Hunter Brown and the Eye of Ends

by Chris Miller

  “Yeah, I know,” I answered flippantly, “but I just wanted to make some progress.”

  Xaul spoke up, “It’s like the Noctu always say, Et Responsum, Imus Nocte, which in the Old Language means, ‘The answers come by night.’ That just means sometimes the best thing you can do is sleep on it, and the answer may come to you.”

  “Hang on a sec,” I answered, suddenly curious by the phrasing of the so-called Old Language the Noctu had been using. “Say that phrase again.”

  Xaul looked a bit surprised by the request. “The answers come by….”

  “No, no,” I interrupted him. “In the Old Language, say it again in the Old Language, only this time a little slower.”

  Xaul gladly obliged and repeated the sentence one word at a time, “Et Responsum, Imus Nocte.”

  “There, you see?” I said, repeating the last two words aloud for Trista to hear. “Imus Nocte, sound familiar?”

  “Not really, should it?” Trista asked.

  “Yes, it was in the message we deciphered in the cave, the one from my father’s drawings. Remember, the words with no vowels?” I answered.

  “Oh yeah, all that gibberish; I remember now,” Trista said, her eyes lighting up in sudden remembrance.

  I pulled the image up on my Symbio and deciphered the letters in the sand to complete the final phrase. The message read:

  IN GIRUM

  IMUS NOCTE

  ET CONSUMIMUR

  IGNI

  Xaul read the phrase aloud, “We Enter the Circle by Night and Are Consumed by Fire.”

  “So it wasn’t just a bunch of gibberish, after all,” Trista said. “Do you think it has something to do with the Consuming Fire?”

  “Probably, but it seems like a random thing to write down,” I said, scratching my head. “I don’t get it.”

  “No more random than Mirror Rim,” Trista replied in reference to the other phrase we deciphered in the cave.

  “I guess not,” I said, recalling Dad’s notes in the Author’s Writ. There was something weird about this phrasing and it wasn’t just the meaning of it. He was doing something on purpose; he was trying to be clever, trying to hide a message in it. But what?

  One thing was certain; both the phrase in the book and the phrase on the drawing had been written by my dad. I felt closer to Dad every time I solved one of his puzzles. I couldn’t help but smile at the memory of him and his goofy binary watch. If it hadn’t been for Dad’s willingness to train me on how to read binary, I never would have been able to apply the technique for deciphering the messages.

  That’s when it hit me.

  “Wait a minute, that’s it!” I shouted at once. “I think I know where to look for more clues. In fact, I’ve already found our first clue. I’ve had it all along.”

  Hope, Trista and Xaul exchanged confused glances, wondering what they had missed.

  “How? What do you mean?” Trista ventured, looking rather stunned.

  “Belac’s castle is in Inire, right?”

  “Yeah, so,” Trista answered.

  “So, it’s where I found my father’s broken binary watch,” I said eagerly. “If his watch was there it’s possible some other things might be as well, maybe even my father.”

  “That’s pretty brilliant, Hunter,” Trista said in support.

  We started making plans to visit Belac’s castle. Hope smiled, but it was a weak smile with a thoughtful gaze behind it.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

  “Nothing. It’s just...I had a funny feeling, that’s all.”

  “A funny feeling about what?” I asked.

  “It was nothing, I’m sure,” Hope replied. “I think I’m just tired.”

  “Me too,” Trista added with a yawn.

  It was true. The night had been long and full of surprises. We settled onto our mats for rest. No doubt we would need it for the travels ahead. Of course, that was assuming Xaul didn’t kill us all in our sleep. His willingness to tell us a story hadn’t dampened my awareness that he was still a cold-blooded killer. If I did fall asleep, it would be with one eye open. I managed to keep that up for a whole twenty minutes before my eyelids and the heat got the better of me. Before I knew it, I was dreaming of sand frogs, Shadow creatures and Boojum spit…a strange combination by anyone’s standards.

  Little did I know, before my dreams ended, things would get a lot stranger.

  Chapter 18

  Visions and Vanishings

  Following a few short knocks, the castle door groaned open for the weary traveler to enter. He welcomed the shelter from the stormy night beyond the castle’s barren walls. As he crossed the theshold, a howling wind blew up behind him and the door slammed shut violently on its own. The man startled at the sound and spun around in fright.

  “Horrid night,” he cursed, setting down his things and fumbling to light a candle in the darkness.

  His bones shivered, but only partially from the cold—the other part was from a recent memory he already regretted making. He would never do such a thing again, he promised himself, unconsciously rubbing his hands on his pants to rid them of the blood that wasn’t there.

  “Hello?” he called out, hearing his echo return four times; the castle was abandoned, just as predicted. The interior of the castle was dark and empty, as good a place as any to be forgotten—much better than a tomb. By daylight things would surely look better. He reassured himself that he was doing the right thing.

  Convinced he was alone, he left his things behind and pressed forward down a long hallway in search of a cozier room. As he started down the corridor, he didn’t notice a lumbering shadow following him—not his own.

