“Can I hold it?” I asked.
“Of course not.” She sounded incredulous. So much for trust.
“It’s not like I’m going to run off with it or anything.” I probably put a little too much whine in my voice. “I’ll sneak to that tree and hide behind it.” I pointed at a scraggly tree about a half-mile away that looked like it would fall over from the breeze of a strong sneeze.
She rubbed her delicate fingers over the wooden amulet before tucking it back under her shirt. “It’s not that,” she said. I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn’t.
“It’s not that you don’t trust me, you just don’t trust anybody?” I joked.
“When it comes to these, yes.” She placed a hand over the spot on her chest where the amulet was hanging. “It is most precious.”
“I don’t get it, though,” I said. “They’re just pieces of wood.”
“Not just pieces of wood,” she rebuked. “We Ashlings have…” She paused, her face twisting into a look of confused thought. “I don’t think there’s really a word for them in English, and I do not think I could form the word in my language with this tongue. It is long and complicated. But they are basically Ashlings who have the ability to infuse wooden emblems with magic.”
I glanced at where the amulet hung under her sweater. I thought I saw a faint glow of purple showing through the fabric, but I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t just imagining it. I felt my fingertips itch. It felt a little like the tingle I would feel when Seanna used magic on me, only with a slight bite to it. I wanted to touch the amulet, just to see what it felt like.
“Most precious,” she repeated.
Her voice pulled me out of my reverie. “So, it allows you to do magic?”
“For a time,” she said with a nod. “It only holds a certain amount of magic. Once that magic is gone, it is just a pretty piece of wood.”
“Can’t those Ashlings just make more?” I asked. “The ones who infuse the wood or whatever?”
“It is a long and difficult process. Only the most skilled and practiced of these artisans are permitted to create these magical emblems. They must call upon the magic through song,” she went on, anticipating my next question. “They sing as they carve. The songs invite magic into the wood. If they sing a wrong word or note, the magic fails. If they slip up in their carving, the magic fails and the piece of wood is useless.”
“Couldn’t they just start over?”
“No.” She wrapped her arms around herself as she walked. The day was warm. “Once the magic is called upon, it must have a place to inhabit or it is lost forever.” Her voice was low and sorrowful. She trembled a little.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Do you need to rest?”
“No,” she said with conviction in her voice. “If we are to reach Daresh by nightfall, haste is essential.”
I nodded and decided to shift the conversation. I hated hearing that note of sorrow in her voice. “Thank you for looking for food this morning.”
“I do understand the need for protein in the human body,” she replied. “The nuts I have gathered should have been enough, but you apparently have not been eating enough of them.” She glanced back at Aoife who was in a discussion with the minotaur. Maybe it was my imagination, but I could have sworn I saw a flash of resentment on the Ashling’s face. Maybe even a little bit of jealousy.
“Yeah, well.” I fumbled for an excuse. I was pretty sure whatever I came up with would be lame, but I didn’t want her to think I didn’t appreciate her looking out for me. I just didn’t have any way to explain why I hadn’t eaten like I should. “I’ve never really been much for nuts. I mean, I like pecans, but they’re dry. Cashews are good, too. Those flat nuts remind me of them a lot. Oh, and almonds are okay, too.” A voice that sounded a lot like my own screamed at me to shut up from the back of my head. Great advice, really. I let my soliloquy on nuts I liked fade. I coughed into the silence that followed.
“Daresh will have food more to your liking,” she said. “You should look forward to meeting him.”
“You know,” I said, voicing a thought I’d had but kept to myself up until that point, “you’ve never really told me who this Daresh person is.”
“He is human,” Seanna said. “Leader of the city state of Delicia. He is a rival of Lortmor.”
“Who is…” I prompted.
“Leader of another city state. They oppose each other in everything they do, coming to the edge of war, but never quite pushing into all-out violent hostilities.” She talked without much feeling behind her words like putting emotion into them would give them power. “The Leaves and Roots only know what has kept them from completely destroying themselves and taking all of Alisundi with them.”
