“Ah, prison hasn’t broken me in the past. And I am weary of the secrecy, Azarel. Aren’t you? Especially here, with them?” He looked around at all of us in wonder. “I can hardly believe my eyes. The prophecies were true. The elders knew. They knew. And now … with you all together. The Ailith rising …” His brown eyes grew wet with tears. “How we’ve waited. Longed for, and waited for this. If only Kapriel …”
“What news?” Azarel said gruffly, pulling at his arm. “What do you hear of him?”
“Bah,” he said, flicking out his hand. “Rumors. Stories. What are we to believe?”
“And what is the most consistent one of late?”
Asher looked at her and frowned. “That he’s on the Isle of Catal.”
Azarel dropped her chin and winced. “No,” she whispered. “No.”
“Where is the Isle of Catal?” Niero asked.
“An island off of Pacifica,” she said, shaking her head. “The harshest prison anywhere. Impenetrable. Let us hope that story is a lie.”
“And if it’s not?” Niero said.
“Then we have to find a way to get in and out. Alive.”
“Excellent,” Vidar said, rubbing his hands together. “Finally a true challenge.”
Bellona shook her head. “Really? Must you?”
“What?” Vidar said, looking puzzled.
“There are fifty ways to die on the Isle, as well as off her coast,” Azarel said, any hint of smile in her eyes or voice gone. She paced to the small, dirty window and ran a hand through the short spikes of her hair. “It is where Pacifica sends her worst criminals.”
“Why so surprised?” Niero asked. “Didn’t you say that Keallach wanted him someplace no one would find him? Haven’t you looked everywhere else?”
She shook her head. “It’s simply impossible,” she said, almost to herself, looking to the flames beneath the giant, flame-blackened soup kettle. “He promised. After everything else … he promised.”
“Don’t tell me you believe anything that Keallach said,” Asher said. “Not anymore.”
“But … Catal?” she said, rising in one smooth motion. She lifted a hand to him. “To his own brother?”
Asher waved his head back and forth as if formulating a response. “Where else? He still believes he can turn Kapriel. So why wouldn’t he keep him there while he continues to try to break him?”
She stared out the window as if she were not in the room with us. Not seeing the street outside, full of the urchins. Seeing someplace far distant … and clearly frightening. She loved him; I understood it then. Loved Kapriel as she loved Asher. They were like bonded kin to her. And she’d loved Keallach once too
I felt the doorway in my heart open to the dark. Just a sliver. For it was in there that this Keallach lingered. The man she’d loved once as a brother. Now missed. Was he the one who had sent Sethos after us? The Sons of Sheol? I searched that tiny opening in her heart — for Keallach, to know more of him, her connection to him.
Asher’s cup clattered to the ground. “What? What is that?” he asked, looking wildly around the room, his eyes settling on me. “Stop! At once! Shut that door! Speak the name of the Maker!”
I stared into his eyes and repeated the name he’d just uttered — Maker — feeling myself pull back to the present. To my people. Here. Now.
Asher rose and walked over to me. Ronan rose too, his heart filling with equal alarm. I stared at Asher, unable to move. He looked around the room and then back to me. “She is Ailith? One of the chosen? Are you certain?” He reached down and pulled me to my feet.
Ronan grabbed his arm, trying to pull him away from me, but Asher held firm, and for a moment we were an awkward, jostling trio. My knight looked into my eyes, and then released me as if confused.
Azarel came up beside us. “Asher,” she said gently. “We are in need of your counsel. Andriana … Her gifts are complex.”
He stared hard at me, then her, then back at me, and I felt the alarm in him. “You are certain she has not been turned?”
Ronan let out a scoffing laugh under his breath but Asher’s tension didn’t ease.
He took a long, deep breath, which seemed to steady him. “What were you thinking about just then, Andriana?” Asher asked, his brow wrinkling further in deep thought. “Tell me.” He took a step toward me, not to harm me, just to study me, as if he wished to see me better. But Ronan put a wide hand on his chest.
