The Soldiers of Halla

by D. J. MacHale

  “Look,” Spader called out.

  Someone had entered the far side of the ward. It was a woman. She stood out mostly because she wasn’t dark skinned like a Batu. She wore a light green smock and pants that made her look like a doctor from Second Earth. She knelt next to a bed that held an elderly man, using a damp cloth to gently wipe his forehead. Though she was caring for the sick and wearing clothes that made her look like a doctor, I knew she wasn’t. The smock wasn’t a doctor’s smock. It was the uniform worn by those who were charged with caring for Mr. Pop, the repository that once contained the history of Quillan. The woman had long gray hair, tied back to keep it out of her eyes as she worked.

  “Is it her?” Spader asked.

  I called out, “Elli?”

  Elli Winter looked up with surprise. At first she smiled, but her smile turned dark. She left the old man and came to us.

  “I’m afraid it is too late. The exiles that came to Zadaa are dead.”

  JOURNAL #37

  19

  Help me,” an emaciated man gasped from the cot nearest us, holding up his hand weakly to Elli.

  “Water,” another begged in a raspy whisper. They were looking at Elli as if she were an angel sent to protect and care for them. Did they sense that she was a Traveler? I thought back to the way the gars looked at me as we were riding in that horse-drawn wagon on Eelong. They sensed there was something unusual about me. That’s what it felt like here. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Elli was a gentle, older woman with caring eyes, who showed them the kind of compassion that was in short supply around this hellhole.

  “I’ll be back,” she said to both of them soothingly. “I promise.”

  She took both their hands and gently placed them back onto their chests. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the looks in their eyes. They were like wounded puppy dogs, desperate for any show of kindness. It broke my heart. It was hard enough to see anybody in such bad shape, but knowing the Batu were once proud, powerful people made it that much worse.

  “Come,” Elli said to us as she made her way through the tangle of sick Batu. As she passed the cots, hand after hand went up to her, begging for something. Anything. Elli touched each of them to give whatever solace that might provide. It seemed to help. A little. They appeared more at peace. Elli really was an angel.

  She led us out of the horrific infirmary to a small room that was cluttered with trash. There were a few broken chairs, and a table that had empty bottles and cups strewn haphazardly.

  “This is where I go to collect my thoughts. Do you like it?” Elli asked with more than a touch of sarcasm. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

  She gestured to the chairs. I didn’t think it was possible to get comfortable in this nightmare ward, but I sat. Spader sat next to me. Elli leaned back on the dirty table. She looked tired and sad. No big surprise. I’m guessing she was near sixty years old, but at that moment she looked closer to a hundred. Her eyes were red. She was on the verge of tears. Having so many sick and dying people begging you for help will do that, I guess.

  “I don’t understand, Elli,” I said. “How long have you been here?”

  “That’s hard to say,” she answered thoughtfully, wiping her tired eyes. “There are no calendars or clocks. Time just goes by. But several nights have passed. I don’t recall how many. Ten? Twenty? I’ve lost count.”

  That was odd. It’s hard to measure time when you’re bouncing between territories, but my own internal clock felt as if the Travelers had only left Solara a day or so before.

  “The nights are the worst,” Elli continued. “Outside these walls it grows quiet, but in here the sounds of agony never end.”

  I couldn’t imagine dealing with such sadness and despair.

  “Why didn’t you go to your own territory?” Spader asked.

  “I did,” Elli answered. “I spent nearly a month on Quillan.”

  Spader and I exchanged looks. We were both thinking the same thing. Time proved to be irrelevant. Again. It seemed as if Elli had been sent back to a time on Quillan that was further in the past than we had been living.

  Elli continued, “There are no exiles on Quillan. At least not anymore. As soon as I arrived, I made my way through the underground, searching for information, just as Press asked. It wasn’t easy. Blok controls every aspect of life on Quillan now. Throughout the territory. Most of the remaining revivors have been hunted down and…” She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to.

  “What about Ravinia?” I asked.

  “It is the new government,” she said sadly. “Of course, they allow Blok whatever freedoms they wish for. The games are a thing of the past, by the way.”

  “Well, that’s good, right?” I said hopefully.

  “No” was her quick response. “It’s because there are no people left to wager on them.”

  Oh. Not good.

  She continued, “I did uncover one bit of information. I encountered a revivor who had escaped from a Ravinian prison. He was one of the few who survived. They’d beaten him unmercifully. Apparently the Ravinians are also looking for the exiles.”

  “Did he know about any exiles?” I asked anxiously.

  “He did, and he was nearly killed keeping the secret. He stayed alive long enough to escape and share it with me.”

  Elli took a deep breath. Emotionally she was in rough shape. It seemed like she’d been through a lot since leaving Solara.

  “Were there exiles on Quillan?” Spader asked gently, prodding her to continue.

  “A few. They arrived in the city of Rune, looking for asylum. They found their way to the underground and actually connected with a few of the remaining revivors. But the entire time they spent on Quillan, they were on the run from Ravinian soldiers. They finally managed to escape back into the flume, and came here to Zadaa before they collapsed. That’s what the revivor told me…just before he died.”

