Firebrand (14 page)

He drew it from the scabbard at his side. “It will not leave my side until…” he stopped, thinning his lips as he tried to find the right words. “Until the dark gift must be given.”

She threw herself into his arms. “You better be here when I get back.”

“Of course I will,” he said. He walked her to the edge of the ring, one hand gripping the hilt of his sword, the other wrapped around her. He paused and stared at the innocent looking ring of flowers before returning his gaze to her face. “Take my love with you,” he said before kissing her.

Teezal gave them as much time as she could before placing her hand on Amber’s shoulder. “It’s time,” she said.

Amber drew her lips from David’s and framed his face with her hands. “I’m ready,” she said, her gaze not leaving his.

Gently Teezal pulled her away. “Concentrate and allow the change from human to fairy to take place. Don’t force it. Will it.”

With her gaze locked with David’s, Amber felt a faint stirring in her shoulder blades.

“That’s it,” Teezal encouraged, “Just let it happen.”

Amber’s slow, even breathing seemed to fill the air. With each breath she took, light swirled around her. David could see wings emerge from her back and open in a glory of iridescent purples and mauves. The expanding glow of light that shrouded her and Teezal momentarily blinded him and he raised his arm to shield his eyes.

As the bright light subsided, he slowly lowered his arm and found two small magnificently beautiful creatures, hovering in perfect unison in front of him. He extended his hand and one alit on his palm. It had to have been Amber. He nodded to her, hoping she could feel his love and his pride.

For a few seconds she remained there, like a tiny firefly caught in a child’s palm, then her wings beat faster and she rose, on the wing toward Teezal who waited, hovering just above the ring. When their radiance’s touched, the play of light seemed like a shower of tiny stars.

In the second it took him to blink, they were gone.

* * * * *

Amber found herself in a frontier of twilight and mist. Butterflies, some of colors she had never seen before, stopped midflight to watch her. She could see tiny heads poking from behind flowers and her acute hearing caught the squeak of their voices.

“It is the Keeper — she is the Keeper.”

“Come we must hurry. Your grandfather waits,” Teezal said, “Follow me.”

“They know about me?” Amber said trying to peer at the faces behind the flowers.

“Yes, we have been told about the Coming since your birth.”

At the doors of a castle-like structure made of tree bark and stone, they landed and drew in their wings. They then walked down a brightly lit hallway until they reached the Great Hall door.

There Teezal turned and faced her charge. “Go in, you are expected,” she said.

“You aren’t coming with me?”

The honey-colored fairy shook her head. “Inside you will find your answers and your family.”

Amber looked from Teezal to the ornately adorned door. “Marcus and Erin were my family.” The words came out like a prayer.

“They were your human family. You have another.”

Again Amber eyed the door. “In there.”

Teezal nodded. “They are waiting for you.”

Amber took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them again Teezal was gone. Slowly she reached for the door’s Golden Handle. When she touched it, a voice filled the hallway, its vibrato whisper rustling the air and making her hair billow around her shoulders.

“Welcome home Amber.”

Slowly she pulled the great door open. In the center of the room, a silver haired man sat on a richly carved golden throne festooned with luxuriantly colored faceted gems that caught the light and sent ribbons of color in every direction. He stood up slowly and then floated down to her, his violet eyes looking her over from head to toe.

“
Halla
Amber.” He greeted her, “I am Tolhram, High Mage of Everwood,” he said in a voice that commanded authority. “and your grandfather,” he added much more softly.

“Are you now?” The awe she first felt at seeing him now turned sharply to edginess.

He held out his hands to her. “Yes.”

She took a step backward to put more distance between them. “And now that the formalities are over, I’m supposed to embrace you and learn all the secrets I need so I can save the world?”

Tolhram lowered his hands. “I can understand your frustration.”

“Oh really? Can you? Then maybe you can tell me how I’m supposed to handle the fact that a few weeks ago, I was leading a fairly normal life and now I can grow wings out of my back and I’m supposed to be a superhero.”

