The Tenth Legion (Book 6, Progeny of Evolution)

by Mike Arsuaga

  “These are eighteen hundred years old, and until Great-pop, no one translated them beyond Archaic Basque?” Ed asked.

  “Correct, Dad, which means no one can claim they were written after the events they predict,” Toby answered.

  “What else did the priestess divine?” asked Ed.

  “There are twenty more. Eighteen are about events that have happened, but two made no sense to Great-pop. I brought them home for further analysis,” Toby answered.

  “Can we see them?” Lorna asked.

  Toby started to object, but before he could say anything, Ed stood up. “Lorna identified with great confidence the true pronunciation of the names of the original First Parents. I believe she has something to tell us, if we’d but listen.”

  All eyes riveted on Lorna again. Unsure of what they expected, she began slowly. “I have dreams. When I wake up, I can’t remember any details, but this I’m sure of. They’re about the couple I described. They lived a long time ago. Moreover, before I emerged, I dreamed about a kind lady. Those memories are also distant and featureless. There’s nothing more.”

  “Father,” Ethan said, “Perhaps Lorna could tell us more if Doctor Montana hypnotized her.” Turning toward Lorna, he asked, “Would you be willing?”

  Lorna frowned. “Let me think about it. I don’t favor the idea of someone fishing around in my head.”

  “I think Lorna’s right,” Bobby said. “She’s new to the family. To lay such a task on her is presumptuous of us.”

  “Thank you, Bobby, but I can speak for myself,” Lorna said. “Let’s see the mysterious passages.”

  Toby turned to Ed, who nodded a quick approval. With a frown etched in his rounded jaw, Toby placed the sheet on the table top.

  In English the words read as follows:

  A pestilence will afflict the New Children of Humanity.

  The unborn are the solution.

  The New World beckons.

  Beware of treacherous spawn.

  A viper is at the breast of Salvation.

  A female at peace prevails.

  And the second:

  A new phase will come to pass.

  Sugaar will scour most of Man from the land.

  A new race descends

  To repopulate cleansed Earth.

  God will bless

  The New Children of Humanity

  “Any ideas?” Toby asked Lorna skeptically.

  “Nothing comes to mind,” she answered. “Maybe if I studied it.”

  Toby lost patience. His large, owlish eyes locked on her. “Study it, nothing. You don’t know any more than we do. Father, let me turn the papers over to our linguists.”

  “With all due respect, my brother,” Ethan said. “I think she does. Send the papers where you may, but Lorna, I implore you to let our scientists place you under hypnosis. I believe you are the key.”

  The key? The key to effing what?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lorna lay on a couch in a curtained room at the back of the corporate headquarters building in Orlando. Beside her, in a well-stuffed lounge chair, sat a small, human male. A low table separated them. Across the room, in straight-backed chairs against the wall, Ed and Ethan sat with identical carriage, like bookends.

  “This is a very routine procedure,” Ed had argued. “I’m not sure what good my presence will do.”

  “I have a feeling it won’t work, otherwise,” Lorna said.

  “What won’t work?”

  “I don’t know, but unless you’re there, nothing will happen. I’m sure of it.”

  Ed rolled his eyes skyward. “All right, I’ll come.”

  Dr. Montana supervised the corporation’s research into what Ethan generically referred to as “Matters of Second Sight” which included telekinesis and ESP, as well as what lay folk referred to as mindreading. In her case, Lorna wasn’t sure what they hoped to find.

  At the initial meeting, a tiny human extended a proportionately scaled hand. Lorna couldn’t help but notice how out of place he appeared in a dark three-piece suit—walking the corporation hallways, surrounded by men in slacks and open collar shirts or women in dresses or skirts and blouses of a more casual cut—but upon entering the long, narrow room gerrymandered into the end of one of the hallways, he blended in. Sitting beside Lorna, he exuded a scholarly aura, accentuated by good pipe tobacco. All around them, glass and metal knick-knacks populated the furniture and shelves lining the walls. A pair of liquid brown eyes, appearing capable of understanding the vilest motive, observed her. Lorna surmised that in his line of work, the quality came in handy.

