by E L Russell
“We could sit and watch over them daily, but that’s a poor use of time. We need to reduce the length of time between the Queen’s departure for the Holy Lands to the exact moment they are stolen. If we knew the date she learned of the theft, we’d have a manageable time gap.”
Finna's eyes flew wide, and she slapped him on the arm. "I know, I know. I remember now."
Leeth leaned away from her. “What do you know?”
“I know when the chalices were stolen. When Queen Eleanor gave me this quest, she told me how she knew they were missing. Her exact words were, ‘When we first arrived at St. Simeon a monk gave the King a message that came by a merchant ship from Vézelay saying both chalices were stolen from the cathedral sometime after the third Christmas Mass in 1147, only months after we departed for the Holy Lands. So that’s our window for returning them.”
“Got it,” Leeth said.
She grinned. “The best part of this is that with your expertise, we can position the chalices from here and watch the drama unfold.”
He held up a hand. "Keep in mind the Time Overlords expect us to do a very careful job, so nothing in the future is changed. After we place the goods, we’ll need to monitor several bits of time to check that no unexpected ripples occur. For example, there’s the situation with Godfrey.”
She frowned. “Situation?
“You shouldn’t have paid him to live on your farm. It was an admirable gesture, except you can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“In this timeline, you no longer exist.”
Finna gasped. “I don’t?” Her heart flipped in her chest. “After all we’ve been through, I’m dead?”
Leeth patted her arm. "Only on Earth, thank God. Let's examine your generous offer to Godfrey. You think about it, and I'll sit here by the wall and enjoy my fresh bread, and, uh, bitter coffee."
The breath she held whooshed out. The ‘living or not' thing had scared her. Now that she understood Leeth's comment, her thoughts lingered on the timeline. It created a mess of problems, she decided. That she no longer existed in the Earth timeline felt right, now that she thought about it. And with her father gone, it wasn't home anymore. She wanted to return to Torg, but first, she had to think through fixes for the current timeline. There had to be a way to give Godfrey the coin and farm that met Time Overlord standards.
“I got it. I have a solution, Leeth.” She took the small piece of bread from his fingers and waved it under his nose. “You go back in a time as far as you need to, as long as it is after the tournament, and give him a written bill of sale for the farm along with thirty-six gold coins. Tell him it is his share of the winnings as squire to a champion.” She lifted a hand for a high-five, one of the strange social skills he’d taught her, and waited for his response.
“Let me make another cup of coffee while you compose the deed to transfer the title to the farm. Meanwhile, since you are dead to this world, I would be most happy if you would stay with me on Torg.”
"Huh?" Finna's jaw dropped, and she quickly closed it. "Are you asking me to live on Torg or stay with you in the castle?" She lowered her brows and watched him with suspicion and hope from under them.
He took her hand and pulled it to his heart. “Come live with me for as long as you wish to be with me.”
Not an ardent declaration. Nevertheless, it held promise.
He grinned. “Let’s give it a thousand years and see how that works out.”
She laughed and freed her hand to use both arms to pull him close. “Hmmm, we might need more time.”
* * *
Finna woke cuddled up against Leeth in the castle on Torg and savored the feeling of safety and warmth. Her quest to Queen Eleanor had been fulfilled, and Godfrey had been given the money and the farm his family so needed all without interrupting Earth's timeline. The chatter from Yasmin and Jamal in the common room assured her she still had her friends near. Although she had a vague feeling of unfinished business, the luxury of safety and Leeth beside her soaked soothed her like a warm bath.
Sometimes, in unguarded moments, thoughts of saving Earth sometime in the far future, drifted through her near conscience, but Earth was in the capable hands of the Time Overlords, ' and she let the intrusions float on by. In the meantime, she and Leeth were free to explore the galaxy. A smile filled her face. And he could teach her how redemption worked. She would see her father again.
Also by E L Russell
Thank you for reading The Seeker - Finna’s Quest.
The rest of the stories we are releasing this Spring include:
GENECAUST, a Meret Mather Mystery techno-thriller. Terrorists plan to use Silent Killing Viruses to destabilize the American government and thereby give world power to powerful Russian and Chinese Oligarchs.
The Ghost in my iPad, 12:12 - The third book in a series with Jengo, and his pals, work with a ghost and an injured dog in a life or death situation to reveal illegal shooting the magnificent bucks in the state park.
Adam Zed, a novella. All does not go as planned with a graduate student's efforts to get his geeky friends hooked up at a rave by genetically altering their microbiome.
H SAM, a novella. A college student takes a part-time job with a local pharmaceutical company interviewing people with rare memory capabilities. With hopes to find a cure for PTSD.