“Keallach,” I said. I needed Asher’s help. His counsel, as Azarel said. “When Azarel mentioned Kapriel, and his brother, I followed her emotions. Her memory of emotions. And it seemed to open a small door.” I turned wide eyes on him, remembering his shouted commands. “How did you know?”
“That door must remain shut,” Asher said, leaning toward me again while ignoring Ronan’s warning hand. “Do you understand me?” He left me and went to the window, peering one way down the street and then the other. “Every time you even get close to that door within your mind, your heart, you call to the dark ones. Concentrate on it long enough and they’ll know exactly where we are. It’s almost as if you bear a chip under your skin as the Pacificans do.”
I nodded, feeling fear inside me that echoed his own. “But how can I keep it shut?” I cried. “Ever since we met the Sheolites in battle, and I watched one die, I can feel that door. Like it’s inside me, as if it’s clattering in a stiff wind — as if it’s about to fly open. And what’s inside seems so important to understand. As if it will give me an upper hand at some point.”
Asher put a hand on his head and heaved a sigh. “It is good we’ve crossed paths, my friends. Forgive me,” he said. “You so alarmed me … But yes, I can help you. Great is the force of the dark, but greater still is power of the true light.” He straightened. “First, we eat. Then we shall speak of such matters.”
Asher not only fed most of us but also the orphans outside, and two couples across the alley who housed some of the children each night. As the sun set, women pulled the big pot off the fire and carried it between them to the alley outside. The other couples that Asher had mentioned brought theirs out too, and together they fed the hundred or more who gathered in solemn lines, each with cups or battered bowls in their hands. Some were toddlers, clinging to older brothers or sisters. Some were well past their first decade. Most were boys.
“Where’d they all come from?” Bellona asked Azarel, arms folded. “Why so many?”
“Georgii Post is a crossroads station that’s tripled in size over the last few years. A small city now, really. Some are the spawn of Drifters, abandoned here. Others are the children of subversives, taken. Many have lost their parents to the Cancer.”
“Why here?” Bellona pressed.
She shrugged. “Georgii has decent weather. Less rain. Clean water. Food, that they can steal or are given,” she said, with a nod to the lines. “Where would you go if you were a child outside of Community?”
I watched as Asher moved among them, touching every one of them, a hand on a shoulder, a tender stroke of his fingertips across a cheek, a pat on the back. Niero stopped beside me and observed him in silence too. “It’s a gift, what he does. Not only feeding them, but showing compassion, love.”
Niero said nothing, only smiled a little and watched Asher with those dark, keen eyes of his.
“I like being with him. Azarel too. They belong with us somehow. Or we with them.”
“That’s how it is,” he said softly, “meeting others who know the Maker.”
I looked back to Asher, now kneeling beside a small boy who was sniffling, tears running down his dirty cheeks. “How does he find the money? To rent this house? To buy this food?” The soup was meager, a thin broth with mostly chunks of potatoes in it, but it was something. And there was enough, enough for everyone in line, including us, it turned out, as I accepted a bowl. It was with some surprise that I smelled fragrant spices, and when I sipped from the edge, found that there was a tart taste that teased my tongue.
; “His father, and Azarel’s mother, as far as I can gather, were close to Kapriel’s parents. They were raised beside the twins in the royal court.” His eyes shifted from his bowl to Asher again. “They have lost and gained much in the years since Keallach moved against his family.”
I frowned. “But he cannot still be a man of wealth. Not out here, not now. Not so far from Pacifica.”
Niero smiled his little smile again. “Wealth is not always counted by the coins within your purse. Look at him.” He thrust his chin out, in Asher’s direction, and I took another sip and then did as directed. Asher was standing with two men, hands on either of their shoulders, laughing so hard his face lifted toward the rooftops above us.
“But how does he do it? How do they do? Buy what they need to continue out here?”
“Just as we do,” Niero said, leaving me in order to speak to Azarel. “One day at a time.”
