Discovered, page 11
Maybe the pendant would give him another way there that didn’t involve boats. Perhaps once he had all the power, he could take over Sawdi’s crown of dragons and fly with them.
With that cheery thought, Stryker gave up trying to sleep and swung his legs onto the floor. He was sore all over, probably from bumping things while on the ship while it flung him from one side of the deck or his room to the other.
Despite not sleeping, or maybe because he hadn’t, Stryker realized that he was hungry. The landlady said there would be food in the morning.
As he dressed, Stryker kept his eyes on the map that he had laid on the table the night before. He had hoped that it would show him where to go next and had not wanted to put it away, thinking that if he did, he might miss it.
As he turned to put on his cloak, Stryker thought he saw a flash of light coming from the map, but when he looked again, it was the same as before. There was nothing. It was blank. Sometimes he hated that map. Once again, it was playing with him, but Stryker didn’t have a choice. It did what it wanted to, and he followed.
Thirty-Two
Dax didn’t leave right away, although he had wanted to. Keeping himself sane while he waited wasn’t easy. But Ruth and Roar wanted to say goodbye to people and settle some of their affairs.
“You’d think they thought they weren’t coming back,” Dax complained to Ibris one morning.
They were sitting on Ibris’ favorite bench, waiting for Etar and Trin to pass each other. Now that magic was once again allowed on the Islands, the ritual of stopping during the day for that moment had returned.
Ibris thought that it wasn’t just the blue flash that people were looking for; it was the chance to pause during the day and enjoy whatever nature was offering up.
Every day the Islanders felt more and more the way they used to feel before the Kai-Via arrived. Although Dax was still not loved by the people, he had fully accepted that he never would be. Dax knew that the people tolerated him only because they knew what he was planning to do.
Of course, they were unhappy that their beloved Ruth and Roar would be going with him, but most of them understood that was the only way to get Dax there in time to stop Aaron from whatever he was planning next.
However, Dax and Ibris knew that there were people on the Islands that still worshiped Aaron, and they would be trying to get a message to Aaron that Dax was coming. But neither of them worried too much about that. How would they send a message? There had been no ships. No Mage would help them, and the Islands were cloaked, so unless you knew they were there, it would appear that the Warrior Monks and Sawdi had destroyed them.
But everyone knew that the Mages couldn’t cloak the Islands forever, so sending Dax off to stop Aaron was something they fully endorsed. And no one besides Ibris really cared if Dax died in the process.
Even Ibris admitted to himself that perhaps it was the way that Dax would like to leave Thamon. He wondered if in death Dax might find a door to pass into a new life, one where Dax might find some peace. But that was all conjecture, and Ibris didn’t want to lose his cousin. However, as deep as his faith was in redemption, Ibris knew it might be impossible for Dax to drop all his need for violence in this lifetime.
What worried Ibris was the Islander’s desire for Dax to die along with Aaron. But then they knew that Ruth and Roar might die too, and no one wanted that. Most of all, Ibris didn’t want Dax to be so cavalier about Ruth and Roar’s support of his mission.
So his answer, “Of course they worry that they won’t be coming back,” was tinged with anger and bitterness.
Dax’s retort was cut short by the blue flash and cheers from the crowd. As much as Dax didn’t want to admit it, he was hoping for that blue flash. Even for him, it was a symbol of hope for what he had to do.
Although he had long ago accepted that someday he would have to die, Dax didn’t believe the way Ibris did that there were more lives after death, that death was simply a transition.
To Dax, death was a closed door. It was over. No punishment, no reward. He supposed that if he was wrong, he might be angry at himself for some of his choices.
Maybe that was another reason he was going after Aaron to stop him. If he was wrong, and there was an accounting system in place, perhaps this act would be one check mark on the right side.
There had been a time in his life when Dax had thought that perhaps there was a God who did control the universes. He had even entertained the idea that it was a good God, not one of vengeance. But after his family was killed, he stopped believing that.
Why them? Why did his parents have to die? His parents believed in good. They believed that good people thrived. And then look what happened to them. They were killed so that a power hungry fake god who ruled with greed could get him, Dax, and train him to be Kai-Via.
Aaron, Stryker, and Sawdi had destroyed hundreds of good people to get to one person. The one person who didn’t deserve it. And then they made that one person become as evil as them. The small thing Dax could do now would never make up for what he had done in the past. But perhaps he could stop at least one of them.
He could do something for the one remaining person from his family who loved him in spite of it all. For a second, it gave him hope that what Ibris believed was right, that there was a good God.
Ibris put his arm around his cousin Dax knowing what he was thinking. Dax was right. He did still love him. And he believed in him, despite all his horrendous acts.
After all, Ibris thought, I was the Preacher of Aaron-Lem. What makes me better than him? Perhaps together, we can make up for what we allowed and assisted in some ways to happen.
That’s the way Ruth and Roar found them. Sitting on the bench. Ibris, with his arm around Dax, watching the ocean together.
Ruth and Roar had seen the blue flash too, while standing on the Arrow, saying goodbye to friends.
