‘I have to go,’ he said, telling his eyes that this was the last time he would see his son, trying to lock into his mind the vision of spiky black hair from which fell a pair of thin warrior plaits at the front, dark intense eyes and a lean restless frame.
Vandal sheathed his sword and went to the portable CD player sitting on the grass a few steps away. He switched off the raucous dance music with a toe of his boot and turned back to his father. ‘Has Glimmer run away?’ he asked. The frown was gone, replaced by furtive eagerness.
Sarah had often told him that his obsession with Glimmer’s safety would look like favouritism to Vandal, and indeed the boy had come to resent it — more so when Pagan had only agreed to teach him swordplay so he might be of assistance if Glimmer was endangered.
‘I have to go,’ Pagan repeated, knowing he should open the Sacred Pool now and leave immediately, before harm could come to his charge in Ennae. When Khatrene had returned from exile on Magoria, she had been found and captured by Plainsmen within an hour of her arrival. He should follow Glimmer now. But he had to see Sarah. Had to say goodbye.
He sheathed his sword and gripped his son’s arms. ‘I’m going away,’ he said shortly. ‘Look after your mother.’ Then he turned away before the boy could respond, before he could feel guilt enough to stay. Instead he marched through the vegetable garden towards the house.
‘Dad,’ Vandal called faintly from behind, but he didn’t follow.
Pagan strode past the swing where he would often find Sarah when her thoughts were troubling her, then up the firm timber stairs he had replaced the previous year when the cyclone had torn them off. His footsteps across the reinforced back verandah sounded hollow, as though they were an echo and he was already in Sarah’s past. But he ignored the feeling and went into the kitchen, calling, ‘Sarah,’ taking his last look at the sunlight bouncing off the polished timber cupboards like rays of honey — sweet and soft and so unlike the kitchen’s owner that the contrast had always made him smile. Today he wanted to cry.
‘Here.’
He followed the sound of her voice down the hallway and found her in the bathroom applying dye to the roots of her hair. The appearance of grey strands five years earlier had triggered a revisiting of all Sarah’s concerns about the difference in their ages.
‘I should get this done at a salon,’ she said, dropping the brush into the sink. ‘Then you guys wouldn’t have to put up with my echidna impersonation.’ She stuck her tongue out at her reflection, as though searching for ants.
‘Glimmer is gone.’
Sarah picked up the brush again and dabbed at her forehead along the hairline. ‘She’s making a bonfire for Guy Fawkes night. In the fallow paddock.’ She tilted her head to dab more above her ears. ‘Listen, I just heard on the radio that Aboriginal groups have reported sightings of the Rainbow Serpent at Uluru. They reckon it’s a sign of the end-times coming.’
‘Was Glimmer wearing brown?’
Sarah smiled at her reflection. ‘No. I’d only just painted her nails with that new rainbow polish. You know how she humours my attempts to turn her into a teenager. I think she had blue jeans on.’
Pagan felt sick. The Catalyst was powerful, but if she was taken unawares …
‘Are you going to have one of your brown phases again?’ Sarah asked wiping more cream onto the brush.
‘Glimmer has gone to Ennae. I must follow her.’
Sarah’s hand stilled and she turned slowly to face him. ‘Now?’
He simply gazed at her, unable to think of anything appropriate to say.
‘But … I’m a mess. You can’t go while I’m ugly.’ She looked dazed, as though she hadn’t really comprehended what he’d said. ‘I’ve planned and rehearsed this. And I always look beautiful. A gown, pearls.’
‘You look beautiful to me,’ Pagan said, and knew it was no lie. Sarah’s kind heart shone out of her eyes, and her lusty nature was not entirely hidden by the stern set of her lips.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘You can’t go.’
‘I am,’ he said. It may hurt him later to remember that he had been cruel to her, but Pagan’s emotions were buffered by the desperation of his situation. He too had expected some warning, some time to prepare. ‘You must think of me as dead, Sarah,’ he told her, gripping her shoulders when her vacant gaze strayed. ‘Do not hold out hope for my return.’
