Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 (4 page)

P
etra saw Vandal fall and immediately darted out of the trees and across the dried mud, splashing into the water, not caring that her new Nikes would be wrecked as she waded out to him. Seconds later she had his upper body out of the water. His eyes had rolled back and he didn’t look to be breathing.

A cold like she’d never felt before swept over her and she shivered. He might already be dead. He certainly felt like a dead weight. A sob of despair welled in her chest but before it could exit her mouth, common sense smacked in. Vandal wouldn’t die while she was here. Not if she was practical. Dry land and CPR. That’s what she had to concentrate on. She grasped him under the armpits and used the water to support his body weight as she dragged him into the shallows then up onto the cracked mud. No time to get to the trees. She hefted him as best she could but he was twice her weight.

At least she had him half out of the water. Quickly she rolled him to his side and poked her fingers into his mouth, clearing his airway. She fished around for obstructions but found none, then pulled back to check his carotid artery for a pulse. Discovered it quickly on his neck. Thank God for the first-aid training they’d had the previous term. Pulse, strong and steady, but no breathing.

Panic swelled but Petra stomped on it. Vandal was not going to die because of her. She rolled him onto his back again and tilted his head up, pinched his nose firmly and leant in to start artificial breathing. But a handbreadth away from his lips she faltered. God, his lips. She knew them by heart. So full, so soft. How many times had she dreamt of touching them with her own, knowing she never would. And now …

Stop it! She covered his mouth with her own, exhaled a good breath, then tilted her head to watch his chest and hear his exhale. Did it again. And again. Paused after five to check his pulse before restarting the breaths. Got into the rhythm they’d learnt. By the time she’d reached ten, however, Petra felt the nibble of panic returning. When was he going to start breathing on his own?

After the fourteenth breath Vandal made a choking sound.

She pulled back and shoved him onto his side where he vomited lake water for what seemed like forever. Her own eyes started watering. Vandal would have a sore chest when this was over.

Her gaze lowered. His chest. She’d memorised that as well, watching it fill out as he grew. Her own chest was … filling out, but Vandal wouldn’t have noticed that, wouldn’t have noticed her in class, a tiny dark mouse scurrying around behind him, watching, waiting. Well, today that patience had paid off. Big time.

Vandal’s retching eventually tailed off and he fell onto his back again, eyes closed. Petra wasn’t sure if he was even aware of her presence. But clearly he was going to be okay. It was time to leave before he recognised her and started wondering how she’d come to be there at just the right moment.

She should sneak off home and try to scrub her Nikes before her dad saw them. Only, she’d never been so close to Vandal before. Well, there had been that time in the tuckshop queue, but he hadn’t been half-naked then, and even if he had been she would have been too self-conscious to stare. But she could stare now, watching his beautiful chest rise and fall, admiring his long, dark eyelashes against those smooth olive cheeks, wishing she could see the dimples she knew were hidden beside his smile.

Sodden strands of fringe poked in his eyes and she wanted so badly to brush them back. Only now it was different. He didn’t need her, so she had no excuse. She should be standing up and slipping away to the cover of the trees to watch from there if she wanted to keep ogling. Wait, naturally, to be sure he was okay, but not right beside him where he could discover her the moment he opened his eyes. Vandal wasn’t stupid. Far from it. He’d take one look at her with her tongue hanging out and know she’d been following him. He watched people. Knew things about them.

She had to go.

She stayed.

Stupid. Incredibly stupid, but she’d had a crush on him since fifth grade. To sit with her hand right next to his biceps, to watch the water running off his skin. She might never have this opportunity again. Common sense was Petra’s forte, but today she’d happily admit to being as dumb as dog shit.

To have actually touched his lips with her own was so incredible she simply couldn’t make herself leave. Not yet. It was as though there was more to happen. As though the warm feeling swelling inside her was inside him as well. As though … this was her chance to tell him how she felt, while he was still physically vulnerable, and grateful for her rescue.

He stirred. She heard a soft groan and saw his eyelids struggle to part. For the second time that morning common sense slapped into her. She turned away, rolling onto one knee to sprint for cover, but before she could, his fingers encircled her arm.

‘Petra … Mabindi?’

Oh … my … God.

