“Where am I?” Julia said as the man got closer.
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” he said in a thick Arabian accent. “It’s just a small storm. We’ll still reach Australia by the end of the month.”
“Month?” Julia cried out. “Where the devil am I?”
The man gave her a perplexed look. “Mrs. Winschfield, this is the Indian Ocean. It’s the only way…”
Julia stared at him. The poor man seemed completely befuddled. She couldn’t understand why. She was the one who’d woken up on a strange ship in the middle of the Indian Ocean. “Where are they?” she said suspiciously.
“Who, ma’am?”
“The men… the people who brought me here. Who put me on this ship?”
At that moment, a huge wave crashed up over the rails of the ship, spraying them with water. The vessel creaked and moaned under the strain. “Perhaps we should go inside,” the man said. “Come, it will be safer.”
Julia complied, mostly because the man seemed trustworthy. She was fairly good at reading people, and it seemed highly unlikely that he was a shadowfriend. His eyes were bright and the look on his face was sincere. He seemed to be genuinely concerned about her wellbeing. They went back in through the doorway and he slammed the hatch shut.
“There,” he said cheerfully. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you well in the storm. Have you been ill, ma’am?”
“No, I’m fine,” Julia said. “I just want to know who put me here. How did I get on this boat?”
The man shook his head in confusion. “But you came alone, ma’am. You paid the fee for a trip to Australia. This was just yesterday. How can you not remember?”
Julia groaned. She put a hand to her forehead. “Shadowlords,” she murmured. They must have hypnotized her. They told her to get on a freighter to Australia, knowing full well that she’d be out of the picture for days, if not weeks.
“Ma’am?”
“Oh, nothing. How long until we reach port?”
“Three weeks.”
“Oh good lord… three weeks?”
“This is a freighter ma’am. We travel slowly. But we are cheap!” He said that last part with a toothy grin. Julia had heard about people who traveled by freighter to save money. She’d never imagined she’d be one of them.
“Do you have a radio or a satellite phone?” she said hopefully. “I’d like to use it, if that’s possible.”
“I’m afraid this is not possible. The storm knocked out our electronics.”
Julia’s face fell and the man looked awfully apologetic. “Perhaps a meal?” he said. “I can take you to the cafeteria. I’ll alert you as soon as the radio is repaired.”
“Yes, thank you,” Julia said, exasperated.
She followed him to the galley somewhere in the bowels of the ship and sat down with a slice of buttered bread with honey, and a hot tea. It was almost impossible to keep them upright with the ship rocking the way it was. She ended up eating the bread as quickly as possible, and then holding the teacup in her hands. She sipped at it as she thought things over.
Julia wondered how long it had been since the shadowfriends had separated her from Reeves. It could have been days. She had no memory of the time lapse between events. Apparently, they’d hypnotized her and sent her to the ship. She wondered if they’d done anything else. Had they tried to weasel any information out of her? Or possibly programmed her to become a killer, like they had with Reeves and Gabriel?
It was curious that they hadn’t kidnapped her, though. If they had hoped to get information out of her, there was no reason to let her go. Plus, she might make a valuable hostage. Why would they give that up? Why send her off like this, just to get her out of the way?
Oh no. She set the cup down on the table. Suddenly it all made sense. They had only gotten her out of the way because sometime in the next few days it would all be over. The Shadow was within reach of its final goal. They weren’t worried about D.A.S. anymore, or Julia. They had the statue… apparently, they had everything they needed.
“This is the endgame,” Julia whispered in horror. “They will destroy us all.”
For one terrifying moment she couldn’t help but wonder about the children. Were they still safe, back at the mansion? Had the Shadow overlooked them? Did they even matter to the Shadow now? Julia forced the thoughts from her mind. Her stomach was churning with acid and she felt on the verge of getting sick. She returned the teacup to the kitchen and then set out to ask every single person on that ship if they had a satellite phone she could borrow…
Chapter 30
It was late when the old troll decided to let Gabriel rest. Very late. Gabriel was frustrated, tired, and hurting. As far as he could tell, the old woman was trying to train him but her methods left something to be desired. So far, it seemed all she had done was beat on him. Not physically of course, but with her powers. He wasn’t even sure why he’d put up with it all afternoon. Then again, there was no telling what she might do to him if he tried to leave. She’d already shown that she was quite capable of hurting him, despite her weak and aged appearance. The old troll was surprisingly dangerous.
