Hunter Hunted (The Eternals Book 2)

by Richard M. Ankers

  Our passage was torturous by Eternal standards, but the monks could not have travelled faster even if their lives depended on it. I hoped they did not. Our pace did, however, provide an opportunity for a painstaking scouring of the scenery for any sign of Chantelle's passing. My senses worked overtime, scent, sight and mind striving to identify any proof we drew closer to our quarries. They revealed nothing. It was not that I disbelieved what Sunyin had said, not at all, just I lacked the same faith as he, and required visual confirmation. Unfortunately, it was not forthcoming. If Chantelle, Raphael and the Marquis had taken the same route, then they had done so without stirring the ground. There was not one trace of anything other than the planet's lingering death.

  * * *

  “Jean,” Sunyin said with a gentle tug at my shirt sleeve.

  “Yes, my friend.”

  “We feel drawn to the mountain ahead. We do not know why, but we feel we should go over it, not around.”

  “Are you sure?” I looked to the monstrous lump of chiselled granite looming before us. “I mean no offence, but it looks an ascent you and your brothers are incapable of making.”

  “Thank you for your concern, but I think you will find us a hardy band.”

  “There is a difference between hardy and foolhardy.” The words escaped my mouth in my usual – speak before thinking fashion – but if my faux pas offended the little monk, he did not let it show. For that small mercy, I was grateful.

  “If you do not wish it, Jean, we shall understand.”

  “I apologise, my friend, I was merely concerned the extra time and energy involved would be better spent conserved. If that is the way you wish to proceed, then that is the way we shall.”

  “We do not wish it, we feel it.”

  “I wish I could say the same.”

  “You do just in different ways. Time means less to an Eternal. You do not heed the instincts of old because you need not act upon them.”

  “And, you do?”

  “Yes, my brothers and I have a set amount of time in this world, so the desire to understand what our minds tell us is of great importance.” Sunyin nodded at his own words as if reconfirming them.

  “But I thought you incapable of…”

  “Death from natural causes,” he interjected.

  “Yes,” I agreed, glad he had said it and not I.

  “We are bound to our genetic code much as you, if not more so. Did you think death beyond us?”

  “I presumed, what with the monks populating the monastery for so long and I dare say Shangri-La the same.”

  “No, we are shackled by the same terms of existence humanity always is,” he continued.

  “Was,” I corrected.

  “If you prefer. I thought you would have realised this when you saw our older brother die.”

  “You know about that, how?” I said surprised.

  “We sensed it.”

  “How so?” I pressed, intrigued by the monks' biologies.

  “Imagine having three fingers on one hand, four on the other, knowing you lacked one even though you had never possessed it. That is the only way I can explain it. We feel a loss, a lessening of ourselves. As the years have progressed, and the Marquis has generated less and less of us, the feeling has become ever more apparent. Our shared memories dwindle much the same as the sun.”

  “Then he is truly responsible for all your lives?”

  “To an extent, yes, as much as anyone could be, anyway.”

  “So how do you know so much of those who have passed before you?” I grabbed Sunyin by the elbow as he looked to stumble.

  “Thank you, Jean,” he smiled. “And in answer to your question, we feel it, just as we do everything else. The universe is composed of energy. This energy swirls and moves between the living, the dead, and the places in between; we are a part of this as are you. It is only that we feel its movement, whereas you have forgotten how, that marks us as different.”

  “I see,” I said scratching my chin even though I didn't.

  Sunyin burst into a shrill laughter that ran throughout the monks like a river to the sea. At first, I was a touch angered by their amusement at my expense, but it was contagious, and I soon joined them in their hysterics.

  “You sound so much like another we knew,” he said once their mirth had subsided.

  “Do I?” I laughed. “Have I a brother of my own?” The look Sunyin gave silenced my laughter, and the lowering of his head told me he would say no more.

  * * *

  We walked on until the approaching mountain dominated the night horizon, then consumed it. By the time we started up those barren slopes there was nothing before us except a wall of rock.

  The mountain rose like a dark, blistering bunion into a maddened charcoal sky, a swathe of bulbous clouds having consumed the night. The whole landscape was one of inhospitable solids, its unholy nature compounded by the cloying smell of charcoal. Loose dust soon coated us in ever-blackening suits, although the effect was somewhat lost on me compared to the others. Yet, despite all that grot, I thought the subtlest aroma, as of a sweet floral nature, punctured the staleness on occasion. It was bizarre for there was nothing on that desolate rock but ourselves. I put it down to an overly vivid imagination and dispelled the notion.

  Up and up we climbed, Aurora and I assisting the little ones where we could. Most of the time they refused our help, on others, they had no option but to accept. Our steady rise was almost proportional to that of the infrequent moon. The whole experience had a strange symmetry to it that I thought the monks would've enjoyed explaining if they'd had the energy to do so.

  The climb became an arduous obsession for the little ones. I saw how they struggled. However, not once did they complain, nor fall back. My admiration grew exponentially for them during those arduous hours.

