Into the Dark (Light Chaser Book 2)

by J B Cantwell

  “It means I’m next on his list,” I said.

  “You’re not the only one in here," he said, alarmed. "Look." He passed the book back to me, but he was looking at a different page, one farther back.

  Fasqe of Eagleview

  It was crossed out, too.

  "I know him," he said. "Or, I guess, I knew of him. Zahn taught us about him, said he was a great warrior who went rogue and was killed in the wild.”

  “So he didn’t tell you the truth,” I said. I wasn’t surprised.

  “This book makes me wonder if he even knew the truth,” he said.

  I imagined Zahn as an ignorant puppet of Torin’s, unaware of just how much malice his master had within him.

  "Let me see that," Duna said, reaching out for the book.

  I held it up for her. "Be careful with the pages. It's very old."

  As she flipped back in the book, her eyes widened. Suddenly, she was alarmed. She stood up and took the book with her, moving quickly toward the front of the group.

  "Duna," I said. "Wait!"

  I jumped up and followed her, unsure about her alarm. But a couple of moments later, she was kneeling next to Arte, showing him the page she had flipped to.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  Arte looked down at the book; his face was as shocked as Duna's. He took it from her, then looked up at me. "What is this?"

  "It's the Book of Torin," I said. "It's supposed to have the names of everyone on his list to kill. I was told that in order for him to prevail, he had to do away with those of us in the book first. I'm not sure why. Who was it? Whose name is that?"

  “These names are those from our tribe,” Arte said.

  "What?"

  Connell approached, a concerned look on his face.

  "What's going on?" he asked.

  I told him about Arte's revelation.

  “There’s a name missing here,” Arte explained. “Could it be? Could it be possible that Angus is still alive?"

  "I don't know," I said. "I thought that everyone in this book who had been crossed out was dead."

  “It’s not about who is in here. It’s about who isn’t.” A look of wonder came upon Arte's face as he thought about what that could mean. "So it's possible."

  "But it's been years," Duna said. "Hundreds and hundreds of years."

  "That doesn't matter," he said. "You know as well as I do that he could very well be alive. Time doesn't matter." He marveled at the book, then looked up at me, a distinctly guilty look on his face. "I haven't been honest with you. There's something we need to talk about." He stood up. "Will you join me?"

  I looked around at the others, but he was only talking to me. Duna looked concerned, and I couldn't blame her. After a lifetime of shame and ridicule, new truths were coming to light.

  I hesitated to leave her behind, but I had little choice. Whatever Arte wanted to say was something I wanted to hear. So I got up, took the book from his huge hands, and followed him out of the clearing.

  Chapter 16

  Arte waited until we were well out of earshot of anybody else in the group. It was suspicious at best, his behavior. Finally, after checking a few times that we hadn't been followed, he spoke.

  "I… I don't know how to say this. But my brother, Angus, well, he had magic."

  "What?"

  "Angus was my twin. We were just kids when Torin came to Ezvar, only about twenty years old. Back then, magic was more common than it is now, and Angus had a gift. Since we were little, he had always found a way to prank me. He never had a wand or any kind of weapon, but he didn't need one. It seemed that all he needed to do to use his magic was look your way. As we grew older, he refined his skills and eventually became well known in the village."

  "Well known for doing what?" I asked.

  "For everything. He could heal people, kind of like Duna, and people began to come to him for all types of problems. Magic wasn't so unusual back then, though only a few in the village had the talent. Some people could move things with nothing more than a glance. Others could run at great speed. There was even one who could fly."

  "What happened to them all? If the Ezvar tribe had magic back then, how did it become such a terrible thing in your village?"

  His eyes shifted away from me and glazed over as he recounted the memory.

  "Torin came, and everything changed. He had magic, but he was far more powerful than anyone in our village. He stayed with us for some time, training those with talent. Soon, he had a group of six trained sorcerers from Ezvar."

  He looked back over his shoulder at the tribe, and when his eyes met mine again, they were full of shame.

  "It became clear after a time that Torin wanted to leave and bring all of the sorcerers with him. My family was against this, as we would lose Angus for who knew how long. In fact, all of those with magic were young, and every family resisted Torin's desire to leave with their sons and daughters.

  "Those in Torin's group also didn’t want to leave with him, not just their families. But he insisted, and when Torin insisted upon something, he got what he wanted. In the end, there was a battle. He used his powers to overcome those with magic and turned them against the tribe. The giants fought bravely to protect their sons and daughters, but they didn't have anything close to the abilities that Torin's group did, and they were quickly decimated.

  "It was a massacre," I said, eyes wide.

  "But that wasn't enough for Torin," he went on. "He instructed each of the young men and women in the group to murder their own families. Angus was no exception. He killed everyone in our family, including our young sister. I'll never forget the look on my mother's face as he turned his gaze upon her. I saw them, his eyes, and they were not his own. I knew then that Torin had completely possessed him, using his powers for his own benefit. He killed them all. They all did."

  He looked out over the crowd, and I could finally understand why he was so possessive over them.

  They were all he had left.

