The 49th Mystic Page 31

  “You mean Jacob. He’s shown me nothing but kindness.”

  Samuel looked baffled, then angry. He cast Jacob a suspicious glare. “Don’t mistake his trickery for kindness.” Back to me. “I beg you. In your state of amnesia, you may forget what Scabs are capable of, but I don’t. Don’t believe a word he says. You have to trust me. I’ll get you out, I swear it!”

  “Coming was a mistake, son of Thomas,” Jacob said. “They’ll only send you back with your tail between your legs.”

  “A mistake?” Samuel snarled. “If not for my confirmation that she was the 49th, she would be dead, thanks to you!”

  “Is that what you think you did? Save her? How little you know these heathens.”

  Samuel shifted as if to launch himself at Jacob.

  “Stop it, both of you! No one is enemy or heathen here. No one!”

  The door opened and Aaron walked in, striding as one who is comfortable in his role as commander. Samuel stepped back, eyes on his new enemy.

  Aaron measured each of us curiously, then stepped along the nearest bookcase, hands clasped behind his back. “Do you know what these books contain?” he asked, then answered his own question. “The full history of the Elyonites, copied in meticulous detail by our scribes. Every battle with the Leedhan and the northern Eramites. Every encounter with the southern Horde. The building of every city and the establishment of every social institution and law.”

  He turned on his heels and faced us.

  “But they do not record this.” His green eyes drilled me with an even stare. “The day the 49th Mystic stood before the three sons—son of Qurong, son of Thomas, and son of Mosseum—announcing the end of the world as we know it. It is an auspicious day, sure to end in death, wouldn’t you say?”

  None of us spoke.

  “Favorable for one of us, that is. Not all.”

  “If by one you mean only you,” Samuel said, “you don’t know who stands before you.”

  “Be quiet, my boy.” Aaron still watched me. “Your time will come.”

  “I’m not your boy.”

  “No? And whose boy are you? Thomas of Hunter, fabled commander of the Forest Guard, who defied the Horde before marrying one? Tell me, is that legend true?”

  Samuel hesitated. “It is. But the Horde he married was Albino when they wed.”

  “So then your father agrees with the Elyonite directive of eradicating all Horde.”

  “I would give my life to see all Horde die,” Samuel said.

  “I see. And what of Mystics? In particular, this one. The 49th.”

  Samuel cast me a quick glance. “She presents no threat except to the Horde. Don’t you know the prophecy?”

  “I do. Which is why you’re still alive.”

  Aaron walked up to me. Looked deeply into my eyes. Slowly lifted his hand and tenderly touched my cheek. It wasn’t a cold touch, only inquisitive, like a boy touching a flower for the first time.

  “Strange that such a tender one could strike so much fear in the hearts of the Elyonites. You’ll usher in the end of our way of life, they say. I’ve never heard anyone speak to my father the way you did.”

  He lowered his hand and sighed.

  “Which is why I am here,” he said, stepping away. “My father is fixed in his old ways, without great regard for strategy. If he had his way, all of you would die today and we would rush to war. But before we execute you, I would consider alternatives that might favor my people.”

  He studied us again, one by one. “It seems that a day of reckoning is here, ushered in by three sons and a condemned Mystic. I will give each of you one chance to tell me why sparing your life will serve my people. Speak carefully—your life depends on it.”

  He faced Jacob. “Now, beast. Speak.”

  Jacob was unflappable. We exchanged a long look before he spoke.

  “I have no interest in saving my life for your gain,” he said. “Though I will say, my death would crush my mother. But if you’re a man of strategy, you should think very carefully about rushing into war. With the Eramites to the north, and all Leedhan, the Horde would present you with an army many times greater than your own. And don’t think your victory over my men on the Divide is any indication of weakness. We would wage a ferocious war. Is this what your father wants? Even if you could prevail, how many Elyonites would remain for him to command?”

  “As I said, I’m not eager for war. You haven’t told me why keeping you alive will serve me.”

