The Kingdom of Tamarack (Book One in The Tamarack Series)

by Ross Turner

  He was everything that any of them ever expected an angel to be: golden, beautiful, and godly; all but His eyes were glorious. Two jet black jewels alight with burning malice and emerald green pupils, set level at the three companions in His wake, having come so far to fair themselves against His will.

  He was a God. He would not let them slay Him and smite His rule over this world, or any other.

  Isabel raised herself up and approached her foe, her eyes burning into the cold depths of His. She was not afraid. She was ready. Zanriath and Ayva were with her; she was not alone as she had expected to be.

  Zanriath looked on helplessly, wanting to help, but knowing his efforts would simply be wasted. Ayva too took in the pitched battle unfolding before her eyes. Her friend Isabel, so brave and courageous, carrying such a heavy burden on her shoulders, tasked with killing her own God… tasked with killing Ayva’s Angel.

  Pain struck at her chest. Her fists clenched and her jaw locked. With her heart pounding against her ribcage she longed for her angel, and a familiar hatred boiled inside of her, and she slowly turned and set matching stone cold eyes upon her friend, the so called Isabella Ta’ Quedara.

  41

  Though in the past in these sorts of situations Isabel’s mind had been racing with thoughts, concerns and what ifs, now it was surprisingly quiet, in the height of probably the most important encounter she would ever experience, she was relaxed. Not complacent, far from it, but confident, sure of herself, and more importantly, sure of what had to be done. She knew her part at least.

  She barely even realised that she’d begun muttering incantations under her breath. The pulse from her amulet matched the steady beating of her heart and her first strike took Depozi a little by surprise. She focused her will and sent it flowing through the cavern toward her foe. He gasped, taken aback, and took a step back. Isabel struck again before He had chance to recover, and again, and again, each time forcing Him further back. It all seemed too easy.

  The knife through Ayva’s heart wrenched deeper and more painful with each strike. Twisting with the brutal agony of what was taking place before her. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. She couldn’t let it happen.

  Her darling angel suffered more and more with each of Isabel’s attacks. Couldn’t she see that she was hurting Him? The agony on His face was so clear, and so memorable from her dreams. Had they even been dreams? Had Isabel tricked her into thinking they weren’t real. And after all her deception, she just wanted Him to suffer? Ayva could see at last. Isabel just wanted her to suffer.

  She couldn’t take it.

  Isabel sent another cascading attack and forced her beloved to the floor with a shrill cry of pain.

  “Isabel! ISABEL!!” Her piercing shriek shocked both Isabel and Zanriath, but not Depozi. He looked up from the floor with a sly smile on His face. Isabel and Zanriath looked also, only to see Ayva holding her bow fully drawn and aimed, not at Isabel, but at Zanriath. “Leave Him alone Isabel!” Ayva ordered, tightening her grip, the point of her arrow inches from Zanriath’s face.

  “Ayva…” Isabel began.

  “DON’T!!” Ayva cut her short. “I know what you’ve been doing! I won’t let you hurt Him!” Tears streamed openly down her face and her gaze flitted between Isabel and Zanriath, her thoughts clouded by hatred and confusion and love.

  “He’s poisoned your mind Ayva.” Isabel urged gently. “Don’t let Him turn you into a monster.”

  “NO!! Be quiet!” She shrieked again, her breaths short and shallow and her heart pounding beneath her heaving chest. She looked across to her love, His face pleading and helpless and His eyes soft and loving.

  “Help me Ayva.” He said in a whimpering, almost tender voice, all traces of His deepening madness dissolving in the illusion He’d planted in her mind. She nodded numbly, biting her lip to stop it quivering and holding back floods of tears.

  “Ayva…” Isabel pleaded quietly, but stopped abruptly as Ayva forced the point of her arrow even closer to Zanriath’s eye.

  “I need you to help me Ayva. She’s going to kill me.” Depozi continued.

  “She can’t!” Ayva spluttered uncontrollably.

