The Thirteenth Scroll

by Rebecca Neason

  She had the feeling that she and Giraldus were not alone, but she could not make out who, or what, surrounded them. The people or creatures were indistinct splotches of darkness amid the surrounding light. And they were closing in.…

  The vision stopped. Abruptly, she was back in her chair, staring at the flames. But the spell was not broken. Before she had time to do more than draw a breath, the sensation of fleeing forward began again. This time she was prepared; this time her stomach did not twist and turn.

  Again she saw herself and Giraldus. As the vision cleared, she saw they were on horseback. Behind them rode a force of arms, though how many she could not see. They were approaching the great cathedral in Ballinrigh. The bells of the cathedral were clamoring wildly; she could feel the ringing like the pounding of her heart.

  What does it mean? her heart asked the powers she had called upon. But no answer came, leaving Aurya to draw her own conclusions. Were they coming to the cathedral in triumph? she wondered. Were they there to claim the crown—or to attack?

  Still no answer came—and the vision disappeared.

  This time the spell also snapped, breaking like a frayed thread. To Aurya, it came like a physical blow. Her head jerked back as if someone had slapped her. Lights exploded behind her eyes, and, for a brief moment, her mind reeled.

  Then it was over, the sensations gone, and she was left panting in her chair.

  Aurya was thirsty, as she had known she would be. She picked up her wine cup and drained it, no longer caring if the wine was good or bad. Then she rose and began to pace the room, glad that no one was there to witness her agitation. She was dissatisfied with the revelations her spell had wrought. More than that, she was angry. She had called on the old gods, honored their power—why had they chosen to show her such obscure and meaningless moments?

  “The Great Ones guard their secrets,” she remembered old Kizzie telling her, “and they do not give them up easily. What they reveal will be of their choosing, not yours. You must learn to look deeply into the heart of each vision and understand what they are telling you. Such meanings are not always easily understood. Patience, child—always remember patience.”

  But try as she might, Aurya could not find any answers in these visions. And, although she often lectured Giraldus on the need for patience, just as Kizzie had once lectured her, that virtue was eluding her right now. She needed to know. Now.

  Aurya stopped pacing. She refilled her wine cup a third time, emptying the pitcher. With a deep breath, she forced the thoughts of the future from her mind and turned instead to the past, to Tambryn and his scroll, and to the one other thing she might try in order to find her answers—if she dared.

  This conjuring would be far more difficult. The future, especially the near and personal future such as she had just viewed, was a thread of time still bright with use. With the gift and the proper training, it was easily found and followed. At any fair there were gypsy women who claimed to see the future and would tell you, for a price of course, what lay ahead. It was a role she had played herself in order to meet Giraldus. She, therefore, understood better than most that the majority of these “gypsies” were fakes, performers who based their “predictions” on the experienced understanding of human desires rather than true magic. But Aurya also knew that there were, occasionally, true seers among them whose visions of the future could not be dismissed.

  But to go back into the past, either to let one’s spirit walk among the long-dead or to call the spirit of one of them forward—that took true magic. Aurya only dared it because need demanded no less. To visit the past, especially a past six centuries distant—to find that one silver thread amid the tangled weavings of existences already spent and follow it back to its source—that was a profound magic Aurya had never tried.

  If something went wrong, her spirit could become trapped in the past, unable to find its way back to the present life. Or, if her spell was not precise, her skill not equal to or greater than the spirit she now thought to Summon, what awaited would be worse than death or oblivion. Her body, her will, her powers, could be overpowered by what she had conjured and compelled to do its bidding here. Her body would live on as before, but without a consciousness or mind to call its own.

  Taking a sip of her wine, Aurya went back to sit before the fire. She closed her eyes and concentrated, going through the spell she would use to be certain she remembered it all. When at last she felt ready she went to the door and opened it, listening. Finally, she heard Giraldus’s voice, one among many, raised in an old drinking song. She smiled; when Giraldus reached this stage, it could be safely assumed he would be hours yet in his cups.

