Diviner

by Bryan Davis

  “Let’s see how quickly.” Elyssa reached out to Uriel. “Will you please help me up, kind sir?”

  Uriel pulled Elyssa to her feet, then helped Jason to his.

  Petra grasped Jason’s sleeve and gestured with her fingers.

  “She’s using sign language.” Jason looked into her eyes. “We don’t understand. Can you write?” Petra nodded.

  “We have quill and parchment right over there,” Uriel said, pointing at the workbench.

  Jason led Petra to the bench, dipped the quill into the ink, and handed it to her. She wrote on a blank parchment in a neat, dark script, re-inking the quill with every few strokes.

  As the words formed, Jason read them out loud. “I want to go back to the Southlands. I saw Koren fly away in Exodus, and I want to help her. I saw Taushin, the black dragon, take a long pole from the castle and fly away with it. It had a sharp point, so I think it is a weapon.”

  “It sounds like a spear.” Jason tapped on the parchment. “Can you draw a picture?”

  Again, Petra nodded. First, she drew long, delicate curves until she formed a circle, Then, after drawing a girl inside the circle, she made a man throwing a spear in her direction.

  Deference drew close to the parchment. Her gesturing hand stayed visible as she spoke. “I told her this story. A long time ago, a man threw a spear at Exodus. The spear is stored down near the star chamber.” As she paused, the hand disappeared. “Or it was stored down there.”

  Petra nodded and wrote more words, this time scratching them down quickly.

  “I think Taushin took it,” Jason read. “He is blind, but somehow he found it without Koren’s eyes.”

  Deference glided back from the workbench. “That’s no ordinary spear. Arxad told me some secrets about it.”

  Uriel crossed his arms over his chest. “You might as well tell us everything you know.”

  With her body fading in and out of visibility, Deference gestured again with her hands. “The tip is made of a metal that we no longer have in our world and one that you never had in yours. Arxad called it an alloy, and it was able to penetrate the star. Not only that, it had a tube attached near the point that was filled with a substance Arxad called gunpowder. It was used in powerful weapons hundreds of years ago. If it burns, it can destroy almost anything in a huge fireball.”

  “But it didn’t destroy Exodus,” Jason said. “Why not?”

  “For some reason, the tube didn’t burn. It’s still attached to the spear.”

  “Why?” Elyssa asked. “It sounds too dangerous to leave lying around.”

  Shrugging, Deference said, “We consider it to be pretty secure that far under the castle. Arxad called the spear an antiquity, a reminder of the evils of the past. It’s a mystery how a blind dragon could find it among all the other antiquities in the storage room. Not only that, it’s a long way down those stairs, and it’s too dangerous to fly blind.”

  Elyssa touched Petra’s shoulder. “You said Koren wasn’t there, but was anyone else with the dragon to guide him?”

  Petra shook her head.

  “At least no one she could see,” Uriel said. “There are quite a number of invisible people here.”

  Deference appeared for a moment, a hurt expression on her face. “Mr. Blackstone, I’m sure the existence of invisible people is frightening, but you don’t know them as well as I do. No one here would lead Taushin down the stairs.”

  Jason imagined an invisible spirit helping the black dragon find his way down the stairs. When he made the journey himself, he had two guides, Deference in front and Cassabrie inside. Between Deference’s gentle manner and Cassabrie’s comforting words, the downward part had been relatively easy. And Deference’s denial that any castle resident would help Taushin rang true, but what about Cassabrie? Where was she now? Did anyone really know whose side she was on?

  Breathing a sigh, he focused on the spot where Deference was seconds ago. “Can you check the storage room? I’m not saying Petra’s wrong about seeing a spear, but maybe the one she saw isn’t the one that pierced Exodus.”

  “I will,” Deference said. “Now that Petra is alive, the rest of you should go to the main floor. Edison and Randall will want to hear the news.”

  Elyssa and Deference used the cylindrical capsule to transport Jason, Uriel, and Petra to the lower floor, where Deference opened the corridor wall with a wave of her hand. Apparently security wasn’t as tight going through in the opposite direction.