  “No, but she wants to.” He replied malevolently. “She won’t be able to if you kill her before she has the chance.” The look Isabel cast across to her adversary was one of utter disgust.

  Ayva looked across to Depozi also. He looked exactly as He had done when He’d come to her before. She wanted Him. She wanted only Him and nothing more. She walked forwards and altered her aim to Isabel, keeping her bow taught and making sure she could still see Zanriath.

  “I won’t let you hurt Him.” She repeated quietly, her voice trembling. She looked at Isabel but received no reply; she merely stood there studying Ayva’s face carefully.

  “Do it Ayva.” Depozi urged. “Do it for me.” That familiar lust for revenge crept back into residence in Ayva’s heart and she looked over to Depozi. His imploring eyes begged her now, begged her to help Him. When Isabel had intervened before, Ayva had been helpless, but now things were different.

  “He doesn’t love you Ayva.” Isabel said quietly. Ayva’s gaze snapped back and she was suddenly filled with harsh anger.

  “Shut up! He does! How would you know!?”

  “Do it Ayva.” Depozi’s voice was hoarse and rasping again now and His gaze focused on Isabel, His smile full of mockery. Isabel ignored it. Ayva couldn’t.

  “You do…don’t you?” Ayva cast her uncertainty across the cavern. His voice and expression remained unchanged.

  “Do it Ayva.” He repeated simply. Ayva’s thoughts flashed back to Hinaktor. She recognised that evil stare that He held locked on Isabel. Had it been a trick? In the end Isabel had saved her. The yearning for revenge subsided slightly and Ayva’s thoughts cleared a little, replacing what she now saw in front of her, and she saw that it was all wrong.

  She still held Isabel, her dearest friend, at the tip of her arrow, and her angel, her love, urged her to kill her dearest friend. She examined Him more carefully. Yes, He was an angel, and everything that would be expected of an angel. But beneath all that, she saw only one thing, one thing that she could not ignore. A demon, and within that demon a pure malevolent hatred born solely out of jealousy, as is the way with so much hate. There was no love here.

  Isabel’s calm expression was one of understanding as Ayva’s eyes pleaded forgiveness and welled with heavy tears.

  “DO IT AYVA!” His harsh voice commanded her, shrieking. Ayva looked over to Him, and then back to Isabel with apologetic eyes, searching for forgiveness, searching for the same help as before when she’d saved her from the nightmares. Isabel smiled forgivingly and nodded.

  “Do it Ayva.” She said softly, her voice kind and caring. Everything that Ayva’s so called angel was not, but that she so sorely wished he was. The same knife twisted in her heart, only more painfully now.

  Ayva returned the smile with surging relief and took a deep breath, driven by the strength that Isabel had - a strength that Ayva could only dream of matching.

  She drew the string of her bow fully back, still pointed at Isabel, and allowed Depozi a pre-empted chuckle of victory before spinning on her heel and fixing her gaze on Him.

  “No…” He began to say, faltering. It was too late. Ayva’s blazing strike soared cleanly down the narrow bridge and struck Depozi cleanly at the heart, no longer impeded by trickery. In the same instant Ayva’s heart shattered and she fell to her knees weakly. A meek cry escaped Depozi’s lips as He looked down at the arrow protruding from his chest. It should not have hurt Him; He was a God, she was a mere mortal. How could this be?

  “There’s something you’ve overlooked.” Isabel said firmly to Depozi as He looked from the wound at His chest to Ayva crouched over on the floor, His mouth agape, her head in her hands, tears dripping through her fingers and dotting the cold rocky walkway.

  “NO!” He shrieked in reply. “There is nothing!” Without warning
He charged towards Isabel, completely rage blind, shifting between an angel and a demon, not knowing any more which one He really was.

  Isabel prepared herself and gathered her will, combining it with her amulet, as this was exactly the purpose it had been created for. But as she released it, she didn’t find what she’d been expecting. Depozi was not attacking her, or even trying to defend Himself.

  Instead He took her strike, absorbing it with a howl of pain and simultaneously ripping the Godly-arrow from His bleeding chest. Before Isabel had time to react, He lunged and drove the arrow through Ayva’s heart as she knelt.

