Soul-Wars Saga
Book 1
PLEDGED
by
Gwynneth White
Published by Swallow Press, at Smashwords
Copyright © Gwynneth Elizabeth White 2012
All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Vukani’s Place
Chapter 2: The Pans
Chapter 3: Dead or Alive?
Chapter 4: The Mists of Time
Chapter 5: The Wrong Promise
Chapter 6: What’s Done is Done
Chapter 7: Prophecy or Fable?
Chapter 8: Reuel’s Curse, Gideon’s Prophecy
Chapter 9: A Warring Heart
Chapter 10: Pledged
Chapter 11: To Do or Die
Chapter 12: Enchanted
Chapter 13: Blood Brothers
Chapter 14: Knife-Edge
Chapter 15: The Teacher
Chapter 16: Lies, Damn Lies
Chapter 17: Deal or No Deal?
Chapter 18: Enslaved
Chapter 19: Conspiracy
Chapter 20: Confrontation
Chapter 21: The All-Seeing Eyes
Chapter 22: Sacrificed
Chapter 23: Please Leave A Review
Chapter 24: Preview of Sacrificed
Chapter 25: Meet Gwynneth White
Chapter 1
VUKANI’S HOUSE
Despite the heat, Seth felt icy. Dread could do that to him. Or so he had recently discovered. Deep breathing usually calmed him, so he sucked in a lungful of desert air and told himself to relax. It didn’t help. By the time he’d walked from the aircraft to the immigration hall he’d ripped off a jagged piece of thumbnail, already bitten raw. He handed his US passport to the Botswanan border official, and, after a frown, and a stamp, he joined the crowd at the baggage carousel. Botswana in southern Africa was the last place on earth he’d ever have picked for a holiday destination. But he wasn’t here on holiday. Not even close.
His backpack was slow in coming. Tired from his long-haul flight from New York, he leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. Almost as if to mock him, the hated vision that had brought him to Botswana burst into his mind. In an instant he was back in ancient times, watching a man he knew only as Gideon. As usual, Gideon was huddled on a windswept hill with his band of hopeless soldiers, waiting to be slaughtered by a huge army gathered in the valley below.
Seth snapped his eyes open to stop the battle from waging in his mind. It wasn’t that he was particularly squeamish; he’d watched enough movies to iron clad his stomach against gory visuals. But no movie had ever left him icy with dread the way Gideon’s battle did. And the reason for that was simple. The moment the visions had started, he had known that the war, fought so long ago in a place he’d never heard of, was far from over. And, as reluctant as he was, he too was being enlisted to fight in a cause he didn’t understand or want.
He forced himself to focus on the present: Erin, who waited for him in the arrivals hall; his brother Kyle, whom he’d come to Botswana to visit; Kyle’s expedition to find the Lost City of the Kalahari . . .
He ripped off another piece of fingernail. Thinking about the search for the Lost City was almost as bad as the war-vision. I hope Kyle never finds the damned place. He slapped his hand on his thigh. Enough! Grabbing his backpack off the carousel, he set his face into a smile and strode into the arrivals hall.
The first hurdle was finding Erin. She was due to arrive an hour earlier on a flight from Cape Town in South Africa, one of Botswana’s neighbours. He’d never met her, although they had spoken over the phone once. Then she’d described herself as “a short, seventeen-year-old (a year younger than him) with a mass of ginger hair.” She’d sounded nice. Meeting her was the one ray of brightness in this otherwise dark picture.
He stopped to scan the crowd. A petite girl with shoulder length, reddish-blonde curls, dressed in skinny jeans and a purple blouse, immediately caught his eye. It had to be Erin. Nice legs. What’s it with girls that they always under-sell themselves? He studied her face with his artist’s eye. Vermeer would’ve killed to paint her. Suddenly wishing he didn’t look so grimy after his three plane-changes, he walked over to join her. “Hi, I’m Seth. You’ve got to be Erin. My brother’s just married your sister Izzy.”
