“I know that Numa and Soman are as necessary to my being as my own mind, but choosing between them and my father is no choice at all. I think you know that, and that is why you lied to me about it for so long.”
Gemynd heard Molly huff in impatience. “What would you have had me do then, son?”
“Fight. Fight for Truth and for your son. Why didn’t you fight the Keepers of Aerie and have the laws of Todor changed so that we could all be together? Why didn’t you make it so that your son would never have to choose?”
“I never believed I had that kind of power. I was just one Terrene, powerless in the world of Todor. I made the very best choices that I believed I could. Perhaps, looking back, they were not the right choices, but what good does it do to desire to change the past? It is not possible and is a waste of Lifeforce. I promise that all the choices I’ve made were because I love you. Can we leave the past behind us now and form a new bond?”
“In time we will,” Gemynd said, and found her hand in the darkness, squeezing it gently to show his earnestness. “But I must first heal the grief of losing my father.”
“Grief is a very powerful force, son. It simultaneously shatters your heart and shows you your capacity to love. It is in grief when we love the most. You are now grieving for your father and, in this moment, you are most aware of your love for him. Please don’t let that blind you to the love you bear for others. It won’t dishonor his memory to love me too.”
Gemynd had not realized it, but that’s exactly what he’d been doing. He had been so angry at his mother, for so long, that he felt it might betray his father to forgive her. Somehow, forgiving Molly might mean that Gemynd was happy about the time he’d spent away from his father. And yet, Golath had forgiven her. “You promised once never to lie to me again,” Gemynd mused aloud. “I should have accepted your promise and put the past behind us at that moment. I am sorry that I’ve held on to anger and distrust. I let my fixation with betrayal affect our relationship.”
“I know how much truth means to you.” Molly squeezed Gemynd’s hand, and he heard her take a deep, ragged breath. “I love you, my son, and I look forward to rebuilding our relationship.”
Gemynd heard the familiar tone of grief in her sadness. “I had not considered what Golath’s death has meant to you,” he said, guilt prickling his insides. “You loved him too.”
“I had only just reunited with him.” Molly wept and Gemynd pulled on her hand until she fell against him. “I have so many regrets.”
“Scitte!” Gemynd heard Keeper Sam swear. He gently pushed Molly back and scrambled over to the hole in the metal.
Sam stood before it, the oil lamp held aloft.
“Did you find the others?” Gemynd asked, already knowing the answer by the look on Sam’s face.
Sam shook his head and set the oil lamp on the ground. “Both of these tunnels just loop back around to here. The only way out must be the tunnel you’re in.”
Gemynd quickly tried nudging Numa again without success. He forced himself not to think about why she was not responding. There could be any number of reasons, and it would not do anyone any good for him to begin speculating. “Then I will go down this tunnel,” Gemynd replied, getting to his feet.
“Son, you can’t see a thing. It’s too dangerous.” Molly stood too and bent down to look out the hole. “Sam can you fit the lamp through this hole?”
“It’s far too small, Molly,” Sam said, not bothering to attempt it.
“Sam, you come and sit right here,” Gemynd said through the hole. “You are both to stay right as you are. Do not move. Do not go anywhere. Keep each other calm with conversation. I will be back as soon as I’ve found something.”
Gemynd pressed his right palm flat against the tunnel wall and extended his left arm out in front of him. He had never experienced darkness so pure before. Even in the depths of Iturtia, there had always been at least a single flame to offer illumination. His instincts told him that it was foolish to move forward in such conditions, but he ignored them. He had to find a way out of their current predicament, and he had to find the lost Iturtians.
Gemynd closed his eyes, signaling his mind to heighten his other senses. Maybe his skin would feel a change in the air if there was a sudden drop off before him. Maybe his ears would hear a predator stalking him, or his nose would smell the rusted metal of another trap awaiting him. This would not be such a challenge for a Zobanite and certainly not for an Empyrean. Gemynd pursed his lips as he realized how ineffectual Iturtian powers were without light.
Gemynd tried contacting Numa again, but met with the same emptiness as before. He would have to forge through the black on his own.
With every step, Gemynd’s heart beat faster. He sensed danger ahead, but nothing could confirm it so he told himself it was only in his mind. The foreboding grew stronger and stronger until he found himself looking back over his shoulder, seeking the safety of where he’d come. But he could see nothing behind him either.
Forcing himself to put one foot in front of the other, he began to notice a slight curve in the tunnel wall. It was bending to the right, which meant it would start to lead back in the direction of the dungeon. It was not a good sign for he knew that the lost Iturtians, and their way out of the tunnels, would be in the opposite direction. Still, he figured going backwards was better than not going at all, so he pressed on. Besides, the tunnels had yet to be cooperative. For all he knew, it would turn back the other way up ahead.
As Gemynd continued slowly rounding what felt like a bend, it seemed that the utter blackness had lightened slightly to a dark grey. Gemynd rubbed his eyes with his left hand. “Another mind trick,” he said to himself. “In this darkness, a lamp or torch would show up as a single point of light. Only the sun would lighten it fully.”
