Because until at least one of the other talismans was destroyed, the Nake was the most important thing in any universe. And so, he thought as he cast the spell that planted the beginnings of a portal in mid-air, was Kaia.
* * *
Kaia awoke to a strange sensation, almost like static electricity. Wave after wave poured through her as she opened her eyes and struggled to sit upright. She’d kicked her quilt and sheet off...again...but everything in the room seemed all right except for one thing. Gingerly she picked up the rose quartz dangling from the end of her necklace and held it in her hand. It wasn’t just pulsating, like the other times. Now it was glowing a steady light, so bright it lit her room enough to see every single corner, every object, and even partway into the hall.
The static feeling began to fade, and so did the rose quartz’s glow. She was mesmerized by it until at last it faded to the tiniest pinpoint of light and then went out altogether. “What’s going on?” she whispered, though she knew there would be no answers. Half-dazed in the stupor of the sleeping pill, she leaned back, eyes closing automatically, and was asleep again before her head hit the pillow.
* * *
“Well, good evening, young lady, what can I do for you?”
Kaia smiled at the sixty-something portly and balding gentleman behind the counter. “Hi, there,” she said, taking a moment to look at the various sparkling earrings and engagement rings and necklaces and wedding rings in the display case separating them. “I was wondering about this,” she said, lifting the jagged crystal laying against her chest.
“Oh, yes, I see, what have you got there?” he asked, leaning forward with interest.
“Well, I think it’s a rose quartz, that seems to be what it looks like the most,” she replied. “But I’m honestly not sure.”
“Is it an heirloom, then?” he asked, and she could see by the twitching of his fingers that he wanted nothing more than to touch it.
Kaia hesitated. “Yes,” she said, though she really didn’t know if that’s what it was or not. “Handed down for generations, and, well, the thing isn’t whether it’s a rose quartz or not.”
“Oh?” he asked, eyebrows rising.
“Um, yes, because, you see...sometimes it, uh...well, just recently it’s started to...well...sometimes it glows.”
He blinked at her as he removed his glasses. “Glows, did you say?”
She nodded, biting her lower lip. This jeweller was going to think she was a nutcase. “I just wanted to know if you could take a look at it and tell me why.”
“Well, I’ve never seen a gem of any kind that glows,” he said. “At least, not without some sort of a light source being placed within it somehow.” His fingers twitched again as he held his hand out. “May I?”
She moved so that her pelvis was right up against the counter, and leaned forward, holding it out far enough that he could take it.
“This would probably be easier if you took it off,” he suggested, and the look on his face told her he was wondering why she hadn’t already done it.
“No,” she said a little too quickly, then bit her lip again. “I mean, I’m sorry, but I have never taken it off.”
“Well, I’ll do what I can.”
The jeweller raised the counter to his right, walked through, and closed it behind him. He approached and held out his hand. She leaned close to him, placed the quartz in his palm and waited as he pulled out an eye loupe with a small LED light already turned on.
“Let me see here,” he murmured, placing the gem directly beneath the glass of the loupe. “Hm,” he said, and turned it over. He made some other odd noises in his throat as Kaia uncomfortably shifted from foot to foot as though he were scrutinizing her.
“You know, I’m not seeing this is anything but genuine quartz,” he said after two long minutes. “I’m also not seeing how there could be any sort of light source inside it. I mean, it’s no bigger around than a quarter, really, and it’s elongated and certainly unpolished. I would guess you were right about what it is, but I don’t know what’d make it glow.”
Disappointed in his response, Kaia backed away as he let the gem fall from his hand. “Well, thank you for checking it out,” she said, hiking her purse up higher on her shoulder.
“If you left it with me for a week I could give you all the answers you’re looking for,” he offered. “I’m one hundred percent bonded and will give you a receipt.”
“No,” she replied, shaking her head and forcing a smile. “I’m sorry, I just...I can’t.” She turned and headed for the door. As she pushed it open, she threw a “Thank you,” over her shoulder before stepping out into the bright last day of June.
Now what? she wondered, but was cut off by the drumbeat ring of her cell phone. She jumped in fright, then squeezed her eyes shut and fumbled for the offending electronic device in the outer pocket of her purse. She’d recognize that number anywhere, she knew, when she looked at the incoming call screen. After all, it had once been for her father’s office.
“Dean Michelson,” she answered cheerily, moving away from the jeweller’s store once she realized the man was peering at her through the front window. “How are you today?”
“Fine,” Michelson replied. “I’m just giving you a courtesy call, Miss Lehman.”
“A...courtesy call?” she repeated, stopping dead in her tracks in the middle of the sidewalk. “I’m not sure I understand, sir.”
“While you were indeed highly qualified for the Associate position here at the University of Iowa’s Department of Ancient Studies, the professorship has gone to someone with a bit more experience actually being a professor. The U of I thanks you for your interest and wishes you all the best in your future endeavors.”
“All the...I didn’t...what?” She pulled the phone away from her ear and saw that the dean...the sonofabitch bastard dean...had already ended the call. “You rat--” A woman walking by gave her a sharp look and Kaia clamped her mouth shut.
