Mara held up her hand and could see the ground through it. A wave of tiredness washed over her, and she swayed for a moment, feeling her left knee threatening to buckle.
A low guttural growl came from the frozen lizard-thing, still floating in the air.
“I can’t hold him for long.” She held out her arm to steady herself. “Wait a minute.” A look of determination and stress crossed her face.
The suspended creature blurred, then dissolved into a shower of translucent pixels that fell to the ground and disappeared.
Ping sidled up to her and took her arm. “Why don’t you take a seat and rest for a minute? We’ve got to consider how much all this takes out of you, not just metaphysically, but technologically. Your body draws energy from light, and it is nighttime after all. We don’t want to drain all of your reserves.”
Mara let him lead her back to the mat next to the fire and took her seat. Looking around blankly, she said, “We don’t have the stone anymore for magic practice.”
“Plenty of rocks are around. Besides, I think we are done with lessons for the night. Just sit there until the disorientation passes,” Ping said.
“We have to be prepared to meet the Coven,” Mara said, her voice slightly slurred.
“It won’t do any good if you’re exhausted when we get to the Arboretum,” Ping said.
A loud scream rang out from across the clearing. It was Diana.
CHAPTER 18
Ping helped Mara get to her feet. When they turned toward the campsite on the far side of the clearing, it appeared the nearby trees and shrubs bared down on Diana and Sam, shifting from the darkness into the edges of the campfire’s light. Something yanked Diana backward, and Sam fell forward on the ground, dragged past the flames and into the darkness.
“Mara!” he yelled as his feet were enveloped by the night.
Adrenaline pumped into her bloodstream, and she bolted across the clearing with Ping following, unable to keep up. He called after her, “Be careful. Your abilities may be compromised.”
Seconds before Mara got there, the campfire winked out, and the campsite plunged into darkness. Instinctively she dug into her jacket pockets, hoping that she might have carried a flashlight. No luck. Her fingers grazed the faceted edges of the crystal she’d created from the bowl of dirt. She clutched it and pulled it from her pocket.
As Ping approached, she tossed the gem into the air, and it ignited, spreading a pool of spinning green light that illuminated half the clearing. In the sweeping bands of light, she saw Ping pointing beyond the edge of the tent. When she turned, she saw shifting branches pulling away, retracting into the dark, as if the surrounding swamp were a tide heading back out to sea. The sounds of rustling leaves and boughs filled the night, as if in a strong breeze, but the air did not stir.
Diana and Sam were gone.
Mara chased the receding plants and grabbed a handful of brush, pulled it aside and peered into the skewing jumble of shadows. Behind her, she heard Ping.
“Those aren’t ordinary trees,” he said. “They seem to have a mind of their own. Perhaps camouflaged bowraiths.”
Glancing at a nearby trunk, she saw its bark flow, move like flesh over a tensing musculature. At first she thought it was a trick of the spinning light, but then black shiny orbs reflected not just the illumination of her floating gem but recognition or maybe intelligence. Branches flung at her, striking her shoulder and knocking her to her knees. A vine snapped out of the darkness and wrapped around her wrist. It yanked her backward, and she fell onto her back.
Shaking her head, she tried to focus, but all she could see was spinning shadows of branches, getting closer and closer, blocking out more of the limited light.
Off to her left, she heard a muffled sound. Turning, she spotted a familiar silhouette, bound by vines to another trunk, hardly discernable in the tangle of branches and vines that grew thicker around them.
Sam wriggled his jaw loose and sputtered at leaves that clung to his lips. “Mara!”
She sensed movement on her other side and rolled in that direction, the vine on her wrist still pulling at her. A pool of yellow light swam over her, and she heard crackling sounds. The brush that had grown up behind her exploded in a whoosh of flame. When the smoke cleared, Ping stood there, carrying a torch, burning a path toward her.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Sitting upright on the ground, Mara held up her wrist, the vine still pulling on her. Ping lowered his torch and burned through the creeping tendril.
