The Bonds of Blood (6 page)

Shaking his head, disappointed that he
could not share more of their mother’s past with them, Dauin walked
to Angelica. Kneeling down, he gently pulled open her fingers and
placed the ring firmly in her palm. The ring, which had been held
tight in his hand for so long, was surprisingly cold against her
skin. It was also filled with a power, a wild, untamable power that
provoked a gasp from her the moment she felt it. Instantly, as if
in response to that power, a headache began to bloom behind her
eyes. The pain was not intense, but it felt as though it could be
before long. Closing her eyes, she was instantly filled with such
overwhelming awe as she watched a sweeping landscape form in her
inner vision. The mountains rushed up into nothingness, and where
they touched the clouds, watery silver blue foliage rushed down to
mingle with another flower that gave the appearance of fire at the
bottom half of the mountain. The vision was so lovely that Angelica
sighed, feeling like she had come home.

Finally he retrieved the last gift.
This one had been visible from the moment he turned to them, as it
was a hard item to hide. In his hands Dauin held a large, blue
velvet cloak, embroidered, and lined with a silver material that
looked to be made of the alloy itself. The silver shimmered and
shined in the filtered sunlight, and the fabric seemed to ripple,
as if made of water.

“This cloak has a long history, one
that I don’t know all of. I only know that at some point your
mother received it from the nymphs in Betikhan Valley. This was
given to her shortly after the Splitting of the World, and it kept
Misha warm on many nights when she was alone and without shelter
from the dastardly northern squalls. As with all the others, I
don’t know if it has anything special about it, and your mother
never mentioned any special feelings from it.” He took the cloak to
Amber, and draped it over her shoulders. “If nothing else, it was a
treasured memento of your mother’s, and I know she would be happy
to have it passed on.”

As the cloak settled heavily around
Amber’s shoulders, she could feel water lapping on a distant shore.
She felt fluid, as if her spirit could no longer be held within the
confines of her corporeal body. She closed her eyes, and all around
her she could sense, but not see, water … millions and millions of
gallons of water pressing in on her, but not crushing her. Instead
her form shifted and melded with this water as she felt it flow
through her, becoming part of her.

Slowly she opened her eyes with a
gracious smile. “Thank you, Father. It is a lovely gift.” Looking
down at it surrounding her, it gathered like a small sea at her
feet.

“Well,” Ashell said standing, “I think
it is time that Grace and I go oversee the preparation of the
meal.”

Grace nodded her consent and followed
the cook and other servants out of the dining hall leaving Dauin
and his four children alone. “Now, I think it is time that I go
oversee some other arrangements,” their father said mysteriously,
and all of them felt a slight thrill run through their veins. Each
year their father did something special for them, something more
grand than the year before. Each time it was a complete and
somewhat unexpected surprise, and all of them were eager to see
what it could be this year.

After hugging his children, Dauin left
the dining hall and the attendees soon dispersed. Jovian, Joya,
Amber, and Angelica climbed the stairs to put their gifts
away.

At the top of the stairs, Amber came to
an abrupt stop, but no one seemed to notice. There was something
different in the air, something powerful. It pulled at her and
thrummed around her, like she was in a large drum, and someone was
outside beating on it. Her whole body seemed to pulse with this
power, and from the corner of her eye, she saw a shadow pass the
other end of the hall, into her father’s room. The power made her
knees ache, limp, but still firm.

Amber’s breath caught, and she stood
for a moment with her heart racing, drowning out all the sounds of
festivity that wafted through the open windows from
outside.

She felt lightheaded, and at the same
time completely rooted to the spot at the top of the stairs. Her
blood beat so hard now that flashes began to strike her vision. The
walls seemed to leap out at her, and the floor rushed up to meet
her. Her knees finally gave out, and Amber staggered back, falling
into the wall.

There was something wrong, something
severely wrong. The shadow came again, this time so fleeting that a
black blur barely made it past the edge of her vision. Amber raised
her hand to her throat and swallowed hard a few times. She closed
her eyes, trying to will the feeling away, but she could not.
Shaking her head, she opened her eyes again, only to see a blue
incandescence issuing forth from her father’s room.

It is time,
a voice seemed to say beside her, but when she
looked, there was no one around.
Go
investigate, Amber,
the voice urged. She
couldn’t tell from where, or who, the voice could be coming from.
It sounded both male and female, young and old. It sounded like two
opposite extremes meeting, and convincing her to do something for
the commonality of these two differing beings. It was as if the two
voices urging her on had never in the history of time agreed on
anything, until this moment.

The light at the end of the hall
pulsed. It seemed hungry, urgent. As it throbbed, a strange moan
came to Amber, a kind of metallic groan, like a wet crystal goblet
being rubbed over and over, creating a musical, eerie
wail.

With strained effort, Amber lifted her
foot and placed one before the other. Her hand still at her throat,
swallowing hard, aching with power and deaf from the moaning, Amber
sluggishly made her way down the hall. Unlike most tales of wyrd
and intrigue, each step did not get easier; instead each step
burdened her to the point of pain. Yet something prodded her on;
her very desire was to be at the glowing, be in that beautiful
light, but there was something else holding her back. It was as if
two forces were controlling her, and Amber was simply standing back
watching it unfold. One force urged her on toward the light;
another tried to hold her back to stop her from entering
it.

She finally made it to her father’s
door, but Amber could not remember having come the distance. She
looked back where she had been rooted to the floor, and wondered
how she had made it here. A strange feeling overcame her then, like
she hadn’t really moved at all.

The throbbing power would not be sated,
however, and Amber was only given a moment to ponder what had
brought her here before the throbbing and glowing intensified.
Closing her eyes, Amber drew upon all of her will to step over the
threshold and into her father’s chamber.

Then something shattered.

