And with these whispers he could influence the minds of men. While they sleep or while they wake, all people heard his whispers and many would obey, believing themselves to be acting in accordance with their own will. And indeed they do, for it is their will to follow Tavaris.
—Gizelle Floren Elkek of Toopek
When Canúden entered his house, Ma jumped from her chair at the kitchen table. Her auburn hair, usually in a neat ball at her neck, hung a bit scraggly. Wrinkles in her henna-colored dress seemed to indicate she had slept in her clothes, or not slept at all. "What a night!" She threw her arms around him and pressed his face to her soft cheek. "How was... Gizelle's?"
"She's probably the only one around here who had any idea what was going on, besides a little baby, but that didn't make any sense. She's a nice old woman, and she tells me about anything I want to know."
"What business does she have teaching you anything?" Ma pulled away from him. "You go to school for that, and I tell you almost anything you want to know."
"She knows lots of weird things that maybe you've never thought about, cuz she's so much older than you are, and she's not from Galia. Besides, healers always have some kind of apprentice."
"Oh?" Her twisted eyebrows said she didn't believe he had any interest whatsoever in learning healing, even if all healers weren't the wari kind.
"I read it in a book," he said. "Can you tell me anyone she's hurt? Anyone you know for sure that got hurt by her?"
She stared at him, mouth half open. Gritting her teeth, she said, "I have my own reasons for not trusting her." Ma seemed so tall when she stood straight and looked down to him like that.
"Ma!" he said. "She's a nice old lady who's been through a lot. You could be her friend and find out for yourself. And anyway, we had a nice time together last night. And she saw the light and had visions, too." He neglected to add the eventually that hung in his mind.
Ma's eyebrows rose, like she was at least a little interested. "And I suppose she told you all about it?"
"She told me what she could. She learned some stories about it when she was in school a long time ago. Prophesies from time mages. And she said we need to choose which side we're on. And a little baby talked, and I mean little. Like she's only a few months old and she talked. The baby said that Hallel means hope and that's important 'cause the world needs hope, and that's why we need to decide what side we're on. I've decided to be on the side of Hallel, because Dylin and I saw him. We flew over the ocean and everything. And Gizelle said Hallel was on the side of Light and that the Dark One's way is dangerous and bad because it makes people stupid."
"Wait. Who's Dylin?"
He sat down at the kitchen table and attacked the oatmeal Ma had been making for him as he was getting home. "I think she's some kind of high siran or something. And it was her baby that talked. She's got a baby even though she's not that old. Why would someone so young have a baby?"
"You mean, Dylin siran Mangoran, the First Siran, was there with you all night?"
"Well, not all night. Only until some guards or something came for her baby. At least they didn't come until our vision was pretty much over."
"What a night," said Ma as she sunk down into her chair at the table.
"But the baby talking wasn't just a vision, because she talked before we started flying, which I don't think we were really flying, just it felt like it because the vision was so clear. And then we saw Hallel being born. But I still don't really know who he is. But apparently he was born in a land across the eastern ocean. Did you know the world stretched that far?"
"I never really thought about it," she managed.
"Did you see anything interesting last night?" he said through a slurp.
"I'm not sure about it all, and I don't think I could explain most of it," she said in a firmer tone, "but despite myself, I think Gizelle spoke truth about a conflict coming. And somehow you have something to do with helping this Hallel."
"Hey, that's just what the little baby said. She said something like, she'd see him someday and help him, and I would too. But how could I help him if he's way over across the ocean? And why would a Creator need help? Seems like the Ancestors would be more fit to help him."
She rested her smooth hand on his empty one; his other hand held his spoon. "I don't know, son. The Ancestors are in the past. It is we who live now. Just stay good." Her gaze held onto her hand, then she spoke slowly. "I also had a vision, selfish it may sound. I saw the man I will bond with someday."
Canúden smiled. "Who was it?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. He wasn't from around here. His features and coloring were... different. Not olive or brown like people around here. Not even pink like I'm told some westerners are. Not quite bluish like Gizelle, either. Very stone-colored. He was very wise and very kind, and in some ways he seemed very old, but he looked to be my same age. It was just a brief image, and it's frustrating because I have no idea where he is." She laughed. "Hey, maybe I'll be traveling with you accross that ocean."
Shrugging, he said, "Did he have a name?"
"...Simon, I think. But for some reason no one calls him that. They call him 'Kek' or something."
"You'll find him someday, Ma."
