The Thirteenth Scroll

by Rebecca Neason

  Standing in the moonlight, she lifted her arms up and out, reaching toward the ancient and eternal symbol of the Goddess—the Goddess whom old Kizzie had served and on whose power Aurya would call this night. It was an old spell, passed from teacher to student through countless years of women. Aurya would cast it as she had learned it from Kizzie.

  “Great Goddess, Mother of All,” she began. “Giver of Life, Bringer of Death; I call upon Your power. Aba, Macha, Morrigan—triple aspect of the One, hear my call and give me aid.”

  Aurya picked up the dagger, passed it three times through the flame as she repeated the sacred names. Then she quickly brought the heated blade down across the thumb of her left hand. The blood welled. She dripped one red drop onto the flame as the symbolic blood offering to the Goddess. Then she took up the crystal wand.

  This, too, she passed through the flame three times. Then she gathered her own blood onto the crystal and with it drew a pentagram on the table. When that was finished, she held the wand within the candle and let the flame burn the remaining blood away.

  Now it was time for Giraldus’s blood, and this was why she had drugged him so heavily. Using his own dagger, she cut a lock of his hair and shaved three cuttings from his fingernails. These, she took back to the table. Then, finally, she also cut the ball of his thumb and collected the fast-welling blood into the groove of the crystal wand.

  Aurya quickly wrapped his thumb in a strip of cloth before any of the blood could stain the bedclothes. Then she returned to the table, bringing the blood-filled crystal with her.

  Into the center of the pentagram she placed Giraldus’s hair and fingernails. The hair, from his head, represented the obedience of his mind that after tonight she would command; his fingernails were the sign and symbols of his actions. With his blood and hers mingled, she would bind him to her will with cords of magic stronger than any ropes.

  She took the hairs and dipped them in the blood. Then she dragged those along the lines of the symbol she had used her own blood to create.

  “Thy mind to my mind,” she chanted. “Thy mind to my calling. Thy mind at my command. By this blood I bind thee in obedience.”

  Aurya dropped the hairs, one by one, onto the candle flame, where they singed and burned in the incense of sacrifice. She then picked up the fingernails and repeated the process.

  “Thy will to my will,” she said this time. “Thy actions be at my calling. Thy will at my command. By this blood I bind thee to obedience.”

  Logic said that the fingernails would not burn so easily as the hair, but as the first one was dropped onto the flame it flared up as if the fire was hungry for the offering. It consumed the fingernails as if they were of no more substance than a spider’s web.

  Now Aurya reached for the wand and the blood it contained. This she poured into the center of the pentagram.

  “Thy blood to my blood; thy life to my life. By the blood of life, I bind thee at my command. My will shall be thy will; my desires shall be thy desires. My hopes shall be thy hopes and my goals shall be thy goals until the time that either I, or death, shall release thee. By this blood I bind thee; only blood can set thee free.”

  Once more, Aurya picked up the wand. The blue crystal shimmered in the light of the flames and the moon. This wand was ancient; the magic set into it centuries ago by a mage more powerful than any the world now knew. Aurya had spent years searching for it or one of its eleven sisters, all cut from the same blue Mother-stone. When at last she found it, it had taken all her powers—and all her purse—to persuade the owner to part with it.

  She passed the wand three times through the candle, then dipped it into Giraldus’s blood. By magic, the stone began to drink. It pulled all of Giraldus’s blood into its heart; his blood, his life, was now captured and in her keeping.

  Aurya now traced the wand backward over the pentagram she had drawn with her own blood. That, too, the crystal absorbed. Their blood was now mingled, her blood laid over his just as her will would now overshadow Giraldus’s own.

  One final time, she held the wand inside the flame. Again, the candle flared, burning off any lingering traces of blood.

  “Mind and body, life and spirit, these I claim by the power of fire, stone, and blood. Three to hold thee; three to bind thee; by the three powers shalt thou be mine forever more.”