About the Author
Entanglement Publishing
My wife and I have published close to 30 Short Stories and Novels. Our writings, high concept science fiction and mystery technothrillers, reflect our eclectic interest in the impact technologies impose on individuals and social groups. We publish through Entanglement Publishing. My latest research has resulted in a series of novels and short stories about the ability to re-program inheritable genetic code, curing disease through self-healing, waging war, and acquiring immortality.
Our protagonists, powerful women scientists, medical researchers, are members of the next human species, Homo Evolutis.
GENECAUST, a Mystery technothriller, to be published in March 2017, defines a new challenge in terrorism, targeting large groups of people for assassination based on unique genetic tags. I created the name Genecaust to warn of the greatest global threat to mankind.
“The Holocaust must be remembered so it will never happen again.
A Genecaust must be anticipated so it will never happen.”
- E L Russell, 2016
As it should,
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Novels by E L Russell on Amazon
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Deadly Awakenings
Deadly Discovery
Deadly Conflict
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Onset - Chloe 1.0
Reset - Chloe 2.0
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Onset, Reset, Mindset - The Box Set
The Ghost in my iPad - The Box Set*
The SEEKER - Finna’s Quest
The SEEKER - Finna’s Revenge*
The SEEKER - Book 3*
GENECAUST - Meret Mather Mystery
SKV - Meret Mather Mystery*
Goth Glam - Meret Mather Mystery*
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ISBN: 978-0-9980974-6-6
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Short Stories by E L Russell on Amazon
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Adam Zed*
Bottoms Up
Critique Circle
H SAM*
Sniper POV
The Commitment
The Night We Lost Cleveland
The Stop
The Story of Sarah and Hagar
To Find a Thief
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ISBN: 978-0-9980974-6-6
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Finna’s Revenge - Book 2
A scene sample
Finna woke sitting on a soft layer of field grass and rested against cool rocks of the stonewall she and her father built. Before she opened her eyes, a hint of a hidden memory flashed through her mind followed by an equally sudden terror shooting down the back of her neck, into her arms, down to her hands, filling them with fistfuls of grass ripped from the rich earth. Her heels pushed her tight against the wall as another spark of discharged memory fragment forced her eyes to remain shut. She knew if she opened them everything would change. She wouldn’t be home stargazing in the dark of night with her father at billions of colorful stars and the wonderful galaxy they shared.
Please, sweet Lord, make this one different.
She wasn’t even sure who she would be. Again, her thoughts reached out to her God, not in prayer, but with something she knew only as a skill someone once taught her and spoke through her mind.
She squeezed her grass filled fists.
With eyes still closed, she raised her voice to her unseen God hiding somewhere behind her galaxy.
“I, Finna Magnusson, was born in 1122, in the same year as our good Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. I am the only child of a single parent. My father, Magnus Magnusson is a former Knight Templar, and current Master Mason making repairs of the of Vézelay Cathedral. He has spent his life as your devoted servant and I implore you to help me find and protect him. You already have my mother, leave my father to me.”
Her chin dropped onto her chest and she waited. Unwilling to open her eyes ending the possibility she was home on Earth, she tried to reconstruct the events in her mind that would drive her toward destruction.
The image of a large agitated man in a grey hooded monk’s robe slipped into her thoughts. He spoke aloud to her with his hand on her shoulder and head tilted, close to her ear.
“What the sarding hell, Finna? Look at this recorded viz the TimeLords just sent.”
She saw the image in her mind.
“That’s Mother standing facing us in a small sphere that is falling toward the Black Hole. No wonder I can’t reach her.”
She watched his view of Mother’s small transparent sphere’s speed increased and heard herself saying, “She’s waving as though she knows we see her.” Then she ruffly tugged his sleeve. “Why would the Mother allow her sphere to get that close to the Black Hole?”
Before he responded, the tiny orb disappeared into oblivion like a piece of dry tinder dropped in a flame.
“Leeth, do something. Can’t we save her?”
His eyes opened wide. “Mother is . . . safe. Listen, I received this a message from her moments ago and I cannot tell if it is in real-time or if she pre-recorded it for me.”
Finna touched his arm. “What did she say?”
He shrugged and glanced away as if to lower his concern. “Only that we were not to worry for her and we would meet soon.”
Finna slowly opened one eye and saw the galaxy. She also saw two moons, a large white one and a slower, faster red one. She sighed and tossed the grass in each hand aside.
Shit, I’m still sitting in Leeth’s castle on Torg. Sorry, father, not tonight.
A hint of sunrise and the call of sea birds brought her to her feet. She stretched and took in the silence of the nearby forest, and turning her thoughts to what she would do today. The ruins? The beach? Training with Jamal? It seemed like yesterday she struggled with her comrades to save the lives of nearly a thousand members of the Liberi captured by the Silva in the last battle of the war between two feuding human species. The surviving Liberi, including children, were placed in metal coffins and launched into a huge Black Hole, to die at the center of the galaxy. The memory of their suffering at the hands of Vald, the leader of the Silva, forced her attention elsewhere.
