by J C Maynard
Tayben hit the ground in anger and tears began to well up in his eyes. Before he knew it, he was sobbing uncontrollably. I’m sorry Birg . . . I should have listened and stayed with the platoon. The stern warning of Fenlell filled his head as his erratic breathing worsened. “We men are not welcome in this forest . . . She watches you from every corner . . . she doesn’t care if you live.”
He looked down at his shredded body and screamed out into the dark forest, “I’m sorry!” He breathed in sharply as tears streamed down his face in despair. Screaming out in frustration, he punched the black wet soil again. Again. Again. Again until his knuckles pained him too much. Letting out one last pitiful cry into the endless forest, he collapsed onto the wet ground, resting his face on the mud. A feeling of utter hopelessness filled his broken and bloody body as he slowly whispered once more, “I’m so sorry.” He closed his eyes and tears dripped down his bloody face into the cold mud. Memories of his hometown filled his head. He tried not to think of his parents. What will they do once they hear that I- He couldn’t finish the thought, but he slowly let the words sink into his broken body. I’m going to die here.
After a while, he opened his eyes and looked into the distance — nothing was there but forest and settled fog, save for a very faint white light that he had not noticed before. After a couple minutes, Tayben realized that this was not a hallucination. The white light was shining on ferns around it. He walked towards it and peeled back the leaves of a fern, revealing a glowing white flower. A strange light emanated from its petals, flowed down through its stem, and into the surrounding soil. Sparks of light traveled beneath the soil and vanished into the surrounding plants. Curious, Tayben touched it with his bloody finger. A searing pain shocked him and he pulled back; when he looked at the tip of his finger, he saw that the blood had vanished and the cut was gone. What in the world . . . He touched his palm to it and an even larger shock of pain rippled through his body, causing him to yell. But, when he turned his hand face up, it looked as if he had never fallen out of the tree.
In the corner of his eye, another white light was glowing. He picked himself up and staggered toward it, collapsing right in front of another glowing flower. Because a rib was broken, each breath sent waves of agony through his body. He leaned forward and was about to touch it when he saw a bed of glowing flowers far in the distance. They heal . . . I could lie in the flowerbed . . . He used his unbroken arm to get back up. Lightheadedness had begun to affect his ability to walk in a straight line — he had lost too much blood from the fall. As he looked around, he could see more and more of these flowers lighting the foggy forest. Just a few steps before he reached the bright light of the flowerbed, someone grabbed him from behind and slipped a dagger in front of his neck.
Tayben froze; he was defenseless. He could not see whoever was holding him except for a hand in a purple robe. A woman’s voice whispered harshly behind his neck. “Don’t move! Who are you? What are you doing here? . . . Answer, now!”
Tayben coughed. “I am a soldier for the Cerebrian Army, I veered away from our brigade and am lost in this forest.”
The woman pressed the dagger to Tayben’s neck, “Why is the army in this region of the forest?”
“We’re on orders from the Queen. The army is just passing through to get from one location to the next.” Tayben winced with pain. “But I’m hurt; those flowers-”
“Those won’t heal you permanently.” He could tell that the woman was looking around. “I can make the pain and the bleeding subside.” she said. A little burst of light in the back of his head lit the forest for a brief moment, and most of the pain he felt was immediately lifted. Blood stopped running down his body. “Come with me now,” said the woman.
Intimidated by whatever she had just done to ease the pain, Tayben did not question her. She pushed him through the forest with a dagger hovering close to his neck. He walked like a drunk man for a half hour as he clutched his broken arm. The farther into the forest she led him, the more plentiful the glowing white flowers were; soon, they lit up the underbrush with the power of a thousand blazing torches. The woman pushed him past a barrier of light and into a field of these glowing flowers which stung at his feet. Tayben had to squint his eyes, as he was not used to this kind of light in the dark forest.
