by RJ Crayton
I readied myself to open a portal. The question was, where to. The choices were threefold: Auntie’s room, Jasper’s room, or the temple grounds. Part of me wanted to tell Auntie, but she was not well, and wouldn’t think I was ready. She was like Pylum, thinking I’d need more training. Jasper was a choice, too. I trusted him implicitly, and I was sure he’d be willing to come with me. I might even be able to convince him not to tell Pylum. But what if the same thing happened with him as happened with Akilah. Or worse, what if my uncle hurt him or ... worse?
I felt confident Zygam would never really hurt me. Yes, he’d hurled a glyph at me, one that might have stung, but it wasn’t one that would have done me permanent harm. I know Auntie said the memories would be mostly feelings at first, but even as the strength of the feelings wore away, I knew they had been real. As had his feelings toward me. He saw himself as my protector.
A memory floated to the top of my mind. Me and alab lying under the saharba tree. He was telling me a story about my father. “You’re like Idris,” he said. “Kind, but strong and powerful, too. I shall guide you and help you always.”
His green eyes had been full of pure light as he’d said it to me. It seemed so odd that he would dabble in darkness, in moon magic, when he could love so purely. I was still at a loss as to exactly what had corrupted him. It hadn’t entirely been the =Talisman. He’d been happy to be at the temple, until my mother took me away. Though, perhaps I was reading too much into him staying at the temple. Perhaps he’d stayed because I was here, not because he’d been happy. My mother taking me just made it unnecessary for him to pretend he was happy here, to offer a charade to the others.
I sighed. I was getting off track. I had to decide. Where should I portal to?
Chapter 30 - Brother
In the end, the choice had been obvious and easy. I could endanger no one else. The last ten years had been me putting Auntie in danger. And Zygam had proved just how dangerous he could be to Auntie. I couldn’t ask her to face him again. And Zygam had been dangerous to my friends, too. It was his fault that Akilah was even like this. I couldn’t let something happen to Jasper, too. The choice was simple.
I arrived in No Man’s land, just outside the Moon Temple. I walked through the barrier, and almost immediately, a portal opened, and out stepped Zygam. Tonight, his expression was grim and his face pale, as if he were ill. “I’m glad you came,” he said.
“Where is Akilah?”
He nodded, and held out his hand. “I’ll take you to her.”
I hesitated a moment, the briefest flash of memory emerging, of him, holding out his hand to little me, and me taking it. And not just once. Almost a repeated sequence. He’d done this with me hundreds of times before. It would have been so easy to reach out, take his hand, and feel the familiarity to it, but I didn’t. Instead I nodded for him to take me to her.
His frown screamed disappointment, but he didn’t utter any words to go along with it. Instead, he opened a portal and walked through. I followed him and we arrived in a small room with dark walls. There, lying on the floor, a cushion beneath her head, and draped with a white sheet was Akilah.
I ran to her side. “Akilah,” I murmured as I looked at her still body and her closed eyes. I frowned and turned to my uncle. “What can I do to help her?”
“Just listen,” he said.
As he said it, I saw movement in my periphery and startled. It was Akilah. She was sitting up, her eyes open now and she looked normal. I stood, and backed away from her.
“Don’t be frightened, Kady.”
I looked from Akilah to my uncle and began to feel an empty hole in the pit of my stomach. I was a fool. “You lied to me,” I said to Zygam. “You said she was sick, that she needed my help.”
“It wasn’t entirely a lie,” he said, his voice calm. “She needs your help and her heart is sick. If you listen to her, you’ll understand.”
I shook my head. “I don’t listen to liars,” I said, and turned to leave. I shouldn’t have turned my back on him. Glittering sparkles rained down on me and I was stuck. My body wouldn’t move. Not my arms, not my legs, not my feet, not even my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Zygam said. “The binding spell is temporary. It will wear off in one minute. Listen to Akilah for this one minute, and if you still wish to go when the spell wears off, you may. But please, give her a chance.”
