The Prophecy of the Gems (17 page)

When night fell, bringing an end to a difficult and tiring day, the four girls stopped at the edge of a meadow, for Janëlle had persuaded the others to spend the night outdoors rather than in an unfamiliar village.

Unable to bear even to share some food together, Jade and Opal stalked off across the field in different directions to spend the night on their own.

Amber was alone with Janëlle. She felt no resentment towards their young guide, whose presence didn’t affect her bad mood one way or the other. Janëlle began to tell Amber about her past, how she came to be alone, working as a guide. Janëlle’s story was so similar to her own that Amber found herself opening up to the other girl and pouring out her grief over her mother’s death. She was relieved to have found a real friend, after being so let down by Jade and Opal.

When they grew tired, the two friends decided to go to sleep, promising to continue their conversation the next day. Amber slept heavily, without any dreams.

The sky was sprinkled with stars; the moon shone faintly. In the middle of the night, the silence was broken by a stifled cry. Amber awoke suddenly, gasping for breath; she felt a burning sensation spread throughout her body and slowly, painfully, she struggled to her feet.

“What’s happening?” she moaned. “I feel terrible!”

Janëlle did not reply. Her expression had changed into one of loathing and malevolence. She bent down and tried to pick up something in the thick grass, then
straightened up with a shriek. It was impossible to deny: her eyes were flashing with rage.

“Janëlle!” gasped Amber, mesmerised.

“Leave me alone!” cried the other girl in a shrill, hysterical voice.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Can’t you tell? Don’t you want to understand?”

Janëlle slowly held out her clenched fist, then opened her fingers to reveal a palm disfigured by burns. At that moment, Amber saw her as the Nalyss had perceived her — as everyone would have seen her if her appearance had been the reflection of her soul: fat, with oily skin, messy black hair, dark eyes buried in puffy cheeks, a piggy nose, a massive and ungainly figure. Her eyes glittered with wickedness, and all her features betrayed a desire to destroy: she had become the incarnation of hatred.

“It’s your fault!” she screamed, as if demented.

“But — what is?”

“Everything! You don’t dare see what’s right in front of you? I hate you … I hate you!”

Amber felt sick. Her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t understand anything any more, and didn’t want to.

“You have everything for yourself, you’re the one I should have been!” wailed Janëlle. “You’ve stolen my place! You’ve stolen my life!”

“That’s insane,” stammered Amber.

“Of course, it’s easy for you to say that. Me, I’m just a poor miserable girl, I have no right to be important — that’s what you think.”

“No, no, not at all!”

“You still don’t get it? Then I’ll help you. Let’s go back to the beginning. I meet three girls, so I stop, and from what I hear them say, I realise that they’ve seen some Nalyss who ran away when they saw me coming! Of course, these three are perfect enough to have seen them, but not me!”

“I — I didn’t know,” whispered Amber, who felt the burning sensation in her body grow worse as her world crumbled around her.

“So,” continued Janëlle, “I decide to make friends with them. I want to show them that I, too, have a right to exist, to be appreciated.”

“I never said you didn’t—”

“But these three girls ignore me.”

“That’s not true!”

“They have everything on their side. Life has given them so much, and me, nothing. So I feel violent anger growing inside me: it fills me, possesses me, until it takes me over completely. I have to get rid of it. I concentrate, and with an ease I’ve never known before, I expel my hatred. It overflows… into the soul of another.”

“Jade!” said Amber.

“But this hatred keeps rising in me, so to control myself I shift it to you, then to the other girl, Opal, isn’t that her name? The anger gradually enslaves me and each of you in turn.”

“Why? We didn’t do anything to you!” protested Amber.

“Then you confide in me. I invent the story of my so-called life and you believe me, feel sorry for me. I hate your goody-goody feelings, your sympathetic manner. I was dying to spit out the truth, to tell you how I’ve infected people with hatred and brought about deaths, caused wars. When you told me about your Stone I realised who you were. And then I thought I was going to explode with rage. I wanted to outdo you, humiliate you, annihilate you.”

“No!” cried Amber miserably, still refusing to accept the truth.

“Tonight I tried to steal your Stone but I couldn’t, it burnt my hand. And you! You woke up, so trusting, with that perfect, smart, unbearable look on your face.”

Amber couldn’t say a word.

“What do you think? That I’m some tormented soul? That I turn to evil simply to escape from my problems? No. Evil nourishes me, gives me power! Without evil, I’m nothing. I serve it, but it consoles me, transforms me, makes me invulnerable! I need evil. When I see others suffer, when I feel evil possess me, I grow strong! With no more need to hide behind simpering smiles, to force myself to be someone else, to seem nice. Evil lets me be myself.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because I know that it hurts you. My words wound you, make your bruised soul bleed — and I love that. You thought you were better than I am? You aren’t! You thought I was your friend? I was just the opposite, one of your most fervent enemies! Your tears give me incredible joy. You think I’ve betrayed you?

Well, I have no regret: I do as I please, I follow my own nature. I don’t flinch at the slippery world I’m forced to live in; I create evil, and I live off it.”

With these words, Janëlle smiled triumphantly and went away satisfied.

Amber thought she vaguely glimpsed a horseman in the distance, watching the scene, but that image could only have been an illusion, a mirage in the night.

