Chosen

by Jolea M. Harrison

  Maralt stared back at the High Bishop for confirmation of what he already knew. Gradyn was talking to Dain, trying to explain why he was there, and what he was needed for. Dain wasn’t inclined to listen. Gradyn cast Maralt a nodding glance.

  The darkness came from the Room of Orbs. Dynan Telaerin and his forefather were on the wrong side of that wall at the same time together, setting up an imbalance that allowed the Orbs, the Six Manifestations, access to this world, maybe permanently. If no one was there to stop them.

  Maralt swore at the thought, hesitating between going to Carryn or back for Dain, aware that he was out of time. He swore again, a term hardly appropriate to use in front of the High Bishop. When Maralt went to Dain, he tried to jerk away. Maralt grabbed him though, avoided a wild swing and then dragged him to the corner so he could see. The sight of all that black coming at them finally stopped him.

  “Your brother is on the other side of that. If it reaches the Sacred Seal, the living seal, he’ll never get out again. Do you believe in Hell, Dain? If you don’t help us, Dynan is dead, and his afterlife won’t be like anything you’ve ever been told about, and well, neither will yours.”

  Maralt shoved him back, putting some space between them in case Dain thought to come at him again. Maralt was far more concerned now with helping Carryn, who was sliding backward, her shoulder into the dark wall.

  “Maralt, no,” Gradyn said. “Show Dain what to do and then come to the Temple.”

  With that, Gradyn turned and left them.

  “Who are you people?” Dain asked, backing away when Maralt moved toward him.

  “Guardians of the Word,” Maralt said, knowing how little that explained.

  “What? What word?”

  “True ones,” Maralt said. “Are you going to help, or not?”

  For the first time, the anger in Dain’s eyes lessened while uncertainty took its place. There was doubt he’d be able to face this, and fear and grief for his brother.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Evil,” Maralt said when that was too simple an answer. “You’ll know when you touch it. Now, be still. There’s something I have to do.”

  “What?” he asked, unwilling to take anything Maralt said uncontested.

  “I have to give you something.”

  Maralt wished he’d shut up for once, and do what he was told. The constant light and the desire to take it set Maralt on edge. He found himself holding his breath to avoid it. The evil nature of the talon was there, too, working against him, and he tried to ignore it.

  “Give me what?”

  “Me,” Maralt said. He put his hand to Dain’s head, two fingers to the side of his face even as Dain reared away from him. Maralt followed, commanding him to be still while he concentrated on implanting the small seed of strength and will Dain would need to fight this thing. Maralt wondered if a little wisdom might help too. Dain fought him, but it didn’t matter and then it was done.

  Maralt took Dain’s memory of it happening next. There was a physical sense to it that surprised Maralt. It was like swallowing a drop of an intoxicating drug he couldn’t get enough of. There was the sensation of it entering his mind, filling him with raw power.

  “Maralt, hurry.”

  He blinked, focusing again and found Carryn struggling against the dark and Dain trying to push him off.

  “Get away from me,” Dain said, trying to wrench free. “I don’t want anything from you.”

  Maralt barked out a laugh. “Suit yourself,” he said, grabbed him up again, and turned him to the wall of night advancing toward them. He forced Dain to hold out his hand, and stood behind him, walking him toward the boiling black. “Focus your will, your strength, all this anger you walk around with, here, against this.”

  Dain gasped when his hand met the solid force of energy as if it were a physical barrier, invisible but palpable.

  “Don’t let it come any further. Don’t let it get away from you either. Do you have it?” Maralt asked, letting him go in increments in case he didn’t, but Dain nodded, the exertion already starting to show in his face.

  Maralt moved to Carryn, who was only barely aware of them, but as he meant to pull her away, he looked into the darkness.

  A beautiful castle sat gleaming in the light, and he saw himself again sitting on a throne of power. Hundreds bowed on their knees before him. He saw, and was overcome with desire to step into that world, and make it reality.