"That's what the vision said, anyway."
"I'm just glad it wasn't the landlord," said Canúden. "He's kind of creepy."
"Yes, not exactly my first or even my last choice in a bonding partner," she said. "You can't bond with someone you don't like, anyway; the mental connection simply won't form. And I'm not important enough to be arranged into a marriage."
"I wouldn't put it past him."
"I'm sure he'll try anyway, but I'm an adult with no living mother or female relative close enough to make an arrangement. If I don't want to marry, no one can make me."
"Well, that's good."
"I just don't know what del Maldon will do when I refuse to see him longer than to pay the rent. I'm thinking we may have to move."
Minara stood in the shadows between Gizelle's orangeberry hedge and a darkwood, where Minara had a plain view of the house, and where she could move for better visibility. She didn't need to see the old woman's pacing to feel her pathetic fretting. Gizelle was wondering what she should bury, what she should burn, as though such destruction would make a difference in anything. Such a useless endeavor for her worthless trinkets, as all Minara would need to do was send a spark of wari and ignite the house and everything in it.
Glancing warily around as she exited the house, Gizelle hefted stacks of books to her barn; a few minutes later, she skulked back, then returned to the barn with more books. More pacing, more fretting. Terror of Minara's power positively paralyzed her mind; how embarrassing for her. And more so, how easy it was for Minara to hide her own presence.
Gizelle hefted something and moved to the fireplace; since no smoke rose from the chimney, Minara supposed Gizelle was hiding something under the hearthstone. The attitude under the panic in Gizelle's mind indicated determination and... love? Gizelle was feeling that she would find an apprentice, and she was protecting something for that event. Books? Ah, Gizelle knew she would die, and she was preparing a way for an apprentice she already intended to guide. She thought the hearthstone would somehow protect the text books from Minara's wari.
Gizelle left the house and headed to the privy, but she brought a shovel. Precious void, was she going to dig there...? Instead, Gizelle chose a spot a pace or so away from the back side of the privy and dug, where she likely thought the smell would deter Minara's search. She placed a stone box into the hole. Probably the box contained books, maybe journals; Gizelle wouldn't value much else, and whatever was in the box knocked around like books would. She wanted the journals preserved, but as yet undiscovered. Probably she was ashamed of all of her deeds for Tavaris over the years, yet she couldn't bring herself to destroy all record of what she'd accomplished for him, so she buried her journals of those deeds in what she thought of as an awful place. It would be interesting to see what Gizelle had managed to record.
The old woman fretted and paced and sat for hours, a tiresome wait for anyone not schooled as Minara in patience. The level of concentration and finger muscle ache during the sitting indicated Gizelle probably spent much of the time writing as she sat. Last instructions? Sunlight peeped over the trees. Morning had long passed, and the sun made its descent.
Gizelle crept out of her house, locking the door behind her. She wore an over-sized lavender dress over her skinny frame; the old woman had changed into what had probably been a nice dress a generation before, and she probably hadn't worn it since it had been in style. She was heading somewhere she thought important enough to attempt to dress well. Gizelle clutched a shawl around her.
Minara stepped from behind the orangeberry bush, crossed the garden, and stood behind the privy. Despite the choking smell, she wari-blasted a bit of dirt from the obvious hole where Gizelle had buried something. Well, fingers would have to get dirty at some point; she hefted the stone box into the grass. Inside the stone box lay a dozen thin journals. Flipping through them, Minara saw references to Tavaris, the subject she had spent a lifetime to understand. A few paragraphs pulled her eyes:
Why couldn't they have just given him a world of his own, to populate and experiment with? Why this exclusiveness, as though their way was the only possible way?
Or why not let him roam free in his corner of the Otherworld? He wouldn't have to see or talk to any souls who didn't wish to see him. Why banish him to the awful, dismally dark void? Why banish one of the brightest lights of the Otherworld?
Yes, Minara and Gizelle had spent many hours discussing how the Creators had betrayed Tavaris. Another journal, more recent by the lack of wear on its pages, evinced a different tone:
Merciful Taleni! How could there be a happy world without the freedom to think for one's self? How could there be joy or discovery? How do I learn to think for myself again?
Stupid Gizelle, you make a conscious choice to have individual thoughts. Becoming one with Tavaris doesn't have to preclude intelligent ideas. Certainly not in Minara's case. Before she registered the acid boiling in her stomach, Minara had set a wari spark onto the journal's page; as it flared, she dropped the journal into the box, which all but exploded in flames.