  Ayva gasped and choked up thick blood, though the searing pain of loss in her heart lessened, and Depozi kicked her effortlessly from the bridge, sending her hurtling down to be swallowed by the surging waters below.

  There was a brief moment of sheer disbelief before Isabel lost control. The cool composure she had held for so long shattered under her own fury and she screamed mercilessly at the faltering God-Demon, trickster, and murderer.

  In an instant she was alone. Isabel stood unaccompanied in the darkness that she was by now becoming so accustomed to, blackness all around.

  Mere feet from her stood Depozi. The Demon-Lord responsible for all her pain and loss, everything she’d fought so hard to protect, and yet He had still managed to take so much from her. Thinking of things she would fight for, she looked behind for Zanriath, but he wasn’t there. It seemed now that she really was alone, just as the High Priest had warned her what felt like so long ago, and all of her worst fears came to life.

  And still Depozi jeered her, taunting her with her failure to protect Ayva. But the truth that Isabel realised saved her heart the pain of yet another loss. Her beloved friend, whom she had become so close to, had been so full of life, whom she knew would never give up so easily, was not gone, and therefore neither was her Zanriath.

  “She isn’t gone.” Isabel said quietly and confidently, slowly and clearly, emphasising each word carefully as realisation dawned upon the face of her enemy. He howled with frustration at His own foolishness as His mistake became obvious and attacked Isabel, gathering His will and sending strike after strike in quick succession, each one falling uselessly against the barrier of what was now the impenetrable strength of Isabel’s soul.

  His final actions had cemented Ayva’s fate, and only now that it was certain could Isabel rid Tamarack of the plague that had almost come to claim and consume it.

  She thought of how easily she’d cast doubt from her thoughts in the mountains of Rilako; how clearing her mind in Dragon’s Peak had made her hardships lessen so. She remembered how she’d so easily channelled her anger in Compii Tower. And she remembered how she was told that she would be alone. And now she was.

  But somehow she could feel Zanriath’s fingers entwined with hers. She could feel the warmth and comfort of his touch as he held her, as now even still he protected her. She held on tightly to that feeling, and it was only then that she realised what that feeling really was. Something she had longed for, for so long.

  She smiled, channelling her anger, her hate, her loss and finally her love, concentrating it all within her will, her human emotion suddenly becoming her greatest strength, greater than any power mustered by her so-called God. The confused look upon Depozi’s face was one of sheer disbelief.

  “You can’t.” He croaked. “She can’t be. You can’t be doing this.”

  “It’s over.” Isabel said simply. “It’s time to start anew.”

  A small tear escaped His eye and for the smallest of moments Isabel pitied the poor God cowering before her, catching the briefest glimpse of understanding at how He himself had twisted and confused His own thoughts. It was all too clear to her now that He did not share the same desire for suffering as the demons did. She sighed. It had to be done, and she was the only one who could do it.

  She thought of Ben and Zhack and her loss of confidence, and how that had cost them their lives. She would have made that mistake here too, except that now her resolve was ironclad, and she knew beyond any disbelief that this was her final task in this place, and if she didn’t, she would lose Ayva and her Zanriath for evermore, just like Ben and Zhack.

  She had no doubt. But she did have hope.

  Releasing her will with strange sympathy the blackness around her echoed Isabel’s strength, mimicking the throbbing amulet at her neck as her will surged towards her demonic foe. He shrieked and what little defence He could muster shattered under Isabel’s intense will.

  She was the victor. Everything she had fought for, her family, her friends, her world, it was worth much more than all her suffering.

  The so deeply-rooted jealousy that she had sensed became apparent to her then and she saw into the very heart of Depozi and all of the demons who had clung to the escape He had offered them. They envied Isabel’s freedom. The freedom her will possessed to be content with security and happiness, and not to forever long for more power. She had been right. There could be no other. In mind and in soul, she and Depozi were opposites, and so only she had the will and the power to counter His maddened rage and lust for revenge.