  Elli looked away from us. She was holding back tears. At least I understood why she landed back on Quillan when she did. She needed to get that information. If she had returned at a later time, that revivor would have died before meeting her. The power of Solara was an amazing thing. Time and again it put the Travelers where they needed to be, when they needed to be there. That was the positive power of Solara.

  The dying power of Solara.

  “So you came here looking for them?” I asked.

  Elli nodded. “Six exiles left Quillan. They made the mistake of entering Xhaxhu looking for sanctuary and stepped into the lion’s den. The Rokador took them in, offering them refuge. But they immediately turned them over to the Ravinians. When the exiles realized their mistake, they tried to escape, and were killed before they reached the outer wall of the city.”

  Elli couldn’t hold back her emotions any longer. She closed her eyes and sobbed. I walked over to her and put an arm around her. It was all I could offer and it wasn’t much.

  “It is all true,” came a voice from the door.

  Spader and I looked to see Loor and Saangi standing in the doorway.

  Loor said, “We have just heard the same story from a Batu who labored in Xhaxhu. There are no exiles on Zadaa, Pendragon.”

  Elli buried her head in my shoulder. I looked at Spader, Loor, and Saangi. They seemed shell-shocked. We had reached another dead end, and Elli was falling apart.

  “Let me talk to her alone,” I said to them.

  Spader nodded and walked to the door. “We’ll be outside, mate,” he said.

  The three left, closing the rotted wooden door behind them.

  “I am sorry, Pendragon,” Elli said through clutched breaths.

  “For what?”

  “This is all more than I can bear. I can no longer continue as a Traveler.”

  I didn’t respond. It was clear that she had a lot of pent-up emotion that had to get out.

  “It pained me to see what Quillan had become,” she continued. “It was far worse than when you were there. I couldn’t stay. It was
a selfish thing to do. I know. I shouldn’t have come here. I should have gone back to Solara to let Press know what I discovered.”

  “Why didn’t you?” I asked.

  Elli wiped her eyes and leaned away from me, trying to get herself back in control. “To try and do something positive. For once.”

  “Everything you’ve done has been positive,” I argued.

  “It hasn’t. You know that as well as I do, Pendragon. My life has been defined by a series of failures. My husband and I couldn’t provide a better life for our daughter, so it drove him to gamble on the Quillan games, and he lost. Everything. He was sent to the tarz, where he died. But instead of being strong for Nevva, I abandoned her. I abandoned my only daughter! I should have stayed with her. Perhaps she wouldn’t have turned to Saint Dane if I had been looking out for her.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said. “Nevva is a strong person.”

  “She is a traitor!” Elli snapped. “And I am responsible.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “And what did I do with my life instead? I dedicated myself to protecting the archives that were the history of Quillan. Mr. Pop. Another failure. It was destroyed, along with the future of our home. It was all for nothing. My life has been filled with one futile act after another.”

  “But then you volunteered to be the Traveler from Quillan to take Nevva’s place,” I offered.

  “Yes, and a lot of good I did. Quillan is in ruins, save for the Conclave of Ravinia and Blok. I did nothing to effect any positive change there. When Press gave us the task of finding and protecting the exiles, I thought it was my last hope of actually doing something worthwhile. That’s why I followed them here to Zadaa, only to discover that they had been murdered by the Ravinians.”

  “How did you end up out here at Mooraj?” I asked.

  “When I first arrived, I wandered through Xhaxhu and saw how the Batu were being treated. It was appalling. They were slaves and I knew why. The Ravinian flags told me all I needed to know. I came upon a young woman lying in the street. She had been whipped by her Rokador master for not delivering fresh fruit to his door in a timely manner. He beat her for that, and left her to die. I helped her. I found other Batu, and together we smuggled her out of the city. The only place to go for sanctuary was here. This isn’t much better than Xhaxhu, but at least here she wouldn’t be beaten. The Batu realized that I wasn’t a Rokador and let me stay. It was on the journey that they told me of the fate of the exiles. I’d only been here a short while before learning my quest was futile.”

  She took a deep breath and continued, “When I saw the state of this camp, I chose to stay and help. They are desperate, Pendragon. Their future is beyond grim. They have no hope. There is nothing more I can do for Solara except to offer kindness to the Batu here at Mooraj. It may not be much, but it is more than they have received in a good long while, and more than I have done as a Traveler, or a mother. I am done, Pendragon. However this final battle plays out with Saint Dane, I will learn of it here on Zadaa.”

  Everything she said was true. More or less. Still, she was being pretty tough on herself and taking a lot of blame she didn’t deserve. I wasn’t sure I could make her realize that. She was too upset. Still, I had to try. Whether she wanted to be one or not, she was a Traveler. We needed her.

  “Caring for the sick Batu is noble,” I said to her tentatively. “But you’re wrong about there being no hope. Anything you do here to make them comfortable is only a bandage. If you really want to help the Batu, then you have to stay with the Travelers and help us defeat Saint Dane.”

  “I can’t,” she said sharply. “You don’t need me anyway. I’m an old woman. I can’t fight. I can’t inspire anyone. I can barely take care of myself. I don’t say that to make you feel sorry for me, Pendragon. It’s the truth.”