  When they arrived in the corridor, Deference led them to a table that abutted a wall at the side. At least a dozen mugs sat in a row near the table’s edge. “Good,” she said, gesturing toward the mugs. “Resolute has seen to your nourishment. Take your fill. We call it secret soup, because we have no way to taste it, but the king says it will supply your bodies for quite some time.”

  She gestured toward the main entrance. “Will someone go with me? That way I can hunt for the spear while someone else finds the others and guides them here.”

  Uriel picked up one of the mugs and bowed. “I will be glad to accompany you.”

  “Good. If they’re not in the foyer, you can help me search for them outside.”

  Uriel and Deference walked down the corridor side by side. Like a glowing cape, her radiance trailed her body, taking most of the light with her.

  While Jason, Elyssa, and Petra drank the warm, bland soup, a dim, ambient glow and Elyssa’s faint aura provided enough light to see the white dragon mural, but the black dragon on the other side was no more than a vague shadow.

  Petra walked to the opposite wall and laid a hand on the black dragon’s wing.

  “Is that the black dragon you saw?” Elyssa asked. Petra nodded.

  “Probably Taushin,” Jason said, letting the word rest in the air for a moment. “Fellina called him a dark pretender.”

  “And he hatched from a black egg,” Elyssa added. “Everything about him spells darkness. If he really has that spear, Koren’s probably in big trouble.”

  While they waited, still drinking from the mugs, Petra taught Jason and Elyssa the basics of her sign language, including the letters of the alphabet. As she repeated them several times, Jason studied the finger positions. They were simple, but it would take him much longer than a few minutes to memorize them. Elyssa, on the other hand, picked them up quickly. While they practiced, Elyssa told Jason everything Randall had told her about his time in Mesolantrum, including Cassabrie’s strange behavior at the portal site.

  Soon, Uriel, Randall, Orion, and Jason’s father joined them. As they approached, Orion’s stare locked on Elyssa. She turned away and slid close to Jason, linking index fingers with him. “I’m not sure I’m ready to go into battle with him,” she whispered.

  “I know what you mean. Let’s just stay calm and see what happens.”

  Jason let go of Elyssa’s finger and embraced his father and Randall in turn. Elyssa gave both a hug as well, but when she came to Orion, she backed away and turned her head.

  Giving Elyssa only a brief glance, Orion extended his hand toward Jason. “It’s good to see you again. I hope there are no hard feelings about my remark at the invocation.”

  “If you mean the remark about sultry witches looking for a callow catch …” Jason shook his head. “I haven’t thought about it since that night.”

  Orion lowered his brow. “Yes … I see.”

  As they exchanged stories, the newcomers drank their fill from the mugs. Elyssa said nothing, though she occasionally cast a suspicious glance Orion’s way.

  When the last story ended, Jason looked around at each tired and worried face. “We have a lot to do, but I have some questions. First, where is Arxad?”

  Randall pointed toward the entry with his thumb. “He went to find Fellina, because we’ll need more than one dragon to get us to the Southlands. He didn’t say when he’d be back.”

  “Okay. How about Cassabrie? Where is she now?”

  “No one has seen her since we came thro
ugh the portal,” Uriel said. “We discussed this earlier, and we have conflicting opinions concerning what her motivations might be.”

  Orion crossed his arms over his chest. “You know my opinion. She’s a devil. She’ll be our undoing if we don’t watch out.”

  Randall snorted. “You think every unusual female is a devil.”

  “Mind your tongue, boy,” Orion said, pointing at Randall with a rigid finger. “When a girl spins into existence in a swirl of dirt and feels as cold as a winter wind, you can’t tell me there is no evil afoot. I learned the hard way.”

  “The hard way?” Jason asked. “Care to tell us?”

  Orion turned toward the table and fingered one of the mugs. “I don’t see why that’s necessary. My past is inconsequential.”

  “Inconsequential?” Elyssa grabbed his sleeve and jerked him around. “Listen, after all the years of torturing my family with your rabid Diviner hunts, if you think I’m going to just forget about it and pretend nothing’s wrong while I risk my life alongside you, then you’re more demented than I thought.”

