Sometimes what we think we know has nothing to do with reality. I began life with limited perception. Too many people insist on limiting themselves. Seek only truth, and your mind and soul will be opened.---Sirah Anath Sorrel of Dunaya
"Bless my soul and my resurrection," gasped Gizelle. "The baby."
Dylin laughed with surprise. "Lianna!" The baby's eyes glittered with wisdom, excitement. Dylin trembled, reaching out for her. "What...? Lianna...? How?"
"He's born, Mama," said Lianna. Her clapping continued. "I'm going to see him someday. I'm going to help him. So is he." She pointed to Canúden and his jaw dropped. Lianna swayed to the Ancestors' song. The music clarified. Canúden felt it with the dizzying sensation of brilliant thought rather than the vibrations of sound. The words came in that unfamiliar language he recognized anyway, something about a newly-born Creator... Hallel? Canúden hadn't understood the words until Lianna spoke them. Something about mortality, and love, beauty, and hope. Freedom. Freedom for the world. Freedom from darkness and anguish.
The little heir had been born only four months previously.
"Lianna! You'll never marry a kel!" said Dylin. "Not when the Ancestors sing like that! How can you marry a kel when you'll see this Hallel?" Whoever that was.
Dylin picked up Lianna and joined Canúden and Gizelle to spin, to join the Ancestors, to sing with all Creation. They laughed, ran in and out of the trees. They spun like the undulating rays of the Object in the sky. Everything brightened until Canúden could see nothing but white and Dylin and the baby, whom Dylin had placed back in the sling in order to free her hands.
The three existed in a void. Everything but the Ancestor's song disappeared. Canúden and Dylin stood as tall as a mountain, taller, and the earth fell away from them as they soared up to the Ancestors. One Ancestor in the sky reached out her hand to them and smiled.
The ocean roared beneath them and they continued east. Islands glittered in the water, and the world continued beyond the map in Canúden's classroom. Rock as wide as the horizon loomed ahead. Land, green and gold and sandy. They descended gradually and the ocean disappeared behind them as a yellow desert spread beneath. Smiling at Canúden, Dylin stood at his side, with Lianna watching intently from the sling, as though she knew what to expect. Lianna patted her mama's arm.
The sky darkened. Canúden and Dylin, with Lianna in the sling, stood in a billowing sandstorm, but the grains missed them in the chaos of wind.
A couple huddled on the ground in front of them, the angry knives of sand beating them from every direction. The young woman clutched her belly and screamed. Scanning the dimming land, panic struck the man's eyes and he covered the woman, who was likely his yuki, with his arms and cloak.
Another man in a concealing hood touched the husband's arm. The stranger wore a crimson cloak over loose saffron pants and top, which swayed only slightly in the wind. He glanced at Canúden and Dylin and nodded, then spoke to the couple in distress. He unrolled a canvas litter, and the men helped the woman onto it. The hooded man lifted the front, the husband lifted the back, and proceeded down a rough path.
Canúden and Dylin followed down a crack in the ground, which widened to a cave. The ground looked soft with lichen and grass. A stout woman stood there, as though she'd been waiting for the distressed couple; she gestured to a birthing pallet of grass and blankets, water, and a fire in the cave. The men helped the mother to her feet, then to the inclined pallet. Hefty stones lay at the mother's feet.
The Object exploded into the sky as soon as the baby crowned, and everything brightened as he screamed life into his lungs.
Canúden gasped and saw Dylin's eyes widen: That baby was Hallel.
"Who is Hallel!" Canúden scanned the scene in search of purpose, the reason he and Dylin were being shown this, any clue as to why all the singing and fuss. "No one has ever heard of him!" he yelled.
"His name means love and hope," said Lianna, as though it were the simplest thing in the world. She was a little baby, yet she seemed to know what was going on.
"Out of the way for the Kel's Guards!"
Canúden was shoved to his back and he blinked several times before he knew he was in Galia again, had probably never left, and that a wind gust had not pushed him over, but a large dog had. And then the pain in his chest and back struck. The Object hung directly overhead.
Three huge guards and as many tracking dogs trampled around Gizelle's flowers and grass. Gizelle was on her back also. One guard held a pathetically pale lantern as though he worked in the deepest part of night. Another had already cut the sling from Siran Dylin's shoulder and held a screaming Lianna. The third held Dylin, who struggled futilely.
