Chapter Ten

The ancients would have said her

Stubbornness augurs something. But these are fever marks

Incapable of understanding. The beginning of agony?

If you ask for them, your requests will be granted.

From In the Lake Region – Tomas Venclova

Translated from the Lithuanian by Ellen Hinsey

“So, my child?” the sweet, darkly soothing voice questioned while gently brushing the tendrils of hair from my face. “Tell your Na-Nan what it is you seek.”

It took a force of will to breathe. To blink past the strain of oppression and open my eyes. I was definitely less impressed with the scenery now than I was…err, um... How the hell long had I been out of it? And how did she get me inside the Vortex with her?

I watched her eyes sparkle like dark onyx glistening in a field of new fallen snow. The glint of a smile sparked like flint; mysterious and wry. “Not long have you slumbered. Though long enough for me to learn many things from your slumbering whispers. Things I’d not have learned while you were beyond my reach.”

She continued to smooth my hair from my face. My head was cradled in the soft folds of her lap while she held me close. It was strangely comforting, this closeness. A gentleness she imbued that even my own mother had never possessed; not once having held me this way.

The woman who’d birthed me had never touched me with any emotion other than hate. So why was it that my grandmother did so now? After all this time? Despite my betrayal of her? What did Lady Arwin hope to gain from me now that she had me within the Vortex with her? And how the hell did she manage to do that in the first place? I had thought the Vortex of Suppression would suppress her powers—hence, the suppression. Could the damn Silent Court do nothing right?

“No. They cannot,” she boldly told me. “Make no bones about it, Rihker. The Court uses all to get their way. They will step on, murder, repress or commit to the Shadow Lands any and all who get in their way. They will use every means within their grasp to become the ultimate source of power, be it Light or Darkness.” Her voice rang with coldness and a far-off look of remembrance shone in her eyes. The lingering tinge of her power rode my flesh like the voltage of a coming storm. Power imbued with the taste of Light and Darkness. Power familiar, but not my own.

“There is no end to how far they will sink themselves in the mire to suit their own means,” she continued. “Even going so far as to use a mere child to capture one of their own.”

I pushed myself up from her lap and turned to face her. “What do you mean, ‘One of their own’?”

“It matters not now. You’ve come for other reasons. More important reasons than trudging through the past. That day will come soon enough.” She stood with a flourish and strode across the small enclosure of her prison, stopping before a stand that held an ebony chest. I hadn’t noticed the stand or the chest until the moment her fingers touched its latch, blending as it did with the shadows. “There are things you must know. And things you want to know—yes?”

She turned and looked at me with those dark eyes. So level. So cold. I couldn’t help but wonder why she had gone to such lengths to get me inside with her only to help me. What did she hope to gain by helping me? And was she truly helping me, or was it just more smoke and mirrors caused by the Darkness. Whose game was I really involved in? Whose pawn had I become?

“We are all pawns, Rihker. Truly you must know that by now.”

“What is your deal, exactly?” I couldn’t stand this any longer. I could feel the agitation rising inside of me. Too many questions. Too many deceits. Deception and chaos were all around me and closing in way too damn fast. I had friends to rescue. An ancient, powerful book to find. One sadistic Vampire bitch to ram a stake through. I still had to find someone to watch over the Land of the Light. Trying to figure out if my own grandmother was going to try to charm me, possess me or burn a hole through my core with some vile black sword of dark destruction was about the last nail in my coffin.

Ooh, maybe that was a bad choice of words. But seriously, this whole damn day was becoming some burnt-assed shit on buckwheat toast.

“I see that Maebe is lacking in her instructions again. Really, must I do everything?” Exasperation oozed from every word like pus from rotting flesh. Somehow, I knew that my visit with my Na-Nan wasn’t about to get any better.

Opening the chest, she took out a black silk bag that appeared to hold something round and somewhat heavy from the way that she clutched it so tightly in her skeletal hands. Turning to me, she said, “Sit, child. Sit and know what you are.”

As she approached I could hear the bag humming. Melodic, whimsical and mystical, the strange tune called out to some distant piece of me. I felt my knees weaken and panic rise from the pit of my stomach to the middle of my throat.

“What the hell is that?” I asked, pointing towards the bag while I unconsciously took a step backwards, away from her and from her trinket bag of hou-ha.

“You came seeking answers, did you not?”

Closed-lipped, I could barely nod a response. The hum was getting not louder, but stronger. I felt it in the pit of my stomach. Its vibration resonated in my flesh, beneath my fingernails. A strange sort of keening I could feel almost to the roots of my teeth as the staccato drilled its way into the core of my being, wrapping itself around my aura, causing my soul to quake.

“This, my dear granddaughter, is the Sphere of Empathy. It is a seeker of true self. You wish to know what you are, or what it is you hold inside of you...yes.”

I watched with a sort of grudging dismay while she reached her slim, pale hand into the black bag and pulled out a small crystalline orb that shone stark white like a brilliant round star in the palm of her hand. The sweet, sickly melody of its hum sang its heaven-song in an antechamber of Hell, and I couldn’t help but shiver with impending fear.

She held it out to me. “Take it, Rihker,” she whispered. “The knowledge is here. All you have to do is take it.” I watched the dark glow of her fathomless eyes fill with an eerie light—shades of endless gray—and I wondered, for the hundredth time, whose side of the line I was really helping. The Darkness? The Light?

