Destiny's Kingdom: Legend of the Chosen (30 page)

Quade shouted out loud, succumbing to his frustration and his anger. He clenched Trina's amulet in his fist and then hurled it at the wall, immediately wishing he hadn't and even reaching to catch hold of the silken cord that it hung from as it left his grip. The amulet made a clanging sound as it hit the wall but much to Quade's shock, it did not fall. The pewter of the symbol was almost the same color as the rocky surface, and it hung, suspended for a moment, and Quade walked up to see what held it in place. To the horror of his eyes, Quade watched as the amulet began to melt, to spread across the rock, creeping grey liquid beads that dissipated into little rivulets and then was absorbed.

"No!" He reached to grab the last remnants of the dissolving symbol but none were there for him to grasp. The wall was back to its original state, and the amulet was gone.

"No!" he slammed his fist against the wall, expecting the jarring resonance of his bones from the blow, but instead, the rock gave way, and Quade's arm disappeared into the wall. He pulled it back immediately, examining his hand and arm to see that it was still intact. It was. He looked back to the wall, and pressed it with his fingers, and they too sank into the stone, disappearing as far as he pushed them, then coming out unharmed as he withdrew.

Quade looked around, looked above. There was no one to be seen. In a moment of non-thought, he took a deep breath and stepped into the wall.

Once on the other side, Quade found that he could breathe the air with no problem, and as he inspected himself he found his body to be in its usual shape, without harm. Some kind of portal, he thought to himself., and the idea was interesting to him. He turned to mark his position on the wall so that he could find his way back out, but when he did he saw that the wall was no longer there. From the bright light of the planet's sunset, he'd crossed into a different place, a place where it was dark and temperate that much resembled Bethel.
 

Quade looked about his surroundings and as his eyes focused to the dim light, he turned a circle and surveyed the place where he now stood. It was nighttime and he was outside, the sounds of many insects chirping and squalling from a dense thicket of trees that he found himself to be within. He looked up, seeing a single orange moon between the silhouette of treetops, thin wisps of dusky clouds hovering in front of the glowing orb. The air was damp and cool, and as his eyes further adjusted to the moonlit darkness, Quade saw that the trees trailed along a twisted path, their branches low and twining, creating an archway ceiling over the worn soil floor of the forest. Torn between which way to walk to find some way out of the dense wood, he glanced this way and that to try and get his bearings. Then the rustle of the wind in the trees made him look to his right down the snaking path.
 

"Too many dreams," Quade whispered to himself. "I've had too many dreams that look just like this."
 

Quade knew he must've blinked; or perhaps it was time that actually blinked, for what he saw appeared from nowhere and for a moment, seemed more an illusion than something that could be considered real. But from within the enveloping darkness of the trees, there came an apparition of no type that Quade could identify. It was at first, a glow; golden like morning sunshine, sprinkled with glimmering sparkles of silver and white. And as it grew closer, he could make out a shape within the glow, a tall, slender, feminine shape that walked among the warm light. She was dressed in a flowing white gown layers upon layers of streaming fabric, all different textures and shades of white. The gauzy lengths fluttered gracefully from her wrists, lapping against her porcelain hands, around her pale, bare feet. The neckline of the dress she wore plunged deeply to her sleek belly, and her skin glowed with the shimmer of sparkling powder. Her hair was rich, bright auburn, and fell in winding tendrils almost to her knees, and as she walked toward him it wound about her ethereal form, moving by the will of some non-existent breeze that Quade himself could not feel.

She smiled at him. The gesture brought a nervous shiver down his spine as she moved closer, and he didn't know if he should fear or trust this strange, mysterious creature that was now within mere meters of him. She carried with her the light sounds of bells chiming and a sense of warm compassion and it was at that moment that he was slowly sensing recognition. He realized that he'd opened his mouth to say something but that he'd never quite actually spoken.
 

"My dream…" he finally brought himself to say. "You were in my dream." She didn't answer, so he straightened his shoulders and spoke again. "My name is Quade," he said. "Is this place P'cadia?"

