Gone were the white hooded uniform and waist-wide belt identifying him as a fierce Xin warrior. No longer did he stretch out his seven-foot frame to tower over me intimidatingly. His silvery eyes were no longer piercing.
Xaul wore a simple Noctu-style tunic now. His broad shoulders were stooped and his head bowed humbly. When his eyes passed over me, they were dull, clouded and lifeless—the helpless eyes of a blind man. Though Xaul may have changed physically, he was still a murderer to me.
I had seen him kill Petrov. I had to watch helplessly as he plunged his sword through Hope. And Xaul would have killed me as well had not the Author intervened and destroyed him in the Consuming Fire. That was the awful end he had deserved. That was the justice I’d witnessed this murderer receive—or so I had thought.
For the Fire to have spared him so that I could share a dinner and friendly conversation with him tonight was inconceivable… but that’s exactly what was happening before my eyes.
Led on the arm of a Noctu guide, Xaul took his seat opposite the fire from where I stood. I watched him with silent contempt through the flames, wishing this fire could finish him for good. Trista didn’t look much happier with the arrangement, remembering all the harm he’d caused her and our friends as well. As for Hope, she looked surprised, but not upset. That was perhaps the greatest mystery of them all. Yes, the Author had rewritten her; she had a new and greater life now, but how could she look past the evil Xaul had done to her and not hate him?
“Is it true?” Xaul’s strained, whispery voice spoke into the night, his ashen eyes wandering aimlessly. “Are you the one sent from the Author?”
“Yes,” Hope replied with a steady voice, “I am Hope. I have come to heal you.”
The crackling fire sparked suddenly brighter for a moment, as if marking the statement with an exclamation point. Xaul nodded his head in silent acceptance, breathing an emotion-filled sigh of both fear and relief. It was a confrontation he had both longed for and dreaded.
“May it be as the Author has said,” Xaul answered. Surprisingly, his tone was a defeated, surrendered one. No longer was he the great Xin warrior. Hope began to stand up, but I grabbed her arm, holding her back.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“You’ll see,” she said confidently, her own eyes spilling over with emotion as she slid my hand from her arm.
I watched in disbelief as she took a step forward and walked untouched through the flames that separated us from Xaul. He inclined his head towards his tender messenger as she knelt and gently gathered both of his charred hands together. Turning them palm up, she curled them to form shallow cups.
“I have come to fulfill the Author’s purpose for you,” Hope said compassionately, “to raise you up from the ashes.”
Having said this, she reached back into the fire and scooped up a pile of hot ash, patiently letting it cool in her hands before pouring the warm, silvery dust into his waiting hands.
“Boojum,” Hope called out, “it’s time.”
“Uh-uh,” refused the squeaky voice from somewhere just beyond the firelight’s reach. “Light bad.”
Hope rolled her eyes, but submitted to his request, passing her hand over the flames till they had lowered to mere embers. “That better?” she asked.
Content with the arrangement, Boojum scampered over and climbed up onto Hope’s shoulder, peering curiously down into Xaul’s hands.
“Boojum here?” he asked.
Hope nodded the okay. “Just let ’er flow.”
Boojum started sucking and snorting, his face twisting and twitching as he forced a thick, wet, gargling sound from the back of his throat. It was disgustingly loud for such a small creature. Children of the Noctu tribe came running over to watch. Hope tried her best to look away.
Unable to see what was transpiring in front of him, Xaul reluctantly asked, “Is it going to…?”
Yes, Boojum was. And Boojum did.
The gooey discharge erupted from his mouth, splattering unceremoniously on top of the gathered ash in Xaul’s hand. For a moment all was still except for the slow drip of surplus spittle, oozing through Xaul’s fingers. I tried not to laugh, but the absurdity of the situation was too good to be true.
“Boojum good?” the snark’s excited blue eyes danced proudly from his handiwork back to Hope.
“Yeah,” Hope said feigning a smile, “you did really well, buddy.”
Speaking to Xaul now, she did her best to explain. “So, just mash that together till it’s a nice paste and then…” she hated to say it, “rub it over your eyes.”