Adjusting to the brightness, Tayben’s eyes widened when he looked at an immense tree on the island of a small, glowing lake ahead of him. What amazed him was not the sheer size of the tree — which was well over forty feet wide and hundreds of feet tall — but that there was a door in the bottom, and open windows in the trunk glowing with firelight. There seemed to be a house inside the trunk of the tree, which sat in a glowing glade.
The tree rose up on an island in a large pond, which glowed with an iridescent light. In it, minnows of all colors swam. A shimmering rainbow of light danced underneath the surface of the water; it seemed like the water was sprinkled with starlight. Not just the white flowers glowed; but red and white toadstools, moss, and ferns all emanated light. Tayben was surprised that the hollow’s light did not permeate the surrounding fog. In the glade, the grass grew perfectly, like an aristocratic lawn. Tayben felt a strange desire to jump into the pond of watery light where the luminous minnows swam. The butterflies that flew all round the hollow too glowed with a glistening light. For a moment, his mind was so enchanted by his surroundings that the pain of his broken and bloody body failed to jab into his thoughts.
A deer pranced on the other side of the glade, and three rabbits ate grass next to his feet. Whenever he stepped, the grass beneath his feet would light up. The woman — of whom he had not seen more than an arm — pushed him forward to the edge of the pool of enchanting water, facing the tree with the house built inside. He looked down into the water which cast ripples of light on his bloody face — the pool seemed to be bottomless. From one of his unhealed cuts, a drop of blood fell into the water, but there was no splash or sound, for the blood vanished as soon as it hit the surface. Within the lake swirled a white light. A turtle-like creature swam up to the shoreline and floated in front of them. It was a black creature the size of five or six shields with a shell that had thick, curved spines, and its head looked identical to a horned lizard.
“Step on.” said the woman behind Tayben.
“I’m sorry?” Tayben tried to look back but she turned his head and forced him forward, causing him to step onto the floating creature. Once they were both on its back, the creature turned and began swimming towards the island with the massive tree. The hollow sang with the calls of birds and hummed with the sound of pollinating bees. The water below him drew Tayben’s attention closer. All sorts of glowing creatures, which Tayben never imagined could exist, swam in its depths. A purple butterfly briefly touched down on the black turtle creature and then flew off. On the opposite end of the lake, Tayben swore he saw a glimpse of a winged lion.
As they approached the shoreline, Tayben noticed that the rooms within the giant tree rose four or five stories high. There was no glass in the windows, and the windows were curved and irregular like the grain of the tree bark. In fact, the door and everything about the house seemed to flow with the growth of the tree.
The spiked turtle creature stopped at the island to let the woman and Tayben off before dipping below the surface. The woman pulled the dagger away from Tayben’s neck and allowed him to turn around. The woman was his same height and wore a purple cloak. Her dark, curly hair flowed over her shoulders and contrasted her pale, angular face. She looked strangely old and young at the same time — almost like she should have been in her forties, but hadn’t lost much youth.
The woman smiled at him. “You’re wounded; I’ll take care of that. I apologize for the dagger; it was to ensure you wouldn’t run away. If you try to swim across the lake, the water will kill you; and my Krackleback will only take me across the water. Sit down and stop wasting your energy.” He sat on the grass and clutched his side. “You won’t live unless I heal your woun
ds . . . this may give you a scare, but don’t run away. Take off your shirt.” He did as he was told, but flinched when the shirt tugged on his broken arm.
“How did you get hurt this badly?”
“I- I fell.”
She placed her hands over his bloody chest. A white light flowed from her hand and onto his chest. Tayben flinched out of surprise when the blood on his chest disappeared. His flesh began to stitch itself back together and the scratches and cuts all vanished. “This will hurt a bit . . .” she said before the white light snapped his rib back together under his skin. Tayben yelled in pain through gritted teeth. She repeated the same procedure with his broken forearm and cleared up the rest of his body from cuts and bruises. The only thing that scarred was a gash that ran from his shoulder across his chest.
“Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter, you won’t remember this anyway.”
Tayben raised an eyebrow. “I’m sorry what did you say?”
