‘I will take up a position on the opposite side,’ she said. ‘Do not fall in.’
Breehan looked up at her and surprised her with a smile. ‘I am old and frail but there is still that within me which wants to live.’
‘Hold onto that,’ she said, and after releasing him and waiting a moment to ensure that he would not waver, she strode around the Volcastle mouth to the opposite side and took up her position. Within her mind a pulse had begun, a countdown to the moment when the divergence would occur. She was aware of her body then, her breasts flattened by the stiff fabric of her gown, the pressure points on her feet where her slippers rubbed, the strange liberation of having no underwear after having worn some form of it for nearly sixteen years.
‘I am ready,’ Breehan called across to her, and though they were only ten strides distant she had to strain to hear his voice.
‘Then let us begin,’ she said and raised her arms.
Across the smoking distance Breehan did likewise and Glimmer raised her head to invoke the rite. ‘I call on the power of the Four Worlds.’ Her fingers began to tingle and she felt the first stirring of the physical conduit that would run through her. ‘I join them here. Four Worlds linked by flesh and spirit.’
People were entering the Great Hall but Glimmer ignored them. No physical entity could touch them now. Breehan was focusing on his task. She could see him with his eyes closed, arms trembling as the pure sparkling light flowed from his hands and met the dark light Glimmer projected. She felt the tantalising nearness of those emotions and struggled to hold her mind separate from them.
This was the last anchor. The Four Worlds would be linked by the time it was completed, in preparation for the final joining. There would be no further risk from the emotion stream after that. She must simply concentrate on channelling the physical energy and closing her mind to the glimpses of other lives, of passions and desires and love.
Her stream of dark, liquid light met Breehan’s clear stream and together the mirror they formed stretched upwards through the open ceiling of the Great Hall and down into the Volcastle mouth. This anchor was harder than the others. Being the last, it brought the other three into line and locked all four down. Glimmer’s reserves of strength were adequate to the task, but for some reason an insistent thought that she might fail nudged at her mind. Breehan was more likely to falter than she, but the premonition of failure would not go away.
The people who had entered the Great Hall were approaching behind her, and in the mirror Glimmer caught sight of a blond head, a royal child. It distracted her, and although the physical energy continued to rise from her hands she felt the seductive glow to motherlove and tenderness as though the emotion stream was trying to draw her into its thrall. The child was her cousin. If she had not been the Catalyst she would feel something for him. Memories of Sarah returned to her: Love is a good thing. It makes you strong.
But Glimmer was already strong.
The child was on the floor of the dais now and the woman who had put him down, her sister Lae, was arguing with Kert, pointing at Glimmer. By their side stood Pagan who had raised Glimmer as a father, bestowing love on her even though she had been unequipped to return the sentiment. He had no memory of that time or the feelings he’d experienced, yet Glimmer felt similar emotions brush past her; the swelling pride of a man who holds his child in his arms, the protective urges.
She struggled to close herself off to them and was succeeding, the anchor was nearly completed, when she heard a deafening crash like the sound of two mountains colliding. Breehan cried out and stark white light illuminated the Great Hall from behind the mirror. Glimmer dropped her arms and ran around the Volcastle mouth. Clear of the mirror she could see Breehan rising in a column of air, to Atheyre, the talisman rising with him.
This was divergence.
She ran towards him and shouted, ‘I need the talisman. Give it to me.’ The anchor must be completed at all cost.
Breehan pulled the thong from his throat and threw it.
The dull stone fell, clearing the column of light and arrowing towards her.
Glimmer watched it in real time but her responses seemed slowed. She gathered her remaining strength around her like a shield, a barrier to protect her from the talisman’s harmful effects and, knowing the risk, she raised her arm, took two steps forward and caught it. The power of the talisman ran down her arm and slammed into her chest, taking the breath from her lungs. Her knees buckled beneath her and the stone fell back out of her hand, into the column of light.
Emotion.
