The Song of Eloh Saga (34 page)

“Try touching my finger and sliding it through,” Alia said.

I placed my fingertip along the shaft of her finger and slid my fingertip down towards the invisible wall. I gasped as my finger slid right through.

“How?” I asked, looking at her, my eyes wide. “Are you…” my voice trailed off.

Alia nodded. “I’m gifted. I can detect fields and break them.”

“Does anyone else know?” I asked, stunned. No wonder she’d been so thrilled to meet me. It was one thing to believe in a fantasy. It was another to be gifted yourself and wonder if someday you might meet your supposed Prophet.

Alia nodded. “Nemison knows. But no one else. He told me to keep it a secret when I was little because he didn’t want the Malborn getting their hands on my talent.”

“Here,” she said, pulling her finger back out, “watch this. It takes just a little friction.”

Alia rubbed her hands together in a circle and I felt the warmth radiating from them. Then she squeezed her palms together. Quickly releasing them, she thrust her hands onto the invisible wall. Steam emanated from her hands, spreading out the length of the doorway. A hissing sound whistled as the invisible wall became visible for just a moment until it flickered out of view.

Krissin never told me any of her slaves were gifted. I didn’t understand the trick Alia just used. So far she’d done nothing but help me, but if she was gifted why hadn’t anyone told me?

Alia sighed and pulled her hands back.

“That wasn’t easy. Try it now.” Alia’s shoulders slumped.

My hand shook as I held it up to the doorway. I didn’t want to rush in because if the wall was still there, I didn’t want to slam into it. I tentatively moved my hand closer and held my breath as I neared the doorway. I didn’t feel anything as I pushed gently towards and through the doorway. I stepped a foot through and then my whole body. I sighed with relief as I turned around and beckoned to Mark and Alia.

They bounded in after me and Mark shut the door behind him.

“I’ll take this side,” I said, waving my arm behind me. “Alia, you search the fireplace wall. Mark, take the third wall,” I said.

We all went to work, only to discover that there was nothing to see. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I realized the room was completely empty. I shrugged my shoulders. All that work and there truly was nothing. Not one piece of furniture. Not one book. Just four walls, a fireplace and lifetimes of dust. Even the walls were bare.

I reached my arm up into the fireplace, but it had been bricked up, probably years ago, and there was nothing to be found.

Alia leaned against the wall, crossing her arms. “Now what?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. I looked to Mark. He shook his head.

“Why guard it if it’s empty?” I asked. “Why set up a force field? I don’t get it. There has to be something here. Something worth protecting.”

“Reychel,” Alia said, “I told you, they cleaned the house out generations ago. The guards are only here to keep vandals and nutcases away.”

I sat on the floor, knees up with my arms circling them.

“If there was nothing here of interest, why set up a shield to keep the house from being torn down?” I asked, talking out loud to myself. “There’s something. I know there is.”

Alia gasped. “I think I hear something,” she said. “We’d better get out of here. If we get caught, then everything we’ve done means nothing.”

I nodded in agreement. “You’re right. Let’s get out of here. I need more time to think.”

Mark held out his hand and I took it in mine without thinking. He squeezed my hand and I squeezed back. Then he let my hand drop. I looked at him, one eyebrow raised with an unspoken question.

He reached up and patted my bald head. Of course, I was a slave again, or at least appeared that way. We couldn’t hold hands outside the cottage, even though I wanted nothing more right now than to feel his touch.

I’d forgotten about our fight, about the kiss that could have meant a hundred different things. Right now I needed him because he was the only one I could trust. I just realized Alia’s eyes didn’t have the spark like ours did, like every other gifted person I’d met. She was different.

Chapter Thirteen

“I need to talk to you.” I whispered in Mark’s ear as we walked down the street. “Alone.”

He nodded. I wondered if he noticed Alia’s eyes too or used his gift on her. He’d told me once before that he’d stopped using his gift because he didn’t want to be detected.

Mark’s gift allowed him to know when people were keeping secrets. He could see into their minds, finding the mental walls they built around secrets. He couldn’t break down the walls or see past them, but he knew they were there. While we all had a few secrets we wanted to hide, Mark had the knack for knowing when a secret was harmful. He’d often joked that we’d make the perfect team in ruling Serenia as long as no one knew about his gift. He’d be with me at court and know who was trustworthy and who wasn’t.