‘But Vandal …’ She focused on him then. ‘He needs a father. He’s so …’
Like me, Pagan thought. ‘Then you must give him one, Sarah. Marry a good man who will love you both … as I do.’
She covered her mouth with a hand, shook her head. ‘Why are you saying that now? All these years …’
GO. NOW.
He released her and took a step backwards. ‘I have been disloyal to Lae, but while I hid my heart, the guilt was less. I can hide it no longer. I love you Sarah McGuire.’
‘Not like this,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t leave me like this.’ Tears slid down her cheeks but he forced himself to turn away. ‘I’ll never forgive you!’ she shouted after him as he ran into his room and snatched the pack he’d prepared out of the back of his cupboard, tied his sword to it and slung it over his shoulders. Then he was gone, out the front door, his heart pounding as much with grief as with the necessity of what he must do.
He ran through the lawn cemetery to the billabong where the Sacred Pool had opened in Magoria sixteen years earlier. Several paces in he was up to his waist, but it took slow breaths for a full minute to quieten his mind. Only then, when his powers were focused and he had pushed his feelings for Sarah into a corner of his mind, did he raise his hands and spread them wide, repeating the words Talis had taught him so long ago:
‘I am the light that warms the tunnel. I am the door that opens the way.’ These words he intoned while imagining his Guardian power stretching the distance between the two worlds to connect himself to Ennae. Time passed, he did not know how long, before he felt a jolt within himself and the sensation of energy passing in both directions. The connection was made. His fingers lowered to touch the water below him and on it he inscribed a circle, forming the way and widening it with his mind.
‘Ancient powers, take from my hand the sacred element of this land.’
‘This water that gives Magoria its hue will forge a way betwixt the two.’
A thrill of sensation ran up Pagan’s spine and wrenched on his mind as the circle drew a greater portion of his life force into it. Steadying himself for the opening of the Sacred Pool, Pagan said the final words. ‘From life itself I would unfurl … the water of this Otherworld.’
A crackling roar issued from around him and rolled outwards but Pagan’s concentration was fierce. He didn’t flinch as the tingling sensation like creeping fingers ran across his shoulders, or falter when he began to sink into the circle of water that shimmered around him. And neither would he let himself think of any woman save Glimmer. Sarah who was his past, and Lae, whom he hoped would be his future, must not invade his mind while danger threatened his charge.
After sixteen years, Pagan of the House of Guardians was returning to his homeland at last.
*
Vandal stood in the hallway, staring at his mother who sat in a disorderly heap on the bathroom floor. ‘Mum?’ he whispered, but she couldn’t hear him over her sobbing. He’d never seen her cry like this. The odd tear at sad movies, but never these big, frightening sobs. ‘Mum,’ he tried again, a little louder. ‘What’s going on?’
She hiccupped a breath and raised her head, puffy swollen eyes focusing on him for only a second before she wailed and started crying again, hugging herself and rocking this time, her head up but eyes closed. Then they heard a crack of thunder so loud it sounded like it was right overhead. Vandal flinched but his mother only wailed louder.
He had no idea what to do, and felt so scared he was sick in his stomach. His dad was gone, Glimmer was gone. These were facts he’d have to get used to, but for now he had to d
eal with his mum.
‘I’ll get …’ Who? Doc Peterson? Aunt Melissa? ‘Reg. I’ll get Reg,’ he said, and walked to the phone on rubber legs. But Reg wasn’t home and neither was his aunt. The doctor would be available but what could Vandal say to him? Mum’s crying because my dad left her?
This was Glimmer’s fault for sure. Everything revolved around her. Beautiful, clever, aloof Glimmer. Autistic girl. The boys at school drooled over her and called her a freak behind her back. What did that make Vandal? Brother of the town freak. He wasn’t sorry to see her gone. But why had his dad left? Was it because he was angry with Vandal for not getting on with Glimmer? Probably. Well he was sick of scrabbling for attention all the time. Sick of finally getting his dad to himself and then having her waltz up and walk off with him — time after time — for some stupid meditation or something.
He and his mum were better off without them.
