The Lebrus Stone (33 page)

Gundulla brought out a stone from under the bronze pillar. It reminded me of a globe of the world, containing the sea and every place unknown. It was like a dome that encased everything and everyone, every face and race, those privileged, those poor, those placed in a throne or dethroned. And it could see everything alive and bestowed to it. My birthmark thrummed, seeming attracted to the stone. It felt as if it was peeling away from my flesh. I held a hand to my chest, wincing from the pain. My mark had something to do with that stone. I was afraid to know how.

The stone soon fragmented in Gundulla's hands. It flew away as silver doves that returned and made the stone whole again. I gasped in awe and horror.

"The underground palace of Fallions shall repay with their lives," Gundulla yelled. "Their abode and their honor with defeat. We shall disengage their shields from which they hide. With this cast from the Lebrus stone, we shall be led to a future where we shall reign victorious and obsolete. We shall once and for all conquer their defenses, execute and take reign."

Her voice resonated through the forest. The sky caved, billowing like a volcanic mound that spewed a yellowish excrement. It coughed up the ghostly heads of perhaps a thousand beasts with demonic growls. I covered my ears and crouched to huddle in my own warmth. My stomach churned, my fears intensified like a wild tornado. I didn't want to be in the past. I wanted to go home, to my real home in Salt Lake City. I screamed, but no sound came out.

"Seek us," Gundulla yelled, her arms outstretched, welcoming the creatures in the sky that coiled around her and attached their tails to her like an umbilical cord from the dead to the living. Horse hooves approached. I removed my hands from my ears to witness who it was.

A man pulled back the reigns of a white horse, halting to a stride of immense control. He brandished his sword after dismounting. His hair flowed behind him as fair as corn silk, his eyes were as clear as stained green glass. He revealed himself as Vander Asholme, a man as gallant and as handsome as his name sounded.

"Let them go," he said, his eyes darting to Arrious. She was unconscious. He went to her and Gundulla allowed it, creating strange movements with her hands as if she were dancing with an invisible partner.

"Save Aleya," Arrious cried when she opened her eyes to find him untying the knots in the ropes. "Please. You have to save her first."

"You're too late," Gundulla said. "The deed has been done. The cast is set by the stone. If you do not allow me to proceed in fulfilling Arrious's death, it will make sure your child perishes too. You will be accountable for both their lives."

"You are nothing but a monster disguised as a sorceress," Vander said without a shred of concern. "You have no rightful place in such craft. You are a cowardly, insane woman with no power to behold us to your commands." He untied Arrious and yelled at her to run, assuring her he would save the child. She staggered toward the woods. Vander turned and raised his sword to Gundulla's throat. She stood still, unhinged by it.

"How dare you," he snarled. "How dare you forsake the one I love for your petty needs. You have loved, have you not? How could a woman such as yourself have been so pure? When you now reek so solely of sin?" He spat at her feet.

She threw back her head and laughed, causing my face to heat with rage. "Love is for the weak, you fool. And yes, I had fallen for its throes, but now you shall see how I will reap the rewards that stale old love could never give me."

"You have gone and lost your mind," he growled. "The love you felt has turned you into a bitter woman who will stop at nothing to blame others for her loss."

Her shoulder hunched, a painful nerve had been tampered, maybe making her recall a time before she lost her sanity.

"I have gained, not lost," she said composing herself. It was ushered with a certainty that made him step back from the emotionless veil. "Now, off you go! Your beloved is about to plunge to her death."

He didn't wait for an explanation. He ran for the woods.

Since my feet were able to move, I followed him.

"Arrious, what are you doing?" he shouted through the howling wind, reaching out for her.

She was standing at the edge of a cliff, just like I had in my dream with Cray. "I don't want to burn alive." She wept, keeping her back to him.

"You shan't. I promise!"

"I will. Gundulla will make sure of it."

"I won't allow her to harm you or the child. I will protect you both. Always. You have to trust me"

It was like watching a reenactment.

"Know I love you, Vander." She sobbed. "I don't regret you. I don't!"

She stepped off the cliff. Vander's hand remained outstretched.

He collapsed and screamed, so loud I had to crouch and cover my ears.