A sad smile grew on his face. “I know there is a lot to explain and we have little time to do it. I will try to answer as many of your questions as I can.”

“Start with this one then. If I was so important, why did you abandon me?” She regretted the question the moment she asked it but felt herself going farther and farther out of control. She could almost feel each cell in her body vibrate faster as the blood raced through her veins. Inside her wariness began to grow, a primal perception she found hard to control.

“You were hidden in the human world to save your life.”

“All your potions and magical incantations couldn’t protect me?”

Tolhram clasped his hands behind his back. His chest heaved in a sigh. “No, they couldn’t. Not with so many looking for you. Watchers on both sides were everywhere. Once the Troll King knew about your birth, he sent the Dullahan to find you and it would have only been a matter of time before he did. We needed you to stay alive and grow.”

“So the plan worked. What now?” she challenged. “I get to come here and go to
Save the World 101 University
? I didn’t ask for this new life and it doesn’t seem to come with instructions.”

“That’s why Teezal brought you here.”

She lowered her head, shaking it from side to side, to clear the hum that grew as every emotion running through her body intensified. Anger, she expected that. Confusion, acceptable. But betrayal cut the deepest of them all. Teezal had used her. David too. They lulled her into a sense of well-being and then pulled the rug out from under her feet.

She pursed her lips, sucking in a few breaths and calming the surge of blood in her veins. If she had to save the world, it would be on her terms.

Raising her head, she looked Tolhram in the eye. “What if I refuse?” She crossed her arms over her chest and cocked her head to one side defiantly.

“I understand your resentment, granddaughter. I even embrace it as an instinctive human reaction.” Tolhram walked back to his throne and sat down. “You may leave, of course. It is not our way to force anyone.”

Amber turned and began walking toward the door.

“But if you do, you may never see your human father again.”

She turned slowly back. “Don’t do this.” She felt her heartbeat rise. Tolhram straightened, his breath catching. Amber’s eyes glowed, blue-black as though a ferocious entity from within was filling her. She started forward. “If you know how to bring my father back safely, tell me now.” The very walls seemed to shake with each step she took toward him. “Can you do that?”

“No.” he said calmly.

“Then you had better find a way!”

She reached out to him in an effort to emphasize her demand but it became much more than that. While she never touched him, her energy did. The impact like a blast of white-hot furnace wind lifted the Mage and sent him flying backward.

He landed hard, driving all breath from him. With great effort he lifted his head and shook it, focusing his gaze on Amber. She was raging now. He could feel it in the waves blasting from her every pore in her body.

She jerked her head upward and the throne followed. With an exaggerated nod, she sent it crashing to the ground. Then she turned her attention back to Tolhram.

He reached out to her but she ignored him, choosing instead to flick her wrist upward and send him rolling across the floor.

He dragged himself to his feet just as the door to the throne room, crashed open.

A light that began in the doorway rolled, filling the room with iridescent brilliance. As it got closer, Amber could see a beautiful woman in the center of the glow. She heard the woman call to her mentally.

“
Daughter, stop!”

Amber’s brows drew together. She opened her senses and felt a hint of related energy. The woman’s presence made her skin tingle.

“Who are you?” Amber asked, sensations of familiarity ripping through her almost like an electric current.

The woman smiled with a sadness that Amber felt in every cell in her body. “Alara. Your mother.”

Chapter Eleven

Heavy snow prevented direct access to the ice cave the trolls of this area of Norway called lKverkljol. With a grunt, the largest of them poked Marcus Drake in the back with the blunt end of a spear and gestured for him to dig. Falling to his knees, Marcus pulled the ragged sleeves of his thin coat over his knuckles and, barehanded, began to hollow out an opening.

