CONTENTS
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Acknowledgements
About the Author
CopyRight
Spirit Binder
Book One of the Cascadian Chronicles
Meghan Ciana Doidge
Published by Old Man in the CrossWalk Productions
Vancouver, BC, Canada
www.oldmaninthecrosswalk.com
CHAPTER ONE
Fractured.
Unbound.
Pieces splintered, seemingly irretrievable.
An overwhelmingly dreadful, insanely painful energy crushed her together again, then pulled her apart.
She was undone.
It was too much. She wasn’t going to make it through. How she had ever thought she was tough enough, focused enough to even be here, she didn’t know. In fact, now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember why she was here, how she got here, or why this twisting, burning energy was searing through her every sense.
She felt the resolve drain from her like dirty bath water; it left the filmy residue and everything. So many people had died — she was fairly sure everyone but her was dead — and how she was still alive was sheer willpower; the same willpower that had just gone down the drain.
She fell, not even remotely aware that she’d previously been suspended in mid-air, and collapsed like a rag doll hitting a stone floor. She wasn’t too sure all her stuffing was still inside her seams. And something had snapped, she was dimly aware, in the fall. It might have been her ankle, but felt like it had probably been her mind.
Blackness engulfed her and she welcomed the relief from the relentless, spirit-rending pain.
Time lost meaning …
Something in front of her moved — a black hulking something — a guardian, perhaps? She was vaguely aware that there had been others to fight previously, but why she’d been fighting was lost to her. The hulking thing seemed to fill the entire space, though maybe that was just her perspective from the floor, on which she just realized she was lying — she’d thought she was still on her feet — no … now she remembered the fall. Though how she could see anything in this darkness she didn’t know. Maybe it was all in her mind. She did have the talent to see things that others couldn’t see. Didn’t she?
Maybe she was dead. Though, since her ankle was a screaming red-hot pulse of pain, maybe she wasn’t so lucky.
The hulking thing, which just might be a part of the granite cave walls, moved toward her again and she caught the creepy slurping noise that emanated from it. Slllllurrrrpppp … Slurrrupp … like it was sucking something off the ground, and the walls, and the ceiling.
Dead or not, she was going to have to move. She wasn’t being sucked up by an unknown guardian demon, if that what it was. It certainly wasn’t something she’d ever aspired to, though according to others she didn’t aspire to do enough. What others thought that of her? And, actually, she’d never even seen a demon before … she kind of felt like moving had to be the hardest thing she’d ever tried.
She tried to call back the amazing willpower, which had helped her through the darkness that was life after … after what? She had a sense that life had been difficult and dreary, but not of the why or how. How was it that she knew that about herself, but not much else? It must be the pain overloading her senses. Maybe her brain was spell-burnt. Had she been hit by some kind of seriously powerful knockback spell that, for some reason, she hadn’t sensed, even though she was extremely sensitive to any sort of magic? That wasn’t something they could block, she retained some smugness at least, but then immediately worried who ‘they’ were and what else they actually managed to ‘block’ her from previously.
The slurping was seriously putting her on edge. She was fairly certain she could feel it reverberating through the stone floor into her right ear. Which, upon reflection, seemed to be stuck to the stone. That was uncomfortable, and seriously nasty.
She turned her head. It worked, but it hurt. Her ear, and her hair, kind of ripped up with the turn, and it must have made a sound because the hulking Slurper paused its slurping.
She waited, now staring up into the darkness, unless her eyes weren’t open, then she was just staring at the back of her dark eyelids. Anyway, she tried to feel her feet, then decided they were too far away, so she refocused on her shoulders. They seemed to branch off from her neck, which was good because that’s where they were supposed to be.
The Slurper started slurping again and she, as if she just snapped her fingers with realization, put two and two together. She was lying in blood; large pools of blood, if the smell was any way to judge. It was drying, hence the stickiness. And the Slurper was the clean-up crew.
She’d been left for dead.
Which was really foul, especially since, given the prophecy — depending on interpretation — the world went to ruin, more than it already was, without her alive. That was how it went, wasn’t it? She had been born under a prophecy, right?
It must have been bad for them to leave her here. And, now that she thought about it, she wasn’t exactly sure where ‘here’ was, exactly, and had she been coming or going? Was this an exit or an entrance? Had she been fighting or running away?
And who were ‘they’ anyway? The ‘they’ that she was fairly sure had left her here? Or the ‘they’ who’d attacked her? She had been attacked, right?
Something nudged her feet, so they did still exist and were still currently attached to her body. Pain shot up her leg from her ankle and sort of settled in her hip. So she was obviously alive; a fact she seemed to keep forgetting.
The Slurper had reached her.
She momentarily thought about just letting it have her. She wondered if it had some enzyme in its saliva that would liquefy her remains. Then she thought that would probably hurt. Hurt even more than she was currently hurting.