  “Now, Ms. Winters,” he said in a soothing voice that matched the all-accommodating eyes, “I’m going to put you into a different level of consciousness, from which we may draw information.” Pouring a cup of tea from the steeping pot on the low table between them, he offered the fragrant beverage to her. “Before we begin, drink this. You will be relaxed.”

  Lorna took the cup, self-conscious about having the others in the room. Ethan placed his hands on the table top. Skeptically, Ed sat erect with arms folded, the demeanor of a man impatient for some cheap magic show to begin. Doctor Montana put a small metronome on the table beside the tea pot, setting the mechanism in motion with the flick of a finger.

  “Let your eyes follow the hand of the little machine.” He spoke through tiny, dark lips.

  Lorna got comfortable, concentrating on the thin black stick that tick-tocked in the silent room. The quiet drone of the doctor’s voice provided the only other sound.

  This isn’t going to work.

  Then she went under.

  Her body and the others remained in Doctor Montana’s office, frozen in place like a frame of movie film. She hovered over the scene. Everyone seemed to be some distance removed, something like seeing them, along with the room, through the wrong end of a telescope.

  Turning away from her reclined self and the men, she moved toward the closed drapes.

  An oval-shaped hole floated in the middle of the curtains, darker than the fabric background. At her approach, metaphysical because the corporeal Lorna remained planted in Doctor Montana’s office chair, the dark spot grew, becoming the size of a doorway. Inside, a slim woman in a simple, cloth dress knelt in front of a hearth. Each wall of the surrounding room, made of large rectangular stones, bore a covering of symbols or pictures of men and beasts painted in bright yellows, ochre, and shades of blue. The fire combined with the fuliginous torches in the wall sconces to illuminate a round face with dark eyes.

  The woman had a twinkle in her eye. “You are here,” she said cheerfully.

  “Are you Cithara?”

  “I am. And you are Lorna.”

  “How do you know me?”

  “I have been with you all of your life. The Christians would speak of me as your guardian angel, but I believe it not to be so simple. Nothing God does is simple.”

  Lorna recognized the room Cithara occupied. “You are The Lady.” Lorna gasped.

  “Yes. I came to you in childhood dreams. Until this moment, I was but a voice and a shadow.” Cithara stood and padded to Lorna with light, catlike steps. Placing her palms flat against the invisible barrier between them, she said, “I came to you as you will come to me in another phase of the world. That is the cycle.” While they couldn’t touch, the odors of burnt offerings from what Lorna always called Cithara’s mediation room crossed the barrier. Lorna assumed the smells traveled both ways.

  “Does everyone have such a guardian angel?” Lorna matched her palms to Cithara’s. The thickness of plastic wrap separated them, an impenetrable barrier.

  “Yes, everyone does, but only those with The Sight are able to see and speak with them. Our worlds are parallel, yet they are also separated in time, like two facets of a gemstone. These ideas always confused Poor Aliff, may God rest his soul.”

  “Aliff? He was your husband?”

  “For two centuries, we were together.” She paused, brightening to enjoy th
e memories sliding across her mind.

  Questions swarmed in Lorna’s brain. Not knowing what to ask first, she speared one up at random from the darkness of her brain. “Are you lycan or vampire?”

  “I am vampire. Aliff was lycan.”

  Lorna regarded the trim priestess with her luxurious brown hair in two large braids wrapped and pinned on top of her head. “Your children—where are they?” Great-pop would want to know.

  “We had thirteen. Eleven lived to adulthood. They have all passed away, but their blood lives on. Some stayed nearby, but others settled throughout the empire. I have descendants from Britannia in the north to Parthia in the East to Egypt.” Gazing beyond Lorna at the men in the room behind, she asked. “Is he your mate?” Her eyes locked on Ed.

