Shock of Fate: A Young Adult Fantasy Adventure (Anchoress Series Book 1)

by D. L. Armillei

  The hair on Van’s arms prickled. The scar on her back—was it the mark of a demon? Uxa had told Van she was responsible for fixing her own ancestral line. Had Van’s father allowed a demon to mark her at birth? Had he already plotted to use her before she was even conceived? Was this what Van had to fix in her ancestral line?

  Or, because of her father’s actions, had Van been fated from birth to work on behalf of demons? Uxa had also told Van that she had a family obligation to complete her father’s mission. Was Uxa secretly conspiring with her father and demons? Was this the truth behind their mission to retrieve the Coin of Creation?

  Another distressing thought overwhelmed Van. Brux would never be attracted to her with such a disfigurement as her scar. It marked her as ugly, inside and out. Her ancestry, money, and looks would no longer matter. All Brux would see was a collaborator with Darkness.

  Ildiss tilted her head, lifting an ear. “I am being instructed to tell you about your mother.”

  Van felt as if her body had solidified, like a rock. Nothing could have moved her from that spot, in that moment when she would finally learn about her real mother.

  “I can see the night you were born through my spirit eye,” Ildiss said, keeping her gnome eyes closed. “The moon’s surface is not clearly visible. Yet my spirit ancestors tell me it was not a Blood Moon. Though you did inherit the Anchoress bloodline from your mother, Aelia, you might not have inherited her magical powers.”

  Ildiss had confirmed Van’s worst fear, that she had inherited the Anchoress bloodline.

  The Seer also implied that Van hadn’t inherited the ability to tap into the same magical power as her ancestors. This matched what Van had overheard Uxa and Fynn talking about almost two weeks ago—except now, Van knew they’d been talking about her, not Daisy. She slumped, weighted by the great responsibilities Ildiss had just placed on her and feeling ill-equipped to handle them.

  “Your mother was the Ambassador of Goodwill for Salus Valde—a position that allowed her to travel out of bounds,” Ildiss said. “On these ambassador trips, she and your father became . . . close. Your father, as her Assigned Protector, was required to accompany her. As such, the Elementals forbade them to marry.”

  Van felt stunned by this newest revelation. It meant the Elders had been against her parents’ marriage, not only because of her father’s commoner status or because he had Balish blood or because having a family was frowned upon by the Grigori, but because the marriage directly opposed the Elementals!

  “Your mother’s blood had the highest concentration of Elemental blood of all Lodians, and when she chose Michael as your father, their blood mixed inside you. The Lodian part of your blood did not grow stronger with an infusion of another pure Lodian’s blood. Instead, it became diluted—tainted—by Michael’s Balish blood.”

  “So what?” Van asked defensively.

  “Diluting a pure Lodian bloodline is blasphemous to the Elementals in its own right,” Ildiss said, “but in your case, it reactivated the Anchoress curse that originated in Amaryl’s time. A curse tied to Balish blood.”

  “So, it’s true. There is an Anchoress curse,” Van stated. She needed to know more. “Was Amaryl cursed, too? Who cursed us?”

  “Silence!” Ildiss said irritably. Her eyes shot open, and she peered at Van. “I can only tell you what my spirit ancestors show me. Michael’s Balish blood diluted the Elemental portion of yours. This is why you are affected by living in the Earth World. All other Anchoresses were born attuned for life in both worlds. Having less Elemental blood weakens the magical abilities of the Anchoress, limiting your ability to connect to the power of the moon and diminishing your capacity to amplify your power. This, and the curse, is why Uxa and your father worried you did not inherit the ability to connect to the powers of your bloodline.”

  “My father and Uxa both know I am the Anchoress heir?” Van felt enraged. “Why haven’t they ever told me!”

  Van had inherited the Anchoress’s bloodline without inheriting its accompanying power. Did this mean she couldn’t get the Coin? Or did it mean she couldn’t control its power? Or both?

  A sick thought entered Van’s mind. Had her father done this on purpose as an insider attack on the Lodians and their regime? Had he destroyed the one hope the Lodians had to protect Salus Valde from the Balish?

