Seeker of the Four Winds: A Galatia Novel

by C. D. Verhoff

  “Me?” Isaiah pointed to his chest.

  “Do you see any other Isaiahs lounging around?” She rolled her eyes again. “Something weird is happening at the Mouth of God and my dad thinks you ought to be there.”

  Other people along the front line were turning toward the city’s center, pointing in a rush of conversation. Luke and Isaiah regarded the rising cloud behind the buildings with awe and trepidation. Through the darkness before the dawn, it glowed with otherworldly light, its nebulous edges laced with gold. The cloud billowed higher and higher like an umbrella opening over the city.

  Isaiah found himself practically floating toward the Mouth of God, weaving through the crowd. When he arrived at the mouth’s edge, thousands of people were already gathered around. Someone said the mouth was a steaming geyser, just like Old Faithful and it was going to blow at any moment. People shrank back, but not everyone. Not Isaiah, who drawn to it like a moth who must journey to the brightest light in the night.

  The Galatians were abandoning their posts in droves, converging around the mouth despite the fact the enemy would be crashing through the walls at any moment.

  The cloud rose higher and expanded. Its depths began to glow with fiery intensity.

  “It’s going to explode!” someone shouted.

  People scattered, tripping over each other to get further away. Isaiah stared transfixed, unable to tear his eyes from the glorious sight. A white fireball came at him and went through him with a hot swoosh. The heat devoured everything within him, searing him so deep, his soul seemed to catch fire. Expecting to die, he slowly discovered that he was being burned by the sweet taste of love. His soul swooned with ecstasy, heaven couldn’t be any better than this. He was standing on a white beach. Water so calm and blue it appeared as an endless sea of glass. The violet sky glittered with stars.

  A large man dressed in a long red tunic, golden armor and belt, with a brown leather girdle, hovered in the sky on a white horse. How they hovered there in the air defied the natural laws of gravity. Perhaps it was a dream? The man wore a golden crown and held a large golden goblet in one hand, a shining sword in the other, while his eyes sparked with white lightning. The horse descended to only a few feet above the ground.

  Isaiah’s heart pounded as the man withdrew a crystal sword from the sheath across his back and pointed the tip of the blade at Isaiah. The world began to melt away and the man, sword, horse and Isaiah were above the world in a field of clouds. The man offered him the goblet filled with wine. Isaiah drank of its content and handed it back.

  The man took the sword, resting it in the flat of his palms to present it to Isaiah. In a voice like the crash of thunder, the man asked sternly, “Forged by the Angel of Galatia, do you accept this gift and all that comes with it?”

  Although he literally ached for that sword, consumed by fear at the authority in that voice, Isaiah fell to his face on the ground and covered his head with his arms.

  “Galatian,” the man ordered him. “Arise.”

  Strength poured into him as the man spoke, though the words were impossible not to obey. Isaiah rose to one knee, and then the other. The warrior from the clouds continued to offer him the sword.

  “Do you accept this gift and that for which it stands?”

  “I--yes.”

  Gingerly, and with awe, Isaiah wrapped his fingers around the offered hilt. Searing pain ripped through his hand, down his arm, and straight into his soul. The pain hurt so wonderfully good—like a burning love—he never wanted it to end. The hilt felt like it fit every nook and cranny of his closed hand. Nothing had ever been so perfect.

  Then he began to sink, like a man in a glass elavator descending form the nine hundredth floor of a skyscraper. His knees braced for balance as if a fast elevator had halted its descent abruptly. Below him Galatia spread out before him like a crazy quilt of buildings, patched with fields, the lines of stitches the streets, and the Mouth was a big mysterious void in the middle. The doors slid open. As his eyes adjusted to this dimmer place, he realized the sword remained clenched in his hands. When he stepped out he was back at the Mouth of God.

  Most people looked as bewildered as Isaiah felt, but stood empty-handed. Not everyone though.