She was drenched in it. But somehow she managed to turn back to the mirror and raise her arms, to reconnect with the streams and continue. She shuddered with the pressure on her mind and her body, and tried in vain to close herself off to the feelings rushing through her chest. She could never have done this four times. Might not be able to do it once.
It was too confusing, too distracting. Especially the experience of love.
Glimmer had not wanted to love Pagan or Sarah because she had known that sentiment was incompatible with her purpose. But Sarah had been right. The sensations from the emotion stream felt achingly good and she grieved that she would never know the love of a man. Observation had shown her that, biologically, women sought a husband with the same emotional profile as their father. Theoretically then, if she could take a mate, it would be a man who could love and protect her the way Pagan had.
Only she wasn’t a mortal who could take a mate.
She was The Catalyst.
And she must concentrate on her task, suffering the emotions for only a few moments more, trusting that the barrier she had created would protect her from being overwhelmed.
The royal child and his carers had moved around behind her, closer to the column of light, but even as they gazed on it in awe, Lenid took two steps away from them, mesmerised by the crystal-sharp mirror Glimmer’s anchor had created. She watched as he took two steps more. Kert and Pagan began to argue and Lae stepped between them. Lenid padded closer to the mirror and no one noticed. No one but Glimmer.
Then Lae turned around, a mother’s instinct, and saw where her son was headed. Towards the Volcastle mouth. She cried out in shock and that frightened Lenid. He stopped. Then she opened her arms and he ran on. Ran towards the perfect reflection of his mother’s arms.
‘Mumma!’ he cried, stumbling forward, yet though the Volcastle mouth was in his path, Glimmer felt no anxiety from the stream until Kert turned and saw what was happening.
Then she was drowned. Her feeble barrier collapsed and emotions engulfed her. The stream of physicality stopped flowing from her hands and she felt submerged, as though all of the world was emotion and she had no escape from it. Terror from Kert ripped through her.
‘No!’ he shouted and ran after the boy. Glimmer saw them as though they were moving in slow-time, but the map in her mind told her otherwise. Time was running to order, but Glimmer was not. Inside her own chest she felt Kert’s pounding heart, tasted his desperation to protect the child from harm. He was exhibiting all the emotional characteristics Pagan had in raising her.
The biological imperative had been met.
A sound issued from the mirror, an audible click that Glimmer hadn’t heard before, and she was disconnected from the emotion stream. She had thought that would bring release, but somehow the emotions continued to flow through her, dizzying her mind. She turned as the child reached her side. In that second she saw Kert’s mouth opening to scream, Pagan behind him and Lae limping last, her arms still open, unaware that her reflection was luring the child to his death.
Glimmer had only to reach across and she could save the child, but Kert was the one she had connected with, the one who had broken through her barriers and shattered the detachment that had kept her from saving individuals. He was diving towards Lenid and would surely die if she did nothing.
Lae screamed, a horrible, anguished scream, as the child ran over the edge but Glimmer felt only K
ert’s fear for his charge. In a desperate lunge, she threw herself at him as the Volcastle mouth hissed and the child was engulfed. They collided and Kert flailed against the restriction. She struggled to grip him, but her actions proved inadequate. Kert’s forward momentum rolled them both over the lip of the volcano, and Glimmer did the only thing she could think of.
She used the last of her strength to transport them both to Haddash.
*
Pagan stood at the Volcastle mouth with Lae sobbing in his arms, the horror of what he had just witnessed indelibly imprinted on his brain, the scent of charred flesh heavy in the air.
The royal woman had been The Catalyst. She had lied to him, and now she was dead; not incinerated mortally as Lenid had been, but dissolved into a cloud of glittering fire sparks that had encompassed Kert’s body as well.
She had tried to save Kert. Why? Why not the royal child? Her cousin. Pagan had no answers, only facts: Kert and Lenid, the only impediment to his love for Lae, were gone. The Catalyst was dead. The Maelstrom was coming.
