MeGath opened his sore eyes tentatively, not noticing his now healed palms, he watched as the unexpected blast of energy affected the gateway he had created. Despite his pain, he smiled, congratulating himself as the sticky wall disappeared and the velvet darkness of the ether and the thin veil separating it from the void beyond came into view, never before had he or any living thing seen into the ether itself with physical eyes. The Ether, being a spiritual place, a place of peace and learning, the place where the roots of all magic were at their strongest but also the place where the barrier, that thin veil between good and evil could be broken. He watched in wonder as the veil holding back the void pushed and stretched as the evil behind its thin membrane struggled to break through, his own spell of opening had called the magic and he was ecstatic.
‘We have done it,’ he said quietly as he stared, thinking of the power that would soon be his to command, then he would finally rule the whole of Arotia not just Boetesh and from there, with the use of this and subsequent gateways he would open, he would rule worlds. As he continued to stare at the inky blackness before him, its dark glow gently dimmed and faded, the blood on the wall began to dry with small veins and cracks appearing as it released dull red flakes to fall gently to the bare wooden floor. MeGath watched in horror as the doorway to his future began to disintegrate before his impaired vision.
‘No…’ he whispered aloud, ‘No, this can’t be.’ Quickly he began chanting a spell of holding, his body swaying from his knees in time to his song. A noise behind him almost had him stumble in his recitation but he regained focus and continued to sing, his arms and hands gesticulating wildly as the spell fell ineffectually on the wall before him. Regardless of his efforts, the gateway began to fold in on itself and within seconds, the wall was as it had been before the attempt began. A pile of blood red dust and the sulphurous eggy smell the only evidence left of the failed gateway. Gath shivered as he felt Medim withdraw from his mind.
The room was now cold, colder than Gath had ever known it, his head pounded unmercifully and he was bone tired, the dried, dead body of the infant lay frozen on the collapsed alter behind him.
The alter stone itself was a large piece of marble with a well cut into one side, the well was designed to contain the blood released from the throat of the innocent child it held, it was now empty and dried blood coated its cold surface. On this particular occasion, two drugged and spelled street-rats, children with so little inherent magic that they lived on their wits and habitually hung around the castle looking for scraps to eat or trinkets to steal, had held the heavy stone. Now in place of the children lay the dead bodies of two old men, their lives given to balance the enormous amounts of magic he had needed for the opening spell into the ether, into the void, that secret space between worlds and time.
‘Why, this time, when I was so close?’ He asked the dead sightless eyes of the preternaturally old man nearest to him and as he stood, he kicked the cold stiff body in frustration and anger.
It had taken him months to study the street-rats of the city and then to acquire the two most likely not to be missed. He had had so many hopes for the spell this time, previously, he had used slaves but their blood was just not right, they held no magic in their veins despite being his to command. No, the street rats were at least Arotian, but he was not sure if he could procure such a source again. The Magmen, his mages of power that patrolled the city ensuring the safety of the civilian population and upholding the laws would soon become suspicious. One or two unwanted children disappearing off the streets were an acceptable loss but a regular stream would soon start to cause tongues to wag and not just amongst the common populace, no, he thought, I must find another source.
Gath stared at the bodies then moved his gaze to the wall, the wall where he had beheld the tantalizing glimpse of the ether and the void beyond. ‘Such high hopes...,’ he sighed, his teeth grinding in anger and frustration. Shaking his head, he walked to the window and pulled back the curtains.
The tempest had blown itself out just as the gateway had and the detritus left by the unprecedented ferocity of the storm was evident by the damage strewn across the city but MeGath saw nothing other than the stars shining brightly above him.
‘Why did it go wrong this time?’ he whispered to the darkness. ‘Why…?’ He closed his eyes and rested his pounding forehead against the glass. A shudder ran through him as the ice cold glass kissed his skin and his anger slowly drained away. Opening his eyes once more he watched as his warm breath clouded the glass distorting his view from the window and stirring a deep-set memory.
In his mind, through the window he saw a young couple walking through a winter garden. The woman was heavily pregnant and smiling into her partner’s eyes and both looked radiantly happy. As Gath watched, the man raised his hand and lovingly caressed his partner’s swollen belly; the woman lowered her head and covered his hand with her own, lifting her face once more toward the man her smile deepened. Gath felt himself tensing, though he could not identify the sudden cause of his anxiety. As the feeling passed, he could see himself as a young child looking out of a nursery window and frantically trying to gain the attention of the woman in the garden, whose only thoughts just then were of her husband and the new infant she was expecting. The view changed as his nurse pulled him away from the window leaving his parents to walk the garden unobserved and alone, leaving him, seething with jealously.
Gath shook his head to clear the unfamiliar memory and wiped at the glass with his sleeve, as the glass slowly cleared he stared at his reflection. A pale sallow face with a thick mop of lank dark hair, black heavy lidded eyes and thin lips, so very different from the face he usually saw in the mirror. As Gath, he had always prided himself on his beauty often using illegal blood magic to keep age at bay; the face in the glass was not his, it was his long time alter ego, Crown Prince Medim of Boetesh.