Slowly, cautiously my fingers extended with a will of their own. Images of Kieran, Dragon, Ian, Garric, even Mercy flashed before me in a sort of kaleidoscope. Poetry of life and death. A flashing feature film of incandescent images. Some filled with laughter, some with lust. Others with gratitude and friendship.

The hum grew louder the closer my palm got to the orb. The wicked gleam on Lady Arwin’s face danced in the darkness of her deceitful eyes. I knew, knew as sure as I stood there, that the orb was more than she told. Certain I would see more than she said it would show me.

Bitter truths and treacherous lies. My family seemed full of them.

How I knew that she was lying I had no idea, but I was as certain as the night is long, my wolf is red, and I wanted my father dead for this curse of my birthright.

From one heartbeat to the next, without thought, understanding or consideration of the repercussions I did what my subconscious told me to do. I grabbed her free hand with my left, snagged her right wrist in a jerking motion, and forced her to bring her hands together around the humming sphere while I held them to the Sphere, to clutch it as she would have me. Forced the truth from a tongue twisted and choking on deceit, vengeance and immoral inequities.

The instant her flesh met the crystal I knew exactly what the crystal was, what she was going to use it for and how I would use it to aid me now.

“You’re truly pathetic!” I told her while violent images ricocheted through my mind like Orcs playing volleyball with a severed head. Only it was my head they were using for the damn ball. Oh, her Sphere would show me the way to my true self, all right. And it did so, right after it was done jamming its way through her wicked, violent and wretched history. A life filled with murderous lies, betrayals, witchery, debauchery, failed attempts at vengeance and a history of Darkness so repulsive I was left utterly amazed that this, this….creature had ever been a child who had walked in the Light.

“Judge you not, little Changeling,” she sneered. “Little half-breed bastard of a Darkling,” she whispered vehemently while instant rewind suddenly buckled my knees. Before I knew what was happening, it was she who was holding my hands to the Sphere. It was my history zooming past in streaks of Light and Darkness.

I stood in the cavern with Modgav, scarfing down pages from the Book. Inhaling them like a starving waif so that the Goblins would never have their power. Feeling the greed and the righteousness coil in my belly at the knowledge that these were magics that the Goblins would never have, even as I trembled before the Light.

Despite the dripping, haze-like quality of the memory I still felt now what I felt then—that the Light hastened, grew like a beacon and shown like the mystical fire of purity that I knew that it was, even in this sludgy Darkness.

In my mind the pages blew up like dancing fireflies. Despite the pressure of my clenched lids, I saw every word they possessed. Knew every phrase like they were embedded on secreted scrolls hidden in a corridor of my brain. I now understood their every meaning and the validity of their repercussions. When the glow became too bright, brighter than the sun, cleaner and purer than what the moment of birth for the entire world must have been like, that man and immortal alike had no choice but to kneel before its splendor, I bowed my head before its glory. Surrendered to its knowledge and its meaning. And as I stood in an antechamber of Hell with a cast-off child of Light—defiled and defamed for her transgressions—I forgave her, thereby accepting the wisdom and the power that was the Light.

When I opened my eyes, the chamber was still filled with a brilliant, golden blaze. Lady Arwin lay cowering on the floor before me, her hands no longer holding mine to the Sphere. No, she was too busy trying to block out the power of the Light.

“What have you done? What have you done?” she repeatedly questioned. Her voice held awe and fear that it had not shown the entire time I had been in her presence. I would have found it funny, except I too was awed by all I had witnessed. Since the moment she’d forced my fingers on the Sphere, Lady Arwin’s whole demeanor had changed and it was she who now quaked in my presence. It was she who cowered in the shadows. It was she who hid from the Light.

Her Sphere wasn’t a Sphere of Empathy like she said. It was a Sphere of Knowing. And I now knew.

I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for the old woman, for she was old, despite her reasonably kept looks. From our trip down memory lane, I’d guesstimate her age close to fifteen hundred years, give or take. But apparently, long years still hadn’t taught her anything. Or at least the important things.

“You ask what I have done,” I said by way of beginning. “It would seem it is the one thing you, in all your life, have not.”

She looked up at me then, her dark eyes filled with the same strange dark emptiness that I saw upon our first meeting. Only now, they appeared more hollow. Less certain. A question marked her brow.

“I have accepted. Not just who or what I am. Or even what it is I might become,” I said with a shrug, as if it was of little matter. “I have also accepted those around me. Those who are different than me. Even those whose Light may be a little dimmer or brighter than my own. And yes, those who walk that line of gray, just like I do. Maybe if you’d have done a little bit more of that in your life…” I didn’t bother to continue the statement. What was the point? She’d made her decisions. Good, bad or indifferent. No matter the cause, they were her choices, she was the one who had to live with them. It’s just too bad she had an eternity in Hell to come to terms with those decisions.

I took the Sphere of Knowing, put it back in its little black bag and tied it to my belt. I didn’t think she’d have need of it any longer. With my questions, for now, answered I had other monster mashing to attend to. Besides, whoever said the road to Hell was well traveled might just have had me in mind when they said it, and obviously hadn’t planned for an extended stay.