A Division of Souls - A Novel of the Mendaihu Universe (48 page)

“How can you tell?” Anando asked.

“How can anyone tell? It goes far beyond
good and evil, you know that. That’s entirely the wrong way of
looking at it. None of us are completely ‘good’ or ‘evil’ in body
or in spirit…we are just not fully knowledgeable either way.”

“That makes absolutely no sense,” Anando
growled. “If we started this because —”

Nehalé held up a hand to stop him. “Remember
this, above all else: we did not start anything,” he said. “We are
finishing what needs to be completed.”

“Completed? That doesn’t —” Anando stopped
and stared at him, eyes wide and mouth half open, unsure of what
his next words were going to be. A spark had gone off within, and
it had made his spirit sing. “Ascendance,” he managed to say. “Both
the Shenaihu and the Mendaihu…we are both one after all. The One is
here to reunite us.”

Nehalé threw his hands at him. “That’s what
I’ve been trying to tell everyone, Anando! That’s the message I’ve
been trying to give everyone downstairs. Now do you
understand?”

“Yes,” he answered quietly. “I think I
do.”

“Good,” he said, and turned towards the roof
door. “Let’s go welcome her in, then.”

*

She’s almost here,
Saone thought. Her
senses tingled with the excitement of the crowd anxiously awaiting
their savior, and of her own Shenaihu blood, hungrily awaiting its
vengeance that had never been sated. It took enough energy for her
to focus just on her own plans.
It is not revenge
, her
father had told her. If the nuhm’ndah were not here for revenge,
what were they here for? The two senses, the anticipation and the
hatred, conflicted each other yet flowed evenly side by side, as if
one were the symbiote of the other…the duality of the whole…

“Madness,” she whispered to herself and
shook the thoughts out of her head. She did not have time to dwell
on such trivial things, not if she was going to capture this young
girl. She would have to keep her mind and her spirit separate from
everyone else if she were to succeed.

Saone,
a voice called within.

Kryssyna, is that you?
She answered
quietly, hoping those on the floor did not hear her.

It is,
she responded.
We’re in
position in the basement whenever you’re ready. Just say the
word.

A chill washed over her as she confirmed
Kryssyna’s report. She leaned back against the rickety wall, daring
not to question her own plans, now that they had been put in
motion. Again she thought of her father’s words. Again she thought
of what this all meant to the Shenaihu nuhm’ndah, what she had been
taught by her father as well as her older sisters, of what happened
to the Shenaihu…to the Mannaka settlers…all the way back to
Trisanda, when the Shenaihu had been abandoned.
Abandoned!
The Mendaihu…the
Mendaihu
…had left. They’d broken the ties
first, the connections that never should have been severed in the
first place! If it was not revenge, what was it, then?

She wished Kryssyna was here, up in the
mezzanine instead of somewhere in the disused subway tunnels
beneath her. She needed someone by her side right now. She’d known
Kryssyna since childhood, and trusted no one else as fully as her.
If anyone would understand the confusion she now faced, it would be
her. Kryssyna had sacrificed much of who she was for her, truly
believing in their spiritual and emotional connection. Kryss was
once a pure Shenaihu like herself, at one time. But in a selfless
act of love, she had chosen to change that. For Saone. She needed
Kryssyna to be here, next to her. She wrapped her arms around her
knees and shivered.

No time like the present.
Send them in
slowly,
she said.
Let them mingle into the crowd first. I
will give the signal for the next move. You will meet me near the
stairs to the northern mezzanine as soon as possible.

There was a quiet pause before her response.
Understood, Saone.

She left the office as quietly as she had
entered it, headed back down to the main floor, and slipped back
into the mass. No one had seen her go up to the mezzanine a half
hour ago, and had not wondered about her absence. There was
something worrisome about the fact that anyone could have followed,
some busybody sticking their noses in where it didn’t belong. Were
the Mendaihu that confident in their soulsensing? It was hard to
avoid that cloying wave of overwhelming
positivity
they
possessed…it wasn’t blissful ignorance, but it certainly felt that
way.