“He’s going to help me?”
“He holds other magical items to help your mom.”
“Why is he willing to help? What’s in it for him?”
“Not everybody is after something, Gaige. Maybe he knew the previous Gatekeeper and wishes to help where he can.” She waved a hand at the minotaur. “There is your proof it happens.”
I didn’t quite buy that. Call it my natural distrust of people. I glanced at Seanna, wondering why I put so much trust in her. There really was no reason, given her short history of manipulation and withholding information. But she was opening up, proving my trust was well placed. I didn’t see any reason to change that.
“How many of those do you have?” I asked.
“Enough to see you there safely.”
“What about back?”
“Of course,” she replied offhandedly.
A large, furry hand holding a long, brown something appeared in front of me. Seanna glanced at the minotaur before picking up her pace to put some distance between them.
“The girl said you are a carnivore and that you have not eaten in a while,” he rumbled.
I glanced back at Aoife who made a show of looking around the plain, but the smirk on her face told a different story. “What is it?” I took it from him and held it under my nose. It smelled like jerky.
“You probably don’t want to know,” Seanna suggested with a glance over her shoulder.
“Dried and salted meat,” the minotaur replied.
Jerky. Just the smell of it set my stomach rumbling. I’ll admit I’m usually not that open to new foods, but my hunger overrode my hesitation. Besides, it was jerky. What could possibly be wrong with it? I dismissed the question and took a small nibble off the corner.
“That’s not too bad,” I said with no small measure of relief.
Aoife made a noise that sounded like a cross between disgust and a stifled laugh. I turned back to look at her, chewing on the dry meat.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She turned back to squinting out over the plain. I couldn’t tell if her face scrunched up from smiling or from the bright sun.
“I really don’t want to know what this is, do I?” I called up to Seanna. She shook her head and I sighed. I examined the meat closer. It looked like, well, jerky, if only a little dryer than I was used to. It was thick and brown with just a hint of pink. It didn’t appear to be seasoned. I sighed again, heavier, and thought about giving it back to the minotaur, but my stomach rejected that idea. Couldn’t anything ever be easy? To calm the rumbling, I threw caution to the wind and took a bigger bite.
As I chewed, I looked at the large beast walking beside me. He didn’t appear to care whether I ate the jerky or not. His attention remained focused on the plain around us. His fur shimmered in the sunlight, shifting with his every move, muscles rippling beneath it. Random spots of gray broke up his otherwise completely black fur, which caught small burrs off the grass as he passed. He didn’t pay any attention to those either. I wondered if I was on the same level as grass to him.
“I’m Gaige,” I offered.
“Indeed.”
A great conversationalist. “Do you have a name?” I asked between mouthfuls of chewy meat.
“Yes.�
��
I waited for him to say, but he didn’t. “What is it?”
“You may call me Minotaur.”
“Minotaur?”
“Yes.”
“Your name is Minotaur?”
“No.”
“Okay.” I really had no clue where to go from there.
“His kind believe their names hold powers over them,” Seanna elaborated. “Only family and close friends know their given names. As close as friends as they can have, anyway,” she added as an afterthought.
“Your tone sounds as if you believe it to be a silly superstition, Ashling.” His large, black eyes rolled her direction.
“You know my name and it gives you no power over me,” she replied.
“Doesn’t it?”
She shrugged and said nothing.
“Whether you believe it or not, a name holds a lot of power,” he stated, though his attention turned from Seanna to me.
“I guess I just don’t see it,” I said with an apologetic look.
“Your name is Gaige.”
“Yeah, I told you that.”
“You are a Gatekeeper. You are in this area of Alisundi, so your gate must be the one up in the Jo-Shar mountains, leading to Earth. That one leads to what your kind call the Rocky Mountains. That would make your surname Porter and your mother Grace.”
