A Division of Souls - A Novel of the Mendaihu Universe

by Jon Chaisson

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Revelation

  In the span of twenty-four hours, Denni had gone from protected little sister and recently awakened Mendaihu to the world-revered One of All Sacred. She had gone from Earth to Trisanda and back in under an hour. She’d figured out how to control Nehalé’s ritual almost as soon as she’d seen its reach from space. She’d returned to the warehouse with the ability to calm the emotions of everyone within. She suddenly had a claim to such a vast amount of knowledge it could not be measured; a knowledge she couldn’t completely fathom, yet she could access it with ease, and understand it instantly once within her grasp. She could do so many impossible things with her newfound power she feared she was losing focus. She ran on Mendaihu instinct as much as possible, and thanked Caren profusely for giving her reason to trust it.

  And now Caren was here. Thank the Goddess, her sister had come!

  Led by Anando, Caren entered through one of the bay doors with her eyes wide. She’d expected a gathering, but nothing this large…and luckily, she had come after the crowd had calmed again. Denni could sense her from across the room…her whole spirit shimmered with equal parts confusion and awe, but when Caren finally found her standing at the top of the mezzanine stairs, that confusion turned to such a powerful love and relief that Denni nearly lost her footing. She giggled in delight, never having felt such a strong energy from her, and bounded down the stairs to meet her. She darted past the throng of people who were making way for her as quickly as they could, and finally crashed into Caren’s awaiting arms.

  Oh Denysia… Caren spoke from within, her arms wrapped tightly around her. You wouldn’t believe how much I love you right now…

  She sank into her sister’s embrace, remembering the countless times she had done so before when she was younger, smaller, and not yet awakened. She could feel her own spirit intertwining with Caren’s, forever bound.

  Karinna, she said. My one constant. My anchor.

  Caren looked down at her quizzically but with a sense of amusement. In their lives together, Caren had constantly told her of her personal troubles and how constantly chaotic her own life was. But to Denni it was Caren’s unending pursuit of that perfect inner peace that drove Denni herself to achieve it for the both of them. She knew this was not out of the many psychic gifts she now found herself with. This was from within her heart.

  “Poe is setting up a Benjamin’s Key a few blocks from here,” Caren said out loud, not only for her sake but for others to hear as well. “I believe they’ll be ready within the next fifteen to twenty minutes whenever you want to start the cleansing.”

  Denni gaped at her. “How did you know…?”

  “As soon as I saw Anando, I understood,” she said, and blushed. Blushed! Caren never did that! “As much as it pains me not to dig into past lives in order to remember where I’ve met Anando before…” Caren turned to Anando and gave him a knowing smile. Denni stole a glance at the young man she had seen floating throughout the place an hour before. How had she not recognized his signature before now? “I had to figure out how everyone fit in,” Caren continued. “We were all wrong from the beginning…we all thought it was chaos out there, that Rain of Light, an aftereffect of edha Usarai’s ritual and the hrrah-sehdhyn, but that wasn’t it at all — it was there for a reason. It wasn’t chaos, but a gathering of spirits. I knew a cleansing was coming as soon as I saw Anando, because he was there for me, to guide me back to you. Every action had a reason, Denni. There was no chaos at all. And it all fell into place at that moment.”

  “Like things finally made sense,” Denni said, more to herself than to Caren.

  “And about damned time,” she groaned. “When Kindeiya Shalei contacted us, he said that you’d be down at the warehouse by four. Why the warehouse? And why so many Mendaihu and Shenaihu jammed into one large place? Then it hit me: the reason I couldn’t sense the Rain was because I was expecting to feel Mendaihu souls up there…of which there are very little. Isn’t that right, Nehalé?”

  Denni looked over her shoulder. Nehalé, who had kept his distance, now stepped forward to join the conversation. “That is correct, emha Johnson,” he said evenly. They both stared at each other for a long and uncomfortable moment, she with the cold professionalism of her duty, and he with what seemed to be both wariness and pity. For that long moment, Denni dared not breathe. This one moment decided the fate of more than just her duty or his achievement in the Awakening.

  Slowly and deliberately, Caren let out a long breath, yet never taking her eyes off of him. “Kindeiya knew about the Rain of Light being mostly Shenaihu spirits,” she said coldly. “So did you. You planned on equalizing it once you had a fair number of Mendaihu and Shenaihu here in this warehouse. Using the polarities to what, cancel each other out?”

  Nehalé smirked. “No…not entirely. Many have thought that was my only motive. I was trying to disperse them, and in the process, increase the flow of Light.”

  Denni frowned. “Then why awaken me? Why did you need me, as the One?”

