The Dark

by Marianne Curley

  Ethan walks in and we explain what we just learned about Wanjala and Julia.

  ‘I wonder what they’re brewing together,’ he says.

  ‘Well, whatever it is, we’ll have to work fast at finding out, if we’re going to have any chance of stopping them.’

  ‘If they suspect us,’ Rochelle says. ‘And no doubt they do by now, they’re going to speed up their plans. They’re going to make sure they finish their job before we even work out what they’re up to.’ She looks at Ethan. ‘Where have you been? Did you find out anything useful?’

  His shoulders lift. ‘I’ve been with Caesar, discussing his latest problems with Mark Antony. There was so much I could have told him, not least how successful he will ultimately be with this man.’

  ‘That’s not up to us,’ Rochelle reminds him – unnecessarily. While it would be tempting, and so easy, to say or do something that could reassure Octavius about his future successes, an inappropriate word or action could have the effect of changing history, and ultimately the future. But Ethan, of all people, knows this.

  ‘Remember we took an oath,’ Rochelle says, adding to her insult.

  He snaps. ‘What do you think I am? An idiot? I’m not going to do anything that could jeopardise the future. I learned that lesson from my father’s problems with Marduke.’ Looking straight into Rochelle’s eyes he adds, ‘I don’t cave in to temptation.’

  I cough to clear the air, but it doesn’t work. They keep staring at each other with daggers for eyes. ‘Look you two, fighting is not going to get us anywhere.’

  ‘Tell her,’ Ethan says, crossing his arms over his chest.

  Rochelle goes to the door, exhaling a long breath that sounds more like a mournful sigh. ‘Why don’t we split up?’

  Ethan slips past her, and without looking at either of us, walks straight out the door, mumbling, ‘Great idea.’

  The afternoon passes quickly. Rochelle disappears to the kitchen, looking for evidence. Ethan sticks with Octavius, closer than a bodyguard, while I try to keep a general eye out for anything suspicious. But nothing unusual or extraordinary happens. Drusus gets some free time and chats with me in the courtyard while his brother looks on with amusement from his bed. It eventually grows dark, and the slaves of the house rush around preparing the sumptuous meal Octavius promised. Finally we go inside.

  The children lead me to a large room, where three long couches on high legs, and a long table, sit in the form of a square. The couches are covered in cushions. Ethan and I are shown to a couch opposite Tiberius and his step-father, Octavius. Livia and her younger son, Drusus, share the other. Slaves soon bustle about bringing food to the table, some carry platters, which they offer to each of us.

  It feels strange eating food in this manner – lying on a couch! But I try to look comfortable, as if I’ve done this all my life. Rochelle, in her role as slave, has offered to help with the food.

  As I sit and listen to the conversation passing from Livia to her husband, and Ethan by my side, my thoughts turn to the brew Tiberius has seen Wanjala and Julia mixing. It has me wondering what on earth they could be making. Mr Carter’s words come back to haunt me as I recall him saying it will be something big.

  Rochelle leans over my shoulder with a tray of bread, olives and fish and whispers, ‘He’s been working like crazy on an unusual centrepiece – a pig’s head. It’s stuffed with a strange-smelling mixture that’s supposed to be herb bread and mixed grains. He’s going to present it to Caesar. My first thought was poison.’ She screws up her nose. ‘But it doesn’t have the right smell. I wish I could get my hands on it without either of them seeing me.’

  ‘That would be too risky,’ I mutter. ‘You’d give yourself away.’

  She nods. ‘Whatever it is, don’t let Caesar, or anyone for that matter, eat the pig.’

  Her words have the same effect as ice water poured down my spine. Poison is Rochelle’s speciality. If the Order suspect she may be here, they could have devised a way to disguise the smell. Passing this information quickly to Ethan, I warn him about the pig’s head.

  I hardly get a second to think when Wanjala makes a grand entrance with a silver tray in his hand, a silver dome lid over the top. ‘For our master, Gaius Julius Caesar Octavius,’ he announces flamboyantly. ‘And his special guests.’

  Laying the platter down on the table, Wanjala steps back to the wall. It occurs to me that this action is quite strange. One would think a man of such pride as Wanjala would be only too keen to display his handiwork himself. Mr Carter’s words, ‘It will be big’, come back and taunt me.