‘I am disappointed in you Gath,’ the image in the glass said. ‘Time is against us, eventually they will come. The balance is shifting, did you not feel it... something has... has changed, we need more power.’
‘I know,’ replied Gath adding, ‘it was almost a success this time, almost…’
‘Is almost good enough then?’ the reflection asked coldly. ‘Did my memory not tell you anything, we need pure blood, what good is our knowledge if we cannot access the power of the void,’ whispered the face in the glass.
‘I know,’ Gath repeated, answering the reflection,’ but what more can I do?’ He asked again through his pain and now with irritation clear in his voice.
‘Find the strong pure blood, give her a child, give us the blood we need, the power we need to open the portal and gain command of the void. Boetesh may at last be ours but I want…We, we want Arotia itself to kneel before us!’ Medim hissed angrily, adding finally. ‘I once had a sister… find her.’
‘Your sister is dead,’ Gath said quietly, answering the voice in his mind, he sighed in pain and frustration as his head pounded, they had had this discussion before and he himself had interrogated King Ramis and knew it to be true, he was sure he would have known if the king had lied. Medim began to laugh once more.
‘She’s not dead, find her... find her...’ Gath heard repeated it repeatedly, he rubbed his forehead trying to close his mind to Medim’s incessant chant and knowing the bouts of madness were becoming more and more frequent. The headaches were also getting worse now and with each failed attempt at the gateway, his personalities split and Medim became stronger. The image in the glass continued to laugh maniacally as the room slowly returned to a normal temperature and the reflection changed, the voice in his head dimmed as the image merged and fused with that of Gath’s own until finally, MeGath saw only himself reflected in the night dark glass, with pain etched firmly across his features. With a sigh, MeGath turned away from the window and walked toward the door.
‘Toby,’ he called to the man waiting in the antechamber, ‘the bodies Toby, get rid of them, deal with them as you di
d the others.’ Slowly he turned and made his way up to his rooms in the top of the tower, the tower given to Medim a long time ago by his father, Ramis. ‘Oh and Toby, find out what happened to the Princess Celendra for me, I don’t care how long it takes... dead or alive, find her.’
Toby watched his master leave and limped slowly into the cold room, he smiled when he saw the bodies on the floor, the pain from his stiff leg suddenly forgotten. King MeGath would be tired after an experiment of this magnitude and would require specialist help to get his strength back and when MeGath needed ‘the blood’, it meant there was usually a little something left for Toby himself to play with.
‘This is such a wonderful place…’ Toby whispered aloud as he piled the bodies into a more manageable fashion and wrapped both the wizened old men in the rug from the floor. Drained of life energy and dried out as they were, the bodies weighed next to nothing, more awkward than heavy he lifted the rug on to his shoulders and holding it tightly one arm, he re-opened the door to the chamber, limped the length of the anteroom and carried on down the steps toward the basement of the tower. Once there he opened the shutter to the roaring furnace and deftly threw the bodies inside, he heard a soft whump as the rug landed on the fire and the acrid smell of burning wool hit his nostrils along with a shower of hot ash as he closed the shutter once more. Returning to the tower room, he cleaned the blood from the marble altar and replaced it on the shelf designed to hold it before wrapping the dead infant in an old piece of tapestry. He walked across to the drapes left askew by his king, reached up to open them fully and as he did so, the absolute stillness of the night outside struck him and a strong almost tangible silence filled the night after the noise created by the storm. Across the bay, he watched as a small sailing ship finally gave up her struggle and sank beneath the waves. Under the bright moonlight, no evidence of the ship remained except a small grating that drifted purposefully against the tide toward the harbour, intrigued, Toby watched until the grating beached itself in a small inlet far below. A last glance around the chamber assured him all was ready for the next time MeGath wanted to use the room so picking up the tapestry bundle he returned to the furnace and threw the drained infant into the roaring flames. His official job finished, he quickly followed his instincts and ran as fast as he could down the narrow stairwell and out of the castle, stepping awkwardly over the debris the storm had left behind. Down through the broken trees and fallen roof tiles and past the weather beaten stables with the still shivering horses, he could hear the stable hands as they sang soft spells of calm and tranquillity, trying to pacify the scared beasts. Down he went until he was almost directly below the high tower MeGath used for his experiments. There on the small almost enclosed beach he found the grating that the doomed ship’s officers and mages had given their lives to protect. A young girl, unconscious and tied tightly to the wooden slats lay as if dead. Quickly looking around to ensure he was alone, he smiled, his scarred face pulling into a leer as the scars distorted.
“Ello me love, I’m thinking the king’ll wanna see you!’ He said, as he cut the magically held knots, lifted the cold wet girl onto his shoulders and slowly retraced his steps back to the castle and toward MeGath.
Chapter 2
The Lady Prays
MeGath’s energy bolt had sped through the vast inky black and empty space of the ether echoing strangely, carrying with it its own resonance, the sacrificed children’s pain and suffering sitting beside those memories they themselves had held dear, those of the future, of the promise of kindness and of love. Further and further the energy sped, ever nearer the barrier of the void, gathering momentum all the time as the children’s souls cried out in torment, able to see the ‘Journey Gates’ but unable to enter and begin their own.