My rigid body had no choice but to give them a chance. Before I knew it, I was being levitated across the room, back to a spot near Akilah. She looked at me with a frown, then at Zygam, her eyes clearly unhappy. “Zygam, release her,” Akilah said.
“Speak, first,” he retorted sharply.
Akilah shook her head. “Kady is my friend and she has a mind of her own. If she doesn’t want to stay, she doesn’t have to. Though,” she said, looking at me now. “What you learn here can help both of us, not just me.”
My body loosened in a huge wave. I’m not sure exactly how Zygam had released me, but I didn’t care. I turned to see a door on the opposite wall and walked toward it. As I was grabbing at the door’s handle, I heard words that stopped me. “Nigel is my brother, Kady.”
Chapter 31 - Long Lost Kin
I stopped mid-stride, my brain trying to assure myself that what I’d heard was right. I turned back to her, to study her face, to see if her words had been a lie. But there was nothing but honesty there. In the corner of my eye, I glimpsed the smile on Zygam’s face. Part of me was inclined to leave anyway, but my curiosity was too overwhelming to leave that there.
“How do you know?”
“My memories have returned,” she said.
“And you remember him?” I asked.
She shrugged. Her voice had been soft, so I stepped closer to her to hear better. She sat down on the floor, and motioned for me to sit with her. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that, but I did take another step nearer.
“When Pylum locked my mind, he locked away many of my memories surrounding the Talisman and my parents. We found it — the Talisman, I mean. My parents and I, our journey was successful. We found it, and it should have been happy, but it wasn’t. My father died. He had that look of greed in his eyes, and the talisman wasn’t meant for him, so it created terrible visions, terrible thoughts in his mind, and then it struck him dead. My mother knew enough to know this was more than she bargained for or could handle. She scooped me up and fled. She told me to forget about the Talisman, that we would move on, that we would live our lives differently. She tried to love me and care for me, but I was strong-willed, and, like any child, I wanted routine. I wanted what we’d had before, the three of us, wandering, searching”
Routine. I understood that. Even now, even as I learned spells and soaked up the inner workings of magic daily, I missed the simple act of kneading dough. The routine, even if it wasn’t necessarily better than the current situation, was something. It was familiar. It was home, even if you’d never had a home.
“How does Nigel fit in?”
“My mother was affected by the crystal, too,” Akilah said, her voice sounding bitter with the memory. “She didn’t always act right, but she tried. It seems that what the Talisman left intact was her kindness, her generous spirit. She tried to help me, when she was able, and she tried to help others. She met a man in the small town she’d decided we’d settle in. He fell in love with her, wanted to care for her, for me. They married, and they had a son, Nigel.”
I waited for her to say more. She didn’t. “That’s not an uncommon name,” I said. “What makes you think this Nigel is your brother?”
She looked down at her hands, and grimaced. After a moment, she looked up at me, and said, finally, “Because he fears me.”
I waited for more, but nothing came. I shook my head, not quite understanding. “You think he’s your brother because he fears you?”
She nodded, and then drummed her fingers on her thigh. She looked down at her crossed legs, and then up at me. “Pylum had a reason, one beyond just
cruelty and his lust for the Talisman, to lock my memories.”
“What?”
“I was a child who struggled,” she admitted, her voice soft, almost pitiful. Not a word I’d ever thought I’d associate with Akilah. “I had great power, and I was troubled. I had lost a father and my mother had tried to pretend as if he hadn’t existed, as if that life hadn’t existed. She demanded we not use magic and she married a salab. A sweet salab, but still a salab. And then she had a baby, a baby for her sweet salab. And I felt she didn’t love me as much as the baby.”
Nigel’s words about Akilah — she has darkness in her— filled my mind and my body chilled.
“So I did what any angry child does. I got mad and I …” She lifted her hand and raised a hand to her eye, wiping a tear. “I created a storm. A horrible sandstorm to wipe the baby away.”
