by RJ Crayton
I picked up the second crystal to put into the orb, when I heard my name inside my head. Kadirah, Pylum said. If you have a minute, I was hoping to speak with you.
I looked down at the orb and thought back to Pylum telling my mother how my father had died. I did want to talk to him. Sure, I responded. I’ll be right down.
I stood, the crystal still in my hand still feeling warm. I slipped it into my pocket, left the remainder of my things, and headed toward Pylum’s office.
Chapter 10 - Bullies
When I arrived at Pylum’s office, the door opened for me seemingly of its own accord. I walked in, and Pylum was sitting in one of the chairs on the opposite side of his desk, waiting for me. He inclined his head toward the chair opposite his, and I sat.
He opened his mouth to speak, but I decided I wanted to control the conversation. “You were with my father when he died,” I said.
He looked shocked for a moment, and then nodded.
“I still don’t understand what happened. My mother’s memory of it didn’t explain enough.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You have memories from Tima?”
“Yes,” I said, the irritation I was feeling coming through in my voice. “My aunt gave them to me. She trusted me with the memory.”
He offered a solemn expression. “Yes, I was there when Idris died,” he said.
“Show me.”
He shook his head. “You should not see Idris like that, and I do not wish to relive it again.”
“Show me,” I repeated, this time harsher.
He stared at me a moment, as if he didn’t know me and then he shook his head. “It is not for you, Dirah.”
I felt a surge of anger at his refusal. Why did he constantly refuse me? Why, when he needed my help, did he constantly refuse to share information? “You promised no more secrets.”
“That is not a secret. You know what happened. Seeing it will only allow you to bear witness to something no child should see.”
“Show me,” I said, and this time I could feel myself shoving inside his mind, barreling in, looking for my father, looking for that day. And then a scene, a vision, the library, Pylum, smiling, and saying my father looked well. My father asking if they could talk. He was concerned about Zygam, but Pylum was saying he had to do a perimeter patrol and my father could join him, and then I felt a sharp pain in my mind and the vision disappeared and my head hurt. I brought a hand to my temple.
“I told you no, Dirah,” he said.
I sighed, frustrated. “It’s not fair for you to keep secrets.”
He regarded me, sizing me up. “Did Talitha unlock your memories?”
I glared at him for a moment, intent on not giving him an answer when he refused to give me one. But as I sat there, my head aching from his mental zap, I realized I didn’t have the patience for a staring contest. “No,” I said, finally. “She said after I’d watched my mother’s memories.”
He nodded. “You’re a good person, Dirah,” he said. “You deserve the truth, but sometimes the truth isn’t what we expect.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He looked away for a moment and then looked back and said, “All people have different sides to them. All people have choices to make about whether they wish to walk in the darkness or in the light. And even when people are raised in darkness, they can choose light, and vice versa.”
I shook my head, irritated. “I don’t understand. Why are you speaking in riddles?”
“Am I?” he asked. “I hadn’t meant to. Since I will not be showing you the memory you wanted, is it alright to move on to the reason I asked you to come? I wanted to help you prepare to face Zygam. And I wanted to explain to you about the necklace.”
I hadn’t expected that. Just when my frustration with Pylum’s secrecy had come to a head, he had decided to be open. Or perhaps I should still be frustrated. He only wanted to tell me things on his terms, never on mine. A week ago, I would have been ecstatic to have him confide in me. Only now, it seemed like a booby prize. He’d deflected my inquiry about my father’s death, but he was willing to tell me about the necklace, the one that had transported me back here last night. The one that was key to the Prophecy of Light. I nodded for him to continue.
He smiled and held out his hand. A box on his desk unlatched, and from it floated the necklace, which landed in his outstretched palm. He held it out to me. “I want you to wear this,” he said.
I shook my head. “It’s Akilah’s.”
He then shook his head. “Actually, it’s not hers. I gave it to her to wear because it is the key to controlling the Talisman of Elpida.”
Chapter 11 - Mates
“How does this control the Talisman? And if it does, why would you give it to Akilah?”
He sighed. “You wanted to know the Prophecy of Light, right?”
I nodded.
“This is why we do not divulge the prophecy to others. It is one of the major prophecies, one with far-reaching implications, but it cannot be used in a vacuum. Those who study prophecies, as Zygam did, understand that. They understand that often a major prophecy intersects with a handful of minor prophecies. While it has often been believed that the minor prophecies associated with the Prophecy of Light were about finding the stone, Zygam was the first to realize that the minor prophecies weren’t saying what we thought they were saying.”
“Zygam?” I said, trying to be certain I was understanding him properly. “You’re telling me you believe some theory of Zygam’s, even though you believe he’s evil?”