  She felt a rushing surge as hundreds upon thousands of demons roared in anger and frustration as they were cast back to their own realm, and the damage Depozi had dealt was healed, or at least it was halted, giving Tamarack a much needed chance to recover.

  His will and His soul vanished. Not to the demonic realm, but back to where He and His brothers had been for millennia, scouring the vast emptiness of the universe that surrounded her Kingdom of Tamarack. Except now, He could never settle again. He would be lost to the unending openness of time and space, unable to hurt her, or anyone else, ever again.

  But even that would never erase the memory of His will imprinted in Isabel’s mind, and Depozi’s last cry of helplessness would haunt her for the rest of her days.

  42

  Zanriath stared across the narrow bridge at where Depozi had been only moments before. Then he looked across at Isabel who stood with her head down and her knees shaking slightly. He held her hand tightly. The bodies of Ayva and Depozi had both been lifeless for what felt to him like only a few moments, but he was sure for some reason it had been much longer; he released the quivering breath he’d held so firmly and the tight pain that had been building in his chest subsided.

  He had watched Ayva’s body fall limply to the souls below, both human and demonic, and then, as both life and motion had returned to Isabel’s body, the angel, or demon, he wasn’t sure which, that was Depozi, slumped lifelessly to the side and fell also, but from the opposite side of the bridge, following Ayva’s body down into the fuming water.

  The souls of lost demons swarmed from the seething water and engulfed the angelic, demonic body and surged upwards, carrying it with them. They separated from each other and soared round the edges of the cavern, their misty shapes dissipating silently as they slammed into the walls, evaporating into clouds of vapour and disappearing, taking their Demon-Lord with them. It was over.

  Soon enough the demonic souls had all disappeared and only the angry yet silent curses from the Souls of the Ocean remained below them. He looked to Isabel again. She wept quietly and slowly turned to hold him on unsteady legs. He found that his too were shaky as he moved to embrace her. She folded herself lovingly into his arms and buried her face in his chest. Her tears seeped through his shirt and were warm against his skin.

  Even in their final moments of disaster, he had sensed that she had wanted so desperately to tell him something; and now yet again, he too felt the urge to give unto her the three words resting gently on the tip of his tongue.

  As she had stood motionless he had known that she was fighting and suffering for them all, and so he had done all he could. He could not fight; he could not strengthen her, so he held her hand, and hoped and prayed it would be enough to help her pull through.

  Zanriath and Isabel crawled back through the tunnel the way they’d come and emerg
ed out into a new and welcoming sunlight. They had not been reluctant to leave the lonely moans of the Souls of the Ocean behind, regretful only that they had lost Ayva’s body to them.

  But Isabel knew they had not lost their dear friend, though Zanriath still wasn’t quite sure exactly what had happened back in the cavern, he was certain that soon enough he would know all that she had so desperately wanted to tell him.

  “What did Depozi overlook Isabel?” She sighed as she stood up and looked around the small and baron island once more. The rain had stopped and the clouds above them had broken, allowing streaks of sunlight to illuminate their emerging victory.

  “That once Ayva realised what He’d done, how He’d lied to her, He would lose. That’s why He killed her, because He realised what she’d become. Even death couldn’t change it though. I think He knew it wouldn’t, but He was desperate, and more confused than I’d thought.”

  “What had she become?” Isabel sighed and looked ahead to where the beams of sunlight struck the grey rocks, lighting them a golden pathway.

  “What has she become?” She corrected. “He was his own downfall all along.” Zanriath followed Isabel’s gaze and let out a small gasp. Amidst the brilliant streaks of sunlight stood a figure, shimmering as if it was clinging onto existence, an illusion of a spirit cast upon their world.

  Her features seemed more beautiful than ever before, and Her radiant golden hair shone volumes above even the sunlight itself. Dressed in pure white Her eyes were loving and pleased. It was Ayva.

  “Isabel. Zanriath. My friends.” She greeted them gladly and warmly, but unable to move from where She stood, just as Ormath had been on the lake, not physically connected, just reflected.