  Satisfied, she closed the door and locked it. She could not risk interruption. Then she went to the table and cleared it, rolling up both the map and the scroll. The map she put aside; the scroll she kept with her to use as a guide. She then turned the chair away from the fire and pulled it up to the table. Finally, she found a single candle in its holder by the bed, brought it to the table, and lit it.

  When the candle was burning brightly, Aurya extinguished both the lamps in the room. All was ready for her to begin.

  She took a seat in the chair at the table. Closing her eyes, she again began her slow breathing to center herself and call forth her magic. Once she felt that inner door open, she opened her eyes and focused on the candle. Without moving her sight from the tiny flickering flame, she reached to her belt and drew out her small dagger. She passed it through the candle flame, keeping her breath slow and steady as she softly began to chant in the old tongue.

  “Tan ac dur, tan ac dur…

  *

  “Fire and steel, fire and steel;

  Power to burn, power to kill;

  I summon thee, I gather thee;

  All power unto myself…”

  *

  She said the words three times, once with each pass of the blade through the flame. The candle was a small fire, its flame symbolic, but touched by the magic she was summoning, its heat was magnified far beyond its size. Aurya felt herself start to sweat as the dagger blade began to glow.

  The third rotation completed, she drew another deep breath… then laid the hot blade to the palm of her left hand and sliced quickly and cleanly.

  Burning pain seared through her as her flesh separated and blood began to flow. Moving quickly, she used her own blood to draw a circle on the center of the table. Inside the circle, she drew a pentagram, each point of the five-pointed star touching the outer circle. At the center of the star she drew another circle; its center became an inward-closing spiral. Aurya then lifted the candle from its holder, dropped some hot wax onto the very center of that spiral, and placed the candle there.

  She held her hand above the candle so that her blood dripped onto the flame. She had no fear of it extinguishing—inside the circle, only magic could put out that fire. As the smell of burning blood began to swirl about her, Aurya began her incantation.

  “Middyr,” she called to the ancient god of the underworld. “I give Thee blood to pay the passage from Thy dark world. Blood and fire to feed Thee. Let Thou one specter pass and come again into this world. Guided by this flame, which blood has consecrated to Thy service, I call forth Tambryn to stand before me, held within this circle of blood.”

  Aurya took the scroll and laid it across the pentagram inside the circle.

  “To the words his hands created, I summon Tambryn’s spirit. By this circle bound; by blood and fire captive.”

  As Aurya watched, the air before her began to shimmer and stir. It is working, she thought jubilantly. Soon she would have the answers to all the hidden messages in the scroll. With the path made plain, the objective clear, nothing would stand in the way of the throne.

  The disturbed air began to coalesce into the outline of a man. Before Aurya’s eyes, the outline became more and more substantial. And it began to glow—first soft, and then the brilliant green of a woodland glade in summer sunlight.

  The
glow took Aurya by surprise. No reference to this Working had mentioned such a thing. Then she noticed an aroma filling the room. It was sweet, like flowers and growing herbs, with no stench of decay, no smell of the blood or the fire.

  Now she was truly bewildered. She had prepared herself for the sight of death, the smell of rotting flesh. Instead, as the specter before her continued to solidify, she saw one who though old, exuded health and vigor, and who smelled of lush growing things.

  “I come to your Summoning by my own choice, not yours,” the image spoke to her, startling Aurya further. Its power to speak was supposed to be under her command.

  “Are you the one whom history calls Tambryn the Seer?” she asked.

  “Tambryn was my earthly name,” he replied. “I was called many things—Seer, prophet, heretic, healer… and others. They do not matter now.”

  “Then, with the fire and blood by which I called thee forth, I now bind thee here, a spirit to serve the living. By fire and blood, I order thee to give me the answers I desire.”

  The spirit of Tambryn began to laugh. “I warned you that I came not at your Summoning. Your power cannot hold me. I came to teach you the price of your arrogance.”