I came to a dead stop, my blood going cold. He stopped as well, half turning toward me.
“How did you know that?” I asked in a quiet voice.
“A name is a powerful thing, Gaige the Porter.” He turned and continued through the tall grass.
“How did you know about my mom?” I hurried to catch up with him.
“He guessed, Gaige. That’s all. Not that hard really,” Seanna said, dropping back to fall in step beside me. “Don’t fall for his hocus-pocus.”
“How could he know about my mom?” I turned to Minotaur. “How did you know about my mom?” I asked him again. Talk about her put me on the defensive, as usual.
“The people on your world are kept in the dark about the gateways,” Seanna said. “Not so here. Gatekeepers are held in high regard. In case you haven’t noticed, people here know who you are. Knowing your parents is not uncommon. It’s all just guesswork.”
Maybe she saw the pain I struggled to keep from showing on my face, but she hesitated until I caught up with her and slipped her hand into mine.
“Does guessing make it any less powerful?” Minotaur asked Seanna.
“When you’re wrong, yes.”
“Was I?”
“You guessed common knowledge, Minotaur,” she said dismissively. “Congratulations.”
“Common knowledge holds power when used correctly,” he retorted.
“Ugh!” Seanna gasped in annoyance. “Arguing with a minotaur is like arguing with a stump. It goes nowhere. I’m going to scout ahead.” She dropped my hand—must to my distress—and stomped off through the grass.
I watched Seanna’s slight form get smaller in the distance as we walked in silence for several minutes.
“Why do your people put so much power in names?” Aoife broke the silence.
“My Ancient Father’s name held great power in it. It literally meant king , and that’s what he was, a great king. Cruel and ruthless, but great nonetheless,” Minotaur answered.
“King?” Aoife repeated thoughtfully. I could almost imagine a light bulb flaring to life above her head. “Minos! The King Minos! That’s your ancestor!”
Minotaur’s eyes rolled her direction, but he said nothing.
“Who?” I asked, feeling like an idiot. Aoife came up with that name with such conviction that I felt like I should know it. “The guy who turned everything he touched into gold?”
“That’s Midas, you Neanderthal!”
“Neanderthal? Really?”
“Big and dumb.” She looked me over. “That’s about right.”
“Why don’t you enlighten me about this King Mentos?”
“Minos.”
“Whatever.”
“Don’t you ever pay attention in class?”
“Sometimes,” I replied, which was more or less true.
“Apparently our mythology class last year wasn’t one of those times.”
“Didn’t we learn about Midas in that class?” I asked, straining my brain to get back that far.
“Yes, but we’re talking about Minos.”
“Who was…” I prompted.
Aoife let out an exacerbated sigh and Minotaur snorted. “He’s not so big,” he said, “but I would agree on the dumb part.”
“Hey!” I protested. “Not all of us are supergeeks.”
“Thanks,” Aoife said sardonically. “Don’t you remember Minos and the minotaur? The labyrinth?”
“I remember the minotaur and the labyrinth. Minos, not so much. Wait,” I said suddenly. “You’re the minotaur?”
The beast snorted even louder.
“Gaige, really?”
“What?” I was feeling stupider by the moment.
“That was thousands of years ago,” she replied. “Minos’s wife had a son, half man, half bull. I won’t go into the details about how that happened, but Minos banished the minotaur to the labyrinth. When the people of Athens killed his son, Minos conquered them and demanded seven men and seven women to be sacrificed to the minotaur every nine years.”
“Seriously, how do you remember this stuff?” I asked.
“I pay attention.”
“I do, too. Mostly.”
“Right. Anyway, an Athenian, Theseus, volunteered to go to Crete as a sacrifice, but he really intended to face the minotaur in combat. He killed the minotaur with the help of Minos’s daughter, Ariadne.”