Minara shook the dirt from her russet skirt, and proceeded to Gizelle's locked door. The wood felt smooth under her fingertips, the doorknob and keyhole were cold. It would take but a shard of wari to manipulate the lock and open the door; instead, she blasted the door into splinters. The whole house would be embers soon enough anyway.
A pry bar lay near the cold hearth. It took nothing to lift the stone; underneath lay two thick books, The Flow of the Waterways, Book 1 and An Apprentice's Guide to the Angles of Wari. Drivel. So many more efficient ways to instruct an apprentice. Minara sent a spark into the hole, and the pages soon curled into ash and embers.
Notebooks, charms and jade carvings of animals cluttered a table in the sitting room. Gizelle had once mentioned her curiosity to instill her wari into inanimate objects to see what would happen; undoubtedly these were her failed experiments, as they seemed all too ordinary. Jars of preserved specimens stood in rows on a shelf. Minara pocketed a vial of Key of Loredo, which she found by the jars; no sense to destroy a perfectly useful tool.
Nothing else in the house was particularly interesting, unless one found dirty laundry and a pantry full of food worth noting. Minara sent five sparks from five fingers in all directions, and left with a smile of satisfaction before smoke filled the rooms.
The sun had lowered near the Amethyst Mountains by the time Gizelle finished a will, complete with instructions for Canúden and Dylin. She clutched her shawl closer around her shoulders as she crept through the forest to Ocher. What had been the Star still twinkled as it rose over the darkwoods to the east, only a little brighter than a regular star. Its appearance brought her courage to keep one step in front of another. The Taleni had forgiven her of her horrible deeds, and showed her how she could help make the prophesies she'd been taught as a youth occur in reality.
The Dark One would not, could not win.
She smelled smoke before she felt the pain.
You think you can be free? said Minara in her head. Do you call this freedom? The laughter felt worse than the searing heat in her brain and Gizelle fell to her knees. You were always stupider than I was. We will win, Tavaris and I. We know the prophesies better than you. We know them better than anyone does. We will twist them to our own use. We will remake the world and all will be great, while those who strive for our enemy will wallow in nothingness!
It took a powerful mind mage to attack someone's thoughts from a distance. Minara was a powerful prime mage, having mastered most of the wari angles. She sent a barely-resistable sensation of adoration to Gizelle's mind, and Gizelle collapsed to her face.
"I spent too long to free myself from you," whispered Gizelle. She didn't doubt that Minara heard the words in her own head. "I won't fall for your charms anymore."
Parts of her wari, the energy her spirit used to touch the world, pulled away from her body and flowed to Minara. Gizelle shook. Images came to her mind of flames consuming her house and the wari-filled charms within. Minara was taking care of the item burning for her. What did she steal before she shot lightning from her fingers? It seemed she had known to dig up the journals, as she felt the sensation from Minara's mind of having done so. Decades of journals gone to ash.... Her concentration waned, or she might have connected more efficiently with Minara's mind and fought back.
Freedom is irrelevant. We will remake a world without pain or sorrow. If you follow our enemy, you must like pain. Gizelle's body shook as waves of wari seared her muscles. Everyone who follows us will be free from pain.
"You hypocrite," managed Gizelle. "This freedom you claim to despise is exactly what gives you the ability to choose to hurt me. Who is the stupid one?"
Minara laughed harder. Gizelle's eyes darkened, and all she perceived were pillars of red flame behind swollen eyelids.
"You may soon hold Hallel captive," said Gizelle, "let him wallow, but that does not mean you will win."
As an energy mage, an alternate angle of mind mage, Gizelle had long perceived Canúden's potential, ever since he lived in his mother's womb. He and others would stand against Minara... she hoped. Minara was powerful and ruthless beyond any mage in the world, and Canúden was a village boy with little or no wari sense. Dear Taleni, what have we gotten ourselves into? said a small voice in her heart which she hoped Minara was too busy to perceive. Breath came with difficulty, and she rolled to her side. She wouldn't make it to Canúden's home to deliver the will. He would surely come along this path, eventually. Someone would. Someone would deliver the parchment to him if he or she found it on the side of the path.
Pain disappeared and a light shined in the distance.
Don't miss any of the chapters!
Prologue: River Flowing
Chapter 1.1: Blindness
Chapter 1.2: Eyes Opened
Chapter 1.3: Hallel's Star
Chapter2.1: Hope
Would you like your story featured by 