  In his searching he came upon a room that seemed to suit his tastes best of all. It was no different from the other rooms except for the window…this room had none. In a hurry, he returned to the entry and gathered up his things, bringing them to the room and shutting the door behind him. He spread out his belongings on the floor before him.

  In the jumble of items, he located a black velvet bag, opened it and looked inside. A red light streamed up from the bag, lighting his face in a way that made him look almost maniacal. With a trembling hand he reached down into the sack and produced a glowing crystal roughly the size of his palm. With the glowing stone in hand, he produced a pen and paper and began to draw the room in which he sat. He drew every detail, including himself and his things. When he was done he added something to the drawing, a mirror. Then an amazing thing began to take place. As he drew each line, the mirror in the drawing began to appear against the wall before him. It was a large standing mirror, oval shaped with a simple wooden frame around its edges. What he had drawn had come to be.

  When he finished the last stroke of his drawing, he set his paper down and wandered to the mirror. With a sense of pride he examined his creation, pleased with the craftsmanship he had just accomplished. He admired his own reflection for longer than he realized, until he noticed something reflected in the mirror that hadn’t been in the room. There was a shape in the corner, a huddled creature of some kind. Spinning around, he examined the actual corner where he had spotted the thing in the mirror. There was nothing there. For a second time he looked into the mirror. Sure enough, the shape was still there…only now it was moving.

  “Is someone there?” he called out, scrambling to hide the glowing crystal in its sack once more before it could be discovered. There was no response but his echo. It annoyed him that he sounded so frightened in the echo. It wasn’t like him to be that way. He had always been fearless before. But that was before he had seen the vision. Now, all he could think about was what would happen if it were true.

  Gathering his courage, he picked up his walking stick and wandered to the corner of the room where the image of the creature had been. He poked his stick into the space, wondering if something invisible were there.
Nothing.

  Satisfied that it was just a trick of the eye, he turned back toward the mirror and found himself inches away from a creature twice his size and strength. It was carrying a knife and didn’t look very pleased with the traveler. Stumbling over his own feet, the traveler toppled to the ground, dropping the bag with the stone for a moment. He snatched it back up again, guarding the object with his very life.

  “What have I done?” the man seemed to whimper, but his voice was lost in the roar of the horrible beast that now towered over him. The roar continued through the night but no one could hear it, except for the black birds perched on a lonely evergreen tree.

  *************

  “Hunter, wake up!” the voice said again. This time something poked my side. I sat up in fright, accidentally cracking my head against the nose of the person hovering over me: Desi.

  “Ouch,” Desi complained, holding her face in her hands. “What did you do that for?”

  “I’m sorry, it was an…” I started to reply, then realized who I was talking to. “Desi? What are you doing here?”

  My excitement nearly woke Trista who was also still asleep. Xaul and Hope were missing from their beds.

  “I came to find you,” she said, still cupping her nose behind her hands, “but now I’m starting to regret it. You really know how to make a girl feel welcome, you know that?”

  Her face was dirty, and a mess of blood flowed from her nose, which I might have broken.

  “Here, lie down,” I said, reaching for my backpack and retrieving my sword. In addition to being a weapon, the sword had healing powers in its hilt. She took my place on the mat. I brought the Veritas Sword over and put the hilt of it on her face. Nothing happened. For whatever reason, the wound would not heal with the sword.

  “I don’t get it; the healing has always worked before,” I said, scratching my head.

  “Yeah, well, it’s okay. I heal pretty quickly anyway,” she said, pulling her bandana off of her head and holding it to her nose. Despite her grimy appearance, she didn’t have a single scratch on her skin from the explosion the other day.

  “Wait a minute. How did you escape the bookshop? I thought I watched you, you know….”

  “Got lucky, I guess,” she answered. “I blacked out in the explosion and when I woke, I was lying in the rubble behind the front counter. Vogler was gone. I hurried to the back door to try and find you, but it was open. I synced my Symbio signal to yours and stepped through the door and landed in the middle of the desert.”

  Trista began to stir and seemed a bit shocked at the sight of Desi lying on my mat. I explained the situation and despite her initial reaction, Trista seemed to genuinely warm up to the fact that Desi had returned.

  “So,” Desi asked, “now that we’re here, what’s our next move?”

  “Belac’s castle,” I answered, explaining what we had learned earlier in the day. “It’s as good a place as any to start looking.”

  Desi nodded her approval of the plan, and wiped the remaining blood from her nose.

  “Hunter, look at this,” Trista said, pulling a note from Hope’s mat. “It’s for you.”

  The note read:

  Hunter,

  I sense the Author is calling me back. There is something we

  may still need in your search for your father. Please wait for me.

  I will only be gone a few days. Xias and the Noctu have agreed

  to let you stay until I return. Learn from them and let them learn from you.

  Hope

  P.S. Boojum says bye too! I’m taking him back to his family.

  “Well that stinks,” I griped, anxious to get out of the camp. The way I figured, the less time we spent with Xaul the better off we were. Two or three days was going to seem like an eternity.

  “Maybe it will give us time to figure out some of the other clues,” Trista said, always the optimist.

