Billy: Messenger of Powers (7 page)

“What would happen if I put my head against the wall?” asked Billy, hurrying to catch up to Mrs. Russet.

“I shouldn’t advise it,” was Mrs. Russet’s only reply.

Now that he knew that one wall was a raging—though cold and contained—inferno, and the other somehow contained an entire ocean in its structure, Billy wondered what the ceiling would look like if he looked up.

So he did.

And Billy saw something few people had seen from ten feet away and lived to tell about: the inside of a hurricane. Not the
eye
of a hurricane, the calm area in the center of the swirling winds where things were quiet and stable, but the actual hurricane itself. Billy could actually see masses of rocks, cars, pieces of buildings, and even some people being thrown about at great speeds directly above them, though for some reason none of the people up there seemed frightened. Quite the opposite in fact: Billy saw that they were all laughing and seemed almost to be dancing in the gusts and eddies that flung them about like autumn leaves in the wind.

The forces at work had to be tremendous, and yet, as with the wall of fire and the strangely contained sea to his right and left, Billy could feel nothing of the great forces only a few feet away.

“What is this place?” Billy whispered. He asked it of himself, forgetting in his awe that Mrs. Russet was even there, not expecting any kind of answer. But to his surprise, she did answer. And to his greater surprise, the answer she gave actually made some sense to him.

“It is a Convergence,” she said. “A place where four great lines of energy come together, drawn here by the Powers who wield and shape them.” She gestured to the wall at her right. “Fire.” Then to her left: “Water.” She pointed up and said, “The great Wind,” and then down at their feet and whispered, “and the ever-growing power of Life.”

Billy looked down for the first time—he had been so captivated by what was happening above and to his sides he had not taken care to watch where he was walking. Now he saw that below him were what looked like enormous leaves from some great tree, but so tightly overlapping that Billy could feel no difference in the floor’s level where one leaf left off and another began. “What kind of leaves are they?” he asked, still hurrying to keep up with Mrs. Russet’s rapid gait.

“They are the leaves of the Earthtree, just as what you see above is the Earthwind, and to the right and left you see Earthsea and Earthfire. Four of the six Elements in their rawest, most unrefined forms. We Powers take these Elements and use them to do what you call magic. They are the source of our strength.”

She stopped suddenly, scrutinizing Billy as though for the first time. “Are you…
closer
to any of these? The gray wind, the red fire, the blue water, or the green life below you?”

Billy looked down. “Well, I’m standing on the plants, so I guess I’m closest to them—”

“Not physically close, you dolt. I mean do you
feel
as though you have any sort of special connection to one of these? Do you like one of them more than the other, perhaps?”

Billy looked at the walls of water and flame again, the swirling tornado of a ceiling, the veined green leaves below. Then, slowly, he shook his head.

Mrs. Russet looked a bit disappointed. To Billy’s surprise, he found that he didn’t want her to be disappointed in him. She was stern, even rude at times, but…she was also fair. She cared. She had been a good history teacher in school, making sure—by intimidation if necessary—that each student learned as much as he or she possibly could. Now Billy sensed that she was trying to teach him at this very moment, and that the things she was trying to teach were even more important than when and how Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo. He just couldn’t understand
what
those monumentally important things were.

“Well, no matter,” she said. “We’ll come to the answers soon enough.”

She turned and strode off again. Billy followed her in silence. Occasionally a school of fish would swim by to his left, or he would glimpse a roof flinging through the storm above. Once he thought he glanced strange, shimmering, but faintly human shapes in the flames beside him. Only the leaves below were silent, still, and somberly immobile.

Suddenly, after what seemed like a year of marching, Mrs. Russet stopped. “We’ve arrived,” she said. Billy was grateful for this announcement: his feet ached from walking, and he had a stitch in his side that was rapidly increasing in intensity. At the same time, though, he couldn’t help being bewildered at Mrs. Russet’s decision to stop. To his eyes, this part of the hall looked the same as had every other part of it.

“We’ve arrived where?” he asked.

