Blood of the Fold (42 page)

Verna missed the New World. She had never felt so at home as she did there.

Ducks sleeping with their heads tucked back under their wings bobbed at the edge of a pond beside the path, while unseen frogs croaked from the reeds. Verna saw an occasional fluttermouse swoop down across the surface of the water to snatch a bug from the air. Moon shadows played across the grassy bank as the gentle breeze caressed the trees overhead.

Just beyond the pond, a small side trail turned off toward a stand of trees among a thicket of underbrush hardly touched by the moonlight. Verna somehow felt this was the place she sought, and strolled off the main path, toward the waiting shadows. The grounds here seemed to be ruled by the wildness of nature, as opposed to the cultured look of much of the garden.

Through a narrow opening in the wall of thorn glove, Verna found an enchanting little stuccoed building with four gables, the rake of each tiled roof swooping down in a gentle curve to eaves no higher than her head. A towering maidenhair tree stood off the face of each gable, its branches lacing together overhead. Sweetbriar hugged the ground close to the walls, suffusing the cozy enclosure with a fragrant scent. A round window, too high to see through, was set in the peak of each gable.

At one gabled wall, where the path ended, Verna found a rough-hewn, round-topped door with a sunburst pattern carved in its center. There was a pull handle, but no lock. A tug produced no movement, not even a wiggle. The door was shielded.

Verna ran her fingers along the edge, feeling for the nature of the shield, or its keyway. She felt only an icy chill that made her recoil at its touch.

She opened herself to her Han, letting the sweet light inundate her with its warm, familiar comfort. She nearly gasped with the glory of being just that much closer to the Creator. The air suddenly smelled of a thousand scents; against her flesh it felt of moisture, dust, pollen, and salt from the ocean; in her ears it carried the sounds of a world of insects, small animals, and fragments of words carried for miles in its airy, volatile fingers. She listened carefully for any sounds that might betray anyone near, at least anyone with no more than Additive Magic. She heard none.

Verna focused her Han on the door before her. Her probe told her that the entire building was encased in a web, but not one she had ever felt before: it had elements of ice woven through with spirit. She didn’t even know ice could be woven with spirit. The two fought each other like cats in a sack, but there it was, the two of them purring contentedly, as if they belonged together. She had absolutely no idea how such a shield could be breached, much less undone.

Still joined with her Han, an impulse came to her, and she reached up, touching the sunburst pattern on her ring to that on the door. The door swung silently open.

Verna stepped inside and placed the ring on the sunburst pattern carved on the inside of the door. It obediently swung closed. With her Han she could feel the shield seal tight around her. Verna had never felt so isolated, so alone, so safe.

Candles sprang to flame. She surmised that they must be tied to the shield. The light from the ten candles, five each in two candlesticks with branching arms, was more than sufficient to light the inside of the small sanctuary. The candlesticks stood to each side of a small altar draped with a white cloth trimmed in gold thread. Atop the white cloth rested a perforated bowl, probably for burning aromatic gums. A red brocade kneeling pad edged with gold tassels sat on the floor before the altar.

Each of the four alcoves formed by the gables was only large enough for the comfortable-looking chair occupying one of them. One of the others held the altar, another a tiny table with a three-legged stool, and the last, along with the door, a box bench with a neatly folded quilted comforter, probably for the lap, as lying down looked to be out of the question; the area in the center wasn’t much larger than the alcoves.

Verna turned about, wondering what it was she was supposed to do here. Prelate Annalina had left a message to make sure she visited the place, but why? What was she to accomplish here?

She flopped down in the chair, her eyes searching the faceted walls that followed the in-and-out of the gable ends. Maybe she was supposed to come here to relax. Annalina knew the work of being Prelate; maybe she simply wanted her successor to know of a place where she could be alone, a place to get away from people always bringing her reports. Verna drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair. Not likely.

She didn’t feel like sitting. There were more important things to do. There were reports waiting, and they were hardly likely to begin reading themselves. Hands clasped behind her back, Verna paced, as best she could, around the tiny room. This was certainly a waste of time. She finally let out an exasperated breath and lifted her fist toward the door, but stopped before she touched the ring to the sunburst pattern.

Verna turned back, staring for a moment, then lifted her skirts and knelt on the pad. Perhaps Annalina wanted her to pray for guidance. A Prelate was expected to be a pious person, although it was absurd to think one needed a special place to pray to the Creator. The Creator had created everything, everywhere was His special place, so why would one need a special place to seek guidance? A special place could never approach the meaningfulness of one’s own heart. No place could compare to joing with her Han.

With an irritated sigh, Verna folded her hands. She waited, but wasn’t in the mood to pray to the Creator in a place in which she was under obligation to do so. It vexed her to think that Annalina was dead yet still manipulated her. Verna’s eyes roved the bare walls as her toe tapped against the floor. That woman was reaching out from the world beyond to enjoy a final morsel of control. Hadn’t she had enough of that in all the years she was Prelate? One would think that would be enough, but no, she had to have it all planned out so that even after she was dead, she could still …

Verna’s eyes settled on the bowl. There was something in the bottom, and it wasn’t ashes.

She reached in and lifted out a small package wrapped in paper and tied with a bit of string. She turned it over in her fingers, inspecting it. This had to be it. This had to be what she was sent here for. But why leave it in here? The shield—no one but the Prelate could enter. This was the only place to put something if you didn’t want anyone but the Prelate to have it.

Verna pulled the ends of the bow and dropped the string back in the bow. Laying it in a palm, she lifted back the paper and stared at what was inside.

It was a journey book.

Finally, movement returned to her fingers and she extracted the book from the paper to thumb through the pages. Blank.