“No one would live here without a reason, young man. I want to help you, but no one can know about me. I’ll alter your memory so that you think you never injured yourself in the forest and never saw this place.”
“That’s impossible —”
“So was healing the wounds you had just there.”
“Are you a sorceress?”
“In a way.”
Tempted to ask why he was seeing memories of magic and fire, he resisted, instead asking. “Why did you do this for me?”
“You were going to die if I hadn’t done anything.”
Tayben stood up with ease. “I don’t know how to thank you . . . This all seems so strange . . . so dreamlike . . .”
“The life force of the world flows freely in this glade.” said the woman. “That energy blossoms here because of what I have given it, hence all the glowing. I grew this tree in the shape that I wanted, with hollow chambers inside to make my house. This is my home, where I can live in solitude from the rest of the world. That’s also why I will have to search your memory to make sure you aren’t lying about who you say you are and where your people are going.”
“I swear I’m —”
“I don’t care.” she said.
Tayben lay on the ground with white ribbons of light shooting through his head. She was prying into his mind for glimpses of information. Flashes from his childhood passed by, and suddenly, he saw memories of what felt like other childhoods . . .two sisters, a brother and a Palace, an orphanage. The prying stopped. “How does it work?” she wondered aloud.
“I’m sorry? Tayben had no answer and wasn’t even sure he understood the question.
“Your mind, your Taurimous, it inhabits four different bodies simultaneously. I’ve never seen anything like it. How do you control four bodies at the same time?”
A wave of questions arose. “What’s happening to me?”
“You think what you’ve been seeing are dreams? That’s all real. Your consciousness must jump back and forth between your bodies. Your time isn’t linear; you live each day four times . . . what’s it like?”
Tayben looked at his hands, “I — I don’t know . . . how — how is that possible?”
The woman looked at Tayben in fear. She muttered something under her breath that Tayben could barely hear. “It shouldn’t be possible . . . who are you? I saw a memory of a Palace. No . . . can it be?” She put a hand to his face. “Tayben?”
“How do you know my name?”
She shook her head and whispered. “Names . . . Eston, Kyan, Calleneck, Tayben. I see you tell the truth, although you did not tell me the whole truth about why you ran away from your brigade. Don’t follow things in the forest Tayben. Never follow things in the forest. Be careful.. I see conflict in your head. Figure out what you believe, or you will find yourself on opposite sides of the war . . .”
“How do you know me?”
The woman stood up and stepped away. “No more questions; you must leave this place now.”
“But I barely-”
The woman raised her hand. “Do not speak.” She escorted him across the lake again, with a dagger to his neck; then she walked him far into the forest, where no glowing flowers could be seen. She asked him to lie down so he would not hurt himself when he lost consciousness; he obeyed out of fear of what she might do to him. “I’m sorry, but I must wipe your memory of this encounter.”
Tayben apprehensively stepped away, but a force stopped him and held him down. White ribbons of light shot from her hand into Tayben’s head. His eyes closed.
When he awoke, he scanned his misty surroundings. I shouldn’t have taken a nap. I need to keep searching for the battalion. Why did I have to lose my spear trying to kill that deer? He stood up and walked through the forest in the direction he thought he came from; but he couldn’t help but feel like something was missing, like he had forgotten something. It’s the forest again. Don’t panic, you’ll find your way back. It was hard convincing himself that he would be one out of two thousand missing soldiers to return to the battalion after being lost in Endlebarr.
Tayben had not been walking long when a shiver ran down his spine. The air seemed to sit completely still, and a bird stopped singing. In the mist, twenty yards ahead of him, a black figure stood like a statue. He grabbed a stick on the ground and walked toward it. An unknown voice in his head said, Don’t follow things in the forest, Tayben. Never follow things in the forest. He ignored it and kept walking toward the figure. As he got closer, he saw another black figure standing beside the first. With every step, more and more figures appeared out of nowhere; he looked back and found himself surrounded by over a dozen cloaked people. They began slowly walking toward him, closing the gaps in the circle.
