He half regretted taking the book, knowing what it might mean to Emaranthe, and even Ivo, Jadeth, and Jaeger. Even Dehil has some stake in learning about the Crown of Gods and why it may be so critical to their effort in stopping the Dro-Aconi after all this time.
But he didn’t, did he? He did not want to admit that he cared about the war between the Immortals and their enemy, but he did, and once he found what he sought, he would return the spellbound object to Sesti and they could continue their quest to find a way to where they needed to go.
The last brazier guttered, he stepped out of the narrow, pitch black hallway and onto a terrace that opened up between the sheer cliffs and walls of the Citadel. To the untrained eye it perched on a series of precipices that seemed destined to collapse, but the expansive open-air walkways, terraces, and tunnels were far sturdier than they seemed. The Windwalkers, he knew, did nothing poorly.
The dark chill of the night air turned his breath into white puffs as he made his way across the expansive platform. Large and spacious, the thousands of terraces were perfect for a species with massive wings.
He shrugged the pack off his shoulder and let it drop to the smooth, reflective stone floor. Plain of color, it was highly polished and reflected the night sky. He found his image staring back, his glowing eyes overly bright and obscene. He ignored his reflection and pulled the book free with shaking fingers.
It sat in his broad hands and did nothing. He sank to his knees and placed it on the mirrored floor, desperation making his movements clumsy.
“Please, help me book. I need to speak with Tanari–Light.”
The book remained still, a mere object.
He placed his palm atop the cover and willed it to do something, anything.
Nothing.
Hot tears burned his eyes. The sleet laden wind whipped strands of graying black hair across his face and across his eyelashes, blurring his vision. The sting of that was no match for the crushing ache turning his heart to ashes.
“Tanari, speak to me, please. I don’t know what I am to do.”
His hand burned hot against the leather cover and he jerked it away. A charred handprint remained.
“What?” He turned his palm up and studied his unburned hand.
He cautiously replaced his hand atop his own charred handprint. Had not Emaranthe done similar? His hand burned again. He gritted his teeth and ignored the pain.
Lightning followed the heat, bolts of pain that surged through his flesh and blood.
A scream ripped through the world. His. Gabaran clawed his fingers into the leather cover and waited for death.
The Book of Gods ~ Gabaran
Darkness rushed through. A cold with it. So deep, so vast. So…empty?
Awareness of his limbs came first. They tingled, the nerves raw and twitchy. The hand on the book spasmed and jerked free.
Gabaran blinked and saw.
A darkness.
An emptiness.
The Void.
So foreign. So familiar.
Unseen fingers of air trailed goose bumps along the exposed flesh of his neck. Blind in the dark, Gabaran shook out his hand until the burning resided, and his eyes adjusted to seeing when there was only nothing.
Half dizzy, he squinted as the vast blackness became a vague grey in the distance. The grey lightened until a haze made seeing just possible. He glanced down at his stinging fingers and cold skin, just able to see their outline in the odd gray-darkness.
“Where am I?” he finally asked out loud. His deep voice croaked at the end, and he struggled to swallow.
No answer. He was alone.
Gabaran’s fingers curled into fists, his gaze not really seeing the scarred, calloused, flesh and bone.
His fists relaxed and he studied the marred palms with no little sorrow. His hands were large, strong, and could do so much more than hold a bow or release an arrow. But what could he do to fix a world gone so wrong when he knew nothing, not even what he was?
“Help me, Light.” He peered up into the odd darkness. “I don’t understand what is happening. Or why. I just know that I have to do something.”
Tiny sparks of light twinkled and flickered in the dark far above. Or, he thought it was far–but there was no sense of time, distance, ending, or beginning.
Gabaran’s gaze fell in defeat, his broad shoulders hunched beneath his black cloak. He reached for the scrap of parchment and clutched it to his chest with shaking fingers. A cold wind tore at him without warning and his grip tightened. The black cloak billowed, just visible as a shadow to his gaze. Even his odd eyes were of no help here.
