The Exodus Sagas: Book III - Of Ghosts And Mountains (9 page)

Angeline Berren kept walking, steady breathing, eyes and feelings mindful of everything around her. The second tree, a willow, she recalled following light in there after some months training with the men. She had learned how to meditate, to listen to the voices and will of those that dwelled here. They knew what she thought and said, so she learned that prayer was unnecessary. It was simply talking out loud the things that true immortals were already well aware of. Here she told her secrets however, confessed and faced her own voice on what she had done, what she had become. She heard the will tell her to make amends for seven years, but make them in silence. Until she could communicate without words, she was still lost, so she learned how.

The light was red like her hair, green like her robes, and peaceful like her spirit. Light from nowhere, just illumination as she stepped into the darkness alone. The third tree was ahead, rooted into the stone deep underground where Larens, her mentor, had told her it would be. A magnificent banyan tree, nearly two hundred feet tall, the trunk like a tower, and the roots were as rivers in and out of the mountain itself. Angeline touched one of the leaves from a branch, it was as big as she was, smelled sweet, and was full of life here in the dark.
Walk past Angeline, just walk past and meet her.
She spoke to herself, telling her mind and body what to do as the real became unreal, the physical became unimportant and everything hummed and glowed with each step she took.

Past the tree there was another cavern, full of trees, smaller ones, growing out of the stone walls, the ceiling if there was one, and even out of the ponds that dotted the ground. Brown stone, rich and inviting and smooth, it glowed as her boots touched down and hummed to the grass. The grass hummed and whispered to the trees, and the water rippled and babbled to the air. Tiny lights came from the canopies of branches, little wings flittering and singing in a strange tongue. The song was sad at first, yet joyful sorrow somehow. A white clothed man was weeping by a bed of vines, and a woman as well.

“I will leave you mother, I will see my brother now, but I will come back soon.” The bearded man spoke softly, but with a deep voice. He turned and walked past Angeline, his blue eyes glowing, tears wetting his face and black beard.

“You must be Angeline of Charity, go on to my mother then.” He spoke deeply, unavoidable blue iridescent eyes trapping her attention.

“I am Angeline, and you are?”

“Go son, go to your father as well. I have not seen him in so long, tell him my heart please.” The woman called to her son in song, her eyes glowing green, solid green like sunlight through emeralds. Her clothing was as green vines and silks of the earth, her hair long and white. She sat up from her bed of plants, turned her head and smiled, light from her eyes looking at Angeline.

“My child, daughter of the earth, the moons, and the Soujan. We meet at last.”

Angeline fell to her knees, trembling, frozen with fear and awe. The woman had no eyes, only empty sockets with green light. She looked away, the man was gone, vanished.

“Do not be afraid. You are not afraid of my voice, why fear you my presence? Is it my eyes?”

Angeline stood, pulling on her own will, closed her eyes and concentrated on banishing the fear from her conscious self. She opened them again. “Yes, great mother, I was not expecting you to look as this.”

“Strange how we take sounds and words and turn them into images in our minds. Curious how expectation is our worst enemy. And yet you can see me for how I am, you have grown Angeline.” Seirena, the banished Goddess of the earth and life, spoke with a smile as she stepped closer to her devout servant.

“How did this happen?”

“My father, the creator of all, he took one of my eyes.”

“And the other?”

“I took it myself, giving it to the earth so I may see all my children and they may find me. Yjaros can see through my eyes, should he possess them both, so I had no choice.”

“How?” Angeline had not expected an older woman, missing eyes, looking so frail.

“The one he took, he placed in his forehead, for I had the gift of sight and he coveted it so. He was angry when we tricked him thousands upon thousands of years ago, when we led our people away you see.” Seirena kissed a darting sprite as it landed on her shoulder.

“The three eyed God, the God of Gods, they worship him in the north. The great Empires of Altestan, the three dragons of the Emperors, they carry his banner and conquer in his name. Why?” Angeline felt sad, wishing she could reverse whatever had happened as if she had been there.