  He felt a restraining hand on his arm, and found Dain Telaerin, not so much a sixteen-year-old child anymore, watching him, aware of his weakness.

  “You should leave,” Dain said, one hand against the darkness and the other pulling Maralt back from it. “And take her with you.”

  Carryn was looking into the dark too. Maralt jumped for her at the same time Dain gathered himself to push. The dark gave way a step. If Maralt hadn’t put both arms around her, Carryn would have gone with it.

  “I’m all right.” Carryn said.

  Maralt watched in awe while Dain pressed ahead. The light around him grew until it was blinding. The only thing he could think was how much he wanted to take it.

  “Maralt,” Carryn’s voice intruded and he looked down. He still had her tightly in his arms. She cast him a look and smiled. She patted his arm while he loosened his grip on her, aware that he was breathing hard now, almost shaking. “We should go.”

  She moved around him, and started pulling on him, drawing him away. He thought she was probably right, even when he didn’t want to leave. An opposing force of reluctance to allow it rose until he wanted to push her off to stop her.

  “No, Maralt,” she said in a gentle voice, taking his face in her hands and drawing his attention from the brilliant flame that stood against the dark. “We have to go.”

  She took his arm again, telling him not to look, talking to him for each step until the desire of it left him and he could breathe again.

  “It was a nice castle though,” she said, hugging his arm as they reached the corner and went around it. The stone walls returned to their usual dull, damp state. “And all the worshiping minions to do every little thing I ever would want. Nice touch.”

  “You felt it too,” he said, surprised and ashamed for his weakness when she seemed more able to ignore the temptation.

  “Yes.” She looked back over her shoulder to Dain. “Do you think he will?”

  “He’s too arrogant.”

  Carryn laughed, a sound like rain falling on a cool spring day, refreshing and relieving. Maralt breathed again.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re right.”

  “No, I’m the one who’s arrogant. I’ve done something terrible, Carryn.”

  “You’ve done what you had to. You brought them to this place and this time where they need to be, so they can do what they were brought into the world to do.”

  “To save us all,” Maralt said, looking back to the hall, and the soft glow of light coming from it. “I believe now.”

  The High Bishop came from the other corridor, greeting them with the usual skepticism.

  “A miracle that,” he said and turned to Carryn. “You should stay with Dain, but only as close as you can safely go, Carryn and no closer. It’s still possible he could fail or falter. We’ll need to know if he does. Maralt, come with me.”

  Maralt didn’t want to, afraid the High Bishop knew of his failings too. Gradyn glanced at him, a brow raised.

  “It would be nice if just once I could tell you in my own time,” Maralt said.

  “I’m not that patient,” Gradyn said, and he smiled, the lines on his face relaxing a fraction. “We all have weaknesses, Maralt. We’re fallible and imperfect. It was a terrible thing I asked of you, a terrible risk to you, and to Dynan. You experienced something you didn’t expect, and now face a kind of guilt for it. The allure will always be there. Did you take the talon?”

  Maralt didn’t hesitate with the answer. “He didn’t have it with him.”
/>   Gradyn stopped, his hand on the door latch that would open onto the Temple Sanctuary. Maralt studied the wall. “Your first thought should have been that you know better than to touch it. The thing is all together corrupt, Maralt. If you risk it and fail...You’ll ruin us all.” Gradyn poked a finger into his chest, jabbing him a few times for emphasis, fortunately not near the place he’d been stabbed. “Guard your mind against your own follies. Now come with me.”

  He took him into the Sanctuary where on the altar the Book of Truth sat open in a shaft of light that came down from the ceiling. Gradyn put a hand on Maralt’s shoulder, pressing downward until he lowered himself to his knees.

  “Stay here, Guardian of the Word. Guardian of the Sacred Seal. Open your mind. Listen and wait. I’ll return soon.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “A King is in need of comfort, and his son needs the protection of the Gods if he has any hope of succeeding in his task. Stay here.”

  ~*~

  Chapter 13

  “Is there any water?”