  "When Torin's group of students had finished his dirty work," he said, "he took them all away from the village. But he didn't have total control. He had convinced himself that he was above all else, and in so doing, he showed his weakness. Keeping control of six giants was no easy feat. It might've been manageable with common men, but giants are a different species, a stronger species if you will."

  "But how did you survive? Why did he spare you?" I asked.

  When he spoke next, his voice was quiet, barely a whisper.

  "I don't know why Angus spared my life; he had been under Torin's complete control that night. Somehow, though, he had broken the spell cast upon him, and for whatever reason, he knew that killing me would be a point of no return for him."

  "What happened to them?" I asked. "The other sorcerers?"

  But I knew.

  "In the end, Torin realized his mistake in choosing the giants as his allies. Like I said, they were too strong for him, and as the night came to a close, he forced all of them up to the top of the closest mountain and murdered them one by one. We saw them fall from the precipice, but we were never able to find their bodies. It was later, when the Keepers would not give him what he wanted, that Torin cursed the sky. He cursed us all."

  "Why haven't you told anyone this?" I asked. "These are your people, and you've made them afraid of you. Instead of leading them, you don't trust them. Your actions breed fear."

  I wished I were taller so that I could stare him straight in the face. I wanted answers, but even more, I wanted answers for his tribe. Ensuring that the giants spent several lifetimes living in terror fell on the shoulders of this one man. He would have to make amends, something that may or may not result in him losing his place in the tribe.

  "I know there is fear," he said. "But you have to understand. Our experience with magic, with Torin, killed nearly everyone in our tribe. Only myself and fifteen others remained. We all agreed that we would not tolerate magic any longer. That was where the rule came from, the reason
that Duna has been outcast for most of her life."

  Hearing all of this made sense of a lot of Arte's actions, but it was no excuse for them. Surely the sorcerers had been peaceful before Torin ever came. And while I could understand his fear, I also understood the feeling of being unwanted. I’d lived my whole childhood that way, unwanted by my father, my home. The only people who had shown me love back then were Grandmother and Oriana. Now Oriana was dead, and Grandmother soon would be. The pain I felt inside my chest when I thought about going home was palpable. It was something I both desired and mourned. There was no place for me there anymore.

  Maybe though, if I could take out Zahn, I could find a life there once again. With Father and the children. It was possible.

  "You need to tell them," I said. "Tell your tribe the truth. What you did was terrible, despite your reasons. But also, your actions have weakened your people. There may be others among you with magic, others who hide their abilities. They won’t look upon you fondly after you tell this tale, but you must."

  His eyes were fearful. How much this man must hate me, I thought, a simple girl descending upon his village and upending all of his control.

  His control had never been real, though. In allowing his fear to overtake him for so many years, he'd allowed Torin to win.

  "What happened to the other fifteen people?" I wondered aloud.

  "A couple of them left when Torin cursed the sky. There were a handful of young ones who’d been orphaned, and the four of us who were older cared for them. Eventually, one by one, they each left once the children were grown. The reminder of what had happened to their lives was too strong for them to sustain it any longer. I don't know where they went, only that they went. So that left me—the leader. I was the only one left. I was the only one who knew the history, but the children did not. They were young when all of this happened, and though they had questions about where their caregivers had gone, eventually they came to accept that they would not be returning."

  I shook my head, and it felt like all the air in my chest had drained away. I was tempted to blame Angus, and Arte's excuses didn’t make up for millennia of lies.

  But it was Torin in the end, Torin who wanted, above all else, to bring pain.

  "I can't tell them," he said. "They will hate me forever."

  I understood this. His wife was gone now, and who else was there? He had housed Connell for a time, but I knew of no sons or daughters, no other family to speak of. Perhaps watching his own family die at Angus's hands had been enough to convince him to never have children of his own, a sad fate for a man terrorized by his past.

  But it was time to move on now. And it was time for Arte to tell the truth.

  "You can tell them tonight," I said. "If you want to come with us, you must tell them your story."

  He hung his head but nodded. I turned and went back to Connell and the others to get everyone up.

  Soon, the group was picking themselves up for one last push before resting for the night. We walked for a few more hours in silence before people started talking about stopping. It occurred to me that they weren't scared enough, or that maybe their brute physical strength was leading them to believe they were stronger than Torin. They couldn't have been more wrong.

  I considered the idea that Angus might still be alive, stuck beneath Torin's thumb somewhere, possessed, or even imprisoned. Certainly, he must've been very talented to have escaped Torin’s wrath and his name in the book. I tried to think of a reason why Torin would’ve let Angus live, but the only thing that came to mind was to possess him further, to use him as he used his sons to go out into the world and hurt all those they came across.

  Arte was no longer leading the crowd. Duna had taken up that task, and now she was in charge of finding a resting place that was safe enough, hidden enough, for all of us. But I think she knew, and I knew, that we were probably being tracked. It didn't matter whether we hid or not. Only Duna, Connell, and I could protect the rest.

