She accepted that.
To rule all of the families would require a leader, a Drayoom, even the dragons would quake to look upon.
Oddly enough, even though the Abbess was the faithful servant of Araki, she had been the one to show Tamami how she could turn the shame of her birthright into her strength and how she could save all the Drayoom—not just her family.
CHAPTER 51
ARAKI REMEMBERED the young Merrick from when the young Drayoom had visited the island of Annoon, the home of the dragons, to do battle with his brother and to learn of his creation name. It had been only a very short while ago, especially to one such as Araki, whose lifespan was measured in millennia, instead of years.
During this time, the young Drayoom had changed immensely. He was more powerful, but there was something else. He was more focused, more intent, and more in control of his magic.
Even back on Annoon, the Wind Dragon had seen something special in him as he sought to avoid his destiny with Sigela—a foolish endeavor that only resulted in prolonging the inevitable.
It was true that Merrick had kept Sigela from returning in physical form to the Earth, but as he would soon discover, the fire and passion Sigela could inspire in both Drayoom and humans alike was a powerful force to be reckoned with.
And then there was Tamami, one of Araki’s favorite daughters. The self-proclaimed Emperor of Araki’s Wind Family had been cruel to her, but she had persevered and thrived. She was one of Araki’s favorites, and yet...her plans, which were obvious to none save Araki himself, put some degree of fear into even the elemental heart of the Wind Dragon.
If the other dragons were to discover Tamami’s intentions, they would do their best to kill her immediately.
However, Araki, more than the rest of the dragons, embraced change. He believed in letting go and seeing where decisions and circumstances would take a situation. And for that reason, Araki had decided not to interfere in Tamami’s plans for the time being.
While Araki let himself ponder the possibilities of what might come from her actions, he recalled the last time that all of the elemental powers were brought together in a single Drayoom. That was a dark time for Araki and the other dragons. They had been held to the will of their own creature, and Araki had no desire to experience that kind of subjugation again.
The one called Merrick only had the blood of two dragons in his veins, so there was no future in which he could be the Drayoom to unite all of the dragon languages. But with Sigela’s passion driving Merrick’s actions, a child of his could have the potential to one day either rule or even destroy the world.
CHAPTER 52
CARA AND HEININ SAT at the dining table in Merrick’s house. Cara had been in Merrick’s Earth City home before, but seeing it now, after all of their adventures over the last year, left her with a different impression of him.
The expertise and the talent he had shown when he had built his home from the inside wall of the mountain was apparent. The walls of his house were made from stone slabs Merrick had split off from the inside of the mountain itself, and thick vines covered the outside of his walls, wrapping around his abode like a leafy cocoon protecting him from outside danger.
And then there was the yew tree. Born from seeds given to Merrick by Balach’s father, Fenton, the yew stood to the right of Merrick’s thick wooden door, rising up like a guardian, in much the same way that Oodrosil watched over them back at Rune Corp.
When Cara passed by the tree on her way into Merrick’s home, she felt a familiar presence. At first she thought that it was because the tree had a direct connection with Oodrosil, but when she touched the tree’s trunk, she instead recognized the familiar spirit of her father, Ohman.
As she sat at Merrick’s dining table, her hands steepled in front of her lips, she allowed herself the painful luxury of remembering her father—the good and the bad. He had been such a firm, tough parent, but he also had taught her so much about her inner magic and about her self. She knew that nothing was ever created or destroyed in this world, but she still felt sad about the fact that she would never have the chance to speak with him or learn from him again.
She was lonely for his companionship more than anything. Without him, she had no other family—other than Merrick, it seemed.
Cara sighed just as someone knocked at the door. Both she and Heinin got up to see who was there. When she opened the door, she saw Bradley with a smile on his face, standing on two perfectly good legs.
She had never been particularly close to Bradley, but now that all of his hate and anger seemed to have dissipated, she saw him in a different light—as someone who had gone through real adversity in his life and had still persevered.
She put her hand on Bradley’s shoulder and squeezed gently.
“It’s good to see you up and around. It looks as if the healers have lived up to their names.”
Both of them laughed as Heinin also waved and greeted Bradley.
“You have no idea,” Bradley said as he stepped into Merrick’s home and shut the door behind him.
“I know it might sound obvious, but I’m all better now, and ready to help,” Bradley said as he sat down at the dining table and was joined by Cara and Heinin. “What’s the plan, Cara?”
“Don’t you want to rest?” she said.
Bradley shook his head.
“I’ve been sitting around for too long as it is, and my leg feels better than ever.”
“I’m not sure we really have a plan yet,” Cara said. “Merrick’s still not back, and I haven’t heard from him. As far as figuring out the source of the Rune Corp divinium, I’ve spoken to lots of different people—some of whom my father used to know pretty well—but no one has any idea where he found the divinium he used to build our company.
