The Tessellation Saga. Book Two. 'The One' (50 page)

‘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 did 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.

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.