“And after only knowing each other for about a week.”
Her dimpled grin was infectious, making him crack his trademark crooked smile. “Madness.”
“Mysterious.” Erin cocked her head to one side, seemingly appraising him. He knew he had been accurate when he’d told her he was tall and dark-haired. But what he had failed to mention was what girls had often said they liked about him: his strong, angular face, softened by expressive brown eyes. He watched her eyes rove over his grey Muse: Resistance t-shirt, taking in his broad shoulders and chest. From there they darted down his black camo-pants to his boots. Amused by her blatant assessment, he cocked his head to one side, watching her. Suddenly Erin giggled – was she embarrassed? – and picked up her bag.
“We’ve yet another plane to catch. My fourth in the last twenty-four hours,” Seth said, hoping to explain away his rumpled appearance. “To a place called Maun.”
“So we do. Let the adventure begin.”
Once on the plane, it was Erin who opened the conversation. “So, Seth, I guess we’re in for an interesting two weeks, searching for the Lost City with Izzy and Kyle.”
“Life’s always interesting when Kyle’s around. I suppose Izzy must be similar.”
“Kyle sounds intriguing. I can’t think of too many people who could have persuaded Izzy to spend her honeymoon living in a tent, with no flushing toilet, scratching in the dust for something that probably doesn’t exist.”
Seth shrugged, hoping to say nothing, but Erin was looking at him with such expectant eyes – brilliant sea-green, he noted – that he replied, “Kyle can be mighty persuasive when he wants something. He’s hard to resist.”
“So it would seem. But tell me, how did Kyle first hear about the Lost City? I mean, it’s not exactly world famous, like some Inca ruin.”
“Simple. He’s an archaeologist. Looking for things in dirt is what he does.”
“I’d have thought there were lots of better places for an archaeologist to dig than some fairytale city lost in the sands of the Kalahari.”
He chuckled at her bluntness. “Fairytale city? What makes you so sure it doesn’t exist?”
Erin pulled a well-used guidebook from the depths of her voluminous bag and thumped it down on her lap. She flipped to a page, then leaned over so close that he could feel her breath on his cheek: “A Mr GA Farini – who, just by the way, was the kind of guy who exploited pygmies to make money – claimed to have found a ruined city in the Kalahari in 1885. He wrote a book about it, which raked in a pile of cash. Since then dozens of other people have searched for it, but no one has found any verifiable proof that it exists.”
“Verifiable proof?” Seth sniggered. “In my world, most people have no problem believing in sparkly vampires and the X
-Men. Verifiable proof doesn’t even feature.”
“Well it does in mine. You can’t just go around making grand claims about marvellous things without backing it up with concrete evidence.” Her frown slowly softened and she smiled. “The craziest thing is that everyone who claimed to have seen the Lost City promptly lost it again. Usually in a convenient sand storm. So please tell me, what makes Kyle so convinced it’s there?’
“I suppose he knows something about the place that the writer of your textbook doesn’t.” Guessing that Erin would have little tolerance for his visions, the inspiration behind Kyle’s search, Seth started talking about the scenes drifting below them: the limitless expanse of ochre-coloured nothingness of the Kalahari desert, dotted with the smudges of far-scattered villages.
Erin flicked her curls and relaxed back into her seat. Like it or not, Seth knew time would reveal all these answers.
* * *
Maun was a gangly sort of frontier town on the edge of the pristine Okavango Delta – a World Heritage Site tucked away in the north-western corner of Botswana. Dodging donkeys, chickens, goats and cows, their taxi driver steered them through the dusty streets to their rendezvous with Kyle and Izzy. Seth sat silent, watching with a bemused expression as they passed an eclectic mix of brash tourist emporiums lined up next to owner-run vendor stalls. Most of the stalls were made from little more than wooden boards straddling tin drums, without the benefit of any shade. Here Herero women dressed in brightly coloured, floor-length Victorian-styled dresses, complete with elaborate headdresses, haggled over wilting fruit and vegetables, or, infinitely worse, freshly slaughtered cows, black with flies. Customers as diverse as suit-clad businessmen, popping out of the office for a snack, small children, sent by their mothers to do grocery shopping, and passing tourists, eager to soak up the atmosphere, vied for their wares.
