Born to Magic: Tales of Nevaeh: Volume I Read online

  She did and the snuck-woman’s coils relaxed further. Another surprise, Man. Perhaps you have some little value. Step aside, Woman. Let me see all of him.

  Areenna did as asked and when she was at Mikaal’s side, she took back the hand she’d released moments earlier. “Son of Enaid, you are a puzzle. You allowed this woman to protect you against all male instinct. Why?”

  “Why would I not? Areenna is no less than I.”

  “Tell me of your powers. No man has ever had such before. Who did this to you?”

  “No one—it is the way I was born.”

  “You have a block that prevents this memory,” she stated. Let me in.

  “I have no such block.” You have already seen. You were there in the black.

  The snuck-woman laughed. “Something created you.”

  “What created you? How can only women live here? Are you so old that you were here when this occurred?” Mikaal shot back.

  The black half being hissed loudly. “You trespass on our Island and you challenge me with questions?”

  “We do,” Areenna answered for them. She had been listening while at the same time trying to gain a deeper sense of the thing before them without success.

  The hissing grew louder. The woman-snuck’s coils tensed and rose as its upper torso arched menacingly. “You have no right!” she screamed and launched herself at them.

  CHAPTER 32

  LIGHT FLARED IN Areenna’s hand, glowing and growing.

  No, Mikaal threw the thought at her as the snuck-woman attacked.

  Areenna drew back the power and stared unflinching into the woman’s eyes as she struck at them. The instant she reached them, she stopped. Her face hung before Areenna’s, then swiveled to stare deep into Mikaal’s eyes.

  “Thrice now you have done what no man has done before. Three times you have done the unexpected. Will you survive more?”

  The snuck-woman retreated to where she had been before striking and rested her torso on her coils. “Come closer, sit before me.”

  Hand in hand, Areenna and Mikaal walked to within a yard of the thing and sat before her. The musky, cloying scent rising from its body was strong but bearable. “We will answer your question of how we came to be. Brace yourselves.”

  Before either could take a breath, the alien feel of the snuck-woman’s thoughts pushed into their minds, spreading within and sucking them into the whirling vortex of its mind.

  <><><>

  The next thing Areenna was aware of was standing in the center of a large green field, holding Mikaal’s hand. She knew she wasn’t there, but was seeing this in her mind.

  People walked all around them. Unlike Nevaeh, their skin colors were a rainbow of differences: white, beige, tan, shades of dark brown, some reddish and even tannish yellow. And their hair was vastly different with dozens of shades of colors, many glaringly unnatural to her eyes. Some walked with what looked like coors but were not, others walked with gorlon sized coors on long chains. There were trees, but only one or two looked familiar. She glanced quickly at Mikaal, who was staring at everything.

  In the near distance were strange structures reaching into the sky. Made of glass and metal, stone and mortar, the behemoths were everywhere. This is the world as it once was. More people lived on this island than do now in the whole of Nevaeh. This is before…

  A woman with white skin and red hair screamed and pointed at the sky. Looking up, Areenna saw a silver shape, like a flying lance. It was heading directly at them.

  Seconds later there was an explosion unlike anything she had ever witnessed. A massive flame leaped skyward rising hundreds of feet before turning into a gray, cloudlike mushroom. She watched people disintegrate before her eyes. One second they were there and the next they were gone. Others blew outward, carried on the winds of the explosion. She turned to look behind her and saw huge structures blow apart, sending glass and stone and metal spewing outward.

  And then they were sucked back into the mental vortex and when it stopped, they were far beneath the earth’s surface, in a dark place where anguish struck them with the might of fists. Here is where the survivors found sanctuary, deep below the ruined surface. Here is where many more died of the poison man had released.

  They watched the scene unfold—men and women lay dying, their skins covered with erupting sores. Even those whose skin had been burned from the horror were dying…

  The animals, too, suffered terribly as the effects of what happened destroyed their bodies as well. Man let loose a force over which he had no control. The results changed everyone, everywhere, not just on the Island. But here, we suffered terribly. In three years, all but a few hundred out of millions survived. But what the dark ones unleashed changed us in many ways.

  Of the survivors, there were women carrying fruit within their wombs. These yet to be born children suffered as well and when they came forth, they were changed. Their very essence had become something…else.

  They found themselves watching a woman—her skin badly burned and scarred, her body thin, and stomach massively distended—twist and cry out as she gave birth. Unable to do anything but stare, they watched the baby come forth. What they witnessed should never have been. The baby was born with its entire body covered in dark gray scales.

  In the moment of birth and delivery, time sped forward, and Areenna and Mikaal watched people die and others be born. All were female, and all were covered with scales except for their faces. Some were so deformed as to take on the appearance of snucks, while others like the snuck-woman guiding them now, were hybrids of snuck and human.

  In the next instant they were back in the glass tunnel, facing the snuck-woman. Mikaal took a deep breath, realizing the people and animals in the vision were genetic mutations caused by the men set by the Dark Ones across the sea.

  The woman stiffened. “How know you these words, genetic mutation?”