  “I’ve already looked those drawings over a million times. I’m not going to find anything new in…wait a minute…the traveler!” I shouted excitedly. I pulled up the images once more and hurried through them.

  Desi turned to look at Trista. Neither of them seemed to have understood what I said.

  “The traveler?”

  “Yeah, the man in my dreams,” I said. “He was searching a castle. There was this creature in the shadows that came after him. It looked just like the one in my father’s picture. This one!”

  I pointed to the picture my dad had sketched…the one where he was cowering under a shadow in a room with stone walls. The image was nearly identical to the scene from my dream; only in this picture the traveler was my father.

  “Okay, so you were dreaming about this picture,” Desi said in a practical tone. “That doesn’t really tell us anything new.”

  “No, but the castle in my dream reminded me of Belac’s castle, only empty.” I pointed back to the screen where the shadow of the beast hovered over my father. “I’m pretty sure this is the same room as the one in my dream.”

  “How sure?” Trista asked, sounding a bit hesitant.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” I answered. “We go to Belac’s castle and look for it.”

  Trista didn’t look too sure.

  “But Hope told us to wait for her,” Trista said. “We can’t just up and leave her behind.”

  “Why not? She left you,” Desi pointed out. “Leave her a note; we might even be back before she is.”

  “How do you know she won’t be coming back with something from the Author for us?” Trista asked.

  “How do you know my dream isn’t the clue the Author was going to send?” I answered.

  Trista started to open her mouth, but stopped short. She had run out of arguments and was somewhat surprised that I would choose to go against Hope’s wishes.

  “Look,” I explained, “if Vogler made it out of the bookshop alive, then we don’t have much time anyway. Hope didn’t know that Desi would be here or that I’d have that dream. We have the clues we need…we shouldn’t be waiting around.”

  “I say we vote on it,” said Desi. “Those in favor of going to Inire?” Desi’s hand shot up first, followed by my own in a meaningless gesture of good faith. All eyes fell on Trista.

  Trista raised her hand just to spite Desi. She didn’t want to look like the odd one in the group.

  “Then it’s settled,” I said triumphantly. “The only thing to figure out now is how to get there.”

  As it turned out, the travel arrangements were easier made than I expected. With Xaul’s approval, the Noctu offered each of us a Raptor and agreed to lead us to an underground spring where a series of pools served as links to other shards. Each spring was a different color and was marked by a large etched rock to identify the destination that would be found on the other end. Inire’s spring was black.

  “So, we just jump in then?” I asked, staring at the reflective surface of the pool. In a way, I was scared—frightened of what I might learn about my father on the other side.

  The Noctu warrior nodded and pointed down into the spring.

  “Let’s get going then,” said Desi, impulsively diving headlong into the water. She never resurfaced. I was next in line.

  “Hunter, wait,” Trista said, stealing a moment alone with me. “I just want you to know that I’m glad Desi’s not dead, and I’m…I’m sorry for being so….”

  “Protective?” I finished her sentence, remembering our conversation in the cave.

  “Yeah, that,” Trista said shyly. “I know what it’s like to have your family torn apart. I have a stepdad.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said, looking at her in a new light.

  “I’m not even sure Emily knows it. He’s a nice guy and all, but it’s not the same as your real dad.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?” I
asked.

  “Because I guess I just wanted you to know that I really do care about you…about finding your father.” She added the last part, but it wasn’t really an effort to hide her emotions. We both knew how we felt about each other. “Anyway, I still like Hope better, but I’m willing to go with Desi if that’s what you want.”

  I nodded and offered her my hand.

  “Shall we jump?”

  Trista smiled and took my hand in her own for the second time in as many days. She entwined her fingers with mine and squeezed hard. My heart felt lighter than it had before. I wasn’t afraid of the other side anymore. As silly as it was, having Trista with me gave me courage.

  “Tell me when,” said Trista, tightening her grip on Hope’s bow with her free hand.

  “Deep breath on three,” I answered. “One…two…three…dive.”

  Together we took the plunge, letting the icy black water swallow us. An invisible current pulled us downward like the suction of a vacuum, then it let go, and we were floating back to the top of the pool once more. Something must have gone wrong, I thought. We hadn’t gone anywhere at all.

  I reached out, breaking the flickering surface with my hand and catching hold of a second hand. It was Desi, but to my surprise, it wasn’t water she pulled us out of. It was a sand pit in the middle of a lush jungle.

  Coughing and spitting, we lay on the ground to catch our breath. We were completely dry, but covered in sand from head to toe. There was sand in my ears, my nose, my hair…there was sand in places I didn’t even know existed.

  “Never a dull moment,” I said, shaking the gritty, grainy mess from my hair.

  “Yes, and if we don’t keep moving,” Desi warned, “it won’t get any duller.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “There’s something in the woods and I think it’s watching us.”

  Sure enough, twigs were cracking around us and the bushes rustled with life. Desi retrieved the black rods from her back pocket and thrust the orange one in the air. The thing in the bushes ran away, but under the cover of night we couldn’t see what it was. Desi retracted the whip and placed it back in her pocket.