  He looked down at her with kind eyes and a reverent smile. “To be honest…” he said, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. Caren stiffened, but restrained herself from doing anything. “My Dearest One, originally to awaken you was not part of the plan at all. Mind you, that was years ago.” He glanced quickly at Caren. “Many years ago, emha Johnson, before either of you knew or understood what you are now. And please, nyhnd’aladh, I say this with nothing but reverence to them…but Kindeiya Shalei knew that Denysia here was the One of All Sacred when your parents sacrificed themselves to protect the two of you. He never told me it was your sister…only that she was here, and being protected by Cheylan and Aaramis Shalei.”

  Surprisingly Caren did not lash out. “So…” she said, and bit her lip. She crossed her arms and moved closer in, much closer than comfortable. Denni saw it purely as a protective move. In the small time she had known Nehalé, however, she had learned and eventually understood his motives for what he had done. His plans may not have been executed perfectly, but in the end…

  …in the end, he had performed miracles, and had protected them all along.

  “So,” Caren said again. “You disperse the Shenaihu souls throughout the city…why? Were you planning another attack on a church? Saint Paul’s up the street, perhaps?”

  “I planned no such thing,” he said as evenly as he could without showing he’d been offended by the implication. “That…” He cleared his throat, and continued in a softer voice. “That was an unfortunate backlash of the Awakening…one that had been exploited by Natianos Lehanna. I’m sure you know who and what he is by now…”

  “Yes…” Caren said, her voice as low as his. “Yes, I do.”

  Nehalé had said Natianos’ name so disdainfully that Denni almost hadn’t made the connection. Saone Lehanna, she thought to herself. The girl she had run into not a half hour ago. If Natianos had been behind the hrrah-sehdhyn, then Saone had either come to stop the Gathering…or had hoped to take part in it. She felt the pang of heartache when she thought of Saone and Kryssyna running away amidst the craziness that had erupted so soon after…they felt they’d been chased away from a chance of real peace.

  “Natianos believes he has the upper hand,” Nehalé continued. “He truly believes that the Shenaihu will prevail, once the Cleansing commences. I am doing all I can to keep that from happening, and at the same time ensure the Mendaihu will not be the overriding power, either.

  “In answer to your question the Cleansing would, in broad terms, let the souls within the Rain of Light disperse themselves throughout the city, perhaps even beyond the limits of the Sprawl. The result would be…well, a bit like your partner.”

  Caren frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “Nehalé is one of the strongest Soulsensers in this hemisphere,” Denni said. “He might not have known it was me, but he found me as the One of All Sacred, when he perform
ed the Awakening ritual. I’d give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  Caren glared at both of them, first at her own sister’s audacity, then at Nehalé’s intrusiveness. She waved her hand frantically in front of her. “What does that have to do with Alec Poe?”

  “Everything,” he said. “He is cho-nyhndah, the twin spirits. He has both Shenaihu and Mendaihu in him.”

  “So?”

  Nehalé reached out a hand to touch Caren on the shoulder. She flinched, about to jerk away and out of his grasp, but thought better of it and let him do so. “The cho-nyhndah is extremely rare, emha. He is the pure soul. The completeness of the Trisandi life thread that so many ancestors have wished for. It is not hereditary by blood, but by spirit. By releasing the Rain of Light…many of the souls within would merge with the souls of those willing to participate, becoming cho-nyhndah themselves.”

  Caren stared long and hard at him. “Who gives you that right?” she asked. “Who gives anyone the right to do that?”

  Nehalé sighed, dropping his head. “You misunderstand, Karinna,” he said. “I am not forcing anyone to do anything at all. I have merely given everyone a chance to make their own decision without influence or ignorance. Just as I have awakened your sister as the One of All Sacred so she may guide us.”

  “And yet…” she said, moving closer to him with an icy hatred in her eyes. “Did you give Denni a fucking choice at all?”

  But Denni was too quick. “Caren, don’t,” she said quietly, taking Caren’s hand and holding it tight. “Please…it’s okay. You don’t have to do this.”

  “I can’t forgive him, Den,” she said, her voice frail and cracking. “I cannot forgive him for what he did to you.”

  Outside, they all heard the low rumble of thunder.

  “No, Caren. Please, it was my own choice as well! Don’t do this!”

  “Do you realize what you’ve done, Nehalé?” she spat. “Do you realize what you’ve done to this city? My city? Are you aware of how many people you’ve affected?”

  “Caren!”

  “Karinna…” Nehalé said unevenly, and took a safe step backwards. “Believe me, I am fully aware —”

  “Bullshit you are!” she screamed. “Do you even see or sense what you’ve unleashed out there?”

  “Caren, please!”

  The air split open with a deafening crack. The sudden jolt of electricity surged through the crowd, knocking dozens off their feet, and Denni instinctively lifted her arms up to shield herself. She tasted the pungent smell of sweat and smoke, and suddenly she felt the surge hit her right leg and travel upwards. A tiny spark of Light shot out of her uplifted hand. She felt her knees give out from under from her, the room shifting sickeningly to her left.

  To her right, Caren had already fallen to the floor in a dead faint.