by O. J. Lowe
He had no idea if her talk of the vision was true or not. Perhaps. Perhaps not. The storm at his back… An interesting picture to conjure up within the magic of the imagination. Ruud glanced over to the fortune teller, saw her wink at him. He smiled.
“A storm?” he asked, almost dismissive in his voice. It was no less of an act than her tears had been. “You wish to see something as trivial as that?”
Ever since she’d put the image in his head, he’d been drawing the power into himself from all around him, felt the Kjarn run through every fibre of his being. This would be disastrous if he got it wrong. He’d seen it before. Seen people die from it. It didn’t do to dwell on what might happen, better to focus on what he knew would occur. Ruud threw an arm into the air, fingers jabbing hard towards the sky and he fought the urge to wince as pure white lightning ripped from his outstretched digits and tore into the air, rising higher and higher until eventually it could no longer be seen.
The leader didn’t appear impressed. “Show tricks.” Behind him, the watching crowd was muttering and grumbling, some of them starting to back away from him. If he could hear any of their words, he wouldn’t have been surprised to hear them be uncomplimentary. They looked to be straddling that unsettling line between worried and angry. That was usually the catalyst that led to violence in his experience, a full-scale lynch mob ready to mobilise its fear.
I’ll give you show tricks, Ruud thought with a wry smile. He brought his hand down suddenly and drove two fingers towards the dirt.
He might have been the only one expecting it. Perhaps the girl had as well. He heard screams as the lightning came back down, five, six, seven, eight columns of sheer destructive force hammering into the grassland around him in one narrow circle, he could feel it driving his hair up on end underneath his hat and he threw out his arms theatrically. He fought the urge to shield his eyes from the flash, instead only narrowed them to a slit. The smell was intense, the damage harrowing. The grass lit up immediately, fires erupting into existence where the lightning had struck the land and he threw up his other hand, watched as the fires rose with him. In a matter of moments, he was surrounded, walls of flame the size of elephants. Sweat drizzled his forehead, he stared impassively through the dancing fires towards the shocked crowd. Any hint of dissent had faded into silence as he brought up both hands and smiled, showed them that there was nothing in his unguarded palms. He hitched up his sleeves and then thrust them out in front of him, directing his will towards the fires.
If they’d been shocked to see them rise, the expressions on their face as the flames subsided into insignificance was something truly special, winds sweeping through them, herding them like orange-and-yellow cows into one small column, a pillar that wilted under his glare, spinning and spinning like an out of control dervish until the heat of the fires could no longer take it, burning out into inexistence. Only a scattering of glowing embers remained across the grass, not hungry enough to catch alight but large enough to make the point.
“I am a man of the storm,” he said. He made a point of glancing towards their wagons, as if silently implying something. “Unless you want me to direct it against your very lives, I suggest that you grant me my request and I shall depart you as swiftly as I can.” He didn’t know if he’d be able to do it again in quick succession. The moment the lightning had hit the ground, he’d felt the energy he’d taken inside him fade away, an emptiness inside him growing and growing under lack of nourishment. He felt light-headed, it hadn’t been a hugely taxing display but repeating it in quick succession might well put him on his ass. That wouldn’t do much for his credibility.
They’d scattered, ran back towards their wagons, leaving him alone barely ten feet from the girl. So much for them not wanting her to be alone with him. Truth being told, he was a little disgusted with the way their chivalry had faded into cowardice. He studied her impassively.
“Did you really see me doing that in a vision?” he asked, genuinely curious. “Or did you hope for the best?”
“Perhaps,” she said, her voice a little hoarse. “Perhaps I saw you doing it, perhaps I saw myself telling my father that you would do it and you had to follow through. Regardless, you did it, so does it matter?”
“You could have shown him some more fake tears,” Ruud said. “I almost found it convincing.”
“That part wasn’t an act,” she said, a little too defensive for his liking. “If they’d fought you, there would have been a big pile of bodies here. There would have been death in more ways than one.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted that,” Ruud said. He meant it as well. “I came here with the best intentions. Not to fight.”
“My name’s Ancuta,” she said. “I probe the veils of reality and pursue the mysteries that most don’t even know exist.”
“Well I do so cut the crap,” Ruud said. “If you’re half as good as you make out, then you’ll know why I’m here.” He paused to let that sink in. “You’ll know who I am. You’ll know what I do. You’ll know what I want.”
She blinked, he saw her eyes swim as she pondered it all. Just a faintest hint of electric blue across the iris, barely noticeable unless you knew what you were looking for. If he didn’t know what it meant, he might have thought he’d imagined it. Such blissful ignorance had long since been lost to him. He could no more have missed it than ignored it wilfully.
“I saw you and her,” she said. “Ms Arventino. Your fates have been knotted together in the past and will continue to do so long after she has expired.”
He didn’t surprise easily. Outwardly, it might not have registered on his face, but the shock hit him like a hammer. “What do you mean? If she dies… She’s going to die?”
“Everyone dies, Master Baxter,” she said, her voice suddenly an uncanny impression of Sharon’s. There’d been a time when he’d known that voice so well, had heard it every day of the year. Hearing it again, he hadn’t realised how much he’d missed it from his life “Everyone dies in the end. Some deaths are closer than others. She didn’t want to hear what her future held. Ignorance makes people happy. Goes by another name. Denial. Denying a truth does not mean that it will fail to come to pass. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“If she dies then how does my fate continue to tie to hers?” He chose not to answer her question. Debating philosophy wasn’t why he’d come here.
