The Amber Legacy (4 page)

‘Very astute for one so young,’ Emma interrupted. ‘Astute,
and
cynical.’ She glanced at Sunfire curled on the mat, canine eyes watchful, and looked back at Meg, observing, ‘No wonder he follows you so faithfully.’

‘What’s that mean?’ Meg asked warily.

‘Animals, clever ones, understand the nature of people better than people do. They choose to serve those who deserve service. He trusts you. He knows you.’

‘I feed him,’ Meg rejoined. ‘I pat him. I’m kind to him. That’s why he follows me.’

‘If you say so,’ Emma replied. ‘So why has your mother sent you to me?’

Meg shrugged. Reluctantly, flushed with embarrassment, she said, ‘She thinks—I might have—the Blessing.’ She snorted, and shrugged again, adding, ‘She
hopes
I have the Blessing—which is stupid.’

‘Why is it stupid?’

The question caught Meg unprepared. ‘I—because it is. I don’t have the Blessing.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

Meg noted how the old woman’s stare intensified. ‘This is silly. I can’t do magic. I—’ She hesitated before saying, ‘Look, I’ve even tried.’

‘Tried?’

‘You know, I’ve tried to conjure things—by concentrating really hard—wishing things to happen. But nothing ever does. I was stupid to even believe in magic.’ Emma started quietly chuckling. ‘What?’ Meg asked.

‘I was just thinking how much like you I was when I was your age.’

‘How?’

‘In lots of ways, girl, lots of ways.’ She stood. ‘Come back and see me in the phase of the full moon. Keep what you’ve heard from Samuel to yourself. The old fool should know better than to say these things, even if they are true. Don’t even discuss it with your mother, even though she’ll ask about it as soon as you return home.’

‘Why all the secrecy?’ Meg asked, perplexed by Emma’s sudden familiarity.

‘I’m asking you to see me again,’ Emma replied. ‘As for the rest, we’ll see.’ Sunfire rose and stepped aside as Emma opened the door. ‘Now I have a lot of work to do. And so do you. Your brothers will be home demanding something to eat.’

Meg fumbled in her pocket and withdrew the shilling. ‘Here,’ she said, thrusting it at Emma.

‘Keep it,’ the old lady answered. ‘I didn’t answer your question.’ And she ushered Meg out of her cottage.

Heading home, Meg flipped the coin in her hand, wondering why the old woman hadn’t taken the money, why she wanted her to return during the full moon, why she wasn’t happy that Samuel had told her whatever it was that he’d said. ‘She even thinks you’re smart,’ Meg said to Sunfire. The dingo’s ears twisted towards her and his tail bobbed slowly. She laughed and skipped several paces, until she saw Iris Baker staring at her from her shop window. Remembering the flour and the silver coin, she changed direction and headed for the baker’s shop.

She was drifting above a battleground. Everywhere she could see men fighting and dying, arrows flying, shields glinting in the sunlight. Fires burned on wagons and on bodies. A river ran with blood. Then she zoomed in to a knot of struggling, wrestling soldiers—in to the face of one soldier, matted red hair framing a red bearded face smeared with mud, blood, sweat—her father’s face. He grimaced and looked down, and Meg looked down as well and saw the lance piercing his leather armour. He looked up at her and mouthed the silent words, I’m sorry.

She sat up, breathing fast, as if she’d run quickly. She was sweating. Silver moonlight streamed through her bedroom window. The house was silent.
She pushed aside her blanket and eased up to the rough wooden sill. Moonlight lit the stark white gum tree trunks, making them appear like ghosts. Her father was dead. Sorrow stirred, but strangely she had no desire to cry.

T
he black bush rat stopped preening its whiskers and listened. Its nose twitched, tracing the afternoon scents on the hill. The world was changed. The rat shivered, dropped from the rock beside the sun-glittering brook and scampered towards the cave entrance. In the lee of the cave it paused again, sitting up on its haunches to sniff, before it ran inside.