Minotaur said nothing while Aoife told the story, his face unreadable. I wouldn’t have been able to read it anyway. I never had the chance to try to figure out what a bull was thinking before.
“I guess,” Aoife went on, “what I can’t figure out is how you are here if Theseus killed the original minotaur.”
“Your story is mostly correct, girl. Up to a point,” he said. “Our Ancient Father did send Athenian sacrifices to Minotaur Father to die as retribution for his slain son, but he had no interest in killing innocents. When he was first banished to the labyrinth, Minotaur Father wandered it until he knew every inch of the maze. In his exploring, he stumbled upon a gateway that led here. He lived most of his life on Alisundi, going back to the labyrinth every nine years to retrieve the human sacrifices and bring them here.”
“If he knew the labyrinth and didn’t want to kill them, why didn’t he just release them to return home?” Aoife asked. She was in her geek zone.
“Ancient Father’s wrath was great and swift and Androgeus was a favored offspring. He had the favor of the gods, so not many could stand against him. If he found the punishment of Athens was going unfulfilled, his rage would have been monstrous.”
“What about Theseus?” Aoife asked, completely enthralled with the tale.
Minotaur nodded his head, his large horns glinting in the sunlight. “Theseus did go with the intent of killing Minotaur Father, but he met Ariadne before entering the labyrinth. She knew what Minotaur Father had been doing and told Theseus. He, like the others, went to the gate, but when he drew near, he felt an odd sensation, a tug on him from somewhere deep inside, pulling him toward the gate.”
I immediately recognized that feeling, having felt it for the first time just a few days ago. “Theseus was a Gatekeeper?”
“Indeed,” Minotaur confirmed. “Once he and Minotaur Father figured out what he was, they devised a plan to end the sacrifices. Minotaur Father showed Theseus a secret way out of the labyrinth so he could find a large bull, slaughter it, and return with its head. While he was gone, Minotaur Father used a string to mark the way to the main entrance of the maze before returning to the gate. He went through it one last time and Theseus closed the gateway behind him and exited the labyrinth triumphantly with the bull’s
head.”
“Wow,” Aoife breathed.
I guess I should have been just as impressed by the story, but I really couldn’t recall the original one, so it went over my head. “Wouldn’t Theseus’s victory over the minotaur have angered Minos?”
“That is something he and Minotaur Father debated. In the end, Theseus was convincing in his argument that Athens needed to remove itself from under Minos’s heel. As I understand it, Minos was indeed angered and waged another war against Athens, this one unsuccessful, though.”
Aoife nodded her agreement. “What happened to the sacrifices that came here?”
“They are still around. Or rather their ancestors. Your Ashling returns,” he said. “I believe you are close to your destination.” He moved ahead of us, cutting a path through the grass.
Aoife fell in behind him, glancing at the jerky I held. “That’s dried balataur meat, by the way,” she called back.
27
A Promise
I had a hard time concentrating on Seanna’s report. My mind flipped back and forth from disgust to the need to eat something. I tried to tell myself the jerky was made from cow. That’s basically what it was, right? Beef jerky. I kept telling myself that, but it didn’t work out so well. I had yet to see a cow stand on its hind legs and try to kill my friends and kidnap me. But there was a first time for everything. I had held on to the jerky in hopes that I could somehow forget the knowledge of what it was and that I would get hungry enough to actually eat it. That plan wasn’t working out so well. I made a mental note to thank Aoife.
“We’ve traveled much slower today than I had hoped,” Seanna said with a glance in Aoife’s direction as if it was all her fault. She hadn’t even looked at me since she returned from scouting. “We might as well sleep here for the night. We should make it to Delicia by midmorning—if we get moving fast enough in the morning.”
I felt a need to argue that we still had a few hours of daylight left. If it was so imperative we made up time, why didn’t we keep going for a while longer? She killed the argument before it fully formed in my head by muttering that she would go look for food. She turned and moved out into the grass.
The Gatekeeper Trilogy Page 25