Three children beside me were huddled in a circle, their bowls licked clean, and drawing something in the dirt at their feet. I turned to get a better look at it, and with some astonishment, saw that it was at first an A, then a B, then a C. The older child among the trio was teaching the others. “Where did you learn that?” I asked.
The boy looked up at me, a flash of fear running through him.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I am only curious.”
“Asher taught us,” he said. Then, with a look of warning at the others, the three dashed off. As if they doubted my assurances. I watched them go, musing over that. Even back home, in the village, only a select few were designated as “scholars” and given time to learn how to read and write. I’d been one of them, and each of us had been tutored by parents or a neighbor. I’d noticed it was the same among the Hoodites. Life was too difficult, too demanding, to allocate resources — time, energy, funds — to such things. It took every hour, every ounce of energy we had, just to forage for enough food and adequate shelter to survive. Learning was relegated to the evening hours, when those who were not designated as scholars were too tired to absorb much at all. Knowledge was mostly shared in story and discussion around the evening fire.
“But if we teach this young army to read and write,” Asher said in a whisper after supper, gesturing out the doorway as a group of them ran by, “they might copy words of truth often enough that it will be written on their very hearts. The dark may try and steal it from their hands. Confiscate books and scrolls. But it still shall remain. And they shall carry it to the far reaches of the Trading Union.”
“You are sharing the sacred word with them?” Azarel whispered harshly.
“I might be, here and there,” he said with a mischievous glint in his eye.
Azarel shook her head. “It is a dangerous game you play, Asher. Every one of those children could be hanged. After they watch you get impaled.”
He sighed and reached for her as if begging her to understand. “At least they die knowing truth, knowing hope. Having an awareness of the One who will welcome them home. And if they find their way out …” A smile spread across his face and the light returned to his eyes. “The Maker accomplishes his goals in mysterious ways, yes?”
It was Azarel’s turn to sigh. “You condemn them doubly. Both the sacred word and teaching them numbers and letters? They’ll stand out, rather than blend in.”
“Bah. I bless them doubly. Better to live twice as deeply than to die in the shallows.”
“You’re already a marked man. Must you make yourself a bigger target?”
“If I am called to be so, how can I do anything but?”
Azarel turned to us. “You see, now, why I had to leave his side? He makes me crazy. I want him to live for our mission, while he seems bent on dying for it.”
Asher smiled. “We’ve made it this far, haven’t we?” He reached out his hand and she took it, the edge of her mouth quirking up reluctantly. “There is still much to do. So we must do it, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Now, back to you, my friend,” he said, turning toward me. “The Maker has blessed you richly. With gifts that must be cultivated, as must those within Vidar and Tressa, as well as in each of us.” He smiled as my eyes narrowed in confusion. “Ahh, yes. We are all gifted among the Community. Your gifts only happen to be more pronounced.”
“Asher,” Azarel said, eying me carefully. “Back when we met Sethos, near the Hoodite camp, he spoke of not only wanting the Remnants — Vidar, Tressa, and Andriana — but of me. He seemed to think I was one of those he was to bring back to Keallach.”
His eyes met hers for several seconds. He rolled an empty cup in his hands. “It may be that he was sensing your connection to Kapriel and the Maker. Or because you are one of the most hunted subversives ever to escape Pacifica.”
I thought about Azarel. And Asher himself. They both exhibited an awareness, understanding, that I’d thought impossible outside the elders in Community. And yet they were relatively young. Our age, or certainly no older than Niero. I could see, if one was sensitive to such things at all, how they’d be recognized as a force. And why Sethos would want them dead.
“Come, sister, and sit with me,” Asher said to me, waving me closer. I sat down and he turned until we were knee to knee. He smiled into my eyes. “Take my hands. The rest of you, circle around us. As we move through this, I want you to be praying for protection. Seal us so that the evil ones cannot get close to our sister, Andriana, or sense our presence here, no matter what happens.” He looked each one of the Ailith in the eye, waiting until each nodded, then turned back to me. “Come. Take your ease,” he said with a grin. “This doesn’t have to hurt.”
