The Akasha Chronicles Trilogy Boxed Set: The Complete Emily Adams Series

by Natalie Wright

  “Bide your time, Dughall,” he said to himself in the dark. “Bide your time.”

  44. A PROMISE

  It was a day like most of the others that lay behind him. As usual he went to his master’s main grounds and cared for the livestock and repaired the buildings. It could be worse, he well knew. Mainly he was left alone to do his work in outside areas, away from others. Left on his own to ponder and think all day and plan his escape.

  He had decided that day was the day. He quickly finished his assigned tasks in record time. He could go home early. He planned to find his mother in their small quarters, through with her morning chores of gathering water and food and readying their evening meal. She did all this before she went to her own ‘work’.

  When he had left that morning at the first light of dawn, his mother’s ‘work’ was still with her, loudly snoring in the small room his mother slept in. This happened occasionally. The lousy oaf was too lazy to get up and out when he was supposed to.

  That day, as he approached the door to their small apartment, he felt coldness come over him. His belly tightened and seized up. With a huge feeling of foreboding, he ran to his home.

  The door to their dwelling was wide open. He stopped in the small doorway and instinctively listened. He dared not call out to his mother. He was small and quiet on his feet. If an attacker were still there, he would have the element of surprise.

  The abode was so small that it took but three steps to move from the entryway to the doorway of his mother’s room. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he peered inside. He quickly surveyed the situation and found no one in the room. He was about to turn around and leave to look for his mother when he heard a small whimper.

  He spun back around and quietly walked the two steps that it took to go to the other side of the small bed in the room. For all the years since that day – and there have been many – Dughall wished that he could excise from his brain the memory of what he saw.

  There, a mass of human flesh. Its face so black, blue and swollen it was barely recognizable as human. One arm dangled, lifeless, from the body. The other was bent at an odd angle, surely broken in two. And on the floor, a pool of blood that oozed from the pile of flesh.

  A part of him wanted to back away and to run. He wanted to run as fast as he could from the horrible sight. Run until he was sure that it was a nightmare and he’d come back to find his dear mother cooking their evening meal as always.

  But then he again heard a whimper and he knew it was real. The pile of broken and oozing flesh was his own mother, his only love, the flesh of his flesh. His reason to live. She was beaten and tortured beyond the capacity to rise again.

  Then a tiny voice, rasping and choking and trying to speak. He bent down nearer what used to be his mother’s face, nearer to hear what may be her final words.

  The power of his touch on her arm as he bent in close seemed to give her the strength to speak. “My dearest son,” she choked out. “Remember all I taught you.” She coughed and stopped. Dughall thought she had stopped breathing.

  But then she started again. “Your time is now my son. You will walk a path of greatness, my love.” Her breathing labored, gasping for air.

  “You must do something for me now, my son. Honor your mother,” she rasped.

  “Of course my most beloved,” he said. His tears choked his words and blinded him. “Anything you ask my mother.”

  “Take your small knife, my son, the one you use to cut rope. Use it now, my love, and plunge it deep into your mother’s heart. Use it, dear son, to end my pain.”

  Dughall felt he could do anything for her. He could kill their master with his bare hands. He’d smash the skulls of the slave owners in the whole province. He could do anything but the task she had asked of him. How can I silence the beating of the one heart that ever loved me?

  “Please,” she croaked. “Please … ”

  As he looked at the rasping heap of flesh that was once his mother, he knew that he had to release the one he loved from her broken shell. Dughall grabbed the small, dull knife from the pack around his waist. His master didn’t allow him to own a dagger, sword or weapon of any kind. The small knife was so dull it would barely cut bread. But it was all he had. He knew that it would be the power of the force of the thrust not the sharpness of the blade that would complete his task.

  With that thought, he summoned all the strength and love that he had. With a powerful thrust, he slammed that small knife into the still beating heart of his only mother. From the sound of her shallow breaths he knew that his knife had swung true. Within seconds, she drew her last breath then laid still, her glassy eyes still open.

  Dughall’s hand was still clenched around the knife handle while, with his other hand, he closed the lids of his mother’s eyes, never again to look upon her loving countenance. In that moment, his hand still on the hilt of the weapon that had taken the life force from his mother’s body, any love or compassion that Dughall may have had within him died. In that moment, the Dughall that would fight his way to the top ranks of the Norman army was born. The Dughall that would lay waste to entire villages on his quest for power was born. The Dughall that would one day risk his soul to bide his time in the Umbra Nihili was born. On that day, the Dughall that sits at the control panel of the most powerful machine humans have ever built was born.

  And on that day, in that moment, kneeling beside the dead body of his only love, Dughall made a pledge. Perhaps never before or since has one made such a fervent promise, a promise that would ring through the ages. A promise that would bind a person to risk their immortal soul. A promise that had the power to resurrect one long ago dead. A promise so strong, the desire to fulfill it blinds its maker to the risk of death to those around him, even to the whole of the planet, perhaps to the whole of the solar system in which the beautiful blue planet swirls.