After the flash, it was Roar who said, “We could put this off forever, Ruth. But it is time to go.”
Ruth nodded, hugged the shop keeper who had just gifted her with a beautiful new cloak, and turned towards Hetale. As they reached the end of the Arrow, they heard someone yell, “Hey,” and Ruth and Roar turned around to see everyone who had been at the market waving to them.
“Be safe! Come back!” they were saying.
Ruth burst into tears and reached for Roar’s hand. They bowed to the crowd and then turned to the beach, both of them not sure if they would ever return. Both of them thinking they wouldn’t.
Thirty-Three
They had been at the cabin for a few days, and Bolong was almost tired of waiting. It was the thought of what would probably come next that kept him quiet.
Sawdi had jumped off Bolong without saying a word, had gone inside the cabin, and hadn’t come out again. Of course, Sawdi had not done anything to take care of his dragon. Bolong wondered if it ever occurred to Sawdi that the dragon he rode everywhere also needed food.
Luckily there was plenty of fresh grass and young leaves for him to eat. He found the bed he had made out of moss the last few times they had visited and settled down under the bush that covered his lair to wait it out.
In some ways, Bolong was happy that it was just him with Sawdi, that Sawdi had not gone back to the Palace right away. It gave him time to think about what had happened to him. It was something he had never believed possible. So impossible, he had never allowed himself to even dream about it. Without warning, without a hint that it was coming, he had found love.
Bolong thought back to the moment he had watched a beautiful dragon, with a red streak like him, land, and then shift into a beautiful woman. He had been so shocked at the sight that he almost roared and shot out a tongue of fire by mistake.
After they learned who she was, the entire crown had rejoiced. Her presence not only meant that there were other dragons on Thamon, but that there was a rebellion in place. Even if they were never able to return to being men, there was the chance that they could be free.
Leaving the Islands that day, Bolong had worried that Suzanne would not be able to make the trip to the Palace while he and the rest of the dragons returned out of time with Sawdi. He fretted and barely slept while he waited. His friends teased him. But they were just as worried. Perhaps Suzanne was not the love of their life, the way she was for him, but she was their touchstone to the rebellion.
The night she had crept into their den, they rejoiced. She was exhausted. They had prepared a hidden bed for her at the back of their cave in case Sawdi ever decided to step into their cave instead of standing outside and demanding attention.
It was a few days before Suzanne fully regained her strength and started the work that she had come to do. She began walking out into Edes, looking for others who were part of the resistance. Karn had supplied her with a list. She would be gone all day, but at night she returned, and she and Bolong had talked for hours.
She had told him all about her life before. Suzanne told stories of her life in the Earth Realm as an ambassador from Erda. She had described her sister and said that this was the first time she wished she could be more than one thing, the way that Meg could. It would make her work on Edes more manageable.
As it was, she had changed her appearance as much as possible. Karn had left her a cache of clothes that the women of Edes wore, and that had helped. The hardest part had been getting into the prison.
But one of the guards was part of the resistance, and he had smuggled her in so she and Udore could make plans.
It amazed Bolong how many people were already part of the rebellion, but were waiting for the right time to take action. When Bolong asked Suzanne if she knew when that time would be, she had replied that everyone would know when it was the time.
For now, they would stay quiet and do what needed to be done to be ready. Bolong wasn’t surprised to hear that it had been Karn who was behind much of the planning. What he was upset about was why Karn had not come to see him before he left the Palace.
Suzanne said it had been in case Sawdi could read Bolong’s thoughts. Karn pretending to be one of the blind Blessed Ones had been hard enough. As Bolong lay on the moss waiting for Sawdi to return, he smiled to himself.
While Stryker had been training his “boys” to be warriors, Kai-Via, and Preachers, there had always been a rebellion fighting him, right under his nose, which included Bolong, his four friends, Falcon, and Karn. Stryker may have trained them, but they would use that training to defeat him, Aaron, and Sawdi.
Bolong wasn’t sure if he was happy or sad to see Sawdi open the cabin door and call to him. He assumed that they would be going back to the Palace. And he hated it when the Warrior Monks were there.
As Sawdi climbed onto his back, Bolong noticed that he strained to get there. Did he appear thinner, tired, and weaker? Perhaps it would be easier to defeat him in this state. But Bolong stopped that thinking immediately.
As Karn had said, it was possible Sawdi could tap into his thoughts. But that wasn’t the only reason he stopped himself. He had seen the ring glowing, and Bolong suspected that it was the ring that was draining Sawdi. That wasn’t good news. It just meant that the ring had gotten stronger.
Before leaving, Suzanne had shared the story of the two bored brothers who had experimented with planets because they didn’t know what else to do with themselves. She speculated that it was the brothers who had placed the pendant and ring on Thamon as a test of good against evil.
If that was the case, they had to discover how to defeat not only the people involved, but to destroy the pendant and ring. Suzanne was confident that they could. She had said, “If someone gave them power, we can take it back.” But the answer to how to do that was still a mystery.
