The Tessellation Saga. Book Two. 'The One' (20 page)

As she tried to
go deeper into their minds to find the source of the link, she
suddenly hit a wall.

‘
Lemba my
dear,’
a voice in her head seemed to smile at her. Her eyes
flew open and she looked up in surprise, suddenly aware Varan was
looking at her and knew she had been trying to read his mind.

‘It’s really
not polite to pry into other people’s minds without permission.’ He
smiled at her to take the sting from the words and added. ‘Do not
explore too deeply, there is much for you to learn and the power
can be dangerous, we will talk more when we stop.’ Sonal turned and
smiled at her too and once again, she realised that they both knew
she had inadvertently been prying. Closing her eyes once more, she
noted that the both twins’ minds were now shut off from her and she
could no longer feel their presence, unperturbed, she continued her
search. She thought of Rhoàld and his past kindnesses as her
probing found him. He was at first hard to read, hard to see,
something was stopping her, it was not a barrier like the one that
had suddenly shut the twins off but there was something. She tried
harder and all at once, she was through, Rhoàld seemed to glow with
a pale light and she felt the sadness somehow tinged with joy.
Strangely, she noticed a second glowing presence surrounding him,
faint and insubstantial but pearly and shining. She touched it and
felt the love it held for the man it encompassed.

‘
Bastian,’
she whispered with her mind to the ethereal form.
Bastian seemed to turn and smile at her before covering Rhoàld once
more, so feeling like an intruder witnessing a private act she
turned away and sent her probes further into the ether. Jed,
Gideon’s father was there, strong and grave. His natural earth
magic kept him going, not magic in the way a spell caster would
weave threads but in the way of a man who knows and loves nature,
of life and natural things, a bird on the wing or a fish swimming
against the current to spawn and die in the place it had been born.
She could feel his love for the trees and the creatures of the
woods, she could see trails of energy flowing out all around him,
his blood was of the earth and fields and the same pulses that she
had felt in the trees and animals were there in Jed too.
So very
different from the twins or Rhoàld, different even from my Jed,
she thought as she squeezed his middle and wondered at his taut
muscles. She smiled as she realised Jed had no idea that she was
prying and she grinned to herself as she thought of Varan telling
her off the way he had.

The effort it
took for her to read people was becoming easier as she continued to
practice and again she wished she could share the experience with
Jed, as she thought of him, his heartbeat changed and in alarm, she
sent herself back into him.

Jed was
thinking of his sister and the lies Toby had told him, then what he
himself had almost done to Gideon on the strength of those lies,
his thoughts were dark and cloudy, full of malice and hatred for
Toby, with guilt and loathing for himself. Lemba felt her own mood
changing as the strength of Jed’s dark energies spread from him
like a virus spreading a nasty fever.

She began to
think of Jed himself trying to lighten his mood as an image of her
kissing him came into her mind, her licking his lips with a tiny
pink tongue, one hand playing in his hair and the fingers of the
other running down his chest parting his chest hairs with her
nails. Her thoughts became hot and unfocused as she continued, she
could see them both naked on a large soft bed, his muscles rippling
beneath her. She could feel his energies changing once more as his
thoughts joined hers and seemed to take over; Lemba blushed at the
ideas that were running through his head. Hastily, she pulled away
from his mind allowing his fantasy to run its course. Glad that she
had been able to lift the dark depression that lurked so closely
beneath the surface, Jed seemed to want to punish himself for not
believing in Gideon, she was going to have to watch him she
decided
. Gideon, where are you?
She thought as she sent her
probes out again. She could not see him physically as he was on the
other side of Jed and she was facing away but she knew he was there
with Mayan behind him just as she was behind Jed. At once, her head
began to ache and she felt sick, she could not get near to Gideon
or Mayan without feeling very ill. Something is wrong, she thought
as she withdrew into herself. Physically she pulled away from Jed’s
back and tried to draw his attention by touching his hand, tenderly
and still in the throes of his fantasy; he stroked her hand
lovingly in return. Frustrated and worried she sent her probe back
toward Varan.