  Tambryn waved his hand. On the table the candle toppled, hitting the scroll. The ancient parchment immediately caught flame. Aurya scrambled to put it out, smothering it with her hands and shirt. Though the flames burned her fingers, she did not dare pull away. If the scroll was lost, so was the crown.

  Again she heard Tambryn’s laughter. She looked up and saw his specter dissolving into the air, and she knew there was nothing she could do to stop him.

  “Blind eyes see clearer than a darkened heart,” he said, his voice still strong, though his image was almost gone. “And Prophecy’s Hand lights the flame of Truth.”

  Then there was silence. It was more than silence, it was emptiness. Aurya felt as if, for the present at least, all the magic in the room—in her—had been drained away.

  With the candle out, the only light in the room came from the fire. Aurya relit the lamps, grimacing as her burned fingers and sliced palm struggled with matches. She could do nothing to banish their pain now, not until her magic returned.

  Once the lamps were lit, she wet a towel from the pitcher of washwater in the corner and wiped the table clean. Then she turned the chair back toward the fire and sat, needing to think.

  She reviewed the steps she had just taken, trying to understand what had just happened and how the Summoning could have failed so miserably. She could find no mistakes; every word and action was performed exactly as it should have been.

  Why then? she wondered again. How did I fail? She knew of nothing, neither history nor legend, that called Tambryn a worker of magic—and yet he had just shown a power few sorcerers could have claimed.

  And what did his final words mean? she also asked herself. What are these blind eyes and what do they see? And what is this Prophecy’s Hand? It was the same title used in the scroll, and it was just as frustrating—no, more frustrating to hear it from Tambryn himself and still not understand.

  The charred scroll lay on the table. Aurya rose and went to it. Slowly, carefully, she unrolled it to examine the damage. The outer edges were burned away and there were holes where sparks had eaten into the parchment. But they had not penetrated all the way. The inner two-thirds of the scroll, including most of the directions she needed, was untouched.

  Aurya breathed out a deep sigh of relief—and she could feel her magic returning. She still had what she needed to make certain Giraldus became King… and no spirit from the netherworld was going to stop her, no matter how powerful it might be.

  Chapter Ten

  Lysandra sat at the small kitchen table, talking with Father Renan. He had fed Cloud-Dancer, who now slept contentedly on a rug before the hearth, and the two of them had also finished their supper. So far, nothing of import had been revealed. In fact, Lysandra had done most of the talking, prompted to tell her tale by Father Renan’s questions.

  She found herself telling more than she had planned. By the end of their meal, he knew not just about her past, but about her dreams and her Sight, and about why she had come to Ballinrigh.

  Finally, Lysandra had nothing more to say. Suddenly, Father Renan rose and left the room, leaving her bewildered.

  A few minutes later he returned. “I have something to show you,” he said, “something important. Give me your hand.”

  Something to show me? her thoughts sneered. He can’t show me anything.

  Then she realized that she was being petulant, her thoughts peevish. But she was tired, physically and emotionally. She was tired of this journey and all the uncertainty; she just wanted to know what she had to do so that she could go home.

  She held her hand out to Father Renan. He took it in his own and started to guide it toward something on the table. Instantly, Lysandra’s Sight flooded her. There was no gentle lifting of fog this time, no slow lightening of shadows. Its force stunned Lysandra, leaving her breathless.

  Father Renan placed her hand upon a scroll. As her fingers touched it, her Sight focused upon it. This was what all of her dreams and visions had been about—this was why she was in Ballinrigh.

  “This is the Thirteenth Scroll of Tambryn,” Father Renan said as he carefully unrolled the parchment. “It was written in his own hand over six hundred years ago. It is very rare—and very important.”

  “Who is Tambryn?” Lysandra asked. “I’ve never heard of him.”

  Father Renan chuckled mirthlessly. “Few people have anymore,” he said, “and of those who have, few will speak his name.”

  He ran his fingers lightly, gently, across the parchment. For the first time there was a little chink in his well-armored emotions, and Lysandra could feel how much this scroll meant to him.

  “Tell me about him,” she said.