An eerie silence hung in the great hall, punctured only by the sound of Lae’s grief. Beyond that was a sense of oppression, of great violence gathering, as though a mighty force, long constrained, had begun to stir.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Kert was preparing himself for the pain that would engulf him, pain he deserved for allowing Lenid to die. Then the air around him sparkled like droplets of water and he knew something was amiss. He blinked and the sparkles turned into tiny flames, and soon the air around him was all flames but he did not burn, and neither did the royal woman who had fallen into the Volcastle mouth with him. Kert looked around himself in amazement.
‘You’re alive,’ she said, and Kert looked down to find his hands were intimately placed on a much younger woman’s form. He snatched them away. The royal from the Volcastle had worn a sparking black gown but this girl was clad in obscenely tight pants and a thin plain shirt of a colour he had only ever seen in the Sacred Pool. Her pale hands stroked his arms reassuringly, her fingernails coloured with the hues of Magoria. ‘You’re safe now,’ she said softly, as though speaking to a child.
A child …
Kert pulled away from her and sat back on a dirt floor, his legs still meshed with her own. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘Where is the other royal? The one who tried to halt my fall?’ His breathing grew fast and erratic but that only matched the beating of his heart. Lenid was dead, and so should he be. He looked around himself. ‘Where are we?’
‘Haddash.’ The young woman said, her voice still set to a soothing timbre.
‘Are you the royal from the Volcastle? The one who …’ Kert looked down at their joined legs and pulled his away, confused.
‘I am the woman who prevented your death, yet in a younger section of my life.’
He shook his head. ‘How is that possible?’
‘I am a shadow through time.’
Kert had heard the phrase before but was unsure when. Didn’t care. Only the practicalities of the situation mattered. ‘Then take me back to the time of my son’s death and I will save him.’
‘You want the boy back but it cannot be done. He is dead.’
Her words echoed finality and inside himself Kert knew Lenid’s death was absolute, and had been inevitable from the moment it had been prophesied by the old midwife. Yet still he could not accept it. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘How can you travel through time?’ He would find a way to manipulate her powers and get Lenid back.
‘I am The Catalyst,’ she said, her strange lingering gaze settling on his eyes. ‘My name is Glimmer.’
‘Child of The Light?’
‘And of The Dark.’
‘The Dark …?’ Kert felt the blood within his breast slow, taxed by the sudden realisation of how this betrayal had been wrought. ‘The Dark deceived us. He told us his child with The Light was a boy.’
‘He was wrong.’
‘He was lying to disguise his intentions.’ Kert reached for the dagger in his boot. ‘He sent you in to kill the child.’
‘The Dark is dead,’ she told him, but the certainty in her voice did not persuade him: in the madness of his grief these pieces of intrigue were a perfect fit. ‘I came to the Volcastle only to anchor the Four Worlds against the Maelstrom. My cousin’s death was an accident.’
‘An accident you could have prevented.’
She shook her head, her eyes infinitely sad. ‘I could only save you.’
‘You did not save me,’ he said, his words conveying the bitterness in his heart, the futility of his anger, and the beginnings of the guilt that would eat him alive. ‘You have consigned me to a life of torment. You should have saved him.’
‘It was not within my power to do so,’ she replied.
‘Not if you would rule in his place.’ Slowly and deliberately Kert withdrew his dagger from its sheath.
‘I won’t hurt you,’ she said, her voice trembling.
‘Then you shall be easy to kill.’
EPILOGUE
A slow roll of thunder rattled the window beside Vandal’s desk and vibrated the floorboards beneath his boots. He reached for his pencil case to start packing away his pens at the same moment his teacher said, ‘Heads up, class. Start clearing up your belongings …’ and the warning bell sounded at the office; five short rings.
There was an immediate scramble and banging of desk tops.
‘And remember,’ Mr Tonkin continued, as though anyone was still listening to him, ‘those of you who can’t be home and secured in ten minutes are required to report to the gymnasium where a roll will be taken.’