Bolong sighed as he saw the Palace in the distance. Suzanne had told him very little about what the resistance was planning. The fact that Udore was gone, and Aaron’s secret lair of women and children had been rescued, told him that the plan was working.
All he knew is that whatever they asked of him, he was willing to do. He just hoped that it meant at the end of it all, he would be with Suzanne. Even as a dragon. Bolong smiled to himself and swooped around the Palace. Even the sight of the Warrior Monks swirling like a gluttonous mass below him didn’t dampen his spirits.
Sawdi tensed. Beneath him, Bolong felt different, what was it? Perhaps he was just happy to be flying again. He had stayed too long at the cabin. For some reason, instead of reviving him, the visit had drained him. But the ring had plans, and Sawdi could no longer even dream of resisting it.
Thirty-Four
Like Stryker’s map, the map that Udore had pulled out of thin air remained blank. The only way they knew it was a map was Udore had told them it was, and the seven people watching him had to believe him.
After all, they had nothing else to guide them. Not that a blank map was much help. All questions about how Udore had gotten the map were brushed aside by Udore. There were only a few that he would answer. “No, he hadn’t taken Stryker’s map. He pulled out a copy. No, Stryker would not know.”
To the question of why it was blank, he answered, “Because this map plays tricks. Stryker’s map was blank when I pulled the copy, so this one is too. When Stryker’s map shows him where the next piece is, so will this one.”
“But how do we get there first?” Meg asked, almost afraid to say anything. After all, this was Tarek’s father and a powerful wizard.
“Why don’t we have Joseph and Fionn steal his map and hide it? Or destroy it. Oh, maybe not destroy it because then maybe this map won’t work. But wait. If you can pull a copy, why didn’t you just take the real thing?”
Realizing what she had said to Udore, she added, “Sir.”
Udore laughed and shrugged. “You’re right, of course. That would be so much easier. I have stolen this map before, just the way you suggested. It would come into my hand, and then it would disappear. Eventually, I realized that it was attached to Stryker, and no one can steal it.
“I couldn’t even copy it before. This is the first time I tried it that it worked.”
“Why did it work now?” Meg asked.
“We are back to the prophesies, Meg,” Udore said, glancing over at Karn.
Meg felt her temper flare again. But when Silke landed on her shoulder, she was able to tap it back down.
“Is it going to do any good to ask you what you mean, or are you going to hide all of it from me.”
Karn answered her. “We aren’t hiding it, Meg. We are simply not telling you right now. You, like us, will have to trust that if we do our part, we have a chance.
“If we don’t, then it won’t matter, because what Stryker doesn’t know is that putting the pendant together might not work out the way he thinks it will.
“If the ring and the pendant are in the same place at the same time without being destroyed, then there won’t be a planet to save.”
“You mean the bored brothers would have gone that far? They would have put a full destruction in place?” Rose asked. “How could they have thought that would be okay?”
“Well, at least one of them must have hoped it didn’t happen. But it would be the ultimate test if good can win over evil,” Suzanne said.
“In Erda, did good win?” Tarek asked.
“It did,” Suzanne answered, “And I trust that will be true here.”
“So say we all,” the eight of them said together.
Suzanne recognized that saying from her time in the Earth Realm, and was happy to hear it again on this strange planet. Of course, that begged the question of how everyone knew it. But it was not something she was planning to waste time thinking about for now. They had much bigger issues to deal with, and so few answers to help them.
*******
It was the first food that Stryker had eaten that tasted good to him since he had left the Islands. The landlady was right. She was a good cook. Or maybe it was because he wasn’t sick anymore.
He was beginning to suspect that Captain Kosti had done something that kept the ship rocking all the time, probably to keep him seasick. But Stryker couldn’t prove it, and Kosti was long gone.
However, once he was the ruler of the planet, perhaps he would spend a little time tracking him down and extracting the truth from him.
But first the map. Stryker knew that Sawdi would figure out where he was going, and would eventually come after him. Why he hadn’t already didn’t mean that he didn’t know where Stryker had gone, but only that he was biding his time. Sawdi would wait for the perfect moment, and only Sawdi would know when that time was.
Since no one in Yeal Thalor knew who he was, Stryker didn’t worry about hiding himself, or the map. It was the first time since they had started Aaron-Lem that Stryker felt free. He found that a strange feeling. Shouldn’t he have felt free before?
A bell rang in the distance, and everyone stopped what they were doing and turned towards the east.
What’s going on? Stryker asked himself.
When he realized what was happening, he couldn’t believe it. Even here, in this tiny remote village on Turva, the people were getting ready to pray to Aaron.
Stryker followed the lead of everyone around him. Through the window, he could see that everyone, even those outside on the street, was bowing.
As he bent his forehead to the floor, Stryker couldn’t stop smiling. They had done it. They had brought the whole of Thamon under their rule. As much as they had dreamed of it happening, all the long nights together talking about how they were going to do it, here it was. Done.
That’s when it occurred to him that perhaps there were people in Yeal Thalor who might recognize him. If they were bowing, maybe then there were Kai-Via and a Preacher in town. He couldn’t keep track of all of them all over Thamon.
