All too soon, Vyker shifted off of her and gazed down into her face, giving her one final kiss before sliding back into the water of the pool beneath them. She sat up and watched him swim for a few moments before joining him.
“Come on,” he said softly.
She followed him across the pool again and up onto the edge where he picked up her dress and handed it to her. She let it drop over her head and then watched as he stepped back into his pants. He reached down and grabbed a bag that she hadn’t noticed sitting in the grasses, then tucked her shoes and lingerie, and his shirt, inside. Taking her hand, he led her along the edge of the pool so that they climbed up into the oasis above the pool where the spring bubbled out of the ground. He rested his bag to the ground and knelt down to pull out two of the blankets that she remembered from the cavern where they hid before making their way to the portal. He spread one on the ground and laid down on it, opening his arms to her so that she would come lay beside him.
Galadriel nestled down at his side and tucked her head against his chest. She glanced up at the stars, and they stared at them together in peaceful silence for several long moments. Suddenly, she realized something strange about them.
“Where are the constellations?” she asked.
“Constellations?” he asked as if he had never heard the word.
“They’re pictures in the stars,” she told him. “Groups of stars make up shapes that have different names.”
“I’ve never heard of that,” he told her. “What kinds of pictures are there?”
It struck Galadriel as strange that the stars would change so drastically that he had never even seen the shapes in the sky that had been one of the greatest fascinations of mankind. They had crafted these sparkling points of light, and yet the ones that she saw in her stream were nothing like the ones that she saw now.
“All kinds of things,” she told him. “There are bears and a Pegasus, an eagle, a lion, even an angel.”
“What is your favorite?” he asked.
“Orion,” she said. “He’s a warrior. When the sky is clear, you can see his sword and shield, even his belt.”
She looked up into the sky again, missing the familiar image in the stars that she had stared at many times before and contemplated what existed just beyond her realm of understanding. Now that she knew so much more than she ever did, the stars seemed even more majestic. Vyker draped the other blanket over them, creating a warm cocoon that almost immediately lulled her to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Galadriel slept cradled in Vyker’s arms throughout the rest of the night. It was the deepest, most rejuvenating sleep that she had ever experienced, and when she opened her eyes against the glint of the morning sunlight she felt as though she had refreshed every fiber of her body. None of the exhaustion remained, and instead of the soreness that she expected in her muscles she felt renewed energy. Vyker was still sleeping beside her, and she lifted up to kiss his cheek. He gave a soft moan and stretched, turning toward her. His eyes opened, and they smiled at each other.
“Good morning,” she said softly.
“Good morning.”
Their lips touched, and then she leaned forward to rest her forehead against his.
“What now?” she asked.
Vyker pulled his head back and looked at her.
“You are here for a reason,” he said. “That portal was sealed when you traveled through it. You being able to move through it means that you are extremely special. There is a reason that you came here when you did.”
“Do you really think that it has something to do with saving the wall?” she asked.
Vyker let out a long sigh and leaned forward to kiss the center of her forehead.
“The only way we can know is to try to figure out the changes in the engravings. I wouldn’t have just done that for no reason. Changing the temple is not something to be taken lightly. If we understand what they say and why, we might be able to understand why you came here, and what we are supposed to do to protect the temple.”
****
When they made their way back to the village, Vyker led her to the building beside the temple that Galadriel assumed was the building the three women had suggested she go to the night before. There they found the bags that she had been carrying and several sets of fresh clothing for both of them.
“Did they take good care of you?” Vyker asked when they saw the supplies sitting on a table in the small front room of the building.
Galadriel looked at him, realizing that he hadn’t just walked away from her when they first arrived. He knew that the three women who had come to the temple were going to take care of her. Her heart swelled, and she nodded.
“They did. Who are they?”
“My guardians,” he said.
“Guardians?”
“My parents died when I was only a few days old. Fraya, Drissi, and Cantu were assigned to care for me in their place and ensure that I survived to care for the temple.”
“But they look so young.”
“You’d be surprised,” he said with a laugh. “Starlight is a powerful thing. When someone is exposed to enough of it, age doesn’t matter.”
“They will live forever,” Galadriel said.
“Not forever,” Vyker said. “Even stars burn out. They were imbued with enough of the starlight when I was a baby, though, to make sure that they stayed alive and young for as long as necessary to take care of me. Now that I’m an adult, their services are essentially to keep me comfortable and to maintain the temple while I’m gone. They can’t get near the wall itself, but they can keep the rest of the temple clean and safe.”