So she reached out; not with her hands, they didn’t seem to be responding, but with her mind. She reached out with her mind, and found the Slurper’s on/off switch. Now, granted, she could just flip this switch to off that would be the shortcut, but she didn’t just go around switching things off. This creature hadn’t ever done her harm, that she knew of, and also the backlash would most likely be agony itself, not that she knew firsthand … so no easy route for her. She opted for a gentle nudge of the metaphorical switch; a nudge away from her.
The Slurper paused.
She felt its heart beating a double rhythm; either that or it had two. It was cold where it touched her leg, as if maybe it had frozen her a little bit. Which, on the bright side, actually eased the pain in her ankle.
It was confused. It seemed to operate on easily directed instincts, but it didn’t normally take its orders from her. She hadn’t even bothered to cloak her presence in its mind. Honestly, she’d all but forgotten she could do such a thing. She’d just reached out and —
She might not be strong enough to turn it.
It snuffled, like a hulking rock cat holding back a sneeze.
Then it turned.
She tried not to scream when it stepped on her numb leg. That might’ve attracted too much attention.
It slurped off in a parallel direction and then, eventually, worked its way around her. She lost track of it, in her
effort to pull herself together. She wasn’t totally sure she had all her pieces.
She really should get up off the ground. It wasn’t a very nice place to be lying.
The numbness in her ankle and leg, the one the Slurper had kind of frozen and then stepped on, wore off in a blaring, blazing blast of fiery pain. This threatened to overload her already exceedingly delicate mind, but did seem to motivate actual movement.
She’d made it to her knees. She was fairly certain they belonged to her, because the pain of kneeling on a jagged rock registered within the already overstimulated pain center of her brain.
Her hands weren’t so much painful as limp. They didn’t like the weight she was foisting on them, but they held.
She crawled.
She suddenly realized that she was surrounded by a light glow, which was probably why she’d been able to see the Slurper at all. As if the blood that painted the walls and ground was glowing slightly, except where the Slurper had slurped it up. Glowing blood. That was new.
She headed into the darkness in the opposite direction of the Slurper, which might or might not be the way out. Depending on whether or not the Slurper had been assigned to clean from the inside out or not. She was hoping the creature was some sort of a hired clean-up crew, not a resident of this cave — or wherever she was — and therefore it had started cleaning from the outside in. But honestly, she was really just trying to move forward, and, having gained hands and knees, she’d started moving in the direction she’d been facing.
A little later on, it might have been weeks for all she knew, she made it to her feet, more because her knees were hurting too badly to carry her any longer, rather than any great achievement on her part.
She still couldn’t see in the dark. She found handholds, smoother edges in the rock walls and practically pulled her upper body forward until one of her legs was forced to kick in and step forward to prevent a possible forward fall.
The tunnel, that was her best estimate as to where she was, started slanting upwards, which didn’t make going forward any easier, but led her to believe she was close to something; an exit hopefully.
Light appeared.
Just a sliver, but it hurt her eyes.
She reached for it, with her hands this time. She wasn’t stupid enough to reach for unknown light with her mind; lots of magic masqueraded as light. Plus, her hands were vaguely working again.
Her hand covered the light; she spread her fingers and realized she might be feeling a crack.
The light filtered in through some sort of crack.
She continued to trace the crack, and after eons, her brain informed her that she might have found a door of some sort, though not a handle.
She felt like it was time for a break, and leaning next to the little crack of light seemed appropriately calming, so she did just that.
Except the crack didn’t stay in place. The weight of her body widened it, and she found herself stumbling forward into a room.
A room filled with a lot of books.
She seemed to have just come through a bookshelf, which was a little strange and obvious all at the same time.
“Oh, darling!” a woman gasped. “We’ve … I’ve been searching … you’ve come home!”
A woman stood behind a large desk. Everything about her was perfectly poised, from her smooth, bobbed hair to her fine, but simply cut, silk dress. She removed a pair of reading glasses to reveal eyes that were almost too green. Despite her words, the woman didn’t actually look all that surprised to see her ‘darling’ coming through the bookcase.
“I have?” She couldn’t remember, except that she was fairly sure she should’ve been fairly easy to find, if she’d been missing at all, in the secret tunnel behind the bookcase. Wouldn’t that be the first place to look?
“I shall call the healer; you’re bleeding on my carpet. Yes, I know it’s annoying that it insists on covering that section of the library floor; it seems to revel in being a tripping hazard, but, none the less, your blood is too valuable to feed such common beings.”
The woman skirted the desk and moved toward her. Every cell in her body suddenly screamed at her to move, to run, or at least to attack, but she was incapable of doing so. Something was wrong here. Or, something was supposed to be wrong here. Something about this woman? Other than the obviously dyed red hair. No one had hair that dark red naturally, did they? It actually matched the ruby necklace nestled at the woman’s neck.