Weak from both the meager food the trolls allowed him and endless chipping away at the glacier walls with crude dull ice picks, Marcus dug robotically, hoping to break through and escape the bitter cold wind that burned his skin. His head throbbed and at times, his vision blurred, forcing him to stop and press the heels of his hands into his eyes. Each time his digging stopped, his troll guard would drive the dull end of his spear into Marcus’ side, ordering him to keep working.

After what seemed like hours, he had dug out a three-foot opening and crawled inside. There he found a cave with a straight floor with walls filled with spectacular rippling ice cascades of all sizes.

Rising to his feet, Marcus caught his reflection in a smooth layer of ice on the cave wall and barely recognized the man who looked back. Slowly he raised his hand to his hair, now peppery white and grown to his shoulders. His face was covered in a matching beard that reached his chest and framed eyes etched with lines of weariness.

He ran his hands across the animal skins covering his tattered clothing and furrowed his brows, not remembering how the hides got there or who tied small sections on his feet with leather strips. Raising his eyes back to the reflection, he could not help but wonder how long had he been in the land of ice, imprisoned by his troll captors and forced to dig for hours every day. Was anyone even looking for him anymore? The question remained unanswered as one of the trolls guarding him pointed to the rear wall, urging Marcus deeper into the cave.

Inside the heart of the glacier, the interplay of ice and water created a moving universe of crystal galleries, translucent meanders and deep blue lakes carved by streams running deep in the earth. Despite the cold, Marcus felt oddly comfortable beneath the skins as he continued forward.

His footsteps crunched on the loose rock mixed in with the ice and snow and he sidestepped cavities in the cave floor that he could easily have fallen into with a single misstep. Overhead two tons of ice loomed hanging at times in crystal spears, as beautiful as they were deadly if one was beneath it when it fell.

The passageway opened up to a tremendous room Marcus guessed was thirty meters high and almost as wide. The air was warmer in this part of the hollow from steam rising through fumaroles in the cave floor. This hole acted like an engine driving a slow melting process causing the passage to gradually enlarge. It would make the digging a bit easier for him.

A second troll guard appeared and took Marcus by the upper arm, leading him to the rear of the passageway. Once there they joined another human chipping away at a dome-shaped formation made up of blue and white layers interspersed with deposits of brown cave dust. The human stopped digging and glanced briefly at Marcus before beginning again.

The guard gestured toward an iron pick resting against the ice wall. As Marcus bent to get it, the troll leaned down, his lips even with Marcus’ ear. “Do not drink the blue liquid given to you at night,” the troll cautioned. “Melt ice and snow in your mouth instead. In a few day your head will clear. I will be back then.”

As the words slowly registered inside his head, Marcus realized he had an ally.

* * * * *

Beleaguered by everything that had happened since she left New York, Amber did not react at first to the words the beautiful woman who came from the light had said to her. Was she dreaming again? As her mind slowly registered the meaning behind the words, her heartbeat slowed to a more normal range and sensation of her blood racing through her like red-hot lava all but disappeared.

The woman had helped Tolhram to his feet. “This is my daughter, Alara. Your birthmother,” he said rising.

“I have been told that another gave me life but beyond that my mother was a wonderful woman who loved me and would never have thrown me away,” Amber replied without hesitation.

The light surrounding Alara dimmed briefly. She walked to Amber and touched the amulet around her neck. “I can understand why you feel that way but in a small way, I was there with you also,” she said. She lifted her gaze to Amber’s. “Always.”

Behind them a door opened. A small giggling woodland sprite flew in carrying an oak leaf on which rested a small ewer and cup. The sprite stopped front of Alara, who took the cup and pitcher from him.

The little sprite tucked the leaf under his arm and skittered over to Amber, flying about her head. He tipped his head first to the left then to the right, looking at her intently before returning to Alara. “She’s very pretty I think. But I hear her mind is thick as ink. She’ll not understand when all is in a whirl. Are you sure she will be able to save our world?”

Alara smiled. “She is our only hope, Neelo.”