She could almost feel the steam pouring out of her ears. She hadn’t gotten the job that she knew she was the most qualified for. Now what in blazes was she going to do?
Chapter Six
Everything seemed to be on fire, but she didn’t feel any heat. It was just color, the world was red, tinged with red, everything looked warm and yet the air was cool. She couldn’t make heads or tails of it as she clung to the warm, strong body that held her. She felt them bouncing along, jarring her bones, teeth clacking together. She felt fear and love and more fear and then heard words she couldn’t understand. There was a heart-stopping screech, and then fear gripped her heart.
Crying out, Kaia sat bolt upright. Beads of sweat rolled down from her hairline, her mouth gulping in air as though she hadn’t been breathing at all for the last few hours. It took more than ten minutes for her to stop shaking, and then another ten to realize it was a familiar nightmare. While she hadn’t had one in nearly a decade, the remnants of this one were clear enough that she recognized it for what it was. Her mind involuntarily took her back to when she was ten years old.
“Kaia, honey, wake up!”
She screamed and flung herself into her mother’s arms, wrapping her own tightly around her mom’s neck.
“Baby, shhhh, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Mom had soothed.
An hour later, her parents had left her in her bed, thinking she was asleep. But their ensuing conversation had been audible in the still of the night.
“I still think we should take her to a psychiatrist.”
“Charlie, no, we can’t do that to her.”
“But she’s had these nightmares since we adopted her, Jan,” her father’s voice had been soft, but worried. “Since nobody knows anything about her past, maybe some hypnosis will help.”
“I don’t believe in that hocus-pocus,” had been her mother’s firm reply. “She’ll grow out of it, you’ll see. Now let’s try to get some sleep.”
Kaia blinked and shook her head. She had grown out of it. At least,
until tonight. Why were the dreams coming back now? She sighed and pushed back the covers. A glance at the digital alarm clock on her night stand told her it was four in the morning. She knew she wouldn’t be getting any more sleep no matter how groggy the sleep meds were still making her.
“Dammit.”
Soon she was on her feet and into the bathroom. The few moments that she looked at herself in the mirror told her all she needed to know. Maybe it was just the stress of not getting the job she knew should’ve been hers. Or maybe it was the really screwed up movie Lou had made her sit through. Or quite possibly it could’ve been that she’d thought someone was being murdered in her back yard and freaked herself out sufficiently as to have to take sleeping pills every night thereafter.
There was no denying she looked like shit, no matter what the cause. And without the Associate Professorship, she needed to get a job. Her parents had left her a tidy savings, but the house expenses alone would eat through that by Christmas. Barking a laugh at her reflection, she knew she couldn’t go job hunting looking like this. Come to think of it, where the hell could she even get a job around here? She wasn’t really qualified for much other than being a college professor, and for the first time she started questioning absolutely everything that she’d believed about herself for so long. Questioning the decisions she’d made about her life, which had seemed perfectly normal and guaranteed to succeed back when her parents had still been around.
But they were gone. And now, she thought as she turned away from the mirror to take care of more basic needs, she didn’t even know whether she was going to be around. If she continued to go after a teaching position, she’d have to leave Iowa City and maybe even the state of Iowa itself. She could only go to colleges with Antiquities programs, after all. Kaia had never really thought about leaving her home, even though more recently it was more like a tomb without anyone there but her. Still...leave Iowa City? Leave Iowa altogether? Maybe even the country, just to get a job?
She flushed the toilet and this time refused to look in the mirror as she passed it by. She had some major thinking to do, and 4:30 in the morning was just as good a time as any to do it. Provided she made coffee first.
* * *
Two hundred and thirty-nine Shinzarns. That was all he had left. The last census during Kana’s reign as High Wizard had counted over a million, but that had been three hundred and fourteen years ago just after High Wizard Aloa had transferred the Light to Kana. The last time before that, that a count had been done, was at the celebration for Aloa himself, and that had been six hundred and seven years prior, when Shinzarns numbered almost ten million.
Theirs had never been an overpopulated planet; merely a comfortably populated one. But to be down so very many in a relatively short time like that? Bijan sank onto an outcropping of silver-grey stone, shoulders slumped in defeat. He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, disbelief etched into his face. The Vloveks had committed genocide in a most thorough way, he realized, and the small groups of scouts he’d sent on reconnaissance had brought back reports that were dismal at best.
Every Vlovek stronghold boasted tens of thousands of demons and sycophants. The Kana/Mulmak being moved around enough so none of the teams had been able to verify whether he was ensconced at any of the five locations. Five locations, Bijan mused. Five locations for five talismans and yet they only had four. The fifth was in the Earth dimension, around the neck of the daughter of a man who’d voluntarily allowed himself to be possessed by the leader of the Vloveks. A man Bijan had loved so fiercely that he’d been prepared to sacrifice himself so that Kana could live.
Yet Kana had denied him the privilege he had earned to do so as the High Wizard Novitiate, and had instead graduated him to High Wizard knowing Bijan didn’t have nearly enough training for the role. He’d lost nearly the entire planet, staying alive himself only because he did have just enough additional training to be able to use magic better than those of the Zar beneath him. The Shin were nearly extinct, having been enslaved by demon possessions. Kana had once told him the sort of symbiosis that was the act of a Vlovek joining with a Shinzarn was irreversible. Those Shin who’d been made sycophants would actually die if the demons left their bodies.
