by Tenaya Jayne
Some called it hallucination, some called it magic, but no matter the name, it was always born of love. Storytellers never worked one on one, but with small groups. Sometimes the story began with song. A Storyteller's voice could hypnotize anyone with only a few notes. The experience was different for each person listening. The story spoken, became a visual tapestry, moving and caressing the senses of the listeners. The crowd not only saw but also felt the story as if it were their own memory, and in a way, it was. Each person gave something to the Storyteller, an intangible part of themselves, the Storyteller in turn wove it into the story they created.
Storytellers were heart-readers, and the cracks and aches deep inside a person were as plain to them as the color of the person's eyes. But a story from a Storyteller was not just a quick whisper of wish fulfillment. It moved into the heart and took root, and it brought healing to the listener's mind and spirit. They could quell anger between enemies, and make the timid brave. They brought clarity, and clarity gave birth to peace.
However, in Regia's modern times, the Storytellers became fewer and fewer. On the rare occasion one would come, they would be exhausted within days from the demand for their services and would quickly leave.
The laws of Illumistice, the Storyteller's world, gave their youth, on the point of maturity, an opportunity to travel the channels for a set period of time, to learn about themselves, and make the decision if they desired to live on another world, or embrace their destiny back home. There was only one stipulation in the law, besides the time limit; once you came home, you could never travel the channels again.
Journey was a healer of Illumistice. Her time to travel the channels and decide her life path was long over. All of her family and friends remembered their time of travel with fondness and spoke of their experiences often. Journey never said a word about her time. Never. Her life was simple and desolate. She cared, maybe too much, for those she healed. Her heart swelled in response to their pain, but that was all her heart seemed to be capable of. Empathy and then nothing. Her heart was useless to her. Broken beyond all hope.
She woke up minutes before her alarm went off. She kept her eyes closed, waiting. Not waiting for the alarm, but for Redge. His eyes appeared in her mind, sad, and beckoning. She never tired of looking at her memory of his eyes—deep blue green water, the color barely visible over a background of black, like the edges of the sky at sunset before all the light was gone. A shiver rolled through her as she thought of his voice and the message he’d whispered in her mind yesterday, Journey, I love you. Come back to me. I know it’s impossible, come back anyway.
Every morning at the same time, she heard his plea. For many years she thought she was imagining it. That it was her longing for him that created the whispered words. But then, every so often the words would change. For two years, the message changed from saying I love you to I still love you. And then there was that terrible month where all he said was, Journey, please.
She had no idea how he was sending messages to her. It was impossible, but the messages came every morning, impossible or not. Journey didn’t try to shut him out. She waited for him to whisper to her, and she absorbed every word. It was a soft, sensual torture.
It was her mistake that separated them so many years ago. Her misunderstanding and knee-jerk reaction that had her running from him, magically locking the door behind her as she flew home. It was the one moment she would undo if she could. And it didn’t matter how she ached to go back to him. It was forbidden. And she was scared. Scared to break the law. Also terrified to return and find she had imagined his messages all along, and he had found love with someone else, or had possibly found his destined life mate.
Journey held her eyes closed, still waiting. The moment passed. Her alarm sounded. Was he late? He was never late. Not for fifteen years had he missed a day or even been a minute late. She sat up in bed, her heart hammering, her mind immediately jumping to the worst conclusions.
“Alarm off!” she ordered.
The annoying chime quieted.
A sharp-edged chill covered her. She got up and went to shower. The water chased the chill but not the seed of fear that caused it. Journey, help me. She gasped as his belated message came into her mind, his voice desperate, broken. Help? How could she possibly help him?
She dried off and dressed quickly, turning on her news screen. She did a search for Regia. It highlighted and popped up in the morning’s main headline. Her throat constricted as she read. Illumistice’s trade partner was preparing for a many-world takeover. She read the list and found what she hoped she wouldn’t. They were on the list. The wizards were planning to invade and conquer Regia.
A sensation she couldn’t name solidified inside her. It was something she was sure she had never felt before, and it was absolute in its resolve.
"Lock," she said aloud to her house. "Privacy mode."
A small chime of compliance let her know she would not be interrupted.
Journey sat on her bed and pulled out her channel map from its hidden place. The lines on the fabric paper lit up as she unrolled it. Light moved along the channels open to the youth. The channel to Regia hardly ever lit up anymore. Travel to Regia had become more and more unpopular as civil wars there became more frequent. Illumistice governors closed off channels to worlds they deemed unsafe, or would put them on a limited basis only.
“Come on!” she pleaded with it. “Please!” The light flickered on and off like a dying light bulb. Her heart jumped. It's against the law to go back, she told herself. Her hands shook as she gripped the map. She would lose everything by doing this. Her livelihood, her freedom, her reputation.
Her heart didn’t care.
Journey grabbed the thread of light and closed her eyes, breaking the law as she began her travel back to Regia. Back to where her heart lived, back where she’d left it, to do all she could to save the man who kept it. The risk was so great, but still, she set fire to the bridge behind her.