Pylum shook his head “I do not believe in evil, Kady. I believe in actions. I believe Zygam has chosen a path of destruction. But just because he has chosen the wrong path, one that turns him to darkness, doesn’t mean he never speaks the truth. Why do you think it is that people follow paths thought of as ‘evil’?” he said, doing air quotes around the word. “People most often do not believe their deeds or thoughts to be evil. They believe them to be something of import. That is why people commit evil acts. If we look at the result of the acts, if we look at whether it brings ultimately destruction or good, we can better determine its worth.”
I was silent as I contemplated what he said. Actions, destruction, good. I suppose the world needed more people to consider their actions, not just arbitrarily decide something was good or something was evil and continue on the path, regardless of the outcome their actions took. At the same time, I couldn’t help but think that every one of Zygam’s actions — from killing my mother to chasing me to kidnapping my aunt and somehow brainwashing Akilah — had all lumped him into the category of evil.
Pylum exhaled. “I’ve moved too far into the realm of the philosophical,” he said. “In regards to Zygam, he was exceptionally skilled at anything he chose to focus on. He loved prophecies. He believed that things foretold would come to pass and could even be made to come to pass by a mage with enough power.”
“Which is why he wants me now that he has the Talisman?” I looked at the necklace Pylum was still holding. The one I’d refused to take. “So how does that figure in?”
He turned to the bookshelf behind us and an aged book, covered in dust floated down from one of the shelves near the tall ceiling. It landed in my lap and flipped itself open to a page. I looked down and read the bold title at the top. “The Prophecy of Alab.”
I zeroed in on the title, reading the words over and over in my head. It gave me a chill. “I called Zygam my alab. He told me he was my alab when we met.”
Pylum nodded. “Yes, alab is an old word. It has many meanings. The one that has stood best in this region is father or father figure. But it is also meant for a person that guides or directs, someone who plays a pivotal role in the life of another.” He looked at the book and spoke to me. “Read it aloud, please.”
I looked down at the words on the page. There were more than a dozen lines.
The powerful talisman
Was forged from the North
B
y travelers of the Midlands
It will work wonders and miracles
It will heal and it will cure
It can kill and it can maim
It can lay waste to all that is good
It is extraordinary
But we must recall all things special start with the ordinary
The talisman is no different
It will achieve its destiny guided by two
It needs the child that is destined for it.
And it needs the strong guiding hand of the alab
To ensure it achieves its full strength and destiny
I reread the words in my head. The alab seemed to be key to this prophecy. “It refers to the powerful talisman,” I said. “Are you sure that means the Talisman of Elpida?”
Pylum shrugged. “As sure as we can be. Those of us who understand the art of prophecy and future-reading know that oracles speak in mysteries and vagaries. They are meant to foreshadow, to aid those who will carry out the future, without telling them so much that they change their future. Prophecies will never be as specific as we would like. But, as best I can tell, and Zygam, too, this is prophecy refers to the Talisman of Elpida.”
“So how do prophecies differ from the Seas of Time?” His visions in the Seas seemed to be more specific.
He smiled. “Those of us able to see the future fall into two categories: visionists and soothsayers. I’m a visionist,” he admitted. “I see visions, using the seas of times of things in the near future. At best, I can see things that are a few weeks away. Nothing further. Soothsayers get snippets of the far away future. Not detailed visions that explain all, just snippets, flashes of distant things. Because they are just flashes, what they write are prophecies. They codify those small bits on paper, so that people can interpret them as they must. Soothsayers can interpret things very wrong, which is why when they are trained, they learn to write mainly about the possibilities of what they see. Not to offer too much context.”
“Why not?”
“Because that can lead people down the wrong path,” he said forcefully. “I know of one such mage whose entire life was altered by reliance on a soothsayer’s vision. Perhaps the thing would still have come to pass, but the soothsayer’s words compelled people to act in a way they normally might not have, if they hadn’t relied on that word.”
Pylum shook his head. “We must return to the prophecy at hand,” he said, looking down at the book in my lap. “The Prophecy of the Alab is clear that Elpida needs one.”
“You’re saying that Talisman won’t work properly without an alab?”
At this, he grinned. “Yes. Zygam and I parsed the language out and looked at it over and over again. We both felt confident that the talisman required not just the child of light to guide it, but an alab, as well.”
“So, the child of light’s father would be the alab?”
“That was our interpretation.”
But it clearly wasn’t his interpretation now. I reached out, took the necklace, looking at the stone that dangled from the end. Multi-colored crystalline cracks threaded through thick gray rock the tiny stone was made of. It was smooth and round and about the size of a large grape. In the low light of the room, the crystalline lines looked as if they glowed. “What is your interpretation now?”
“That the alab doesn’t mean a person. It means a father in a sense, but the father of the stone.”
I held out the little stone. “This can’t be it,” I said. “It’s too small.”
“I am small,” Pylum said. “Does this mean I cannot be a great mage?”
My eyes found his and what he was saying was true. Size wasn’t a key to power. I was tiny, but there was magic in me. I had seen it in memories, and I’d even felt it at the moon temple. And even today in the market, when I helped rescue Nigel. I shouldn’t judge it on its size. “It doesn’t feel important,” I said, finally, realizing that was why I didn’t believe it was important. “The Talisman, even in watching your memory, you could feel the glow of it, the power behind it.”
