The Ancients: Book 3 in the Cedarstone Chronicles

by Sean Stone

  He looked up again, peering into her eyes. "I do," he nodded. He didn't like it, but he understood it. "I'm sorry for my temper," he said, ashamed suddenly at how he had behaved. It was foolish of him to storm in without even reading the whole ritual. Had he seen what was required to complete the ritual he would never have been so angry, he would have understood.

  She nodded and smiled kindly before releasing his hand. "Did Set show you this?" she asked, her tone somewhat edgy.

  "No." Nick shook his head. "I found the book open in his potion chamber."

  She nodded, her lips pursed. Then she scooped the book up and marched from the room in much the same way Nick had marched in. He jumped up and followed her through the temple and back to the potions chamber. When they arrived Set was there, preparing ingredients for a potion. Kayla threw the book down on the table and it flew open to the page with the warlock ritual. Set looked up curiously.

  "I did wonder where my book had got to," he said, and then continued cutting the sprigs on the table.

  "You left this for Nickolas to find," Kayla accused. "What was your aim? To try and cause an argument? Or did you want him to go out and attempt it knowing full well that he would get himself killed?" she demanded.

  Set stopped chopping and looked up again. His eyes met hers and it was then that Nick realised there was no love between the two of them whatsoever. They both nurtured a hatred for one another that they'd somehow concealed from him for the past year. But now it was there in full view.

  "You're being paranoid. Talking lunacy," Set said quietly.

  "Am I? Am I really? This boy is pure. You will not corrupt him with your wickedness," Kayla said, positively seething. Nick had never seen her show anything even close to anger and it was frightening to witness. Set didn't seem bothered in the least.

  "Nobody is pure, Kayla. Not even you." He took a step towards her, knife still in his hand. Nick backed away, shrinking into the shadows, unsure what he was about to witness.

  "You are here by my good graces. Remember that," Kayla warned and then turned and tromped out of the room. Set glanced over to Nick and raised an eyebrow. Nick quickly scurried up the stair after her, not wanting to be trapped in the room with Set after that reprimanding.

  Nick found Kayla in the garden sitting at the edge of the fountain, her feet dipped in the pool and letting the spray from the water flick over her hair and face. Without turning around she knew that Nick was approaching.

  "I'm sorry you saw that, Nickolas," she said. "Set and I have a complicated relationship." That much was obvious now.

  "I didn't realise how things were between you," he replied, trying to think of a way to comfort her. He settled for resting a hand on her shoulder although the gesture felt unnatural. She reached up and placed her hand over his. "Why do you have him here if you don't like each other?"

  "It's rather a long story," she replied. "But, I suppose we have time."

  She patted the fountain wall next to her and Nick settled onto it, kicking off his shoes and putting his feet in the cool water.

  "There's a lot I haven't told you, child. At first, it was because I didn't think you would understand or accept it but you have shown me that you are far more accepting of things than I imagined. You asked me a long time ago if Set and I were witches, do you remember my reply?"

  It was over a year ago now, but if he thought back he could just about remember the conversation. "You said you was something else, but you couldn't say what."

  "Indeed. I suppose that in order for you to understand fully I am going to have to go back to the beginning." She took in a deep breath and then released it. "There were three races in the beginning."

  "Oh," Nick said before he could stop himself. Kayla raised an eyebrow questioningly. "Sorry, it's just when you said you would start at the beginning I didn't realise you meant the beginning of time."

  Kayla laughed. "Well I wasn't there at the beginning of time, this is just the history that was passed down through the generations. It might be little more than a myth but is the history I was taught. There were three races, the humans, the jinn and the ancients. Humans were as you know them to be now, jinn were powerful beings made of fire and the ancients were powerful immortals. Set is an ancient."

  "And you?" Nick asked.

  "My mother was an ancient. My father was a jinni."

  "You're both?"

  "Indeed."

  "And you are immortal?" Nick asked in wonder. For over a year he'd been living amongst immortal beings and he'd been none the wiser. Of course, it did account for how young she looked considering that she said she created Elysium. He had often wondered how she could have started a community and kept rule in such a short space of time.

  "We are. We do not age and we do not die. Where the ancients originated from is a mystery, it is known that they did not come from Egypt though. They did come to settle in Egypt, and they quickly established themselves as superior to the humans that lived there and they ruled over them. That is where all those mythologies that I taught you about came from."

  "The stories about Ra and Isis and the other gods?" Nick asked. He'd enjoyed learning about the Egyptian gods, they were fascinating stories, but to think they were based on truth was something different altogether.

  "Yes, but they were not gods, they were ancients, pretending to be more than they were. When Osiris was king the ancients clashed with another race from Arabia; the jinn. It is not known what caused the two races to begin fighting, but it soon erupted into a terrible war. It was rumoured that the jinn wanted immortality and thought they could take it from the ancients. Apparently, a life that stretched over millennia was not good enough."

  "Do you think that's true?" Nick asked.