Chapter One
There were moments in Redge's memory that never faded in clarity, or pain. Journey lived at the center of all of them. His heart never let her become the woman of his past. It didn't matter that he hadn't seen her since he was a young man, nor did he have a chance to ever see her again. She was his past, but she was also his present because he never let go of her. He'd tried. After so many long, lonely years, he no longer held out any hope of moving on. Journey, the one, the only woman who ever mattered to him. From the moment love took its first breath, to the current day, she was it for him. And she was gone. His heart was forever full, and her place in his arms would be forever empty.
Redge and Journey didn't make sense in any way whatsoever. They were polar opposites. No to mention they came from different worlds, literally. But the heart knows things, secrets it may never whisper to the head.
Every morning he wrote her a note. Just a few words. Ink and parchment. Then he would burn them. He didn’t know why he did this, only that he received some small shred of comfort every time the wisp of smoke disappeared into the air.
Breath filled his lungs, his heart pumped, but his body moved off kilter. He strained against the slave mark on his neck, trying to defy the order pushing him onward. Sweat ran down his face and back and coated him with shame. All these years, since Journey had run away from him, he'd strived to live his life worthy of her good opinion and make up for the sins of his youth. And in this terrible moment, the memory, the worst one, came into sharp focus starting with the look in Journey's jeweled magenta eyes, wide with horror and heartbreak as she witnessed him doing something he'd have given anything to make her un-see.
Journey haunted Redge every day. He'd joined the army to give his life purpose and discipline, and oddly enough to stop the loss of life when he could. He'd never been just a soldier. He moved up the ranks for the purpose to create peace and end fighting quickly when fighting was unavoidable. But violence was a major ingredient of his internal makeup, his youth was marked by a
short fuse, wild bloodlust, and a need to prove his superiority over his humble beginnings. She'd seen the heart of him, and she'd loved him anyway. She tried to teach him the things that really mattered, but regrettably, he wasn't capable of listening very well back then… In the absence of her, he lived his life for her. A rigid framework of order and reason defined his life and held what was left of the monster inside him in a cage.
Redge never understood what the king had seen in him, or why he was chosen to live in the castle. It was a wonderful turn in the events of his life. His friendship with Syrus had pulled him from the cold loneliness that defined every day since Journey left.
But now, as he moved forward, helpless to stop himself from committing a terrible betrayal of his friends, he saw Journey's eyes, and they condemned him again.
What have I done? What am I doing?
His pulse pushed so hard and fast through his veins. His new slave mark burned hotter, reminding him again he'd been reduced to nothing but a drone; Copernicus' property. His dear friend, Forest, lay at his feet, unconscious. She would come-to quickly; she was tough. He looked down at the magnificent weapon she'd been carrying. Surely, Copernicus knew nothing of this sword, or else his orders would have included bringing it back along with Forest.
Redge picked it up by the carved wooden hilt. He ran over to the edge of the invisible barrier that protected Forest and Syrus' home. He couldn't get through. Quickly, he placed the sword on the ground at the base of a tree and covered it with branches and leaves.
Forest moaned behind him. He ran back to her and bound her hands in front of her with a short length of rope, careful to not tie it too tight so it didn't hurt her, but not so loose she could get out of it. He took her End of the Bridge ring off her hand and slid it onto his own finger. Copernicus wanted it.
Cursing himself and his inability to do anything but what he was told, Redge picked her up. He had to keep his head. He might be a slave, and he was the one to kidnap Forest, but he'd do all he could to protect her until he could get her out again. He tried to keep his mind off Syrus, knowing the pain and horror he was inflicting on his best friend.
Taking one quick glance down at Forest in his arms, Redge pulled in a deep breath, fighting back against the force to obey his orders. The weight of her limp body stung his heart. She was powerful and had a sharp mind, but at the present moment, she seemed so small. He was delivering her to the monster as a prize. Perhaps the prize would be the one to destroy Copernicus. He'd put his faith in Forest.
Forest jolted, her voice ripping through the air in a terrible yell. He tightened his grip on her, wishing his arms would obey his own mind and allow him to turn her loose, but he couldn't. He'd been given an order; he was a slave. Compelled to move forward, he opened a portal and carried her into its opening.
****
Syrus gasped for air as something jerked him from his morning meditation. Forest. He stumbled to his feet, trying to breathe. Her heart was screaming. He moved to the window and stuck his head out, his lungs desperately reaching for the air. What was happening to Forest?! What was happening to him? Why couldn't he breathe?
He managed a gulp of air and choked on it. He had to save them! Them? His heart felt the racing of Forest's heart, but behind that, there was something, someone else's heart. A child… His child!
An invisible force pushed down on him from overhead. His vision hazed. He saw the attackers dimly from the window: a line of ogres, walking steadily toward the mountain, Devonte, the wizard in the center. A flowing membrane grew on the air, pulsing closer and closer.
Syrus reached out the window, extending his arms as far as they could go. Lightning sparked and snaked over his hands and forearms. Straining with all his might, he pushed it out from himself. Two bolts of red electricity shot, one from each hand, down at the line of attackers coming for them. The red lightning hit the strange wall, fizzling out in sparks against the energy being pushed against the mountain, but he'd ripped a small slit.