I forced a smile to my face.
“Now, Andriana. Your primary gift is reading emotions, yes?”
“Yes.”
“I believe what’s happened is this: Your gift gives you access to the heart. To feel as others do, and therefore know them more clearly than any of us can ever hope to. In essence, you are experiencing what they are, yes?”
“Yes.”
“This is a magnificent blessing,” he said, squeezing my hands, “when encountering those ready to leave behind the lies they’ve been told.” He shook his head a little and his dark curls bounced around his neck. “You will be called upon again and again in the days to come, because in you our people will see the Maker’s heart. It is reflected in your beautiful eyes, like pools of water. It’s a huge blessing,” he said again, squeezing my hands again and smiling.
His face fell a little then. “But in opening such a sacred highway, you’ve discovered something else. You’ve accessed the inner realms — that doorway to the soul. And in our enemy, that doorway leads to a fearsome darkness. That is what we must teach you to keep locked, no matter whom you face and when.”
I nodded. No one was more eager than I to do as he said.
“Andriana, I want you to first search me. Read me and my heart. Tell me what you find, no matter how intimate it might be.”
“All-all right,” I said. I had never done it on command before. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, smiling a little, his face as open in invitation as his soul. I’d never had an easier time accessing another’s emotions. “Welcome. Peace. Excitement,” I said. “Those are first and foremost.”
“Good. Continue.”
“Kinship. It’s as if we’re already family.”
“Indeed we are. As knit together as if we were born of the same father.”
I smiled, responding to his joy, bubbling to the surface in pleasing waves. “You might be the happiest person I’ve ever met.”
“Wait until you meet Kapriel,” he said. “Continue.”
I delved deeper, seeking fear, concern, stress — emotions we all seemed to face constantly within the Trading Union. But even deeper, I couldn’t quite find them. My eyes popped open. “How do you do that?”
“What, sister?”
“Live without the negatives? Fear? Worry?”
His brown eyes opened and he smiled at me
. “Fear and worry are the antithesis of faith, are they not?”
“I-I suppose they are.”
“Every time I give in to concern about tomorrow, even my next hour, I rob this hour, this day of strength, peace. The Maker holds all my days. Do I trust him with them, or not?”
I drew in a long, deep breath, studying him, considering his words. Then nodded.
“Good, continue.”
I searched him again, and besides a playful spirit I detected nothing. Anything else was too faint to register. “Hope. A pleasure in others. That’s it.”
“Excellent. Excellent. Now focus on those same emotions in your own heart. Consider your father. You had a male protector, yes?”
I swallowed hard. “I did. My dad.”
He stared into my eyes, his brows lowering as he noted my pain, my hesitation. “He is gone now,” he said softly.
“Yes,” I said, feeling my throat tighten.
He didn’t drop his gaze, and I knew his care and concern. “Remember, Andriana, the good things. Remember him holding you close to his chest, close enough to hear his heart, the warmth of his skin. Do you have such a memory?”
I remembered the day my father held me on the banks of the river as a little child while I tossed rocks into the water, the warmth of his chest behind me, the strength of his arms around me. I felt safe and yet free. I nodded, sniffing, struggling to hold on to the memory like a hug from Dad himself.
Asher squeezed my hands. “You have that image in your heart and mind now? Of a papa and his precious daughter? Hold on to it. Now consider the one who is holding you, in just the same way, is the One who saw you before you were born, and sees you as complete, perfect, even now. Only full of possibility and promise.”
I considered that
“Good. Remember this, how he will not let you go. Now, Andriana, go to the dark door. The door introduced to you by the Son of Sheol.”
I turned inwardly toward where he directed, feeling weary, dreading it. I could almost see it rattling in the wind, a tornado on the other side
Season of Wonder Page 22