Xaul, having willingly gone along with Hope’s instructions up to now, stopped to consider the humiliating and unhealthy step he was being asked to take. I could tell he was worried it could be a joke.
“You want me to rub this…glop…on my eyes?” Xaul questioned with a disgusted look on his face.
“Yup,” Hope said. “That’s the plan.”
“What good will that do?” he asked.
“It is the Author’s will.”
If it were a prank, Hope had planned it perfectly. By now the Noctu parents and elders had gathered with their children to see what their adopted tribesman would do. Resigned to his fate, Xaul shrugged and slathered the sticky mud over his eyelids. I wanted to laugh at how ridiculous the man looked, his eyes smeared with Boojum’s spit. I was still gloating at the man’s humiliation when he began to shout.
“My eyes…I can see again. I can see!”
I was completely caught offguard. I hadn’t expected the prank to actually work. I thought Hope was getting back at the man, not truly healing him. It was a real letdown.
Almost immediately, the Noctu tribe erupted in a spontaneous celebration that was more colorful than their neon paint. Xaul’s sight had been restored! That was the message on everyone’s lips and the reason for every smile. With dancing, singing, feasting and laughter, everyone in the Noctu camp was buzzing with excitement over the miraculous event they’d witnessed from the Author’s hand. In recognition of the miracle, their chief held a special ceremony in which they gave Xaul the new name of Xias (it meant “Xin of ash” according to Hope’s translation).
It was all very fascinating to watch…from a distance. Trista, Hope and even Boojum let themselves get caught up in the merriment but I had my reasons for sitting this one out. For starters, every minute we wasted here should have been spent searching for my father and rescuing my family. I hadn’t come to Solandria to celebrate a criminal who had escaped the punishment he’d deserved. As the party continued, I slipped away to be alone with my thoughts.
Beneath the stars, I pondered the injustice of it all. How could someone as cruel as Xaul be given such a great gift by the Author? It wasn’t fair, and I wasn’t happy.
Darkness finally gave way to dawn, driving the luminescent plant life back underground and the Noctu back to the shelter of their domed huts. Their “day” had come to an end; it was time to prepare for sleep that would carry them through the heat of a searing, sun-filled “night.”
Now that we were finally free from distractions, I was looking forward to getting down to the business of why I came to Solandria in the first place—finding my father.
“I’ve made arrangements for us to stay in Noctu for the night,” Hope said to Trista and me, though by “night” she meant “day.”
“Great. Where are we staying?” I asked. Honestly, I would have rather set out in search of my father, but the harsh reality of being burned alive in the scorching sun left me no choice. Instead, I settled on the idea of using “tonight” to formulate our plan with the promise of an early departure in the cooler temperatures of the “morning.”
“Sorry for the delay,” Xaul said, addressing Hope from behind me. He had snuck up while I wasn’t looking to invade our privacy. “I’m so glad you’ve agreed to stay with me. We have so much to discuss. Come, follow me. My place is just across the camp.”
Follow him? To his place? Hope caught my worried glance and answered the man before I could object.
“Yes. We’re looking forward to sharing your company tonight, Xias. I believe it’s what the Author intended.” Her intentional use of his new name brought a huge smile to his black face; mine was still pale with shock.
Before I could respond, the tall man turned on his heel and led us away with long, exuberant strides through the Noctu encampment to his domed hut. It was all I could do to keep up, kicking and screaming inside the whole way. We reached our destination as the first slivered edge of the blazing sun inched its way over the horizon. Already the temperature was rising, though the day had hardly begun.
Xaul lifted the hut’s flapped door and ushered us in. Hope went first, followed quickly by Trista. I, however, was not nearly as trusting or comfortable turning my back on the man. I put one hand on my sword and motioned him in with the other. Xaul understood and entered ahead of me.
Inside, the semi-translucence of the hut’s animal skin walls allowed a small measure of sunlight to pass through, lighting up the domed room in a soft orange glow. Grass mats were spread over the sandy desert floor for us to recline on. Xaul sat cross-legged, pouring water into cups made from hollowed-out gourds. He offered them to each of us. Both girls readily accepted. I declined. Suffering from a dry throat was better than accepting hospitality from the man who had killed so many.