The sprite shrugged. “Then I guess it will be as it will be. And I will wait to see what there is to see.” In a movement almost faster than the eye could catch, he was gone.

“What was that? And why does it speak in rhyme?” Amber asked.

“That was Neelo. He serves your grandfather, and he has an affinity for creative verse.” Alara poured thick twinkling liquid into the cup and held it out to Amber.

“You must drink this, my daughter.”

Amber looked from the cup to Alara’s eyes. “What is it?”

“We call it the Water of Innocence. It will help you understand. Long ago the same was given to he who raised you to open his mind and allow him to see clearly what had to be.” She lifted the cup higher. “Now it is your turn. Drink and see.”

Amber took a sip from the cup like Marcus Drake had done all those years ago. As the sparkling liquid rolled over her tongue and down her throat, a hunger began that compelled Amber to drink more. Soon she found that she did not want to stop.

“Only a little at a time, my dear.”

She felt Alara preventing her from emptying the entire cup. Soon her mind began to swirl in a dozen directions at once. Figures with no faces and locations with no clarity flashed inside her head.

A woman and a man, naked, entwined in each other’s arms slept on a lush field of grass while a serpent, coiled around a tree filled with flowers and fruit watched. A light flashed and another figure entered. Dressed in robes of pure white, he woke the sleeping couple. Fear danced on their faces as they ran from him.

Soon they reached a gate. A hundred feet high it loomed over them. They turned back to the garden in which they had lived but were stopped by the figure in white. He pointed to the gate and it opened, revealing a vast wasteland beyond.

The landscape was terrifying to the couple. Great winds, terrible lightning, rain, heat and cold moved across the vista. A confusion of lands some green with plants, some brown with endless desert sand, some white with the cold of snow lay beyond the gate.

Above them the great voice of the First One boomed. “Go,” he commanded. “This is your inheritance.”

The man and woman pleaded for mercy. They did not want to leave the lush place in which they had lived. Sure they would not survive even one day, they dropped to their knees and cried. The man pleaded for the life of the woman he loved, offering to sacrifice his own if only she could stay.

The man’s love of the women touched the heart of the First One. “You will not be alone,” he said. “The serpent that excited you and the custodian of the garden who had been sent to watch over you will also leave this place.”

In a flash of cold white light, all mentioned were transported beyond the gate. As it began to close, three swords rose from the ground.

“Take the Sword of Adam, human,” the First One said. “Protect your woman and make your home above the earth in a land of your choosing. Gatekeeper,” he said to the figure in white, “The Sword of Light is yours. You and all those to come like you will now guard the delicate world of hope and dreams that exists just beyond perception. And you,” he continued as the serpent grew thick arms and stubby legs and rose from the ground on which he slithered to stand upright. “Yours is the Sword of Shadows. Because you used trickery and deceit to turn my children away from me, for you and all your kind that will come from you is the world beneath our feet.”

The ground shook and columns of fire rose, splitting the ground into three equal parts.

“But know this all of you. What was to be can be again. In time one will be born of the blood of all three worlds.” The First One raised his hand and out of the churning river of lava that began at the entrance to the garden and then split into fingers of fire, a circle of gold rose. “Forged in the fire of your tears and branded with the words to salvation, this key will have to power to either unite all and maintain the calm or send all worlds into oblivion. When the time comes, it will appear and the new breed shall choose the course.”

In fascination, Amber watched the horrible scene play out in her mind as the words were fire-branded onto the golden charm:

From one comes three

From three comes one

In a sudden lash of light, the vision fast-forwarded to scenes of wars, times of peace, the meeting of a fairy and a human woodsman near a lush green glade. The scene shifted to a frantic race of mother and child as a headless demon searched overhead.

Like a page turning in a book, Amber saw her father, Marcus, take a bundle from the fairy woman’s arms. Erin was smiling and the child was chasing a butterfly in a meadow. Faster and faster the time raced until Amber saw herself with David and Teezal.

