Destiny's Kingdom: Legend of the Chosen (20 page)

"And you've come telling me this why, Quade? Ride or not, I've no care in the matter. Speak to my daughter. Go home and seek a healer. I've no time for such things as this."

The words were cutting and foreign. They were not the words of the Keystone that Quade knew, the compassionate man that he'd grown up around, who treated him like family. Turning his head to the side he stole a glance at Aazrio and saw that he'd cocked a curious brow at the Keystone's comment but he said nothing. Taking a deep breath, he sat up straight again. Aushlin was facing one of his readout displays, studying it nonchalantly but the dark face of the wicked entity that enveloped him still stared at Quade, it's black pit eyes narrowed into hateful accusation, the pulsating gape of a mouth chilling him to the bone. The Keystone then turned his head to look back at Quade, and was obscured by the inky darkness that controlled him.

"Yes Aushlin, you're right. I should speak with Trina and tell her I've been ill. Perhaps all I need is to rest." He forced a smile, the burning in his nerves nearly blinding him with pain. "Do you know where she is right now?

"I've no idea, Quade. It's not my habit to keep track of her whereabouts."

The Keystone turned back to analyzing the display in front of him, and Quade craned his head to see the readout. He startled as Aushlin quickly jerked his head and scowled at the unwelcome visual inspection.”

"Kitrina is out at the stables, as she would be Quade," came Aazrio's voice from behind. Startled again, Quade turned to face the guard, realizing how jumpy he must seem, and nodded. When he glanced back to the Keystone though, Quade had to fight from losing his balance and falling from the chair in reaction at what he saw.
 

The blackness began moving away from Aushlin; separated in a strange, stretching cloud, snapped apart and floated across the room. The entity remained upon the Keystone, but a part of it had broken off and drifted away through the door.
 

Perplexed and horrified, Quade rose from his chair and walked hastily to the door, forcing himself to look at the riot of displays that filled the room. Leylines, nexus points, all data on the navigation of the galaxy and its planets highlighted Aushlin's research, and Quade had a sickening dread with how that tied in with what it was that he saw hovering around the Keystone.
 

"Thank you Aushlin, Aazrio." He tried once again as he walked out the door to make a connection with the family guard, his eyes searching and hopeful, but all Aazrio did was watch him leave, the usual scrutinizing gaze upon his face.

As Quade left the room, Aazrio approached the Keystone's desk, fueled with annoyance at the young man's anxious manner. Once standing before the Keystone, he started to speak, expecting to be silenced before the words left his lips. He was not, and he faltered slightly from surprise.
 

"That was… unusual, don't you think, Keystone?"

The Keystone didn’t respond. After a moment of strange silence, Aazrio added, "Perhaps I should pursue the matter?" He would be brushed aside as usual he knew, his suspicions dismissed by the trusting regard that the Keystone held toward Quade.
 

"Do what you will, guardian. I've no time to concern myself with frivolous matters."

Aazrio stood speechless for a minute, never having been anything but halted in his pursuits to put space between Quade and Trina. The Keystone looked up, his face disinterested, and the guard began to walk toward the door.

"I shall require complete seclusion, Aazrio and there will be no visitors accepted between now and tomorrow night. Is that clear?"

"Yes Keystone," Aazrio replied, ignoring the twitch of puzzlement that crossed his brow. "Whatever you wish."

Was that confusion Quade heard in the guard's voice as he stood, his ear against the heavy door of the Keystone's study? Quade clutched his chest with his hand, heaved heavy breaths as he leaned against the ancient wooden entrance. He had never heard Aazrio sound unsure of anything in his entire life. Perhaps it was only Quade who could see the entity that possessed the man who'd been more like a father to him than any other man in the world, but just from the tone in the guard's voice Quade knew that Aazrio was as mystified by Aushlin's behavior as Quade himself was terrified from it.

He needed answers, and fast. Before he had the mind to think it through, Quade bolted down the long hallway and was running down the curving decline of the spiral staircase.

CHAPTER 15

Q
uade flattened himself against the castle wall facing the open hills, a place that had, of late, become his place of meditation, where he could come clear his mind. His chest heaving, hands shaking with anger and disbelief, he spoke aloud, figuring that at this point he had nothing to lose.

"Emissaries! You said that you would be here to guide me so where are you now? Show yourselves!" He looked to the south, he looked to the east, but the voice came from the north.

"They always become so demanding once things begin to be revealed."
 

Quade jerked his head to the side, where the two emissaries walked toward him. He watched for a moment, spellbound, because though they walked instead of floating, which was their usual mode of transport, they also grew as they advanced, beginning as creatures no larger than a squirrel perhaps, and ending, once they stood before him, as the size of young girls, about a meter tall. They still maintained their color, and the glimmer of their respective gold and blue dusts flurried around them from behind, settling as they both came to stand still in front of him. Seeing them at such a height and standing so close to him, they seemed almost human were it not for their unusual skin tones, and Quade found himself unnerved to speak to them in the aggressive manner in which he'd planned. They both appeared calm for all the anxiety he was feeling, and that brought him back to his state of dismay.

"What's happening?" he demanded. "What's happening to the Keystone? What is this thing that no one else can see but me?"

The blue emissary-Echo if he remembered rightly-was the first to speak. "It is the thing we have warned you about, Quade. It is the beginning of the end for your world if you don't heed our word, and follow our guide. The plan we have told you of must be fulfilled and quickly, for this is only the onset for the destruction of all things."
 