Seirena took Angeline by the hand and began to walk through the grass and ponds in her home deep inside the mountain. “My child, have you ever played with toys and blocks?”

“No great mother.”

“Call me Seirena, I am mother to all, yet I like to hear my name on the air.”

“Yes Seirena.” Angeline was walking on water now, her feet in step with the Goddess.

“Have you ever baked bread or cooked and ruined the recipe or burned your dish, Angeline?”

“Yes actually.” Angeline chuckled, remembering her first time cooking anything back in northern Kivanis as a young girl.

“What did you do?”

“I threw it out, after trying to scrape the burned parts off of the bread. Nothing could be saved, so I started over.”

“Yjaros, my father, thought much as you did back then. He feels this world is burnt, ruined, so he tried to use force and clean it up to his liking. That is when we fled.” Seirena looked to the canopy, floating now with Angeline as the air obeyed their wishes.

“He can do that?”

“He created me, my brother Megos, and our sister who shall not be spoken of. He wished to toss this world away, and start over. We did not allow that to happen. For our trickery, our love of this world and all that exists, we all paid terrible prices, Angeline. We suffered, and still do.” The trees parted, still floating up with her newest disciple, the Goddess felt the weight of her words upon Angeline.

“Can he be stopped?”

“No. He is God. He imprisoned my son Annar who you just met. He also imprisoned my brother to the white moon, and took the green moon from me and cast me to the earth. He did many horrible things to his children and grandchildren, forcing us to run and hide.”

“Why can’t you simply rise up, unite and stop him?”

“That is another long story, yet we are here to talk of you, your path, and the wishes I have for you.” Seirena touched the stone wall above the canopy of branches neverending inside the mountain. “I hope we all survive long enough to see many things come to pass. It takes time untold, however, it is laid in the stars beyond my sight, so we wait. And we train, and we prepare, and we help others. As you know, only through total loss can one achieve victory over themselves. Only through surviving the impossible at the end, can we hope to make a possible future.”

“The Soujan code. Where I was in the dark will leave me a journey to find where I will be in the light.” Angeline smiled, thinking of the wicked harlot she once was, and what she was today.

“Very true, and you will become one of our chosen this morning, Angeline Berren. Should you choose to.”

“Our?”

“Yes, a chosen protector of the Caricians, a Knight Soujan. One who has come from the meek, the unworthy, and found themself reborn despite wanting to die. Only the weak and wicked, so is the curse of Yjaros upon us. It cannot be undone. Have you been reborn from your afflictions?” The Goddess stood larger now somehow before Angeline, and passed through solid stone and was gone.

“Yes!” Angeline yelled at the stone, the room growing dark without the light of Seirena. She pushed on the stone, it was solid and she did not pass.

“Do you swear to protect those of the white moon and my brother Megos? To stand for life and those that I love?” The voice echoed through stone and empty cavern.

“Yes!” Angeline simply walked into the wall to follow, her face and body hitting stone once more. She did not pass.

“Will you seek to find my son Haddius the Ruler of the Oceans and my son Solumet the King of the Sun who were imprisoned by my father thousands of years ago?” The words became force, became real in the blackness. Powerful words that could be felt but not seen.

“Yes!” Angeline fell to her knees, crying now, and sensing failure that she could not pass through the stone wall and follow the mother of the earth.

“Will you honor my children Annar, Embodiment of Strength, Alden Lord of Heaven, Vasentanessa the Lover and Judge, Siril Guardian of the Woods and Sky and Vundren Sentinel of the Mountains? All my Carician children and not just me?”

“Yes, yes, yes, all of it! Just please let me follow you!” Angeline felt no warmth. Cold and alone, doubting everything, feeling failure as real as the mountain she could not move through.

“No living being may pass. Only an immortal, a blessed messiah of the old Gods, one who will truly serve with love and honor may pass. Draw your blade and make it so.”

Something was wrong, the voice was different than what she had felt in her meditations all these long years in silence. Her blade was in her hands, the hand and a half sword that she could easily plunge into her own chest and pass the test of the Goddess, yet something was not as it should be. Her tears stopped. Angeline stood. “You want me to end my life, by my blade?”