  He saw Veronica Albright, Uncle Mike, and Dr. Steelsun holding swords like his own, but most of the recipients of the swords were nobodies, young people close to his own age. Whoa, how had the others gotten their angelic weapons? Had they each had a private encounter with the fierce warrior on the horse as well? Had they been through a similar experience as himself? So many questions!

  Grandma Elizabeth stood near the edge of the pit. She looked radiant and healthy—her walker no longer needed. The large golden goblet Isaiah had drank from was cradled in her left arm.

  “Behold,” he heard the voice of the heavenly warrior speak, but his glorious form had changed from that of a man to a radiant golden orb surrounding Grandma. “The anointed Judge of Galatia.”

  The orb rose into the air, leaving Grandma Elizabeth by the lip of the Mouth. In one hand she still held the goblet, but in the other she was holding a gavel with a crystal head.

  “He carried me on his horse,” she said, chin quivering, sounding dazed. “And showed me many things. My mind is clear. My arthritis is gone. I’m healed.”

  “God was in that cloud,” an old man exclaimed. “I haven’t been able to hear out of this ear since I was sixteen and now it’s working again!”

  Other people were miraculously healed of illnesses and injuries old and new, thanks to the numinous mists that had engulfed them before vanishing. Isaiah couldn’t wrap his mind around any individual fantastic event, but he rejoiced to see his grandmother up and about. He touched his own scabbed face to find his wounds from last night’s attack were gone.

  The war drum resumed its beat in the distance, other drums joining in. Bringing the jubilant back to reality. Sunrise was minutes away.

  That’s when Isaiah noticed a man with a neatly trimmed white beard sitting on a rock next to the Mouth. His face was lined with age. He wore a gray robe with a slight sheen that didn’t appear to be made in this era nor the bunker. His weathered hands gripped a metal staff with a tip shaped like a spade from a deck of cards. The spade was hollowed out. Smooth crystal filled its frame. Hefting himself from the rock with a grunt, the elderly man stood and addressed the dazed crowd.

  “As the ancient prophets foretold, the dead were raised and judged according to their faith and deeds.” Isaiah’s heart did a cartwheel as he recognized his father’s voice. “The old Covenant was fulfilled long before we arrived in the future, giving way to a new one. May His love and protection be with Galatia forever and ever. But as a father corrects his wayward children, sparing neither the rod nor staff, our God punishes the Galatians.” The people trembled to see the man they had murdered standing before them—older now, slightly shriveled with a head of white hair now—but the red birthmark was unmistakable. “You chose the weapons of war over the prophet of God, so from this day forward, the weapons of war will be your livelihood. Our sons and daughters, and their children for generations to come, are bound to lift the sword in defense of the innocent wherever they find them. They will exhaust their minds in the study of justice, and their bodies in delivering it, yet they will be despised outside of their own nation. As it is said, so it shall be done.”

  “As it is said,” Isaiah and the crowd replied. “So it shall be done.”

  “Asbedon is the new Amen. It seals the new covenant between heaven and earth.”

  “Asbedon,” the people replied.

  The amazing cloud whirlpooled back into the Mouth of God. The vapors vanished, leaving behind a bottomless pool of swirling white mist below the mouth’s rim.

  “What the hell just happened?” Nathan Steelsun approached, daring to poke the man with the staff in the chest with an index finger. “Holy crap, you’re not a figment of my imagination. Is it really you, Red Two?”

  “It is I.�
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  “Whoa! I mean, I’m glad to see you alive, but why aren’t you dead? And why waste a fine new sword on an old goat like me?”

  “His ways are not our ways.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Nathan asked.

  Veronica replied, “It means just go with it, you doof.”

  The laughter that followed was a welcome relief, but the war drums were getting louder, while the first rays of the morning were breaking behind the mountains. Isaiah wanted to wrap his arms around his father, but was afraid that he would dissolve with the clouds.

  “A glass sword is nice to look at,” Nathan continued, “but I can’t see it lasting long against metal.”

  “In the name of the father goes the son!” Red bashed the glass end of his staff against a rock the size of a bowling bowl. The rock split in two. The blade was unscratched. “My staff and your sword were forged by angels. Nothing on Earth can break them.”

