelves of books and parchments. A table and two chairs sat in the centre of the room on a floor that was etched with a map. Using her amber to translate the names, Meg gazed at the outlines of the old Andrakian, Ranu, Targan, Uz Erhaagian and Androsian kingdoms. ‘Nations change
over time,’ Erin said, crossing the room to the table. ‘The map was drawn from an ancient parchment.’ He sat and crossed his legs, and asked, ‘Why did you choose this library?’

‘I lived in Andrak for a while,’ she explained. ‘Just curious.’

‘I don’t have guests,’ he said. ‘You’re my first visitor since I sealed myself in here. I haven’t got food or drink anywhere for you.’

‘You sealed yourself in? Why?’

‘I made a decision that was mine to make,’ he said, but she heard a defensive tone that made her curious.

‘What decision was that?’ she asked.

‘You had a reason for coming here,’ he replied, avoiding her question. ‘What is it?’

Tempted as she was to pursue her question, she sensed that it was a taboo matter. Instead, she said, ‘What do you know about the Demon Horsemen?’

All three started at the echoing report of a thundermaker and Swift rose, drawing her knife and staring to the south. ‘Surely the Kerwyn haven’t followed us all this way?’ Chase muttered. Another shot echoed through the city.

‘Did we see any thundermakers in the Ashuak towns we passed through?’ Swift asked.

‘I wasn’t looking for them,’ said Chase. ‘Were you?’

Swift glared at him. ‘We should be safe in here,’ Wahim suggested. ‘If they do come, we can easily defend the tunnel.’

‘With what?’ asked Swift sarcastically. ‘One knife? You might be able to brawl, Wahim, but a thundermaker will just put a hole through you. And you, half-brother…’ She left her statement deliberately unfinished for effect.

Wahim and Chase looked at her sheepishly. A third shot resounded in the distance. ‘What if they’re shooting at Meg?’ Chase suddenly considered.

‘You two stay here,’ said Swift. ‘I’ll go and see what’s going on.’

‘And we’ll do what?’ asked Chase.

‘You’ll wait,’ said Swift, fixing him with a cool stare.