The sound of the baby crying in the distance eventually made Vander stumble to a stand. We both headed back to the circle. The coven had dispersed into smaller groups. Vander grabbed the baby and turned to Gundulla who was standing motionless. She had her back to me.

"You will pay for this," he yelled, eyes red and practically pulsing. "I will return to finish you for good."

The hood of Gundulla's cloak lowered. Yet I only saw her scarf-wrapped head.

"I cannot be killed, fool. I have the youth of your mistress and child, the strength of a thousand gods. Her sacrifice has given us our immortality and the child its life." She cackled. "For now, that is. As for this ritual, it shall continue until the day a female is born with a mark of the stone."

I instinctively placed my hand above my birthmark. It hummed, perhaps answering to her call. Bile rose to my throat and burned, the forest spun, bringing me to my knees.

Gundulla brought out the stone from under her cloak. "Your child shall bear a child and that too will be sacrificed, much like Arrious. Every mother from this lineage will bear daughters, and every mother will meet the same end so as to bring us closer to our destination. They shall open the portal to Shimmarian once again, and with this stone, I shall have the power to take my place as the leader of a world that is supposed to be mine. I am now the master of my destiny. Every Fallion shall bow down and beg for
my
forgiveness"

Vander ignored her and mounted his horse. With his child in his arms, he rode into the night.

Gundulla turned and I clamped a hand over my mouth. The woman cackling was Isobel.

Leaves fell on my face. I dry wretched.

"Chal-ra- ya…chal-ruh- ya," someone sang, wiping drool from my mouth with a damp cloth. "Himah de ah shumlak."

My heart beat faster. No. Not more chanting. I couldn't take it. I found it harder to breathe.

Did Gundulla have me? My fake great aunt? Or was Elandra's coven conspiring to make me believe she was against me to take her riches?

My eyes stung and my limbs felt stretched and poked. My lungs felt the size of water balloons.

Through the blur, I could see faces moving up and down, crowding over me to fill a whiter gap, a space that must have been the ceiling to Elandra's living room. I was back, but from what, a too-real dream? The actual past? I couldn't be sure. I didn't know what to believe. I just wanted my heart to stop pounding, my body to stop feeling so detached from my brain.

A face moved in closer, pale green eyes that made me sigh.

Jess held me to her laundered scent, but I was dragged away from behind. My head was pushed back and placed on something soft. My eyelids were being stretched back by a woman I recognized as Shikra. She chanted before spitting on my face.

I yelped. She moved, giving me room to try my legs.

Everyone was sitting around me. Their mouths opened, closed, then re-opened.

When Elandra appeared, she seemed the most concerned. Her once silky hair stood on end, her cheeks were streaked black with perhaps shed tears. I couldn't see Jess anymore. She had let go of my hand when I yelped. I knew she had moved away, but I couldn't turn my head to find out where.

"Better?" Elandra asked, lifting my chin.

Her eyes were wet. Her lips quivered like she was freezing.

I moved my tongue around before speaking. "I…" My voice came out as a whisper. I could barely hear it. "I think." I paused to swallow. "So…"

"Take your time to come back to us," Elandra said, smoothing back my damp hair.

Jess returned to sit beside me, taking my hands and rubbing them at her chest. She was the only person to have considered I might be cold.

Her thoughtfulness fizzled out some of the pain in my limbs.

"Iso-bel," I rasped.

Elandra nodded in understanding. The rest gasped and mumbled to one another.

"You weren't to know," Jess said, her voice quavering.

I ached with anger. "I want to go home," I croaked, trying to get up. "I want to go home, to Jared." I stumbled around the room, knocking into things and people.

When I fell to the floor, I tried to cry. I needed to let all the years of anguish I kept inside out all at once, but I felt too numb. If my so-called enemy was to have her way, I may never see Jared again. I hadn't gotten to tell him how much he meant to me. I hadn't gotten to hug him properly.

The floor trembled.

"Take her," someone yelled.

Nails dug into my arms and I was hauled back. The room shook and lost fragments from the ceiling. The tables and chairs slid across the room; the window shattered behind me and the walls crumbled. I was too distraught to care what was happening.

