Van gasped, not from Lady Loka’s speech, but at the Minotaur. It . . . he was now almost completely human.
Lady Loka followed Van’s gaze to the Minotaur and beamed. “He attacked your friend because she took the decoy coin, demonstrating her inability to resist the temptation of greed. For this, I am truly sorry. He only did what was in his nature. A nature bound to him by a curse cast by my jealous sister, Lilla. The Minotaur was once a handsome prince, with whom both my sister and I had fallen in love. He chose me. So my sister, out of vengeance, cast a spell, turning him into a beast. Lilla created the labyrinth around my Station of the Coin and sent him to wander endlessly in vain, searching for the correct path to me. We would be forever close, yet never together.”
The story made Van’s chest tighten; her eyes teared.
“From here, I constantly heard him moving about. My voice resonated through the labyrinth. I kept telling him he could reach me by crossing the camouflaged bridge in the chasm . . . so simple. However, his bull ears muddled my words. He could hear my voice but didn’t understand. For centuries, I had to listen to his moans and cries, as he heard my calls. Over time, my tears accumulated into the lake you see behind me. Only someone who possessed the power of creation could undo my vengeful sister’s curse. Someone able to access the Power of the Light. Someone such as the Anchoress.”
For the first time, Van became aware of her Anchoress legacy as a benefit, rather than a burden. She felt awestruck that she could help Lady Loka and her prince in such an important way.
“Instead of using violence against the Minotaur, you gave him a gift of something precious to you, demonstrating your lack of corruption. The orb you so generously gave to him illuminated the bridge, and the orb’s music reversed my sister’s curse. As you have noticed, the Minotaur is turning back into his human form. Soon, he will become the handsome prince he once was, though our victory will be bittersweet. Being in human form, he will rapidly become his true age and turn to dust, returning back to the earth as all mortals do.”
Van felt Lady Loka’s unbearable sorrow. A tickle of tears warmed Van’s cheeks.
“As I have said, you have proved yourself worthy and therefore are allowed to retrieve the Coin of Creation. It is hidden in my Lake of Tears, but I must warn you. If you fail, it will result in your death. The choice is yours.”
Van understood why Lady Loka had given her this warning. The earrings reversing Lilla’s curse were not Van’s; they were her mother’s. Van’s father, Uxa, Ildiss, and now Lady Loka felt uncertain of Van’s ability to connect to the magic of her Anchoress bloodline. Van thought differently. She had felt the power in her blood when her eyes lit the darkness. She had passed Lady Loka’s tests and survived the mission so far.
She marched to the edge of the lake.
She gazed into the calm blue water. Grief resonated from its essence and flooded Van. She shook it off and engaged her brain. The Coin lay hidden in its depths, and Van didn’t know where to start or what to do. She decided to dive to the bottom and start her search there. She took off her boots, socks, and jacket.
As soon as her toe hit the water, its smooth glassy surface grew rough, with rumbling waves. She took several steps back, as the water broke and a gigantic serpent ascended from its depths. Mud slid from its sleek body, clouding the dark blue water. Its scales glittered with green and red flakes, the same color as the enormous bloodstone basin.
“The ground serpent is very protective of his lake,” called Lady Loka. She descended from her throne, watching Van, as she held her now-handsome prince’s hand.
The serpent moved as gracefully as a silk scarf floating in the wind. Its forked tongue flicked at Van. For brief a second, she thought it had come across the lake to give her a friendly greeting, but then she remembered Lady Loka’s warning about retrieving the Coin. Van knew she would have to fight for it.
The serpent let out a blaring shriek. Its long jaw opened, exposing deadly fangs. It snapped at Van, while the rest of its body still remained concealed in the lake.
She jumped aside and rolled on the ground, losing Zachery in the process. There were no sticks around for her to twirl; they would be useless against the serpent, anyway. According to the Law of Abundance, she didn’t need Zachery or sticks. She was always provided with what she needed to fulfill her spiritual destiny. But what did she have?
She dodged, as the serpent made another lunge. This time, it caught its fang in her pant leg.