Suddenly a din of many tiny voices sounded from the trees behind her, and all at once a small swarm of fairies bolted from the shadows, tinier than the glimmer finch that lived in the Kadashamrian Forest, but flying with all the speed and agility that they possessed. Glowing with the same light that bathed the unworldly woman that now stood before him, they flitted in a riot of little luminary circles, chattering as they began to tug on Quade's clothes.

"Come on!"

"Come on now, we must go!"

"Come! Hurry! Come!"

Quade looked down at himself, at all the tiny hands that pulled him toward the radiant being that had magically appeared. The fairies all spoke to him in their high, tinny voices, while pulling at his pants, his shirt, even at the buckles that ran up the side of his boots. He walked in the direction that they pulled him, and the ethereal being turned, her garment and her hair now flowing out behind her, the radiant light that she walked within bathing the surroundings in a warm yellow glow. Some guide of sorts, Quade thought to himself, and looked to the ground in front of him. The glowing white woman with the streaming red hair and the fluttering garments left no footprints in the ground where she walked.

He was led to the spot in the trees where she'd appeared, and as he followed, the swarm of fairies suddenly let go his clothes and flitted away, the tinny chime of their voices still echoing in his ears. The guide was heading toward a spot that was dark and empty, which leant him no clue what lay beyond it. She disappeared within the darkness all at once, but before Quade even had the chance to turn back from uncertainty, in the span of a breath he realized that he was now somewhere else entirely.

Quade was now standing alone in an open area of smooth, marbled rock, a large, circular space which was edged by standing stones and sapling trees, dense ivy that wound its way across the ancient, uneven formations. The darkness of night was broken only by moonlight, and Quade looked up to see a familiar sky, Bethel's twin moons, and immediately the welcoming sense of being at home made him feel more at ease. Beyond the empty plaza of unpolished marble where he stood, the shadows were thick and seemed unaffected by the moons' glow. As he turned his head to survey his new surroundings, Quade walked slowly toward the center of the circular area, when suddenly a voice called out from the side.

"Beware of where you drop this," said the voice, and suddenly an object flew at Quade, and he barely had time to reach out and grab for it before it would have hit him square in the chest. It was Trina's amulet that he'd thrown against the wall, that had become a part of the wall before his eyes, and it was now safe in his hand, perfectly intact. A shape walked slowly from the shadows, a hooded, cloaked shape whose topaz eyes could be seen within the dark confines of his garment. As the shape came closer, Quade realized that he wasn't cloaked at all, but the darkness which hung around his head and face was merely a shadow which lifted as the wearer's hand willed it to in a sweeping motion in front of his eyes.

"Avè," Quade said, his voice no more than a breath. "You're actually real…you're actually… here."

"Who did you expect to find if not the Avè, when searching through P'cadia?"

"So this place is P'cadia." The man gestured with his head, maintaining direct eye contact with Quade as he came to stand before him.

"And who are you, the one who comes here bearing Kitrina Val-Vassu's family amulet?"

"I'm Quade Decairus," he replied without thought, his mind still reeling from being in the presence of this such exalted and legendary person. Then once thought came to him a split second later, he asked, "And how do you know Kitrina?" It always sounded so strange when he used her proper name.

"I can't rightfully claim to know her since I've not seen her since her birth," the Avè answered. "And now I shall pose the same question back to you."

"Trina is…" Quade paused, and lost eye contact with the Avè, fumbled for a moment over what to say. Then he looked back up. "Trina is my love."

"Lovers then," the Avè mused, "A grand gift to give a lover, the amulet." Quade stopped him before he went any further.

"More than lovers," he said. "She's my life, my world…she is everything to me." Quade paused again, awkward over his next words. "But the amulet wasn't a gift."

"So you took it without her consent?"

"I suppose you could say that. But she wouldn't mind."

"Then why did you not ask for it?"

"I couldn't." He sighed, frustrated. "If I'd have asked her for it, her safety would have been jeopardized. It's a complicated story, unfortunately."