Devonte looked up. Syrus ducked the acid green smoke shot at him, and as he lay close to floor, he found he could breathe again.
"Ithiel!" he yelled, praying the master could hear him. "Get down, tell everyone to get down and fight back against the power!"
He crawled to the door. "Len!" he shouted for the ogre. "Len, build a portal around the mountain. Push back the force! Everyone, push back! Push back together!"
Guttural yelling filled his ears as the other masters did their best to fight the force descending on them. Syrus rolled to his back, looking up at the ceiling. The momentary relief being close to the floor brought to his lungs, began to ebb. The air grew thicker by the second. Maybe three more breaths, and then he wouldn't be able to breathe again. He opened his mouth, filling his lungs to their full capacity. As he exhaled, his life passed before his eyes. Not his whole life, but the memories that mattered most, down to the most recent passion he and Forest had shared, the moment he knew their child must have been conceived. Then the breath was gone.
Syrus inhaled again, and this time he saw flashes of the present. Forest being attacked, taken away; Regia crying out and dying in smoke and flames. Then the breath was gone. Syrus inhaled again, but this time he saw nothing. He heard the beating of Forest's heart and the racing pulse of their baby in her womb. Nothing had ever convicted him like that sound did in that moment. He held the air in his lungs. He didn't need to breathe. Breathing was overrated.
It was anger that gave him his unique power. There were a few unequivocal moments in his life when he knew his power, felt it grow because of anger: when he transformed from master to mage, when he learned of Forest's slavery, when he killed Lorcan…and when he killed Leith.
What he felt now was something new. Wrath brought him to transcendence. The mingled sound of the beating hearts of those he loved most filled him up. Those individuals who tried to take his loves from him…there would be no pity. No mercy. Strength exploded through him. Whatever titles or attributes he'd previously held melted away.
He was retribution. He was reckoning. He was vengeance.
He stood and walked out of his room. Thinking of Forest's new sword and how he had infused his lightning power inside the black glass of the mountain, he suddenly knew what to do. The stone under his feet awoke and came alive. He moved down deep into the heart of the mountain to the very largest slab of glass that jutted defiantly out of the shadowy rock around it. Syrus placed both his hands flat on the glass. The channels in his palms tore open, forming a connection to the element. He forced his rage into its depths, roaring out his last breath as he poured his power into the glass.
The glass worked as a perfect conductor. Red lightning moved through the entire Obsidian Mountain. It traveled on the veins and cracks to every chunk and shard of glass in the walls. The line of attackers outside stopped dead in their tracks as the black mountain lit up. Lightning ripped through the membrane on the air. In a terrible, blinding flash, they crumpled to the ground, dead. The charred remains of bodies, rock, trees, and scorched earth spanned a fifty foot radius.
All except one. The wizard stood amid the pool of lifeless bodies, tall and defiant. Seemingly immune to Syrus’ vengeance. Then, as Syrus exhaled, the wizard wilted in a heap. The convulsions of his body as he wheezed were the only signs he still lived.
The masters followed Syrus out of the mountain, most of them black and coughing. Syrus strode along the line of attackers, sword in hand, making sure they were all dead. He stopped at the crumpled and wheezing Devonte lying face down on the ground.
"Pick him up," Syrus ordered to the masters standing behind him.
Two of them rushed to heft the wizard to his feet. Braced between the two masters, Devonte blinked and squinted at Syrus. A rush of memories came to Syrus as he looked at the wizard who had attended to him years ago when he'd been attacked and lost his sight. So many hours he'd spent with Devonte, who worked, unsuccessfully, to restore his sight. His actions were a sharp stab in Syrus’
back. The wizard had always been like a tutor to him. His parents had embraced him and rewarded him for his service and loyalty to the crown, and to Regia. Betrayal and realization that who he thought Devonte was and who he really was, were two very different things.
"Syrus…please," he rasped.
Syrus curled his lip at him. "Traitor."
Devonte straightened up a bit, indignation flaring in his eyes at the insult, and spat on the ground. "You're the traitor. You should be sitting on the throne, yet here you are, selfishly pursuing your own interests. Instead of taking a queen from the appointed bloodlines, you rut with that Halfling… And now look at you…you look like some kind of… monster."
"That's right." Syrus' voice went deadly calm. "I am now."
"You've been pushing the boundaries of your ability." Devonte looked around at the dead ogres lying on the ground and then back at Syrus. "You did that, didn't you? You've become a killer. I'm ashamed of you."
"You're ashamed of me? You come here, leading an unprovoked attack. You've joined with Copernicus, who kills without conscience. Kills whole villages of women and children."
"If you kill me, you're just as bad as he is."
Syrus threw his head back and laughed, a terrible laugh that placed fear in those around him. "Pathetic fallacy." He nodded to the masters holding Devonte. "Turn him loose. We'll end this with combat."
They let go.
Devonte grabbed the one on his right, using him as shield, his hand at the young master's throat. "All of you get back, or I'll kill him!"
A spark snapped on Devonte's index finger. He backed up, towing the terrified master with him. Syrus walked slowly after them.