“At your Determination,” she answered. She pulled a small stone from her pocket and clenched it in her fist. A moment later, the stone expanded, lengthening out and increasing in size until it was a long staff of clearest crystal.

“Stand back now, Mr. Jones,” said Mrs. Russet. Billy moved quickly back about five feet, and as he did so the old woman struck the end of her crystal staff against the leafy floor. The resulting sound was quite unexpected. Billy had expected to hear a dull thud, the sound one would normally hear when dropping a rock to a spot of grassy ground. Instead, a clear, bell-like tone reverberated up and down the corridor. It bounced off the walls, back and forth and up and down, changing in tone until it had traveled the entire range of a musical scale, like the most beautiful, voiceless song that Billy had ever heard. The sound dissipated until the song was no more, but it faded so slowly that Billy couldn’t tell the exact moment when the beautiful song ended and the silence of the corridor began.

A long moment passed, during which neither he nor Mrs. Russet spoke.

Then a pair of legs dropped down into Billy’s view.

He looked up to see a kindly-faced old man floating down from the maelstrom in the ceiling, landing gently in front of Mrs. Russet. The man seemed to be around the same age as Mrs. Russet, but neither stern nor sour as she could be. Rather, he seemed more like Billy had always imagined Santa Claus: eternal youth clothed in an old and happily chubby body.

The man wore clothing, Billy was sure, but he couldn’t see exactly what kind of clothing it was, because from the neck down the man seemed to be dressed in wind: a swirling cloud of gray and gusting air that obscured what he was wearing and made him seem larger than he actually was. The man wore a piece of the storm above, and had brought it down into the hall with him.

The instant he landed before Mrs. Russet, the old man grinned, deep gray eyes twinkling. “Lumilla,” he said, and bowed a sweeping bow before her.

“Tempus,” replied Mrs. Russet, nodding her head.

“I’d ask if I might kiss your hand, but my ears are still ringing from the tongue-lashing you gave me last time I dared that question,” said the wind-clothed man, Tempus. He turned to Billy. “And who have we here?”

“Who indeed?” whispered a voice. Billy, Mrs. Russet, and Tempus all turned to see another man enter the hall, this one stepping out of the wall of flame to Billy’s right. Like Tempus, the man was clothed. And also like the wind-wreathed Tempus, the newcomer’s clothing could not quite be seen. He was ringed in flame up to his neck, but the fire light dimmed as he stepped away from the wall and approached them. At last, it seemed to extinguish completely as he moved away from the wall, though Billy could still see the barest hint of a spark in the man’s piercing eyes.

“Hello, Vester,” said Tempus, holding out his hand in greeting.

Vester ignored Tempus’s outstretched hand. He knelt next to Billy. He looked like a young man, in his early twenties perhaps, good looking and tall, with wavy brown hair of the kind that Billy wished he could have. The man was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that said “Los Angeles Fire Department” across it, and just as Billy wished he could have the man’s hair, he also looked longingly at the man’s thick arms and muscled chest which fairly exploded through his t-shirt. Someday, he thought. Someday I’ll look like that, and I won’t need Blythe to protect me anymore. Instead,
I’ll
protect
her
.

Then on the heels of that thought came another: Who am I kidding?

The man who had walked out of flame looked at Billy for a long time, then the corners of his lips perked up ever so slightly before he stood and took Tempus’s hand. “Sorry, my friend,” said Vester to Tempus. The fireman looked at Billy. “I was surprised to see Billy here, that’s all.”

Both Billy and Mrs. Russet started. “You know him?” asked Mrs. Russet in surprise.

“No,” Vester said to her. “But I work with Mr. Jones, who is a paramedic in the fire department.” He looked at Billy. “I was in his ambulance once. Did you know he has a picture of you taped to his dashboard? You’re swimming in the picture. In the ocean, as I recall.”

Billy’s eyes widened. He remembered his mom taking that picture just the last summer, on a family trip to the beach. His father hadn’t been able to be there, working as he so often was. His mom had taken a picture of Billy flying head over heels in a crashing wave, laughing as he struggled to his feet, covered in seaweed. “For your father,” she had laughed.