Erin couldn’t resist teasing Seth. “I guess living in big city New York didn’t prepare you for this.” She turned to face him, happy to see that crooked smile. His warm brown eyes were so . . . gentle!
“It’s another world.”
They crossed a rickety bridge over a startlingly blue river. Finally the pot-holed tar narrowed to a bush track. This in turn faded to nothing at a mean-looking house crouched behind a mesh fence. The windows, some of them cracked, were plastered with sun-bleached newspapers. In the front yard tiny dust devils swirled over grey sand.
“This is it. Trip’s over,” the taxi driver grunted, holding his hand out for cash.
“Wow,” Erin said, trying to imagine her sister even stepping into the yard of this derelict place.
“No kidding,” Seth said. “Are you sure it’s the right address?”
“It’s what she told me,” the driver said, pointing at Erin.
“I’m sure you got it right, sir. What do you think, Seth?”
“I think you should rather ask what Kyle was thinking.”
“You mean this is out of character for him?”
“You could say that. C’mon, let’s check it out.” He touched the driver’s shoulder. “Just hang here until we tell you to leave.”
“I’m not going until I get paid.”
“Chill. I’m from New York. We know about paying for cabs.”
They climbed out of the car, coming face-to-face with two feral dogs tearing open garbage bags piled on the road. One snarled at Erin, but Seth jumped at it, shouting to drive it off. With a low growl, it turned to look at him through unflinching dark eyes.
Erin took the gap, sidled to the gate and rattled the padlock. It was rusted fast shut. “Seth, I doubt anyone has opened this gate in months. Forget that . . . years.” She looked for another gate. There wasn’t one. “This is crazy–”
A garbage bag interrupted her. A wind-swirling dust devil had picked it up, blowing it against her legs. She grabbed it, spreading something black and nasty on her fingers before the wind ripped it from her hands. It fluttered onto the fence – and there it flapped, as though mocking her. “Ew . . . gross.” A needle-sharp splinter pierced her finger as she wiped her hands on the brittle grass growing along the fence. Resisting the urge to suck the fleck of blood rising from the puncture mark, she shouted to Seth, “This dump is deserted! Typical of Izzy to give me the wrong address. I’ll try and get her on the phone.” She pulled her cellphone out of her bag and dialled Izzy’s number. “Oh . . . she’s on voicemail.”
“Voicemail!” Seth pulled his eyes away from the dogs and looked at the house, as if its unwelcoming face held some clues to his brother’s lack of hospitality.
“Let’s head back to town and grab something to drink while we wait for them to call,” Erin suggested, only too eager to get away from the spooky place.
“Done.” Seth waved his arms and shouted to keep the dogs away while Erin jumped into the car. He leapt in after her.
The dogs stood their ground, watching them. But, as if in response to their planned departure, the wind died, releasing the garbage bag trapped on the fence. It settled onto the ground like a black stain.
It was then they heard a lyrical voice call out. “Erin! Seth!” They turned and saw a young woman waving at them from the front porch. She was a beauty, a little above average height. Her hair, the colour of dark chocolate, tumbled to below her tawny shoulders. She wore a long, scarlet silk dress that wouldn’t have looked out of place at King Arthur’s Round Table, and her feet were bare. But it wasn’t these details that held their attention: it was her eyes. They were the colour of deep violet-blue tanzanite. Even at this distance they looked compelling, hypnotising. “I’m Sophia,” she called out. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to welcome you when you arrived.”
“Interesting accent,” Erin murmured. “It matches her dress, somehow.”