Xaul cleared his throat and spoke to the three of us. “I can only imagine what you must be feeling toward me right now. An apology will never fix the wrongs I have inflicted against you, but for what it’s worth, I am sorry.”
What little composure I’d managed to keep up to this point flew right out the door.
“You’re sorry?” I scoffed loudly. “You have no right even to be sorry! You are supposed to be dead!”
“Hunter!” Hope exclaimed, appalled by my outburst.
“No,” Xaul said, intervening. “Let him speak it. I don’t deserve my life. It is one thing I know for certain.”
Trista tried to smooth things over by saying, “I think it’s safe to say we all thought you were dead after the Flame… you know….”
“After it incinerated my pathetic existence?” Xaul suggested.
“Well, I wasn’t going to put it that way,” Trista objected.
No, but I would have, I thought.
A sad smile came to Xaul’s face as he reflected on his past. “Of who I was before, there was nothing worth saving. I was hateful, cruel, destructive….” He paused, glancing my way before finishing, “…a murderer and a thief.”
I bristled, suddenly feeling robbed that I wasn’t the one to deliver the accusation myself. He continued.
“None of this mattered to me at the time. Xin teaching dictated that our wrongs could be ‘purified by pain.’ So I did what I wanted, whatever evil was necessary, and believed the rituals of fire would cleanse me. But as a wise Codebearer once challenged me, ‘No amount of pain—nothing I could do—could ever make me perfect.’” Xaul nodded to me in acknowledgement. “You were right, Hunter.”
I shifted uncomfortably beneath his praise. Those were my words, but they were meant to be used against him…not for him.
“I learned that lesson too late,” Xaul continued the story. “I pursued and overtook the eternal Flame, believing I would master it. Instead, as you witnessed, the Flame’s power overwhelmed and mastered me; in the process it consumed every darkened part of my being until I was reduced to…nothing. All that remained was a vast emptiness. Then, into that awful place, a great Voice spoke. I heard it, but being nothing how could I? It sounds crazy, I know.”
He was right. It did sound crazy…but not to me. I knew differently. I knew exactly what he meant as only one who had passed through the Author’s presence could. In spite of my opposition to Xaul, my heart stirred within me as he related his experience.
“The Voice spoke my name.” Xaul closed his eyes now, reliving the memory. “It called to me out of the darkness and carried me toward a single point of light—a candle set upon a desk where a tattered, smudged paper lay next to an inkwell and quill. I recognized the words on the page as my own handwriting. At the top was my name with word after word descending down the page, describing my shameful life.
“If I had been able, I would have looked away, but I couldn’t. Instead, I was forced to read each line until I had reached the end. I read how the Flame brought about my deserved destruction.
“As I read the final words, something remarkable happened. The Voice spoke again saying to me, The seventh of Seven only Fire can name. Then the quill was lifted out of the inkwell by some invisible hand and its tip dipped into the candle’s flame. The flaming tip was touched to my paper, setting it on fire. Amazingly, the blaze did not consume the paper, but only purged the words away until the page was left completely clean and new.
“I know this may sound strange to you,” Xaul continued, “but that was the most terrifying moment of all. Those words had represented the last link to the life I had known. Now that they were erased, I was completely finished.”
“But you had to know the Author wasn’t through with you yet, right?” Trista scrunched her knees up to her chest, eagerly awaiting the rest of the story.
“No,” Xaul laughed. “I didn’t know anything. But you are right; he wasn’t done. Taking up the quill, the invisible hand of the Author dipped it into the candle flame once more and began to write in flaming letters a new chapter he intended for me.”
“What did it say?” Trista asked.
“That the Author had chosen me as the ‘seventh of Seven.’”
“You!” I blurted out incredulously. “He chose you?”
“He did,” Xaul nodded humbly, “though I still don’t know why. The next thing I remember is falling into the sand of Noc where the Noctu found me just before sunrise, blind and weak. I had been given a second chance at life.”