Lightning flashed with blue and red orbs. People crawled along the floor that tipped from side to side, making them slide around like legless crabs.

I was held in a corner in front of a panting Jess. Elandra fought to stay still against the pushing wind, her face turning blue and unrecognizable as she squinted from flying shards of glass. Shikra was somehow still in the center of the turmoil, her hands raised, her lips moving as quick as the light surrounding her waist.

I was only concerned for their lives. If this was meant to be for me, what was the use in fighting? Secretly, I had wanted to give up sometimes, ever since that night, two years ago, ever since I had to keep it a secret. Maybe this was all a blessing in disguise; a way out for me without having to do it myself, a way to finally let go.

The ceiling had all but caved in. I let myself turn limp and defenseless. Crows and vultures shuttled down toward us, their eyes ruby red.

Jess and I were thrust to the ground on our front by a gale wind. Everyone but me screamed.

The birds tried to attack my face as a blue mist hovered above us, crackling red like flagellated flames. The heat was so fierce, I could feel my fingernails begin to melt.

But I took it. I took the scald of it on my scalp, the brazen stroke of it to my exposed skin as I felt incubated in my own sweat.

"Ah sah..urth!" Shikra yelled. "Me yah tu…rish!"

My birthmark moved. Literally. Like a finger was poking me from the inside. I rose. My back slammed into a wall with a painless thud. I hung there, my arms spread out like I was about to be crucified.

My birthmark thumped as the birds gathered around me. Shikra pointed her hands at me and her eyes turned a vibrant yellow. When my strength returned, I became determined to survive, if only to save these people.

A strange language I spoke, cleaved to the walls, flitting away the birds and evaporating the flames. Sharp golden spikes tore out of my birthmark, slicing through the walls and striking the birds. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, what I was capable of. It didn't hurt a bit.

There was no more thunder or wind capable of breaking furniture and tossing people around. The spikes shot back into my birthmark and it sealed over, returning back to normal.

I was released from an invisible grasp.

I hit the floor with a thump and passed out.

~ * ~

"Jared," I whispered, "Jared, where are you?"

"Shhhh," said someone to my left.

I lay limp, sedated. My heart beat as normal. My breathing was easy considering what had happened, or perhaps what I'd just dreamed.

It was too dark to see what was around me. I counted two voices muttering, but I couldn't locate their distance, whether they were a friend or enemy. Something told me to scream for help.

A hand clamped over my mouth as soon as I was about to. So hard, I could taste a tang of blood

"Quiet," someone sniped. It came from my left again.

A light was switched on and I found myself lay in my bed at the manor. Isobel was staring down at me. Her eyes stretched wide as her lips pouted with a wrathful look on her face. "Try to outdo me again and I shall skin you alive," she hissed.

She kept her hand clamped over my mouth, muffling my screams as I struggled within ropes and chains attached to my wrists and ankles. My heart beat so fast I thought it was going to burst out of me. I trembled with fear, anger, shock, and everything imaginable.

How had I gotten here? Where was Jess? The others? I thought we were saved. I recalled what had happened in astonishment. What had come out of me; my birthmark. Had that been a dream, too? How did I get here? At least now I knew I hadn't imagined Isobel was against me. Just in case it was all miraculously true, I willed my birthmark to help, but nothing happened.

"Cover her mouth for now," Isobel commanded to someone. "I should have known better than to keep it free before boarding up the window."

A woman with fine, mousy brown hair lifted my head. She tied a piece of fabric around my mouth and knotted it as Isobel whipped away her hand.

They then stood over me, their eyes gleaming from the soft light from a lamp shining on their face. The room was no longer pure white and beautiful, but cave like, smelling of rot.

"You see what happens when you try to outdo me? Use your powers?" Isobel said with a slivery voice. "Do you see how easily I can destroy you?"

I kept struggling within the binds, though I knew it was useless. It only made my wrists and ankles bleed.

"Do you now see Cray for what he is?" she asked, heralding his name with a wicked grin.

He wasn't in the room. She was testing me, wanting to see how I would react.

"Do you see how he will never come to love you, you idiotic girl." She smiled all the more ravish. "Come, Judith. Let us leave the little misery."