Gabriel noted in her conversation with the others that the creature’s name seemed to be Mayzhl. It was either her name or her title, he couldn’t be sure. For dinner, one of the younger females brought bowls of mushroom stew in wooden bowls, and some sort of bread that tasted a lot like mud, in Gabriel’s opinion. “It’s good,” he said politely, switching back to the soup. The old woman chuckled.
“Wild onion and mushrooms,” Mayzhl said of the stew. “Many mushrooms in forest. Good mushrooms.”
Gabriel nodded. The soup was in fact very good… even if he was dying for a double-cheeseburger with fries and a shake. He watched her eating, and couldn’t help but wonder how he’d ended up in this strange place. A few hours ago, he’d believed that all shadowkind were monsters. He’d also believed that Aldron was going to train him and the orphans to fight the Shadow. Suddenly he felt very foolish.
“How did you find me?” he said, thinking about the young warrior who’d led him from the Black Palace to the troll village. He wondered how they’d known Gabriel would be there.
“We spy,” Mayzhl said. “Trolls clever. Humans stupid.”
Gabriel grinned weakly. He was still trying to figure out what Mayzhl wanted with him; how he was supposed to fit into the whole picture. He wondered if all trolls were like the ones at this village. He was sure he’d seen some working at the Black Palace. “The trolls back there, at the castle… are they slaves?” he said. An angry look came over Mayzhl’s face, and Gabriel suddenly worried that he might have offended her.
“Slaves, yes,” she said. “One thousand years of peace we had, now one thousand years as slaves. The humans come. Humans always come.”
Gabriel frowned. “Did the humans do all of this? Did they make this world so… dark?”
Mayzhl finished her stew. She set the bowl aside and held her hands out to the fire. “You smart for human, but will you do?” she said.
He stared at her, confused. “I don’t understand.”
Mayzhl leaned back, resting against an old stump. Her eyes were distant, as if she were dreaming of some other place and time. “Stories of Elders say darkness came many thousands of years ago, when great wizards broke the world. Light was gone, and much wisdom lost. In time, wizards made doorways. Human returned. Wars soon followed. We were … too distant, too long.”
Gabriel listened thoughtfully. He was familiar with the concept of the separation of the Shadow world and the mundane world, but he had always been told that shadowcreatures were inherently evil, that they wanted to destroy and consume the mundane world. “Do you want to leave here?” he said. “Do you want to go to the world of light?”
Mayzhl looked at him as if he was crazy. “This my world,” she said. “Our world. This is where we belong. But sometimes… sometimes we like light.”
“Do you know what Aldron is trying to do? Do yo
u know what he wants the statues for?”
“Return,” Mayzhl said flatly.
Gabriel wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly. Her accent was thick, and her English wasn’t very good. “Did you say return?” he said. “What does that mean?”
Her voice became soft, as if she were explaining something to a child. “Wizards broke the world to increase power. They destroyed it. Pieces of the stars fell to earth, and held great power. Wizards use pieces of star for idols.”
“Idols? You mean the statues… they are pieces of a star?”
Mayzhl nodded, pleased that Gabriel had understood.
“What does Aldron want with them?” he said. “What will he do with the statues?”
“Return,” she said again. “Aldron remakes world. World in shadow.” There was a certain awe in her voice, maybe even fear.
“What will happen, then?”
“Aldron make more slaves,” she said, snorting. “Humans not very smart.”
Gabriel slept in the lower branches of the tree over Mayzhl’s hut that night. He slept in a hammock, curled up in a thick warm blanket that the trolls had given him. He was so exhausted and sore from the beatings he’d taken all day long that he couldn’t fall asleep directly. Instead, he took the time to reflect on his day and try to make some sense of everything that had happened to him.
