“We’re talking about taking a tour of the palace while we wait for the breakthrough at the beach,” Alessa told Nastasha. “Are you up for it?”
“Only if there is nothing else I can help with. Is there any news? Anything I should know?”
“Stress is high on the mainland,” Alessa told her. “It’s been a rough morning for the three of us.” She was referring to herself, Makias and Jaimin.
“Of course. You feel everything that’s going on over there, don’t you?” Nastasha asked.
Alessa nodded.
“Jaimin, do you feel it too?”
“I’m trying hard not to,” he said.
Nastasha noticed that Alessa and Makias were clothed in what she could only assume were Celmarean outfits. Makias wore a baggy white shirt of a linen-like fabric, trimmed with blue embroidery, and white pants tucked into boots of bleached suede. Alessa had on a white strapless dress, flounced at the bottom, and accented at the top with leather ribbons and laces. She wore tall boots made from a weave of fine leather ribbons.
After the meal, Alessa and Makias began showing Nastasha, Jaimin and Mascarin around the palace. Mascarin was perceptibly affectionate with Nastasha on the tour, and she responded: closeness here, a squeeze of the hand there, whispers… Alessa and Makias were also behaving as a couple, but they were more subtle about it. Jaimin tried to abide it all.
Nastasha posed a slew of nerdy questions to Alessa and Makias throughout the tour. “Sorry,” she whispered to Mascarin eventually. “I feel I’ve been talking for hours.”
“It’s fine,” he said. “I see how thrilled you are to be here”
“I’m quite passionate about learning,” she said.
“You are an absolute genius,” Mascarin said.
“Does it annoy you? Do I…”
“Please,” he said to her. “Be who you are.”
Only one of Nastasha’s questions actually seemed to fluster Makias: she had asked, “Why do only women rule on Celmarea?”
“Hmm,” Makias replied, nervously, “I suppose only our ancestor, Ariane, knows for sure.”
“It’s because we’re better at it,” Alessa said. Makias gave her a scathing look.
“Before the present era,” Makias said, composing himself, “most nations were ruled by men. And humanity nearly destroyed itself.”
“So, the Celmareans felt men were not to be trusted with leadership?” Nastasha asked.
“The Celmareans wanted to survive, and part of their survival strategy was to contemplate what had gone wrong with the world, and to do the exact opposite.”
“That’s just your theory, Makias,” Alessa said.
“Women have led Celmarea for thousands of years,” he replied, “and the divine spirit has so far not led us down a different path.”
“Fascinating,” said Nastasha. Nastasha actually had no firm opinion on whether men or women were inherently better leaders. It was a topic she had never researched before, and, surprisingly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
The tutor and his son were still confined to their quarters. Just before supper, Prince Jaimin, his associates, and some of the general’s inner circle assembled in the tutor’s living room for an event that was awkward to many: a funeral, led by an army chaplain, for the tutor’s daughter.
The girl’s name was Chaval. She was fifteen, and had been an excellent student in the army school. Like many of her peers at the school, Chaval had fallen in love with Celmarean horses, fishing, and boys.
It was strange for the others to see the tutor break down in tears. The tutor’s son was the only one who reached out to embrace and console the man.
Jaimin almost stepped in to comfort them, knowing that that’s what Elaina would have done, but he held back.
Well after dark, Jaimin was in his chamber preparing for bed, having been told that the diggers might reach the Kel-sei room in the middle of the night, in which case he would be summoned. But he hadn’t even hit the bed when he heard a knock. It was Nastasha.
“Already?” he asked.
“Yes. They’ve breached the wall.”
Jaimin quickly dressed and donned a cloak, and he and Nastasha left under escort.
“This could be it,” Jaimin said.
“I pray that this works,” she said, and then she added in her mind: What are you going to do if it doesn’t?
That wasn’t a helpful thought, and it was one Nastasha instantly regretted, but Jaimin was getting used to hearing what was really going through people’s heads.
“I’m going to try this, and not worry about ‘what if’s,” Jaimin told her.