B
reehan, the Storyteller of the Plainsmen, opened his eyes and tried to look around himself, but his aged body would not respond. His head would not turn. He could see that he was no longer in the great hall of the Volcastle where he had been with The Catalyst. A white light had descended on him and he remembered nothing more.

Now he was in a much smaller room, stone walls, yet again with an open ceiling like the great hall. This skylight was above a crypt platform, and through it Breehan could see dark clouds swirling overhead, deepening the shadows below. A russet glow from a fire nearby cast an eerie light. He strained his eyes to find The Catalyst with her glistening black gown and distinctive royal-white hair, yet could not.

Breehan was relying on her to live up to her part of their bargain and return him to his people. Though he was old, the Plainsmen would still have need of their Storyteller. The lore of the tribe lived in his mind. He must pass that on before he died. And though it would scald his soul, he must see Noola again.

The Catalyst had promised to take him.

He must find her.

‘There, old man. Do not move,’ a voice said from behind him. A voice out of his past.

‘Talis?’ he whispered, then was shocked at how decrepit he sounded even to his own ears. ‘It is I, Breehan.’

The Guardian came around in front of him and Breehan’s breath caught in his throat. Only three years on Ennae, he reminded himself. Talis was yet to see thirty summers and Breehan had been younger when they had last met. He held out a withered hand. ‘I see you are unchanged.’ The marvel of that discovery was reflected in his voice. His own hair was a straggly grey tail, while the Guardian bore the same long dark locks and warrior plaits that Breehan remembered. Talis’s eyes were the same kind brown in an unwrinkled face, though the dimples he remembered so well were not in evidence.

‘You are much changed,’ Talis said in consternation. ‘Your years have been stolen …’

‘I was trapped on the fast-moving world of Haddash by the Serpent God Kraal.’ Breehan paused to let the emotion of these words wash over him. ‘I live now only to return to my tribe.’

‘Then I will aid you to do so when I have returned my king to his Volcastle.’

‘I was there.’ Breehan looked around again, his old head wobbling. ‘But now … where are we?’

‘The Royal Shrine, three days march from the Volcastle. Soon we will leave.’

Breehan struggled to regain memories long lost in his mind. ‘I thought you had died,’ he said.

Talis shook his head. ‘I was on the Airworld with Khatrene and King Mihale. We have only recently returned.’

Breehan’s gaze wavered. It had been sixty years since he had concerned himself with the political affairs of Ennae. His sole focus had been to escape Haddash and rescue Noola’s son, Hanjeel. Now he struggled to remember others from his past, but the decades of mental torture at the hands of the Serpent of Death had blunted his memory. ‘Khatrene was The Light of Ennae … who bore an aura of otherworld hues?’

‘The same,’ Talis said. ‘Your tribe gave us sanctuary while her husband The Dark was pursuing her.’

Breehan nodded. It was coming back to him now. ‘The child that grew within her then was The Catalyst, Glimmer, who rescued me from Haddash that I might aid her to construct the sky mirrors which anchor Ennae to the Four Worlds.’ Breehan was still awed at what they had created with her inner strength and his people’s memory stone.

The memory stone!

Breehan raised a hand to his throat. ‘The talisman …’ He struggled to sit up and Talis assisted him. ‘Where is the memory stone of my people?’ The last he remembered he’d had it in his hand.

Talis looked uncomfortable but he held Breehan’s glance. ‘My Lord and King Mihale now wears the stone.’

Breehan shook his head. ‘A descendant of the Ancients? But why?’ He glanced around. ‘Where is your king?’

Talis looked away. ‘Speaking in private to his sister.’

‘And The Catalyst?’

‘Gone from this world.’

Breehan snatched at Talis’s shirt front, startling the Guardian. ‘That was not her plan. Something is amiss. We must return to the Volcastle at once.’

‘I hear you,’ Talis said, but Breehan doubted that he truly did. The Guardian’s mind was elsewhere, but Breehan’s had found a focus. If the Plainsmen were to survive the coming Maelstrom, The Catalyst must join the Four Worlds. Something or someone had pulled Glimmer from her path, and Breehan would gladly use what remained of his life to restore her to it.