  “What about Nevva?” I asked.

  “What about her?” she said quickly, as if I had slapped her.

  I didn’t know where I was going with this, but I had to trust my gut. “If you believe she turned to Saint Dane because you abandoned her, maybe you should unabandon her.”

  Elli looked at me as if I were nuts. Maybe I was. I was grasping. Up until then Elli hadn’t played much of a role in the war against Saint Dane. Her daughter, Nevva, was to be the Traveler from Quillan, but when she joined Saint Dane, Quillan no longer had a Traveler. So Elli stepped in and took her daughter’s place. But since the turning point for Quillan had already passed, there was nothing for her to do. As I thought back on those events, something hit me. I hadn’t thought much about it until then, because it really didn’t matter. But now that we were revisiting Elli’s past, things didn’t quite add up.

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” I said. “Every Traveler from my generation was mentored by other Travelers who prepared them for the battle with Saint Dane. But your story is different. You had a whole life with your husband before you found out about being a Traveler.”

  “Why is that hard to understand?” Elli asked. “We all had lives before discovering we were Travelers.”

  “Not the Travelers from the previous generation,” I shot back. “You told me on Quillan that Uncle Press told you you were a Traveler, but that was after Nevva was already around. How could that be? If your mission was to prepare Nevva, why didn’t you know you were a Traveler before she showed up?”

  Elli looked to the floor. I wasn’t sure if she didn’t know the answer, or was holding something back.

  “I was adopted when I was a baby and never knew my natural parents,” she explained. “I knew nothing of my future as a Traveler until after my husband died, and I’d already had my daughter.”

  “That’s exactly what I don’t get,” I said quickly. “Wait. You had a child? On Quillan you told me you adopted Nevva. You did adopt her, didn’t you?”

  Elli looked pained. “No,” she admitted. “I don’t know why I told you that. Maybe it was to distance myself from the person she had become. I was so ashamed. But Nevva was not adopted. I gave birth to her.”

  Whoa. What the heck did that mean? Nevva was a Traveler, but she was also the biological daughter of another Traveler. As far as I knew, none of the other Travelers had biological parents. Including me.

  “Was your husband a Traveler?” I asked.

  “No,” Elli said. “He was such a good man. I hope his spirit never discovers the truth about what Nevva has done.”

  I paced. Thinking. I didn’t know what this meant. Maybe nothing. Uncle Press didn’t think so, or he would have told us about it. Maybe it didn’t matter. Still, there was a real, physical bond between Elli and her daughter that none of the other Travelers shared. Nevva was the physical offspring of a Traveler. She was the only Traveler who was actually born on her territory. The old-fashioned way. From what Uncle Press told us, the rest of us just sort of…showed up. All of us. From both generations.

  Except for Nevva.

  “You know what I think?” I finally said, still forming the thoughts. “I think you were always meant to be the Traveler from Quillan. But you fell in love and had a child before you found out your true destiny.”

  “Maybe,” Elli said. “I suppose. Does it matter?”

  “Well, for one it means that you didn’t just fill in for Nevva. It was supposed to be your job. Things just got sidetracked because of the death of your husband. What’s happening now might be the way things were meant to be for you.”

  “Knowing that doesn’t change anything,” she argued. “I still am not up to the task.”

  My thoughts were firing fast. Maybe I was spinning my wheels, but it was the first idea I’d had in a long time that felt as if it might have promise.

  “You never got the chance to help Quillan,” I said. “What if that wasn’t what you were destined to do?”

  “But you just said you thought I was always supposed to be the Traveler from Quillan.”

  “Yeah, but what if your true mission hasn’t happened yet? What i
f you are exactly in the place you’re supposed to be, when you’re supposed to be here?”

  Elli didn’t like the sound of that. She turned away and busied herself with tidying up the messy room. “I can’t imagine what that mission might be.”

  “I can.”

  She looked at me with a mixture of fear and curiosity. I paced again. Remembering. Putting myself back into the past. Re-creating moments from memory.

  “It’s about Nevva,” I said, thinking out loud. “No question, she’s a traitor. She bought into Saint Dane’s vision of Halla and helped him at every turn.”

  “If you are trying to make me feel better, young man, you are doing a horrible job.”

  “There’s something more,” I said. “It happened more than once. In spite of all that Nevva has done, I’ve always had the feeling that somewhere deep inside, she has regrets.”

  I had Elli’s attention.

  “She believes in Saint Dane’s philosophy, no question. But there have been moments, fleeting moments, where I felt a trace of humanity trying to peek through. It was like she believed in the vision, but not the methods.”

  I scoured my memory for those little moments that made me think there might be some truth to what I was saying.

  “When she forced my friend Mark Dimond to give up his Traveler ring, Mark told me that she seemed upset. She got what she wanted, yet she was disappointed, as if she wanted Mark to hang on to the ring. And on Ibara, she truly seemed upset that I wanted to quit. It was like, like, she wanted me to be stronger and stand up to Saint Dane. Is that possible? Was she looking for another way?”

  Elli shook her head. I was confusing her. Heck, I was confusing myself.