They walked quickly through the central hall, down the colonnade, and out the main palace doors. The sky glistened with countless stars. The cool, still air felt heavy with dust and smoke. Dozens of solders were in sight, conversing in groups. “Where’s the Sentinel?” Jaimin asked Nastasha.
“It’s been moved to the docks on the north coast.”
“Why? If this works, and we find Elaina,” Jaimin said, “we need to be able to get back to the mainland.”
“I’m sure there are good reasons why they moved it. Don’t worry, we shall get ourselves and Elaina to the ship. We don’t know where Elaina is going to turn up, anyway.”
A generator, running on organic fuel, was rattling away at the entrance to the fresh tunnel that led diagonally down through the sand and rock to the outer wall of what everyone hoped was the Kel-sei chamber.
Soldiers led Nastasha and Jaimin into the tunnel, where torches on sconces lit the way down, except at the tunnel’s end—the excavation spot—where electric lamps flooded the newly-exposed ancient wall with light.
They had to wait while the army blew out the mortar and pulled out enough bricks to make an opening large enough for a person to pass through.
Soldiers aimed one of their flood-lights into the opening, and General Jorge called Jaimin over to have a look. “There you are,” said the general.
At the center of the chamber, partially lit by the flood-light, was the Kel-sei archway. It was real!
But it wasn’t illuminated, as it had been in Jaimin’s visions. There were no writhing patterns on its face. Jaimin could even see the far corner of the room through it. This mythical archway appeared to be a dead relic plopped in the center of an empty room like a museum piece. The ancient air smelled foul and muddy.
It was about a meter hop from the hole in the wall down to the floor of the Kel-sei room. Jaimin moved to make the hop, and the general stopped him. “You’d better let us check out the place first—to make sure it’s safe.”
The general sent in two officers with torches and gunbows. They hopped down into the room and split off in different directions—one planning to check behind the archway while the other cleared the nearer end of the room.
But, after a few steps, one of the officers stopped. The other dropped to one knee.
“What is it?” the general asked them.
“I feel…sick…” the first soldier cried.
“Come back at once. Both of you,” the general commanded.
The one who had spoken hurried back, and the general helped him up into the opening. The other one, who had fallen to his knee, didn’t respond, and he stayed frozen in his position. The torch fell from his hand.
“Must be bad air,” the general said, waving to some of the other troops. “Run in there and pull him out, quickly! Hold your breath.” Three soldiers rushed out, grabbed the paralyzed soldier, and brought him back to the opening in the wall. All who had entered the room appeared ill now. Their fellow troops sat them down against the tunnel wall. Their eyes appeared sunken, their faces gaunt, their breathing labored.
“I held my breath,” one of them said. “But after a few steps there’s a heaviness…” He ran out of breath and had to pause a moment. And then he added: “and pain.”
“Pain?” the general asked.
The soldier nodded. “Pain all over. From the head to the…” He indicate
d his feet. “Getting better now. It can’t be the air. I was holding my breath the whole time.”
Alessa and Makias had just arrived, and they watched as the general checked on each of his sickened men.
“It’s there,” Jaimin told Alessa. “The archway. But it looks…dead. It’s not glowing or moving.”
“It glows and moves when you see it while in the spirit,” Alessa said. “I would expect it to look different through physical eyes.”
“But will going through it work?” Jaimin asked her.
“I have no idea,” Alessa said. “I’ve told you that from the start.”
“Jaimin, you saw what happened to these men,” Nastasha said. “You won’t even be able to get to the archway. The air in that room is toxic.”
“I don’t think it’s the air,” said Makias, who had been paying close attention to the injured soldiers.
“What is it, then?” Nastasha asked.
“Some kind of ward.”
“What’s a ward?” Jaimin asked Makias.
“Well,” Makias replied, “you know from our tour how parts of the palace were imbued by the ancients with a certain energy? Like the cloud in the Temple of Knowledge? That’s likely what we have here. Only this time it’s an energy meant to keep the living away from the archway.” Makias looked at Alessa, and she shrugged.