“It means you are discovering things that you were always meant to know, Gabaran.”
His head snapped up, his jaw unhinged. She stood before him, radiant where only darkness had been.
“Light.”
Her smile lit up the night far brighter than his eyes ever could.
“You came.” she said.
She stepped closer and Gabaran fought the urge to reach for her, to make sure she was real and not some figment of his imagination. Her red hair tangled on the ever present wind. Like her name, she radiated the only light in the darkness. His darkness.
“Is it really you?” he asked. “I have always wondered if you were real.” A fitful breeze sent shivers up his spine. He couldn’t fathom how she could stand there in little more than a simple tunic dress.
Tanari’s smile faded as she regarded him with steady brown eyes. No galaxies wheeled in them now.
“I am as real as I can be in The Void, Gabaran.”
Long, slender fingers, untouched by blood or scars, reached up to cup his jaw. He stiffened at the hot surge of longing, the twist of his heart.
“Help us. Please,” he whispered. He closed his eyes and leaned into her caress. “We are lost. We don’t know what to do. What do I do?”
She spoke softly. “Gabaran, only you can answer that question.”
His teeth ached from the effort it took to keep from bellowing in frustration. Instead his broad fingers wrapped around hers and held them to his lips. He spoke, his lips grazing them.
“I don’t know the answer. I don’t know what I am or what I must do.”
“Then you must find it. You must answer the question you’ve always known.”
Gabaran swallowed. He pressed a kiss to her knuckles and let her go. “Who am I to you?”
Tanari’s smile trembled at the corners of her full lips. She moved closer. He could see her freckles now. He’d half been afraid that she would wear the evidence of their last encounter, the gruesome wounds that had marred her beautiful face–but her fair skin remained smooth, freckled, her eyes brown. His breathing stopped altogether when she halted mere inches from him.
“Tanari?” he breathed her name. Without wondering if he should or shouldn’t, he drew her into his arms. She melted against him with a soft, airy sigh.
“I’ve missed your hugs after all these thousands of years,” she whispered, her voice soft and pained. Gabaran’s arms anchored her to his side, her slender curves molded to his lean, muscular body. Giant fingers sifted through the riot of red curls in a caress.
“All of these years?” He swallowed. “How many years have you known me Tanari? How many have I somehow lost?”
“Too many to count,” she said.
“Tanari you know who I am…was, don’t you? Am I immortal or not?”
She stilled, her breathing hitched. She shook her head, sending curls cascading around them both.
He whispered, “You can’t tell me.”
“No.”
“What do I need to do then? Please, help me,” he pleaded. “I can’t do this alone!”
“You are not alone.” She blinked tear laden eyelashes. “You are never alone. I have always seen you.”
“Then tell me, what am I meant to do? Why did you bring me Emaranthe? Who am I? Who is she?”
“You only need to remember.” The tears fell. “I cannot help you. T
his is your quest, Gabaran. Your story.”
“Remember what?”
“Remember us.”
Before he could respond, warm lips met his. His eyes closed in the age old mix of pleasure and pain. She pulled away from his embrace, left cold air in her place at his side.
The breeze sharpened, a sigh of regret that sounded like words his mind couldn’t process fast enough. His eyelids remained crimped shut. He didn’t want to open them and see a world without her.
The wind whispered.
Remember me, Gabaran.
The wind raked and Light’s sigh faded with it. He opened his eyes, not sure what to expect, but a deep, dark, snow filled forest was not it.
“What is this?” he asked again. His skin crawled even as he shivered. The sleet laden wind turned the forest into a haze of white.
His breath clouded the air as he automatically reached for the bow and arrow strapped to his back. His fingers grazed the sleek, black wood and halted. This deep, cold snow. The blinding white. The cold, darkness, was familiar.
This wasn’t real. He was still within the book, The Void.
Remember…
Chapter Fifteen
The Book of Gods: Northern Wilds, Three Hundred Fifty Two Years Ago
“Gabaran, please!”