“The only group I haven’t been able to speak with yet are the Keepers. I’m hoping some of them might be loyal to Merrick and might talk to him when he arrives. If they don’t know anything, I think we need to start thinking broader and assume that no one but Ohman knew the source of the Rune Corp divinium, and that we may never find it.”
“It’s too bad the Keepers won’t talk to you,” Bradley said. “That would definitely save some time while we’re waiting around for Merrick to show up.”
Cara had thought about that very same thing. Talking with the Keepers might yield some information, but even though she had requested an audience with the Master Keeper on more than one occasion, he and his followers had avoided Cara all week.
She wondered silently whether the fact that Ohman had once been their Ard Righ and a Keeper himself would work for or against her. The question was, did the Keepers believe the Queen and see Ohman as a traitor, or had the revelation of the Queen’s deception changed their opinion of Ohman...and of his offspring?
Before Cara could say anything, the earth beneath them started to vibrate. Cara sprang up from the table and stepped through the door. The dirt in front of Merrick’s house shook, and tiny pebbles and pieces of stone popped up and landed, over and over again, until one by one, each one of them stopped. Gradually, a message began to form on the ground.
She wasn’t sure how it was possible, but in front of her, formed from dozens of tiny stones and rocks, was a message from Merrick.
Be there tmrw or soon after with the cube.
In the middle of the message was a larger stone that Cara could feel was emanating heat. She picked it up carefully as several images shot through her mind.
She saw the same stone she was holding, but it was in the clouds—in the Cloud City itself. Cut off from Terrada. A slave. A prisoner. Along with a small tree and a larger boulder. And there were other followers of Terrada as well.
And then Cara saw Merrick and a woman with scars on her face. Cara could feel that the stone did not like the woman, but she did not understand why. The next image showed Merrick dropping the stone off the side of the Cloud City.
Now the images changed to sky and clouds moving quickly p
ast the stone as the ground rushed up to meet it. Cara briefly felt the pain as the small stone pierced the skin of the planet when it struck—traveling deep into Terrada herself with a single mission—to give Cara this message from Merrick.
Even as she moved the rock closer to her lips to say thank you, it crumbled to dust in her fingertips, having used up all of its life energy after it accomplished so much more than anyone would ever expect from a simple rock.
Such was the power of Merrick, Cara thought. He could inspire even a stone to do miraculous things.
She wished there was a way to send a message back to Merrick, but there was no connection between the Earth and the Cloud City so high above that she could use. She would have to wait and hopefully see Merrick, Mona, Jonathan, and Master Banzo, along with the cube, tomorrow.
Cara knelt down and gently erased the message with the palm of her hand. As she stood up and turned to go back into Merrick’s house, four Drayoom in dark green robes with large hoods that covered their faces emerged from the ground and surrounded her, Bradley, and Heinin.
Their sudden appearance startled her, but she immediately recognized them as Keepers.
“Our master would have words with you, Cara,” one of them said.
Cara opened her mouth to speak, but she was dragged down into the ground by powerful Earth Magic and soon felt the familiar flow of traveling through Terrada.
Her journey lasted only a second before she popped out of the ground once again.
She found herself alone with the same four Keepers inside a dark, stone room with no apparent doors. The only way in or out must have been to travel through Terrada. She had never been there before, but she knew that they must be deep in the chambers of the Keepers.
But for what purpose, she did not know.
On the other side of the room, the Master Keeper stood in his dark green robe with his hood up and covering most of his face in shadow.
“Master Keeper,” Cara said, addressing the Master Keeper. “Thank you for seeing me. I thought that perhaps you were planning on waiting to talk to Merrick directly when he arrives.”
“I have meditated on this,” the Master Keeper said, “and it is with you I must speak.”
As Cara looked around, she saw that there were several divinium cubes sitting on a wooden table in the center of the room. Each pulsated with a glowing green light. They looked similar to the Rune Corp cubes, but she could tell that they had been molded by a different process than the ones used by her father.
“You’ve been making your own cubes,” Cara said as she approached the table.
“Ohman and Merrick have shown us the way,” said the Master Keeper. “Although I admit we have not been able to replicate his success. Sit, please.”
Cara decided to remain silent on the fact that she and her father had designed the cubes, not Merrick.
“Do you know the life of a Keeper, Cara?” the Master Keeper said. “We spend the earliest part of our childhood just as other children of the Earth Clan. But those who show propensity to memorize vast amounts of information are plucked by the Master Keeper and indoctrinated into the order. This is a great honor for the parents of the Keepers of course, even though they do not see their child again until he or she has reached adulthood. There is too much to be done and too much training to allow a normal life for any of us once we are chosen and have accepted our role and our responsibility.”
“I understand,” Cara said.
“We are honored to provide this service to our family and to our royal leader, and we train every second of every day to achieve our tasks. But Ohman created a better way, at the center of which, are your cubes. Your cubes have the ability to store all of the names that we endlessly repeat in our minds every second of every day. Even as I speak to you now, I am also chanting a progression of names so that I may never forget. I do this, as do all Keepers, because we do not have a way to accurately store any of the names that are our charge.