It was his gift that had first put the seeds in my head about Ivy’s loyalties. Since discovering my best friend had never loved me as much as I loved her, I’d been too afraid to trust. It was one of the reasons I’d let Mark walk away from me at Ivy’s wedding and why I hadn’t followed him into the woods.

But now things were becoming clearer. I paid more attention to what people did and not just what they said. Alia didn’t have the same attributes of everyone else I’d met with the gift. Her eyes didn’t have the spark. Mark was able to hide his using his gift and maybe she was able to do the same thing. Even so, she should have recognized me immediately when we met. The greater the gift, the greater the spark.

Now I questioned everything she’d done for me. We’d snuck out of the castle too easily and her gift was able to gain me into the cottage, a cottage no one had supposedly entered in hundreds of years. It was too coincidental. I was sure she knew more than she admitted.

“Can we sneak back into the palace?” I asked Alia. “I’m sure I was missed today. I have to come up with some reason for being out.”

“Use me,” Mark said. “Tell them I convinced you to come out with me. I’ll even come back to the palace with you. It’ll prove the story.”

“But Alia and I have to sneak in through the servant’s quarters. You can’t come in that way.”

“I have an idea,” Mark said. “Alia, can you run in and get Reychel’s wig and a dress? Then she can dress out here and she and I can come into the main doors of the palace together.”

Alia looked at me and then at Mark.

“I’m not sure I should leave the two of you alone. It wouldn’t be proper,” she said.

I laughed. “Alia, Mark and I have been alone many times over the past few months. We’ve even spent the night together.” Alia’s eyes widened, but I didn’t feel like explaining to her. “You don’t need to worry about us out here in the forest on the edge of the palace. You’ll be back fast enough and no one will know if you’re worried about improprieties.”

“Okay,” she said. “I suppose this makes the most sense. But what about me? They’ll wonder where I was today.”

“I’ll just tell them I brought you with us. As a chaperone,” I added.

“Well, then, I’ll be back soon. I’ll try not to be seen.”

Alia ran out of the woods to the servant door. As soon as the door closed behind her, I turned to Mark.

“Did you read her?” I asked.

“I didn’t have to,” he said. “I knew something odd was going on the minute we stepped foot into her parents’ house. No one lives there,” he said.

“What do you mean ‘no one lives there’?” I asked. “There was furniture and food. Why do you think that?”
“Did you even look around?” he asked. I shook my head. I’d been too distracted, thinking about the empty journal.

“When Alia was getting drinks for Ace and me, I peeked into the door to the next room. It was cracked open. That would have been her parents’ bedroom, right?”

I nodded, expecting the same.

“The room was filled with maps and books, scattered across multiple tables. There wasn’t a bed in sight, Reychel. No one lives there. It’s a meeting house. I was afraid for you, so I read Alia. The walls were strong, Reychel. Not as strong as Ivy, but still Alia has a lot to hide.

“I went along with her plan because I wanted to see the inside of that house too. I wanted to know what she was hiding and why she was taking you exactly where you wanted to go.”

I shivered as the cool night descended upon us. The twilight had passed and total darkness awakened in the forest. The lights from the palace and the town couldn’t penetrate the copse we stood in. Mark put his arm around my shoulder and I leaned my head into that soft spot I had missed so much over the last couple of weeks. I wanted to erase the misunderstandings that still stood between us.

“I’m hoping that someday soon I won’t have to protect you anymore,” he said.

I stiffened up under his arm. “I’m sorry you feel like you have to protect me. You’re perfectly welcome to go elsewhere.”

Mark took his arm off my shoulders. He grasped me with both hands, spinning me to face him.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. “I’d like life to be boring. For both of us. Together.”

I took in his words. Boring. Together. Those were two words I just couldn’t reconcile between Mark and me. But I knew deep down, that’s what I wanted too.

But the time wasn’t right. Not yet. We couldn’t walk away, no matter how much we wanted to.