Instantly everything came to a violent
halt. The air was forced out of her lungs, and Amber frantically
clung to her throat, this time not urging herself to swallow, but
to breathe.

“Amber?” Jovian called from his bedroom
door. Suddenly a panicked look crossed his face, and he rushed for
her.

The blood began thundering in her ears
again, this time from lack of oxygen, and Amber felt as though her
eyes were trying to swell, explode, all the while her lungs burned
like they were being filled with a liquid fire. The earth was
spinning out of control. The walls and floor heaved, Amber gasped,
and Jovian ran in slow motion to her side. Suddenly her vision
faded, like a light slowly flickering on and off, and then finally
completely shutting off, leaving her under a veil of utter
darkness.

From where Jovian bent over her he
could see his sister grasping at her throat, he could see her
unstable legs weaving her to their father’s room. Then finally he
watched as she went completely limp and fell in a midnight blue and
silver heap on the floor.

“What happened?” Joya asked joining
Jovian at the end of the hall with Angelica.

Joya pushed Jovian out of the way, and
knelt beside her sister, quickly checking her heartbeat and her
breathing. “She seems to be fine, at least outwardly.” Joya
frowned. “Jovian, can you get her into bed? Angelica, go get
Grace—”

“Wait!” Jovian said quietly, yet
urgently. “She seems to be coming around. Amber? Amber!” He tapped
her lightly on the face. “She looked like she lost her
breath.”

“That would explain why she fainted,”
Joya said, relieved. “Jovian, you are doing it wrong.” Joya pushed
him out of the way and slapped her sister with a loud crack across
the cheek.

As if her lungs were on fire, Amber
gasped, and her vision slowly came spiraling back to her. She was
laying on the floor, her sisters and brother standing over her with
apprehensive stares. “Why are we in Dad’s room? And what are you
all doing around me?” Amber asked, curious as to what all the
excitement was about, and why she seemed to be the center of
it.

“You don’t remember?” Angelica asked,
helping Amber to stand.

“Remember what?”

“Maybe you should lay down,” Joya
soothed, taking her other arm and leading Amber to her
bedroom.

“But I feel fine!” Amber protested.
“Jovian, what the Otherworld is going on?”

He shrugged and helped Joya shuffle
Amber into her room as Angelica went in and straightened out the
bedding. “I don’t know, Amber. I was in my room when I heard
something shatter; when I came out I saw you teetering in father’s
doorway, and then you just fainted.”

Amber looked at him as if he were
making the story up on the spot, but she didn’t protest as Joya
pushed her back onto the bed, and Angelica drew the
curtains.

“Maybe I do need some rest,” she
conceded, closing her eyes and folding her hands over her stomach.
It felt so good to just relax, her head cradled in the feathered
pillows, surrounded by soft blankets and family, even if they were
fretting over her. She began drifting off when she heard the three
of them prepare to leave. Their movements brought her back to
herself. “You three,” she said in her most stern tone of voice,
“none of this leaves this room, or rather that hall, understand? No
one is to know, and this will not upset tonight’s happenings in
anyway, am I clear?” She sounded so much like Grace at that moment
that none of them could do anything but nod in
agreement.

“Yes,” they all complied.

“Good. Wake me when the guests start to
arrive, if I am not awake by then,” and that was the last that was
said between them before sleep claimed Amber.

CHAPTER FIVE

_“W
hat are you doing?”
Joya asked Angelica and Jovian when they left
Amber’s room.

“Well, I found something rather
interesting in my book that I wanted to look over,” Angelica
explained, and Jovian perked up at her words. The truth was that
Jovian didn’t have anything planned; he hadn’t received a book, so
he had nothing to occupy him—that wouldn’t make him dirty—in the
hours before the party.

“I think I will join you,” he said, and
Joya nodded.

“Let me get my book, and I will join
you as well,” Joya said, heading to her room.

“Which one?” Jovian asked.

“The herbal one; the book Grace gave me
I am sure is a math book, plus I can’t read it anyway.”

Jovian shrugged. “Bring it anyway; at
least it will give me something to flip through.” Joya went off to
her room as Jovian followed Angelica into her brightly lit one.
Only a moment passed before Joya joined them, shoving the red
leather book into Jovian’s hands.

“Knock yourself out,” she offered,
sitting in a high backed chair close to the bed making the effort
look rather simple in her impossible skirts.

Jovian sat in a chair at the foot of
the bed and opened the book, peering at the curious letters that
seemed to scratch their way across the page. He smiled at the
geometric figures, and the numbers corresponding to them. “It looks
like math all right,” he laughed.

Angelica scoffed, “I am sure even Grace
would not give you a math book for your birthday, and even if she
did, why didn’t she give one to the two of us also?” Angelica
reasoned. “Besides, some ancient religions have been known for
their religious markings and sacred geometry; it is not unusual for
there to be books written on it,” she pointed out, and Joya
brightened at that possibility. She might not have been as
interested in theology as Angelica, but when all was said and done
anything was better than arithmetic.

“But either way, I can’t read it; it is
some strange language,” she complained.

“Well, she did say she received it from
her sisters in the Realm of Earth; you know that place is filled
with mountains and dwarves, so that could be the reason for the
strange language.” Angelica wasn’t sure if that was really the case
or not, but it made the most logical sense.

“I suppose,” Joya replied, not sounding
convinced. She sat for a time pondering the strange book Jovian
held in his hands, then subsided as she turned to the black
compendium she held in her lap. “Why would Mother’s herbal book
have the page for aconite marked?” She looked to the others
gathered in the room, and when they didn’t seem to know she decided
that maybe she would turn to the page for possible answers. Again
the book flipped open automatically to the folded page, and Joya
eased out the bend carefully so as not to rip the parchment. She
looked over the picture for some time before her eyes drifted to
the description.