He went back to the bathroom, stepped inside and crouched in front of her. ‘Mum,’ he said loudly, but wasn’t game to touch her. ‘Mum, we need to get this stuff out of your hair.’ Then he was going to get her to lie down. He’d make her some tea. That’s what you did when people were sick or sad. You made them tea. He’d seen enough bereaved families in action to know that.
‘Mum.’ He reached out and gently grasped her shoulders, trying to rouse her from her sobbing.
She opened her eyes. ‘Van … daaaaal,’ she wailed, and pulled him awkwardly down into her arms and started rocking again.
He lay against her, feeling a little comforted to be in her arms. At least she was acknowledging him. He wasn’t shut out. But they couldn’t stay on the cold bathroom floor. Not while she had a wet head. That was a sure way to catch a cold.
If only he could quieten her down, calm her. In the stories of the brown kingdom his dad had told him as a child, Guardians could use their power to heal people and Vandal had desperately wanted to be a Guardian. His dad had indulged that game, teaching him how a Guardian would lay his hand on his patient’s forehead and recite the ancient words of healing. If only he could do that now.
He put his hand on her forehead, brushing the sticky hair off it in distaste. Up close, the dye smelt like cat piss. Then he shut his eyes and concentrated, just like the Guardians of the stories, and said, ‘With Guardian power do I heal the broken … heart herein,’…adapting it as he went along and ignoring the surge in his head that felt like a pressure headache coming, ‘restoring strength and making whole. I order pain to end.’ The pressure in his forehead abruptly eased and his fingers tingled.
He pulled them away and his mother fell silent.
Vandal’s eyes snapped open. She was gazing at him in shock, her mouth slack and wet from crying, but she was no longer trembling. ‘Pagan told me you didn’t have the power,’ she said in her normal voice, no hint of the sobbing. ‘He lied.’
‘What power? Guardian power?’ Despite it being just a story, Vandal wanted to believe that. More than anything in the world he wanted to be a Guardian. But it wasn’t real. Like fairies at the bottom of the garden, the brown kingdom stories had been cute and entertaining but you were supposed to grow out of them. Only Vandal never had. ‘Am I … a Guardian?’ he asked, and held his breath, knowing it was impossible but desperate for it to be true anyway.
‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘Because if you are, you can take me to Ennae.’
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Tulak staggered down the tunnel, his raised brand striking the rock wall from time to time, sending sparks flying onto the damp stone floor. ‘I know you’re down here somewhere,’ he slurred. ‘Lazy Cliffdwellers.’
A goodly sum of magoria weed sat in his stomach and Tulak was feeling particularly warm, but not towards the Cliffdwellers. The kitchen boy had told him that no deliveries had been made all day, and Guardsmen reported seeing no Cliffdwellers on their trails or the rocks below where they netted food.
‘You’re hiding!’ he shouted, stumbling into a wall adorned with their splash-patterned art work before righting himself. ‘But I’ll find you. And I’ll beat you,’ he said, knowing it would be easily done. The Cliffdwellers were so compliant he could beat a hundred individually and not one would lift a hand to stop him. ‘Cowards,’ he added, forgetting that he himself had slunk through the corridors of Castle Be’uccdha for fear that his lord was walking with his Plainsman toy. They lost more guards each week to this folly, but The Dark’s physician was the only one who could speak to their lord and he’d admitted to Tulak that his advice was disregarded.
‘I could kill the boy,’ Tulak said, but even in his drugged state he knew this was a futile boast. The Dark would kill anyone who spoke ill of him, let alone threatened his life. Their lord’s infatuation was obscene and yet, strangely, Tulak felt jealous of the attention Hanjeel was receiving, rather than sickened by it.
The effects of the magoria weed slowly wore off as these thoughts plagued him and it was more than an hour later that he discovered himself to be deeper in the Cliffdweller warrens than he had ever ventured. Deeper perhaps than anyone had ever ventured. And still they were empty.
The Cliffdwellers were gone.
Hundreds of men, women and children had disappeared and Tulak knew not where. They certainly had not been seen leaving the castle surrounds for the Plains beyond, nor diving into the ocean to be smashed against the rocks.