  Aurya drove the tip of the wand down into the center of the candle. For an instant, just before the pressure extinguished the light, the crystal pulled the flame deep into its heart. Fire was now inside the stone, trapped with the blood by the power of the spell.

  Giraldus’s obedience was hers.

  The ritual was nearly complete. Once more, Aurya raised her arms toward the moon, now high in the west.

  “Great Goddess, Mother of All,” she cried in a voice fervent with emotion but still soft enough not to wake the other people at the inn. “As I have and do honor Thee, I beseech Thee to lend Thy power to my spell. What I have bound here on Earth, let it be so bound in Thy universal home. By mortal and Immortal command, by human and Divine decree.”

  Bathed in the moonlight, Aurya stood with arms outstretched, waiting to feel the Goddess’s presence. Slowly, deep within, far past body or mind, she felt a warming. The sensation swiftly grew until she felt as if the blood within her veins had turned to flame. It engulfed her, overwhelmed her. For one instant, Aurya felt herself suspended somewhere beyond reality, outside of life and death.

  Then, between one breath and the next, she found herself back where and as she was before, arms outstretched to the Mother-Goddess, feeling only her own heartbeat, the cold of the floor beneath her feet.

  Slowly, she lowered her arms and let a tiny smile form upon her lips. Her body ached with the exhaustion only those who traffic in magic can understand. But it was a weariness Aurya welcomed.

  It would take all her strength to restore the room to its previous appearance. But even her exhaustion could not dim her triumph. Giraldus’s heart and body she had owned for years; now the rest of him was hers as well.

  And tomorrow they would ride toward Rathreagh.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Elders stood, silent as a row of apothecary jars, watching every move Lysandra made as she cared for the injured. The Healers did little to help. They would hold a patient while she set a bone or run back to the cave to replenish any supplies she had used up—but nothing more. They had been given their orders; unless Lysandra proved incompetent, she alone was to care for the victims of the cave-in. By her actions, they said, would her heart be known, and by that, she and Renan would be judged.

  Lysandra worked as she never had before. Not all of her patients had been injured in the cave-in. Several of the rescuers also needed treatment—for cuts and scrapes, bloodied fingers, sprained wrists or ankles, and an occasional pulled muscle. But such minor injuries were quickly treated as excavation of the cave-in continued.

  It was Lysandra’s Sight that allowed her to keep working without rest or relief. Her empathy made her share what her patients were feeling, and she could not turn away from the injured until all their pain had been eased.

  Exhaustion soon flooded her. It wound through her body like a living thing, eating up her reserves of strength that were already depleted by lack of sleep and a long, captive march. But she still pushed herself on, until the last trapped Cryf had been brought out.

  Finally, with her mind numb and her arms feeling like bars of lead, there were no more patients to treat. She rose to go over to the Elders, hoping that she and Renan had now earned their trust. But this one action was past her strength and as she stood, the blood drained from her head and dizziness swept through her. She put out a hand to find Cloud-Dancer, to ground and steady herself. Her fingers barely touched him before she fell.

  Lysandra did not feel the arms that caught her. Renan, back from his work with the rescue parties, had seen Lysandra sway as her face turned ashen white. He pushed past the Cryf and reached her barely in time to break he
r fall.

  Surprised by how light she was, Renan found himself staring down at her, unconscious in his arms. He could not help but notice how wisps of her richly golden hair had come loose from its braid to curl, damp with perspiration, around her face. He saw, too, the creamy beauty of her skin and the way her thick dark lashes looked like half-moons of sable resting above the satin of her cheeks.

  Renan closed his eyes. He could not allow himself to see Lysandra—or any woman—this way. He had relinquished that privilege when he had taken his vows as a priest. He had given up everything he was before. He would never again take the chance that…

  No. He pushed the memories away, ran from them the way he knew Lysandra fled from hers. He understood how and why she ran—and it did not change what he believed of her.