Billy didn’t know what surprised him more: the fact that this strange young man who could walk through fire knew his father, or that his often distant-seeming father had a picture of Billy in his ambulance, where he could see it while he worked.

Vester looked with apparent concern at Billy. “You all right?” Billy nodded mutely. Vester smiled, a reassuring, comforting smile. “It looked like you were having a good time in that picture.”

Yet another voice was now heard, this one thick and phlegmatic, as though the speaker had a serious cold. “Of course he was having a good time. How could you not have a good time when in the water?”

Billy looked over and saw a man hanging in the wall of water, his hair moving slowly back and forth in the invisible currents that flowed through the great Earthsea.

The man stepped out of the water and into the hall. Billy looked at the man’s feet as he entered the hall, expecting him to leave a wet trail behind him, but he didn’t. His feet—and the rest of him, including his impeccable three-piece suit—were perfectly dry. Only his voice remained thick and unpleasantly wet. He looked at Billy. But where Tempus had looked at Billy with amusement and Vester had looked at him in a comforting and familial manner, this man’s look was cold and deep as a midnight sea. “You are unDetermined,” he announced gravely, more than a hint of distaste in his expression.

Tempus laughed. “I’m always surprised that you can know that sort of thing right off, Wade.”

Wade looked at Tempus with contempt. “I am a Power of water. I see the boy’s blood, and the blood tells much.”

Billy shivered internally, unnerved by this aloof man talking coldly of his blood.

“Well,” said Vester, apparently sensing Billy’s discomfort. “We’re just about all here, then, aren’t we?”

“Almost,” said Tempus, seeming to laugh even as he said this one word. “Just our favorite lass and we’ll be ready.”

“Ready for what?” squeaked Billy.

Mrs. Russet stepped toward him and put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “All will be explained in a moment, Mr. Jones.”

“Mr. Jones?” came a voice, and Billy’s skin crawled. He knew that voice. Or at any rate, he knew a voice very much like it. He turned behind him and saw a woman walking toward them. She was dressed all in black, a long black dress that accentuated the exaggerated sway of her hips as she walked, elegant black gloves that extended all the way to her elbows, and a string of black pearls that hung on a long white neck that was partially obscured by her thick black hair.

His eyes were drawn for a moment to a huge dark broach pinned on the side of her dress. It was a beetle, one of those types he saw in movies about mummies who came alive and killed folks. Usually with the help of such beetles. The beetle broach made Billy feel sick to his stomach.

“Mr. Jones?” said the woman again, drawing Billy’s gaze to her eyes. Billy’s skin continued to try to pry itself loose from his skeleton as she approached. She had green eyes. Green eyes that were very familiar.

“This is Eva Black,” said Mrs. Russet. And then, almost unnecessarily, for Billy already suspected what she was about to say, she added, “Cameron Black’s mother.”

Mrs. Black stood close in front of Billy, eyeing him with what he thought was amused disdain. “Mr. Jones, I’ve heard so… much… about you.” Then her expression of disdain turned to one of cold rage as she said, “You hurt my boy today.”

Billy’s skin stopped trying to run away without him and instead now felt as though it had frozen solid. He tried to say something, but nothing came out of his twitching mouth. Mrs. Black smiled and looked at Wade, the man who had come from the seawall. “UnDetermined?” she asked him, nodding toward Billy. The water Power nodded, and with that Mrs. Black turned to Mrs. Russet. “So that’s why you called us, Lumilla?”

Mrs. Russet nodded. Mrs. Black smiled delicately, as though contemplating eating a rich chocolate truffle or drinking a cup of cocoa on a cold winter evening. Then she said the most horrifying words Billy had ever heard: “It will be a pleasure killing you, young man.”

Billy didn’t know what to say or do. He wanted to hide, but there was nowhere
to
hide in this hallway. And besides, he knew that running would be the wrong thing to do, a useless gesture.