Galadriel drew in a breath. She knew that she needed to tell him what the women had said about his quest, but she didn’t want to upset him. These women were obviously important to him, and she didn’t want to hurt him, but she also wondered if knowing what they thought of everything that he did, if he didn’t already know, might change the way that they would approach the journey that lay ahead of them.
“Why don’t they believe what you tell them?” she asked.
He looked at her, an indecipherable expression in his eyes.
“Would you?” he asked.
“What?”
“Would you have believed me? If someone came to you in your own time, in your own stream, and told you that they do what I do, that they move across streams of existence to try to protect all that ever was, is, and will be, would you go along with what they said, or would you question them?”
Galadriel thought back to her encounter with Rick and the frantic way that he spoke to her when he was trying to explain the streams, and the confused, resistant way that she had automatically responded. He was only telling her a theory – a concept that she didn’t have any other link to and that made no true impact on her life in that moment – and she was still hesitant to even try to believe what he was saying. Vyker was asking those around him to believe so much more, to accept something far more out of the realm of possibility, and in that acceptance cope with the idea that they were in serious danger. It made sense that they would try to block the thoughts out of their mind and keep themselves from having to live with that knowledge in their minds and their hearts.
Suddenly, she realized that Vyker was far more than determined and courageous than she had even begun to understand. He showed strength when there was no one there to support him, and devotion when there was no one to show him gratitude. The reason for everything that he put himself through came completely from within.
Rather than responding, Galadriel ran her hand along his face and then guided it forward to kiss him tenderly. She wanted him to know that she was there and that she would be with everything that she had in her. Vyker nuzzled her nose and then took a step back from her.
“Do you know where your papers are?” he asked. “I need to look at the pictures again.”
Galadriel picked up her bag from where it
was sitting next to the fresh clothing and pulled out the papers. The blade fell out with them, clattering to the polished stone floor. She stared at it for a moment, its starkness a bold contrast to the elation that she had been feeling since they woke. Vyker leaned down and scooped the weapon off of the floor. He deposited it on the table beside the clothing and reached for the papers in her hand without any further acknowledgement. He looked at them for several seconds, his eyes moving rapidly over the images, and then glanced up at her.
“Come with me.”
He grabbed his bags and an armful of the clothes that were left on the table. Galadriel followed suit, gathering up her own bags and the clothes the women had left for her. Vyker was already walking across the room and she hurried to follow him. They passed through a door at the back of the room and then through another in the next room. Finally, they made it to a larger room with a wide, circular bed in the center and a high, arched glass ceiling. Vyker led her toward a collection of chairs positioned around a low table. There he spread the papers out, arranging them in the order that she had showed him before. Above the series of imprints that showed how the engravings changed, he put the pictures of the wall where it was found in the desert and the plaque beside the segment of the wall in the museum. Vyker pointed to that image.
“What is this?” he asked.
“That’s a plaque,” she told him. “It’s beside the wall. It tells about where the researchers found the wall and what they think that it means.”
“What do you mean?”
“I told you that they were researching a different civilization when they found it. Since they didn’t have any other information about it, they just assumed that it had something to do with that civilization. The engravings aren’t exactly the language of those people, but the researchers said that it was close enough that they could consider it a dialect. They came up with a rough translation that is the generally accepted version of what the engravings said when they found it.”
“And they used a different civilization’s language to ascertain that?” he asked.
Galadriel nodded.
“They found the wall after they had already spent a few years studying that area of the desert to research a completely different civilization. By then, they knew enough about the Gylex culture to be familiar with the language. They noticed that some of the engravings were close enough that they could make some vague connections.”
“They’re wrong,” he said, running her fingertips along a close up of the translation. “This is our ancient language, used only for traditional purposes. The temple wall is one of the few places where it can be seen. I can see a few characters that might be similar, but it is not an accurate translation at all.”
“What does it actually say?”
“The original engravings explain the importance of the knowledge that is contained in the wall and the responsibility that comes with knowledge and wisdom. There is nothing about religion or warfare like the translation says.”
“That’s why they thought that this wall was part of a ceremonial building. They misconstrued the engravings.”
“The changes made to the engravings would make it so that they weren’t able to even attempt a translation. They completely alter the look of the characters so that they don’t even resemble anything from the other language.”
“Do you know anything about the Gylex?” Galadriel asked.
“No,” Vyker said. His voice sounded strained, concerned at the thought of a culture inhabiting the place that would have been his home. “They must have come after us.”
“You said that you knew all of your kind in that stream were gone and that they were the only ones other than those in this stream. You must have known that there would be other cultures and civilizations that would live in the streams.”