  “And as I said, I’m not interested in saving my life for your gain. I only say that my death would enrage my father and ensure a bitter war.” He paused. “Even more, killing Rachelle will end badly for you.”

  “The 49th,” Aaron said.

  “Her name is Rachelle.”

  “She will have her chance to—”

  “I speak on her behalf as well,” Jacob said, stepping forward. “Her very presence here proves the prophecy is true. Lesser minds might call her a witch, but we’ve both seen her healing power. Kill her and another 49th will arise in her place, and another and another until the prophecy is fulfilled. Ba’al, priest of my people, assures us on the authority of Teeleh that when the lion lies down with the lamb, all Albino lambs will be subjugated by the Horde lion. The 49th is here, and so it begins.”

  He was playing Aaron. Talya had said the Horde were terrified of the 49th, thinking it meant the lion would surrender to the lamb and become Albino.

  “Assuming the prophecy means what you say,” Aaron said. “Some suggest the opposite.”

  “Perhaps, but I suspect your priests agree with our own. Eventually, Elyonites will surrender to the lion, a terrible problem for you, especially if you make a martyr of the 49th.” He took a deep breath. “Unless . . .”

  “Go on.”

  Jacob looked at me. “Unless the 49th betrays her own purpose and opens the way for you to destroy all Mystics. Then raise your army and wage war if you insist. At least your fate will be in your own hands, not in the hands of the Mystics, who toy with you.”

  I knew he was only working to keep me alive, but the words cut deep. What if I did betray my mission? The thought struck fear into my heart.

  “I see,” Aaron said. “So your concern is for the Mystic more than yourself.”

  “My concern is for sound thinking. Kill her or kill me and you will have yourself a war that will end in your subjugation.”

  Aaron crossed his arms. He dipped his head at Samuel. “And you?”

  Samuel looked caught off guard by Jacob’s reasoning. “I wasn’t aware that the beasts had the capacity for such sound thinking, but I can see his logic. Albinos must prevail. Killing Rachelle will gain you nothing but trouble. As for him”—he wagged his head in Jacob’s direction—“let me take him in chains and kill him on the other side of the Divide. Blame his death on me and spare yourself a war.”

  “So you too like this Mystic? This . . . Rachelle. It’s why you pursued her so far from home?”

  Samuel thought carefully before responding. “The son of Qurong was sent to kill her,” he said. “I couldn’t allow that to happen.”

  “Why would the Horde want her dead, if they interpret the prophecy to mean the 49th will ensure their own victory?”

  “To make a martyr of her and raise holy rage among all Horde. And as I said, I couldn’t allow that to happen.”

  In his own way, Samuel was also playing Aaron. I knew for a fact that he had no such opinion of the prophecy. They were both vying for my life.

  “Unlike many, I think the time for war is here,” Samuel continued. “But as the beast said, killing her will only keep the prophecy intact and threaten all Albinos, assuming you read the prophecy to foretell their subjugation.”

  “Which you do as well?”

  “We have to assume the worst, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Then you agree with Jacob,” Aaron said. “Manipulating the 49th to betray her own is the only way for Albinos to foil the prophecy.”

 
Samuel looked at me, concerned. “Yes.”

  “The two sons implore their captor to save the heretic.” He looked at me, amused. “And you?”

  “Me?” My voice sounded thin, stripped of the power it had held in the courtroom.

  “Yes, you.”

  No words came. I had nothing to say in my defense. Nor could I interpret the prophecy for them. I was only me, seeking the five seals and bringing division.

  But as I looked at Aaron’s face, a thought did come, and I spoke it in a soft voice.

  “I see only that all three of you are beautiful and without blame. You just haven’t seen what I have to offer you. One day, if you let me, I’ll show each of you. Nothing you’ve seen can compare.”

  The room went still.

  “You’re blind, that’s all,” I said. “But Justin came to bring sight to the blind.”

  Aaron looked stunned. I’d just spoken the greatest of all heresies, suggesting that he and his Elyonites—Justin’s chosen bride, as they called themselves—were still blind.

