Message Bearer (The Auran Chronicles Book 1) (10 page)

Seb followed Caleb back out of the Drain, as
Caleb called his place of work and dwelling, and back onto the ground floor of
the mansion. They made their way down the corridor towards the reception hall.
No one else crossed their paths as they progressed.

‘Where is everyone?’

‘What do you mean,
everyone?’

‘Isn’t this some kind of
academy? I thought other members of this Magistry came here to be trained in
whatever it is you do. Don said there were only six here, which doesn’t seem
like many for a place this size.’

Caleb laughed then, but
it was without humour. ‘Look around, kid, take it all in. Does this look like a
place that’s thriving?’

Seb glanced at the bare
walls, the threadbare carpets. Once upon a time he imagined Skelwith might’ve
been something splendid, now it looked like one step away from being claimed by
the National Trust.

‘Nope.’

‘No.’

‘No. Once upon a time we’d
have fifty here. The finest from all the Families. Now though we have just six,
from those who couldn’t afford their own resident trainer. Well, six and one
outcast.’ Caleb said, ending the sentence with a wink.

They arrived at the front
door. Caleb turned to face him, the bag of scrolls clutched against his chest.
He backed against the wood, both doors opening out into the drive. It had been
raining; the gravel had turned a dark grey and a sweet scent hung in the air.
Seb breathed it in as they stepped outside, savouring the freshness as it
washed more of the city away from him.

‘You not used to the
great outdoors?’ Caleb said as they trudged across the gravel towards a sea-green
van that had obviously seen better days.

‘It’s great,’ Seb
replied, surprised at his own honesty. ‘I didn’t think I’d like it in the
countryside. It’s not somewhere I’ve been to before.’

Caleb yanked open the
doors of the van and tossed the bag inside. Seb covered his mouth to stifle a
cough as a plume of dust billowed out.

‘Well,’ Caleb said,
slamming the doors shut. ‘Make the most of this feeling. Once it wears off you’ll
soon learn what the countryside is really like. It’s cold, wet, and stinks.’

Seb smiled as he followed
Caleb’s indication and got into the passenger seat. Caleb got in the driver’s
side. The glove box was open and Seb caught a glimpse of some kind of firearm
there, part covered by a dirty rag. Caleb saw him looking and slammed it shut.

‘Phosphorous,’ he said. ‘The
sheol hate it.’

An image of the white
explosion on the night Cade had saved him sprang to mind. ‘It kills them?’

‘And then some. If it hits
somewhere near the light will blind them at worst, stun them into a coma at
best. If you blast one with this at close range you’ll incinerate the little
shit.’

‘You ever had to use it?’

‘In the old days, hardly
ever. Nowadays, too much.’

The van shuddered into
life and Caleb steered over the gravel towards the drive that led out of the
grounds. As they moved, Seb stared at the massive stone warriors that loomed
over the perimeter, sure that they were watching him with eyes of granite. The
sensation made him shudder, and he turned back, eyes on the road.

‘Where are we going?’ he
said as they descended the track that led back down to the B road. Although the
sentinels were far behind now, the forest still seemed to watch them go, as if
unseen eyes peered out from the gloom. He couldn’t feel anything, but recent
experiences showed how little that meant.

‘Making money. Keeping
this place afloat.’

‘How do we do that with
scrolls?’

‘We lend them,’ Caleb
said, steering the vehicle onto a road that had once seen tarmac.  ‘There are
people, very rich people I should add, in this society that pay dearly to study
the secrets that the Magistry has. It gives them a glimpse of another world,
one that doesn’t exist in the everyday.’

‘And what do they do with
this knowledge?’

‘Very little. Learn,
mainly. None of those we lend our archives to are Latent, but that doesn’t stop
them wanting to know more. Many of these people have keen and inquisitive
minds, and when they wont for nothing, what else is there for them?’

Seb shrugged. ‘I just
thought the rich just wanted to get richer.’

‘Most do, it’s a human failing.
Some though, and by this I mean a very, very small minority, manage to rise
above it all. They desire knowledge, nothing more. In return we provide it, for
a small financial recompense of course.’

‘Are you not afraid they’ll
expose you all? Expose this secret world?’

‘They could try, but we
have several safe guards in place. Mainly though, it’s the Consensus that does
that for us.’

‘The what?’

Caleb sighed. ‘Right,’ he
said. ‘We might as well get started. You listen whilst I drive. We’ve got an
hour before we get to the first drop.

‘I’m listening.’

‘Let me give you the
history first. The history of the Magistry in abridged version.’

‘I’d like that.’

‘Some of this will sound
crazy. It did to me. Hell, some of it still does. But bear with me.
Understanding the nuances of this new world you find yourself in will be key to
progressing, and it might just keep you alive.’

‘Keep me alive. That’s good;
I’m always about the keeping alive thing.’

Caleb snorted.

‘Once, many thousands of
years ago, the universe we inhabit now was much bigger. Many civilisations
lived side by side in relative peace. Uniting the various factions was a common
group of people. These individuals were what we now call Latent, and they were
the first to access the Weave. From these people were formed the first magi.

‘The strongest amongst
these were the brothers, Danu and Balor. Although it is lost to the annals of
history, these were credited with finding the Great Forge, the source of the
Weave, and hence all of reality.’

Seb whistled. ‘Wow, so
these two were like God then, if they created the Weave?’

‘Not
created
,
found. They found the Forge, but someone else had built that.’

‘Who?’

‘We never found out.’

Caleb slowed down at a
large roundabout that fed onto a main A road. He paused, waiting for a gap in
traffic before slotting in. When the van was in lane and back up to speed, he
continued:

‘The brothers were wise,
and they trained others who shared their affinity for the Weave, those who
could sense its workings as it rendered the reality we all see. The magi
numbered in the thousands, and they existed across many worlds, all bound by a
common code of conduct.’