  “Wait a minute,” Van said. “Then what did Uxa need Daisy for? Does this mean Daisy and Brux are Goustav’s heirs?”

  Ildiss looked angry at Van for, again, speaking out of turn. She didn’t answer and instead reinstated her habitual rocking, but this time the Seer’s eyes remained open. “The curse that lay dormant for centuries has returned and was validated the night your mother died giving birth to you. Michael had gone out of bounds that night. He had found a way to sneak into Balish territory without being detected. Your mother discovered he was missing, knew he had illegally gone out of bounds, and went searching for him, hoping to stop him from doing something foolish, to bring him home. The Balish immediately caught your mother out of bounds and tortured her with liquid fire. She was eight months pregnant with you.”

  Van’s hand reactively reached behind her, touching her lower back.

  Ildiss nodded at Van’s unspoken question. “Yes, this is how you got your scar. The liquid fire pierced through your mother’s skin and reached you while you were still in the womb.”

  The Seer paused, giving Van time to digest this horrifying reality, then continued. “Your father found out what happened and rescued your mother from the Balish soldiers. Iphigenia was also there, in the woods of Tipereth, fleeing from the Balish.”

  By this point, Van felt certain Ildiss had invoked memory engrams without touching an object. Ildiss had used her connection to her spirit ancestors to see into the past. Ildiss had the same skill as Van! Except the Seer had a mastery of this skill that put Van to shame.

  “Can you see why Genie fled?” Van asked.

  This time Ildiss answered. “Iphigenia was the palace healer at Balefire. She . . . hurt one of the royals, and the queen didn’t forgive her. So, Iphigenia fled and happened upon your parents. She managed to save you—but couldn’t save your mother. This explains why your father felt indebted to Iphigenia, and why he helped her escape to Providence Island.”

  Genie saved my life? And Van had always thought of Genie as such a ditz.

  “Your bunfy was originally your mother’s. If he hasn’t appeared to you until now, then . . .” Ildiss hesitated. “He had someone else as his charge.” Ildiss’s beady eyes remained on Van. “Your mother loved you and would have done anything to protect you.”

  Van’s heart welled. Her mother loved her! This awareness came with a corresponding ache over the loss of the life they could’ve shared together, if her mother had survived. “Why did my father go out of bounds that night?” she asked.

  “He went someplace he wasn’t supposed to go,” Ildiss said.

  Those words, seemingly vague, jarred Van’s memory. Her father had said the same words to her the day they went quahogging, when she asked him how he had gotten his scars.

  Van understood Ildiss’s message. People make their own choices. Van was not responsible for her mother’s actions or her death. Her mother went willingly out of bounds, chasing after her father.

  But her mother never would have been in that situation if her father hadn’t snuck out in the middle of the night! For what? “What was so important?” Van muttered, almost to herself.

  It seemed likely her father had been plotting with the Balish even back then; maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that Genie met him that night. Maybe she was already his mistress. Now Van was even more willing to believe the rumors about her father. That he was a greedy, power-hungry womanizer. Maybe her father and Genie wanted Van to survive because she carried the Anchoress-in-Waiting bloodline, a tool they could use later. To get the Coin.

  Rage burned inside her.

  “Your internal struggle distracts you from your purpose,”
Ildiss said. “You listen but do not hear. You must use your heart to clear your thoughts, to find your way.” Ildiss paused, closed her eyes for a brief moment, then continued. “It is the will of the Creator to constantly challenge our inner fortitude. This makes us grow and become stronger. Your father is part of your ancestral line, and you must reconcile your feelings about him to have any hope of coming into your full power.” Ildiss peered at Van with intense eyes. “The dark part inside all of us constantly struggles for domination. You must choose which to cling to, the Light or the Dark. That is what makes a person.”

  With a swift change in demeanor, Ildiss bellowed for the gnome guard to bring Hallux forth.

  The gnome leader arrived with his donsy. They gathered inside the Seer’s nook, crowding around Ildiss, Van, and the fire.

  Ildiss spoke to Hallux. “I have communicated with the spirit world, and, in their wisdom, they said this child before me is not the destined savior who rises to fight against evil in Dishora, side by side with the gnomes, and therefore cannot be deemed the true Anchoress.”