  “Not exactly. It’s complicated.”

  “He is the image of my Aliff, but he is vampire, is he not?”

  “Yes, he is. How did you know?”

  “I came to him in his youth, but he didn’t understand. However, I believe there is yet hope for Ethan, his son.”

  Ethan, the ESP research candidate.

  “Why did you return to my dreams, so long after my emergence?”

  “I have no answer for God’s designs,” Cithara said. “Perhaps I am tasked to deliver a message to you and The People.”

  Lorna marveled how in dreams or séances or whatever the hell she experienced, no language barrier existed. Even words in an idiom unique to her time somehow became understandable. The process worked both ways. Then she remembered the questions Great-pop Jim and Toby wanted her to ask.

  “I would like to talk more about how our fates entwine,” Lorna said. “But there are matters of great importance for The Others I must ask you about.”

  “The Others…” Cithara seemed to test the word in her mouth. “Is what you call us in your time? Such a harsh word. Our name, The People, seems far kinder.”

  “Among us, you are a great, revered prophetess. Our scholars study your writings with deep interest. Some are disturbing. All are confusing. There are questions. We need a better understanding of your prophesy in order to make the correct choices.”

  Cithara turned away to face a mirror of polished metal hanging over the fireplace, presenting Lorna a clean-featured profile of strong brow, straight nose, rounded cheeks, set off by pitch-black eyes. “I am near my end,” she said, as if the stare in the mirror had reminded her of a neglected task. “The empire crumbles. That, we have in common. For so long, our clan fought the Romans together with what they brought with them, but now I see value in their sense of order. Too late, I fear. The age of the barbarian will soon be upon us. A similar catastrophe will overtake your time.”

  “How? When?” Lorna demanded.

  Cithara faced Lorna. She stood erect, slim molded arms at her sides. “I write what God tells me. I do not understand all of it, but of this I am certain. You are the key to the challenges ahead for humanity, as well as for our kind.”

  Undeterred by the deflective answer, Lorna reached into her memory for more of the prophecies. “Who is the treacherous spawn?”

  “God has not revealed his face to me. He is close to your leader, and will not be identified until after he has done his work, but don’t despair. The solution will reveal itself in you.” Pausing, she gazed into the fire. When she continued, another seemed to speak through her. “Soon, two great travails will visit The People. About the first, I have told all. The second, greater one, comes from God and affects humankind in its entirety.”

  “What are the signs of its approach?”

  “Once I believed Mari and Sugaar ruled the Universe. Now the Christian God is everywhere. He is cunning to promise a rich afterlife and take all sins onto Himself. In return, He asks His followers to believe, repent, and ask forgiveness. But God is more complicated than any of that. Sugaar, the sun and the giver of light, is but one of His implements, like the rain, and wind. Although the Christian God seems to occupy a special place of honor, He too is bound to God’s bidding.”

  Lorna wondered where Cithara’s answer led, thinking how to steer the priestess back onto the subject.

  “Patience, my child,” the older woman chided mildly. “A person of my years exercises the privilege to answer in her own time and way. When God began to reveal the fate of the world, He bade me commission temple craftsmen to render images onto steles. In our time, no one recognized or understood their meaning. I believe they are meant for the future, for you.”

  “Where are these steles?”

  Cithara changed the subject, answering with maddening indirectness. “So many questions from one so young. Be patient. Have faith. You will understand everything when you are at peace with yourself. When you were but a child alone among the other un-emerged children, did I not tell you your destiny is still unfolding? Everything you experienced in your life to this very moment, the good along with the bad—the happiness, the sadness, all has prepared you for the rest that is to come.”

  At the edge of patience, Lorna came close to shouting. “What about the steles?”

  “You will learn about them after you are at peace with your parents.”

  “My parents? What do they have to do with any of this?” Lorna drew inward, walling out any reference to her mom and dad, even from someone with the gift of prophecy.

  “They are gone now and can affect you no more, yet you hold resentment for them.”