He leaned over and opened a small chest, producing a folded paper from within. He extended it to me saying, “The Author did not send me alone; he left me with this promise so that I might never forget his calling on my life. You may read it if you like.”
Trista and Hope leaned in to read over my shoulder as I opened the paper:
Xaul, my chosen “seventh of Seven,”
What began as your darkness, I will turn into light.
Where once you were blind, I will now restore sight.
I will send you to Noc to discover new dawn, while you
learn to find good in what I’ve rescued from wrong.
Await my message of hope.
~The Author
I read the letter through twice, not willing to take it at face value. Xaul was the “seventh?” This enemy of everything the Codebearers stood for had become the capstone to the Consuming Fire’s prophecy. It didn’t add up. How could anyone excuse all the evil he’d done against the Resistance? It wasn’t fair. It didn’t make sense.
“It was not my choice to be given this chance, Hunter,” Xaul said, perceiving my thoughts.
“No,” I snapped back. “Your choices were to kill. You don’t deserve this.” I angrily threw the letter back at him and stormed out of the hut.
Outside, the blinding sunlight stung my eyes; the rising heat was already stifling but I didn’t care. Instead, I was glad to meet something else as hot and angry as I felt inside. Hope slipped from behind the hut’s flap and stormed across the sand. She was not happy.
“Hey, what’s your problem?” Hope fumed.
“My problem? I’ll tell you what my problem is!” I bellowed, flinging my arms over my head in disgust. “I can’t do this. I can’t sit around and pretend I don’t know who he really is.”
“Nobody’s asking you to. I haven’t forgotten either,” she replied, “but he’s changed. We all can see that; why can’t you?”
“Has he? How do you know? How?” I pushed her for an answer.
“You read the Author’s letter. Xaul’s been rewritten; he’s the seventh mark!”
“Yeah, well, he doesn’t deserve it,” I said. Suddenly, I realized what bothered me most was that the Author chose Xaul over me. Why hadn’t I been marked? After all, I was the one who suffered so much to carry the Flame. I felt insulted that the Author had overlooked me after all of my loyalty and sacrifice. Instead, the seventh had been a murderer and enemy of the Codebearers.
Hope nodded, “You think you deserved to be marked instead of Xaul, is that it?”
“Why not? At least I’m not a murderer.”
She raised an eyebrow at me, “Oh no? So, Venator had nothing to do with you, huh? And that wasn’t your blade that ran me through?”
I flushed, remembering that fateful moment when my Veritas Sword cut through her, all but killing her. It was the darkest moment of my life.
“That’s different,” I said, rationalizing the thing away. “It was an accident and you know it.” But the truth was, Venator, my mirrored self, had killed often throughout his service to the Shadow. Even so, I thought comparing Xaul to me was hardly fair.
“This isn’t about me. I’m not saying I’m perfect,” I reasoned. “I’m just saying…I did everything the Author asked of me, Hope. I’ve risked my life for him time and again! I trusted that the Author knew what he was doing. I trusted him even though he never trusted me enough to tell me the whole story…never the whole story!”
Hope reached out for my arm, but I pulled away. Her voice softened as she spoke to me.
“So you’re angry with the Author then,” Hope said bluntly.
“Maybe I am!” I answered at last, finally being honest with myself.
“It’s not a choice between the two of you, Hunter. The Author’s story is bigger than any one of us. He has his reasons for Xaul and he has already chosen you. You bear his mark in the deepest fabric of your being. Surely you must know that….”
“But Xaul?” I interrupted. “He spent his entire life as an enemy of the Resistance and now, all of a sudden, I’m supposed to accept him as one of us? As a friend? Doesn’t that seem just a bit odd to you? He could cut our throats while we sleep!”
“Look,” Hope reasoned, “I’m not defending anything that Xaul did to us…or to me. But, I am willing to accept in faith what the Author has done, what he is making new. You can’t forget the steep price the Author paid to save and rewrite your own life. Doesn’t it stand to reason that there was a price involved in saving Xaul’s life too?”