Judith glared at me before walking by my bed. "You will give me my last wish," she said to me, blinking three times before switching the lamp off and following Isobel's confident steps.

They closed the door gently considering their actions were the complete opposite. I lost by voice from screaming so much; my head felt heavy.

I began to realize the difference between closed eyes and a natural darkness. The blackness in my room conveyed colors, dot to dot scatterings that combined to make shapes, letters and congenial eyes, even moving lips.

"Wait for me," were the words written in the dark. "Wait and I will come for you."

~ * ~

I was lying spread eagled on the floor of the dining room. It was empty and clear of furniture. The chandelier directly above me doused me with an over bright light.

A murmuring began in the direction of my feet. I think hands were rubbing together, along with grinding teeth. But it soon fell deafeningly quiet, so quiet, I could hear my eyes blink, hear the air sweep in and out of my nostrils. I willed myself to stay calm as a mist formed above me.

Then, just as I had at Elandra's home, I rose until I was standing midair. My hair billowed behind me; my gown of white silk fluttered to the sides like wings.

My arms were outstretched and my legs were bound, and like before, my mind was a lot more peaceful in this position: empowered, lighter, free from worry.

Was my mark going to help? I hoped so, no matter how much it frightened me.

Isobel, or Gundulla as I should call her now, appeared from out of the shadows.

Do something
. I thought, visualizing my birthmark.
Help me, please.

"Ah." Gundulla grinned. "Such a beauteous face, though so tiresome and feeble for a part Fallion. Wouldn't you say?"

I tried to reach for her, throttle her, but my arms remained stretched out on either side of me. How had I fallen for her act? How could someone so evil have portrayed herself as being so innocent, loving, and a doting mother and aunt? A part of me was saddened that Isobel never existed. A bigger part of me couldn't wait to get my hands on the real her, show her I wasn't as weak as she assumed. I couldn't let her control and manipulate me. She had made enough of a fool out of me.

She stopped her heinous laughter and peered around the room. "You may take what you have waited for, for so long. You may taste what you have desired all these years."

I spat in her face. She gripped a lock of my hair. "Drink from this measly descendant of a Fallion," she harked.

With a villainous grin, she nicked the side of my neck with a small blade. Blood trickled, but I didn't feel any pain.

I let my head droop as Gundulla stepped back into the shadows.

Clawed hands and feet made their way into the mist and light, belonging to creatures with large heads, scaly skin and limbs like that of a hairless animal.

I tried to scream and move my hand to my bleeding throat, but of course, I couldn't move a muscle. I was stuck, hovering like a meaty stick for those looking deprived of it. Only my blood pumped through my veins and trickled to the floor, causing hungry growls as the
creatures
gathered.

Green saliva oozed from their roaring mouths, their sinewy hands snatched at the hem of my dress.

Within seconds they had me on the floor, biting and sucking, draining me of what seemed like my soul.

~ * ~

"You must take her now, Cray," Gundulla's voice echoed. "I did not know you had agreed to sample her to see its effect on a human. Take her now before your condition worsens. You have been very careless once again."

My eyes fluttered open. Cray had me over one knee on the floor of a dim, cluttered room. I didn't recognize it. But I had a feeling it was the basement to the manor.

I was still in the white silk gown, yet I wasn't wounded, and the creatures seemed to have gone. My heart pounded and bile bubbled in my chest with the fear of them returning. I was never going to forget what happened: the pain, the sickening crunch of my bones. How was I going to cope with the memory?

Cray gripped my gown just below my left breast and scrunched up his face. People stood around us. I couldn't make out who they were. I could only see their clasped hands under heavy cloaks of black and fiery orange.

My arms were able to move, but not enough to protect myself. I was drained of all strength. I may as well have been asleep.

"This could be the only way to cure you," Gundulla said to him. "Her kind can be poison. Perhaps, at times they can even be the cure."

Cray turned a stony gray, his temples pulsed. I could hear it through his hands. What was wrong with him?

My hair was bunched in his hands. One glided down to my waist as he licked his lips. His eyes became a chromic white. He was becoming someone else, someone who couldn't really see me or know what he was about to do. I wanted to scream, but it was as though my vocal chords had shriveled.