  “Hear me now, any gods there be. Hear me now as I pledge this solemn oath, with all my heart and soul. From the depths of my being, hear my promise. I will find you, my beloved, and we will be together again. I will find a way to bring you back to my side and together, my mother, my queen, we will rule over all those who have had a hand in our suffering, and over their kin for all generations to come. This I promise to you, my love.”

  Having made his oath, Dughall rose and swiftly left the small dwelling where he had lived since he was an infant. He considered himself free and would no longer live the life of a slave.

  It was payback time.

  45. DUGHALL’S REVENGE

  As he sat at the LHC control center, Dughall’s musing became enjoyable to him. He brightened as he remembered going to his master’s home, intent on revenge. He had the element of surprise as he had always been a dutiful slave, not one to backtalk or show any signs of rebellion. His mother prepared him well for just such a moment.

  “Why are you barging in here boy,” the master bellowed as Dughall kicked through the door. “You belong out with the hogs and filth, not in your master’s home.”

  “Maybe this will be my home now,” he impertinently responded.

  “What?” his Master yelled. His eyes raged at Dughall. “You will leave my sight at once and go back to that hole with your whore mother before I beat you to within an inch of your life.”

  “You will take back what you said about my mother just now, you swine of a man, or so help me,” Dughall responded with fire in his eyes.

  “You have gone too far slave. You have lost sight of your place in life.” The master reached for his sword lying on the table beside him.

  But the old, fat merchant was slow, his reflexes dulled by hours of drinking wine. Dughall knew it was his moment. He leapt for the sword with impressive speed and agility. Before the merchant had risen fully from his chair, Dughall had the sword in his hand.

  “Look here boy, you can barely hold that blade, let alone wield it,” the merchant sneered at Dughall. “Lay the weapon down and I may choose to spare your sorry life,” the merchant
pled.

  Dughall had to admit that it was, in fact, difficult for him to hold the sword. It must have weighed more than twenty pounds. He was strong for his age but being only fourteen, it took all the strength of both his arms to hold up the sword. But Dughall’s desire welled up from his core, a will forged by years of suffering and abuse.

  There are some who live such a life and in their suffering, they grow immense compassion and peacefulness with all of existence. In others, the years of torment and observation of ill will among their captors breeds a hatred and anger that is unmatched.

  From that place of ultimate despair and sadness over the loss of his only love, from that place of deepest desire to have her revenge, from that place of wholly unchecked anger and hatred, Dughall summoned a strength of body and will that surprised even him. Dughall lunged at the rotund merchant and plunged the man’s sword deep into his belly. The merchant’s dull eyes were filled with surprise as the warm blood that had pumped through his portly body spilled out, great torrents of crimson.

  Dughall stepped back a few paces as he watched the merchant fall to the floor. Dughall stood by and watched with a rising feeling of glee as the life force once powerful in the large man spilled across the floor.

  The merchant sputtered as he said, “Help me. Help me, boy.”

  Dughall laughed heartily at the merchant’s words. “Help you? Help you?” he said incredulously. “Old man, I’m the one who put the blade in you. Why should I bother to take it out until I am assured that the last breath has passed from your rancid lips?”

  “But what of your immortal soul, boy? If you kill me, what will come to your immortal soul?”

  Dughall bent down so he could look the dying merchant in the eye. He smirked the smirk that would become one of his defining features, born in that moment.

  “Well, old man, I suppose your soul, if you have one, awaits the same fate as mine then.”

  “But I haven’t killed anyone,” the merchant choked out.

  “Ah, but you have. You killed my mother.”

  “No, I didn’t,” the merchant pleaded with Dughall. “Please, you have to believe me. I didn’t get anywhere near her. I didn’t kill her. It was someone else then.”

  “You may not have been the one who beat her and bloodied her and left her in a heap for me to find, barely recognizable as my own beloved. But you are the one who sent her each night to her real death, the death of her soul. And you are the one who sold her life for a price to the one who did her in. How much did you get for it, huh? How much you filthy rotten pig?” Dughall took the hilt of the sword and twisted it.

  The merchant choked out muffled screams of agony as Dughall inflicted pain to his once master. “Please,” the old man pled. “I am sorry,” he whimpered. “Please … ”

  “Too late you fetid scum. You shall die here, alone and broken and suffering, just as she did. And if you do have a soul, it surely will rot in a hell worse than any you can imagine for the horrible crimes you have committed in your life. And while it is indeed a pleasure to watch you die in agony, I must be off.”

  With that statement, Dughall gave the sword one last painful twist and turn before he drew it out of the near dead body of the merchant. He took the merchant’s napkin and wiped the blade clean of its owner’s blood.

  “A fine sword,” he said aloud. “It shall come in handy on my quest.”

  With those words, he turned his back on the merchant and left him to die. Dughall had taken the first steps on his path to becoming a bloodthirsty conqueror. He found killing far too easy and in a way pleasurable. In the years to come, he would find that with each new death, it became easier and easier to end the life of another like one would swat a gnat or a fly. Anyone who stood in the way of all that he desired was to him like a mere insect, of no consequence. In time, he stopped counting the number of human lives he took along his path to conquest.

  Sitting at the control panel of the LHC, it was no different. All the humans around him, the team of thousands, they were of no consequence to him. Even those in the nearby towns and villages above, what should he care if they too perished when he implemented his plan?