It raised its head, lifting Van into the air, where she dangled uselessly.
The monster flailed its head, attempting to flick Van into its mouth.
She flapped her arms to keep from swinging. She dropped a few inches, as the material of her pants gave out, and then plunged to the ground next to the edge of the lake.
As she hit, she heard a sickening crack and felt a sharp pain in her shoulder.
The serpent made another deadly swipe.
Van rolled away, certain her body was fractured in several places. She scrambled onto her bare feet and ran, hoping the serpent couldn’t leave the water.
“Damn!” she sputtered, as the serpent slithered out of the lake in pursuit of her.
Her injuries slowed her. Van knew she wouldn’t be able to outmaneuver it, so she stopped and grabbed the nearest thing—a rock—and threw it at the serpent’s head.
It shrieked.
“You’re making him angry,” Lady Loka said.
Lady Loka’s words provided a hint. Fighting the serpent gives it power, thought Van. She must take away the serpent’s power. How? Connect to her ancestral line, as Zane and Ildiss had said?
Van’s father fought evil creatures every day. How did he do it? Van remembered the chant she had found in her father’s study—the one Brux told her could kill demons. Maybe Brux had been wrong, and it wasn’t for demons. Her father had done a lot of research on how to get the Coin. Maybe the chant could be used to defeat this serpent.
Van ran from the serpent on raw bare feet. Her weak ankle gave out, and she stumbled. The serpent moved in for the kill. Van had nothing else, so she gave the chant a try. She said out loud, “Thrice around the circle’s bound, evil sink into the ground.” It didn’t work, so Van changed the word evil to serpent and repeated it, as she rolled and dodged the serpent’s snapping snout.
The third time Van said the chant, the serpent froze. With a poof, its body collapsed to dust, sending its scales scattering across the cavern floor. Hundreds of thousands of them. All the same color. But to Van’s discerning eye, one was different.
She picked it up.
“Congratulations, my young Anchoress.” Lady Loka smiled proudly. She still held hands with her prince, who had markedly aged. “You have successfully retrieved the Coin of Creation.”
Van rubbed it between her fingers to remove the reddish-green, slimy coating from its years in the lake. She crinkled her brow. It still looked nothing like Amaryl’s shining gold Coin.
“It’s sealed with a protective, skin-tight covering. The covering is designed to mask the Coin as an aged bronze stip, giving it the appearance of little value. The Coin is now yours, to do with it what you will. Keep in mind, young one, your lessons do not end here. Your journey has just begun.”
“What do you mean? My mission was to retrieve the Coin. Once I bring it back to Lodestar, I’m done.”
“It is time for me to bid you farewell. Your retrieval of the Coin has brought my time here to an end.”
Van raised her eyebrows, unsure whether she had accidentally killed Lady Loka by retrieving the Coin or if the Elemental was simply returning to Mt. Altithronia.
“Goodbye and good luck,” Lady Loka said, as she and her elderly prince floated toward the ceiling and then faded away.
The cavern grumbled furiously, bringing its surrounding labyrinth to its final collapse.
Van tucked the Coin into her pocket, as she sprinted to the nearest tunnel, stopping only to snatch Zachery and barely escaping the falling
boulders. She dashed down a shuddering tunnel, using her flashlight eyes to guide her, and ignored the stabbing pains from her injuries and bare feet that flared up with every step.
Van felt proud that she had passed Lady Loka’s tests and retrieved the Coin of Creation. For the first time in her long journey, she felt confident about being able to access the power in her Anchoress bloodline.
The ground shifted violently.
Rubble crashed around her, collapsing the tunnel and burying Van in a mound of rocks and stone.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Day 24: Morning hours, Living World
Van wasn’t dead. She hadn’t even lost consciousness. Instead, an invisible shield protected her from the avalanche encasing her.
Still, she panicked. She was buried alive! How am I going to get out?
A threatening creak came from the protective bubble. It was collapsing!