“No passage for the incarnate,” Nastasha said. “That’s what it said on the diagram of the room. I bet living people can literally not get through.”
“Well, can you get rid of the ward?” Jaimin asked Makias.
“No one alive today can clear a ward,” he replied. “Not even Priestess Ariana. It’s an ancient practice nobody has had the need to learn in generations.”
Jaimin looked over at the archway. “We’re so close,” he said. “Just making it across the room and through that gate could bring Elaina back.”
“We could go back to the archives,” Nastasha said. “Learn how to clear the ward.”
“There’s no time,” Jaimin said. “I’m going to go for it.” He took off his cloak and handed it to a soldier.
Nastasha grabbed his arm. “Think about this, Jaimin. It’s not glowing like you described it. Maybe the archway doesn’t even work for the living. Maybe for us, it is dead.”
“If it’s dead, why is there a ward?” he asked.
“You could die.”
“I’m not going to die,” Jaimin said.
“Are you so sure?”
“My grandmother once told me I’m going to have many children,” Jaimin said. “How can that come to pass if I’m dead?”
“All right, you shit,” Nastasha said, furious. “At least let me tie a rope around your leg so I can drag your body out.”
“Agreed.”
They obtained a sturdy rope from the soldiers, and Nastasha secured it firmly around Jaimin’s leg, using double knots. “Augh,” she said. “The things you make me do. There. That’s not coming off.”
He opened his arms for a hug. “This better not be good-bye,” Nastasha said, and she hugged him firmly. “If you die, I’ll murder you.”
“Thanks for the encouragement.”
Alessa came up to give him a hug as well. “Don’t let her pull me back,” Jaimin whispered in Alessa’s ear. “No matter what happens.”
“If this doesn’t work,” Alessa said to him, “let Elaina go. There are people in this world who need you.”
Jaimin nodded, but didn’t look in Alessa’s eyes.
“Do you understand?”
He didn’t answer. “Make sure the rope lets out quickly,” Jaimin told Nastasha. “I’m going to run for it.”
Jaimin hopped through the opening into the ancient room, got into sprint position, and aimed himself directly at the archway.
“Ready?” Jaimin called back to Nastasha.
She replied: “Wait just a…let us…ready now, go ahead.”
Jaimin took off.
As soon as he hit the ward, it felt like he’d been snagged in a net. It didn’t bounce him back, but it wasn’t going to let him forward either. Defiant, Jaimin dove forward, managing to achieve a bit more distance. He landed hard on his forearms.
The ward’s pain was already coming on like the headache one gets when drinking something too cold, only much worse, and it affected every part of him. And it didn’t subside. He very much wanted to cry out, but he didn’t want to panic Nastasha, who would surely pull him back.
He lurched forward again, and again, gaining some ground each time. The archway stood just a few meters away now. His will locked in a battle with his pain, he crawled, arm over arm, across the dusty stone floor.
The last thing he noticed before he fell on his face was that his hands and lower arms were shriveling.
This ward was designed to kill, not just dissuade.
Landing cheek to the floor, his body reflexively gasped for breath once, twice… His vision began to cloud. His brain was shutting down: thoughts, senses, vital functions fading all at once.
From afar, Nastasha caught a glimpse of Jaimin’s face, and she screamed in horror. She could hardly recognize him! His face was gaunt and wrinkled like a dried plum. His head was half caved in. She started to pull back on the rope, but Alessa clamped her hands on Nastasha’s wrists and stopped her. She glared at Alessa and wailed: “Let me!”
Peace, child, Alessa told Nastasha in her mind, in a commanding voice. Look what’s happening!
Jaimin lay still on the ground, with his hands and face shrunken and shriveled, but Nastasha noticed a white glow just at the tips of his fingers.