Gabriel had already begun to piece things together. He was sure Aldron’s plan to align the planets involved the unusual machine inside Black Mountain. If Mayzhl was right about the statues, then Gabriel was sure they were the power source for the machine. He wasn’t sure how. Perhaps they were radioactive. Or maybe they possessed some sort of magnetic energy. Whatever it was, it must have had something to do with the ancient “wizards” Mayzhl had spoken of.
Gabriel couldn’t help but wonder if Mayzhl didn’t entirely understand. He wondered if the men she called wizards had actually been some sort of scientists. Maybe they had possessed some form of advanced technology that allowed them to break the world apart. That wouldn’t be too surprising. Gabriel already knew that technology was capable of opening doorways between the Shadow world and the mundane world. In fact, maybe Mayzhl’s so-called magic wasn’t anything of the sort. Maybe “magic” was completely scientific and mundane in nature.
It didn’t feel mundane when it knocked him on his butt, though.
Gabriel reflected on his afternoon with Mayzhl. Throughout the day, she had insisted many times that he was learning an important lesson, but all she seemed to do was close her eyes and meditate. Or snore, he couldn’t be sure which. Some of the sounds that came out of the creature were altogether unidentifiable.
I was supposed to be learning something, he thought as he lay swinging in the hammock, gazing up at the surreal-looking night sky. Instead, it seemed that he’d just been sitting there all day. Well, not all day, because now and then he’d try to use some magic to replenish his strength. And then she’d knock me over, he thought.
And then it hit him. He’d known all along that Mayzhl was attacking him for some reason, but he couldn’t understand why. It was only at that moment that he realized it happened every time he had reached out to the magic. That was strange. It was almost as if she didn’t want him to use the power. But why? Why would she do that? Obviously, Mayzhl used magic herself. That meant it was okay, didn’t it?
Was it possible that she didn’t want him to use it because he was human? Perhaps she thought magic was only for trolls. No, that didn’t make sense either because she’d called him the ‘high one’ several times over the course of the day. She did it in a joking or sarcastic way, but he was still pretty sure that she meant it. She had said he was supposed to be learning, but what? That he’d get slammed every time he used magic? No, that wasn’t the point of it. The point was that he was doing something wrong. But what?
Gabriel made up his mind to pay close attention to Mayzhl the next day. He wouldn’t use any magic, but he would sense it. He’d find out how she was using it, and why she’d been able to attack him so easily.
Morning came sooner than Gabriel would have liked. It seemed he’d just closed his eyes when the hammock began to shake and Mayzhl called out to him from her hut down below. He bolted upright and realized that she’d been using magic to shake the hammock. How had she done it? He’d always been able to sense when Aldron used magic. It was like standing next to a tidal wave.
“Come, Gabriel. Breakfast, then learn.”
Gabriel sighed and climbed down to meet her. Mayzhl was sitting at the fire, chewing on some sort of bread. She waved him to another plate across the fire. He settled down and took a cautious bite, fearing it was the same stuff from last night. It wasn’t. This stuff was dense and moist like a brownie. It tasted like honey and something else that he couldn’t quite place, but it was very tasty.
“It’s good,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Good,” Mayzhl agreed. She took another slice from the warm platter by the fire and handed it to him.
“I was thinking about my lesson last night,” Gabriel said. He watched a slight smile play across her lips, and then it vanished like a wisp of smoke on the wind. “I think I know why you were hitting me. Was it because I was using magic?”
“No,” Mayzhl said. She took another bite and stared off into the distance.
“But every time it happened, I was using magic,” he said.
“No.”
Gabriel stared at her. There was no clue in her expression or her body language, no reason for the way she’d been acting. He must have been missing something. But what was it? He thought about it for a while, but then breakfast was over and it was time to learn again.
Mayzhl grunted, “Learn now,” and then closed her eyes and started humming.