“Sam’s over there,” Mara said. “Can you help him?”
Ping turned, but several vines swung down from the darkness above him and grabbed his arms and torso, yanking him backward, causing him to drop the torch, which sputtered into a few glowing embers on the damp ground.
“Use fire to stop—” Ping said, a vine wrapping around his neck, choking off his words. He exploded into a cloud of gray dust, leaving the vines to snake aimlessly in the air for several seconds before they turned toward Mara.
Standing, she rubbed her wrist, then thrust her hand forward. A bolt of lightning shot from her palm, setting the vines ablaze. After unwinding herself from burned tendrils, she ran to her brother and held out her hands again, palms first. Before she could blast the foliage restraining Sam, he got his mouth free again and yelled, “Behind you!”
She spun around. A figure in a white hooded cloak stepped from behind the tent some twenty yards away and raised his arms to the sky. He said something but was too far away to hear. Clouds roiled and gathered in the sky above the clearing; lightning danced and crackled, as if a storm gathered.
“Oh, jeez,” Mara said. “That doesn’t look good.” She summoned the floating crystal, and it darted closer, hovering about ten feet above her head. Examining the area, she just could make out a coalescing mass of gray dust in the air.
“Ping? Is that you? I need you to pull it together in a hurry ’cause I could really use some advice right now. We’ve got an acolyte of the Coven here, and he’s got a weather fetish.”
A bolt of lightning jutted from the sky and hit the ground three feet away. Static crawled over Mara’s skin as a wall of compressed wind flung her into the air. She collided with a tree, knocking the breath from her lungs. Moments later she awoke on the ground, spots dancing before her eyes. With a shake of her head, she cleared them away and found herself staring at an athletic shoe, the toe of which wiggled. It was Sam’s.
Looking up, she caught his wide eyes staring down at her. Vines and leaves covered him, leaving only his eyes and forehead visible. Even so, his glare said, Do something.
A gust of wind blasted across the clearing, carrying with it sheets of raindrops. Within seconds, water ran around Mara’s flanks, as if she lay in a creek. She jumped up with a splash. Wiping water from her face, she peered through the downpour to see if the acolyte was coming.
No, still staring up into the sky.
She turned to her brother. While waving her hand over the vines that bound him, she noticed the rain pass through her hand. Without pausing, she concentrated more intently, ignoring the wave of tiredness running all over her.
The vines shuddered and emitted a strange screech that made Mara’s skin crawl. Then they blurred. Tiny translucent cubes tumbled away as they dissolved into a shower of pixels, washed away by the rain. With several waves of her hand, Sam was free.
He backed away from the tree trunk, keeping his gaze trained on it. “When you’re standing in the swamp, you can’t tell the trees from the bowraiths,” he said.
The tree didn’t move.
Mara glanced around. The foliage was noticeably thinner. “Where did they go?”
Ping stepped from the shadows into the still-spinning light of the green crystal. “It appears the bowraiths retreated. The local flora has stopped moving for the time being.”
“Where’s Mom?” Mara asked.
Ping held out a hand, and Diana took it, stepping into the light as well.
“I found her a few feet away. They released her as they withdrew.”
“Are you all right?” Mara asked.
“Yes, but what’s wrong with you? You’re transparent. I can see right through you,” Diana said, stepping toward Mara.
“She flickers like that when she overuses her powers,” Sam said.
“You need to give it a rest,” Ping said.
“We’ve still got an acolyte to deal with,” Mara said.
As if on cue, a bolt of lightning shot between them, knocking them to the ground. Eyeing a nearby tree suspiciously, Mara used it to pull herself to her feet. She staggered toward the campsite and said over her shoulder, “You guys stay here, and stay out of sight until it’s clear.”
“You’re not supposed to hide under trees during a storm,” Sam called after her.