Tayben called out, “Who are you? . . . Stop right there!” The figures did not stop; they made no sound as they stepped through the lush vegetation. They were like ghosts the way they moved. Tayben’s heart raced and his lungs convulsed rapidly. His bones turned ice cold and he tried to yell but couldn’t. The figures were now each twenty feet away from him, but he could not see their faces underneath their cloaks.
The figures stopped, and one stepped forward and removed his hood. “Tayben Shae, lower your guard; we are not here to hurt you.” Tayben fell to his knees, for before him, cloaked like the others stood Gallien Aris.
“Gallien — where have you been? What’s going on? Who are these people?”
“Your questions will be answered soon.”
Tayben looked around the circle at the cloaked figures who had not made any sounds. They were what he had been chasing . . .
Gallien opened his arms and smiled big. “It’s my pleasure to introduce to you . . . the Phantoms of Cerebria.”
The Scarlet Palace
Chapter Eight
~Afternoon, September 2nd
Lightning flashed outside the Palace window, briefly illuminating the Great Library, which was otherwise lit by candles. Rain pounded on the glass and thunder shook the stone walls that arched into a towering vaulted ceiling over two hundred feet tall. Lined with decorative mahogany and elaborate murals of the Ferramish countryside, the Great Library of Aunestauna hosted millions of scrolls, letters, and handwritten books. Taking up nearly the entire east wing of the Palace, the library hosted scholars, senators, and wealthy citizens alike. At a small reading table, Eston sat across from Sir Whittingale.
Sir Whittingale looked young for his forties, with a narrow chin and slick dark brown hair. His eyebrows were perpetually raised, causing his forehead to wrinkle. Eston had noticed from a young age that the man never flinched or jumped. As one of Tronum’s right hand men, Sir Whittingale had been Eston’s mentor from the time he was ten years old. Whittingale had taught him in the arts, language, science, politics, history, and physical skills; but most importantly, he was preparing Eston to become King of Ferramoor. One day his father would either die, or pass off the crown to his eldest son. Either way, Eston could not escape the immense responsibility that awaited h
im.
It always seemed unreal to the prince that one day he would rule over a kingdom of which he had seen so little. He never liked thinking about Fillian would not have a chance of taking the throne even though Fillian was only just over a year younger,. Unlike when Gallegore chose Tronum to sit on the throne over Xandria, Tronum had no choice but to hand the throne to his eldest child. The King had appointed trusted mentors for Fillian and Eston, for he could not teach his children day to day.
Sir Whittingale turned over a scroll on the table. “Name the two ways to delay a senate order for a governor’s resignation.”
Eston leaned back in his chair to think.
“Back straight, Eston.”
“Yes, sorry sir. The order can be delayed if the governor’s regional military commanding positions were not all filled — preventing a security issue — but the other existing governors have a right to appoint those positions. I forget the second.”
Sir Whittingale shook his head. “The second is if no senator in favor of their resignation has held a government position directly relating to that governor’s region. You have to know this Eston. Read through this scroll again tonight and make sure the information is solid in your head.”
“Yes, sir.” said Eston.
Sir Whittingale stood. “Meet me in the Maple Courtyard in fifteen minutes. Get changed and ready to duel.”
Another sword fight in pouring rain . . . wonderful. Eston took the scroll and glanced over at the other reading tables in his section of the library. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a girl with dirty blonde hair leaning over scrolls. That’s her! The one from the Little Raven, the one I’ve been looking for. Her name . . . it’s- Ra- Raelis-, no, Raelynn, Raelynn! That’s it! . . . How do I know that’s it?
Vibrant colors of light coiled through his memory. She’s a sorceress . . . She’s here to find her mother . . . I read her letter to her father . . . Those dreams about sorcery, they can’t be real. But then how could I have read her letter? Eston thought hard. I could’ve dreamed that I read it. But I have memories of seeing her in Cerebria even though I’ve never been there. I could ask her again why she’s here; if she says she’s trying to find her mother, then that means those visions actually could be memories. That means that there is a rebel group within Cerebria . . . the Evertauri.