“Did you notice how Alia urged us to leave just as I was trying to puzzle out another reason for the house still standing? It makes sense, doesn’t it? That if they had cleaned out the house there must be nothing left, no reason to leave it standing. Yet there it is, guarded by guards and force field put in place by a gifted person. What are they hiding Mark?” I asked. I hadn’t forgotten how close we were or that his hands still rested on my shoulders.

“I noticed that too,” he whispered, his breath tickling my cheek.

“What do we do next?” The words caught in my throat.

“This,” Mark said. He leaned in closer and kissed me. His right hand wound around my neck, his left cradling my back. I snaked my arms on top of his shoulder, tangling my fingers in the hair curling off the back of his head. We breathed the same air, our chests moving in unison as our lips mingled.

We reluctantly broke apart. I pecked his bottom lip and he leaned in, crushing me against him, taking my lips fully against his. I didn’t breathe. I didn’t need to. My body had all the life it needed in Mark’s arms.

He pulled away, gently rubbing the back of my neck with his thumb.

“We don’t have time for this now, do we?” he asked, a smile escaping his lips. I smiled back, stupidly unable to do anything but grin. I shook my head.

“More later?” I asked. “When life is boring?” My fingers played with his curls as I gazed into his eyes.

“I wouldn’t exactly call that boring,” he said, his eyebrows arching.

“I didn’t mean…” I started to say, but his lips caught mine again in a quick kiss.

“I know exactly what you meant,” Mark said. He dropped his arms, lacing his fingers with mine. “Right now we need to find out what Alia is doing. And why.”

“And who she’s working with,” I said. “She can’t be doing this alone.”

“I agree,” Mark said. “It’s just one more reason I need to get into the palace with you tonight. I need to find out who else has secrets.”

“We all have secrets,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of walls in my head.”

His eyebrows fell. “I’ve never read you, Reychel. I didn’t think it was right.”

“But how did you know you could trust me?” I asked. “I could have been just as awful as Ivy.”

“Some things don’t need to be guessed, Reychel. I knew you were wonderful the moment I met you.” He laughed. The glimmer in his eyes shined as he let his guard down. “Why else would Johna have hidden you under the counter? You were the true prize, the one worth treasuring.”

A rustle in the leaves caused us to pull apart. Alia must be back. I looked in the forest, hoping it was Alia. I couldn’t handle another problem.

“We have to hurry,” Alia said as she pushed through the branches. In her hands was a dress. I could see strands of my wig poking out the sides. She tossed the bundle to me. “You need to change as fast as possible.”

Mark turned his back to us so I could change. Even though the Southern Kingdom were warm, the night chilled me as I pulled my slave robe over my head. I stuck my head and arms into the silk dress Alia brought, yanking it down to keep the chilly air from hitting my bare legs. I grabbed the slippers Alia hung from her fingertips. I tried not to think too much about her deception. Instead I concentrated on getting back into the castle without suspicion.

“Did anyone see you?” I asked as I pulled my wig on. I tapped Mark on the shoulder so he knew it was safe to turn around.

“I don’t think so,” Alia said, straightening my wig for me. “I slipped in with no problem. None of the other slaves care too much about where I’d been. No one even asked or said a word to me. It was when I first entered the hallway to your chambers that I was almost caught. I saw Jada and Krissin leaving your room. They were arguing. Krissin was very angry. I waited for them to exit the other end of the hallway before I ran to your room.

“What was Krissin upset about this time?” I asked, knowing it could be anything, but sure it had something to do with my disappearance.

“She said it was just like you to run off when we needed you most. That you couldn’t be trusted. Jada was ignoring her, like she does most of the time. But the point is that they know you’re gone. We need to get back before they become suspicious or send out the guards after you.”

I stepped back from Alia and turned to Mark. “How do I look?”

“Every inch the Prophet you are.”

I sighed. I couldn’t wait until I could grow my hair back out again and live a boring life. With Mark.

“Shall we go, then?” I asked, lacing my arm through Mark’s offered arm. “Which way out of here?” I asked Alia.

“Let’s go back out the way we came,” she said. “Follow me, but as we get closer to the path, I’ll switch to behind you. Anyone seeing me leading you would be suspicious.”