  His brow knitting, Orion glared at her, but after a short stare down, he let out a sigh. “Very well.” He leaned back against the table, his hands gripping the edge. “When I was a boy of thirteen, I was lying in bed late at night and heard a bird that sang so beautifully I had to see it. I followed its song deep into the forest, and there I met a young woman. Although the dim moonlight prevented me from seeing her face clearly, I could tell that her skin was as pale as a cadaver’s. Yet to me she was the most alluring creature I had ever seen—long hair that caressed the shoulders of a white gown and eyes that sparkled green in the moonlight. Like Cassabrie, she radiated cold, and I stood petrified as if frozen to the ground, so she sang a song that calmed my fears, trilling with a voice every bit as beautiful as that of the songbird. When she finished, she told me that she had led me into the forest to tell me something. She said that my parents and two sisters had been killed in a fire.”

  Orion’s voice began to quaver. “I ran home as quickly as I could and found our house engulfed in flames. I threw bucket after bucket of water from our horse trough, but it wasn’t enough. When our closest neighbor arrived, he broke through the flames and carried out my two sisters. They were dead, burned beyond recognition. Later, after the fire dwindled, my neighbor found a lantern with an insignia that was foreign to Mesolantrum. I concluded that the woman of the forest used the lantern to set the fire and called me away because she knew I was awake, and she didn’t want me to douse the fire and rescue my family. I swore that day that I would find every sorceress in the land, whether Diviner or witch, and make them suffer in the flames that their kind inflicted on my family.”

  He finished with a sigh and picked up one of the mugs. Swirling the contents, he stared at it in silence.

  Jason studied his posture. He seemed relieved to shed the burden of the horrible event. But was it all an act? Jason scanned the faces in the corridor. Uriel and Petra had glistening eyes, while those who knew Orion, especially Elyssa, displayed furrowed brows, though Randall’s seemed more pensive than skeptical.

  “So,” Jason said, “do you think that girl was Cassabrie or someone else?”

  Orion shook his head. “I can’t be sure. I can pinpoint obvious similarities, but I was so young, so enthralled, I’m not sure the details are clear.”

  Jason nodded. If Orion were still fanatical, he would have answered with certainty and accused Cassabrie without question.

  “You told me you ended your crusade,” Randall said. “You invited Elyssa to come home without any further persecution. What changed?”

  Orion glanced at Elyssa. “My perspective changed. I saw Marcelle quite some time before she captured me in the forest. I knew then she had become one of the same sort of devils I had seen that night in the forest long ago. Elyssa is not that type. She has strange abilities, to be sure, but she never exhibited an icy, corpse-like body. I decided it was foolish to chase and investigate every abnormal girl and instead focus on obvious witches like Marcelle and Cassabrie.”

  Elyssa linked index fingers with Jason again and whispered, “Are you believing this?”

  “Not really. Don’t worry. I won’t let him hurt you.”

  She tightened her grip on his finger and said nothing more.

  “Okay,” Jason said, again addressing everyone, “so Cassabrie is a mystery. We’ll just have to let her do what she will.”

  “It’s not that simple.” Randall shifted his weight from foot to foot. “She asked me to give her the crystal peg that opens the portal.”

  Jason’s eyebrows shot up. “And you gave it to her?”

  “Yeah. As much as I hate to say it, I think I’m starting to agree with Governor Orion. She kind of charmed me out of it. You know, the Starlighter gift.”

  Orion gave a firm nod but, to his credit, kept silent.

  Edison clasped Randall’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. Cassabrie wants the troops to come, so she will likely return it. If not, we’ll have to look for her. Someone has to open the portal for the troops.”

  “Arxad might have one,” Elyssa said.

  Jason looked at her. “What makes you say that?”

  “If Arxad went to Major Four with Magnar, they must have gone through the Southlands portal. I seriously doubt that they would leave it open for anyone to pass through, so he must have taken the crystal with him.”

  Randall touched his stomach. “Arxad has it. Cassabrie wedged it between his scales.”