Her words were sobering. I remembered well Aviad’s sacrifice for me when he took the Bloodstone’s curse upon himself in my place. If indeed Xaul had been redeemed as he claimed—at what cost, and by whom?
What began as darkness, I will make into light.
Framed by Hope’s counsel, the Author’s words given to Xaul rang just as true for me now as they did for Xaul. Perhaps he and I were not so different after all.
Still, it didn’t mean I had to like the guy.
“I don’t trust him,” I said flatly. “Xaul, that is…not the Author.”
“Fine, but at least give him the chance to earn your trust,” she replied. “If not for him, for me…for the Author. Everything for a purpose, remember?” she said cheerfully, quoting the words of the Author’s Writ.
I nodded in return, begrudgingly conceding the argument.
“Who knows?” Hope said, leading me by the arm. “We might need his help before your adventure is through.”
“Stranger things have happened, I guess,” I said.
“Oh yeah, like what?”
“Boojum’s spit,” I chuckled.
“Yeah, that was pretty gross,” Hope laughed in response.
She hooked my arm and pulled me back toward the shelter. We re-entered the welcoming shade to find Trista and Xaul engaged in conversation. To my shock, Xaul was holding my father’s sword…the one he had used to kill Hope. Trista, being far too trusting, must have retrieved it from my backpack during my absence. Seeing it in his hands made me stiffen a bit more. My memories of crossing blades with this man were still fresh, and I knew how deadly this weapon could be in his hands.
Trista looked excitedly my way and said, “Hunter, I was just asking Xias about your father’s sword and you are not going to believe this! He knows where your father is…or was.”
Xias calmly raised my father’s sword and offered it back to me. “I was telling her how this sword came to me long ago, when I was still a boy. Your father rescued me.”
“He did?” I asked, taking the sword from him. “How?”
Xaul recounted the tale.
“As my people were being slaughtered by the Shadow, I ran. The creatures that came were ferocious, dark and vile. I had never seen anything like them before or since. They moved swiftly, like a plague of death from the heart of the Void itself. I was only a boy of seven at the time—old enough to fight; however, as the crowned prince of my people I was told to hide. My mother carried me as far as she could, but she wasn’t alone. One of the Shadow creatures had seen our escape and caught up to us in the hills just beyond the city. Mother protected me until her final breath.
“I would have died as well if it weren’t for your father. He dropped from the sky out of nowhere, his sword glowing in a fierce blaze of green flame. Never had I seen a Codebearer fight with such skill and anger before. He dissolved the creatures at last with a final, brilliant stroke of his sword.
“I expected more Codebearers to appear, but he was the only one that day. His Thunderbird landed and together we flew back to my city in hopes of finding survivors. There were none. By the time we arrived the Shadow invaders were gone, and the once glorious city was burning to the ground. Each Xin stronghold we visited thereafter told the same story. The Shadow had come to every shard. In a single day, my people had been annihilated. I was an orphan, the last of the Xin.
“Your father claimed to have foreseen the danger, but he was unable to convince the other Codebearer captains to act on his insight. After the slaughter, the Resistance response was to mount a reconnaissance mission to search for survivors. Your father led that mission; his men were discovered and taken captive. He alone escaped with his life.
“For safety, my existence was kept secret. We hid in the abandoned caves of my people. Only your father knew who I was. He returned from his mission to tell me the news that my family had been slain. The Resistance had failed; they were weak. He knew it, and so did I. He claimed he had business to attend to in Inire. Before he left, he gave me his sword as a promise that he would return. I never saw him again.”
Petrov had relayed the sad history of the Xin to us before but hearing it from Xaul himself meant so much more. When he finished we sat in silence, digesting the story for a moment.
“You said my father went to Inire?” I asked, picking up on the name of the shard in Xaul’s story.
Xaul nodded, “Yes, but that was long ago.”
“You’re not thinking of going there, are you?” Trista asked, spotting the curiosity on my face.
“Maybe, it’s the only lead we have so far,” I answered.
“But just knowing that your father visited Inire at one point isn’t enough to go on,” Trista replied.
“Even if he’s still there, Inire is one of the largest shards in Solandria. We can’t very well go tromping across the entire shard in search of clues,” said Hope.