Journey books were objects of magic, like the dacra, that had been created by the same wizards who had invested the Palace of the Prophets with both Additive and Subtractive Magic. None since, for three thousand years, except Richard, had been born with Subtractive. Some had learned it through the calling, but none but Richard had been born with it.

Journey books had the ability to transmit messages; what was written in one with the stylus stored in the spine would appear by magic in its twin. As near as they could determine, the message written in one appeared in the twin simultaneously. Since the stylus could also be used to wipe old messages away, the books were never used up, and could be used over and over.

They had been carried by Sisters who went on journeys to recover boys born with the gift. More often than not, the Sisters had had to travel through the barrier, through the Valley of the Lost, going into the New World to recover the boy and put a Rada’Han around his neck so that the gift would not harm him while he learned to control his magic. Once beyond the barrier there was no turning back for instructions or guidance; one journey through and back was all that was possible for each Sister. Until now—Richard had destroyed the towers and their storms of spells.

A young boy with no understanding of the gift could not control it, and his magic sent out telltale signs that could be detected by Sisters at the palace who were sensitive to such disturbances in the flows of power. Not enough Sisters had this talent to risk sending them on journeys, so others were sent, and they carried a journey book to be able to communicate with the palace. If Sisters were to go after the boy, and something happened—he moved, for example—they would need guidance to find him in his new location.

Of course, a wizard could teach the boy to control the gift in order to avoid its many dangers, and in fact that was the preferred method, but wizards were not always available, or willing. The Sisters had long ago established an accord with the wizards in the New World. In the absence of a wizard, the Sisters of the Light were allowed to save a boy’s life by taking him to the Palace of the Prophets for training in the use of his gift. For their part, the Sisters had vowed never to take a boy who had a wizard willing to teach him.

It was a truce backed by a death sentence to any Sister who ever again entered the New World if the agreement were ever violated. Prelate Annalina had violated that agreement in order to bring Richard to the palace. Verna had been the unwitting instrument of the violation.

At any one time there could be several Sisters gone on a journey to recover a boy. Verna had found a whole box of journey books back in her office, tied together in matching pairs. The journey books were twinned, each working only with its correct twin. Precautions were always taken before a journey was undertaken; the two books were taken to separate locations and tested, just to be sure a Sister wasn’t sent off with the wrong book. Journeys were dangerous, that was why the Sisters also carried a dacra up their sleeve.

Usually, a journey lasted a few months, and on rare occasions they had lasted as long as a year. Verna’s journey had lasted over twenty years. Nothing like that had ever happened before, but then, it had been three thousand years since one like Richard had been born. Verna had lost twenty years she could never recover. She had aged in the outside world. The twenty-odd years of aging her body had undergone would have taken near to three hundred years at the Palace of the Prophets. She had not simply given up twenty years to go on Prelate Annalina’s mission; she had in reality given up close to three hundred years.

Worse, Annalina had known all along where Richard was. Even though she had done as she had in order to allow the proper prophecies to come to pass so they could stop the Keeper, it hurt that she had never told Verna that she was being sent out to throw away that much of her life as a decoy.

Verna reprimanded herself. She had not thrown anything away. She had been doing the Creator’s work. Just because she hadn’t known all the facts at the time made it no less important. Many people toiled their whole lives at meaningless things. Verna had toiled at something that had saved the world of the living.

Besides that, those twenty years were perhaps the best years of her life. She had been out in the world on her own, with two other Sisters of the Light, learning about strange places and strange peoples. She had slept under the stars, seen distant mountains, plains, rivers, rolling hills, villages, towns, and cities that few others had seen. She had made her own decisions and accepted the consequences. She had never had to read reports; she had lived the stuff of reports. No, she had not lost anything. She had gained more than any of the Sisters sitting back here for three hundred years would ever gain.

Verna felt a tear drop onto her hand. She reached up and wiped her cheek. She missed her journey. All that time she had thought she hated it, and only now did she realize how much it meant to her. She turned the journey book over in her trembling fingers, feeling the familiar size and weight—the familiar grain of the leather, the familiar three little bumps at the top of the front cover.

She jerked the book up to her eyes, looking in the candlelight. The three bumps, the deep scratch at the bottom of the spine—it was the same book. She couldn’t mistake her journey book, not after carrying it for twenty years. It was the very same book. She had looked at all the books in the box in her office, absently searching for this one, and she had not found it. It had been here.

But why? She held up the paper it had been wrapped in and saw there was writing on the paper. She held it near the candle in order to read it.

Guard this with your life.

She turned the paper over, but that was all it said. Guard this with your life.

Verna knew the Prelate’s hand. When she had been on her journey to recover Richard, and after she had found him but was forbidden to interfere with him in any way, or to use his collar to help control him, yet was expected to bring him back, a grown man, unlike any other they had ever recovered, she had sent an angry message to the palace:
I am the Sister in charge of this boy. These directives are beyond reason if not absurd. I demand to know the meaning of these instructions. I demand to know upon whose authority they are given.

She had received back a message:
You will do as you are instructed, or suffer the consequences. Do not presume to question the orders of the palace again. —In my own hand, The Prelate.

The message of reprimand the Prelate had sent her was burned in her memory. The handwriting was engraved in her memory. The hand on the piece of paper was the same.

That message had been a thorn in her side, forbidding her to do the very things she had been trained to do. It was only back at the palace that she discovered that Richard had Subtractive Magic, and had she used the collar he would have very likely killed her. The Prelate had been saving her life, but it nettled her that once again she had not been informed. Verna guessed that was what annoyed her the most: the Prelate not telling her why.