Van closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. She reached deep to grasp her inner Light and said, “This is my space, given to me by the Creator. Nothing can harm me unless I let it, and I do not let it. I am safe.” She had added a new twist to the protective mantra she’d learned in her mediation class at school. The words acted to reclaim lost energy and allowed her to be fully present in her physical body, giving her control over what happened in the space around her.
The creaking stopped.
The invisible force regained its strength. A feeling of groundedness and tranquility filled Van.
The Coin! She slapped her hand against the pocket where she had hastily slipped it. The Coin was still there. Her elbow accidentally hit the edge of the bubble. It expanded, easily pushing aside the surrounding rocks.
Curious, she stood. The bubble stretched upward with her, and the debris slid away to make space. She took a step forward, and the bubble moved with her, pushing aside the rocks and boulders like a bulldozer. She took another step, then another, and then burst out of the collapsed area.
She reached out, trying to touch the bubble, but she couldn’t feel anything.
Her feet vibrated, prompting her to get moving. She dashed through the winding tunnels, maneuvering around the fallen debris from the previous quakes, following the open pathways.
One of the Coin’s inherent magical properties was to bring luck, and it worked. Van had to stop short, as she nearly crashed into Brux and Paley.
Brux wrapped his arms around Van at the same time that Paley clutched her in a vice-like hug.
“I’m so sorry, Van,” Paley said. “I don’t know what came over me.” Paley gave Van the decoy coin. “It does bad things to me. I don’t want it anymore.”
Van didn’t want to risk anyone else picking up the solid gold decoy coin and suffering its adverse effects, in case it caused any. She slipped it into her pocket.
Brux kept a stiff upper lip as Paley sobbed when Van told them that Jorie had died in the tunnel collapse.
“You saved Zachery,” Brux said. “Jorie would be happy about that.” His voice cracked.
Brux said a prayer for Jorie’s spirit to have a safe journey, as it made its way through the Light and back into the arms of the Creator. Then, all three held one another and cried.
Brux was uninjured, for the most part, but Paley felt drained and sweaty from a wound on her thigh caused by the Minotaur. Brux had made a tourniquet out of a piece of rope to keep her from bleeding out.
Though battered from her struggle with the serpent and still exhausted from the Gemstones, Van proudly showed her injuries to a worried, hovering Brux.
He tended to her wounds as best he could, given their limited supplies. He even destroyed their one remaining backpack to make Van temporary shoes out of its material. They stuffed some of the other items into their pockets.
Brux tucked Zachery into his belt and used their only torch to light the way, but they had no idea where they were going. Van and Brux took turns supporting Paley as she hobbled, using her one strong leg.
Along the way, Van filled them in on Lady Loka, the Minotaur who had turned out to be a handsome prince, and the deadly ground serpent that hid the Coin. Van didn’t tell them about the mysterious invisible bubble that had saved her life, because it sounded too ridiculous.
“Mission accomplished,” Brux said.
Paley cheered meekly.
“Not yet,” Van said, acutely aware time was slipping away. They needed to get the Coin back to Uxa to stop the Balish invasion of Salus Valde before midnight of the next full moon.
“I don’t think Solana is after the Coin for its magical power—that’s a Lodian belief unsupported by the Balish Counsil,” Brux contemplated. “It’s unusual for a female heir to be allowed to take the throne. I think her only objective is to take over Salus Valde, so she can prove her worth to the Counsil. Our democracy has been a thorn in the side of the Balish monarchy for a millennium.”
“She knows from reading Manik’s text that the Coin can’t be used against other humans,” Van agreed. “How does she plan to use it, then?”
“She doesn’t want the Lodians to have it,” Brux said. “In our hands, it gives us the power to defeat demons, satisfying the Elemental ruling that our Grigori can protect the Living World. Manik’s law will remain in place, and Solana won’t be allowed to attack Salus Valde.”
“So, she’s running around searching for the Coin, all to impress her father?” Van asked rhetorically. She hated to admit it, but she could relate to that.