The voice echoed on the frost clouded air from somewhere ahead. The cold was a minor annoyance, barely felt. But the sound of his name on a stranger’s lips in the middle of the thickly forested slopes of his mountain home made him pause. He squinted into the swirling snow, his black bow a slash of color in the stark whiteness.
A shape emerged from the blanketing whiteness, no two. One clutched the other, smaller figure, as they stumbled across the small clearing. The deep drifts and hidden obstacles seemed determined to bring them to their knees.
Her.
Gabaran frowned. What was a female doing in the middle of this weather?
Without thinking about it, he slung the bow over his shoulder and plunged the hundred feet through the snow toward them. He halted, startled, by the sight of an Earthlander woman cradling a smaller one to her.
Wide brown eyes, wild with panic and framed by snowflake laden eyelashes, caught his gaze and held it. She glanced down at the bundle of cloth she was struggling to hold upright. Pale braids trailed from the shadowed hood. A girl child?
“Who are you?” he asked. He didn’t spare a second glance at the girl child. She seemed already dead to his sharp gaze. “And how did you know my name, woman?”
“Please, help us. She is dying.” Tears tracked filthy streaks down her ashen face. A stray gust of sleet laden wind snagged her hood and tore it free, releasing a banner of scarlet curls.
Gabaran grunted noncommittally and shot the unmoving bundle of cloth and pale hair a glance. He couldn’t see much, the dark blue hooded cloak was overlarge for the pitiful creature’s tiny body. For a split second he almost asked why he should bother, but Her gaze caught and held his once more.
The gentle brown was gone, replaced by pitch black. Tiny specks of light pulsed and flared deep within. Stars wheeled and galaxies spun through an unending darkness, and Gabaran knew then that he was seeing the universe.
His knees buckled. He sank into the snow, unable to pull his gaze away. Those eyes didn’t have to command him, didn’t have to do anything but show him how insignificant he was in a giant, beautiful world. He watched, transfixed.
“Who are you? How do you know my name?” he croaked again. The shockingly cold snow bled through his cloak and trousers but he didn’t feel it. What he felt was the weight of her startling gaze and the sight of tears spiking dark eyelashes.
“I am nobody, Gabaran,” she pleaded. “And I have always known you. Please help her. I cannot.”
He finally took a good look at the girl. Limp in the redhead’s grip, the girl was probably dead already.
“She’s beyond help…”
“Light, I am called Light. Please.” The tears fell, coursing a frosty line down ashen cheeks. “Please help her.”
The woman shoved the bundled girl at him, forcing him to grab the unmoving child or dump her into the snow.
A faint whimper caught his ear and he glanced down, startled.
A small hand, smeared with raw, seeping burns and caked with blood unfolded from the wad of clothing and reached up to him. Thin fingers trembled to uncurl, the palms burned beyond recognition, muscle and bone exposed. Deep within the massive cloak, wide golden brown eyes studied him in a haze of pain and fear. Eyes that were far too old and full of knowledge. He was glad he couldn’t see the rest of her, see what other savage damage could have been inflicted on such a tiny, defenseless girl child.
“What happened to her?” Gabaran’s voice hitched on a croak when her bloodied, raw hand dropped limply. He glanced at her mostly hidden face, horrified to see those stunning eyes closed.
Light stood, swayed, but steadied herself. Her gaze, now normal, dropped. Hidden behind the wild mane of red curls, she shook her head and turned away.
“Wait! You can’t leave me with a dying child!”
Light halted, mid turn, and glanced over her shoulder through strands of red hair and white snowflakes tangling on her eyelashes. She leaned into the sleet driven wind.
Her voice broke, “Save her. Gabaran, you must do what I can no longer do. Protect her.”
“What?” Gabaran said, confusion turning his voice harsh. He surged to his feet, unconsciously cradling the broken girl to his chest. “What are you doing?”