From there, like a flame touched to fuel, the white light moved quicker than anyone had ever seen it move. Jaimin’s hands lit up like white torches, and became restored. Next, his arms, his neck, and his face radiated an immensely bright divine light that threw a sharp shadow of the archway onto the back of the chamber. The light was renewing Jaimin, returning him to life. And he began to move again! Alessa released her grip on Nastasha, who just stared in awe.
Soon, Jaimin’s body beamed light through every pore in his thick green clothing. He got back up onto his elbows, and then his knees, and then he stood, and then he walked.
He walked resolutely toward the archway.
And he stepped through it.
Nothing happened.
“What happened?” Nastasha asked Alessa. “Did it work?”
Alessa didn’t answer. She just watched.
Jaimin, still glowing like a white sun, turned around and stepped back through the Kel-sei archway. To the observers it looked like nothing was happening.
“It’s not working,” Nastasha said to Alessa. “Tell me what he feels.”
“The divine spirit is keeping him alive. You should remember how that feels,” Alessa said. “No, it didn’t work.”
Jaimin didn’t look angry. Bathed in the light of the divine spirit, he seemed serene. He tried stepping through a few more times, and then he abandoned his quest.
He slowly walked back toward the others.
When he escaped the ward’s radius, the glow gradually faded.
Nastasha helped Jaimin up into the excavation tunnel and gave him another huge hug.
“I’m so sorry, Jaimin,” she said.
“I was prepared for this,” he replied. “I just had to try.”
“What now, Your Highness?” General Jorge asked Jaimin.
Jaimin looked at Alessa, and then at Nastasha. “We sail to the mainland,” he said. “That’s where my duty is now.”
General Jorge slowly walked Jaimin up out of the tunnel as the others stayed back, absorbing what had just transpired.
Nastasha said to Alessa, “He’s leaving her. I can’t believe he’s leaving her. I didn’t think he would be able to…”
“We’ll see how he feels when the effects of the light wear off,” Alessa said.
Nastasha knew exactly what Alessa meant. Nastasha, too, had experienced the divine light, and she knew how much of a numbing, p
acifying effect it could have on the spirit, even after it faded. And Jaimin had been bathed in it longer than anyone had been before. But something didn’t make sense to Nastasha: Alessa was Elaina’s closest friend, and Jaimin’s change of plans didn’t seem to be affecting her at all. There was only one explanation—Alessa knew more than she was letting on.
“Jaimin was right! You know something more, don’t you?” Nastasha said. “About the future? About how things are going to turn out?”
Alessa was quiet.
“Why are you holding out on us? What must we do now?” Nastasha pleaded.
“Once revealed, the future cannot be changed,” Alessa said to her. “If I did know anything about the future, you must understand why I couldn’t reveal it to you or Jaimin. Neither of you are ready for that responsibility.”
“Elaina told me the future once,” Nastasha said. “She said there would be a man in my life, and there is.”
“She was careless for telling you that,” Alessa said.
“What do you mean?”
“The future should only be revealed to those who have fully accepted the will of the divine spirit.”
“Maybe Elaina knew that one day I would be worthy.”
Alessa seemed surprised and impressed by this answer. “Maybe,” Alessa said, her attitude softer. “Maybe you are farther along in your journey than I know.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Jaimin called for everyone to prepare to leave the island at once. Despite the late hour, and the darkness, they would set off on horseback through the forest to reach the Sentinel and the other vessels berthed at the small port in the northeast. Only once the ships were headed back to the mainland would sleep be allowed.
Alessa and Makias were ready first. Suited up in chain mail, they conversed with General Jorge in the palace’s central hall while they waited for the others to finish packing.
“Surely once the war is won,” the general said to Alessa, “your people will want to live here.”
“Many will,” she said. “Makias and I will.”
“I’ll keep it safe for you until you return,” the general said. “Are you two married?”
Alessa giggled. “No, sir. Not currently.”
“Well, you make a fine couple,” he said. “You should start a family when you get back.” Alessa raised her eyebrows flirtingly at Makias. “And here’s another prospective family…” the general said. Mascarin and Nastasha were arriving.
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