Their conversation ended, and they drudged on through maze-like tunnels that Van swore had been forged from the sands of hell. Every so often, they came across Elmot’s stone piles, but the vibrations from the earthquakes had scattered them, so that they held no clues about navigation. The trio wandered through tunnel after tunnel, coming across rockslides and dead ends.
“This is hopeless,” Paley said. She unhooked her arm from around Van’s shoulders and slid to the ground, drained.
“We have to keep trying,” Brux insisted. He held the torch high and pointed to one of several openings. “I don’t think we’ve tried this one yet.”
“We already went that way,” Paley said wearily.
“Are you sure?” Brux asked. “Van, do you remember?”
“Um.” She had no idea. She needed rest, too, but also wanted to escape the endless tunnels. Figures. She’d survived retrieving the Coin, only to end up dying while she tried to find her way out of a maze. Just her luck.
Luck! She pulled the Coin from her pocket. One of its inherent magical properties was to bring the holder luck. Maybe it worked better without the protective coating. Van rubbed the Coin between her thumb and forefinger. The covering shifted, revealing the startling gold Coin beneath. Five triangles on the Coin’s face intertwined to form a sacred ancient symbol, exactly like Amaryl’s Coin.
“Van!” Brux anxiously strode over to her. “Van, what are you doing? Don’t try and use it!”
“I’m not! I just wanted to see if opening it would bring us more of its magical luck.”
The tunnels rumbled again.
“This area is dangerously unstable,” Brux proclaimed. “We have to find a way out!”
Van’s finger accidentally brushed against the exposed Coin. She felt dizzy, detached. Oh no! She tried to hold herself in the present and couldn’t.
She heard Brux cry her name in the distance, as she was pulled to another time . . .
She caught the fresh scent of pine. She was with Amaryl, running through the woods of Tipereth with a newborn baby in her arms. Rowen, Rowen’s brother, Romet, and his wife, Regina Lake, were there. Regina was Amaryl’s and Zurial’s first cousin and closest friend. All of them had accompanied Amaryl to Balefire for the birth of Zurial’s child and had witnessed the massacre currently taking place.
Amaryl knew using the Coin against other humans was incorrect, so they had fled the Balefire Palace, using the Coin for direction. They had safely escaped Goustav’s bloody rebellion when Amaryl stopped. She felt as if something were m
issing and touched her neck.
She gasped. “I have lost the Coin!” She handed Zurial’s baby to Regina and frantically checked the ground around her feet. “It is gone! I must go back! I need to retrace my steps and find it!”
“We do not need the Coin,” said Rowen. “We can find our way back to Lodestar without it.”
“Goustav will be coming after Manik’s baby,” Romet said tensely. “We must keep going.”
“We never should have taken Mehal,” Regina said. The baby fussed in her arms. “He has put us in danger.”
“Amaryl, my love,” Rowen said. “Your obsession with the Coin will kill us all. We must let it go. The Elementals can retrieve it from the forest later.”
“I can’t trust that the Elementals won’t let it fall into Balish hands,” Amaryl said, worried. “You go ahead. I am going back.” She turned down the same path she had just come from, frantically searching the ground as she went.
Rowen followed. As her husband, he refused to leave her side. Rowen called back to Romet and Regina, “Go! Save yourselves and the baby.”
They didn’t argue and sprinted into the woods.
Amaryl retraced her steps through the trees, inspecting every inch of the path for her shiny gold Coin.
Rowen followed, his sword drawn.
“The Coin is close. I can feel it,” Amaryl said, as she studied the ground.
A crashing noise echoed through the woods; branches snapped and cracked. Something came at them with unnatural speed.
Knowing it couldn’t be outrun, Amaryl and Rowen turned to face it.
Rowen protectively moved in front of Amaryl, his sword raised.
A beast slid from the shadows of the forest, fierce and growling—as if darkness itself had taken on the shape of a great wolf-like creature. Its red eyes glared, and its deadly fangs dripped with saliva, as it snarled and spit. Its massive clawed paws impatiently gouged into the earth, as it longed for something to rip apart.
Shock of Fate: A Young Adult Fantasy Adventure (Anchoress Series Book 1) Page 37