  Mikaal threw a block around his mind as he stared at her, meeting the vertical pupils unflinchingly, refusing to allow her to see the truth about his father. “My mother told me how whatever the Dark Ones did caused people to become different. She called it mutation.”

  “Yes, that is what we are. Remove your block.”

  “No,” he said. Areenna’s hand, still wrapped securely around his, tightened. He returned the pressure.

  “You know I could destroy you easily.”

  “And destroy yourself at the same time?”

  “You are overconfident.”

  Mikaal smiled for the first time since stepping onto the Island. He shook his head slowly. You know better. You have always known. Would you risk her life?

  You think yourself better than we are. You think you can do what no other has done.

  Areenna, watching and listening to both the verbal and the silent conversation, released Mikaal’s hand and said, “No, it is you who think yourselves better than we. It is you who are so afraid of man you are willing to let Nevaeh be overrun, letting them destroy everything.”

  The human part of the body turned to her, its hands clenched as it stared at her. “Your emotions, your feelings for him matter not to us.”

  “Then we have wasted everything in coming here. I was to learn what was intended. I was to gain something unsaid. But I have found nothing worth the sacrifices we have made to come here. Without him, I am but half a woman.”

  And then Areenna let her powers loose. White bolts of fury rose from her hands and shot toward the snuck-woman. Instantly, Mikaal followed suit, sending flames at her. Neither expected what happened next.

  The snuck-woman disappeared. She was there and she was gone, just as the last two had done.

  “She was never here, she was only in our minds,” Areenna said a moment later. The light glowing from her hands gave them enough illumination to see.

  “What we saw was truth,” Mikaal added. “Of that I have no doubt.”

  Areenna stared at the spot where the woman had been. “Do you think she could have harmed us?”r />
  “Yes, if necessary. And it is They,” Mikaal said. “I have this feeling, I don’t know what to call it, but somehow I know, she was not one, but more than one.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “How is this possible?” he asked, pointing to the people and animals caught within the glass, perished three thousand years before they had been born. “How is a woman part snuck?”

  “A false image?” Areenna asked.

  Mikaal shook his head once. “No, it was a true image, we would have known otherwise.”

  “We should get out of here, go back to the street and find that…needle.”

  Agreeing, Mikaal turned and started back to the entrance of the tunnel. He made it five feet before he was stopped by another of the invisible barriers. He gave a short barking laugh. “Apparently, they do not want us going that way.”

  “They herd us still,” Areenna whispered.

  Perhaps, Mikaal thought back. But we are now permitted our abilities. Light the way, Areenna.

  Instead of moving forward, Areenna knelt on the smooth yet wavy surface of the glass floor and, with her hands pressed to it as she would have to the ground outside, she let her senses roam.

  Nothing blocked her this time and she pushed forward, seeking what might lie ahead. “I feel nothing living within this tunnel.”

  Rising, she started in the only direction they could go. Behind her, Mikaal drew the sword, gripping it with both hands and taking comfort from its solid feel as they walked past the dead, who stared blindly at them from within their glass prison.

  They walked in silence for almost an hour, each wrapped within solitary thoughts, when the first wisp of a breeze reached them. “I smell water,” Areenna said.

  Only at that moment did Mikaal realize they had been on the slightest of upgrades and had unknowingly been moving toward the ground above. “Give us more light,” he said.

  Areenna called forth more power and the tunnel brightened. The walls still contained the dead, but they could see further now. A few minutes later, the mouth of the tunnel appeared. “Hold,” Mikaal whispered.

  With the light from the entrance filtering in, Areenna closed her hands and drew back her energies. They stood still in the grayish light, staring at the tunnel entrance, looking for anything.

  There was a sensation of being watched. Mikaal spun, sword at the ready, and stared into the tunnel.

  “What?” Areenna asked in a whisper.

  Something is behind us.

  Light flared in her hand and she threw it into the tunnel. It blazed higher, exposing a half dozen traats, their eyes yellow and glowing in her light. “We never heard them.”

  As she spoke, more traats came into the light—a lot more.

  Their rodent-like bodies, elongated and muscular, were tensed. The one in front lifted its head, its ears rotated forward as it stared at them. Mikaal looked over his shoulder at the opening a hundred feet ahead. Now that he had control of his abilities, he was about to tell Areenna to run while he stopped them from chasing her, but held back. Why had they given them their abilities in the tunnel? To defend against the traats? The lessons from the three times he had met the women of the Island told him that was the wrong answer.

  Areenna stepped past him and stood between him and the traats. She looked at them for several seconds. They held still. Then the leader lifted on his haunches and stared directly at her. Their eyes locked and something passed between them, but it was unlike anything she had ever experienced from an animal.

  A half breath later the pack of traats turned as if one and disappeared into the tunnel’s darkness.

  Mikaal grasped Areenna’s arm. “What happened?”

  “I have no idea. I felt something—not danger. It was as if it were deciding our…worth.”

  Mikaal nodded. “It was a test.”

  “For me?”

  “For me. All the tests are for me, but you play a part in them as well,” he said with a shake of his head.

  He slid the sword into its sheath, understanding at last that the metal was the least effective of their weapons. The most potent, he discerned, was their minds. He grasped Areenna’s hand again and started toward the opening. “I itch for this to be done,” he said as they neared the entrance and whatever awaited them in the red mist outside.