“Because of what you make that death stand for. The spark that lights the flames of reaction. That was what I thought then, it’s what I say now. Death is not the end, it is a cycle of rebirth and regeneration. For the new to flourish, the old must die.”
He said nothing, a few seconds of silence that might well have been an eternity as he pondered. He could still smell the ozone where the lightning had struck the ground around him, burnt grass and torn earth. Only his control over it had stopped fires from spreading across the plains. It was Canterage, the rains would have quelled them in the end but what damage would be done before that happened? He wondered what the nearest weather institute was thinking about the freak lightning that they’d just monitored. Anything to avoid thinking about what Ancuta had just said.
“She cares about you, you know,” the fortune teller said. Her voice cut into his thoughts like a knife. “I think she even misses you. Wishes you’d get in touch sometimes. She might have everything anyone else would want but I think there’s a part of her that’d go back.”
He was surprised by the guilt that clutched at him. He’d long since tried to make himself above anything like that. It was good not to have regrets. They crippled you. Made you doubt yourself. Useless. He’d learned from his mistakes, or so he thought, it didn’t do to dwell on them.
“It was for her own good,” he said. “She never wanted this life. Her father forced her into it. She had his blood. She had the same gift as him. He’d have died before he let her squander it.” He didn’t add that Canderous Arventino had died and his daughter had foresworn her power. As prophecy went, it was hardly on the
level of what Ancuta was coming out with.
“And she’ll live or die by her choices,” she said. “I see her death. Were she stronger, she might have been able to prevent it.”
“When?” Ruud asked, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. “When does she die?”
“I can’t say. That is beyond me. Only that it comes within the year. You cannot stop it. I suggest you don’t try.”
He made the decision in that moment, one that wasn’t going to be pleasant but regardless, it needed to be done. Not just his future depended on it, but the entire future of the Vedo and that was something he couldn’t afford to pass up.
“Yes,” she said. “I know you think I need to come with you to your sanctuary. Learn how to use this gift. You think I can be useful.”
“And do you?” Ruud asked.
“Do I come with you or do am I going to be useful to you?” she asked coyly. “You won’t be able to take me without a fight. My father won’t want me to leave. Not without something of equal value.”
“And what, pray do tell,” Ruud said. “Is that going to be?”
Her smile lit up the field. “Come. Let’s go see him.”
The bad feeling didn’t fade as he went to follow her back towards the wagons. It appeared that the Kjarn wanted him to find this young woman. True seers were exceptionally rare, especially ones with power this potent. He’d never quite seen anything like it in the old order or the new. Either they went mad long before they found the balance needed to switch it off, or their talents had never been as grandiose as they implied they were, and they wilted under the weight of expectation placed upon them. Because after all, who didn’t want to know the future before it happened.
If he was honest, it unnerved him. It unnerved him a lot. Better to keep it close. Whatever it’d take, he had to take her back with him. His order was in its infancy, they’d need every advantage they could to survive. If someone had a gift, they needed to nurture it, utilise it for the good of the Vedo.
For too long, the five kingdoms had been without them. They’d been wiped out, torn themselves to shreds. A suicide knell for a group that had been slowly stagnating for hundreds of years, grown bloated and complacent, set in their archaic ways that bore little regard for a changing world. Ruud didn’t know why he had been spared. He hadn’t asked for it.
Now that he had though, he had his duty. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes they had before. He couldn’t afford to. Nobody else knew what lurked behind the scenes of the kingdom. Without their eternal foes, that power had only grown unchecked over the last half decade. Whenever he ventured back into society, he could see the hints of their work everywhere, power sought for the sake of it with little regard for using said power for anything less than selfish gains.
The kingdoms would crack. He’d seen that much themselves. The Vedo were needed, the scales remained unbalanced without them. It was time to start re-dressing that imbalance. He just hoped that when it came, he’d prepared them to the best of his ability. If he hadn’t, it would be disastrous for all. If he hadn’t, he doubted he’d be alive to see it all come crashing down. A strange mix of regret and relief tugged at him, if that were to be the case. A war was coming, and he needed his troops to be at their best.
That was tomorrow though, and this was today. For now, the future was a long way away. You could only be mindful of it and prepare for the worst.
A Note from the Author.
Thank you for the time spent reading this book, taking the time to spend your days in this world I created. I hope that you enjoyed reading it just as much as I did writing it. Just a quick note, if you did, please, please, please leave a review on Amazon for me. Even if it’s just two words, it can make a lot of difference for an independent author like me.
Eternal thanks in advance. If you enjoyed this one, why not check out other books I’ve written available at Amazon.
OJ.
Also by the Author.
The Spirit Callers Saga.
The Great Game. – Available now.
The Forever Cycle. – Available June 2018.
Tales of the Spirit Callers Saga.
Appropriate Force. – Available now.
Homecoming. – Coming 2018
The Sentinel Chronicles.
Darkstar. – Coming 2018
The Madame K Chronicles.
God of Lions – Coming 2018
About the Author.
Born in 1990 in Wakefield, OJ Lowe always knew that one day he’d want to become a writer. He tried lots of other things, including being a student, being unemployed, being a salesman and working in the fashion industry. None of them really replaced that urge in his heart, so a writer he became and after several false starts, The Great Game was published. He remains to be found typing away at a laptop in Yorkshire, moving closer every day to making childhood dreams a reality.
He can be found on Twitter at @OJLowe_Author