G
limmer lay quite still, staring into the crazed eyes of the man above her. Kert Sh’hale had a knife at her throat and she had just used the last of her power reserves to save him from following his son into death in the Volcastle’s fiery mouth. Having transported them both to the Fireworld of Haddash, she was trembling with exhaustion. An unnatural calm hung in the air. That and the smell of sulphur.

‘I give you one last chance,’ he said, pressing the knife against her windpipe.

Despite the necessities of the moment, the part of Glimmer’s mind that was not swirling with unwanted emotions observed a decrease in the possible futures — too many divergences to calculate whether it would still be possible to join the Four Worlds. But if she could stop Kert killing her now, the possibilities widened.

‘Bring Lenid back to life and you may yet live,’ he said.

She shook her head slowly, long blonde hair sliding through the dirt. Shadows around them concealed more than they revealed. A cave, that was all she could see, with glowing fungus on the walls providing illumination. She looked back to Kert. ‘I cannot do what you ask,’ she said.

‘Cannot? Or will not?’

Glimmer simply stared at him, unable to assimilate the deluge of feelings — attraction, compassion, protective urges, desire — she was experiencing for this man who was about to kill her, a man she had never met before this day. She took a shallow breath and tried to think. How could she could feel pleasure from a threatening touch? Was she in
love
?

She should never have come into contact with the emotion stream while she’d been constructing the anchor. It had wrenched her from cool self-mastery and locked her biological radar onto Kert. Now everything about him made her ache — the way his coal-black hair fell in careless strands across his pale forehead, the slender fingers that had bruised her throat, his dark tortured eyes. At first all she had seen in them was hatred, but behind that emotion she now saw grief, and torment such as she had never imagined a man could bear.

The Fire God’s interference while she’d been creating the final anchor was the cause of both Kert’s grief and her own crippling emotional state. Kraal had not only sidelined her, he now had the talisman. She must get the stone back, she knew that, but such was her immersion in the ecstasy of love, she could not find the will to act on this knowledge. Instead she longed only to take Kert’s pain away. To take them both away, somewhere the Maelstrom couldn’t touch them; but even if she’d had any power left, there was nowhere to go. The only worlds that supported life were slowly being torn apart.

‘You are The Catalyst. You can do anything.’ Desperation sharpened his words. ‘You can give me back my king.’

‘No.’ Bad enough to have rescued Kert. Going back in time, even that short distance, to rescue the child was impossible. She had exhausted herself anchoring the Four Worlds. It would take time to recuperate enough to return to Ennae. If she wasn’t careful, she would not have the strength necessary to join the Four Worlds when the time came. Assuming she could get the stone back. What she needed was rest, to regain her vitality, but …

Love makes you weak.

Her Champion, Pagan, had told her that when she was a child, and at the time Glimmer had felt relief that she would never experience this debilitating vortex that sapped the will and the mind. Yet rather than causing a deficiency, in Kert’s presence her heart felt full of wonder and blissful delirium. Like a dreamer who suddenly awakes from monotone to colour, her reality now sparkled with promise and vibrated sensuously with each beat of her impetuous heart.

Kert, of course, was oblivious to her awakening. ‘You are the “shadow through time”,’ he said, and even the harshness of his voice stroked her senses. ‘You can go back and forth.’

‘I told you, my strength is —’ She felt the knife press harder, swallowed tightly. ‘Yes, I have travelled time,’ she admitted. ‘I am younger now than I was in Ennae.’

‘Why?’ He leant closer; his eyes narrowed, probing her defences, trying to catch her in a lie.

Glimmer caught his hot scent and felt dizzied by it. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, her voice too loud, sounding as desperate as he did.

‘You lie.’

Her lips parted and she stared at his, wondering what it would take to bridge that small distance, to have him touch her with his mouth, probe her with his tongue. The idea of tasting him dizzied her more. Was she going mad?

‘Speak or die,’ he said coldly. ‘Why are you younger here?’ The knife pressed and stung her throat and she quickly regathered her attention. ‘Is it to gain sympathy from me?’ he demanded. ‘I will not spare your life.’

Yet he continued to speak to her when he could have killed her, had threatened to kill her many times. And had not.