The Avè tilted his head, examining the young man who stood before him. Quade looked back, trying to appear undaunted, though as was the case of late, he was lost for words to explain himself. And this man, the Avè…Quade didn't know exactly what he had expected, but it surely wasn't this. He appeared to be a man of simple variety, standing no taller than Quade and no broader, his dark hair cut short, his clothing ordinary and nondescript. It was his air of power that held Quade's attention however; the intensity in his stare and in his presence that made him seem like he might be more than just a common man.”

"What have you come here for, Quade?" the Avè asked.

"Answers," he replied.
 

"You must first ask questions before you can expect answers, true?"

Quade hesitated. Tell no one of this, Quade, the emissaries had said to him, no one but your fellow chosen! Did the Avè count in the definition of 'no one?' How could he expect any help if he didn't spell out all that he'd been told?
 
"I'm in a desperate situation, Avè… the outcome of which promises mass destruction of a kind never before seen. It's not so much questions that plague me as it is…circumstances." The Avè turned away from Quade and walked back toward the spot in the circle of stones where he'd appeared.

"Circumstances change Quade," he called, waving his hand casually. At that, a swell of energy resounded in Quade's ears and he felt a shifting in the air. The Avè tuned on his heels and faced Quade again, though now he was on the other side of the area, which had transformed from the circular plane of standing stones to a jagged cliff top, where Quade now stood precariously at the edge of a narrow overhang above a vast, craggy canyon. A single, full moon hung low over him illuminating the barren cliff that they stood upon, and the sky was a deep starless blanket that made space seem endlessly vast. Quade stumbled away from his unsteady position at the edge of the narrow overhang and toward the Avè who seemed unfazed by the shifting of scenery.

"What happened?" Quade demanded, turning a circle to take in his new surroundings. "How did you do that?" The Avè laughed briefly then gestured toward the puzzled young man in front of him.

"Perhaps you would prefer this."

Again, the swell of energy. Not exactly a sound, but the combination of a feeling and a humming vibration, and again the surrounding changed. Sunrise, on Tal-Min Vista. A meteor shower rained down in the sky above, a hint of the blazing twin suns just coming up over the sandy plains. The purple and blue sky swirled with color, pinks and orange, as hundreds of shooting stars shot here and there. The breeze was arid and sharp, filled with the sand that flurried from the deserts. Quade covered his eyes against the wind and the rapidly coming light, but as quickly as he did, the scene changed again.

"Or maybe this."

Peaceful silence. Quade spun around to find himself in Trina's bedroom, late at night. Something startled him when it brushed against his back and he gasped as he looked over his shoulder to see the curtains as they billowed inward, a grazing tickle in the serenity of the room. He turned his head and saw a shape that slept in the bed in front of him, and he whispered her name. "Trina…"

"Bethel would be my choice as well," came the Avè's voice, and at once Quade was transformed back to the circle of standing stones, the familiar twin moons and the constellations that he knew so well. "I was once of Bethel myself."

Quade hadn't noticed the Avè since his surroundings started shifting, and now when he looked back, the man he saw wasn't the same at all. His face was much older, his eyes darker, his clothing more ceremonial. He now wore a jeweled and intricately stitched tunic that hung snugly on his slender form, with a fringe of beaded ribbon just above his knees. He wore high, sable colored leather boots that had thick buckles at the ankles and at the knee over close fitting dark leggings. An ornate and finely drawn tattoo edged the side of his face around his hairline and across the curve of his temples and ears, and there were tiny jewels fixed over the bridge of his nose and above his eyebrows.

"How?" Quade stammered, overwhelmed. "How do you do this? Is it real, or another illusion?"

"P'cadia is no simple illusion, Quade." The man walked to guide Quade away from the center of the area, and over to a stone formation that seemed to serve as a table with benches on either side. "P'cadia is my place. It is what I make of it, and that is what you see." Quade hardly realized that he'd sat down across from the Avè, he was so bewildered by all that he had to take in. "Now, then Quade. Tell me why you've come here."

"Impossible things have been happening to me." His eyes locked on this strange man, this man who controlled his appearance and his surroundings. "I've had dreams, visions, been told legends and prophecies that I'm unsure how to handle. I've been made a part of something that threatens to be catastrophic, and I don’t know if I have the ability to accomplish what I need to, within the time in which I have to do it."