“No, I suppose not,” I agreed. “I guess I’m just anxious to get started with our mission.”
“Who said you haven’t already?” Hope asked. “So long as you are following the Author’s wishes you are already doing his will.”
“Yeah, I know,” I answered flippantly, “but I just wanted to make some progress.”
Xaul spoke up, “It’s like the Noctu always say, Et Responsum, Imus Nocte, which in the Old Language means, ‘The answers come by night.’ That just means sometimes the best thing you can do is sleep on it, and the answer may come to you.”
“Hang on a sec,” I answered, suddenly curious by the phrasing of the so-called Old Language the Noctu had been using. “Say that phrase again.”
Xaul looked a bit surprised by the request. “The answers come by….”
“No, no,” I interrupted him. “In the Old Language, say it again in the Old Language, only this time a little slower.”
Xaul gladly obliged and repeated the sentence one word at a time, “Et Responsum, Imus Nocte.”
“There, you see?” I said, repeating the last two words aloud for Trista to hear. “Imus Nocte, sound familiar?”
“Not really, should it?” Trista asked.
“Yes, it was in the message we deciphered in the cave, the one from my father’s drawings. Remember, the words with no vowels?” I answered.
“Oh yeah, all that gibberish; I remember now,” Trista said, her eyes lighting up in sudden remembrance.
I pulled the image up on my Symbio and deciphered the letters in the sand to complete the final phrase. The message read:
IN GIRUM
IMUS NOCTE
ET CONSUMIMUR
IGNI
Xaul read the phrase aloud, “We Enter the Circle by Night and Are Consumed by Fire.”
“So it wasn’t just a bunch of gibberish, after all,” Trista said. “Do you think it has something to do with the Consuming Fire?”
“Probably, but it seems like a random thing to write down,” I said, scratching my head. “I don’t get it.”
“No more random than Mirror Rim,” Trista replied in reference to the other phrase we deciphered in the cave.
“I guess not,” I said, recalling Dad’s notes in the Author’s Writ. There was something weird about this phrasing and it wasn’t just the meaning of it. He was doing something on purpose; he was trying to be clever, trying to hide a message in it. But what?
One thing was certain; both the phrase in the book and the phrase on the drawing had been written by my dad. I felt closer to Dad every time I solved one of his puzzles. I couldn’t help but smile at the memory of him and his goofy binary watch. If it hadn’t been for Dad’s willingness to train me on how to read binary, I never would have been able to apply the technique for deciphering the messages.
That’s when it hit me.
“Wait a minute, that’s it!” I shouted at once. “I think I know where to look for more clues. In fact, I’ve already found our first clue. I’ve had it all along.”
Hope, Trista and Xaul exchanged confused glances, wondering what they had missed.
“How? What do you mean?” Trista ventured, looking rather stunned.
“Belac’s castle is in Inire, right?”
“Yeah, so,” Trista answered.
“So, it’s where I found my father’s broken binary watch,” I said eagerly. “If his watch was there it’s possible some other things might be as well, maybe even my father.”
“That’s pretty brilliant, Hunter,” Trista said in support.
We started making plans to visit Belac’s castle. Hope smiled, but it was a weak smile with a thoughtful gaze behind it.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Nothing. It’s just...I had a funny feeling, that’s all.”
“A funny feeling about what?” I asked.
“It was nothing, I’m sure,” Hope replied. “I think I’m just tired.”
“Me too,” Trista added with a yawn.
It was true. The night had been long and full of surprises. We settled onto our mats for rest. No doubt we would need it for the travels ahead. Of course, that was assuming Xaul didn’t kill us all in our sleep. His willingness to tell us a story hadn’t dampened my awareness that he was still a cold-blooded killer. If I did fall asleep, it would be with one eye open. I managed to keep that up for a whole twenty minutes before my eyelids and the heat got the better of me. Before I knew it, I was dreaming of sand frogs, Shadow creatures and Boojum spit…a strange combination by anyone’s standards.
Little did I know, before my dreams ended, things would get a lot stranger.