  I turned to Samuel and saw confusion on his face. But his mind was likely on Jacob. He couldn’t fathom my saying that a Scab was beautiful. I wasn’t sure I could understand either, I only knew it was how I felt.

  Jacob stared at me. Of the three, only he understood, I thought.

  “And so it begins,” Aaron said. He turned and headed toward the door, mind clearly set. “Sequester Samuel in quarters under house arrest. Take the others to separate cells in the dungeon to await their execution tonight, as ordered.”

  28

  I FOUND MYSELF in a dark cell once more. They’d given me no water and I was thirsty, separated from Jacob, who had the page woven into his hair. But part of me was still preoccupied with the power that had flowed through me in the courtroom.

  There was still so much I did not know. Where were my Mystic brothers and sisters? I’d seen the valley with the lake and the colored forest—would I ever see it again? How could the seals find me here, in this dank cell? And what about Eden? It was falling apart at the seams, and what I learned here was supposed to help me there. But how, if I died?

  I closed my eyes and set my mind on metanoia, going beyond my thoughts to know the world differently. And in that silent space I trusted that the seals could still find me before the Realm of Mystics could be destroyed. How much time did I have? Where was the realm? Close, Talya had said, but how close?

  I silenced the questions. My only task now was to take the journey with intention and devotion. The words I’d spoken in the courtroom were as much for me as for any of them. If I asked my Father for a fish, would he give me a serpent? If I asked for truth, would he give me a lie?

  My earthen vessel didn’t know how to seek anything other than information that would reinforce its own programming. My search for the seals, then, would have to rise above this. I would let go of what my brain told me was true as well as the fear that I might be deceived. I would let go of what I thought I knew, so that I could know my Father.

  These thoughts occupied me as I sat in the corner of the holding cell. But as the hours passed, I began to awaken once more to familiar fears, beginning with my fear of death.

  I tried not to think about what drowning would feel like, but once the images filled my mind, I couldn’t get them out. It was clear that I’d come to Mosseum to speak plainly to them, yes, but surely my journey wouldn’t end here. And what about Jacob? Drowning was the preferred method of execution among the Horde because it caused such pain and dread. Now he would drown because of me.

  Unless . . . Unless both Jacob’s and Samuel’s reasoning had shifted Aaron.

  As the hours lengthened, the voices of fear grew. And as they grew, they blinded me further. I knew what was happening as it happened, but I seemed powerless to stop it all. Even knowing that my struggles were simply good teachers, as Talya had said, eased my fear only a little.

  I was cold and shivering, condemning myself for not being able to let go of my fear of death, when the soft voice whispered through me once more.

  There is no death, dear one. It is a shadow.

  With those words, clarity filled my awareness. Tears slipped down my cheeks. I lowered my head onto my knees and shook with gentle sobs. Then I took a deep breath, leaned back against the stone wall, closed my eyes, and waited.

  They came for me with heavy footfalls and rattling chains less than an hour later.

  A HOOD blocked my sight, so I couldn’t see where they led me or what the preparations looked like, and I think that might have been a good thing. I kept repeating the reassuring words under my breath. There is no death, dear one. It is a shadow. Just that, half believing myself, but that half was enough to keep me just beyond the reach of my deepest fears.

  The room they took me to was damp and smelled of blood. I could feel the weight of the chains that bound my hands behind my back, the cobblestones under my bare feet, the thick moisture in the air, the goose bumps on my skin when they tore my tunic off.

  I could hear the sounds of seven people breathing and walking. By the sound of a grunt, one of them was the old Gnostic. One of them was Jacob, but I knew that by the scent of his skin. The other four were our executioners, who were working at some kind of contraption involving chains and pulleys.

  The bag over my head severely limited my echolocation, so this was all I could see.

  “Jacob?”

  “Yes.”

  “Silence,” one of the guards growled.

  I didn’t care.

  “You are treasured,” I said, voice wavering.

  “Silence!” A whip’s lash bit deeply into my exposed belly.

  “As are you, 49th,” he returned calmly. “Do not worry, I know my way around death.”