Gabriel took a deep breath and sighed. He folded his legs and stared at her, watching and waiting. After a little while, he decided to use magic again. Why not? Mayzhl had insisted that his punishments had nothing to do with using magic. If that was true, then he didn’t have anything to worry about. He smiled slightly as he closed his eyes and reached out, feeling the energy around him. Then he pulled on it, dragging it into his body and…
Boom!
Gabriel’s eyes fluttered open and he found himself staring up at the trees. A small cloud of dust drifted over him. He reached up and felt the two throbbing wounds on his chest. He felt like someone had hit him with a hammer. He sat up and glanced around. The elders were watching him from across the clearing, smiling again, and Mayzhl wore a broad grin on her face. Finally, his anger got the best of him.
“What’s the matter with you?” he shouted. “Why do you keep hitting me?”
“You learn,” Mayzhl said patiently.
“No, I don’t! I don’t learn because all I’m doing is sitting here getting my butt kicked. Every time I try to use magic-”
“NO!” Mayzhl cut him off. “You don’t use magic. You force it. You bend it, enslave it. You act like one of them!”
Gabriel was stunned. His jaw dropped open. “But, I just pulled-”
“Exactly! You pull, you push, you beat like master whips slave! You twist magic!” Mayzhl was angry, and she rose to her feet. She was surprisingly frightening for an old troll woman, four feet tall. “You humans, too stupid. You no learn.”
“I’m just doing it the way I was taught,” Gabriel said defensively. “If there’s a better way then show it to me!”
Mayzhl stared at him for a long time, her eyes boring into him. “You learn?” she finally said.
Gabriel nodded emphatically. “If I’m doing it wrong, then teach me to do it right,” he said. “I want to learn. Teach me. Please?”
Mayzhl’s demeanor softened. She seemed appeased. She nodded slowly, eying him up and down. “Now you learn,” she said.
Mayzhl trained Gabriel in earnest that day. Once Mayzhl was assured he wouldn’t fall back into old habits, she began to teach him everything she knew. It was easier than Gabriel expected. He had a n
atural affinity for magic, a genetic predisposition for the talent, and that helped. It also helped that he’d already had some training. Even though Aldron had taught him incorrectly, he had opened Gabriel’s mind to the existence and the possibilities of the use of magic. Gabriel took this understanding and ran with it. Within a few hours, he’d mastered almost everything Mayzhl had shown him. It was still tiring, but Gabriel found the experience completely different than before.
Aldron had taught Gabriel to fight the energy, to control and manipulate it. Mayzhl taught him to guide it, to channel it through himself and redirect it, without ever changing the flow. This method was simpler, though it took a lot more focus. Because it was so subtle, it was hard to see the results. Aldron’s results had been explosive and powerful. Gabriel could imagine Aldron lashing out at an enemy with a lightning bolt, whereas Mayzhl would brush against the flow of the magic, causing it to press against a tree, and the result would be that a huge branch would fall down, crushing her enemy. It wasn’t just a different system of magic, it was a different system of thought.
“Use the universe,” Mayzhl said many times. “Give universe what universe wants; universe give Gabriel what Gabriel wants.”
Using magic Aldron’s way had also been excruciatingly painful, especially at first. Mayzhl’s system actually made Gabriel feel good. He felt energized and relaxed, but it was harder in a different way. Channeling a tiny bit of energy onto a new path the way Mayzhl had taught him took extreme concentration. It was truly a discipline, and Gabriel was beginning to worry that he wouldn’t have enough time to learn. Aldron’s army was almost ready to march. Gabriel needed to be able to fight now, not in weeks or months.
Finally, late that night, they settled down in front of the fire to rest and eat dinner. “How did I do?” Gabriel asked
Mayzhl handed him a bowl of stew. “You learn,” she said. It was a blunt comment, completely void of compliment, but Gabriel thought he saw a bit of pride on her face. If nothing else, it was an affirmation that he was capable of learning. It was better than anything she’d said to him since they met. Gabriel was satisfied with that.
Shadow Rising (Shadow Born Trilogy Book 2) Page 15