Even the Shenaihu here were caught up in the
excitement, and that worried her even more. They should know better
than to lose themselves in this! They should not be so quick to
trust anything the Mendaihu were to offer here. She’d given them
the benefit of the doubt when she’d arrived this afternoon. She
even let herself get lost in the flow for a while, especially
whenever she ran into that Mendaihu boy, Anando. It was just a bit
of harmless flirting and playing along to make him believe she had
no ulterior motives.

Such fools, she thought, shaking her head
and laughing to herself. Her father was right, this wasn’t revenge
at all. It was a mockery. A mockery of her spirit!

Moments later, Kryssyna emerged from a large
group of followers who barely noticed her, slipped awkwardly
through the tight pack and tripped to a stop in front of her. “Too
much happiness here,” Kryssyna smirked. “It’s giving me a
headache.”

“Always the voice of reason, I see. They are
all getting in position?”

Kryssyna nodded, and began pointing at
various parts of the warehouse floor. “We have at least two
nuhm’ndah in all the major gathering points in the main area.
There’s at least a dozen near the main rolling door. There are
others in the holding bays behind us. There won’t be too many down
below, but I’ve kept at least ten at the tunnel entrance.”

Saone nodded, impressed by how fast she had
gathered these extras in a short amount of time. “They’re saying
the One of All Sacred should be arriving any moment now. I’ve heard
from the outside posts that she has made her way on foot for the
last mile and was last seen three blocks from here.”

“I’ve confirmed that,” Kryssyna responded.
“To come without guard, though…very unexpected.”

“She has one Protector with her,” Saone
said. “A girl of the Ehramanis clan.”

She snorted out a derisive laugh. “She won’t
do much damage.”

Saone dismissed her gruff answer by putting
an arm around her. “Come…” she said. “We have a few more things to
—”

She comes.

The calm, soothing voice was so unexpected
that Saone stopped dead in her tracks and gasped. She felt the dark
chill rolling down her back, doubling back when all the sounds and
voices that filled the warehouse quelled at once, leaving quiet and
cold silence. Someone, perhaps Nehalé, had spoken within everyone
in the immediate area at once — no mean feat, even for a
well-trained Mendaihu — and had commanded the attention of every
single person inside and outside the warehouse.

She comes!

A second chill raced down her back.

The One of All Sacred is here.

Saone dared not speak into this silence,
either aloud or within. She dared not even think a complete
thought, for fear that it would disrupt whatever was about to
happen. Even as she shifted weight from one leg to the other,
turning herself around to face the open dock doors, her steps were
muffled by the overbearing quiet. The only noise came from the wind
from the storm outside, racing down the cross streets and spilling
into any open building. Many of the dock doors had been opened on
the southern end, and now a cool breeze pushed through the
warehouse, stilling the crowd even more. She heard the soft murmur
of the transports at the detour a few blocks up, and the rumble of
the storm reaching the Tower a few miles away. It was only seconds
later, when it rumbled again, that what she actually heard was
something entirely different. This was not a thunderstorm.

Rain of Light
, she mouthed
silently.

A dozen or so people surrounding her turned
slowly and faced her without so much as a word or a sound, as if to
confirm her darkest fear. When they turned back seconds later, she
felt a tear fall down her cheek. It was then that she saw the crowd
slowly parting to make way for the One of All Sacred.

I am here,
the young girl said.

*

I am here,
she said.

Denni stood just inside one of the warehouse
doors and slowly scanned the thousands of Mendaihu and Shenaihu,
who were all staring back at her in rapt silence. She sensed each
and every one of them. They were quiet, reverent…and they were all
waiting for her. For
her
, the One of All Sacred in its Ninth
Embodiment. She stood there, not daring to move another step, not
yet. She felt their eyes on her, the gossamer threads of their
spirits reaching out to her, afraid to touch but powerless to
ignore the attraction. They were anxious for the moment…they were
patient and subdued. Their spirits were in flux.

I am the One of All Sacred
, she said
within.