‘I’m guessing this took a
turn for the worst?’

Caleb sighed. ‘As with
all great civilisations, even one with individuals as great and as wise as Danu
and Balor at their head, there will come times when they are tested.
Unfortunately, the test that befell them would prove to be their undoing.

‘Danu and Balor were
driven by a thirst for knowledge. Balor perhaps more so than his brother. They
pushed the Weave to its limits, increasing their knowledge, seeking to uncover
the very secrets of creation. It was during this time that they first
encountered Nazgath, and the sheol.’

‘Who were they?’

‘It was Balor who
encountered them first. He succeeded in creating a portal into another realm,
the first Way in fact.’

‘Way?’

‘Later. Balor travelled
to this realm, what we now know as Umbra, and met Nazgath, the leader of the
sheol. Nazgath possessed abilities that Balor had never seen, and the two
became close friends, sharing their immense knowledge of the Weave.’

Seb raised both hands. ‘Wait
a minute, I’ve seen these sheol, they weren’t nice people. They had black eyes
and fangs and claws that rip the flesh from your bones. How could anyone be
friends with them?’

Caleb nodded slowly. ‘What
you are referring is what we now know as the Great Deception. You see the sheol
are fiends and tricksters, and Nazgath was the greatest trickster of them all.
Umbra was not just another realm. It was a prison, one made for the sheol by
others long since gone. Balor was deceived by them, but Danu was not. He saw
through their disguise, saw the fiends for what they were. He challenged Balor
on this, but by then his brother had become too enthralled in their spell to
listen to reason. He turned away from Danu, and it was that break that allowed
Nazgath to act.

‘With the knowledge taken
from Balor, the sheol and their dark magi were able to rip holes all over Aura.’

‘Aura?’

‘The one universe.’

‘Right.’

‘Their hordes poured
forwards. Thousands of them, overrunning world after world. The magi fought,
but they were too small in number. For every hundred sheol they slew, thousands
more poured forwards. They surged towards the Forge in the centre of all
reality.’

Something wet dripped off
Seb’s chin. He slammed his mouth shut, realising he was dripping saliva from a
jaw that had well and truly dropped.

‘This is some deep shit.’

‘The deepest.’

‘What happened?’

‘Balor could not act. His
mind was broken by what had happened, by what he had let happen. Danu tried to
rouse him but he could not. Instead, he made a decision that would forever
change the entire universe. He destroyed it.’

‘He what?’

‘He summoned all the
Weave energy he could, his body becoming a vessel that channelled directly from
the Forge itself. With Nazgath at the gates of Temperos, he unleashed this
energy, and cracked the universe into many different pieces. What we now call
the Shards.’

Seb sat in silence. A
light rain had started to fall. Caleb put the wipers on, the rubber squeaking
on the barely wet windscreen.

‘What happened then? What’s
the deal with the Magistry, and Earth, where does this all fit in?’

‘You are quick, Seb, I’ll
give you that,’ Caleb said. ‘Danu had foreseen the fall of Aura. His power was
great, his sense the greatest of all Latent. Before the sheol forces made their
way to Temperos he summoned to him his most loyal magi, the greatest of his
order. He told them of what would happen, that the end was nigh. He gave to
them the founding principles of the Magistry, and with the last vestiges of his
energy, he created a Way that sent them to the farthest reaches of Aura. When
he cracked the universe, these magi found themselves on a Shard untouched by
the sheol. They were on a world like many they had seen before, but one where
the connection to the Weave was weak.’

‘Earth. Our universe.’

‘Bingo.’

‘But what about the
Brotherhood, and Sarah, they said she’d been on a mission. Where? Another
shard?’

‘Later, Seb. We’re here
now.’

‘Where’s here?’

Seb masked the
disappointment at having their conversation cut short as they trundled up a
seemingly endless drive that finished at one of the finest houses he’d ever
seen. If Skelwith was a mansion, then this was a palace.

The van slowed as two men
in suits with rather ominous looking bulges in their jackets stepped out in
front of them. Caleb wound the window down as one of the men came to his side.
Seb stared forward, his heart fluttering like a caged canary under the scrutiny
of the other man, who watched him with a steady eye.

‘You’re late, Caleb.’ The
man said.

‘What can I say, the
traffic’s a bitch. Now, are you going to let me in or am I going to tell the
big man that you’re holding up the item he’s been waiting for the last two
years.’

The man’s face flickered
for a heartbeat. His mouth dropped, his eyebrows raised. The movement was
brief, barely an instant, before the blank veneer returned.

‘You have it?
The Night
Song?
’

Caleb nodded. ‘Fully
translated.’

The man’s professional
demeanour nearly melted. The excitement came off him in waves. Without further
hesitation he stepped back and waved them on.

‘What’s the
Night Song
?’
Seb said as they drove past.

‘An ancient manuscript. One
of the few surviving documents that made the Crossing. I’ve been trying to
track it down for years. It’s a journal written by a mage – Lasander – who was
apparently based at Temperos when Nazgath attacked. Many people considered it a
hoax, whereas some thought it one of the most precious historical documents
across all of the shards.

‘And is it?’

‘Is it what?’

‘A hoax?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never
read it.’

They came to a stop in a
tarmacked area just to the left of the mansion, parking next to a massive
garage where some of the doors were open, displaying a showroom full of various
exotic looking sports cars. As they trudged across the ground towards the side
door Seb noticed the tennis courts alongside the houses, and beyond that, an
estate that stretched on over the horizon. He tutted and shook his head.