‘
Varan,’
she screamed, unsure of whether she could get past his barriers
.
‘Varan, its Gideon…, something is wrong with Gideon!’
Varan’s
head snapped round to Gideon, seeing him sitting quietly with his
eyes closed with Mayan sleeping soundly against his back as the
horse ambled onward, he looked questioningly at Lemba.

‘
Why do you
say that my dear?’
She heard his voice deep inside her head,
comforting and smooth as he replied and he looked deeply
puzzled.

‘
I feel sick
if I try to get near him, my head hurts and I can’t ‘see’ something
feels… bad… wrong… I don’t know, it’s just I have this
feeling…’
she babbled on as Varan turned to Sonal.

‘How are you
feeling Gideon?’ Sonal asked as he studied Gideon and felt nothing
unusual in the ether, he walked his horse a little closer to the
boy. Gideon lifted his eyes to his friend, blue eyes, dark with
pain and suffering, looked back at Sonal and he answered
quietly.

‘Me ‘ead ‘urts
a bit Sonal, but I’ve not said as May’s asleep. I feel sick again
too,’ he added as his skin seemed to turn slightly green and pasty
looking, Sonal mumbled a few words and looked into the roots of the
magic surrounding the boy; he gasped and looked back at Lemba
briefly as a puzzled expression crossed his face. Quickly, he
turned back to Gideon and reaching behind him, lifted the sleeping
girl from the back of the horse.

‘Wake child,’
he commanded and placed her rather unsteadily on the ground.
‘Varan,’ he called, as he helped Gideon climb shakily down, ‘it’s
started, get the box,’ he added as he too, climbed from his
horse.

Gideon stood
beside his horse swaying and with his head pounding, a solid band
drawing closer and tighter squeezing and straining against his
skull. The pressure behind his eyes forced him to close them
tightly as he feared in his pain they may pop out of his skull like
a chick from an egg. His body somehow felt too small for him and
his skin too tight, everything hurt. His mouth suddenly filled with
saliva and his throat constricted pumping bile from deep within his
gut. It stung his throat and began dribbling down his chin as fire
licked at his guts, burning him up from the inside out, he fell to
his knees and threw up struggling to draw breath as his stomach
vented and retched even after it was empty. As the pain drew toward
a crescendo Gideon again thought he was going to die and his world
began to turn black. Somewhere behind him, above the fierce
uncoordinated sounds in his head he could hear Mayan sobbing and
Jed, his brother shouting at the elder twins to
do
something
.

‘It’ll be all
right boy, yer jus’ need ter ‘old on...’ he heard his father say
from somewhere above him as he and the twins worked quickly with
the dark wooden planks.

‘Da… ‘elp me…’
Gideon began as his breath left his lungs and he fainted.

‘Jed, it looks
like a coffin,’ whispered young Jed as a box began to take shape;
he was frightened for his friend and again, reminded of what he had
tried to do.

Suddenly Gideon
was outside his body looking back, pain free and light, he watched
the scene playing out before him dispassionately. The elder twins,
Varan and Sonal were slotting the wooden planks together firmly and
quickly. Both he and the younger twins had asked what the planks
were for as they were loaded onto the hapless horses but had not
received any answers and in their eagerness to get home, they had
let the matter drop. Now though, with the planks reassembling,
Gideon recognised the wooden chest his grandfather had shown him
just days ago, the first piece of furniture his father had ever
made. As he watched, the scene below him quickly disappeared amidst
a chaotic mass of colour.

The colours
surrounding his friends were fiery and red with sickly flashes of
yellow and green building in depth and hue from the centre, each
successive colour growing like a cancerous tumour. The unbalanced
colour left him feeling sick in his stomach even though he knew he
was no longer in his corporeal form. Somehow Gideon knew he, he was
creating this madness, this angry chaotic disruption in the ether
and it was building, growing with voracious intensity, he had never
seen such power, had not known that this was inside him and he was
frightened.