  “Return to your posts,” Red ordered everyone. “Trust in the power that brought us here.”

  Two girls no more than sixteen or seventeen, both holding angelic swords, approached. “We were holed up in Megan’s housse until the cloud came. We don’t have a post. Where should we go?” Three boys about the same age, also holding angelic swords, wordlessly joined the girls to wait for instructions.

  “Follow me,” Red said raising his staff high. “To the front line!”

  Ten minutes ago, Galatians hadn’t seemed to have a chance: outnumbered a hundred to one, swordsman versus computer programmers, seasoned bowmen against accountants, and army captains against chefs. But through some miracle, his father was alive, looking like Moses leading his people through the desert. Hope renewed, Isaiah returned to the front line, holding his fantastic new blade.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  An Hour Earlier

  (Josephine Rose Albright)

  Loyl’s path led them up a weedy hill that had a gradual but constant incline, which taxed the muscles and made Josie pause a few times to catch her breath. The trees had spaced out, letting in the light of the moon, brightening the path. She glanced at Lars who looked energetic and refreshed. Raising an eyebrow, she sent him an irritated frown.

  “You don’t even look tired.”

  “You know,” Lars replied, “if you open the excito a little, it will increase your stamina.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “Then why don’t you do it instead of sending me dirty looks?”

  “Maybe I don’t want to do it.”

  “Maybe you’re stubborn.”

  “Maybe I don’t care.”

  “Trouble in lovers’ paradise?” Lindsey asked with a smirk.

  “I’m sorry, Lars,” Josie apologized, not wanting Lindsey to enjoy herself too much. “It’s just that we skipped supper tonight, and I’m sick of walking.”

  “Aren’t we all?” Dante replied. “Suck it up, Josie.”

  Biting her lower lip, she concentrated on climbing, trying not to think too much about what waited ahead. Even though the rise didn’t feel like a mountain, or look like one, she sensed they had reached a high elevation when the forest changed to into a meadow of thick blue-green, grass, which transitioned into scrubby lichens with large patches of bare ground. From the distance, neatly spaced rock formations were lined up like houses along the ancient streets of Suburbia. Growing up in the confining underground city, she had imagined how wonderful and carefree it would have been to live on the surface of the Earth.

  The reality was much less idyllic.

  Her feet ached, her mind was consumed with worry, while her empty stomach gurgled. Sometimes she longed for the four metal walls of her bedroom, the carefree days of knowing where her next meal would come from, and no concerns about vicious animals lurking in the shadows waiting to kill her. Difficult to put into words, but up here everything was more. More colors, more hot, more cold, more sorrow and more joy. More real.

  Her eyes went up to the sky where brilliant white stars splattered the endless indigo canvas of the cosmos. The night air smelled like pine trees and moonflowers. Somewhere a bird called out with a lonely whoooo sound. This alluring world held so much beauty, but it came with so much pain. Given the chance to return to the bunker, would she even want to?

  Prince Loyl ordered the squad to drop and crawl commando style, pulling Josie from her thoughts. “Stay down,” the prince ordered as everyone peered over the edge of a bluff. Rolling farmlands spread out before them, and deeper into the horizon, Josie saw the tip of a city circled by a tall, but uneven wall.

  “That can’t be Galatia,” Rolf said. “It’s so big.”

  “I rode through these lands many times in my youth,” Prince Loyl said. “And I assure you no city this size has been here until now. This is the land built by your people’s sweat and blood. You should be proud.”

  “Galatia.” Tears filled Josie’s eyes as she wistfully looked out over the fields to the city. This land represented security, the pursuit of happiness—which included education, parties, laughter, marriage and a safe place to raise children. From this vantage, they could peek down inside the wall. The outlines of the buildings and chimneys poked up like a forest of adobe and bricks. A million fireflies flickering in the fields surrounding the city, adding to the charm. Propped up on elbows, or knees, everyone fell silent to admire the view.