  Dynan turned around in the cramped, cut from the stone cave at the sudden cessation of movement. Polen, Grint and Faulkin looked at him as if he’d said a dirty word. Polen shook his head.

  “You breathe,” he said, unwinding one of the bandages on his hand that he didn’t need any more. “You feel pain. That’s about the extent of any similarity to living. Like I said before, you’ll get used to it.”

  “No, you won’t,” Grint muttered. He had a carpet of freckles across his face. He had hair that might have been red blond, but was so covered in dirt it was hard to say.

  Grint reminded Dynan of Kamien, minus the freckles. They might have been the same age, or close to it, looked enough alike, seemed alike, except that Kamien was very much alive at the moment. Kamien was bigger than Grint too.

  Grint started tearing the wrappings off, turning his hands over and back. He kept laughing.

  “All right, Grint, settle down,” Polen said, but he was smiling, and while Grint moved off to examine himself, rubbing his fingers all over his face, Polen moved to Dynan. “You have to forgive him. It’s been a long time, beyond the count of years that we’ve been around the living.”

  “Living?” Dynan said, and Polen nodded.

  “You can’t be dead. Not with what you can do. It’s no wonder they sent the Six after you. Now we just have to figure out what you’re here for.”

  “I’m supposed to find Alurn,” Dynan said, and that stopped them too. “I have to bring him back.”

  “Alurn?” Faulkin said. He was brushing dirt from the brown vest he wore, straightening the fabric where it had gotten rumpled. He had brown hair to match, equally rumpled and cut close to his head. “He’s not here. It’s not possible.”

  “We’d know it if he was,” Grint said, and turned to Polen, who didn’t discount the possibility outright, even though he was shaking his head.

  “It isn’t impossible,” he said. “But it isn’t probable either. It would mean something beyond bad for you both to be here. Who told you this? Who sent you here?”

  Dynan couldn’t answer, except to stammer out a confused story about a man he didn’t know who’d saved him from certain death only to take his life the next moment.

  “And he told you to find Alurn?” Polen said. He was quiet after Dynan nodded, but then he swore. “Damned priests. That sounds about right for their ilk. Alurn never should have trusted them to begin with. Half of the whole damn catastrophe is their fault. Mishandling people’s lives without thought to the consequences.”

  “Priest? I don’t think he was from the Temple,” Dynan said. “I mean, he wasn’t dressed like one of them, and I can’t believe the High Bishop—”

  “They’re the only ones who know, so he had to have been. They sent you here instead of letting you be taken by the other side. That was the first attack they stopped. If they hadn’t...well, you’d be holding open a gateway from this side right now, or worse.”

  Polen rubbed his face with his hand and paced around the room a moment while everyone watched him and waited.

  “With the Six aware that you’re here,” he said and then didn’t go on, except to swear again.

  Dynan hesitated, glancing around at each of these men. Contrary to everything he’d ever read about them, they seemed consumed by fear. “Who are the Six?” he asked.

  “It’s best not to talk about them,” Faulkin said, and Grint agreed. “It’s enough to know they’re evil.”

  “He has a right to know, and a need,” Polen said.

  “I’ll go check the entrance,” Faulkin said. “One of them just had its claws in me, Pol. I’d just as soon not hear it.”

  Grint pointed after him. “I’ll just...I’ll make sure he comes back.” The two disappeared down the narrow passage.

  “Don’t mind them,” Polen said. “They think talking about it will draw them to us. Of course, they could be right in this case.”

  Polen Forb looked down at his hands a moment, rubbing a finger where the skin used to be flaking off, and then he looked at Dynan, his eyes narrowed, examining him.

  “You are awfully young,” he said under his breath. He took a seat for himself on a boulder, nodding to an outcrop of stone next to it, so Dynan sat down with him. “What’s your name, son?”

  “What?”

  “Your name? I know you’re a Telaerin.”

  “Dynan,” he said. It was the first time he’d ever met someone who didn’t know who he was.