  Tiberius jumps up, just as Octavius reaches across to the domed lid. ‘Let me do it,’ the boy asks in his familiar, charming voice.

  Octavius smiles down at him, then says, ‘Your arm must grow another whole length before it will reach the table.’

  ‘Watch me,’ Tiberius says, stretching as hard as he can for the lid. ‘I can do it.’

  At the very moment both Octavius and Tiberius reach for the domed lid, it hits me. It’s not a poisoned pig’s head under that lid. But something much more deadly.

  Their fingers grip the handle just as I scream out, ‘No! Don’t lift it!’

  But they do. And as the lid lifts Octavius looks at me with an amused frown. For a second it appears as if he’s about to ask me something, but he doesn’t get his words out before the tray, with everything on it, explodes.

  The force of the erupting bomb catapults Octavius and Tiberius into the air. The table bursts into shards of splinters and food flies everywhere. Livia screams and runs to her husband and child, both unconscious and sprawled against the wall.

  Amid a scurry of slaves running everywhere, Ethan and I scramble off the upturned couch. Out of the corner of my eye I see Wanjala and Julia take a look, and seeing the destruction and gathering pool of blood beneath the soon-to-be Emperor, start to back away.

  ‘It’s done,’ Wanjala says in a voice devoid of all his earlier bravado. ‘He’ll be dead in a few minutes. Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘No wait,’ Julia replies. ‘Let’s make sure.’

  Rochelle hears the woman and sees red. She grabs a splintered piece of timber from the floor and goes to stab her. But Wanjala intercepts her. Pulling a dagger from his tunic, he holds it beneath Rochelle’s ribs. ‘Don’t try it. I won’t hesitate to kill you.’

  Ethan takes one look at Rochelle in trouble and uses his skill to animate objects. Cushions, broken bits of furniture, platters, and even food, start whirling towards Wanjala’s head. Using this distraction, Ethan pushes Julia roughly out of the way, then drags Rochelle out from Wanjala’s grasp. ‘You’re not going to die here in the past! Do you understand?’

  As the debris starts to settle, and slaves stop screaming, I finish assessing Octavius and Tiberius’s wounds. Both of them are critically ill, having received massive injuries. Suddenly Wanjala towers over the back of me. I look up, expecting to see him wearing a look of smug satisfaction. But he’s not. He stares at the man and child sprawled below him, his mouth drifting open as his eyes rest on the boy. He sees me looking at him and pulls away. Without saying a word, he takes Julia’s hand, and the Order’s two soldiers run from the room.

  Rochelle, still caught tight in Ethan’s hold, snarls and hisses in frustration. ‘Let me go!’

  ‘No. You’re needed here. Help stem this blood flow.’

  Livia looks from her husband to her son and moans hysterically. She must think she’s about to lose them both.

  But the decision of who lives and who dies right now is unbelievably up to me. I have the power to heal, but only one at a time. And looking at Tiberius my heart skitters uncontrollably. The only reason this child is lying here on the verge of death is because of me. If I hadn’t healed him of his chest infection this morning, he would still have been in bed. He wouldn’t have opened the lid not meant to be touched by his hand. With these thoughts thundering through my brain, I bend over him, running my fingers over his bloo
d-stained head, searching for internal injuries, and looking for a point to begin healing.

  But Ethan grabs my arm and drags me backwards. ‘No!’

  I look up, hardly seeing him through my rapidly blurring vision. I know what he’s saying, but I can’t accept it. ‘I have to heal the boy! He’s dying,’ I whisper.

  He swallows deeply. ‘You have to save Caesar first. He’s dying too. That’s what we came for.’

  ‘But the boy,’ I try to tell him, even though I know he knows. ‘He will be an Emperor too.’

  ‘Gaius Julius Caesar Octavius will be the first, the famous Augustus Caesar and his changes will be the ones that will shape our modern world. You have to heal him first. And you have to hurry. He’s losing a lot of blood.’

  Livia wails, pulling her son into her arms. Meanwhile Rochelle tries to stop the blood flowing from a deep wound to the base of Octavius’s skull. ‘Hurry!’ she calls.