Samuel flinched as the rat leaped onto his bench, and he glared at being rudely interrupted, but he softened and, lowering the small pottery jar in his left hand, he asked, ‘What is it?’ The rat cocked its head to one side, and Samuel turned towards the entrance. ‘Someone’s here?’ He picked up a black rag to wipe his hands. ‘Who would visit an old man at this hour of the day uninvited?’ he mumbled as he shuffled towards the daylight. Shadows appeared in the entrance. He stopped, and called, ‘Who’s there?’ The shadows lengthened, and three men entered the circle of his yellow lantern light. Two were soldiers. The dark-haired man in the middle wore a light blue robe. ‘What do you want?’ Samuel asked warily.

‘Some friendly hospitality would be a good start,’ the man in the blue robe said, as he surveyed the clutter in
Samuel’s cave. ‘You know we’ve travelled a long way to come here.’

‘Then
you
know how far you have to travel back,’ Samuel replied.

The Seer smiled wanly. ‘It is a harsh world when a disciple of Jarudha cannot feel welcome in another man’s home.’

‘What do you want?’ Samuel repeated. The Seer nodded to one of the soldiers and the two men pushed past Samuel into his den. The old man protested, ‘This is my cave. There’s nothing here of any use to soldiers.’

‘Evidently true,’ the Seer remarked, appraising the chaotic jumble of odds and ends scattered across the cave and its crude furnishings, ‘but you and I both know that what I’m here for isn’t of any use to soldiers either.’

‘Leave,’ Samuel ordered.

‘Or you’ll do what?’ the Seer taunted.

A pottery jar smashed, and Samuel turned to see a soldier sweeping his hands along a shelf, knocking the contents to the floor. ‘Stop that!’ he demanded. He hobbled towards the soldier, who stopped and waited for the old man to reach him. As Samuel lowered his lantern and squatted to retrieve parchments that had been brushed from the shelf, the soldier kicked the old man’s shoulder and sent him sprawling. The lantern tipped and burning oil spread across the ground.

‘Put that out and light another one,’ the Seer ordered. As the soldiers hurried to obey him, he stood over Samuel, who was struggling to sit up. ‘Now, old man, the time for games is over. I know
who
you are, I know
why
you are here and I know
what
you have.’ Fresh lantern light filled the cave as Samuel went to rise, but the Seer used his boot to push him back down. ‘You sit there and listen. I don’t want you to think that this is going to get any better for you.’ The Seer paused to lick
his lips, and to the soldiers he gave the quick order, ‘Find it.’ As the rummaging through Samuel’s possessions recommenced, he returned his attention to the old man. ‘My father spent his lifetime hunting down the Conduit. The records are confused, and the myths and the legends even more so, as I suspect you already know. But he searched until he was certain that it had come on a long journey out of the ashes of the old Empire, and that it had come to this place.’

‘I have no idea what you are talking about,’ said Samuel. Another pottery jar smashed and he flinched.

The Seer snorted, and grinned cynically as he rubbed his hands together. ‘Samuel Kushel, son of Erol Kushel, grandson of the sea captain Kosek Kushel, on the descendant line of Julian Kushel, son of Sardek Kushel.’ He shrugged and squatted beside the old man whose craggy features had blanched. ‘My father was a scholar, old man, of considerable intelligence and diligence, and a committed disciple of Jarudha. To have the Blessing is a rich reward for serving our Lord, but to have the Conduit to amplify the Blessing—now
that
is what every Seer has sought, and my father’s scholarship has brought me to you.’ He rose. ‘No more games, old man. Give me the Conduit.’

‘I don’t have whatever it is you’re talking about,’ Samuel said, in a quiet but shaky voice.

The Seer snarled and kicked the old man under the chin. Samuel, spreadeagled onto his back by the kick, rolled his head to his left and coughed and spat broken teeth between his bloodied lips. As he raised his bony right arm to use the sleeve of his ragged green robe to wipe away the mess, the Seer sank a boot into his exposed ribs, curling the old man into a spasm of agony. ‘Anything?’ he growled at the soldiers, who were standing in the detritus of Samuel’s shattered and scattered possessions.

‘Nothing, Your Holiness,’ one replied.

‘Are you sure?’

‘There’s nothing here like what you described, Your Holiness,’ the soldier confirmed.

The Seer strode across the ransacked space and kicked random items out of his path as he searched for anything that could hide the Conduit. ‘Look for camouflaged shelves or hiding places. It’s got to be here,’ he said, his anger snapping in his tone. The soldiers resumed their investigation.