Seth nodded in agreement and then called out the window. “We’re looking for Kyle and Izzy. They said they’d meet us here.”
“They’ve been delayed at the Lost City base camp,” Sophia called back. “But I’ve got directions for you. Come on in.”
Erin’s eyes looked meaningfully at Seth. “Delayed?”
“Yeah, I heard. Very irritating.” Seth shouted to Sophia, “Thanks for the invite, but the gate’s locked. And the dogs are really mean.”
“Oh, don’t worry about the mutts. They won’t touch you now. And the gate is open.”
“I checked – it’s locked,” Erin insisted.
“Let me see it.” Seth took a deep breath, eased out of the car and edged past the dogs to the gate. Although they continued to growl at him, they now kept their distance. At Seth’s touch, the padlock fell free and the gate swung open soundlessly on its rusty hinges.
“That’s impossible. It was locked.” Erin had joined him. She grabbed the padlock, caking her fingers in rust. She hated that Seth would think she was an idiot who couldn’t tell if a lock was open or not. “Honestly, Seth, I’m not making it up.”
“Relax. I’m sure it just looked locked.” Seth fished out his wallet to pay the driver. As he opened it, Erin caught a glimpse of a faded photo of a fierce-faced man and a laughing woman standing next to three good-looking young boys. She presumed it was his family, taken a few years ago. Seth shoved his wallet back into his pocket and grabbed their bags out of the trunk. Erin smiled up at him as he stood aside to let her pass through the gate. Guys with manners always got her heart racing.
Seth followed her, slamming the gate shut to keep out the dogs. He had only taken a few paces to the front door when a flicker of movement in his peripheral vision made him look back. There was nothing there. Not even the dogs. They had vanished as if they had never existed. Steeling himself against an icy shiver that washed over him, he stopped walking. He was about to turn back to the gate to look for them when he sensed someone watching him. Sophia. He wished he could read her smile, but it was enigmatic.
“This is Botswana, Seth. Strays come and go,” Sophia explained.
Seth couldn’t resist looking at Erin. She looked as unhappy with the situ
ation as he felt.
“Come into the house, and we’ll talk. And then you can be on your way to Kyle and Izzy,” Sophia said. Without waiting for a reply, she waved them into a dingy entrance hall smelling of stale marijuana. After exchanging a heavy look, Erin and Seth followed her. A dark passage yawned before them, down which Sophia glided, beckoning them to follow her deeper into the silent house.
The hair on Erin’s neck prickled and she stopped walking.
“Trust me,” Sophia said, as if reading her thoughts. “You’re in the right place.”
As Sophia was their only link to Izzy, Erin followed her. A few steps on, Sophia turned into a musty room decorated with a mass of dried animal carcasses dangling from a smoke-blackened ceiling. Flicking open a path between a desiccated jackal and a leering monkey, she stepped over a litter of grass baskets brimming with dried herbs, chopped roots, splintered bones and buffalo hooves, then lowered herself onto a zebra skin mat. She tucked her dress over her bare feet. “The room’s somewhat grisly, I know. But Vukani’s a sangoma, and this is his house. Please, join me.”
“Who’s Vukani?” Erin asked, refusing to move into the gallery of death.
“And what’s a sangoma?” Seth’s eyes were fixed on the gaping beak of a black and white crow, hanging next to his face.
“Vukani’s a witch doctor. A diviner, to be more accurate. He interprets dreams and visions.”
Erin noticed Seth’s tanned face pale. For a guy who talked so glibly of sparkly vampires and X-Men, his sudden faded colour intrigued her.
Sophia didn’t seem to see it. She waved her arm around the room, and continued speaking, “He uses these things to communicate with the dead.”
Erin watched Seth sink onto his haunches, facing Sophia across the zebra skin. His eyes were wide and staring, as if he couldn’t believe what Sophia had just said. Erin just had to know what was driving his weird reaction, so she crouched next to him and asked, “What has this sangoma got to do with Izzy and Kyle?”
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