She looked in the grass for her Stone, which had turned warm and comforting again. The bitterness and burning in her heart had vanished with Janëlle, yet her cheeks were still wet with tears, like pearls of deep dismay.

THE NAMELESS ONE
opened his eyes and quickly regained consciousness. His injuries had disappeared. He no longer felt any pain or saw any trace of the deep wounds he had sustained. He realised that he was in the same room as before, a narrow room with bare walls. And though he was still sitting on the strange chair of green moss, his limbs were no longer restrained by bonds. Next to him, Elfohrys seemed unhurt as well, although he was still tied up.

“Ah! Nameless!” he cried. “Finally, you’ve come round!”

“But — the theatre, the agony…”

“Excuse me? You must still be in shock.”

“I didn’t dream it,” murmured the puzzled hovalyn.

“A few hours ago, after Naïlde left, some Ghibduls came.”

“I know.”

“They surrounded you and started chanting a strange spell. You fainted, became agitated, and babbled some incomprehensible sounds. Then they stood around you without a word for about half an hour. I was beginning to get really worried! You were still unconscious when they left. I shouted, I tried to help you. At last, after two hours, the vines imprisoning you untied themselves and you seemed to become more peaceful.”

Perplexed, the haggard young man stared at his intact limbs, unmarked save for the old wound on his right arm. He put his head in his hands. Was his memory beginning to play tricks on him? After eradicating his past, was it betraying him anew, conjuring up an imaginary present?

Before he could think any further, three Ghibduls entered the room. Their monstrous faces were twisted into affable expressions, while their lips tried vainly to
form a smile. Approaching the knight, one of the visitors silently held out to him a long object wrapped in an immaculate white cloth. Cautiously, the young man reached for it with a tentative hand.

“Take it,” said a Ghibdul encouragingly, in a harsh voice tinged with humility, respect and admiration.

Unwrapping the object, the Nameless One was astonished — it was his enchanted sword!

“If you will accept them,” continued the Ghibdul, “we would like to offer you our apologies, honourable hovalyn.”

Elfohrys hooted with laughter, which drew scowls from the Ghibduls.

“Perhaps you could let us go now,” suggested Elfohrys gaily. “We’re quite touched by your sudden change of heart, but—”

“Quiet, wretch!” ordered the Ghibdul who had returned the sword and who clearly had the most authority.

“I forbid you to treat Elfohrys like that!” protested the hovalyn indignantly.

“If such is your wish,” mumbled the disconcerted Ghibdul.

“I think that you might offer us some explanation,” continued the young man, still bewildered but determined to take advantage of this unexpected development.

“We entered your mind and staged a simulated experience, using images that were already in your thoughts but of whose existence you were unaware. And we added a few elements of our own.”

“So everything I thought I saw and felt was false?”

“From the moment you thought you had left this room,” confirmed the Ghibdul. “It was a necessary and effective test. We are particularly gifted at this sort of painless manipulation.”

“Painless,” sighed their victim. “That word may not mean the same thing to everyone, but personally, I did not consider the invasion of my mind to be either pleasant or harmless!”

The Ghibdul was so close to him that the young man could smell the creature’s fetid breath, and he turned his head aside when his visitor spoke again.

“There were some doubts about you. What we had at first suspected seemed unlikely, but we were determined to settle the question. And in entering
your mind, we were able to confirm our initial suspicions, our hopes…”

“Oh, so you are actually capable of hoping?” said Elfohrys sarcastically. “Well, we learn something every day.”

“Hovalyn, you are the one we have long awaited. What is your name?”

“I don’t have one,” confessed the knight. “I am the Nameless One.”

The Ghibduls did not seem troubled by this news.

“You are the only one to have stood up for so long to the, uh, mental torture we inflicted on you. We are truly sorry to have put you through that.”

“Well you certainly weren’t very subtle about it.”

“But it was necessary,” said the Ghibdul earnestly. “Even amongst ourselves, no one has ever lasted that long under such a trial. And it’s the choice you made that is especially unbelievable. No one, until you, had opted for that solution. No one had had the courage to do so. Except you.”

“You think it’s fun to practise mental torture on one another?” asked Elfohrys. “That’s really… entertaining!”

“And why do you think I am the one you have ‘long awaited’?” asked the hovalyn.

“For centuries we have lived a secluded existence. We have created a civilisation that is still in its infancy. But since the dawn of time, a tradition, a belief has been passed down: that one day a man would come and we would recognise him. He would change our way of life, create fellowship between us and other creatures. And we would follow him, obey him, help him when he asked for our assistance. That man, Nameless One, is you.”

“That’s impossible,” protested the hovalyn. “How could I bring you together with other peoples? And besides, I have no intention of leading you!”

“We are going to show you our village, and then you will leave. But one day soon, you will call on us for aid,” announced the Ghibdul calmly. “For so it is written.”

Seeing that the sceptical young knight was both confused and unconvinced, another Ghibdul spoke up.

“There is no reason for you to believe us, hovalyn, except for the fact that, some centuries ago,
Néophileus himself prophesised the same event. He wrote in
The Prophecy
that one day, after a victory, a man would discover a hidden civilisation living in the depths of the forest. He would endure a trial that would reveal his identity to the creatures holding him captive. Then the man would leave. When Darkness came to blot out the Light, he would return. He would ask these forest people for help and would bring them forth from oblivion. Hovalyn, this is your story. And ours.”