  Father Renan did not speak at once, but sat as if trying to decide where to begin. Finally, he shook his head.

  “Tambryn’s story is a long one,” he began, “and, perhaps, best kept for another time when the hour is not so late. In short, he was a monk, a man holy and true. He began his life as a Religious as an herbalist and healer. But then, shortly after he turned thirty, his visions began. At first, he was proclaimed a Seer with the gift of divine prophecy—until he offended the wrong people. After that, he was named a heretic. But he escaped his captors and fled—no one knows where. The rest of his visions, if there were any, are lost to us. His writings were burned by those who did not want the people to learn the truth in Tam-bryn’s words. Very few copies now survive… this is one of them.”

  “How did you get it?”

  “That’s not important,” the priest replied. “What is important is the words this scroll contains.”

  As Father Renan spoke of Tambryn, the carefully maintained wall around his mind continued to slip little by little, giving Lysandra the barest glimpse of the man underneath. With her question, however, it snapped firmly back in place. On the one hand, it was a relief to be around a person whose inner thoughts and emotions did not constantly pound at her, disquieting each moment. But this unyielding control also made Lysandra wonder what Father Renan was hiding.

  “Why is this scroll so important?” she asked him. “What does it have to do with me?”

  Once more Father Renan ran his hand over the scroll, as if drawing some strength from touching it.

  “Because,” he said at last, “I believe you are the one whose coming was foretold. I have waited and watched carefully… and from the moment I saw you enter the church, something told me that my waiting had ended. You are the Prophecy’s Hand whom Tambryn’s writings say will find the Font of Wisdom. Together you will bring Aghamore back from the precipice of destruction before all is lost to darkness and evil.”

  Lysandra felt a shock run through her, a current containing both recognition and disbelief. She jerked suddenly to her feet, knocking her chair over.

  “No, y
ou’re wrong,” she said, backing away. She did not want to hear this; she just wanted to hear that she could go home.

  “Am I?” Father Renan answered. “Tambryn’s scroll says that Prophecy’s Hand will be one who has lost everything to the instruments of destruction and who has walked in darkness, as one dead. Yet out of this death, a new life is born, so that Prophecy’s Hand can ‘Look through the Eyes of Blindness with a Sight that is more than seeing. Prophecy’s Hand will know the ways of the wild ones and dwell among them. They will he both guide and companion. Only Prophecy’s Hand can unlock the Font of Wisdom that will be the salvation of Aghamore.’”

  Slowly, Lysandra shook her head. Her stomach contracted into a tight and painful ball, and the sudden lump in her throat made it difficult to breathe. She wanted to reject everything she was hearing—but her heart and her Sight told her it was all true.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. She wanted to run away, but instead she began to pace. The movement helped her think. “I’m no Seer. How can I be this Prophecy’s Hand when I have no gift of prophecy?”

  “You may have gifts you’ve not yet realized,” Father Renan said softly. “But the scroll does not say Prophecy’s Hand will have the gift of prophecy, only that it will deliver this prophecy into action.

  “‘… And so shall the way be shown by the clear, unsighted vision of Prophecy’s Hand. Inner Sight shall know what eyes cannot see. The Font of Wisdom found, unlocked, then Truth embraced shall set free all that has been bound…’”

  The scroll’s words rang in her head. Unsighted vision … Inner sight… She could not deny these had been her reality for nearly a decade. But what was she supposed to do? What could she do, even with her Sight, one woman alone?

  “What is this ‘Font of Wisdom’?” she asked. “How is ‘Prophecy’s Hand’ supposed to unlock it?”

  “I don’t have all the answers, Lysandra,” he said to her. “I have studied Tambryn’s words half my life, and until I saw you I didn’t understand much of the description of what Prophecy’s Hand was to be. Tambryn’s prophecies often become clear only at the moment of their fulfillment. Or so it seems. But everything I do understand says that the Font of Wisdom is a child who must be found—and soon, before another King occupies the throne. If this latter is allowed to happen, it will mean the end of Aghamore.