The future looked grim at best and with only a dozen Zar left in his own group, Bijan was running out of options. Every time the notification spell he’d placed on Kaia niggled at the back of his brain, Bijan was able to focus directly on her, get through a portal and keep the sycophants from killing her and taking the Nake. She’d become paranoid of late with so much happening around her. Barrels flying up and over roads with no notice and no one she could see responsible. Cars smashing into seemingly invisible walls right in front of her. People being knocked down not too far away, and once the front window of a store being smashed out as a sycophant he’d hit with a bolt of Black Death had slammed back into it before disintegrating.
All he knew was that he couldn’t go on this way. Kana he had already given up as lost forever, and buried his feelings for the greatest man he had ever known deep inside himself to be left untouched. Shinzarns were almost gone, sycophants were attacking Kaia every time they could get a portal opened up and Kaia herself? Well, Bijan wasn’t sure, because of course he didn’t actually spend that much time around her without the threat of attack.
But her eyes had seemed haunted last time he went, and this time he’d seen her up close indeed. A sycophant had physically gotten way too near her. Kaia, perhaps realizing she was about to be attacked by the thin, grey man in the trenchcoat and bowlers hat, had turned and swung her purse at him, only to be stopped in silent, open-mouthed shock as the ‘man’ disappeared right in front of her. Courtesy of her invisible protector.
Invisible. Bijan shook his head, this time running both hands through his hair, grown much longer now. He was tired of having to do this invisibly. He was tired of not knowing enough about whatever spell it was Kana had put on Kaia and the Nake before putting her through the portal. He needed to be able to protect her, but more importantly he needed to know whether the Nake could be used to destroy the other talismans.
Because now, that really was the only choice he had left. There was no way his small band of Zar would be able to steal even one of the talismans from the Vloveks, let alone then break into all the other strongholds to destroy the rest of them. His only real choice was to get the Nake back to Shinzar, and pull together all remaining Shinzarns to descend upon a single stronghold. They would use the Nake to put an end to one other talisman, and that would be that. The Vloveks would never be able to control Shinzar and, Bijan prayed, would therefore leave his planet, and dimension, for good.
There was one hitch, however, and this Bijan dreaded more than anything: Kaia. She was the unknown factor in the entire plan. What Bijan had to do was gain her trust somehow, to actually show himself to her as a fellow human of Earth rather than one of another planet. He had to keep on protecting her and figure out if he could take the Nake back to Shinzar, all without her catching on to any of it. To his way of thinking, there was nothing to be gained from Kaia learning the truth of who she was, or what the Nake really was, or that Shinzar even existed, let alone other dimensions.
Kana had left him. But Kana had also entrusted his only daughter, and all of Shinzar, to his hands. Bijan looked at those hands now, turning them palm-up and then rubbing them down his face as he sighed. This was his duty. Above all, he was the High Wizard of Shinzar. It was a legacy he would bring honor to even if it meant his own death. That was the way of things. He would find some method of becoming part of Kaia’s life, and he would determine what had to be done to save Shinzar.
Chapter Seven
Walking along, she couldn’t help the slump of her shoulders. Sure, her parents’ death had left her with plenty of money for a nest egg, what with the accidental death clause on top of their regular policies. But Kaia wanted to be self-sufficient. She wanted to work, she wanted to teach. She wanted to share her pas
sion about everything she knew and loved, everything her parents had known and loved and taught her throughout her life. Expanding the minds of others, showing them the wonders of places and peoples so far removed from the here and now had been in her blood as though she’d really and truly been born to the Lehmans.
But weeks of job-hunting had told her two things. One, she’d have to leave Iowa in order to get anything other than a minimum wage job as an administrative assistant or in a local fast food joint. And two, the only places that seemed at all interested in her fresh off her Bachelor’s degree were Clark University in Massachusetts or Washington State University. She did not want to go to either the East Coast or the West Coast, but it was looking more and more like her chosen career was going to leave her with nothing but those two possibilities.
Her shoulders sagged even more as she pulled into the garage and clicked the button for the garage door opener. Waiting until it was down all the way, Kaia moved slowly as she locked the car, left the garage through its side door, and made her way up the steps to her house. Tonight she truly felt depressed, and really, with all those weird things happening around her lately, who could blame her? It wasn’t like she had anything to do with them…at least, she was reasonably certain she hadn’t. The nightmares had come back full force, which meant she wasn’t sleeping. And since she wasn’t sleeping, she found herself spiralling further and further into depression.
It was as she stepped into the shower that she realized it was time to get out of the house. Yes. Tonight she’d go out, and with any luck she’d get completely plastered. Tomorrow she’d have a fantastic hangover and that would lead her to sleeping for at least two days before she started feeling human again. Sleeping for two days was good when you were sick and tired of your life already. Feeling somewhat renewed with a fresh sense of purpose, Kaia scrubbed herself just a little more energetically, looking forward to her first night out on the town in longer than she could remember.
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