  Hallux ordered, “Take her back to—”

  “However,” Ildiss interrupted.

  The surrounding gnomes froze in the act of reaching out to grab Van. They stepped back. “The insight of our spirit ancestors is often beyond comprehension for those of us trapped here in our fleshy prisons. Even those of us whose gifts are vast,” Ildiss rasped. “We are to give this child a chance to prove herself worthy of our help. She must present us with an acceptable gift, one that represents life. If not, you may turn her and her friends over to the Balish as nothing more than petty gold thieves.”

  Van felt stung, slapped in the face by someone she’d thought was on her side. It left her feeling more incompetent than ever. The Anchoress legacy had just been dumped on her, minus the ability to tap into its power, and she still had to complete her mission and find the Coin. Now, she needed to figure out what a gift of “life” meant. Great.

  While the gnomes led Van across the cavern to the jail, she worried that a gift of life meant they planned to kill one of the team or Wiglaf. The ground trembled again.

  “Earthquake!” screamed a gnome. They all scattered to take cover. Rocks and dust crashed around them.

  With no other recourse, Van curled into a fetal position and covered her head.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Day 12: 1:22 p.m., Living World

  When the rumbling stopped, Van rose from the dust, coughing and staggering. She had survived with minor cuts and bruises, but a roar of agony rang out through the hollow.

  A female gnome lay on the ground, unconscious.

  “Schydel!” Hallux cried, cupping her face in his hands. “Someone help my wife! Please!”

  Van seized the opportunity to escape. She saw her teammates milling around the cell. Brux and Jorie tugged at the bent bars, trying to get out. None of them seemed to suffer from any major injuries, so Van quickly scanned the cavern for Wiglaf. She spotted the wicker cage sitting on the landing area for the carts. Their backpacks lay strewn on the ground next to the track.

  While the gnomes gave their attention to Schydel, Van darted over and tore open the door to the pebble-covered cage. She pulled out the little bunfy, who had managed to keep his white coat clean, despite the flying dust. Though trembling, with his ears tightly pushed down against body, he appeared uninjured.

  Van wrapped him in her arms and cradled him like a baby.

  Wiglaf stretched his ears and chirruped merrily.

  Van held Wiglaf with one arm and used her other hand to reach into her backpack and take out the bunfy’s nest, hoping it might comfort him.

  Hallux’s loud moans over his wife’s injuries broke into Van’s happy reunion with Wiglaf.

  Wiglaf turned his tiny head. “Mirpp weep,” Wiglaf said, staring at the gathering of gnomes around Schydel.

  Van glanced at her teammates, still trying to break out of the jail cell, and then back to Wiglaf.

  “Okay,” she reluctantly agreed to Wiglaf’s plea. She went over to Schydel and pushed the protesting gnomes aside.

  “What is that?” cried one of the gnomes, grabbing Van’s arm with the nest.

  “A bunfy. He can make her feel better,” Van replied, as she placed Wiglaf on Schydel’s stomach. “It might be enough to pull her through.”

  The other gnomes stared at Van, gasping.

  Hallux’s tiny black eyes opened wide, and he raised his palms upward. “Bless the Light! It’s the body of a vegetable lamb!”

  “No, he’s a bunfy,” Van said, confused.

  “No, no, you simpleton!” Hallux said. “The wreath in your hand! We have our offering.”

  “It’s the wreath, right?” Van asked, not trusting the gnomes and their strange culture. “Not my bunfy?”

  Hallux’s wife stirred. “By the Light! My wife has regained consciousness!”

  “I think she just has a concussion,” Van said, not wanting the gnomes to think Wiglaf had the healing power to bring back people from the dead. If they did, she would never get him back.

  Hallux picked up Wiglaf and handed him to Van. She hugged him to her chest and then gave the nest to one of the gnomes, who scurried off to “put it in a safe place.”

  Hallux bellowed with great joy, “Release the prisoners! They have proved to be our honored guests! We must celebrate our great good fortune! Prepare the Feast of Departure!”

  The gnomes cheered. Van still had no idea what Hallux and the other gnomes were so excited about, as several of them ran across the cavern, dodging the fallen rocks, and opened the jail. A merry gnome bustled by Van, eying Wiglaf, and said, “To think! We had planned to eat him!”