  I wanted to give Arte time to think about how to tell the others what had happened so many hundreds of years ago. I decided I would wait until after dinner and allow him to tell his story. But as the rest of the group pulled out their gyvu and started to eat, I looked around and didn't see him.

  I walked up to Connell, who was sitting with a group of giants I didn't know.

  "Do you know where Arte is?"

  I hadn't told Connell or Duna about Arte's story, but the cold feeling I was starting to feel in my stomach told me that maybe I’d been wrong to keep it to myself.

  Connell shrugged. "I haven't seen him. He was walking behind everyone, but I was up in the front with Duna."

  I, myself, had spent the rest of the afternoon keeping watch for anyone who might be tracking us. I'd had my knives out at all times, ready for fire should the need arise. I’d decided to wait for Arte to digest our conversation before expecting him to share the news with the tribe. Now, though, I was wondering if that had been a mistake.

  I stopped walking and let the group go by me as I searched for him in the darkness. But when the entire tribe had passed, and I hadn't found him, I feared the worst.

  He had left us.

  "What's wrong?" Connell asked.

  "He's gone."

  "Who?"

  "Arte," I said. "I haven't seen him for the past few hours. I thought he was walking in the back, but I think he might've taken off." I turned all the way around, trying to see if he was maybe hiding in the distance.

  "Taken off? Why?" Connell asked.

  "He told me… well, he told me about his past, about his experience with Torin. It wasn't a good story."

  "Was it that bad?"

  "I think the others want to stop," Duna said. She had just fallen back in the crowd to find us. "Where's Arte?"

  I recounted to both of them in whispers the story that Arte had told me. Duna was shocked, though Connell seemed unfazed.

  "That man," Duna said angrily. "Just wait until I get my hands on him." She took out her wand and held it up, ready to fight, searching around and hoping that her target would appear magically before her.

  But her target was long gone.

  "Don't be so quick to judge," Connell said. "You've never fought Torin or anyone sent by him."

  "Is that so?" she said acidly. "It just so happens that our tribe is almost constantly in danger from Howlers, and you got a good dose of their abilities last night." She turned to me. "If the story is true, there could be others among us who are hiding their magic. Others who might've helped, even last night."

  Sparks flew from her wand, and she turned around, searching for him, searching for someone to unleash her anger upon.

  "Where did he go?" she asked.

  If I’d known where he was at that moment, I wouldn't have told her. It was my belief that Duna was becoming extremely powerful now that she was learning how to harness her abilities. But she’d had a lifetime worth of pain upon her, and I was getting the impression that she was one who didn’t forgive easily.

  And why should she?

  "Let's get everybody settled for the night," I said. "Then we can go look for him."

  Duna was fuming, but she went up ahead to tell the others it was time to stop. Connell hung back with me.

  "Do you really think he's gone?" he asked. "I mean, I understand why Duna’s upset, but after what he went through, can you really blame him?"

  I, too, understood where Arte was coming from, but I couldn't justify centuries of lying. Too many people had been hurt.

  "I've never fought Torin," I said. "But I have fought his sons. They were terrifying. They were relentless and cruel. If I'd had to face them without magic, like Arte had to face Torin without magic, I might be more understanding. But there's just no excuse for what he's done for all these years."

  The group slowed and veered off to the left of the valley, searching for a place to rest near the rocks.

  Duna came back our way, and I could tell there would be no forgiveness
if she were ever to see Arte again.

  "Any sign of him?" she asked. There was no concern in her voice, only anger.

  It wasn't my place to tell her how she should treat him if she did ever see him again. But as I turned around, searching for any sign of him, maybe a figure in the distance, I saw nothing. And I thought I knew what this meant.

  He had left us for good.

  There was no easy way to tell the Ezvar giants the story that Arte had told me. It didn't seem right for me to stand up and shout the truth that he had withheld from them for so long; we were trying to be stealthy after all, and it didn't seem like my place. But somehow, we needed to get through to each and every one of the giants, to let them know that if they were hiding something, now was the time to disclose it.

  Duna was the one who filtered the story through the crowd as the night came on. She didn't tell them every single detail, but she did make it known that magic would no longer be any kind of offense in the tribe, and she openly asked for help from anyone who might've been holding back secrets about their abilities.

  I didn't expect many of them to come out of hiding, so I was surprised when two giants approached us later that night. Connell, Duna, and I were sitting in a small circle discussing the day's events, and one man and woman quietly made their way toward us.

  "Come sit," I said quietly, not wanting to cause a stir.

  The three of us made space, and the two giants sat down.

  “I’m Carden," the man said, "and this is Lesley. We both… well, we can… do things."

  "What kinds of things?" I asked.

  "Unusual things," he said. "Forbidden things."

  "Arte is gone," I said. "I don't know when, or if, he will return. But there’s no need for you to continue hiding your abilities. We can help you."

  They looked up at Duna with shame on their faces, but, surprisingly, she did not blame them.

  "I know you," Duna said. "Both of you. You aren’t bad people, and I understand why you’ve done as you've done. In a way, I made my own situation worse, refusing to hide my talent. But you're here now. Do you know of any others?"