  Lars reached for her hand and kissed the back of her knuckles. “Home,” he said, “the most beautiful word on Earth no matter the time period.”

  “Amen to that, brother,” Dante said. “Our illustrious mayor has been busy.”

  “Yet, even with all your ingenuity, I fear all of your hard work is about to come crashing down,” Loyl said ruefully, regretfully.

  “But I have the map right here,” Josie patted the pocket of her cloak. “We’ve won.”

  “Galatia is surrounded,” Prince Loyl said.

  “Surrounded by lightning bugs,” Lindsey guffawed. “I think we can handle them.”

  “Those aren’t lightning bugs,” Dante informed. “They are campfires from the armies of the Alliance. How many do you think, Loyl?”

  “For every campfire, assume four to six soldiers. And the attack comes at daybreak.”

  The saliva in Josie’s mouth instantly went dry. Her mother was down there, her sister, her niece, nephew, and highest aspirations...

  “The soldiers ring the city like a mile-wide donut,” Dante said, rolling onto his back and giving a defeated sigh. “How are we going to cut through to enter the hole in the middle?”

  “Why don’t we just show the army guys the map and be done with it?” Josie asked.

  “If only it were that simple,” Loyl replied. “The Western Alliance is hungry for the spoils of Galatia. Approaching any one of these armies will yield unpredictable results. We need to get the map to the Regalan in charge—Prince Gerard no doubt.”

  He reached for the book holding the map, but Josie had an uneasy feeling, and hefted it away. “I’m sorry,” she said, clutching it protectively to her chest. “I don’t like that idea.”

  “And why not?”

  “It’s not your city or your species at stake here. I can’t hand it over to anyone except Mayor Wakeland.”

  Prince Loyl’s brows narrowed. His pupils constricted as he studied Josie with a probing stare meant to challenge her position, but she did not back down. The other squad members shifted uneasily.

  “C’mon, Josie,” Lindsey said, giving the prince an apologetic glance. “He has risked his life a hundred times over for us.”

  “For us?” Josie said sharply, remembering the somber warning Mayor Red had given her before the squad had left for the mission. “Or for Regala D’Nora?”

  “Josie,” Lindsey admonished. “I can’t believe you’d raise such a question.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but the security of Galatia trumps politeness. Prince Loyl knows better than any humanoid that we are who we say we are—the last su
rvivors of the human race—which means First Rights belong to us. Considering how close Regala D’Nora is to Galatia in geography, King Doyl might think it’s in the best interest of his kingdom for the map to stay lost.”

  “Josie,” Dante said. “Be reasonable, if Prince Loyl wanted to betray us—he had plenty of chances to do it already.”

  “Prince Loyl, I trust you entirely, but I have never met your father or your major prince brother. If the map is given to one of them, can you guarantee what they will do with it?”

  “No,” Loyl’s right ear twitched and his voice lowered an octave, “I cannot.”

  “Before we left on this mission, the mayor ordered me to hold onto the map until he personally took possession of it. And that is what I intend to do.”

  “Josie,” Rolf said. “You seem to be forgetting that Prince Loyl is in charge here.”

  “And you seem to be forgetting who put him in charge—Mayor Wakeland. When the mayor’s orders conflict with the prince’s, I follow the mayor’s. No offence, Prince Loyl, it’s just how I roll.”

  “Your loyalty to the mayor is admirable,” Loyl replied. “Perhaps it is best this way. Although I would never raise my sword against any of you, my dear friends, I cannot and will not raise it against my father’s soldiers, which puts me in a quandary.”

  “I see,” Josie said, her voice reflecting disapproval. “You plan to be Switzerland.”

  “I don’t understand the reference.”

  “She means you’re going to remain neutral,” Lars said.

  “If I can remain neutral—yes.”

  “If you can’t?” Dante asked.

  “My life and loyalty belongs to Regala D’Nora. That’s just how I roll.”

  Now that he put it that way, Josie understood his dilemma. Just as she could not hand him the map without contravening the mayor’s orders—Prince Loyl could never directly oppose Regala D’Nora.