The Tessellation Saga. Book Two. 'The One' (18 page)

Discussions
lasted into the evening as one by one as possible solutions were
explored and rejected, eventually it was decided that Dotty along
with Gideon’s parents and Jayson would travel to Devilly to stay
with Jayson’s aunt, her own home was still there and vacant in any
case and it had shielded her before. She also knew people of the
blood in Devilly who could help hide the family if the need arose
and although she did not much warm to the idea of returning so
soon, she could see the reasoning behind it, too large a party
travelling to Green Home Village at this time would attract
unwelcome attention. She smiled at Gideon’s father shyly and warmed
as he smiled back. Gideon, along with the rest of the party would
travel on to Green Home and to the forest. Young Jed, torn between
the need to rescue his family from slavery and staying with Lemba
decided on the latter, Rhoàld using diplomacy and tact made Jed
realise his presence amongst the group going to Devilly would
endanger them further. He was, after all a deserter from the
Derovian Armed Forces and well known about town. There was also the
suggestion that Gath could possibly use him to get to Gideon
because of their shared blood.

‘We’ll watch
out for your family as best we can Jed,’ said Dotty trying to ease
his worry.

‘We’ll get ‘em
back ‘ave no fear, them an’ the rest of the villagers an’ iffen we
can’t then we’ll die trying,’ offered Gideon’s grandfather angrily,
‘Good King Gath has a lot ter answer fer,’ he added, looking at
Lemba knowingly. Lemba blushed; Dotty had explained Lemba’s
inability to speak the previous evening, when Gideon senior had
mistakenly tried shouting at her thinking she was deaf.

With the
decisions made, the company began to drift off to bed, Gideon,
struggling to stay awake finally succumbed to his weary body and
was the first to say goodnight. As Dotty rose to follow the others,
Varan stopped her.

‘Dotty…, would
you have any objection to Lemba receiving back that which is
rightfully hers?’ He asked. Dotty looked at Varan with a puzzled
expression on her face.

‘I don’t
understand,’ she replied and looking at Lemba she asked, ‘do I have
something of yours Lem?’ Lemba looked as puzzled as her sister did,
Varan smiled gently at the two women. ‘Lemba is going to be in
great danger; Gath will almost certainly follow Gideon here and on
to Green Home. Now might be a good time to return the gift you have
held secure and safe since you were both children,’ he said.
Dotty’s hands flew to her face.

‘Your magic
Lems, he means your magic.’ She said, ‘of course she can have it
back, what must I do?’

Dotty sat on
the sofa her hands holding Lemba’s own tightly. She remembered the
night she had received the gift and Lemba’s tiny frame that was
tortured with dreams.

‘Don’t be
afraid, this was always yours Lemba.’ She said as she smiled at her
beloved sister and kissed her cheek. The twins, Sonal and Varan
held forearms above them, slowly Sonal began to sing, his usual
singsong mumbling voice now obviously a thing of the past as he
held his brother. His tune was sorrowful, yet a hint of hope could
be heard like a blackbird singing just before the dawn or a child’s
smile in the face of the rain. Varan’s voice joined in, calling the
root of the magic to open to them. The tunes began to wax and wane
like a silver moon and pulsed with power, Rhoàld, still sitting
across the room watched in awe as he felt his blood begin to rush
around his body, his breathing quickened and he began to ‘see’.