Then suddenly, like an unfinished page, the vision pulsed white and then faded, the ending unfinished, relying on the choices Amber would have to make.

* * * * *

Marcus was grateful that the animal pelt given to him for the night was long enough for him to drape around his shoulders and also lie down on to prevent the cold of the ice cave from seeping through his clothes. He wrapped his arms around his bent knees to make himself as small as possible and conserve body heat.

The human sitting across from him seemed to be sleeping. He must have been in the caves a long time, Marcus thought, as he watched one of the guards jostle the man awake with a thump to his shoulder and then hand him a bowl of the boiled meat that had become a meal staple. The man was thin, gaunt almost. His hair and beard was almost as white as the ice itself. He seemed to come around slowly, nearly spilling his food as he took it from the troll guard. When he saw Marcus watching him, he turned away, crouching low to protect it.

Marcus was hungry after the longs hours of chipping away at the ice and accepted his own meal eagerly. A second guard brought a wooden cup filled with blue liquid and, with a grunt, instructed Marcus, to drink.

As he raised it to his lips, over the rim Marcus watched the man across from him. His movements were lethargic, deliberate, as though he had to think each one through before reacting. Through the fog that seemed to fill his own head, the curious advice given to him earlier echoed —
do not drink the blue liquid given you.
He looked up at the troll hovering over him and realized the troll would not move on until the cup in his hand was empty.

But suddenly in the center of the cave, the fumaroles erupted, sending a billow of steam curling upward toward the roof of the caves, causing a large piece of ice to give way and crash to the ground. Momentarily distracted, the guard watching Marcus turned to the sound. Gathering what hint of lucidity seemed to remain, Marcus poured the liquid from the cup between his bent knees and pretended to finish the drink just as the troll guard turned back toward him. Satisfied the cup was empty, the troll left.

Marcus crawled across the ice and dirt floor to his fellow captive. The man turned further into the cave wall, shielding his bowl while continuing to eat the tasteless food.

Though the thoughts came slow, Marcus fought to gather them together. He tapped his hand on his chest. “Marcus.”

The man look up briefly and then continued to eat.

Marcus moved closer to him. “Marcus,” he said again, tapping a forefinger to his chest. “Marcus.” He then reached around and tapped the man’s chest before extending his hand.

The man shrugged away.

After repeating the action several more times with the same non-response, Marcus took a healthy portion of meat from the crude wooden dish given him. Reaching around, dropped it into man’s bowl.

The man looked at Marcus warily before taking the meat in his hands and downing it quickly. When he picked up his cup to drink, Marcus knocked it from his hands, shaking his head and quieting the protests with a finger to the man’s lips.

“No! It’s bad,” Marcus said, making sure all of the liquid spilled from the cup. He then took the ice pick and chipped away some small silvers of ice from the wall of the cave and put them in his bowl. One by one he put the shavings in his mouth.

As the chips melted, turning into the water, the men would need to survive, Marcus opened his mouth and encouraged his fellow captive to do the same. If the troll’s warning was correct, whatever had been put into the liquid he was given to drink should wear off if they did not ingest any more.

The man imprisoned with him scooted closer to Marcus. Marcus saw him eye the meat left in the dish and pushed it toward him. “Eat.” Marcus said, taking a bit of meat between his fingers and putting it into his mouth. “You eat.”

The man took a small amount and returned the bowl to Marcus. “Bri-an,” he said, touching his hand to his chest. “Bri-an Mc-Ken-na.”

* * * * *

As the visions produced by whatever her mother had given her slowed and then disappeared, Amber felt as if she should be in a state of panic but she could not work up to it. Everything she seemed to be in a soft haze with no delineation of past, present or future. Her head and limbs felt heavy, her eyes too tired to stay open When she allowed them to close, she saw it all again in flashes of color and sounds.