  Van squeezed Wiglaf a little tighter.

  Her team reunited in the middle of the partly destroyed cavern.

  Paley shivered. “Creepy little things, aren’t they?” she whispered low enough so that none of the busy gnomes scuttling about could hear.

  “I dunno,” Van said, with a shrug. “They’re kind of growing on me.”

  “I hope my maps survived,” Elmot said, searching for his backpack.

  “Forget your maps,” Jorie scoffed. “Where’s Zachery?”

  “Over here.” Van waved for them to follow her.

  On the way to the tracks, she told them what had transpired with Ildiss—including the Seer’s confirmation that she carried the Anchoress-in-Waiting bloodline.

  “That’s why security on the island is so intense,” Paley said. “And why the Elders fawn all over you.”

  Brux’s eyebrows pinched together, along with a downward turn to the corners of his mouth. Van knew he still struggled against the idea of her being the Anchoress-in-Waiting, instead of his sister.

  “Brux— ” Van stopped. She didn’t know what to say to make him feel better. I’m sure my father is not torturing your sister too badly, or I’m sure Daisy is still alive. None of those would work. So, Van said nothing, and neither did anyone else.

  Jorie wondered whether anyone had checked on the old gnome since the earthquake, and, after they grabbed their backpacks, Van led them to Ildiss’s nook.

  When they bustled in, Ildiss didn’t flinch. She sat as peacefully as ever, cross-legged in front of her smoky fire. She had two gnomes with her. One had a beard and wore overalls. The other was beardless and wore a farmer’s dress with round-toed boots.

  “I, uh, we came to make sure you were okay,” Van stammered. The old gnome with her spirit wisdom intimidated Van.

  Ildiss introduced the other gnomes as Nid and Sashee, and then she instructed them to have a seat and listen well. “My spirit ancestors have counseled us to help you continue your journey. To reach the Caves of Wolfenden, you must pass through the land of trolls. Three guides will accompany you.”

  Van got the shivers. She had never told Ildiss about needing gnomes to accompany them.

  “Trolls are unfortunate creatures,” Ildiss rasped. “They value things. Your guides will bring gold—”r />
  “No one ever mentioned needing gold,” Brux interjected.

  “We don’t want to take your gold,” Van said. “It’s not ours. We didn’t earn it.”

  “It’s not our gold, either,” replied Nid, the bearded gnome standing behind Ildiss. “We are enslaved by the Balish and mine for them.”

  “Gold has no value, except that which we give it,” Ildiss lectured. “Gold itself is not important. It only serves as a means to keep the Balish from destroying our tribe. We care about one another above all else.”

  “We gnomes have access to all the gold in the world,” said Sashee, the beardless gnome. “But we cannot buy the simple things we need, thanks to the Balish.”

  “We are forbidden to possess the body of a vegetable lamb, a plant you may know of as cotton,” Nid said. “The body is the part of the plant that contains seeds. The bodies are plentiful in the wreath you have given us. It will enable us to grow crops in our hidden towns throughout the mountains.”

  “The Balish do not allow our tribe to own any plant that enables us to create our own clothes,” Sashee said. “It is too empowering for a slave race.”

  “Why do you let the Balish treat you like that?” Van asked crossly.

  “The Balish thought our kind had been wiped out during the Great War,” Nid said. “Within several centuries, the Balish discovered our hiding place in the earth and that the gnome tribe had survived. They told us we had been living on Balish-owned land and would have to pay. We had no protection and no ability to fight such powerful enemies. And so, we became nothing more than a slave race to the Balish.”

  “Vanessa, your mother visited us when she was the Ambassador of Goodwill,” Sashee said. “She found out about our enslavement by the Balish and tried to help.”

  Ildiss waved her stubby arms. All of the chitchat between the earthbound creatures before her must have been too much, and she dismissed them from her nook. “Go. All of you. I must get back to my meditation.”

  Nid and Sashee walked out of the nook with Van and the others.

  “Your journey will commence at first light tomorrow,” Nid announced. “Fortified with food, supplies, gold, and guides.”