  When they stepped onto the street, which was clear of debris, they found themselves facing a mound of metal and glass the height of fifty people. Atop this was the needle-like strand of metal Areenna had pointed out on the start of their trek through the Island’s pathways. Sunlight gleamed off it even within the constant swirling of the red dust. When Areenna recovered from the sight, she said, “So large, so high. How powerful our forbearers were to create such a thing.”

  “And how stupid,” Mikaal said. “To have done this to Nevaeh—to have destroyed their world.”

  Such is the nature of man, came the thought.

  Mikaal looked at Areenna. Her green eyes were wide, her mouth partially open in reaction. Her pale blonde hair was covered with red dust. “Not all men,” he said to them as well as Areenna.

  “So say you.”

  Mikaal turned to find the old crone with them. This time no hood covered her head and face as she stood at the base of the rubble. “But if man is allowed to rule, it will happen again. It always does.”

  “It does not have to. But if they conquer us, your words will be true.”

  The old crone’s eyes glowed luminous and blue. “You make a good argument, but can you promise man will not rule as he has in the past, that this will not happen again should the Dark Forces be defeated?”

  How could he make a promise so far beyond his power to keep? He studied her, looking at the blue eyes and saw something in them that made him look deeper into himself.

  It took a few seconds, yet for Mikaal the moment drew on forever; but when answers came, they gave him a deeper knowledge of who he was.

  “I can promise but one thing,” he said. “Whatever abilities I possess and for whatever reasons I have been given them, I will never allow what has happened to be repeated. But to promise what you ask…I am only capable of speaking for myself.”

  “And her?” the old crone asked, pointing the gnarled finger at Areenna.

  “Have you not taught me the lesson yourself? Have you not shown me in the black place, then with the warrior on the street, and again in the tunnel what I had to learn? I have no claim on Areenna. I cannot speak for her nor tell her what to do. Perhaps together…but only in that way.”

  The woman moved forward. She did not walk, but seemed to float toward them. When she was a short distance away, she raised her arms. “Kneel before us.” As the words left the pale slash of her mouth, there were suddenly eight cloaked figures circling them, each with their black hands held toward Areenna and Mikaal.

  A crackle sounded in the air. Bands of blue and orange lightning issued from their hands, going not toward Areenna and Mikaal, but connecting the eight together. The scent of an approaching thunderstorm filled the air. The red mist disappeared from within the circle and the voices of the eight reverberated in their heads.

  Woman, they said to Areenna, you are young to be here, but this day we have seen coming for…a long time. You are strong and powerful beyond your years and even your knowledge, yet there is more you must learn.

  Man, they said, you have shown us your abilities, and they are powerful to behold and frightening to us. But more so, you have shown us a man can learn, a man can think—not like a man, but as does a woman.

  There is more you need to learn about yourself before you can do battle with those who seek our end. The eight stepped forward, moving as one, drawing the circle closer and closer until their robes touched Mikaal and Areenna.

  What follows next is the most dangerous. Over the centuries, more women have died or have lost the abilities they were born with than have survived. It is a choice you each must make now. You are free to leave with the abilities you pos
sess, or you can accept whatever gifts we give. But with these gifts, should you survive the giving itself, will come terrible responsibilities and a future of what…we cannot say, but choose your path now you must.

  The last silent words were sent at them with such deadly certainty it caused shivers to race through Mikaal and Areenna, who still tightly clasped each other’s hands, each understanding the other’s mind. We agree, they responded in unison.

  Blue-orange lightning exploded around them, spun in a circle over their heads and rose skyward for hundreds of feet. It reversed and, in a jagged bolt, struck downward into them.

  CHAPTER 33

  ON THE LANDING across from the Island, the four women and Roth continued their watch. “It’s late. The day is speeding past. How long does one stay there?” Roth asked.

  Four sets of eyes locked on Roth. Enaid moistened her lips. “It is different for each woman. Some take only a few hours, others the entire day.”

  “Longer? Have any stayed longer?” he asked, his face etched with worry as he looked at the declining sweep of the sun.

  “And come back whole? No,” Enaid whispered. “But they are not those others. We can only wait,” she added, laying a warm hand on Roth’s bare arm.

  On the tail of her last word, Enaid stiffened. Her gray eyes went wide and she spun to face the Island. Atir, Ilsraeth, and Laira turned at the same instant, staring.

  A streak of blue-orange lightning shot skyward from the center, near the tip of the Island, moving almost too fast to track. And then, as if time stopped, it hovered in the air, reversed direction and dove back from where it had come.

  Behind them, near the edge of the Landing, Charka reared and gave vent to a loud cry. And then the kraal charged across the Landing, toward the water. Without thinking, Roth dove as Charka ran by him, wrapped his arms around the kraal and planted his heels on the wood planks in an effort to stop him.

  Behind him, Enaid cried out in distress, but Roth could not release the kraal. When he had Charka under control a mere yard from the edge of the Landing and, as the large animal stood there shuddering and whining, Roth turned to find Enaid had collapsed and the other three women had surrounded her.