  "I have no idea. The war started centuries before I was born. Osiris grew tired of the war and was planning on making peace with the jinn, but his brother, Set, wanted the opposite. His brother was a warmonger. Do you recall the story about Osiris and his brother?"

  Nick gasped as he remembered the story that Kayla was referring to. More importantly, he remembered the name of the brother: Set. "Set is not the Set, is he?" Nick asked, his shock written across his face.

  "The very same," said Kayla, with a single nod.

  "But he's a monster. Why on earth would you let him live here with you? You said that evil had no place in Elysium."

  Kayla raised her palm to try and calm Nick. He stopped talking and waited for her response. "I shall get to that in time. For now, let me continue. As you know Set found a way to dispose of Osiris and take his place as king. He chopped his brother up using the sword of Ra and scattered the pieces across the earth so they could not be reunited. Set was a far more brutal king and military commander than Osiris had been and many ancients fled Egypt. Most went to Greece, thinking they would be safe there. The war was so out of hand people from both sides were fleeing to Greece. A peaceful community was created there. There were ancients and jinn living side by side . My own parents were among those who fled to Greece and it was there that they met and I was born. But the war spread and even the refugees across the sea were no longer safe.

  "Some of the refugees formed a group, an alliance against the war. It was an alliance of ancient and jinn. They put their powers together to try and find a way to stop the fighting, but they could find no way. That is where I come into the story. It turned out that I was born with…" She stopped to think about how to word it and then continued. "Unique abilities. Being both ancient and jinni I had the powers of both races. The anti-war group believed that I could stop the fighting and they got to work to design such a thing. When I was old enough they taught me in their ways, they trained me to fight, and when the time was right they showed me what they intended for me to do. Their plan was monstrous and I refused."

  "What was it?" Nick asked, his voice hushed in awe.

  Kayla shook her head. "Not long after I refused the jinn government found the rebel base and killed everyone. I managed to get away,
possibly a few others did too, but the rest were killed. After that Apophis, the king of the jinn, managed to lead a force into the ancient palace and they slaughtered Set's wife and children as they slept. Set was the only survivor because he was not in the palace. He had found out about my survival and was on his way to apprehend me. I could probably have escaped, but with my family dead, I had no interest in living. Set found me and took me back to the palace only to learn what had happened in his absence. When Set heard that his family was dead he did not fall into the same despair I did. He turned to vengeance. He told me he wanted to stop the war. He turned my mind to vengeance too." Nick thought about how Set had encouraged him to plan revenge on Bolingbroke.

  "I no longer cared about how monstrous the plan was. The ancients and the jinn had destroyed all those I loved with their fighting, and I found that like Set, I wanted to punish them."

  "Like I did when I arrived," said Nick. He'd wanted to return to England and kill Bolingbroke, but Kayla had talked him out of it.

  "Indeed. But I am glad you let go of your vengeance, Nickolas because exacting revenge does not ease your suffering. It serves only to make it worse, as I found out myself."

  "What happened next?" Nick asked.

  "Set told me to fulfil my destiny and end the war. He did not fully understand the consequences of what he was asking me to do. The plan my parents and the other rebels had concocted was a curse, the greatest and most devastating curse in the history of the entire world. So powerful that nobody had enough power to cast it."

  "Nobody but you," Nick said.

  "Because of the unique abilities I had been born with. The rebels took both sides in the war and for that reason, the curse was directed at both races. The rebels had devised a way to make themselves immune from the curse, but they were all dead. I made Set immune but nobody else. In hindsight, I wish I had found others to immunise but it's too late now.

  "Set called a meeting with Apophis, for peace negotiations. Once the two kings were in the room I had what I needed to get started. The kings provided me with a connection to every member of their races. Then I unleashed the most horrific curse on the planet, it was barely short of double genocide. The entire race of jinn were banished into prisons. Jinn had the ability to take any form and any size so the curse had been designed to use that ability. They were all confined to small bottles. The ancients were cursed as well. Every ancient with the exception of Set was turned to stone."

  "Whoah," Nick said in shock. The woman who he had come to think of as his mother had brought about the end of the two most powerful races in the world, and to think that no more than hour ago he had been shouting at her. He suddenly felt very sheepish.

  "Set thought that I was going to restore the ancients afterwards, but I had no such plans. I left them as statues. My parents were right. The fighting between the ancients and the jinn would have destroyed the world eventually and the world was better off without such destructive people in it. Set tried to force me to do his bidding but I was born with more power than he and I easily outfought him. It was then that he told me he had adjusted the curse before I cast it. He had made it so that the jinn were not just trapped but enslaved. Whoever held the bottles that imprisoned the jinni would have complete mastery of the jinni. The mastery would not last forever but any sort of enslavement is bad enough. I was furious with him, of course, but there was nothing I could do. What was done was done. He tried to take the master bottle from me. The bottle which contained Apophis. He knew that he could use it to undo the curse on the ancients. At least that was what I thought, but that was only half of his plan. He wanted to kill Apophis whilst he was unable to fight back. Not that it would have been that simple. The master bottle does not work the same way as the rest. Apophis cannot be forced to serve anyone and letting him out of the bottle would not have helped Set. Realising Apophis would simply release him for good."