  “And the rest of it?” Polen said.

  “Alurn. Dynan Alurn.”

  Polen grunted at that, nodding as if he’d known it. “All right then, Dynan Alurn. How long has it been since your namesake ran the place?”

  “A thousand years, or just about.”

  “Really? That long. And people still know who I am? I’ll be damned,” he said. His laugh trailed off into a grunt.

  “There are a couple of books written about you,” Dynan said.

  “Oh I bet they got it all wrong. Not too many of us lived to tell the tale. Bremen was only a boy. Alurn didn’t tell him about the real struggle. Did you know he had a twin brother?”

  “Alurn? No.”

  “Not too surprising considering how it ended up. I suppose you have one too.”

  “Dain.”

  “Dain Ardin, right? So you were both named after him. Do you trust him with your life, this brother of yours?”

  “Yes,” Dynan said, wondering why Polen asked, and why he didn’t seem to believe the answer.

  “And you’re a telepath. I know the kind. The big secret. Well, maybe it’ll turn out differently this time. Alurn and Adiem started out that way, living for each other. They were given a task too big for either of them when they were barely older than you. A mission no less than saving the universe from itself, trying to right a mistake made who knows how many thousands of years ahead of them.” Polen shook his head and stood up from his rock chair. He started pacing, glancing down the passageway toward the entrance as he turned.

  “They failed. Adiem failed. He was taken by it, corrupted by it almost instantly. Alurn lost his brother to the darkness. He spent the rest of his life fighting him, trying to make it right, trying to get him back. Adiem is...The Six are all part of him, and as great an evil as you can imagine. The demon took him a long time ago.”

  “The demon’s rampage and the wrath of the Gods.”

  Polen looked at him. “You’ve heard the stories then, couched as a child’s tale, no doubt. You’ve not heard all of it though. The demon escaped because Adiem let it. And it destroyed all the worlds, because he wanted it that way. He was told, you see, that he’d get to rule us all. He fell for the lie, and nothing Alurn said changed Adiem’s mind, or turned him from it.”

  “But—”

  “The Gods scoured the planets clean after it happened. They had to. And they will again. It weakens them though, every time they have to come here and fix our mess. Maybe this time the
y won’t be strong enough. We’re running out of chances to get it right.”

  Dynan shook his head, hardly able to believe it, or really understand except to be afraid. He’d heard the stories. Kamien used to tell them at night when they were younger, about a demon escaping the void, scaring them to the point they couldn’t sleep. But they begged him to tell them more. It was a long time ago, before Kamien stopped talking to them or having anything to do with them, before he stopped being the brother they knew.

  “Why do you call them the Six?” he asked, and put Kamien out of mind.

  “It’s what he did to survive,” Polen said. “They killed each other, Adiem and Alurn. You never would have known they were brothers. The priests took Alurn somehow, took his spirit, to protect him, to save him from this place, maybe to give us all another chance for later on. Adiem didn’t have that option. He was less inclined to leave his life than Alurn. He wouldn’t take what they offered him. He had a son, and so to escape the void he went to the boy instead. A part of him anyway, probably the worst part. He joined with him, a sin greater maybe than all the others he committed. Took his own child’s life. Lived through him. For generations it went on, moving one to the next, getting stronger every time until the priests realized what was happening.”

  “Here? On Cobalt?” Dynan asked. He’d never heard this part before, even as a bedtime story. There was no mention at all in any history text Dynan ever read that Alurn Telaerin had a brother.

  “And other places. Every time they found one, they contained it, sent it back to the Void where he can’t reach the real world, or couldn’t until now, and now there are six. The Priests guard them, or maybe it’s only Alurn with that job. Each is as evil a thing as you’ll ever encounter. Each has a power of its own, abilities to warp what you think and what you know. You felt something of it when they were looking for you. You’d fall before them if you were to face them all together, or maybe even one, unless you’re made of sterner stuff than you seem.”