But the more he walked, the more sure he became that it was, indeed, becoming lighter in the tunnel. Soon, he could see the outline of his right hand as it pressed against the tunnel wall. Then, the toes of his boots. “This tunnel must open to the outside,” he said, hope filling his heart.
Just as he’d spoken the words, the tunnel turned sharply still to the right. The turn was so tight that Gemynd’s right hand was momentarily touching nothing but air. When he turned the corner, his eyes were forced shut by the sudden intensity of the bright light that was everywhere.
As his eyes slowly adjusted to the light, he began to make out shapes, familiar shapes. To his left, he saw what looked like the Wishing Hut in Aerie. But to his right he saw the unmistakeable interior of the Director’s office in Iturtia.
“What is this?” he asked aloud, trying to see both places at once. He realized then that the two were separated by a thin stone wall that ran between them.
Gemynd studied the Wishing Hut side first. As he looked at it, he saw people begin to form. He recognized their faces. These were the Aerites he’d grown up with.
Gemynd took a quick step back and felt a rush of heat in his chest. As he watched the Wishing Hut, he saw another version of himself walk towards it. “What is happening?” he asked again.
Then he heard voices coming from the Director’s office. He looked and saw Golath and Hildegaard deep in conversation. Golath sat at his place behind the desk, while Hildegaard hovered in front of it. “Director, why have you risked your plans this way?”
“I’ve risked nothing,” Golath replied, putting his attention on a parchment that lay on the desk.
“This is me you’re talking to. I know how much you’ve put into your plans, your plans to raise Iturtia up. Gemynd is part of that plan and you let him go.”
“As I said, I’ve risked nothing.” Golath still focused on the parchment. “Gemynd will return and it will be his choice to do so. It can work no other way.”
“You can’t know that for sure. What if he gives that preposterous peace declaration to Keeper Clary? What then?”
“He won’t do that. He will come to his senses.”
Gemynd’s skin prickled and the tops of his ears felt hot. He quickly looked to the Wishing Hut and watched that version of him approach it then hesitate outside the doorskin.
“You will psychpersuade him, then?” Gemynd heard Hildegaard ask from the other side.
Gemynd held his breath as he waited for Golath to answer, never taking his eyes from his old self outside the Wishing Hut.
“I can see through his eyes,” Hildegaard continued when Golath remained silent. “He is at the Wishing Hut now. The timing is perfect.”
Gemynd turned his attention back to the Director’s office, shocked that Hildegaard had this ability.
“I will not take the power of choice from my son,” Golath replied at last, looking up from his parchment to pierce Hildegaard with a fierce stare.
Gemynd exhaled slowly through his lips. He hadn’t realized until then how afraid he’d been that his father would answer in any other way.
“I fear you are no longer making the decisions that are best for all of Iturtia, but only those that are best for one Iturtian. You are obligated to do right by more than just Gemynd.” Hildegaard backed slowly from the desk as she spoke the words. At the same time, Golath stood. He towered over Hildgaard and his expression turned to ice.
“You have been a loyal and skilled Iturtian, but you will not get a second chance to question my decisions,” he said, his calm tone making him seem all the more menacing.
“I only worry that your love for Gemynd has blinded you to your duties,” Hildegaard pressed and Gemynd winced. He knew he was somehow watching a scene from the past--events that had already transpired--but he could not help feeling sorry for Hildegaard. Questioning Golath a second time would surely result in her suffering.
Golath reached across the desk with one hand and wrapped his fingers slowly around Hildegaard’s neck. “Do you intentionally seek my punishment?” he asked.
“I seek your attention,” Hildegaard confessed, her voice strained but not broken. Golath was not squeezing as hard as he could.
“Ah, another example of an Iturtian led astray by her heart.” Golath laughed quietly and released Hildegaard. “Do not forget that it is only through your mind that you have power. Now, run along and ignore your heart. Be the good Iturtian I know you can be.”
“Surely you have a heart, too, Director,” Hildegaard said, making no move to leave.
“I gave it to another long ago. Now go.”
As Hildegaard turned to leave, Gemynd saw a string of Lifeforce float out of the top of her head and slither through the stone wall towards the Wishing Hut. He watched it as it made its way into the ear of the version of Gemynd standing outside the Wishing Hut. It went inside his head and coiled around his brain. When it did, Gemynd heard Keeper Clary’s voice say, “He is a threat plain and simple.” Then another Keeper’s voice said, “His father is the threat. We cannot say anything for sure about Gemynd. He did take the oath after all.”
It was the Keepers’ conversation he had overheard the night he’d destroyed Aerie. In fact, it was the conversation that pushed him over the edge to madness. And it had all been fabricated by Hildegaard.
“No,” Gemynd whispered as he watched the conversation unfold. “How could I have been such a fool to leave my mind open to her?”
But there was another question prodding the edges of his mind: would he have destroyed Aerie anyway? He had already been filled with doubt and mistrust. Had he really needed to overhear that conversation to push him to destroy? Or had he already become wicked enough to do it on his own?
“I would have left before I’d have destroyed it,” he said to himself. “It was this conversation that led me to murder and lust for revenge.” Knowing that truth filled him simultaneously with relief and rage.