  I move to Octavius. He’s in a bad way. Other than the head wound, he has severe internal injuries and a badly damaged arm. I work at stopping the rapid blood loss, repairing burst blood vessels and scarred and damaged organs. Then I work on repairing torn ligaments, muscles and bone.

  I’m hardly finished when Livia screams a woeful sound, a sound that lets us know we have lost the child. My heart clenches, my breathing tightening unbearably. What have I done?

  I force myself not to look, to keep working on Octavius, but can’t help one brief glance. What I see will remain with me for the rest of my life – a grieving mother rocking her lifeless son in her arms.

  Once healed, Octavius sits up, stunned at the massive destruction around him. ‘What happened here?’ He crawls over to where his wife grieves, the dead child in her arms.

  ‘Is there nothing you can do?’ Rochelle asks softly.

  ‘I can’t bring back the dead. His injuries were too severe. He wouldn’t have recovered without immediate healing.’

  Ethan grabs our arms, yanking us both up. ‘We have to get out of here. Caesar is going to want answers. And we can’t give them to him.’

  Understanding this, the three of us back out of the room. Finding an isolated corner, Ethan calls Mr Carter’s name. In seconds I feel the imminent pull of transportation taking hold. I can’t stop thinking how miserably we failed. How miserably I failed. Then an image comes to me. The image of Wanjala’s face as he stared at the destruction of human life before him. A flash of recognition hits my senses, and I wonder, what’s a dark-skinned African doing with such deep green eyes?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Arkarian

  The temple is a pyramid-shaped structure, with an enormous base, the centre point reaching far into the darkness and the disappearing sky beyond. It is, so Sera informs me as we enter through an open doorway, made entirely of crystal, glass bricks and marble sheets. The glass is apparently constructed from elements able to withstand freezing temperatures and incredible heat. Inside, the walls are shaped in a design that forms a perfect octagon, a design that can also be found in a room within the Citadel. A smaller, inner octagon forms the base for this high slanted roof. Each panel of this roof is a myriad of etched, coloured patterns. Not that I can see all the way to the top. There’s only the light coming from a single fireplace built into one distant wall, which hasn’t a chance of heating this entire building. But somehow the cold takes second place in here. There’s another more dominant sensation – more a feeling really. Of solace. It helps me control my pain.

  I make my way to the fireplace, and it’s obvious the temple hasn’t been used for a long time, centuries or maybe even millennia. It has the look and sound of hollowness. Dust lies thickly on the sparse furniture – a chair, a footstool, a bed, a simple stone bench, a table and a rug before the fire.

  Sera leads me to the chair near the fire, where I sit gratefully. She says she will bring me a drink of water, but first helps me remove the cloak. Taking the cloak she looks at it with a frown, then buries her face in it. ‘It smells of Bastian.’

  ‘That’s right. He was wearing it. Tell me, Sera, how do you know him?’

  ‘He visits me sometimes.’ Her face scrunches up with a frown and a smile at the same time. ‘He confuses me.’

  ‘I think perhaps Bastian confuses himself.’

  ‘He brought me here after a long time of wandering through Marduke’s gardens. They were so beautiful I could have lived amongst those fragrant petals for ever.’ She sighs like someone who misses something she once loved, then shrugs her slender shoulders. ‘I don’t know why Bastian dragged me from them. They’re here, you know. On the other side of this island. But Bastian won’t let me go there any more.’

  She leaves me with these bizarre thoughts of Marduke having a garden, a beautiful one at that, to fetch me a cup of water. In all his years in the Guard, I never knew of Marduke’s love of flowers, though he did appreciate beauty in those days. It was his love of a beautiful woman that played a large part in his turning traitor in the end.

  Sera soon returns with the cup of water. I sip it slowly, rinsing my mouth of the taste of blood. We sit and stare at the soothing fire, and in these quiet moments I bring my thoughts into focus to try and manage my pain. Still without my powers, the most I end up accomplishing is to take the sting out. I’m not a healer anyway, and so my ribs stay broken, while some of my joints remain bruised or even dislocated. But of these injuries, the worst is to my kidneys. I fear they may both be bleeding.