  Three strikes of a whip cracked through the room.

  “By Elyon’s wrath, if the old man wasn’t already strung up . . .” A guard grunted. “Hurry it up.”

  There is no death, there is no death . . .

  But the fear crept closer now. And when I heard the old man weeping as chains clanked, that fear swallowed me.

  I could see it all through my ears. Heavy links of a chain rattling over a pulley as they lowered his suspended body. The splash at his feet as he kicked. The gurgling of water as they plunged his body deep into their black pool of death.

  Then silence except for a few bubbles breaking the surface.

  The guards in charge of our execution said nothing—three more drownings among a thousand.

  A full five minutes passed before the chains ground again, hauling the dead body up. Water splashed and dripped back into the pool; their mechanism creaked. A body landed heavily on the stone floor and was dragged from the room.

  Cirrus’s earthen vessel was dead.

  Rough hands grabbed my arm and steered me around the pool to the far side.

  “The shadow, you say?”

  “While the other watches. And be quick about it.”

  The shadow?

  I felt clamps being latched to my ankles. My body was now reacting of its own will, trembling as I stood in the cold room, terrified.

  “Jacob?”

  “Hear Talya, Rachelle! Shift your mind! See light instead of darkness as he taught you!”

  A whip cracked, biting into his flesh. My mind was already falling into a deep well of darkness.

  They shoved me back onto a table and strapped my arms and legs in place. I’d expected to be chained and lowered into the water. What was happening?

  My hood was jerked off, and for the first time I could see the room.

  Light from two torches lit the subterranean chamber with rough-hewn walls. Chains and huge hooks hung from the stone. Contraptions of death and torture ran the length of the wall beside me.

  The black pool Mosseum had sentenced us to die in was dark as oil. But they’d strapped me to a table far from it. Why?

  Fighting panic, I jerked my head around and saw Jacob. He stood bound, chained to the wall ten paces beyo
nd my feet, strong chest rising and falling with deliberate breath. They’d removed his hood and shoved a cloth into his mouth. He was watching me, trying to show me courage, but he couldn’t hide the fear in his eyes. Fear for me, I thought, not for himself.

  “Jacob . . .”

  A fist clubbed my head. “Shut your hole!”

  They strapped my forehead and my neck to the table, working quickly. Then an iron grid went over my face, a mask of sorts, one with clamps that bit into my eyebrows and upper cheeks. With a yank my eyelids were spread so that my eyes stayed open, exposed to the air.

  It hit me then . . . And when it hit me, nausea flushed through my gut and chest.

  “Watch your hands,” one of them said, speaking to another. He chuckled. “One cut and you’re dead.”

  They lowered a cage over my head, plunging me into darkness. A hiss sounded above me.

  I might have tried to cry out. To thrash against my straps. But I couldn’t. Hot waves of terror rolled down my body, paralyzing it.

  But the fear didn’t stop the voice in my head—the same voice that haunted my nightmares.

  I’m going to blind you. And when you see again, I’m going to blind you again. Shadow Man’s vow whispered through my mind. And what happens to you happens to them all. Through you, I’m going to blind them all.

  A black cloth was pulled free from the cage, and my nightmare came to life by the torchlight. A large black snake uncoiled in the cage only inches above me, separated from me by an iron mesh so that it couldn’t reach me.

  It had a flared hood like a cobra’s, and red eyes peering down at me as its forked tongue flickered to taste my scent. This was the serpent they called the shadow.

  I could hear Jacob grunting through his gag, struggling against his chains.

  My body let go then, and I began to hyperventilate. Once more I was in my nightmare. Once more I could hear Shadow Man chasing me into what I thought had been my safe place. Once more I heard his chuckle behind me.

  And then he was there. Shadow Man was there, rushing at me as the black snake above me bared its fangs.

  I began to thrash against my restraints, screaming, unable to move my head or close my eyes. The coiled snake struck hard, slamming its fangs into the iron mesh, spraying my spread eyes with its blinding poison.