“How else did you control me?” he shouted towards the Director’s office.
Golath stood there alone now, his head bowed in a look of shame. “She’s right,” Gemynd could hear him thinking. “I am putting Gemynd’s welfare above that of Iturtia. If I do not force Gemynd’s hand in destroying Aerie, I will be forsaking my people.”
Gemynd’s heart thundered in terror. How clearly he remembered hearing the commands, “Destroy them. Destroy them all.” Had they been in his father’s voice or his own? There was so little difference between the two, how would he ever know?
He turned and watched the other Gemynd walk into the Wishing Hut. At the same time, the vision shifted and now Gemynd could see inside the Wishing Hut too. He saw his former self confront Keeper Stout, then Soman and Ruddy Tom. Beads of sweat ran down his cheeks from his temples and bile pushed its way up his throat. What would be worse? To discover his father had given the commands or that the wickedness had come from within himself?
And then it happened.
“Destroy them. Destroy them all.” The words echoed in Gemynd’s mind, but had not come from anywhere outside. Golath had not inserted the words. The destruction of Aerie had been entirely Gemynd’s choice.
Suddenly the stone wall between the two worlds crumbled, covering Gemynd in a cloud of dust. Through the haze, he saw the images of the Wishing Hut and the Director’s office begin to swirl together. They swirled faster and faster and then the muddied mess popped like a soap bubble. All that was left behind was a single point of light. Gemynd wiped the dust from his eyes and bent over the light, realizing it was the flame of an oil lamp. He lifted the lamp and saw that the only thing before him was a solid, rock wall. The end of the tunnel.
Gemynd frantically ran his hands along the wall, trying to make sense of what he’d just seen. Aerie had just been there. And the Director’s office.
Gemynd’s breath came in short, rapid bursts and he flattened his back against the cool stone wall. The scene from Aerie--from the Wishing Hut--could have been nothing more than a projection from his own memory, his madness seeping forth in hallucination. But what of the Director’s office? That had not been a memory. Had he imagined it? Made it up in his own mind?
The thrumming of Gemynd’s heart in his ears told him he had not made it up. Something or someone had shown him this so he’d know the depth of wickedness in his own heart. Though he had never wanted to discover he had been Golath’s puppet, the truth of his own depravity ran like lightning through his veins, searing them closed until his heart felt drained of Lifeforce.
“How do I bear the guilt of what I’ve done?” he heard his own voice ask in a broken whisper.
Gemynd knew he was standing at the end of the tunnel, but he felt like he was falling, pulled by the hands of the earth into a pit of his own making. He had no idea how long he’d stood there before reality snaked its way into his awareness. His mother and Keeper Sam awaited him. Numa was counting on him to find the lost Iturtians. Somehow he would have to carry on existing in two separate worlds: the pit of horrors where he belonged and the Todor where everyone else expected him to be.
Gemynd pushed himself away from the wall and made his way back down the tunnel. With an oil lamp now in his hand, the journey back was much faster.
“Mother, it is I,” Gemynd called, knowing Molly would only be able to see the flame from the lamp and not the person who carried it. “I found this lamp down there, but nothing else. This tunnel ends around a bend.”
Gemynd set the lamp down next to his mother and peered through the hole to check on Sam. “There’s no way out on this side, Sam,” he called. Gemynd saw Sam close his eyes in defeat.
“I have not come up with another plan in your absence.”
“If neither of us is able to psychspeak with anyone, the problem must be with us,” Gemynd reasoned aloud. “Perhaps there is something in the tunnels that is blocking our ability to communicate with our minds. So, as far as I can tell, we have only one other option. You must go back to the dungeon the way we came and
see if there are any other tunnels leading from there.”
Sam sighed and walked to the middle of the tunnel, looking back at where they’d come. “Before I do that, try nudging my mind to see if even that works.”
Gemynd nodded, impressed with Sam’s reasoning skills. Perhaps he was Iturtian after all. He nudged Sam’s mind, then tried his mother’s for good measure, and both were unresponsive. “I have no ability to psychspeak here.”
“Try psychmovement,” Sam commanded.
Gemynd looked at the oil lamp and tried moving it with his mind. “Apparently none of my glinting powers work here,” he said, hoping that it was, indeed, the location to blame and not that he’d lost his powers.
“Neither do mine,” Sam replied. “Which means it would be fruitless to bring the lost Iturtians here anyway. Their powers would likely not work either.”
“Then go back to the dungeon and summon Numa. I know I was able to psychspeak there.”
Sam bent down towards the hole in the sheet of metal. “The dungeon was a far way back. I would be gone for quite some time. Are you certain you and Molly are safe in there? Numa would never forgive me if I left you alone for so long if there was even a hint of danger.”
“There is nothing in here but the two of us. You’re the one who might face danger.”
“Strangely, I find little reassurance in that.”
Sam stood up and turned to go when he let out a piercing shriek. Gemynd jumped to his feet, then dropped down again to look through the hole, but Sam had pressed his back up against it. “What is it?” Gemynd shouted, trying in vain to see through Sam. “Sam, I can’t see. What is happening? Will you move?”
Unity: The Todor Trilogy, Book Three Page 11