  When Aurora broke from our wards, apparently content they could manage on their own, I was more than a little surprised when she drew close. We had remained distanced throughout the evening's onset and hadn't spoken since we'd left the burial ground.

  “I have been thinking about what you said.” Aurora's iced tones cut through the deadened silence like the first crack of an Alpine storm.

  “About what?” I replied, having quite forgotten.

  “About vengeance.”

  “In what way?”

  The girl that looked to me appeared strangely aged to she who I'd spoken to last. Aurora looked troubled, desperate even, and I pitied her in her less than pristine robes. She looked more ordinary, it did not suit so angelic a creature.

  “I do not like vengeance. I have mused on it these past hours and am uncomfortable with the feeling. It sits like a stone in my gullet that won't allow anything good to pass.”

  “I feel that way all the time,” I jested, then apologised for my ill manners.

  “Does it not consume you, Jean? Do you not wish things could have been different?”

  “Indeed, I do, Aura. I wish for nothing more for it gnaws at my very soul, or whatever we Eternals have in place of one. I would have everything in my life redone if I could.”

  “Do you blame any one person for your unease?”

  “I have blamed many people, but none more so than myself.”

  “Why?” she asked, cocking her head to one side in her usual way. The moon appeared over the mountaintop at that moment, slipped between the cloud, and reflected in those deepest pools of blue that were her eyes. She looked once more the goddess in those seconds. I wished I could've taken away her pain, but I could not.

  “Because when it boils down to it, dear girl, I could have said no, and didn't. At any second in my centuries of life, I might have chosen a different path, my own, but instead, I blindly stumbled from one instant to the next.”

  “Do I have that choice to make, Jean?”

  She looked at me, her eyes pleading. I couldn't imagine the loneliness Aurora must have felt in her lifetime and did the only thing I could think to lessen her anguish.
/>   “I believe you have made that choice in asking the question. I believe you will be just fine.”

  “Do you, Jean, do you really?” she all but begged.

  “Please forgive me, I do not mean to have listened in on your conversation,” Sunyin said wandering over, “but, if I may?”

  “You may,” I replied, somewhat relieved by his intervention.

  “My brothers and I know of your life, sweetest child.”

  “You do!” Aurora said startled.

  “Yes, we do. We have meditated on your place in this world as we have our own, and even Jean's.” Sunyin bowed to me, and I returned it. “We believe your loneliness will soon end. There will be a time in the near future when you will know the happiness you have thus far never felt.”

  “Honestly?” Aurora said with tears in her beautiful eyes.

  “We are as incapable of lying, as you are of looking anything less than sublime.” Sunyin bowed to his questioner, lowered his bald head and continued his climb. But within a few steps, it became evident that he, and the rest of us, did not have to climb any more.

  “The summit!” I exclaimed as a subtle scent assailed my senses once more.

  “You smell it too,” Aurora said, as the Sunyins staggered onto the level surface in various stages of exhaustion.

  “I know it, dislike it, but cannot place it.”

  “It is lavender, the very faintest whiff,” she replied. “My brothers close on us.” She spoke the words without intonation, it simply was, and that was how she saw it.

  “That is not good,” I replied straining to see back to the horizon we'd left behind.

  “But that is,” said Sunyin. He pointed in the opposite direction where the faintest flicker glowed against a lightening background: fire.

  “What should we do?” Aurora asked. “We dare not leave the monks to chase down the others.”

  “No, I agreed,” sucking in a great intake of un-required air.

  “May we rest a short while, Jean?” Sunyin asked. “The sight of our brothers has settled our hearts and the distance will close sooner if we are recuperated even a touch.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  “I too,” Aurora concurred.

  “Thank you,” was all Sunyin managed. The monk turned back to his brothers almost collapsing in the process.

  Aurora tugged at my arm, drawing me away before I had a chance to aid he or his fellows. I followed her a slight distance from the others where she pulled me in conspiratorially.

  “Jean, if these Sunyins sense their brothers' proximity and strive to reunite with them, why do the others not? And how is it that one party has gained such distance on the other?”

  “I don't know, but you're only voicing concerns that have troubled my own thoughts.”

  “It does not feel right,” she added.

  “I agree. I expected to come across the others long ago.”

  “It is a puzzle,” Aurora noted.

  “It is suspicious,” I corrected. “I think it best if we both keep a vigilant eye out. If your brothers catch up to us, I doubt they will allow themselves to be stalled twice.”

  “They will not. But we need not keep a lookout.”

  “Why?” I replied.

  “I see them,” said she, pointing to a white glow on the boundaries of our southern vision.

  “Oh, great,” I bemoaned.

  Chapter Twenty

  -

  Luminous

  Grella's apparent reluctance to harm me was a dilemma. I would have said kill, but it was such a harsh choice of word. Whether to share the fact with Aurora was one I postponed until more certain he didn't.