  “You, most of all, should know what they did to me!”

  “Yes, child, I do. It was cruel and wrong, but each event blended to make you what you are. After the abandonment, your parents were never the same. They often wept for you.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “You can do nothing to them they have not done to themselves, except to forgive and let them go.”

  Lorna remembered Mike’s advice from his hospital bed. A quickening of movement gathered behind her. “You must go now.” Cithara smiled in the familiar way Lorna remembered throughout her life, in a manner similar to her own. “We will talk again, now that you have remembered the way.”

  Lorna backed away. While the room returned to her reality, the portal closed in on itself. Sounds of breathing accompanied the metronome’s repetitive natter.

  “Lorna. Lorna.” Ed held her hand, patting frantically. “Is everything all right?”

  Opening her eyes, she wore a serene smile. “Fine,” she answered. “Everything’s just fine.”

  At the debrief, she provided enough information to send a dozen technicians scurrying to uncover the location of the steles as well as evidence of the threats Cithara spoke about, withholding mention of the traitor.

  When they were alone, Lorna said, “There’s one more thing, Ed.”

  They were in her condominium. “What’s that?”

  “Cithara said there was a traitor in the family.” Lorna conjured a picture of the irascible Toby.

  Ed became defensive. “What do you mean?”

  “Hey, don’t kill the messenger. She told me someone close to you would hand us over to our enemies. I think the prophecy might have something to do with the plague she predicted.”

  “I’m not going to accept this.” Ed’s stiff tone told Lorna his opinion of the idea. “I trust my family with my life.”

  “Believe what you want, but I recommend you take reasonable precautions.”

  Ed flung himself around, confronting her with his formidable countenance; so close, the copper-colored spots of new stubble in the cleft of his chin stood out on the paler flesh. “I will not investigate them like common employees.” The Chairman threw a coat around his shoulders. “I have appointments. Don’t wait up for me.”

  In that moment, a curtain descended between them.

  For a few moments after he left, Lorna sat in the silence, thinking about what had happened. In retrospect, his departure worked for the best. Further discussion would lead to argument, which could only end badly. Ed needed time to process the information. Facing the possibilit
y someone you’ve known all your life, or worse, one of your children, willingly planned to destroy everything you ever worked for, took some getting used to. Eventually, she knew, he would quietly check it out.

  Was that our first fight?

  With Ed not around, she took advantage of the solitude to try what Cithara recommended-forgive her parents. After a shower, she changed into bed clothes, brewing a pot of Earl Grey— “the favorite of lycans worldwide,” according to the product’s ads. Turning up the natural gas fireplace for atmosphere and dimming the lights, she sat in the plush reclining chair.

  “Okay,” she said to herself taking a pensive breath. “Here we go.”

  Remembering Mike and the Twelve-Step program, she counted off the similarities between that doctrine and Cithara’s recommendations. Both recommended resolution of past resentments, even with the dead, to put the living at peace. The same cavalcade of hurtful memories associated with her parents since she first understood what they’d done flooded in: the constant bickering over being saddled with a pre-emergent, never having enough of anything, the sordid battles about changing her soiled diapers.

  Then, for the first time, there followed the stark image of a couple consoling each other in grief over the daughter they’d abandoned, spending the rest of their lives in regret. Suddenly, she didn’t know what to think.

  Wiping a tear from each eye, she positioned the chair to the limits of the recline setting. From the horizontal position, her eyes gazed at the ceiling heating grate, on past, through the next two floors, out the roof into the night sky, beyond to the black vastness of sidereal space, and at last into the nameless face of whatever Higher Power existed out there.

  “Mom, Dad. I forgive you,” she began.

  An hour later, the malevolent mechanism of hatred coiling and turning slowly in her chest since childhood stopped. It had been a part of her for so long that she recognized it only when the deliberate grinding rotation ceased. Filling the void, a warm sensation of calm seeped through her soul, nourishing and giving peace.