“Yes, my child.”

“No.”

“You defy me?”

“No. I would not trade my life for one of immortality, for power, not for any reason or cause. All life, even mine, is precious. Suicide is never a course for a Knight Soujan.”

The stone parted, trembling with forces unseen on the surface, and Angeline was blinded by the lights of gold and green and white. Her heart and breath seemed to stop at once. Pure air, pure light, a being of force too bright to make out hovered above a lush forest deep within the stone of Soujan Mountain. Her green eyes were the same, yet her body was young, hair of gold, and skin of white marble under flowing gowns. The melody was deafening yet intoxicating, unknown songs from hundreds of beings unseen guided her inside.

The being pointed her hand to a grove of trees emanating with green sunshine from everywhere, their vines wrapped around ornate swords of all different styles and shapes, glistening in the glow of the Goddess.

“Your vows are complete. You are indeed reborn, Angeline. I hold you to your words. For many years have I watched you, heard you, spoken to you, and listened to you. You are here for a reason, and therefore precious. You seek not power, nor greed, nor fame. A sword here, one of dozens blessed over the ages by the Caricians, awaits your touch. For you and your blade shall be one, and you will carry it with honor.” Seirena settled to the ground, her bare feet touching the stone and grass.

“But which one, great Goddess?” Angeline was frozen in awe, joyful to tears, yet reserved and honored at the same moment. So many emotions at once, she thought her chest would burst.

“I am the mother of the Caricians, the Gods of the white moon, yet even this I do not know. Every blade holds the spirit of every Soujan that wielded it prior, and every one of them was forged in a holy place long ago. They each have a name, but you must follow your heart and choose.”

Angeline walked through the grove, feeling, listening, looking at the blades wrapped in vine and held to the trees, trees that moved when she passed. Curious trees. A longsword, a greatsword far too large for her, a scimitar, broadswords galore, gold ones, all inscribed with runes and gems and designs of names she could not read. She closed her eyes, closed her thoughts, knelt down in a small pond by the trees. Angeline took her sword out, laid it in the water, and held her hands out, palms up.

“Come to me friend, I ask your help in the long journey ahead.” Angeline smiled, sensing something warm trying to speak to her from one of the trees.

Angeline smiled, eyes closed, and turned toward where she could feel the Goddess to be. “She is shy, I can feel it. Come to me, yes.”

“They each have their own personalities, you will learn together over time. Ahhh, there she is, beautiful. It will be such a shame not hearing your song in my temple.”

Angeline felt the steel in her hands, weightless, she caressed it slowly, feeling the cold steel mixed with unearthly warmth. She was long, a bastard sword for certain, crosspiece perfectly balanced, and a silk wrapped hilt with strips still dangling like her own braids. Angeline felt the Goddess take her in her own hands and Angeline let her.

“You and I have shared many a tale over the centuries, now I ask you protect Angeline for me. Good, I knew you would.” Seirena was weeping, stifling sobs as she lifted the golden hand and a half sword over the bowed head of Angeline.

Whatever their conversation, Angeline only heard half. She opened her eyes as the blade touched her shoulders, then her head, then its edge sliced a faint cut on the finger of Seirena, allowing a drop of rich red blood to collect on her fingertip. The Goddess drew a circle upon forehead of the woman kneeling before her. Angeline wept, feeling the warmth upon her whole being, in touch with everything, nothing separating her from Seirena or the world.

“Kneel, Angeline Berren of the Knights Soujan. You are now the bearer of the fourth blade of the sacred forge of Vundren. I ask you to give your remaining breaths to the knights and unwritten code of love, to the Caricians, and pay homage to no other man or God. For there is only one true God, and he is wicked beyond understanding. We are but his children, and you are but ours. Your worship is to each other knight only, and each to your blade. Her name is
Charity
, blessed by Alden upon her creation nearly three thousand years past. Listen long to her song, and guard her well.” Seirena handed the blade known as
Charity
to Angeline and stepped back.