The Tessellation Saga. Book Two. 'The One' (41 page)

Blue lowered
his heavy head and licked Sonal’s hand once again. ‘It’s alright
now Blue, I really do understand.’ Sonal said and stared at the
dome once again wishing his peace and blessings for a swift journey
to the people he had once loved and left.

At last, the
wolf stood and urged Sonal to move by placing his nose under the
arm of the tired man and pushing hard.

‘Blue, I’m
grateful you pushed me out of the hole but I can walk unaided …,’
Sonal said as he stood and walked away from the wall, even now
slightly duller than it had been during the making of the spell.
Smiling weakly, moving slowly and clearly exhausted, Sonal began to
follow the wolf as it made its way back along the narrow path.
Abruptly Blue stopped, turned and padded quietly to a rocky outcrop
near the edge of the track, his gaze out over the base of the
mountain and on to the pass so far below, his ears alert and
forward. Sonal moved on unaware the wolf had stopped until a
gentle, whuff drew his attention. Sonal turned and gasped, he
looked at the silhouette of the wolf standing firm and solid with
the great barrier softly glowing behind him. Blue’s outline wavered
and shimmered and somehow Sonal could see the human man underneath
the body of the magnificent wolf. He again remembered his vision of
so long ago, he and another person standing before the Bleak
watching the great wall as it shimmered and shone, beautiful and
deadly in the moonlight.

‘It was you in
my vision wasn’t it boy, it was you!’ He said as he moved slowly
toward the wolf, still tired from his run to the wall and the
exertion of the song, as he neared the mound and stood beside the
wolf, Blue jumped at him forcing him to the ground.

‘Hey!’ Sonal
called as he fell heavily onto the hard rocks at the base of the
rise, Blue returned to his previous position and once more looked
down the mountain and into the pass now illuminated fully by the
moonlight. Sonal leaned forward to join him. ‘Can you see a
rabb...?’ Sonal began in jest, rubbing his sore backside and he
stopped abruptly as he realised below him and encamped on the
plains before the pass was a huge army; flags flew above tents that
gleamed white in the moonlight, ‘Gath,’ he said unnecessarily. As
they watched, small figures began to move around the camp and
lights began to glow from tiny fires as one by one they were put to
flame, then the figures began to swarm toward the mountain itself
and slowly they began to climb.

‘Maybe they
heard the song, felt the magic…’ Sonal began as both he and the
wolf moved quickly off the mound and back along the path that led
to the hidden gateway.

As before,
Sonal watched in wonder as the gateway opened, he thought he would
never see anything as beautiful as the moment the shiny black
hexagons amid their rivers of molten gold finally tessellated and
snapped shut becoming the solid but liquid surface. Again, both
Blue and Sonal passed through to the valley and as a man once more,
Thaddrick closed the portal, forgetting in his excitement over his
newly found book to conceal the evidence of the gateway’s existence
in the ether.

‘It has begun,’
Thaddrick said as he turned to the man he thought of as a nephew,
noticing for the first time shots of silvery white running through
his normally thick dark blonde hair,
the balance, he used
himself for the balance,
he thought, sadly remembering the
passion of Sonal’s song as he repaired the damaged section of the
dome. Solemnly, Sonal withdrew the book from his jerkin and passed
it to the old man.

‘I truly forgot
I had it until I heard you mention it this evening. I wasn’t even
sure it was the book you spoke of, because the pages are all
blank,’ he said and he stared at Thaddrick’s hands as they caressed
the cover, watching in amazement as at once the book seemed to take
on a life of its own, with the colours returning and glowing
vibrantly. Thaddrick smiled and flicked through the leaves, writing
appeared page by page as his fingers touched them and disappeared
again as his fingers passed on.

‘With this once
more, we may yet succeed…, we
must
succeed,’ Thaddrick
answered as he put his arm around Sonal’s shoulders and drew him
back toward the whitewashed buildings and the still rising sun.