“What I still can do,” she whispered. She turned her back to them and raised both arms to the cold gray sky. “I must go back to them now, before he escapes and finds out what I have done.”
The world around Gabaran halted, inhaled, tilted. He stumbled and planted his feet in the slippery snow before an unseen pull could tug him into the strange woman.
The air rippled, bent, surged. Toward the woman. An invisible energy rippled the space around her, lifting her off her feet.
He saw then, to his horror, that her feet were bare.
He glanced up, ready to admonish her for being unprotected in the icy north, but no words could escape his suddenly jumbled thoughts as her scarlet hair seethed into the sleet laden air like coiled snakes. His mouth snapped shut and he clutched his burden closer.
Light hovered a moment longer before curling her limbs close to her body and then snapping them out in a blur of motion. A pulse of energy, seething with fire and lightning, surged from her body. It halted, hovered, as if it were a tiny sun. Perhaps it was.
She dropped to the ground, a faint whimper the only sound she allowed herself to make. Knee deep in the snow, she struggled to her feet and reached for the floating star with her bare hands.
Without thinking about why, or why he shouldn’t, Gabaran bellowed a warning and reached to put himself between Light and the orb. The motion was made clumsy by the dying girl clutched to his chest, and she easily dodged his giant frame. His single free hand swept wide and snagged only air, even as her long, graceful fingers closed around it.
He froze in horror as she prodded and shaped the ball of energy into something roughly oval and large enough for a giant elf to traverse.
“What are you doing?” he asked when her fingers swept along the trails of lightning and fiery flickers. She ignored him and instead worked the orb into a spiraling frame. The center remained a vague haze, untouched by the fiery energy that wove the outside of the oval shaped disc.
She stumbled back from the spiraling disc, her fingers splayed as if to hold it off, head bowed. The vague fog in the center sharpened and cleared.
“Please save her,” Light whispered. “I trust you.”
“Wait, who is she?”
He was beyond thinking he was sane at this point. He wondered if the extreme cold had finally taken its toll on his mind.
Light swallowed, pain tightening her lips. Her arms shook with the effort to keep them aloft.
“She is
all I have left now.”
“What?”
The ground beneath them rumbled, startling them both. The fiery disc shivered and Light gasped.
“Go, the portal will not last long, Gabaran,” Light urged. She grimaced. He glanced at it, startled to see, very clearly, the softly lit, cold stone halls and chambers of his adopted home within. A home hidden high in the mountains where no one could find his people. Ever.
“How? What?”
Light swayed on her feet, her face pinched. The edge of the portal flicked and flared at the same time.
“I can’t hold it much longer. Go. Please. Save her!” Light pleaded. She sank to her knees, her simple brown tunic, instantly darkening as the dampness soaked in.
Gabaran stumbled forward but stopped on a horrible suspicion.
“What about you? Come with me!”
Tears froze on her dark eyelashes but her full lips twitched into a sad smile.
“I am nobody, Gabaran. I cannot.”
“I will find you. I will not forget you,” Gabaran vowed then, his deep voice a harsh rasp in the cold air.
She smiled through the tears at him. “I know.”
He plunged through the portal and felt the faint blast of heat and energy ripple as he broke through to the hallowed halls of his home. He turned around, intending to reach through the portal and drag her in as well.
But she was gone. Not even footprints in the snow were evidence that she was ever there.
Light was no mere immortal.
Light was who his people had needed for a long time.
She was hope.
Gabaran glanced down at the wounded girl. Then and there he vowed to save her. For Light. And then, he mused as he raced down the faintly lit corridors yelling for every healer they had, he would find Light.
Save the girl.
Find Light.
The Void
The clearing vanished and the heartache returned with the heavy darkness.
He had saved the girl. Just. She’d have to learn to walk again. To talk. She had no memory of anything beyond the few minutes before Tanari had directed him to aide her. No name. For ten years the immortal girl he’d named Emaranthe was his only link to the god, Light. And then she’d left.
Exiles & Empire Page 15