‘Bloody rat!’ a soldier bellowed as a black shape leaped from beneath a rag. He kicked empty air as the rat dropped to the ground and bolted for the exit.

‘That was pathetic,’ his companion jeered.

‘Find the Conduit!’ the Seer roared, infuriated by their interplay.

‘We’ve searched everything, Your Holiness,’ a soldier reported.

The Seer clenched his fists and glared at both soldiers. ‘Burn it,’ he hissed. ‘Burn everything.’ He stormed across the cave to Samuel who was still huddled, clutching his side. ‘Where is it, old man?’ he asked, forcing the words through his teeth like bitter rind. Samuel’s wheezing silence evoked another kick to the old man’s ribs and Samuel cried out, trying to curl into a tighter ball. ‘Where is it?’ the Seer repeated.

‘Your Holiness?’

The Seer turned, his eyes blazing with anger. ‘What?’

The soldier hesitated, realising that the violence in his master’s voice would inevitably fall somewhere. He only hoped that it would not be on him. ‘Your Holiness, it’s probably best if we don’t burn anything. The smoke will give us away.’

The Seer stared until the soldier averted his gaze and bowed his head. Then he turned back to Samuel. ‘I know you have it, old man. My father couldn’t be
wrong. He knew that it came here. I promised him on his deathbed that I would retrieve it, so there’s no point holding out. You’re going to die anyway, so you might as well pass it on to me, because, if I don’t get it, no one will, will they? You won’t be able to give it to anyone when you’re dead. Will you?’ He waited for an answer, but Samuel stayed silently curled in a ball. The Seer swore and kicked the old man again and again. ‘Jarudha make you rot and burn forever!’ he screamed, as he kicked and kicked and kicked the curled wreck of rags and bones.

Emma looked up from her reading as the black bush rat pushed through the gap in the wall, and she watched the rodent scamper across the cottage’s earthen floor and launch onto her lap. ‘Well,’ the old woman said, ‘here’s a surprise visitor. What’s brought you down to my place?’ She stroked the rat’s twitching nose before she noticed the fine gold chain dangling from the little animal’s neck. ‘You’ve taken to wearing jewellery?’ she asked light-heartedly, but she felt a cold chill within. She unhitched the chain and held it to the daylight streaming through her open window, staring at the amber crystal slowly spinning at its extremity. ‘Samuel!’ she gasped.

Following the agile but patient rat up the hill took her longer than she wanted, but her old body would not obey her fearful heart’s need, and by the time she reached the cave she was breathing heavily and her legs threatened to melt. She halted by the stream, fighting her trepidation, and watched the rat cautiously creep to the entrance. Only after the rat entered and did not return could she summon her trembling strength and gather her breath to go forward. She stumbled into the darkened cave, feeling more than seeing the wreckage. ‘Samuel?’ she whispered. She retreated to the entrance
and picked up a stone, which she cupped in her hands until it glowed with light. She went back in and revealed the true extent of the destruction. Everything was broken, torn apart and overturned, as if a wild beast had gone on a rampage. The rat appeared at the edge of her light, so she followed it to Samuel and found him curled under the fragments of a shattered gum wood stool. His wispy white hair was stained maroon and black with his dried blood. ‘Samuel,’ she said in shock as she knelt beside him and gently touched his shoulder. The rat was nudging the old man’s bloodied chin. ‘Oh, what happened?’ was all Emma could say as she sat despairingly beside her old companion. ‘Who would do this to you?’

‘Well?’ Prince Future asked, pushing aside the pageboy who was adjusting his breastplate buckle. ‘Successful?’

Seer Truth swallowed the bitterness in his pride and shook his head. ‘No.’

Future shrugged. ‘I thought you said you knew where this thing was.’

‘I did. But it wasn’t there.’

‘And now?’ Future asked, studying the dark-haired, blue-robed Seer with his critical green eyes. ‘You promised that it would help to change the direction of this war. Now what do I do?’

‘You go back to the original plan, Your Highness,’ Seer Truth said calmly.

‘That’s why we’re losing, Truth!’ the Prince snapped. ‘We’re losing because the original plan isn’t working!’