“We have also been taught that it would be too dangerous to commit the names of the Earth Clan to paper even if we had a syntax and a framework for even doing so. But your cubes combined with human technology solve these problems, and are nothing short of a miracle.”
“I’m sure we can help you with your cubes,” Cara said. “After we get back home, we’ll schedule you to visit Rune Corp, if you’d like.”
The Keeper smiled.
“You honor us with your kindness, but that is not why I wished to speak with you.”
Cara suddenly felt vulnerable. Keepers possessed the creation names of every Drayoom who had lived and died since the time of Abred. The Keepers were beings of great knowledge and power, and she was essentially trapped in an underground room with four of them and their leader.
As she contemplated her potential fate, the Keepers did something Cara never could have expected.
The Master Keeper and the other four each dropped to one knee and bowed to her.
“Daughter of the great Ohman, past Keeper and Ard Righ of the Earth Clan, we humbly seek your assistance,” the Master Keeper said.
Cara felt her shoulders relax slightly as her anxiety turned to incredulity.
“I don’t understand…” she said.
The Master Keeper raised his head slowly.
“We implore your help in placing Merrick on the throne of the Earth Clan as its rightful Ard Righ. He carries the blood of the Queen, and of Terrada, and of Sigela, and we choose and acknowledge him as our rightful leader.”
Cara was stunned, but she knew that she couldn’t speak for Merrick.
“When Merrick arrives, you can talk to him about that,” she said.
“There is more,” the Master Keeper said as he held out a piece of divinium to her that had been shaped into the form of a small twig with several smaller branches sprouting off from a main branch.
“What is this?” Cara asked.
“We know that our divinium is not as powerful as the stone used to create your cubes. We have heard that you seek the source of your own divinium. In an attempt to help, we performed our most sacred of ceremonies and contacted the all-powerful Terrada herself.”
Cara was stunned that the Keepers had asked the Earth Dragon where their divinium came from.
“What did she say?” Cara said.
“The dragons do not speak, as you know. But the bountiful Terrada left us with the piece of divinium you hold in your hand. That was her only response.”
“She said nothing else?” Cara said.
The Master Keeper removed his hood and looked directly into Cara’s eyes. His face was young, but looked as if it had been weathered by twice the number of years he had been alive. Such were the dangers of working with creation words each day, all day, of one’s life.
“Mighty Terrada relayed her desire for Merrick to lead the Earth Clan. The Earth Dragon also made it known to us that you, Cara, daughter of Ohman, hold in your veins the blood of the great Ohman and the blood of the humans. Terrada believes that you are to rule the Earth Clan along with Merrick, and that your descendants will one day reign over all of the Earth.
“Blessed Cara, Terrada has declared that you are to be Merrick’s Queen.”
CHAPTER 53
BRADLEY TOLD HEININ to stay at Merrick’s house and to wait there in case Cara returned while he ran to tell the Queen’s guard, the Fianna, that Cara had been taken.
Heinin hesitated then sat down on the front step leading up to Merrick’s door, settling in to wait.
Bradley ran as fast as possible, back to the royal quarters, feeling the power of his new leg propel him faster than he had ever run before. When he arrived, he approached the muscled Fianna who was standing guard outside of the entrance to the royal section of the city.
Bradley was elated that he had come upon a chance so quickly to prove his worth to the Queen, and he could hardly contain his excitement.
He didn’t know why exactly, nor was the reason important, but he craved the Queen’s appr
oval more than anything he had ever wanted before in his life. But his desire for the Queen was not completely selfish. He also wanted the power she possessed, and he wanted her as a man wants a woman. Never before had he been this stricken, this in love, and he would do anything he could to prove himself to her in every way possible.
“What is your business, human?” the guard said.
Still out of breath, Bradley tried to compose himself as best as he could.
“I have an urgent message for the Queen,” he said. “One that can only be delivered to her in person.”
The guard spat on the ground.
“I’ve been given orders to take you directly to her if you seek an audience, although only Terrada knows why the Queen would possibly want to speak with the likes of you.”
Ignoring the guard’s comment, Bradley followed him as his heart gradually slowed to its normal rate.
The guard led him to an ornate stone building with a line of giant yew trees planted just outside its walls. Thick, ancient vines crawled up the outside walls and covered even the roof several stories above.
This was the palace itself, and Bradley was rightfully impressed.
“Wait here,” the guard said before entering the front door and closing it behind him.
After several minutes, the guard returned and escorted Bradley into the palace. They walked down two adjoining hallways until they came to a sitting room decorated with three gold-lined couches, each covered in ornate throw pillows. Each of the couches had a low, wide table in front of it.
The graceful and beautiful Queen sat, half-reclined, on one of the couches.
Bradley could tell that the room was designed to show off the Queen’s wealth, but even more importantly, to make her feel comfortable in her surroundings.
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