"I wasn't running away," she said. She hung limp.
"You took advantage of the commotion caused by the dark night," said the guard with the lantern. The black dogs yapped at the sky and chased as playful as pups.
"Do what you want, girl." The man who held Dylin dropped her to the grass. "There are plenty of wet nurses who would be more than happy to care for the heir."
"How dare you insult me!" she said as she got to her feet and seemed to grow two inches. "I was not running away. You will not take my baby from me. I was simply visiting friends."
"Right," said the first guard. "Leave the baby home next time."
"Thank you, healer, for helping me," she said, briskly brushing grass from her skirt, and stomped after the guards, who already were on the path outside Gizelle's gate. Lianna screamed in their arms.
Gizelle bowed to her. "My pleasure, my Lady."
Canúden only smiled at her. She rushed ahead.
The Ball of Shadows sat warm and heavy on Minara's fingertips. The sun had set, but a sign from the Taleni emblazoned the sky and eastern ocean and glinted through arched windows into her study. The rays danced on her books of prophecy and trinkets of power, swirled on her rug, and gilded silhouettes in the corner. That Light touched the ball and disappeared like drops of water in a bucket of desert sand. The ball cast neither reflection nor shadow, as though light had no effect on it; instead the ball obscured her flesh in darkness.
Tavaris's face appeared in the ball, and Minara's heart quickened. He had been her companion most of her life, since she'd found the Ball of Shadows, back when her skin was still blue. With her wari sense, her ability to touch and capture the energy in others, she'd done remarkable things to extend that life.
"The time has come," she said. "The sign. The sun has set, and the light rises in the sky."
"That's all very well," said Tavaris, "but what are you doing about it?" His voice was soft, as his face shimmered in the ball - in despite the ball's utter opacity. His features were delicate, his air imposing, and his eyes ice. Vibrations caressed Minara's flesh when he spoke, and a chill touched her spine.
"Turbia's Siran is my creature." She laughed. "Tamil believes she's in love with me. I speak to her mind while she sleeps. Before long, she'll convince her Council to declare war on Galia."
Tavaris nodded curtly; the gesture - that he approved - thrilled her. "That is well."
"Night with no darkness," she scoffed, glancing out her window over the golden ocean. "It's just like the Taleni to think of such a ubiquitous sign. Not that most people will even notice it, distracted as they are with their trivial, petty lives. Most people, if they don't sleep through it, will be as blind as though in a cave. Why don't they make their Light visible to everyone? Why this exclusiveness?"
His eyes sparked. "The Taleni are always selective on whom they'll talk to. They're more concerned with freedom than with peace, and look at what a mess the world is. A few people, maybe, notice the Light splash the sky, but to what effect? No one knows who Hallel is anyway. His prophesies are long forgotten. Petty as people are I hardly had to intervene to make his birth irrelevant. He'll be so easy for me to replace because of that." He smiled with confidence.
"I attended an exclusive and ancient school, and no one there really understood these prophesies, not like I do." Minara had given her soul to understand them under Tavaris's tutelage. "Three hundred years is a long time to wait for a silly baby to be born."
"Hallel is hardly silly." Tavaris smirked. "His greatness nearly matches my own."
She blanched. "Of course, my love."
"But he will soon see why I was the first in the Otherworld. I am more ancient by far, and now he's a screaming little baby who doesn't remember who he is."
"And what of him?"
He shrugged. "He'll be in bondage before four years pass."
"How long until I can feel your touch?"
His chin slid forward as she drew the Ball closer to her lips. "Just become the Siran of Galia already," he said, "get the Ball, and free me from this void."
Tavaris refused to tell her where the Ball of Lights lay hidden. He became angry if she ever brought it up; the Ball seemed to frighten him as much as it possessed him. She suspected it was a key to his imprisonment, as well as to his freedom. The Taleni don't talk to me anymore he would say when she asked. She hadn't asked for nearly two hundred years.
"I want your touch. I will free you," she said.
"Of course you will," Tavaris said.
Images courtesy of:
Innovate Us
deviant art
John William Waterhouse
Don't miss any of the chapters!
Prologue: River Flowing
Chapter 1.1: Blindness
Chapter 1.2: Eyes Opened