How could a whole race disappear?
‘My Lord will not be pleased with this,’ Tulak said to himself, yet he knew it was not The Dark’s displeasure he should concern himself with. Ocean food provided by the Cliffdwellers had been a staple of the Be’uccdha diet for centuries. Gathering the oceanweed and tiny sea delicacies was a time-consuming and onerous duty, a specialised task that Tulak knew nothing about, and with no ready labour-force to perform it, the people of Be’uccdha could starve.
An enchanted Plainsman boy would be the least of their concerns.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Pagan staggered away from the Sacred Pool and collapsed onto the cracked earth as a loud cracking roar rolled across the Plains. The way behind him closed. Something wet and heavy was tied to his back but he was more intent on regaining his breath. When he had that back, he raised his head and looked around himself for the babe he had taken out of Lae’s hands to bring to Magoria. It had seemed like only minutes ago that he had fled that fierce battle in the Royal Shrine with the child of The Light, leaving Lae who had been in danger. Yet now he was on the Plains, so clearly he had been successful in taking the child into exile. How much time had passed?
Guardian lore said that those who ventured into Magoria would return with no memory of their time there, and clearly this was true, yet how long had he resided in the illusion world and where was his charge now? The boy could be any age.
He pushed himself up on trembling arms and looked around himself into the Plains mist. No movement in any direction. Then where was the child of The Light?
The pack on his back weighed him down and he pulled at the ties, loosing it to look at its contents: his sword and belt, which he buckled on quickly; a selection of oddly coloured strips, which could be food, in clear packets that were like pliable glass — strange indeed; a metal instrument he had no comprehension of with a grip for fingers and a pointed end that bore a hole. There were many small metal objects in the bag with it and Pagan could not begin to discern their purpose. He put that aside and took out a flask made of less pliable material than the food packets, and with water inside. He had obviously packed carefully.
There were clothes in waterproof packets and at the bottom of the satchel he found another clear packet which contained paper. A note to himself? He pulled it open and though the symbols were strange to him at first, he must have understood this language in Magoria. The knowledge was within him, so he closed his eyes and thought of the Sacred Pool with its Magorian hues, focusing his Guardian blood into his own mind. Then he looked again at the letter in his hand. The looping pen marks became wor
ds.
Dear Pagan
Glimmer told me you would forget about us when you returned to Ennae. That’s hard to believe considering what we’ve been through together, but I’m assuming it’s true. In fear of that, I’ve been putting an updated letter in your emergency pack every year, always hoping I’d get the chance to toss it and start over again. But if you’re reading this then you’ve left me. You’ll break my heart, and I can’t bear the thought that you’d walk back into Lae’s arms without a second thought. So I’m going to tell you what you’re leaving behind.
Your son Vandal is twelve now, which means you and I have been lovers for thirteen of the sixteen years you have spent on my world. We never married and I know you didn’t fall in love with me, but we’ve shared a bed and parenting and kindness. So don’t think you can go back to Lae with a clear conscience.
Look after Glimmer for me, and I’ll look after Vandal for you.
Love
Sarah
Pagan lowered the letter to his lap, uncaring of the drips from his warrior plaits that fell onto the page, smearing the writing. He had been unfaithful to Lae. Not once, but for thirteen years. He had fathered a son. Pagan looked down to the letter again and noticed his hands which held it. They were not the hands he remembered, not the hands that had carried The Light when she had fled from her husband to the sanctuary of the Plainsmen tribe, certainly not the hands that had held Lae’s in the last moments before he had left Ennae.
These hands were no longer smooth and full-fleshed. They were lean, muscular, weathered, as he would expect of a man who had seen thirty-three lifedays.
WHERE IS YOUR CHARGE?
The voice came from no source Pagan could discern.
He scrambled to his feet and turned a circle. ‘Who speaks to me?’ he demanded.
I AM YOUR GUIDE. YOU ARE STRAYING FROM YOUR PATH, THUS I PROMPT YOU.
Pagan remained still, but his eyes slid from side to side. ‘There is no one here.’
Daughter of the Dark: Shadow Through Time 2 Page 35