  Petra pulled on Jason’s sleeve and spelled out a message.

  Jason squinted. “Dragon coming?” She nodded.

  They turned toward the entry. Deep in the shadowed corridor, the form of a dragon took shape. Seconds later, Arxad wheeled around and called out, “Meet us at the foyer. We cannot land here.”

  As he flew back into the shadows, the breeze from his wings buffeted their bodies. Everyone jogged toward the entry. Jason began lagging, his side still aching, and Petra did as well, her body apparently not yet accustomed to exertion.

  Elyssa dropped back with them. As the trio slowed to a quick walk, the group ahead also decreased their pace, but the distance between them kept Orion out of earshot.

  “Maybe Arxad knows where Cassabrie is,” Elyssa said.

  “True, but we shouldn’t ask him in front of Orion.”

  “Right. I hope Orion doesn’t ask.”

  By the time they arrived at the foyer, Arxad and Fellina had already gathered the others — Orion, Uriel, Edison, and Randall—in a semicircle. Jason, Elyssa, and Petra joined the line at the far end from Orion.

  Fellina’s wings drooped low, and she let her body sag to the ground. She drew in deep, rapid breaths, but her eyes were clear as she stared at the humans, seemingly evaluating each one.

  Arxad spoke in a low, even tone, without a hint of exhaustion. “It appears that events are coming to a climax in my village. Koren has flown there inside Exodus. Fortunately, she is no longer under Taushin’s control, so she will likely try to use her influence over the humans to create a rebellion or perhaps convince the dragons to release them. In either case, I believe she will have to make many attempts before she is successful, so I think we can rest here for the time being. Since we flew much of the night, we should probably get some sleep as soon as possible.”

  “There’s a problem,” Jason said, raising his hand. “We think Taushin —”

  Deference ran in from the stairway room, calling, “It’s gone!”

  “Correction,” Jason continued. “We know Taushin has the spear that punctured Exodus. I assume he intends to use it in the same way.”

  Arxad’s facial features sagged. “This is most troubling. We cannot rest. We have to leave as soon as possible.”

  “Right,” Jason said. “Koren might be in big trouble, so —”

  “Koren as well as every man, woman, and child on Starlight. Even if we leave now, it will likely be well past dawn by the time we arrive. I have
had enough pheterone to allow me to travel without weariness, but Fellina does not have the same advantage, so we will have to go at a pace she can endure.”

  Fellina rose to her haunches. “For the sake of Starlight, I will do what I must.”

  Arxad smiled at her. “My mate is a most excellent treasure, but I think she downplays her fatigue.” He turned back to the others. “I am not sure how we will pass the barrier wall guards with humans accompanying us, so we will have to face that obstacle when the time arrives. For now, we must decide who will be coming with us and who will be staying here.”

  Edison raised his hand. “I suggest that I stay here to conduct the army on the march southward. I have been there before, so I can find my way again.”

  “If you march quickly and rest only when necessary,” Arxad said, “you will make it to the barrier wall in one day. Since your army is unacquainted with fighting dragons, it would be unwise to assume that you will be able to pass the wall easily. You will need whatever weapons your world can provide.”

  “I trust Marcelle will prepare them adequately.”

  “But how will we open the portal?” Randall asked. “Cassabrie took the crystal that controls it.”

  Arxad’s brow lifted. “She did?”

  Randall nodded. “She used her … uh … charms, I guess you might say.”

  “Interesting.” Arxad looked at Fellina. She reflected his worried expression. “Opening the portal for the army is of no concern. I still have the crystal you returned to me.”

  Jason glanced at Arxad’s underbelly. Indeed, it seemed that something sparkled in the midst of his scales.

  “If they are interchangeable,” Elyssa said, “why didn’t Magnar demand that you bring one to him a long time ago?”

  “Because he does not know they are interchangeable. And, in reality, they are not. A center peg is interchangeable with another center peg, but not with any of the others. Long ago, I brought one from the end of the Northlands portal line, but since the Southlands portal required a center peg, it did not work.”