Deep inside the
domed basin, within a stone chamber carved from the living rock of
the mountain, a crystal sat on a stone plinth, its silver cap black
with tarnish and dirt. Once it was clear and clean, its silver
bright and shining in the radiant sunshine, once it was full of
pure energy used for the good of all. The evil soul it now held
imprisoned within its confines had existed for many, many years and
over time had learned to use the crystals magic for itself. It used
the remaining power little by little to dominate the weak-minded
creatures that eked out an existence in the almost toxic atmosphere
within the dome that surrounded the once green and fertile
valley.

The crystal was
aging as the power it held lessened and the spelled barrier broke
down, becoming less of a prison than it had always been and as the
spell waned, the once solid crystal was becoming more and more like
pretty glass, fragile and brittle. The entity had waited; it had
waited patiently for many, many years and now knew that it would
soon be free to begin its spree of revenge. The magic of the
crystal had done more than just imprison it, it had enabled it to
absorb the souls of those who touched it, absorb the energies of
the weak. Already the entity was more powerful than it had been as
it had emerged from the void into the dead lands of the Bleak and
found its host. It had travelled the void for an eternity seeking a
way home, a way to exact its revenge on the mortal men it hated
most.

Across the
void, it had felt the call, felt the life flowing through the small
hole in the fabric of the void like a ribbon of brilliance,
lighting up the darkness, full of emotion and exuberance. The world
itself had called to it and the entity had swum up the stream
following its call remembering emotions it had long forgotten,
feeling life in the thousands of memories and feelings from souls
lost on their journey. Memories of a life it had once lived began
to resurface, the call of a crow, the flowing of blood as a knife
slit a vein, the sound of a woman screaming in agony as it cut away
her unborn child. All things it remembered and the memories became
a mercy to it, cast out as it was into the void for all time and
time meant nothing, a minute, an hour, a century, in the void, time
did not exist.

The memories
grew greater as it neared the source of the stream it followed, the
love of its mother as she held her first-born, the feel of her arms
as they caressed the infant it had been. The curiosity at the
mother’s swollen belly that was to be its sibling, then the new
baby, the one that had taken its mother’s life and its sadness and
confusion at its mother’s disappearance and the disdain of its
father when it had looked for love and comfort. The pain it had
felt for the ever neglected children, its loneliness, the hate that
grew for her; the sibling who had caused its pain. Then it tasted
greed and envy, loving the feel of the dark emotions caressing its
being, it tasted the lust it had felt for that human sibling as she
had grown more and more like the mother who had died birthing her
and it remembered taking her... Then rage filled it as it recalled
its separation, its immortal soul, torn from his mortal body and
the pure malevolence it felt toward the twelve who had cheated it
of life. It remembered Dèvin, Théoden’s son, willing his own death
to trap it in his own human form.

Then it
remembered waiting

For the entity,
time had begun once again when Thaddrick had cast it into the
crystal.

The soul of
Théoden’s son had been silent for a millennium. At first, it had
fought to be free,
free to begin its pathetic journey, such
sacrifice and noble indeed,
the entity thought, deeply
sarcastic. It had not really believed such sacrifice could exist,
it vaguely remembered as a mortal being taught about balance and
sacrifice, the act of giving something up for someone else but it
could not comprehend the why of it,
Dèvin for example,
why would you knowingly trap your own soul?

It fought
through its vast vocabulary for the right word to describe what it
was
, as, such as, as… I. That’s it, I…I… I. Am. Medim. I, I will
soon be free and I will take my place amongst my own kind once
more.
It glorified in remembering its once human name.

The soul that
was Dèvin stayed silent and hidden in the depths of the crystal. It
would have sacrificed its body again and again to keep the monster
away from other people. While still human himself he had been the
vessel that the entity had used long ago in its attempt to kill his
uncle Thaddrick. It constantly lived the thoughts of the evil one
as it coerced and planned the death of its captives and they were
captives, these poor deranged folk left behind when the Guardians
finally abandoned the wall and the lake had gone, dried up like the
life that leeched away into the void.