Vandal was out the door, snatching up his duffel bag and running to the bike racks before the next ominous rumble shook the ground. At first they’d been blasé about these new breed of storms that had appeared out of nowhere. Then Katie Pen had been sucked into a tornado. Nobody joked about them anymore.
Kids poured out of the school like ants boiling out of a disturbed nest and Vandal was on the main road pedalling for home before he risked glancing over his shoulder. A bank of gunmetal clouds chased him and he knew he’d be lucky to make it. His mother would be at work so he’d head there. The steel frame of the funeral home was bolted onto a concrete slab, which made it one of the most secure structures in the district, and children caught in the open had run there in the weeks since the weather had worsened. It should have been ironic that people would shelter in a house of death when they wanted to live. But Vandal was past irony. As his legs pumped the pedals his only thought was of sanctuary, and of making sure his mother was safe.
He slammed through the front reception and tossed his bike onto the carpet, then turned back to bolt the glass door as he shouted, ‘Mum! Where are you?’
‘Prep room,’ came the faint reply and Vandal followed her voice through the dark hallway, switching lights on as he went.
‘There’s another bad one coming,’ he said, reaching the door and stepping into the stainless steel lined preparation room. ‘Is the house locked up?’
‘Yes,’ she said, not looking up from her work. ‘We’ll be safe here.’
Vandal hung hack, not wanting to approach the corpse on the table. They didn’t spook him the way they had when he was little, but it was still unnerving to watch his mother calmly gluing together the lips of someone who might have spoken with her the week before.
‘Looks like little miss perfect isn’t doing such a hot job of controlling the Maelstrom,’ he said, trying to take his mind off death and the memory of Katie Pen’s twisted body on the preparation table the week before. He’d had to assist his mother that day. They’d needed to straighten limbs and use the makeup putty to disguise the mangled mess of Katie’s face — they’d told her mother it was because of her acne.
Vandal had wanted to use his healing powers to try and smooth the skin, the same way he healed his own cuts and bruises, but he hadn’t dared suggest it. Any mention of his Guardian blood caused his mother to
withdraw into herself even further, so he’d said nothing and they’d done the best job they could.
‘I try not to think about what’s happening in Ennae,’ his mother replied, her voice as mechanical as her actions. She never stopped what she was doing when a storm came — just ignored it, as though she could pretend that the Maelstrom wasn’t happening. It was her way of excluding his dad from her thoughts, but it also shut Vandal out and he hated that.
‘Maybe Glimmer is dead,’ he said, knowing he was trying to provoke a reaction from his mum. Even anger would be better than the empty glances and bland conversations they had now.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied and the overhead lights flickered. A rushing sound battered the outside of the building but his mother never faltered in her task, gluing the eyelids together now.
‘I’m sure Dad’s alive,’ he said.
She didn’t even shrug, just kept on gluing — working to keep herself sane, his Aunt Melissa had told him. Yet every day she seemed to drift further away from him, hiding herself in her little cocoon of numbness.
It might be years before his powers were strong enough to open the way between the worlds. If the Maelstrom didn’t kill them first, could she hold on that long? Or would she give up hope of his dad ever returning? And would the loss of that hope also mean the loss of her desire to live?
‘I’ll bring him back,’ he promised, then added recklessly, ‘even if I have to kill his girlfriend to do it.’
Sarah’s hands stilled briefly, and Vandal was sure he saw a brief flare of emotion animate her downcast eyes. He expected a reprimand for such a violent suggestion, but instead his mother said, ‘I want him back.’
That was all the permission Vandal needed.
Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3
The Maelstrom is building – inexorable, relentless, causing destruction and death on an unprecedented scale, pouring elements from one realm into another – and the only hope for humanity, the young Glimmer, has strayed far from her destiny to unite the Four Worlds. An accidental touch of the Plainsman Memory Stone infects her with emotions and she abducts the coldest of the nobles, Kert Sh’hale, taking him to the Fireworld of Haddash where her clumsy seduction allows the Serpent of Death to escape.
Daughter of the Dark: Shadow Through Time 2 Page 45