I let out a small gasp, but then kept my mouth shut. Nigel hadn’t died. That was clear. “And what happened?” I asked tentatively.
“My mother saw me, and she grabbed him and scooped him in her arms. She put a shield around the two of them. A shield to block me from them, and she whispered something in his ear. A glyph shone above his head, and sprinkled on him.” Her eyes stared straight ahead, glossy from the memory. “I’ve always known inherently what glyphs mean, so I knew exactly what it was. It was warning, a fear glyph. It’s very old magic, and to be honest, I’m not even sure how my mother knew it. I ran across it in a book and asked Master Shanzu more. He said a fear glyph was often placed on children to protect them. They make a child fear a specific enemy or person. That way the child’s instincts will tell them the person is a danger. The child will stay away from that known enemy, will not be seduced by lies or sweets or promises of glory. It’s apparently fairly defunct now, as mages don’t battle or duel as they once did. But she thought that he should fear me, that he shouldn’t trust me, that he should protect himself from me. At the times I saw it, I hadn’t understood all the particulars, but I understood enough to know she had picked him over me. I was more hurt than I’d ever been, so I funneled my rage into the storm and I saw it begin to eat away at her shield. I heard her beg me to stop, to beg me not to do this. But the one thing she never said was that she loved me. She never said, please stop because I love you. And the last thing I remember was her shield disintegrating.”
I swallowed, not sure what to say. She’d killed her own mother; she’d tried to murder a baby.
“I passed out. It was too much power for me to wield without the benefit of a ketesh. It had sapped all my energy, destroying her shield with the storm. When I awoke, they were gone. At the time, I’d assumed I’d killed them, but now I don’t think so. I think they both escaped, and that my mother died sometime later, sometime when Nigel was older.” She took in a deep breath, her eyes cleared, gained focus and she centered on me. “You have to get him to talk to me. I need to know what happened to them. I need to know what became of my mother.”
If she’d seen the shield disintegrate, why would she think it had ended well? I wondered if she really meant what she said. “Why don’t you think she died that day?”
“Because I’m not encumbered. You can’t perform magic that takes a life, not without serious repercussions. Even for a child. I wandered on my own for many years after that, but my magic never felt the burden of her loss. Her death wasn’t caused by me, despite my best childish efforts.”
I nodded, feeling a hint of relief. The darkness inside Akilah had been strong enough as a child, but it hadn’t actually succeeded in killing anyone.
“Will you help me?” she asked me.
I shook my head. “You don’t need my help,” I said. “Return to the temple. Talk to Nigel. Tell him your story. He feels safe there. He may come to trust you in time.”
She laughed. In only that way that Akilah could, bold and brash and full of confidence that you had suggested the most ridiculous idea known to man. “Pylum will not let me return,” she said. “Nor do I want to. I only want a chance to connect with my brother.”
“The one you wanted to kill?”
She grimaced. “I was five. I did not want them to perish forever. I was a child with too much power who wanted the person I blamed for my misery to go away. And in the end, I stopped. In the end, when all hope was lost, in that last second before annihilation, I folded. And now I want the family I lost. I want them back. Perhaps it is too much to ask, but I want to try.”
“Then come back to Hakari Ahet.”
“My place is here, now,” she said.
“Why?” I asked, flummoxed. “Your brother is at Hakari Ahet. And you have friends there, too. Me. Jasper.”
“We will be friends again, after we are all joined,” she said. “But Nigel could help us. He could make the transition easier.”
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. “What transition?”
“Kady, we are coming to Hakari Ahet. We will rebuild the temple in the image of the moon and invite into the fold all the mages who welcome us.”
I shook my head. “Akilah, I don’t understand why you would do that.”
From behind me, I heard Zygam’s voice. “Allow me to explain. The prophecy is about building a community under one rule, under one person who can help and heal all.”