“And that is the brilliance in this prophecy. It is the ordinary that helps us create the extraordinary. That stone is from Miltinsla.”
The name wrung a bell for me. I wasn’t sure why though.
“Your father and Zygam were born there. It’s in the Northlands. The Talisman was forged there by a Midlander named Raja. The stone in the Talisman was said to have been from the hot depths of the earth, cooled by the Northland’s frozen winds, and brought to the Midlands where it could harness the light it lacked in the North.”
The little thing in my hand definitely looked ordinary. It sort of looked less than ordinary. Almost ugly. “And this is the Talisman’s alab. I don’t see how it can be the Talisman’s father. This is a rock, and the Talisman is a beautiful, glowing crystal.”
Another book flew from one of the highest shelves and rested in my lap on top of the other one. It flipped its pages and finally stopped on a page with a picture of the Talisman. It was pretty, even in an illustration. There was something alluring about it.
“It’s one of the reasons the prophecy isn’t taught,” Pylum said as he watched me. “Even its image compels people, makes them yearn for it. Even a replica of it can make people do awful things for the power.”
“I wouldn’t do anything bad to get it,” I said, looking up, feeling defensive.
“The talisman can change people,” he said. “But you shouldn’t worry about that. I think the reason the talisman does have that effect is because it is incomplete. It needs its alab.”
“It’s father?”
Pylum shook his head. The book page ruffled and a golden arrow appeared in the air, pointing to a spot on the page. I looked at the spot and read aloud. “The history of the stone is murky, as it is more than three thousand years old. The earliest records of Elpida says its power is absolute and all-encompassing. The most detailed records of the Talisman were kept by the great mage Joquai, who was said to have hidden the Talisman to prevent further destruction. His records include one of the few images of the Talisman and generally give its dimensions, and the depths of its power. The stone is believed to be uncontrollable and able to corrupt mages who are not completely pure of heart. After Joquai hid the talisman, claiming he’d barely escaped its destructive forces, the talisman has been long sought.
“Many have claimed to have found it, or almost found it, but been thwarted by it. However, little proof exists to indicate these were factual accounts.
“While Joquai gave us the most detailed accounts, there are other accounts of the Talisman. One in particular, from an ancient scroll unearthed recently, suggests the Talisman as we know it is incomplete. While some scholars believe the scroll references a different Talisman, others believe it refers to Elpida. The Talisman of Elpida is most often described as being fixed on a chain of gold. The talisman in the scroll is part of a scepter. The scepter in the drawing includes a small top piece, best described as a cracked egg. This ancient scroll suggests the egg adornment represents the shell from which the stone was produced. It was the parent, also known in ancient times as an alab.”
I stopped reading, my mouth hanging open.
“Has Zygam seen this?”
Pylum nodded. “Yes, but Zygam discounts things he wishes not to believe.” Pylum inclined his head toward the shelf on the wall. “You see the top three shelves?” I indicated I did. “Every single book on those shelves is about the Prophecy of Light or the Talisman of Elpida. Not a single book mentions the scepter idea except for this one. It is an odd and peculiar notion, and most people who have read on the prophecy do not believe this scroll refers to Elpida. They believe it references another talisman.”
The little rock in my hand looked like the egg described in the book. “If no one else believes this, why do you?”
Pylum shrugged. “I can’t say,” he said. “I have no justification, just that I feel it to be the case. I feel like this will match with the stone. This is its alab, and
with this, the child of light will be able to control the talisman.”
“Who is the child of light?”
“That is a good question. Zygam thinks it is you. I considered that it might be Akilah, but it also could be you.”
“What makes you think it’s either of us, and why don’t you know?”
Pylum sighed, and the books in my lap shut themselves and zoomed back to their respective shelves. Another book from the top shelves floated down and landed in my lap. It opened slowly to a page early on in the book. In gold leaf lettering were four words at the top of the page: The Prophecy of Light.
Chapter 12 - The Prophecy of Light
There shall come a day when the world when be in the hands of one mage
This child of light will control the fate of all
The child shall be born with ties to the North and Middle lands
This will tie the child to the stone of ultimate power: Elpida
The stone can unleash untold power
The stone’s master can rule in peace — or crush in darkness for as long as desired
Elpida can be controlled only by the one who tames it twice;
Once in youth and the second time when wisdom compels.
Then, all the power of Elpida belongs to the child
The child will choose:
Power and glory to bring light to all
Or bring darkness and destruction
We hold this child of light as a symbol of peace
That can elevate our world
But also as a warning of destruction
The child will hold the power in her hands
With the aid of Elpida
All will be ruled by the child of light
All fates will be decided by the child’s will.
I read the words on the page twice. “That’s it?” I asked. It seemed anticlimactic. “This is why Zygam has been hunting me?”