  "Would that undo the curse for all of the jinn?" Nick asked. He'd read a fair bit about curses and had a small understanding of how they worked, but this curse was like nothing he'd learned about so far.

  "No. The curse was written to be very hard to break. The jinn can only be uncursed by the ancients and the ancients can only be uncursed by the jinn. Of course, being both myself and the caster of the curse, I can break the curse at any time," Kayla explained.

  "I hid the master bottle away and left Set to his own devices. He found a few jinn over the years, but he discovered that his mastery over them only lasted for three commands before the jinn would be banished back to their prison and then the bottle would disappear. A side effect of the curse which he had not intended." Kayla kicked the water gently with her feet and looked out across the garden. "The only consolation for the jinn was that they finally had the immortality they desired. Whilst slaves to the bottles they cannot grow old and they cannot die. They must be freed if they are to be killed."

  "What did you do next?" Nick asked, completely immersed in the story.

  "I travelled. I discovered as many races as I could, made friends in every corner of the world, all in an attempt to rid myself of the loneliness that I'd been left with. But everywhere I went I found disappointment. Every race I found was just as bad as the two I had cursed. War seemed to be the only thing people knew how to do. So I came here, to this island."

  "I thought you created the island?"

  "In a manner of speaking, I did. The island was already here, and I could feel that it was easily the most magical place in the world. So I made it my home. I used my own magic to protect it from others. I made it so that nobody would be able to find it, so nobody could corrupt the magic. I invited other people to live here. People like me who were disheartened by the nature of the world. People who wanted to live peacefully."

  "If nobody can find this place then how did Set get here?" Nick asked. From what he had heard so far Set was the very definition of evil. Although, his time with the man had never made him seem so. Sure he had a temper and was sometimes mean, but he wasn't evil.

  "Set, as you have seen for yourself, is a keen devourer of knowledge. He always has been. It led him to have magical abilities that evaded even the likes of Osiris and Ra. His most accomplished ability is that of shape-shifting. An ability that no ancient has ever possessed. Even most jinn find it difficult and it is said that they were the first to have the gift."

  "Can you do it?"

  "No. I tried a long time ago but I cannot master the skill."

  "So Set can turn himself into anything?"

  "There are certain forms he is unable to replicate, my own being one of them. He took on the form of one of the rebels. One I had not seen die. I don't know how long he kept the pretence up for before I left Elysium to investigate, but I found him in Greece and saw straight through it. I learned that day that no matter what form he takes, I can see the real him, as could the other ancients. I was going to turn my back on him, but he begged me not to. It had been millennia since we had seen one another. He told me he was a changed man, that he no longer sought revenge. He said that he had been searching for me because we are the last two of our kind and we belong together." Kayla paused again, looking down into the crystal water. "I agreed with him. For thousands of years, I had walked the earth with nothing but my loneliness. No matter who I had with me I still felt so alone. I even considered breaking the curse once or twice. Thankfully I never did. I thought that Set might be able to ease my loneliness. So I brought him home."

  "And has he changed?"

  She sighed. "I do not believe that he has truly abandoned his quest for revenge. I think that given the chance he would seize it but he has done nothing to lose my trust yet. He does the occasional bad thing but so do the people of the village. No person is born good, neither are they born evil and no person is either one. Everybody has a mixture of good and bad in them and every once in a while we give in to the badness. As long as we come back from it, and ask for forgiveness it should always be given."

  "And ar
e you still lonely? Did Set make you feel better?"

  Kayla turned to Nick and smiled broadly so that her eyes twinkled in the sunlight. She put a palm on his cheek and stroked him affectionately. "Such a sweet boy. Set did not take away my loneliness, but you have."

  Nick smiled back at her, at a complete loss for words. He'd always thought that Kayla had been the one who had helped him, that she had given him a new life, and fulfilled the role of mother that had been absent for as long as he could remember, but he had never thought that he might have done anything like that for her. He leaned forward and hugged her as tightly as he could, his way of showing how he felt without needing to put it into words. She hugged him back and he felt the warmness spread across his body and reach down into the depths of his soul.

  "You have become the son I never thought I would have, Nickolas. Now come on, let us go and get some food."

  *

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Present Day

  "I really think that this is ill-advised. I'm a member of the clan not the supernatural investigations team. I shouldn't be handed over like this," Charles whined. They were waiting in the club for Clara to arrive with the vampires that SIT had taken prisoner.

  "You aren't being handed over Charles," Richie sighed. It wasn't the first time he'd explained the arrangement to the irritating little man. "You'll still be living here and you'll still be a part of the clan but when SIT needs information it will be your job to get it for them."