“
By the
Journey’, who am I?’
He asked, terrified at the ferocity in
which the warring colours were straining for release and for Mayan,
her tiny figure almost lost in the anarchic mass below, he could
not see her face but it broke his heart to think she would be
crying and scared. As the box was completed, he watched in horror
as Lemba threw in a pillow and a blanket before Jed and his father
gently lifted his unconscious body and laid it inside. Varen and
Sonal holding the lid placed it on top of the box sealing the
wooden creation closed.
I must be dead,
he thought, as the
lid closed over his body and lay in the road like an elaborately
carved coffin.

Lemba watched
the scene unfolding before in her in awe, she could see the mass of
violent colour and hear the terrible sounds echoing and resounding
through her head, bouncing off the people and objects in its way
and exploding in her ears. She stared at the others in horror as
they rushed about seemingly oblivious to the growing danger. As her
Jed took Gideon’s arm, she opened her mouth to scream at him, to
tell him to get away, to run away as far and as fast as possible
from the horror, that Gideon was becoming. She turned her face
toward the horse she was holding and pushed it into the horse’s
warm flank, mourning the loss of her tongue once more as she
covered her ears with her hands trying to block out the sound as
well as her sight. Her teeth sank into her lip unnoticed as she
felt the magic pulsing and intensifying with each beat of Gideon’s
heart, wave after wave washing over her, drowning her. She could
feel herself pulled toward it, an unstoppable power dragging her in
as she fought against it clawing and spitting. Silently she
screamed for help as she pushed herself harder against the horse
feeling the small box sewn into the lining of her clothes digging
into her ribs reminding her she was alive herself and not just a
part of Gideon’s magic as the music of the song clashed and jarred.
Each note screeching for attention, there was no harmony, just
inconsonant noise, no tune just senseless sound, a cacophony of
discord, with spikes and spears of colour fighting and trying to
absorb her very soul along with her newfound magic as it fed off
her, adding to the abstract chaos multiplying and expanding around
her. The power that was Gideon was alive and uncontrollable as it
sought release from his pale and weak form. She was losing herself,
losing her battle to remain free and as the blood pounded in her
ears and her heart began to beat in time with Gideon’s she tried to
reach for Varan.

As the lid
closed upon Gideon, Varan felt Lemba’s call and he looked to her in
the ether and saw Gideon through her eyes, again he wondered at her
power as he sent himself toward her, calming and drawing her soul
back into her body. Lemba heard the gentle harmony of Varen’s song
through the senseless clamour that was holding her. She tried to
draw away from the magic that was Gideon but it held her, the very
music of the song had her enthralled, from the chaotic madness to
the quiet sleep inducing harmonies of Varan’s tuneful voice.
Through the ether, she could now see the completed box with its
tightly fitted lid looking so much like a coffin she wondered if
Gideon was indeed dead, not thinking that if he had been the pull
from his power would have stopped.

The box clearly
was a thing of beauty, a mass of carvings and latticework not
unlike the carvings Gideon’s grandfather had shown her in the barn
at the cottage. Swirls and vines intricate leaves and tiny insects.
It shone with a deep rich glow emanating from within the wood
itself. The colours still seeped out through the lines of the box
and poured through the latticework lid throwing shapes and patterns
through the darkness like a skilfully worked panel of stained glass
in the sunlight but as she watched, the warring colours gradually
became more muted, not so angry, not quite so violent. They were
calmer and gentle, easier to look upon and shining softly, the
music Gideon exuded now from his subconscious was calm and
peaceful, full of life and hope. Pastel colours seeped through the
gaps in the latticework lid creating pale rainbows against the
darkness, angry reds and purples turned into pale pinks and lilacs,
so beautiful that Lemba felt tears ease from beneath her eyelids
and soak away into the horse’s coat. Still she could not draw
herself away, the power was like a drug, it held her, intoxicating
and terrifying yet she wanted more. Slowly as the colour dimmed and
the noise began to quieten, her headache eased and she no longer
felt so sick. Varan’s song finally caught and surrounded her, she
felt herself cut away from the drug that fed her and Lemba found
herself again. She smelt the earthy mustiness of the horses coat
and tasted the hot metallic blood on her lip from where she had
bitten it as she tried to stop the sounds.