“Yes. Of course I knew that. There are many other cultures and kinds, not just on this planet but on others. I know of them. Remember, it is my responsibility to protect the wall that gave their kinds all of the knowledge at their origin. What I don’t understand is how this Gylex civilization would be so familiar with my kind that it would be able to mimic much of our ancient language in its own, and yet I don’t know anything about them.”
“I don’t understand,” Galadriel said. “If you have access to all of the knowledge of existence, how can there be anything that you don’t understand? Shouldn’t you know anything that you have ever wanted to know?”
“No, Galadriel. That is exactly why there is only one of my kind in each generation allowed to get close enough to the wall to touch it. Just as it would for the StarKillers, if any of my kind had access to all of the knowledge that exists, they would be the most powerful, and the most dangerous, being in all of the universe. If I was to break the wall and gain everything that is held within it, I would destroy myself. Nothing could exist as it is any longer. I would either have to enslave and control every other being throughout all of existence, or all of the information would crush me from the inside out.”
“If no one is allowed to touch the wall, how would the StarKillers take over the knowledge?”
Vyker looked at her, and Galadriel could see the mournful expression radiating from deep within him.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I know that they destroy the wall in each of the streams that they attack. There has to be something about that destruction that they believe will give them access to the knowledge inside of it and the power that it would give them. That has to be part of what we need to find out. If we know how they believe that they would be able to access the power of the temple, we will know what we can do to prevent it from happening.”
Galadriel nodded and eased closer to him on the low couch where they sat. She could feel the warmth of his thigh pressing against hers and the strength of his arm as she leaned against it. Despite the intensity of his words, her mind kept wandering to the feeling of his body on hers and the way that they had melded into one. She craved more of that feeling. Vyker seemed to sense what she was experiencing and turned to her. His face brushed hers and he kissed the tip of her nose. She caught his bottom lip between hers and nipped at it playfully.
Vyker reached beside him and swept his arm around her hips, pulling her around so that he scooped her onto his lap. She settled onto him, sliding as close as she could to his body.
“Be with me,” he whispered.
“Yes,” she whispered back.
“Stay with me.”
“Yes.”
She kissed his neck and ran her fingers through his hair.
“Don’t let me lose you.”
“Never.”
Suddenly Vyker pushed back away from her, a startled expression on his face.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I know what the first change means,” he told her. “I couldn’t understand it, but it makes sense now.”
He lifted her back up off of his lap and put her back on the cushion beside him before reaching forward and grabbing the image of the original wall engravings and the imprint of the first change.
“What does it say?” Galadriel asked.
Vyker traced his finger beneath the words as he read them.
“Stars lay together where they fell apart. Seeing everything and nothing at all.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“I’ll show you. We need to change and pack, and then we’ll leave.”
“How long are we going to be gone?”
“I don’t know.”
****
Galadriel and Vyker rushed around the home, repacking the supplies in their bags. They sat for only a few moments to eat before Vyker stood, secured the bag to her back as he had done before, and they started back out into the desert. She had changed into a pair of loose, thin pants and a flowing top that were easier to keep up with Vyker in than the dress, but she had slipped another of the beautiful garments into her bag, always wanting to be able to reca
pture that incredible feeling that it offered her.
“Should you tell anyone that you’re leaving?” she asked as they hurried out of the village in the direction of the oasis where they had spent the night before.
“No,” he said simply. “They never expect me to be around for long.”
They walked through their own footprints back toward the hill at the edge of the village, but when they got to it, Vyker took a sharp turn, and they walked along the foot of the hill for several minutes. The village was getting farther behind them, and Galadriel was worried that they were embarking on another of the journeys that would take them days through the desert, but soon he started up the hill, and his quickened pace told her that they were close to their destination. She followed him to the top of the hill, and they walked along the peak for a few more moments before he stopped.
“There,” he said.
Galadriel looked in front of them and saw what looked like a statue protruding from the sand. A large platform of polished white stone connected two smaller stones that came from either side and came together in the middle to rise up toward the sky.
“What is this?” Galadriel asked.
Vyker knelt down by the front of the stone platform and rested his palm on it.
“This is my parents’ grave,” he said. “They died right here. My father first, my mother three days later. She said that she could never be without him, and she wouldn’t leave his side after his death. She laid with him until she died, too.”
Galadriel was both horrified and devastated by the thought of his mother spending the last hours of her life suffering such gut-wrenching pain that it literally broke her heart. She knelt down beside Vyker and rested her hand on his back.
“They fell together,” she said, remembering what he had said about the engraving.
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