"But what is it, this plan? You tell me these things and then expect me to interpret your ambiguous words! I will not have it anymore. Explain this to me, in a way that I can understand! Explain this evil force that has come into my world!"

"The confines of language is limiting Quade, and it is difficult to describe this entity with simple words. Countless worlds have fallen as its victim, countless souls have braved this battle and lost."
 

"Yours will likely be no different."
 

"Why do you say this to me?" He glared at the gold one, Mimic, the one who always carried such doom and hopelessness in her comments. "Say that I'm destined to set forth on this quest but destined to fail. Say that I must seek my fellow chosen, as though I'm living a legend that we tell school children! As if this thing I keep encountering were the same thing that threatens to end our world in the myth!"

"Ah, he finally faces the truth," Echo said, casting a sideways glance at Mimic then looking back to Quade. "Perhaps this legend of which you speak isn't really a legend at all."

"You feel ill whenever it is near," Mimic stared hard at him as she spoke. "And yet you still refuse to acknowledge the very thing your body is reacting to. You doubt our presence, our warnings, and yet all we tell you has proved to be true. We can guide you but you must be willing to heed our words."

"Why should it be me who goes forth in this task? What quality do I have that makes me the right one…to save our world!"

"We do not make these decisions, Quade. Those are choices of the gods."

"Quade, your destiny is what you've seen. Your power, the ability to see that which others cannot. You have gifts they have given to you alone. With these gifts the Chosen, when allied, can overcome this adversity. It is the way things are ordained."

Quade thought on this for a minute, tried to bring himself into what he reasoned would be the right state of mind to accept what they were telling him. He thought of Aushlin, how cold and strange his manner had been. He thought of Clea, remembered how his heart had skipped a beat when she reacted to his speaking the word P'cadia, this imaginary place from his dreams. He thought of the legend he'd grown up hearing, finding it hard to remember the proper way that the story went now that he actually needed to know.
 

"Tell me about this thing," Quade said slowly. "How does one defeat it? Assuming this is real, as impossible as it seems…assuming I can find my missing Chosen, assuming I can get Clea to come back, what is it that we will be fighting? Tell me so we might at least have a chance."

"How to explain that which cannot be explained without seeing?" Echo said this without really asking, as though she knew there was no way. Mimic added her typically abject commentary.

"How does one explain to a deaf person what it is to hear the song of a bird, or a blind man how it is to glimpse the colors in kaleidoscope?" She cocked her shoulder and cast a quizzical glance to him. "How to explain that which has not been experienced?"
 

Echo was looking at him with the same expression. "How, indeed?"

Quade felt a moment pass between them as he stared at the two creatures, and the silence around him was so heavy he almost couldn't speak. They both stared intensely, and somehow he knew that something was about to happen, a revelation…that would change everything forever. His frustration flared, but the determination for some understanding prompted him to demand an answer.

"Show me then! Show me what has come before."

He saw them both nod their head, and for a moment, all went black.
 

In an instant, everything was gone. Quade hadn't moved, and yet somehow he'd been moved. Moved to a place that was no place, where he stood on a ground that he could not see, looked up to a sky that was not there. He stumbled in his confusion, reaching to grasp anything that might give him a sense of place, but there was nothing. Nothing but emptiness, nothing to see anywhere that he looked around and so he fell to his knees. Terror rose within him, and he gasped over the words that tried to form in his throat.

"Where…?"

It was a helpless sound, echoed off of nothing, fell flat because there was no resonance, no grass beneath him, no trees or structures, no sky, no planet. Nothing for the sound to bounce against. As he gained the ability to again try to speak through his bewildered fear, a sound came from behind.
 

"This is the Beginning, Quade." It was the voice of the blue emissary, Echo. He turned quickly toward the sound and saw that she hovered over his shoulder, tiny again, like a bird. Such relief he'd never known, to simply see something, anything, amid that which was truly void.

"The Beginning of All, what there was before there was Any Thing."

"Take me back to Bethel," he said. "This isn't my place, isn't my time. I'm needed where I was before, that is where my life is. Take me back!"

"Your life awaits you Quade, but by your demand you wish to experience what has come before. This is the path you must take to grasp your destiny, to embrace your role."

"You must see to understand," Mimic had appeared over his other shoulder. "And understand to see."

"You're sure you can get me back?" He looked between the two. "Back home, once this is done?"

"Ever-doubting Quade, you must trust us." The two came to hover before his eyes. He nodded, still uncertain, but knowing he had no choice.

"Why the Beginning?" he rasped, then cleared his scratchy throat. "How does this bear on what's happening in my world?"

"There was a time, though it was eons ago Quade, when the gods were young and alone."

"They sought to create something all their own, though having never created, they had no guide to follow." Mimic drifted behind Echo, rotating gently as she hovered and as she spoke, and Quade found her movements more a comfort now that there was nothing else to see. It seemed to bring him focus, and assured him that he was still actually alive and not dead or trapped inside some dream. "What they created was crude and unrefined. It had no shape, no true substance. And for the time, it was their grandest accomplishment."

Something caught the corner of Quade's eye, and he looked up to see a distortion in the invisibility. The clear had begun to separate and from the nothingness all around there came a mutation. A rip became apparent in the vastness of nothing, a rip that started as a thin tear, spreading quickly across the panorama of Quade's sight. Suddenly a vibration began to sound inside Quade's head, an unnatural swell of magnetic warp, deep, bellowing.

"Oh, and Quade," Echo interrupted, "you might want to cover your ears-"