  Suddenly a thunderous noise has me bolting from my seat. Pain seers through my lungs and every joint with the effort.

  Sera giggles, covering her face with her hands. She has taken a place on the corner of the rug right before the fire. ‘I told you it was going to rain.’

  I have never heard rain as heavy as this before, then realise that it’s actually thick clumps of ice hitting the ceiling and everywhere around us. Neither have I felt anything so cold. I’m suddenly very grateful to be inside, rather than still out on that rocky beach getting pounded into the ground.

  Sera seems oblivious to the noise and chilling air. Now that she’s stopped laughing, she sits hugging her knees and staring wistfully into the fire. Eventually the hail eases, and Sera turns her eyes to me. ‘Tell me about my parents, Arkarian. What happened to them after Marduke murdered me?’

  I tell her how her father withdrew from the Guard, and life itself, for a while, afraid Marduke would take more revenge on the rest of his family. And I tell her how her brother became indentured as my Apprentice when only four years old, and how superbly his skills have developed. ‘He has an amazing talent – the ability to bring real things to a scene created from his mind.’

  ‘But he has no psychic skill. I spent years trying to reach him.’

  ‘Through his dreams. Yes, I see that was you now. Ethan had no idea. He blocked out your murder, believed what the doctors told him, that you died of a medical condition.’

  She sighs, ‘And my mother? What of her, Arkarian?’

  I’m not sure how much I should tell her. She appears to be the same ten-year-old girl I last saw the day before she was murdered, the day I told her about the Guard and how she was to play a part in it all. But that moment was such a long time ago. How has thirteen years in this place affected her?

  ‘I tried to reach her too,’ she says in my silence. ‘Sometimes I thought she heard me, or felt me at least. I heard her cry out my name lots and lots of times in her sleep. And sometimes even when she was awake.’ She looks down at her clasped hands. ‘I cried with her.’ She turns to look at me with enormous, piercing eyes, ‘Do you think when Ethan rescues me, I will be able to see my mother once more before I go?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I tell her honestly.

  But my answer is not enough. She stands up and stomps around the room. ‘Ethan will come! I know this! I have finally broken through to the girl Isabel. You called her that. She knows to come. She will bring my brother. I will finally be free!’

  She speaks of resc
ue and freedom as if it is a certainty. And part of me wishes it were true. A large part! But the risks to attain this freedom are so high. Yet, what right do I have to dampen Sera’s spirits? She finally has hope for release from this morbid prison. At least now I understand what’s wrong with Laura. The least I can do is get Sera to stop sending her mother messages. ‘Listen to me, your mother is … having problems.’

  ‘What? Tell me how? You make it sound like it’s my fault.’

  I try to make her understand, ‘She hears you, Sera. And she feels you too. But she’s not like us. She’s a normal human being with no powers. Your distress is torturing her. You have to stop, so your mother can heal and move on with living.’

  ‘But I can’t move on!’

  She doesn’t understand, and I don’t want to upset her. It might even be too late to help Laura anyway. She’s probably so attuned to sensing her daughter’s entrapment, and feeling her daughter’s pain, that even if Sera stopped sending these messages, Laura might still look for a means to escape. Probably the only way to save Laura will be to save her daughter first. Freeing Sera’s soul, allowing it to move on to its destiny, might be what it will take to free Laura’s mind.

  That’s it! That’s the answer to saving Laura’s life!

  But even if a rescue is accomplished, and Sera’s soul is freed, would it be in time? I honestly can’t say. Yet there’s one thing that I can do right now, and that’s to make Sera understand. ‘You have to stop sending these messages to your mother, Sera. You’re in touch with Isabel now, and as you say, trying to reach Ethan is a waste of time. But each time you connect with your mother she grows more disturbed. Do you understand what I’m saying? You have to stop, Sera. You have to stop now.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Isabel

  For twenty-four hours I can’t sleep. Ethan, though, is wonderful. All afternoon we talk about what happened in Rome, and he reminds me of the time he botched a mission and the woman he was supposed to protect unfortunately died. ‘The Tribunal aren’t blaming you. You didn’t put the bomb under that silver dome, Isabel,’ he tells me over and over. ‘Just remember that.’