She ignored him and stepped into the clearing, followed by the spinning, floating crystal in the air above. Standing next to the smoldering campfire, the cowled acolyte remained motionless with his arms extended to the sky. As Mara got closer, a deep male voice came from the shadows of the white hood. “Submit to the curate or die.”
Another bolt of lightning brightened the skies, but Mara held up a transparent hand and the crystal flew to the left, into the path of the jagged streak of light. The green gem brightened and spun once, freezing in place, spitting a brilliant emerald arc of light that struck the acolyte in the chest with a brilliant flash of light.
Everything went black.
At first Mara thought she had fainted, but she felt her eyes blink, even though she saw nothing. Out of the obscurity came a whisper—a feminine voice, dry as sandpaper and old as Time:
There is only One
Chronicle of Consequence,
One Viable Realm.
Then everything went blacker. This time there was no blinking, no voices in the darkness. Just nothing.
CHAPTER 19
Mara’s eyes fluttered, and, as they focused, they saw nothing but brown—more of a dark khaki that she couldn’t place. Lifting her head, her cheek grazed something soft, and, when she tried to move her arms, they felt bound. Her heart skipped a beat, and she struggled to sit up. Her gaze caught a rectangle of light coming from the direction of her feet, and she realized that she was looking through the entryway of the tent. She was not bound but wrapped in a sleeping bag.
Diana’s head poked through the opening of the tent. “There you are. It’s about time you woke up. Why don’t you come get some coffee and breakfast?”
Mara found the sleeping bag zipper and freed herself. While slipping out of it, she noticed she was in her underwear. A pair of jeans and a shirt flew through the opening to the tent. “Here’s your clothes. I rinsed the mud out of them as best I could with rainwater and dried them by the fire,” Diana said. “I couldn’t find your duffel bag to get to your clean clothing. You must have left it in the car.”
Mara quickly dressed and, stepping through the flap in the tent, found her mother sitting by the campfire, pouring a cup of coffee and turning what looked like a cinnamon roll on a grill precariously positioned over the fire. Taking the offered cup, Mara sat on the log next to her mother.
After swallowing a sip and letting the drink warm her, Mara asked, “What happened? The last thing I remembered was an acolyte calling down lightning from the sky. That did happen, didn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah, that happened,” Sam said. He and Ping walked up behind them and took a seat on the opposite side of the fire. Sam carried a bucket, which he plopped down near the fire. “Here’s the water you requested,” he said to Diana.
“That’s for you to wash up, Mara. I wiped off most of the mud, but your hair is a mess,” Diana said.
Mara tried to run her fingers through it, but knots and clumps prevented her. “Great,” she said. “I must look like a pig.”
As if on cue, Ginger approached from behind and nuzzled her snout under Mara’s elbow. After being momentarily startled, Mara patted the pig’s plated head. “Where’s the acolyte from last night?”
“Ah, you blew him up,” Sam said. “And then you disappeared for a really long time.”
“What?” she asked.
Ping shook his head. “You were gone for about two minutes, but it did seem interminable at the time. I don’t recall you flickering out like that since the morning at the bridge, following the battle with Sam’s mother.”
“I’m not sure I’m the one who’s flickering when that happens,” Mara said.
“What do you mean? You clearly disappeared last night. All of us witnessed it,” Ping said.
“No, what I mean is, from my perspective last night, it was the world that flickered. Like someone pulled the plug, and Reality disappeared. I was left in the dark, but I was still conscious.”
Ping frowned and considered what she had said but didn’t respond immediately.
“What are you thinking?” Mara asked.
“Perhaps it is Perception that is flickering. Not you and certainly not Reality.”
“I’m not following,” Mara said.
Sam cut in. “Remember when he was giving us metaphysics lessons at the warehouse? We talked about how this world was just pixels, like the user interface overlaid on a program running in the background? Perception is the UI. Reality is the program. When you flickered, the UI crashed.”
“And the underlying program kept running,” Mara said. “That’s exactly what it seemed like.”
“If everything went dark, how did you know you were conscious?” Diana asked.