Until he had
been cut with Gath’s knife, he had not realised that his blood was
any different from anyone else’s, although he had always felt
gifted in that he could usually reason with people to do exactly
what he wanted them to do,
apart from with Gath that is,
he
thought as he tried to rationalise what was happening. As the music
filled the air, he watched as everyone in the room began to emanate
a golden light, an aura softly glowing and pulsing with the song.
The song continued and some of the lights began to change,
fascinated, he held his hand before his face and compared the glow
from his own body to that of the others and eventually he realised
their various auras were different. From Sonal and Varan who glowed
like the sun in a clear blue sky to Jed and his father, whose auras
were faint and coloured in an entirely different way but all were
shining and pulsing like a second skin, young Jed’s being different
again. Lemba was the exception, her body remained, as it always
was, beautiful and silent and he wondered absently how Gideon’s
aura would look. The radiant lights looked fragile and yet
beautiful, every colour of the rainbow shimmered and pulsed as they
were teased from within by the melodious song. The lights shimmered
and danced as they twirled and spun, all moving in accord, the song
seemed to go on and on as the twins sang. Suddenly a second light
seemed to rise from Dotty as she added her voice to the song,
stepping up the quality of the harmonies. Her voice lifted the
lights, and the pattern of the dancing changed. What had been slow
and gentle suddenly became faster and more focused, another voice,
a voice Rhoàld recognised, Bastian, he thought and smiled as his
beloved began to sing in the ether, changing the chords of the
music once more, a depth unheard for a very long time.

Colours spun
and split as the music weaved and glided, intertwining and
separating as the individual notes blended and encouraged the
ambient sounds to change pitch and character. The tones changed
from whispering caresses to angry demands as Rhoàld’s blood flowed
faster and faster, suddenly, he found himself joining in with the
song, his deep bass voice joining as one with perfect harmony in a
song he knew he had never heard in his life before and in a
language, he did not understand. As they sang, the room itself
began to glow, power unheard of burst through the doors filling the
house and grounds with light and music.

Gideon lying
fast asleep in his bed above the lounge saw the song in his dreams,
he heard the music and felt the notes that were missing and
unconsciously he hummed the accompaniment.

Downstairs,
Dotty’s second light glowed stronger and suddenly broke from her
body, finally free it rushed around the room creating new sounds
for the song, new patterns for the dance.

Lemba, hearing
only the beautiful music felt empty, the rapturous faces of the
people she had grown to love all around her filled her with envy,
she closed her eyes to hide her thoughts. She wanted to see what
they saw, feel as they did, to be loved as they were. Silent tears
ran down her face as the beautiful music called to her very soul.
Suddenly she gasped as the lights surrounded her body forcing her
to open her eyes in wonder and as if a curtain had lifted, she saw
the lights and the colours as they swirled around her enveloping
her like a beautiful but diaphanous shroud.

The song drew
to a crescendo as the lights intensified again as they drew closer
and closer, suddenly they disappeared and she sighed, knowing she
would never see the like again. Her skin began to itch as her blood
pounded in her ears, her heart beat to the song as her blood raced
around her body and at last she ‘saw’ the others around her as if
for the first time. Their own lights swirled and played in ever
decreasing circles as if exhausted, why, she thought when she was
so full of energy and wanted to sing, to shout her joy from the
rooftops.
Why does everyone not feel as I do?
Her heart beat
to its own song and her body tingled, she had never felt that
something in her was missing but now, somehow now, she felt
complete, as her stub of tongue began to itch and tingle she
released Dotty’s arms and opened her eyes wider in shock. She had
had no feeling in her tongue since Gath had so roughly cut it out
when she was but a child, she put her hand up to her mouth hoping…
but no; the stub was still just that, the rough end of a useless
piece of dead flesh in her mouth. Her eyes watered in
disappointment and hastily she blinked her tears away.
Jed,
she thought as she saw him watching her as intently as a mother
would a child making its first steps. Jed was standing across the
room and as she looked at him, she could feel the love he was
offering her, his need to protect her and her heart warmed sadly at
the sight of his worn face and the growing dark circles under his
eyes. She saw his shame and guilt at his actions toward his brother
and his worry for his family.

‘I love you,’
his fingers told the tale.

‘I love you
too, always and all ways,’ she flashed back as she rose to meet
him. His arms closed around her and her life was complete.

Gath rode with
his entourage out of the city, the city of Devilly that had been
his home for so very, very long.
Now, today I am beginning my
journey home,
he thought,
after so many years trapped with
no magic on a planet where life spans are counted in
moments.

‘Home,’ he said
aloud, in his heart, he had always known this day would come. He
could not remember how many lives he had lived or how many times he
had tried to sire a daughter. With Lydia’s birth, he had finally
known the end of his exile was drawing near. Until her birth his
own magic and his memories of home, of Arotia had slowly eroded as
the blood in his host body drew further and further away from the
blood that had run through his veins when he had been born, so long
ago on Arotia.