‘I should be twenty-six, not sixteen,’ she admitted, wondering why she was. She must have done this to herself. But why? Part of her did not experience time in a linear fashion. Had that part already known she would fall outside her destiny and into love? And if it had, why had it acted to place her in Haddash with Kert instead of preventing the error?

Though the range of possible futures had narrowed, the section of her mind still intent on analysis saw a handful of possibilities in which she joined the Four Worlds, but not with a Plainsman at her side to focus the talisman. In these futures Glimmer saw
herself
focusing the stone and she hadn’t thought that was possible.

‘You do not gull me with your counterfeit innocence,’ Kert said and even his sneer was beautiful, yet Glimmer was forced to struggle with the anguish his rejection brought her. Sharp stabbing pain obliterated joy, and neither emotion was familiar to her. This was the torment Pagan had described — love unable to find fulfilment. ‘I will kill you if you do not do as I ask,’ Kert declared.

Glimmer tried to concentrate, to think despite her suffering. ‘I am of royal blood.’ She hoped to quell his hatred with a reminder of duty. ‘You have sworn to serve the throne.’

‘I served Mihale and his son —’

Yet at the mention of Lenid, instead of vengeance Glimmer saw hesitation in his eyes. She pushed her advantage: ‘Lenid was never meant to rule. His father has recently returned to Ennae —’

‘Mihale is alive?’ The knife lifted a fraction and Kert’s beautiful eyes widened.

Belatedly she realised she should not have told him that. Now his desire to return to Ennae would be increased. She had to keep him here, with her. ‘Mihale is adequately protected,’ she told him. ‘I am not.’

‘If you are The Catalyst, Pagan of the House of Guardians is your appointed Champion,’ Kert said coldly, ‘not I.’

‘I am the child of The Dark and The Light,’ she said with as much force as her pounding heart would allow. ‘If I die, who will save the Four Worlds? Or Mihale and his kingdom, your home …?’

Kert frowned. ‘You didn’t save Lenid.’ Pain was vivid in his eyes as he remembered the boy he had raised as his own, son of the king he’d thought dead.

‘That wasn’t my destiny,’ she said.

‘But saving Mihale is?’

‘Why do you think you are still alive?’ she lied, her lips trembling. She hoped he would think it was fear of his knife. ‘If you protect me now,’ she said, ‘when I am stronger we will return to Ennae where you may resume your role as Champion to the King.’

He glared at her but she could see that her words had given him hope. The madness of desperation had fled his eyes. She waited, unable to breathe until at last he took his knife from her throat and slipped it back into its ankle sheath, pulling her up with him. His cloak brushed her bare arm, setting off tingles that made her mouth dry. She bit her lip to find pain and a way to regain control over her wayward body, but when he grasped her shoulders to steady her, she swayed, lost again in his eyes and the tumult of sensations that overshadowed her analytical thought processes.

‘At the earliest moment you must return us to Ennae,’ he demanded, oblivious to her emotional state. ‘My duty lies there.’

She nodded. One day they would have to return. The Four Worlds could not be joined from Haddash, but the Maelstrom had not yet reached critical mass. While she waited to perform the joining she would try to win Kert’s love. Here on Haddash she would have years instead of the months that would pass on Ennae.

‘Mihale must live,’ Kert said, gazing through her now.

He appeared to be struggling to retain his anger at her or his duty towards Mihale — anything that might keep him from the dark realm of grief for his son. She could confirm that, as she had done many times on Magoria, reading Sarah’s and Pagan’s thoughts, but she didn’t dare touch Kert’s. To open her mind to him as she had opened her heart would be to lose herself completely, to not know where she began and he ended. One day she might have the strength for it. But not this day.

‘Will you protect me until I can return to my uncle’s kingdom?’ she asked to distract him, knowing her request, phrased in this way, would play on his loyalty to Mihale. ‘He will be grateful for your service to his kin. As will those who would see The Catalyst join the Four Worlds,’ she reminded him.

Kert’s hard grip on her shoulders eased and she allowed herself to enjoy this gentler touch, long fingers warm through the thin fabric of her T-shirt.

‘I am a sworn Champion to the throne,’ she heard him say warily, as though convincing himself to give up his vengeance. ‘My duty is to protect the descendants of the Ancients.’