  There was a slight gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach, a feeling foreign to him for so many years. What is this? He could not place it, but it seemed a bit familiar. Why do I feel this edge in my gut? Perhaps it was something he ate or a human virus trying to bring him down with an illness.

  Just then Macha appeared by his side with news. It was upon casting his eyes on her face that he realized what that horrible feeling was in his stomach.

  Dughall felt a pang of guilt. He was slightly amused with himself. He didn’t realize he could still feel that. Apparently he had a pang of guilt over the probable loss of Macha.

  To be expected, after all, he reassured himself. She entombed herself for over a thousand years just so she could help me to resurrect when the time was right, he thought. She has been a faithful servant.

  Of course, if she hadn’t entombed herself and put herself into the deepest pixie sleep, she probably wouldn’t be alive today, he rationalized. Yes, that’s true. She would have gone the way of all the other pixies and faerie folk. Vanished with the rest. Vanquished by humans and stamped once and for all out of existence.

  The faerie people were so blind to the nature of their own condition. As times changed and humans left their ways of nature worship and chose the one God, the faeries retreated away from humans to survive, never fully realizing that they needed the interaction with humans to exist.

  Macha may, in fact, be the last of her kind, thought Dughall. But his mind could go no further down the road of guilt or sympathy. For Dughall, that road was short indeed and a dead end.

  The sacrifice of one pixie, it is no matter if I can achieve my most fervent desire, he thought. In fact, Macha is probably prepared to sacrifice herself for me. With that thought, the pinching feeling in his belly ceased. He sat upright and with a clear purpose.

  Nothing would get in his way, not even the death of the world’s last pixie.

  46. PIECING IT TOGETHER IN DUBLIN

  As Liam drifted to sleep on the small bed, he hoped that he’d wake from his nap to find myself back in the States, the whole thing just a crazy nightmare. Instead, he woke to find Fanny flopped on her stomach on the other bed, maps spread out in front of her. It looked to Liam like she was trying to look busy rather than actually doing anything.

  On the other hand, Jake was the picture of concentration, intently reading a webpage on his laptop. His hair was more tousled than usual, his eyes rimmed in red and bloodshot from hours of looking at a computer screen.

  Liam stretched his arms above his head and breathed deeply. He wasn’t in a dream after all. His daughter’s life depended on his belief in their outrageous story.

  “Jake, you found anything interesting?” he asked.

  It took Jake a minute to register a voice from the outside world. He slowly turned and ran his hands through his shock of now jet-black hair, pausing as if to collect himself.

  “Well, I don’t know if I’m getting anywhere with this, but I have an idea. It’s a bit off the wall.”

  “Off the wall? More off the wall than our best friend disappearing into another dimension?” asked Fanny.

  “Okay, well maybe not that off the wall. Okay, check it. Dughall’s supposed to want to get to the Netherworld, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s what Hindergog said.”

  “Sure but what’s he after? I mean, why does he want to go there?”

  “That’s the mystery, isn’t it nub?”

  “Don’t be short with him Fanny.”

  “Yeah, work with me on this. What I’m saying is we have to know what this guy is after. What does he think he can find in the Netherworld?”

  “I don’t know. Hindergog didn’t say anything about what the psychopath wanted.”

  “But the story he told had clues.”

  “What kind of clues? What do you thin
k he’s after, Jake?” Liam asked.

  “Well he was power hungry, that much we know. And he clearly didn’t care who got hurt in his quest for power, so we know he’s dangerous.”

  “Yeah, but Jake, we don’t know what’s in the Netherworld really. We may have to wait for Emily to come back to answer that,” Fanny said.

  “That’s what I was thinking too, but then I started to think about what Dughall might think he’ll find there. You know it doesn’t matter what he’ll actually find there, only what he thinks he’ll find.”

  “Okay, that’s riveting, but we don’t know that either.”

  “I think we do have some clues about that. Dughall heard the story of the well from that guy that he killed – what was his name?”

  “Cormac,” offered Fanny.

  “Yeah, Cormac. Anyway, according to Hindergog, Cormac told Dughall all about the Sacred Well and the portal and the torc. And then there was the pixie … ”

  “Macha?”

  “Yeah, Macha. Sounds like she knew a lot. She probably told him things too. He probably knew a lot about the Netherworld, or at least what people thought was on the other side of that Well.”

  “That’s some good deduction, but I’m not following what you think that tells us about why Dughall wants to enter the portal,” Liam said.

  “Yeah, or how you think he’s going to do it. He doesn’t have the torc you know. Hey, you know, come to think of it, if he doesn’t have the torc, he can’t get through the portal, so what are we worrying about?”

  “Ah, you see, that’s just the question I had. We know he wants to go to the Netherworld and badly. And if Hindergog and those in his world are so worried, they must know something we don’t and that must mean there’s another way in.”

  “Right, some other portal,” said Fanny.

  “Or, a way to create a portal,” Liam said.

  “Exactly Mr. Adams! That’s what I’m thinking. And here’s the biggest clue that Hindergog gave us. He mentioned a large machine being built by humans.”