Ultimus Thesaurus: The last Treasure (Era of Change Book 1) (11 page)

“I don’t know. This just can’t be my life, it is impossible for it to all be real. I have waited for my father, and you have waited to leave this village. But now we are no longer here. My father is dead, our village will soon fall, and we cannot leave. Why should we put our trust in the treasure? You said that it was dangerous. Is it more dangerous than you?” she asked me and looked up to the sky.

The snowfall in the last few days had decreased somewhat, but the severe storm that struck the country was unusual for this time of year. We had changed the run of events in this world, and as much as I wanted to undo that, I couldn’t do it.

“It is all we have. What I did is not easy to forget, but I am still convinced that I have done the right thing. My mistakes, the mistakes of your father and yours, they all count for nothing. We must look to the future and we must find what your father has sent us to find. This is the only way we can rectify that which was lost.”

She smiled, but not because of joy, but out of fear.

“I will follow you. In the morning we will leave this city, as you have always wanted. I can’t understand what is happening, nor can I feel it, but when the day comes and we find this treasure, then I hope that I will finally be able to. And now leave me alone. I would like to spend these last moments with my family. And do not worry about me, Aton protects me. He has promised.”

All night I lay awake looking at the stars in the sky. At first I wanted to tell my father that I was sorry and that I had changed, but in the end it wasn’t worth the effort to me anymore. This man had done everything possible so that I hate him, and now he was paying the price for these deeds. As soon as the moon began to disappear and the sun rose, the first building started to burn. I ran to the square in front of the town hall and here too the chaos had found its victims. Many corpses piled up on the streets and in the distance I noticed my father. In the midst of all this death and destruction, he stood there and did not move. He just leaned against the great statue of Eoghan Ayrs, the founder of our village.

“Father, you must flee. We oftentimes didn’t agree, but…,” I called from afar, but the more I reached him, the clearer it became to me that he was already dead.

The sword of the captain stuck deep in his body and fixed him on the statue. It was a message to me, but I felt nothing when I looked at this man. The pirate had taken from me, what was mine. Now I could never gain the trust, or the recognition of my father. And that is why I made a decision on that day.

“Not long, father, will you sleep, and then when you awake you will see who your son truly is. I will be the man who brings back the dead into this world; I will be the one who frees them. This I swear!” I screamed over the town square, but no living soul could hear me.

My attempt to remove the sword failed miserably but Aton who stood behind me grabbed and pulled it out.

“Here. Our journey begins. Follow me,” he said and went straight to the harbour.

He didn’t care about the things that happened around us, but even if I did not know exactly what I felt myself, I was completely at Aton’s mercy. His ability to see through me, told him things about me that I myself could hardly understand. The captain was already on the ship and with him Lucia, who tracked me with her dark gaze and Isaac, who looked the worse for wear.

“Finally you are here, bub! Men, we set the sails! On to Singasteinn!” he yelled and a few minutes later we left my home.

I looked out over the harbour into the village, which was sinking ever so deep into the flames that swallowed up where I had once been born.

“A lesson like this is learned best when you are still young. You are lucky to have found me. And now under deck with you. We will fetch you if we need you. Your friend the giant has assured me that he is more than capable of showing me the way alone. And your little friend has also proven to be more useful than you are.”

Dylan let his men take me into detention and put me in chains. Together with Isaac, whom they forbid to take his elixir, they put me in a cell. Our trip had not started as planned, but in the end I had done it. Soon, times would change and if we found the treasure, I had hoped to return to what once was the life I knew.

The smell of salt was in the air, and every time I opened my eyes and awoke from my dreamless sleep, I knew where I was. They only rarely let us leave our cell, and when they did, then just to chain us up on deck to work for them. Lucia always looked at me with this dark gaze while I and Magnus mopped the ground. We had already been out at sea for a few weeks and there was still no sign that this island even existed.

“Where do we need to go now, Aton? This was the course you gave me, but I see no island in miles,” said the captain and expressed his displeasure by ripping the map in his hands to small pieces.

“We have arrived, but we are not prepared. The island tests our will. They will soon come,” said Aton and informed us about everything he knew, but in a way so that we couldn’t understand it.

“Who are 'they'?” I asked and was immediately silenced again by one of the crew members who kept a watchful eye on me and Magnus.

“They are the guardians of Singasteinn. They are the reason why I doubted that a simple human could have uncovered the secret. No one has ever entered this island. They have killed all who tried.”

Of course none of us believed that these mysterious guardians of the invisible island existed, but I still couldn’t avoid looking into Aton’s eyes and seeing an emotion which he could never convey before, almost as if he was afraid. It was an unusual image watching this titan as he was looking at the sea, seemingly seeing things, which we could not.

“Cast the anchor. We should get ready to 'welcome' them. Men, ready the cannons and lock this scum back into their cells,” called the captain and the ship came to a halt.

“I had a dream, everything full of foam, I can hardly believe it! The whole room was full, foam up to my chin, couldn’t see anywhere!” sang Magnus, who was still firmly grasping his broom while the crew tried to lead him off.

I took a last look at Lucia, but she just turned away and helped the men. Whoever these guardians were, Jasper had defeated them, and he was alone. At least that’s what I hoped had happened. Even if I never really knew him, he knew me better than I do myself. From the very first day he couldn’t stand me and now I knew why. Maybe I had not changed since this trip began; maybe I had always been this monster.

“Soon night falls who would have thought, and every man watches with care, and so some find it in their heart, to take what others guard! And now I drink, turn to the gods, just like I always do. You however, you can go,” sang Magnus and put a small key on the ground, which he must have stolen from one of the crew members.