‘And while I am in this weakened state I require your protection,’ she reminded him, untroubled by the admission. Her dependence on Kert was all that kept them together. She could hardly bemoan it.

‘How long must you rest?’ he asked, an edge of anger still in his voice.

She shook her head, as though she was unsure. ‘Anchoring the Four Worlds has sapped my strength. Bringing you here was too great a strain.’ On heart, body and mind. ‘It could be days.’ In truth, she hoped to keep Kert with her for years, but that wasn’t news he would want to hear.

‘Lenid’s … death unsettled me,’ he admitted. ‘I am sorry to have offered you violence.’ This was not said graciously but Glimmer did not care. ‘Clearly your life must be safeguarded if the Four Worlds are to be joined and Mihale is to live.’ So he blamed her for Lenid’s death, yet would protect her out of duty to Mihale. It was a poor beginning for a relationship.

He looked around. ‘Our histories of the Four Worlds speak of a Serpent of Death on Haddash, a fearsome beast that devours all who appear on his world.’

Glimmer nodded and tried to focus away from her body and how Kert affected her. She must sound sensible to regain his respect. ‘Kraal cannot exist on the same world as descendants of the Ancients. While I am here he cannot come.’ She knew she should show an interest in their surroundings, but while Kert was with her she had eyes only for him.

‘What else may offer us violence here?’ Kert continued to scan the nearby area. She saw that his animosity was no longer directed at her but was now aimed outwards, at any threats to their safety. That gave her heart. Where the anger had been, she hoped to plant seeds of love.

‘I don’t know,’ she lied, thinking the idea of threat might keep them in the cave where close proximity could breed intimacy. In reality Haddash was harmless. The Fire God’s underlings had disappeared with his castle when Kraal had fled her presence. Only the Domedwellers with their fetish for technology remained, and they were a spent force.

‘Have you been to this world before?’ he asked her. ‘Is there food?’

For the first time Glimmer noted a distant howling. Wind? The cave they had appeared in was evidently far from the exposed surface of Haddash. ‘I saw only the crumbling palace of the Serpent God, several domed cities and a great expanse of baked earth,’ she said. ‘There was little vegetation.’

He looked back to her and frowned in irritation. ‘Do what you must to regain your strength. Later we will venture forth in search of food.’

Glimmer nodded. He did not know the extent of her powers. That could be used to her advantage. After sleep she would be able to materialise edible moss in the next cave, together with a spring. Such meagre sustenance would not raise his suspicions, and convenient food would encourage him to stay in the caves. With no duties to perform he would be forced to keep his attention on her, watching her, talking to her. And if she pretended weakness long after her strength had returned, he would not be distracted by thoughts of returning to Ennae.

‘I will try to sleep.’ She lay back on the hard ground, her arm under her head for a pillow. Kert did not offer his cloak as bedding, and she did not ask. Her mind was trained, she could ignore discomfort. But she could not ignore Kert. Her eyes moved of their own volition, watching as he paced the cave, his long legs restless, the set of his shoulders tight. He stopped to inspect the wall, lifting a portion of the glowing fungus with his knife. He sniffed it, then dropped it to the ground and turned back to her.

‘Sleep,’ he ordered.

She closed her eyes. It was not a Champion’s place to command royalty, but his thoughts were obviously fixed on her recovery — selfishly at this point, because he wanted to be reunited with his king, to have distractions from the horror of remembering his son’s death. Her rest was simply a means to an end. In time, however, Glimmer hoped he would care for her without the need for ulterior motives.

In the privacy of her own mind she dreamt of more than a Champion’s concern from Kert. Her dreams were of love; wild as a waterfall, reckless as the wind and as enduring as time itself.

Lying still on the rock floor, she thought about that, about the poetry of her impetuous dreams, and the impossibility of them ever coming true. Time was not enduring. The linear time she existed in was about to end and she wanted to make the most of it.

If she remained on the fast-moving world of Haddash she could live ten years with Kert while a bare twenty weeks passed on Ennae. During that time the Maelstrom would spread the elements of the Four Worlds across each other: water from Magoria, air from Atheyre, earth from Ennae and fire from Haddash. These elements would mix with each other creating catastrophic climatic conditions.