On Lydia’s
death, his world had collapsed. Many times over the years, he had
looked at his burgeoning young daughter and thought her ready for
him but prudence held him back, his best chance of success was with
her as a woman. Therefore, he had waited until her sixteenth
birthday and had taken her then, she of course had been frightened
and hurt but she had not understood his need of her. Only as it
became obvious that she was with child had Gath left her physically
alone, he remained as always, solicitous of her every need and
desire but the pregnancy made her an object of fragility, after
all, he believed her child would be his salvation and nothing that
could endanger that would be permitted.

From her first
years, Lydia was frightened of her father and his intensity around
her and he allowed her no friends other than the maidservants he
chose, so she grew into a solitary young woman, happy to be on her
own in the great castle libraries or in the palace gardens. Gath
considered this fitting and left her to her own devices provided
she always had her maid with her, the maid that would report to
Gath directly on any of his daughter’s needs.

As she grew,
she craved the company of people other than her father’s successive
chosen companions. Her attempts to be friendly with other servants
employed in the castle always seemed to come to nothing as her
‘current guardian’ thwarted each tentative offer of friendship but
despite the girl’s best efforts, Lydia did meet and become friendly
with one of the garden lads. The maid duly reported the friendship
to the king and surprisingly, Gath allowed it to stand.

Just before
Lydia’s fateful birthday, her father had her likeness commissioned
by a renowned artist. She sat for the portrait quietly and
patiently, enjoying the scenes and the memories playing out in the
artist’s head. Never allowed out of the castle alone and never
having travelled far, her interests in the known world had had to
be satisfied by the books she read and the tales servants told her.
Until that is, she discovered she could also read the minds and
memories of people in her father’s employ. Over the years she
became very good at it but kept her ability a secret from everyone
around her, this, a habit born of necessity as everything she did
or said she knew was reported directly to her father. His mind she
was never able to read, his remained blank and though she often
tried, there always a barrier of some kind.

On the evening
of her birthday she knew something had changed with the king, his
intensity around her had been increasing and throughout the day she
had caught him looking at her with such concentration on his face
that it made her shake with fear. At her birthday dinner, he
decreed she was now an adult and had given her a glass of foul
tasting wine.

‘To celebrate
you’re becoming an adult,’ he said, as she finished the wine and
accompanied him to his rooms to retrieve a special gift he had
inadvertently left there. Lydia went with him gladly; knowing that
her day was soon to be over and she could retire to her own rooms
and be alone.

That night
though, Gath had taken her forcibly and repeatedly, he kept her in
his rooms and used his now enhanced magically ability to change the
perception of servants who knew her. They saw only a king’s whore
in his bed and their ears seemed deafened to pleas for help. After
the repeated rape and the princess’s resulting pregnancy became
apparent, Gath ensured that the blame be directed at the garden
boy’s door, the only friend Lydia had ever been allowed. She
pleaded for her friend’s life relentlessly until one day frustrated
by her constant whining; Gath struck out at her, knocking her to
the floor. In his horror at his action and the possible damage done
to the unborn child, he left himself unguarded for the first time
and as she lay stunned from the blow, she subconsciously sought to
read his mind. His concern for the unborn child left him weak and
vulnerable with his mind open to assault as he searched for any
sign of damage he may have inflicted from his violent blow, so Gath
was completely unaware as his daughter went deeply into his
psyche.

In an instant,
Lydia saw his memories flowing before her like a running tap, each
memory deeper and darker than the last; she saw his long and many
lives, the deaths he had caused and his love of all that was
violent. She saw the memory of darkness, hiding away inside him
awaiting the time to claim his soul. She saw an old man laying
beneath a tree a knife in his body, blood pooling beside him. The
injured man mumbled, pointing unsteadily at the person whom Lydia
knew to be Gath, her father but looked nothing like the man she now
knew so intimately and loathed so fully.