  Any conversation concerning Aurora's family was one that required careful consideration. She had alluded to her family's disdain for herself several times, and although I suspected there more to it, I understood only too well the pain of a certain mind being challenged. Yet, Grella's hints at none of it being his choice had altered the situation dramatically. So many what ifs to be deliberated over, too many, in truth. For better or worse, I chose the path of silence.

  “You look to ponder when action is required,” Aurora snapped, quite out of character.

  “I am pondering over what action to take, dear girl: we cannot resist them, we cannot stall them, and with the monks in tow, we shall never outrun them.”

  “Then, you must leave us,” came Sunyin's level-headed response having risen once more. His ashen pallor suggested he might not have managed it again.

  “I will not,” I said.

  “You must. Aurora's Nordic brethren do not wish harm upon us, not as I interpret it. They seek their sister's return, not our capture. You should go ahead, reach our brothers, and then ask them to wait. We shall follow with all the haste our mortal frames allow.”

  “I will not. I will not be driven from what I know to be right, not again.” I stamped on the ground like a petulant child.

  “He is correct, Jean, it is our only choice. We have completed half of what we set out to do. Now that we know these monks are safe, we must make sure of the others.” Aurora regarded me coolly, too coolly for my liking.

  “How the hell can you say that!” I exploded. “Your brother's set their goddamn wolves upon them last time.”

  “They were sent for me, not the monks, and even then to track and delay, not harm. It was not the wolves' fault that nature drove them to kill. Besides, they have no more wolves with which to do so again. Thanks to me,” she added with a look of such hurt that my anger subsided that instant.

  “That is not true.”

  “It is.”

  “Aura, I'm telling you, I heard another wolf when last I departed your brothers. I quite forgot about it until now, but I did.” I spoke with a tempered rationale, my anger stabilised.

  “Strange,” she said puzzled. “They always hunt in packs of ten and that is how many I killed.”

  She cringed at the word ten. I visualised her thoughts then, they were written all over her porcelain features. Memories of Nordvind running over the Arctic ice to be with her, her only companion, two souls drawn together in a world of almost perpetual snow. Poor girl, how desperate she must have been. How much her kind had to answer for. Almost as much as my own.

  “Well, they have either changed those rules, or we will have Vladivar's own hounds to deal with at some point. Either way, the monks are not safe.”

  “They will not be safe until those that track them are dealt with. We have not overtaken Chantelle, therefore, she must be ahead of us. That again indicates we must proceed to the others.”

  “I… I do not feel…comfortable with that,” I stammered.

  “It is the only course of action, my friend.” Sunyin lay a steadying hand upon my arm.

  I shook it off and walked a few paces from my companions, leant against the mountain's very pinnacle and sighed. “Will I never make a choice of my own free will?” I punched the rock in frustration, hung my head to hide my temper.

  When I deemed myself calm enough, I turned to see Sunyin's smile and Aurora's look of concern. I warranted neither. The disgust I felt at my inability to finish anything I started rankled deep within my gut.

  “We must leave, Jean, every second counts.”

  “All right, Aura, as you wish it. We shall go, but I will not pretend to hide my thoughts on the matter.”

  “I understand,” she acknowledged with a polite inclination of her head. She then paced back to the makeshift blood sack where she discarded all but a few of its contents.

  “And what should I say to you, my small friend?” I asked Sunyin.

  “You do not have to say anything, but I would like to say something to you.”

  “Hm, and what would that be?”

  “Please save our father. I, my brothers, and all those who still reside within Shangri-La want nothing else. We would give our lives freely to save his. We would not have lives at all if not for he.”

  “Is that not a touch dramatic?” I sneered, th
en instantly regretted it. “I'm sorry, Sunyin, old habits,” I apologised.

  “You are frustrated that is all. We understand the reasons why and believe that someday soon you shall be free of them.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do, or rather, we do. There is not one iota of doubt in our belief that through you we shall find that which we both seek.”

  “And that is?”

  “Freedom, Jean.”

  “I have my freedom,” I replied.

  “Have you, dear friend? Have you?”

  The little monk gave a shallow bow and returned to his brothers in meditative contemplation. Aurora stood beside them awaiting me.

  I had no choice but to do as the others wished, but still chanced a surreptitious glance to Aurora's brothers. A halo of white light shimmered on my vision's peripheries. There was, however, no mistaking the fact the white fog would not remain there for long.

  With nothing more than a nod to the monks, we set off. I had never liked goodbyes.

  Down the mountainside we sped. So fast my companion and I travelled, that should we have created a rockslide by the force of our passage, we should have outrun it. We descended at such a pace the distant fires of the second party of Sunyins soon vanished into the night. Rather sooner than I would have preferred, we were very much alone.

  * * *

  We'd been running for about twenty minutes, silent passengers on the same road, when the clouds that had obscured the night sky disgorged their bellies upon us, and how.

  “You didn't see this one coming,” I attempted a poor joke.

  “I did not have the heart to tell you,” Aurora replied, her cloak streaming out behind her into the whitewashed night.