‘You know my answer to that, Your Highness.’

‘What?’ Future asked derisively. ‘That it’s Jarudha’s will?’

‘No, Your Highness.’ Truth wondered why he championed the cause of the impetuous red-haired young pretender to the Western Shessian throne. The
act
was
a necessary step in the fulfilment of Jarudha’s will, a plan the Prince could never comprehend, even in blind faith, but it was becoming a tortuous trial for the Seers like Truth who had sided with the Rebels under Future’s leadership.

‘Then what?’

He knew what would follow the moment he resurrected the worn argument, but persistence would always eventually wear down resistance. ‘There is the matter of the Queen, Your Highness. If she was to be simply eliminated—’

‘She is my mother!’ Future retorted angrily.

‘She is your enemy, Your Highness,’ Truth reminded him.

‘She is still my
mother!
And I will not have her blood on my hands!’ Future’s face was crimson with exasperation at the Seer’s impudence.

Truth dared a cynical smile as he said, ‘She seems happy to have your blood on her hands.’

‘She is my mother! I will not kill my mother!’ Future yelled.

‘Then you will
not
have her crown, Your Highness,’ Truth quietly said. ‘While she is alive, you cannot be the King.’

‘She’ll make me King if I beat her in war.’

‘Perhaps, Your Highness,’ said Truth, tempted to yawn with boredom at going over the same old lines. ‘But first you have to beat her.’

‘Damn you and your stupid promises! You priests tell nothing but lies!’

‘We do Jarudha’s work, Your Highness.’

‘You told me that Jarudha’s work was to restore a King over our land and to begin the holy cleansing of evil.’

‘And so it is, Your Highness, but sometimes we must be patient.’

‘I’m tired of being patient. You promised to end this war in our favour by finding this—what did you call it?’

‘The Conduit, Your Highness.’

‘And now you tell me that it doesn’t exist.’

Truth hid his anger at the young man’s ignorance, but he reasserted his belief by replying, ‘I didn’t say it doesn’t exist, Your Highness. It just wasn’t where I thought it would be.’

‘So where will you look next?’

‘I don’t yet know,’ said Truth, and he meant it. His father’s painstaking research didn’t point to another possibility. Logically, Samuel Kushel was the only live link to the old tales associated with Alun’s gathering of Conduits and Erin’s sharing of them—at least he
had
been the only link—but the old man did not have a Conduit. The thought that his father’s research had been in vain—the single-minded and pointless pursuit of a myth—goaded him, and singed the core of his beliefs. He looked over the Prince’s shoulder at a figure riding towards them. The knight wore plate armour that gleamed with a soft blue hue.

When Prince Future saw the Seer’s attention change, he turned. ‘Lord Overbrook!’ he called in greeting, as the knight reined in.

‘Your Highness,’ the knight replied with a nod, before acknowledging Truth with, ‘Your Holiness.’ He swung down flamboyantly from his horse and embraced the Prince.

‘How is the armour?’ Truth asked.

Overbrook smiled, his looks disarmingly handsome, as he said, ‘Your colleagues’ spells make it impregnable, Your Holiness. If we could do the same for a whole troop we’d be invincible.’

Truth glanced at Future as he said, ‘It will happen, but not yet.’

‘And the army?’ Prince Future inquired.

‘We’re ready to march, Your Highness. We merely await your command.’

Future smiled at the reminder that he was the supreme authority of his Rebel army. ‘Tell them I am coming,’ he said.

Overbrook bowed, and said, ‘At once, Your Highness,’ and with practised ease he remounted, wheeled and galloped down the slope towards the Prince’s forces.

‘Lord Overbrook could still sway the balance in this war,’ Prince Future said as he watched the knight’s receding form. ‘I’ll give your priests credit for what their spell does in protecting him from our enemies’ weapons. No one is his equal on the battlefield.’

‘Our Blessing has its uses,’ Truth said. ‘Be thankful that Jarudha gives us a glimpse of His greatness through our small works.’ Within, however, the Seer knew that the magic of the Blessing was severely limited without the power imbued in the Conduit, and the Conduit was the key to an even more glorious future than anything the ambitious and selfish Prince imagined.