  To live as she did in spite of her blindness, and to have undertaken this journey, was a testament to her indomitable courage. She did not see it; when she had told him of her life—past and present, of the reason for her blindness and the wondrous gift of her Sight that allowed her to have a purpose—he had also heard what she did not say. There was a part of her heart that viewed the peace of her life in the forest with guilt, believing that she was only running away from anything, past or present, that might cause her more pain.

  But he knew better. She had not been running away; she had been running toward herself. Like the prophets of old who sojourned in the desert, needing to learn to be alone before they could hear the Voice of the Creator, she had to travel through solitude to come to that place where her gifts were free to manifest.

  He also believed that she had more gifts than she had yet to suppose and more power than she realized. She was truly the most amazing person he had ever known.

  Cloud-Dancer whined once as Renan gently laid Lysandra on the ground and stayed kneeling beside her. The wolf immediately lay on the other side of her, his head upon her shoulder, his nose gently nudging her cheek in an effort to wake her.

  Her eyes slowly fluttered open. Renan was again struck by her beauty. Even reddened from exhaustion, the rich forget-me-not blue was something he found exquisite.

  Once more, he made himself look away. Then he waited until the lump that had suddenly filled his chest subsided. Only when he was certain he could look at her with the eyes of a priest did he turn back to her.

  Renan took her hand—no, he would not notice how small and fragile her hand felt in his or the way her fingers curled around his own. She started to sit up, but he put his other hand gently on her shoulder.

  “No, Lysandra,” he said. “Rest. You’ve done enough.”

  “Ye have both done enough, and more.”

  Renan looked up quickly. The leader of the Elders had come to stand beside him. His expression was no longer wary or judgmental.

  “Ye are, indeed, the ones for whom the Cryf have waited,” he continued. “Though ye be Up-worlders, ye need no longer fear our Law. All three of ye”—he included Cloud-Dancer with a glance—“are welcome here.”

  Renan stood, a hundred questions on his lips. But the old one held up a hand for silence. Then he waved a signal to the others behind him and immediately four of the younger Cryf appeared, carrying one of the stretchers that had been used to transport the wounded. Despite her protests, they lifted Lysandra onto it.

  “Thou and the Healer shall be taken unto a soft place that ye may rest in comfort,” he told Renan. “All that your bodies need of food and drink shall be brought unto ye, that ye may also be refreshed. Only then, when strength hath returned, shall we talk.”

  Renan nodded. “We are glad that the Cryf now believe the truth of our words—and our hearts—that they have nothing to fear from us. I am called Father Renan and the healer’s name is Lysandra. I must know, if we are to rest with easy minds—will the Cryf show us the way safely through their realm?”

  The old one seemed to consider Renan’s words for a moment, and the priest wondered what more they must do to win his trust.

  “The Cryf do not share their names easily,” the old one said at last. Then he drew himself up, standing as straight as his advanced years allowed. “I am Eiddig,” he said. “Guide of the Cryf. Into my keeping have been given the Holy Words. With the Voice of the Divine, I guide the Cryf through the time that is and by the Will of the Divine, I guard all that be still with us from the First Times.

  “Of these must we speak when the Healer hath slept and eaten. There be words ye must hear—and words the Cryf must hear of ye.”

  Renan glanced at Lysandra, now deeply asleep upon the stretcher. The pallor of exhaustion still tinged her skin. All right, he thought, for now. But I need answers soon.

  At a signal from Eiddig, the stretcher-bearers lifted Lysandra. Cloud-Dancer paced on one side, staying as close as he could, and Renan walked on the other. He found himself longing to reach down and take her hand once again, to hold it as they followed Eiddig.

  The underground passages, though marked here and there by piles of the glowing stones that seemed to be the only source of light for the Cryf, were too dark for Renan’s comfort. He wished for a torch in his hand. But the Cryf navigated the many turns without a falter until at last they entered yet another cavern.

  Here, the walls were studded with openings too regular to be natural caves. Renan saw hundreds of Cryf, mostly women and children, some in laughing groups, some sitting or going in and out of the caves that must be their homes.