“I heard a voice.”
“The last time you heard a voice while in an altered state, it was your future self, telling you to write in the Chronicle of Continuity. Was it her?” Ping asked.
“Your future self?” Diana asked.
Sam leaned forward. “I told you last night about Hannah, my daughter from the future. Mara sent her back to help us deal with the dragon and the darkling wraith that came from this realm.”
“This voice didn’t sound like me. It was old and raspy.” Mara’s eyes widened as she recalled the experience. “But she did recite a haiku. I always wrote haiku in the Chronicle of Continuity. She said, There is only One Chronicle of Consequence, One Viable Realm.”
“Did you get a sense of what she meant?” Ping asked.
“Not in the moment, no.”
“We’ve encountered the Chronicle of Creation, the Chronicle of Continuity and the Chronicle of Cosms. Each associated with one of the elements of Reality,” Ping said. “Each have provided direction or guidance in their own way. It’s only logical we’d eventually encounter a Chronicle associated with Consequence. It’s odd the haiku states there is only one.”
“How so?” Mara asked.
“We know there could be multiple versions of the Chronicle of Creation after the Aphotis stole the first one you had—the one from Sam’s realm. You had Ned Pastor create a second one from your realm. You used the new one to defeat the Aphotis in the battle in your backyard just before I—the dragon—burned down your house. This new haiku is telling us, first, that the Chronicle of Consequence cannot be duplicated, and, second, it implies there may be a question about that in the future. Why tell us there is only one unless the owner of the raspy voice expects us to encounter more than one? We may encounter counterfeits or some other deception.”
“And One Viable Realm refers to the final state of Reality after the universal beta test has run its course. Right?” Mara said. “One of my counterparts visited me inside the Chronicle of Creation and used that phrase while warning me that the Aphotis might be trying to gain control over the one viable realm.”
“But the Aphotis is no longer a threat,” Sam said.
“Perhaps there is another,” Ping said.
Mara grimaced. “What? Another threat? Another bad guy in the battle for existence? We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, don’t you think? The whole experience could have been a deception. For all we know, Curate Tran got into my head
, and the whole light show last night was a distraction so she could do that.”
“Unlikely,” Ping said.
“Why?”
“You said yourself that it felt like Perception had flickered away. That would be an unimaginable feat for even a powerful pretender. And how would Tran know to speak in haiku, that you had received instructions that way in the past?” he asked.
“What is the significance of haiku?” Diana asked.
Mara shook her head. “We don’t know. It seems like my future self has an affinity for them. They have a nice rhythm and symmetry to them that I find pleasing, but I’ve never been particularly interested in them.”
“Is it possible this haiku is a warning not to go to the Arboretum?” Diana asked.
“Not at all,” Mara said. “If anything, it’s a warning of what to look for as we continue. We learned end-running the haikus in the Chronicle of Continuity was pointless. We ran smack into everything they predicted, even when we chose to ignore them.”
“What if Tran is this new bad guy in the—what did you call it?” Diana asked.
“The metaphysical battle of existence. Or the battle to shape Reality. Whatever. At this point, we aren’t even sure such a thing exists. And we didn’t need a whispered haiku in the dark to tell us Curate Tran is one of the bad guys—she killed your son and kidnapped your daughter.”
“But now Tran knows we’re coming.”
“Given she’s been one step ahead of us since we got to this realm, I never thought we’d surprise her by showing up,” Mara said.
CHAPTER 20
The swamp grew denser and encroached more on the narrow path they followed, leaving barely enough room for two people to walk side by side. Occasionally an errant branch or vine had to be pushed out of the way to continue. Overhead, only occasional glimpses of sky could be seen through the canopy of green with violet highlights. The exotic hues and lavender fragrances reminded Mara that she traveled in a foreign place and that they weren’t hiking for recreation. Occasionally she heard the flutter of birds or the skitter of small animals, and she would tense, wondering if they were being followed.
Broken Spells (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 6) Page 12