Dangerously close to the roots of the magic and the barrier itself, stood an ethereal figure in flowing white and blue robes, her long blonde hair fell gracefully around her gossamer form like a silk shawl, at her neck, a crystal reflected the fire from the magic’s shimmering roots that threatened to engulf her. As she stared at the nacreous tendrils of glowing light that made up the roots of magic, they seemed to shiver and darken somehow, the iridescent quality not quite as it had been but before she could ponder the ramifications of the darkening stain, she felt the power of MeGath’s energy as it entered the ether. She turned her light gossamer frame toward the bolt of energy as it flew toward the roots and moving slightly, she waited in its path. Opening her arms, she welcomed it into her soul, intercepting it before it could rip asunder the thin barrier of the void and release the evil it held back. As it pierced her delicate and insubstantial form she screamed, her intense blue eyes closing with the pain. Quickly, she plucked and held the tiny glowing souls of the children from the vast quantities of energy that surrounded her completely before repelling the bolt with all her might and returning it from whence it came.
‘Not this time father,’ she whispered, ‘not this time,’ she added again and smiled as she released the souls into the ether and watched as two of the tiny glowing orbs sped toward the golden gates which had opened ready to accept them, a huge golden bull like creature stood waiting at the entrance.
‘Why have you remained, it is safe for you now...’ the lady spoke kindly as she opened her palm allowing the remaining orb to rest there, it pulsed and shone like a heartbeat made of light, ‘no,’ the lady smiled sadly at the beautiful ball of light. ‘My time has not come, not just yet,’ she said and turned looking wistfully after the bright spark of the energy bolt flying swiftly back toward Arotia. ‘I have a little more I must do,’ she added as she smiled again and released the glowing ball of light at her palm. Gently it lifted and began to move toward the Gates and the golden bull, she sighed wearily as it joined the others flying through the ether and she returned he gaze toward the repelled energy bolt.
The bolt flew through the vast inky blackness of space back toward MeGath and the Lady watched its path, it came close to a small dead planet and it ploughed on through scattering the detritus everywhere. The new meteors, each having picked up a little energy from the bolt became shooting stars, leaving a glittering tail in their wakes as they began separate journeys into the depths of the ether, there is such beauty amongst this ugliness, the Lady thought as she watched the shooting stars begin their short journey across the heavens. Ahead in the darkness, the Lady could see the reason she would not accept the pull of the Journey Gates, a pale slim tube, barely there it was so frail, a spiralling worm of weak energy, pulsing with a faint heartbeat and the beat pulsing in time with that of her only child. She did not know why or how the tube was still viable only that it was and she knew that within its sealed and damaged framework it contained the almost lifeless form of her son, Gideon and his companions.
Before the open Journey Gates and standing beside the huge golden bull that guarded them, she had judged and blamed herself for not being the mother he had needed, she had died, leaving him to mercy before even giving him life. She had sworn on the very gates before her that she would not begin her journey until he was safe, his soul safe, and safe from his natural father who would destroy him if he could, just as he had destroyed her mother and tried to destroy her.
If the Lady had been able to breathe, she would have held her breath now, as the energy bolt collided with the insubstantial tubeworm. It surrounded its delicate framework with its power and light forcing life back into almost dead lines and the gossamer tendrils of magic that held it together. Like the umbilical cord that attached a new babe to its mother, it began to pulse strongly once more, its glowing bubble shaped end that surrounded the sleeping figures held in abeyance inside, glowed with energy. The returning bolt swept on leaving a glowing trail, a beacon for the damaged wormlike tube to follow slowly, finally completing the pathway Thaddrick had hurriedly set up ten long years ago. The Lady looked once more at the figure of her son sleeping peacefully inside and wiped away an invisible tear, the force needed to return the energy bolt had been gre
at and she did not know if she had the strength to make it to the Journey Gates alone. Still though, she stayed, she prayed to the Gods to give her the time needed to aid her son in his quest to save two worlds and rid the cosmos of the evil that was MeGath. MeGath will judge himself and find himself wanting, she thought as the now glowing tubeworm slowly followed the trail of energy, finding its way through the darkening stain of evil that was surrounding the world like a cloud in front of the sun.
Chapter 3
Awakening
Far away, amid one of Arotia’s vast mountain ranges and deep inside a large extinct volcano, the change in the magic’s roots sparked a small fire, as it flashed into life; tiny yellow and orange flames cast long dancing shadows around the walls of a hall that had seen no light or life for centuries. The ice walls slowly turned from their natural blue and green in the reflection of the flames. Drip-drip, drip-drip... the age-old ice slowly began to thaw, the leisurely and steady drip of melting water strangely echoed the beating of an equally old heart as it too began to stir from its enforced slumber within the dead volcanic tomb.
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The Tessellation Saga. Book Two. 'The One' Page 37