She felt Amna’s presence behind her. Always
behind, never beside. She recognized her stance as reverence, not
as subservience. She would be the closest to her from now on, an
ever loyal and trusted
sehnadha
. Amna would remain close to
her from here on in…yet the spiritual bond she and her sister
shared would not be surpassed. Caren…
Karinna
…she would
always be the closest spirit to her, the Protector.

I have come to Awaken you all
.

She exhaled and very slowly stepped into the
warehouse. She did not know exactly where she was headed in this
place…except that they moved back with each step she took. She
scanned over the crowd at the racks and the mezzanines, searching
for a place where she could see all of them and they could see her.
The words she spoke within were reaching them clearly. She raised
her lips in a half-smile…and the people closest to her returned her
expression ten-fold.

I am Dennise Johnson; I am Denysia Shalei
si Emmadha si Dhumélis. I am not Meraladian or Mannaki by direct
bloodline; I am Gharné, and I am Trisandi by spirit and by ancient
bloodline. I am my own; I am part of All. I am singularity; I am
duality. We are
all
duality.

She found the steps to the northern
mezzanine and made her way to them in a slow arc. She needed a high
place for everyone to see her when she at last spoke aloud. As she
walked she remembered the words given to her by Ampryss…her Spirit
Guide. Ampryss! She now understood who she was! Ampryss was
Trisandi, her anchor to all other realities, and the One of All
Sacred was the only spirit who could safely and knowledgeably
travel all of them. If it wasn’t for the fact that her spirit was
giddy with this sudden influx of Light and Knowledge, she would not
have been able to accept this daunting fate.

We are
all
duality. We are
One.

Did anyone out there on the floor understand
what she was saying? Would they in time? She shook that thought out
of her head, realizing that she could ill afford to doubt herself
right now; she was their chance to learn all that she, the One of
All Sacred, had to teach them. She was their
only
chance.

We are here, you and I, to set things right.
We are here, ultimately, to learn and to evolve. We wish to ascend,
to lift our spirits to higher plains of consciousness, to higher
states of being. Hear this now: none of you — NONE of you! — are
unworthy of this simple quest. Because we are all descendants of
Trisanda, that is our ultimate goal, and it is one we are all able
to achieve in our own way.

Balance. Love. Peace. Light.
Understanding.

Denni stopped at the bottom stair, and
turned to look at the still-silent crowd. They were waiting in rapt
silence for her to say more…yet she found herself wanting someone,
anyone, to join in. This journey was not just hers. This was
everyone’s. She could feel the presence of non-Mendaihu souls here;
some were curious onlookers who resonated with everyone, but most
were Shenaihu. The element of danger — the
possibility
of
danger, she reminded herself — was there, with the two polar
opposites here in this ultimately confined space. It could just as
easily turn into another pitched battle, but she refused to let
that happen.

I hear…I see Light and Dark surrounding me.
I feel it.

Her eyes stopped on a young woman. She was
slim with an athletic build, with short jet-black hair, and dark
eyes open wide in equal parts awe and terror. She tentatively
reached out her senses to touch her aura, when the most unexpected
and surprising thing happened: the woman flinched.

Fear!

“Do not be afraid,” she said aloud, directly
at the woman. Again, she reached out her senses, this time with a
deliberate slowness. “You are not alone here,
eichi
. There
is no need to cower. I will not harm you.”

“I —” the woman started. Fear gave way to
anger; she changed from stock still to defensive stance in one
fluid movement. The surrounding crowd gasped in shock. Was she
really that terrified of being touched by the One of All Sacred? “I
—” she said again. Her hands wavered slightly, dropped a few
inches. A single tear appeared under her right eye.

The crowd surrounding them stood still, not
daring to move for fear that their motions would be construed as an
attack.

D-Denysia…
the woman whispered.
Do
not tempt me.

“I do not tempt you,” Denni said quietly. “I
welcome you.”

“Don’t —” she growled. The woman shifted in
place, hands still in the air in front of her, ready for combat.
The inner demon held fast. Yet there was confusion within this
anger, within this fear, as if she’d had a revelation, that
something she’d never wanted to understand, had come to light and
she had been cruelly forced to accept it. She choked back a sob,
blinked out the tears, and held her stance.