I turned to him, but wanted no explanation. I wanted nothing more from either of them. Just to leave. “I don’t want to hear this,” I said. “I’m returning to Hakari Ahet.”
Zygam frowned, and stared at me. “There’s something I need to show you,” he said
I shook my head.
“Kady, you want to see what he has to show you,” Akilah said from behind me. Her tone was clear, hushed and honest. There was a quality of light about it, even here at the Moon Temple. “I promise you, you will regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t see.”
I turned to look at her and when her eyes met mine, they implored me to stay. “What does he want to show me?”
“The same thing he showed me,” she said.
Irritated, I asked, “Which is?
She shook her head. “Some things can only be believed when seen,” she said. With that, she stood, created a portal, and walked through it. Zygam and I were alone.
I took a step toward the spot Akilah had been before she portaled out, and part of me yearned to create my own portal, to leave here. But the other part of me was beyond intrigued. I wanted to know what Zygam had shown her, what he could show me that couldn’t be spoken.
“You may go,” he said, stepping away from the door to the room. An empty gesture since I hadn’t planned on using the door.
“Why can’t you tell me what the thing is you want to show me?”
“Because you won’t believe me,” he said plainly.
With a pang of regret before I’d even done it, I walked over to him. “Show me.”
He smiled and started out the door. I’d expected a portal, but he seemed to want to walk. I hustled and caught up with him. He spoke as we wandered through the quiet hallways of this dark temple. “The Talisman is mentioned in the Prophecy of Light, therefore it is associated most with that. People focus on the notion that it can help a single person rule,” he said, his pace brisk but his voice low. We passed no one in the halls, and I wondered how few followers he had. Though it was nighttime, so perhaps they all slept.
“However,” my uncle said. “That is not what drew me to the Talisman. My original interest in it was from studying texts on healing. The Talisman is also noted to have amazing healing properties. It can cure any disease, even ones our healers have no cure for.”
I wasn’t sure why he was telling me this, but I didn’t have much to add.
“I’d sought the Talisman to heal Idris,” he said. I stutter-stepped. I supposed I had known, that my mother’s memories had shown that he had wanted to heal my father. “I would have healed him, if he hadn’t died in that explosion.” His voice sounded bitter, angry, hurt, even all these years later. My own heart wasn’t as
saddened by the loss, on some level. My loss of my father was all in my head. I had no reference point of what he was really like. He was a ghost that could have been as indifferent or amazing as my imagination. But Zygam, he had a real picture in his head, real memories, a real sense of what he had lost.
We rounded a corner that led to a dead end. Zygam spoke a word, a symbol glittered in the air and slammed into the wall, and the doorway sized opening appeared. We walked through it to a staircase, which we began to descend.
“After Idris died, I was desolate, as was your mother,” he said. “I think we both found solace in you. You reminded both of us of him. There was a joy to you that was similar to the joy that Idris had. It was as if he’d infected you with his light, and now you would spread it to all you touched.”
It was a sentimental thing to say, and it didn’t even feel like he was talking about me. I realized perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps his notions of my father were as imagined as his notions of me. He had built him up, and perhaps me too, in his mind, as more than we actually were.
“I knew that the illness that took Idris might come for you, too, so I was determined to find Elpida. Determined to make sure it would be there for you if you would need it. When I finally found it, it called to you and you tamed it. It was amazing. I knew that it was fated then. That Idris had gotten sick so that I would search for Elpida, so that I would find it and bring it to you.”
We had descended several flights of stairs. A door opened in front of us and we were now in a small room. “Only, little did I know that it wasn’t just you who needed Elpida. It was me, too. Before your mother left, before she took you, I realized I had it.”
He stopped speaking, and motioned for me to go through the door.
“What did you realize you had?” I asked.
“Ghazer,” he said.
I shook my head. “You can’t have that,” I said. “That’s deadly.”
He nodded. “It is,” he said. “But I had help.”