  It’s like a city, Renan thought in amazement, a city and a people that no one above—Up-world—knows exists. These truly are “the forgotten.”

  He and Lysandra were taken into one of the caves level with the cavern floor. It was a large chamber, brighter than the passages through which they had just traveled. Crystal lanterns that magnified the glowing stone were set into little niches throughout the cave. Everything within the room was made of stone, different kinds and colors carved into shapes that were both useful and beautiful. In spite of the material used, the overall effect was not harsh… it was unexpectedly harmonious.

  Lysandra was carried to the back of the cave. Here, two sleeping platforms had been carved to extend out from the wall. They were covered with a material that made them look like little nests. Renan stepped quickly in front of the stretcher-bearers, to examine the beds before Lysandra was placed on one.

  The stone had been slightly hollowed. Each platform was padded with some type of moss, but not one Renan had ever seen. It was soft and spongy, and when touched it gave off a warm, slightly spicy scent that was comforting. On top of the moss lay a thick layer of a material Renan could not name. It was obviously spun, but it was softer than newly washed and carded lamb’s wool.

  What was it? he wondered. Did the Cryf have animals here, of a kind just as forgotten as the Cryf themselves? What other discoveries were waiting to be made?

  Renan turned around. Although he did not distrust the Cryf, they still had not answered any of his questions, and until he knew more about them, he would care for Lysandra himself. He lifted her gently from the stretcher and settled her onto the center of the bed. Without waking, she shifted, nestled, and sighed with contentment. Cloud-Dancer jumped onto the bed, picking his way gingerly across the unfamiliar material until he could take his usual place beside her.

  The other sleeping platform was only a few feet away. Renan knew that he would sleep well and deeply… after the Cryf had left them. He turned back to find Eiddig looking at Lysandra with a strange expression in his large eyes that seemed something between the paternal and the reverent.

  “Thou shalt not be disturbed while thou rest,” the old one said, not taking his eyes off Lysandra. “If thou hast need, thou hast but to call. One of the Cryf shall be near to hear thee.”

  Finally, Eiddig looked up. He held the priest’s eyes firmly with his own. “Sleep thou well, Father Renan,” he said. “The Cryf and the future wait upon thine awakening.”

  The old one turned, followed by the stretcher-bearers. Renan pondered his final
words as he watched them go. He had no doubt that the Cryf were The Forgotten of whom Tambryn had written—but what could the Cryf, living here in this realm of stone and solitude, know of the Scrolls of Tambryn or the state of the kingdom?

  Renan shook his head; it was an unanswerable question—for now. With one more glance at Lysandra, he crawled onto the waiting bed, settled himself onto its softness, and gave himself over to sleep.

  When he awakened, the first thing he saw was Cloud-Dancer’s muzzle only inches away. The wolf’s chin was resting on Renan’s sleep platform, and he was staring at the priest as if willing him to awaken. The sight of the wild-tame, unblinking blue eyes startled Renan into fast awareness.

  He raised his head, drawing back a bit from Cloud-Dancer’s scrutiny. “Lysandra?” he said softly, not wanting to awaken her if she still slept.

  “Where are we?” she asked. Her voice was stronger than before she slept, but it had an odd tone to it he did not quite recognize.

  “We’re in one of the Cryf homes—or sleeping chambers, anyway,” he told her.

  “Describe it to me. I cannot See, Renan—or even share Cloud-Dancer’s vision.”

  Now Renan heard the fear, bravely covered, in her voice. He tried to think of something to comfort her.

  “You are tired, Lysandra,” he said, “perhaps more tired than you realize. Give yourself a chance to rest and regain some strength. You’re a healer for everyone else, try thinking like a healer for yourself. I’m sure everything will be all right soon enough.”

  When she did not answer, Renan wondered if everything he had said came across as empty platitudes. It sounded so to his own ears, even though he meant every word.

  “You’re right, of course,” Lysandra said suddenly, sitting up. “Rest is all I need, and then it will all come right again. Silly of me to make such a fuss. I’m sorry.”