The woman stopped a few feet away. She might have been in her late forties, but could have been younger. The power that emanated from the woman was painful, and she actually convulsed when it brushed against her. The woman looked a little aghast at the discomfort she caused, and somehow pulled all that power, power that seemed too vast to contain, back inside of her. The convulsions stopped.
“Sorry, darling. I forgot how sensitive you are.” The woman reached a tentative hand out to her, but didn’t move forward to complete the touch.
“Mother?”
“Yes, darling?”
“My head hurts.”
“I know dear, but it will get better. It will all be better now that you are home.”
That was it.
This was home.
She hadn’t recognized it until her mother had pointed out that fact, but now she understood. This was where she’d grown up. She’d had friends and teachers here, and her mother …
“Something happened.”
“Yes, darling, someone took you away, but I’ve got you back now. Everything will be fine now.”
She decided now would be a good time to kneel again. The carpet rose up to break her fall.
Her mother called out for help, yet she wasn’t distressed. No, even in the haze that coated her eyes, she could see her mother’s satisfied smile. Which was a bit odd, wasn’t it?
Other people soon arrived. Her mother never did touch her, though her hand hovered over her forehead a few times, and she, huddled in the hovering carpet, gave in to the ministrations of hands and magic that felt familiar, yet distant, like tasting something in memory.
“Theodora, spirit-predestined, daughter of my blood, is home,” her mother, rather formally, announced. There were murmured answers, but she couldn’t distinguish the words.
Theodora.
That was her name.
Funny, it didn’t sound right. As if it didn’t belong to her.
Only later did she remember she’d been wrong about the Slurper creature. It had been cleaning from the inside out.
She also remembered she wasn’t to address her mother as ‘mother’ or ‘mom’, but as Your Majesty or, in private, Rhea, but she noticed her mother hadn’t seemed to mind being addressed incorrectly.
Then, she succumbed to the welcoming darkness.
∞
The room — her room — was exactly the same: stone walls awash in candlelight, canopy bed draped with rose-colored silks, and a craggy mountain view from the west-facing balcony.
The sun had just set, spilling burnt orange over the edges of snow-covered peaks — the Twin Sisters — which was confusing as she remembered it being late spring … though maybe the snow rarely melted even in the summer on the peaks … wasn’t that something she should remember?
A blonde girl was sleeping curled in a chaise next to her bed; her face another discordant memory. She looked strikingly similar to a friend of hers, who should be just out of puberty, but now, with her curls tumbling over a high, regal brow as she pursed full, very pink lips in her sleep, she looked like a woman, young still, but fully formed. Perhaps this was an older sister of her friend?
Her head hurt.
Actually, if she stopped to take stock, her entire being ached. She thought about getting up, but it seemed like an impossible task.
The curly blonde shifted in her sleep … Peony! That was her name. It suited her more now as a woman than it had as a dirty-kneed child. Something about Peony’s age
d appearance bothered her; some connection her brain was attempting to formulate …
Was that the carpet from the library? Or perhaps it was just an identical copy? If that was the case, she was fairly certain it was new, but it seemed unlikely her mother would ever purchase or commission more than one; uniqueness was a prize in her household.
She swung her legs off the edge of the bed and stood before she even knew she’d decided to move. She wandered over to the bathroom. It was easier than she thought it would be. The pain felt old, and mostly healed. She couldn’t remember being injured …
The bathroom was decadent, not that she had many others to compare it too. It boasted stone floors that warmed underneath her feet, a waterfall tub, and a steam shower. The mirror over the double sinks stretched at least twelve feet wide and eight feet tall. It was through this medium — her reflection — that her brain finally connected the problem of Peony’s age with Peony’s appearance, because, looking at herself in the mirror, it was clear that under no circumstances was she sixteen anymore. Plus, ironically, it did seem that her mother’s dark shade of red hair was natural, as that was what flowed across her shoulders and down to her waist; though hers was sun streaked. Unless someone had dyed it while she was unconscious, which would be odd and exceedingly creepy.
She didn’t have as much of a problem with her hair as she did with her face. That wasn’t her in the mirror. It looked like her, and, honestly, nothing like her mother, though everyone always compared them. Her green-flecked hazel eyes were almost too big for her face now, and her cheekbones too bulky. There was nothing soft and sweet about her now. She momentarily considered that the mirror might be spelled, but she didn’t feel any magic emanating from it. She looked hard, almost chiseled, in a way that a noble woman wasn’t supposed to look, and she was older. How much older, she couldn’t tell, but certainly not about to celebrate her sixteenth birthday.
She stopped examining herself. The scars, some minor, some almost hideous, that speckled her arms and legs were disconcerting.
What had she been doing with her body? Or, for that matter, what had happened to her?
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