Behind all this senile nonsense that he was spouting, a glimmer of his former mind remained. I took the key and sneaked out. As an escape was impossible on the high seas, and I didn’t intend to even think about it, I figured that I could use this time alone on deck to think. Since I didn’t want to risk being discovered immediately, I sat down in one of the tenders and looked up into the sky.

“Are you afraid?” I suddenly heard a voice asking and so I turned around.

It was Lucia with a drawn sword in hand behind me. She was holding the weapon of the captain, the sword that killed my father.

“No. You?” I said quietly and looked back at the stars.

Lucia lowered the weapon and sat down next to me. She was relieved to see that I hadn’t changed entirely.

“My grandparents didn’t make it. They didn’t want to flee, none of them. First I cried, but then I realized that it was my fault. The curse of my father had been on me since my birth. His travels, his search, everything he did were worthless and brought nothing more than pain. My mother died without him, and he died without me. But he couldn’t let it end there. He sent us both out to destroy the world. Why else would he have done all of this?”

“I do not know. At the beginning I thought that everything would have been a lie. That the king had him executed, because he truly was nothing more than a liar. But should this island really exist, I will be able to see what he did. Only then will I judge him. Perhaps the horror of this knowledge is so much more terrible than our suffering. If we find something that can improve this world, we will use it to mend our wounds, but if it is dangerous, I will do anything to destroy it.”

“You have always been like that. I remember now. Back then you feared the people because they called you a monster and a freak. You were forced to be like that. You wanted to protect what was important to you and because your fear of failure is so much bigger than that of any other person you just can’t set any limits for yourself. I hope that you are right in the end. The captain gave me this sword not without any words. He said that I would kill you. He was so sure about this that he wanted to give it to me, because it was important to him that it happens with this sword. Please don’t let him be right,” she said and went away.

The captain had seen the hatred in the eyes of Lucia, but he disregarded the love from which it was born. Now it was my turn and I would choose what happens next. Isaac worried me the least at this point in time because he was a valuable member of this group. The captain however was unnecessary, now that we had reached our destination. Right from the outset I had been sure, that we wouldn’t leave this island together. His crew was not small, and against more than twenty men not even all of us together could do anything. Aton was the weakest of our group, because he had no own opinion. He didn’t care about who would die.

“What should I do?” I whispered to the gods, and unexpectedly they seemed to have the answers.

A strong wind hit the deck and a few seconds later there was an envelope at my side containing a message. I opened it and noticed that the message was not written in ink but in dragon tears. It was a very rare tonic which in ancient times had been used to torture captives. Stories told of victims whose body would fight so strongly against the tonic that it literally incinerated them from the inside. If it came in contact with the air, it only took a few seconds to burn away. You could recognize it immediately by the red shimmer and the almost liquid font. So far I had only read about it, but I knew that I had very little time to read the message.

“Superbia Draconum! Taste my power.”

Every person in the five kingdoms knew these words, even if they hadn’t been spoken for many centuries. Only the house of prince Marko sent letters such as these. According to the legend Marko was the first dragon slayer and later the founder of the first debtor houses. In my time these were of course not controlled by dragon slayers, but who was behind them I wasn’t sure. Rumour had it that you could only pay a debt in blood or gold, but this message told me something else. The letter burned away while I still held it in my hand and full of pain I dismissed it to the wind. Whatever magic it was that touched me; it burned the mark of dragons into the palm of my right hand and left behind a small vial.

Nothing except the word ‘Drink’ was noted on it. I looked around me, but I could not see anything except the sea and the darkness. This person, whoever it was must have killed Jasper. He watched us and with this gift he showed us that we were not alone searching for this island. But how could anyone keep this house alive for such a long time? Marko himself must have died about thousands of years ago. 

Uncertain whether the content was poisonous, I turned the bottle in the light of the moon. Something deep in me cried out after it and without any real control over my action I drank the contents in only one gulp. I felt a strong burning, while the viscous liquid slipped along my throat, and when it had finally reached my stomach, a sharp pain drew through my whole body, and it disappeared only a second later, together with the mark on my hand. Nothing remained, except the empty bottle and many unanswered questions.

Since I crept back into the cell before sunrise, and threw the key over board as a precaution, there was no one, except Isaac and Lucia, who knew about my little escapade. We had waited a whole other day now, but the guardians of the island still didn’t show. Under the assumption that it was poison that I drunk, I kept the bottle for the time being, to have it in an emergency so that Isaac could be able to analyse the contents. He was clearly worn out by our trip, and I was sure that it was just as unpleasant for him as it was for me, even though they only kept him in this cell because they feared that Magnus could show himself again.

“Do you believe in these guardians? Or do you have an idea what they might be?” I asked Isaac, who was leaning against the iron bars with his bare back.

“I just know, that I hope, that these guardians kill every single one of these pirates. I don’t want to suffer from their company any longer. We better had built a ship of our own than to travel with them.”

“They hardly left us a choice, after the city burned down to ashes. But you are most likely right with what you say. These guardians won’t let those onto the island, who only long for glory and gold. I just hope that we can leave this ship soon.”

Shortly after our conversation the man who had to take care of us reported in, like every morning. They called him Igor, but I was sure, that this was not his real name, if he even knew it himself. He was the general servant on this ship and he chained us up like every other day when our help was needed. As we left the cage, we felt a shock equal to that of an earthquake, which was unusual on the high seas. Igor immediately ran together with us up to the deck and in the distance we saw it. It was a gigantic maelstrom that dragged down everything around it.

“Pull the anchor! We must immediately turn the ship around” commanded the captain, but Aton, who was standing next to him, pulled out the wheel of the ship and threw it into the ocean. 

The captain was completely speechless, and no one had ever seen something like this before. Our test had started, and Aton wanted to make sure that we did not cheat.