The Beach!
Her first view of a body of water bound only by the horizon was the Mediterranean. In spite of its beauty, after several months of walking, starving, and skirmishes with other crusaders and marauders, the magnificent body of water soon became synonymous with suffering, sea sickness, and rape. The subsequent slaughter of three thousand fellow French crusaders who, when surrounded at Antalya on the southern coast of Anatolia, elected to fight rather than convert to Muslim and live as slaves. Her visits to the beach became her only self-medicating therapy where memories of the past were resurrected and forbidden to reconstitute. Leeth’s castle on the planet Torg was within one mile of such a place and she had many memories to drown.
Instead of walking through the forest, she removed her sandals and repositioned directly to the shallows, scattering seabirds to stand where wet sand, warm washing water, and cool breezes performed their magic cleanse. The endless beach ran almost true North-South allowing her the pleasure to turn and face the North wind. She always smiled at the idea of the colder North. Perhaps it was in her blood. Perhaps she took pleasure just knowing which direction it lay.
Shielding her eyes she caught a glimpse of the lower, faster red moon and followed its progress across the sky until another, smaller object competed for her attention.
A sphere?
Stepping backwards in surprise she almost lost balance, but never lost sight of the approaching intruder. It fell toward her rather than cross the sky and Finna leaned forward anticipating better clarity. The size of the small sphere quickly grew until a figure inside took shape, becoming a woman wearing a familiar black dress.
Son-of-a-bitch, it’s Mother’s sphere, she’s returned.
Deciding not to contact Leeth or the others, she waited to see what Mother wanted. The idea of the two of them meeting one-to-one was unique and far overdue. The woman always made her uneasy and she had to know why. For now, she waited, watching the sphere’s approach and reviewing questions that queued in her mind.
Mother’s personal sphere, a miniature version of the huge orbs they used to rescue the Liberi, looked barely large enough for seven. She remembered filling her rescue sphere with more than one hundred and fifty refugees.
Mother’s sphere stopped a few feet away and hovered above the small surf. Her hands folded low over what Leeth described as her black Victorian gown, slowly opened and waved.
Finna found herself inside the sphere next to her. Finna greeted the old woman and instantly awash with a minor flush of anxiety, went into her go to backup mode. She asked several questions
Mother casually explained. “First, no one can see the sphere or its contents because the sphere does not exist here. It is only an indestructible window into this place from somewhere else. Second, your view of my path into the Black Hole was an illusion caused by the superior gravity and . . . and I will address all your questions, especially your concern for our proximity when we arrive. You will understand everything soon enough.”
Finna’s head snapped toward the old woman’s face. “I believe what you say and I realize there is much for me to learn, but to tell the truth, the only unknown I can’t endure much longer is this terrible feeling I have, please forgive me for saying this, is being near to you.”
The old woman studied her face and nodded. “I feel the same discomfort as you. Our proximity is an unnatural thing. After I reposition us to my home sphere, we can put some space and comfort between us and I’ll try to find the correct words to help you understand why we feel this way.”
The scene abruptly changed. Finna saw the sky above fill with the image of the Maelstrom. The floor had morphed into a well manicured lawn within what Leeth once described to her as a classic Victorian garden filled with statuary, proper plants, and paths. They are inside Mother’s Home sphere.
Finna reached i
nstinctively for Leeth, but he wasn’t there. Nor were Jamal or Yasmin. They’d vanished, from her mind as had the hundreds of Liberi they recently rescued.
Mother had also vanished. Finding herself alone in her garden, Finna wrapped her arms around herself to ward off the chill of a deepening sense of alarm. She back peddled deeper into the garden where dirt anchored her feet and the voices of people in her memory proved she was not alone. When she turned to face the house, the French doors blew open revealing Mother, who stood inside there, waiting.
Finna heard a buzzing in her ears and felt curiously disconnected. “Where did you go?”
Although Mother’s face was ancient, her blue eyes were youthful. They studied Finna and looked deep inside her. The woman was more than an enigma. She touched Finna’s soul in mysterious ways. It was almost as if the woman was part of her, but that couldn’t be. Mother confused her and unsettled her. The woman terrified her.
Mother raised her arms and chin.“I didn’t expect this. I certainly didn’t plan it for you.” Her scrutiny went beyond Finna to the garden and Finna turned to see what held the woman spellbound.
The glorious Victorian mansion stood at the center of a large courtyard circled by a high wall. Glancing behind her, above the line of the wall, where she expected to see the trees of the surrounding forest, she saw nothing but whiteness. Looking through the metal bars of the double gates in the wall she saw the outside garden with all it plants and statuary had vanished. The transparent sphere appeared as though someone had painted it white.
