by Hart, Blaine
“What power on this good earth could do this?” Kell said in quiet amazement.
“No power on earth,” Wendfala answered. “We must leave here. My heart doesn’t feel good and we must leave now if we want to live.”
“No,” I cried, and then shrieked long and loud into the abyss again, “Anna!”
Someone clutched my shoulder but I shook it off. I stood in despair listening to my own echo.
“We must go,” Wendfala said. “There is nothing here that we can do, and if the powers that did this returns--”
But even as she spoke a single soft word drifted up from the depths.
“Longo . . .”
I sank to my knees gazing down. A small vapor of mist appeared. I craned to look as it rose, and as it rose it began to take shape and the form it took was,
“Anna?” I said.
“Longo,” the misty apparition smiled. “Would that all of your kind was as simple as you.”
“Anna . . . what?”
“Is that what you call the child,” the vision said. “She wouldn’t tell me her name. She has this silly notion about names holding power. So quaint. Still, the body is young and fair, and it feels so nice.”
“What have you done with the – “but before I could finish Kell slapped me aside.
“The Angel,” my master finished. “What have you done with Gavial?”
“And who are you?” Wendfala demanded.
“Questions, questions,” the misty thing answered. “But that’s alright. I will answer because I want you three to tell the world who it is that has the power to enslave an Angel.”
“Then tell us,” Wendfala cried. “Who are you?”
“I am as I am,” the voice of Anna said. “I am the mind bending Mistress of the nightmare that witches and wizards would never dare dream of. I am she who terrifies the undead and who haunts the thoughts of the gods themselves, and I am she whose name they will not speak.
“Go away then demon,” Wendfala goaded. “For truly there is no good here.”
“There surely is not.” The mist laughed spitefully. “I am the right hand of the idiot who thought he could use my pet dragon to conquer your pitiful Nine Realms. While your cunning led to my pets defeat, my minion’s failure is also my victory, for while your holy paladin was distracted, I saw into Kell’s mind and knew it blessed.”
“So now I know how to defeat you Kell,” the voice said with a sneer. “Your foolish quest may have defeated my dragon, but that bundle of bones was just a pittance of my powers, and your pathetic waste of an Angel’s blessing led me to the shadow of her wind… and so here I am thanks to you.
“And you Longo,” the vision smiled. “Longo the Simple. You go forth and tell all that you meet of all that you have seen. But also tell them this; tell them that I am she who will conquer all. Once you came to this place for an Angel’s swift blessing, but you will leave now with my slow curse. So hear my curse now simpletons, and hear it well.
“For ninety-nine nights and one hundred days your world will know nothing but a driving, vengeful rain. Waters will rise and islands will sink. In the lands that survive crops will rot in the fields and in the stores, and after that a famine the likes of which your world has never known will come. Behind that famine will come plague and pestilence, and the peoples of the world will war among themselves until nothing is left but a ragged bunch of bedraggled desperates who I will enslave into my service.
“So go now, Longo the Simple. Go with your friends and tell the world that I am everlasting and that I am patient. And tell them to be afraid. Go!”
And so saying the misty vision of Anna vaporized.
“Kell,” Wendfala said softly. “I think . . . I think that we should be afraid.”
“I think,” Kell said, “that whatever that demon was, it missed something.”
“What?”
“The other Anna,” he said. “I’m sorry Longo, but that’s why I stopped you from talking – before you could say the Annas. That thing knew only of Gavial and Anna. She didn’t know that there were two of them.”
“That means,” I said slowly. “That means that the other Anna . . .”
“Could be anywhere,” Wendfala said. “Angels are powerful, and it could be that in Gavial’s desperation she hid the child.”
“Then we must find her,” I said. “She’s the only one who could tell us more about that wicked being.”
“The girl could be anywhere,” Wendfala said. “We must look for guidance. The girl might give us a story but we need wise counsel. If that wraith spoke anything near true, then we must seek Gavial’s sisters.”
“Anna saved our lives,” I cried. “We must look for her.”
“Anna is one life,” Wendfala said. “I am sorry for your little friend Longo, but a thing that could capture an Angel is a thing to be feared and fought. We are puny in the light of that power and so we must look for greater help.”
“First,” Kell said. “We must look to the Chaos.”
My master walked down the beach and across the fallen tombstones. As he walked, a silvery noise began to dance about the grotto. We looked to the mouth of the cave and it began to rain.
The End of Book 1
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