Dèvin’s soul
knew regret and sorrow, lamenting his heady youth that had almost
caused the barrier spell to fail.
Yes, the vanity was mine, mine
was the fault, I allowed my body to be vulnerable to it as I
attempted to close the gateway, using a magic I was never strong
enough to undertake.
Dèvin’s soul mourned for every other
spirit that perished, every soul absorbed by the evil of Medim,
knowing he must share the blame and knowing that soon the crystal
would shatter, no longer able to withstand the constant barraging
from Medim’s spirit. Slowly the evil had eroded the crystal’s
timeless surface

Soon, soon
now…
It, Medim, began to laugh gleefully, even as it felt the
disturbance in the roots of magic as Sonal sang and cast his
spell.

A resounding
boom and suddenly the barrier felt strengthened, Medim’s soul felt
the wards surrounding the crystal tighten and toughen, it screamed
in rage and fury as the soul of Dèvin quietly smiled.

The crystal
turned purple and black, the colours swirling sickeningly fast
inside the twelve-sided stone sending shadows with an almost
palpable intensity of pure hate the like of which had not been felt
before.

The priests
surrounding the stone paled under the onslaught and screamed in
pain as one by one prisoners’ were hastily sacrificed and bled out
around the base of the crystal’s plinth, all in an effort to
placate the raging stone but to no avail. As Medim’s temper grew,
the crystal grew hotter. Finally, in an almost cataleptic trance,
the priests took up their knives and swords as one and wailed as
they sliced through skin offering their own blood for the sake of
their crystal’s pain. Their heavily disproportioned bodies began
bleeding profusely as they attempted to cool their precious stone
the only way they knew how. Still, the crystal heated and raged as
it pulled against the power holding it tightly confined. Fear
smothered the priests and chilled their hearts as their blood
continued to flow freely.

Only once
before had they seen the crystal act in this way, a captive, a
hated guardian of the dome had held the crystal in homage ready to
die. As he had knelt ready to kiss the stone in his final
humiliation and say the sacred words, it had suddenly pulsed with
life and reflected emotion. It burned brighter than it ever had
before and ribbons of darkness had shot from each of its twelve
sides seeming to pierce the very souls of those waiting in their
turn, to bleed and die. The priests had removed the crystal from
the guardian’s hands in horror and the crystal had dulled as it
cooled but it had cooled.

Now, the
priests continued to wail as their sacred icon burned, it demanded
more and more from them. Their blood flowed from their wrists and
fell, filling the small trough surrounding the stone plinth. As the
blood pooled, the soul of Medim raged as his temper reached its
height,
I was so close, so very close to escape,
it thought
and slowly its temper began to wane just as the blood flow slowed
and stopped. The priests bled out happily, as one by one they died,
willingly giving themselves in sacrifice to their precious idol,
believing their sacrifice would enable them to become one with it
in the afterlife.

Gath stared up
at the mountainside high above him. Here at the head of the pass he
had hoped to await Gideon’s arrival in comfort, knowing from his
memories that there had never been any other way in or out of the
vast valley now known as the Bleak. He remembered this pass well,
somewhere here, on this plain; he had killed a deer and fed off it
for almost his entire journey out of the mountain range.
I’m
sure it was greener then
, he mused,
so long ago, so very,
long ago.
He heard the flap of fabric behind him and turned to
find Darnel close by.

‘Do you recall
my mentioning I began this life here Darnel? Strange how I could
have forgotten all about this place for so long, don’t you think?’
Darnel said nothing and he stood quietly in his toga, cold and
shivering under the cool night sky. The white toga along with the
pale skin reflected the moonlight beautifully. Gath smiled;
remembering the brown sun-kissed youth he had first met during the
pledging ceremony, and how he had enjoyed changing the young man to
what he was now. A little magic had whitened the boy’s skin to the
colour of alabaster and a servant always available to apply white
powder to the young man when his own enthusiasm caused a blemish to
mar the pale almost translucent skin. Gath loved to look at the
young man standing so still in the pale silvery glow, a slight
breeze played at the curls that were so carefully coifed by another
of Gath’s servants and the boy gave the illusion of a statue
turning from stone into life, as Gath watched he felt himself
harden with desire.